There are 5 posts from November 1996.

November 25, 1996

Windows gets smaller

The people that get paid to pronounce such things have pronounced over and over again that computing will continue to get smaller and smaller and smaller… To the point where you’ve got your PIM running in the sole of your shoe, communicating with the other shoes in the room. (“Hey, nice swoosh. Wanna exchange VCards?”)

Until we reach that laced-up Elysium, the bit-addled among us are stuck with the personal digital assistant. Or electronic organizer. Or handheld PC. Or whatever they’re calling it these days.

After the fall of the Newton (which, as you look back on it, was as inevitable as gravity), the mainstream PC press was remarkably free of PDA hype. Thanks to some lousy handwriting recognition and an oversized form factor, the category was stillborn. Meanwhile, products like the Sharp Zaurus, the Psion Series 3a, the HP OmniGo and the US Robotics Pilot operated under the radar screen of hype-central, and actually helped their owners organize their lives and get some work done.

Bit just when you thought it was safe to use your little thing-a-majig without getting inquisitive looks from the guy in the next seat on the commuter train, here comes Microsoft, with Windows CE. And the requisite hype.

Reportedly, Comdex was chock full of machines from Compaq, Casio, HP, NEC and others running the dimunitive version of Windows 95. The machines all weigh about a pound, fit “in your pocket” (assuming you’re not talking about something convenient like a shirt or pants pocket), and will retail for between $500 and $1,000.

Windows CE has been a long time in coming. Back when Microsoft was developing Windows 95 (then known as 4.0 or Chicago), there was talk of “WinPad,” which would be released for palmtop computers soon after the PC operating system. Of course, with the high-profile failure of the Newton, Microsoft rightly retrenched to see where the world was headed. And, at first glance, they made some good decisions – like including built-in integration with the Windows desktop, a simple email application and Internet Explorer. For the traveling sales rep who needs to make a quick connection to the corporate web site and blast off a few emails, it could be the perfect machine. It looks just like Windows, it runs just like Windows, and it even has that helpful little Start button and the politically correct Recycle Bin.

But wait a minute…does it make sense to have a miniature version of the Recycle Bin in your palm?

When you read about the beginnings of the Graphical User Interface, you learn about the challenge to create a metaphor for the user that’s easy to understand. And the one they chose was the desktop…complete with documents, file folders and a trash can. Since most people work on their computers at some sort of desk, the metaphor is transparent.

Does this UI metaphor hold water when you’re away from your desk? It’s a simple form/function question, really: does it make sense to have an “opaque” operating system on the machine that you need to work most “transparently” with? Windows CE requires using a combination of the pen and the keyboard for navigation and data entry. Sure, you’ve got that “friendly” Start button in the lower left corner of your display, but if you have to fumble around pulling out a pen to tap it, what good does it do you?

Microsoft claims that Windows CE is “compact, providing high performance in limited memory configurations.” That sounds all fine and good, until you read the FAQ, and realize that it sounds a heck of a lot like the Windows we all know and “love.” Sentences like “If you’re having strange problems, close all applications and reset the device” and “Don’t forget Inbox doesn’t like attachments” send familiar chills up my spine. And I’m going to put my calendar on this thing? Talk about a critical app…

What’s fascinating about Microsoft’s move into the PDA market is that if users think Windows CE is worth it’s salt, then PDA differentiation will have to be done on the physical characteristics of the machines. If the O/S is set by Microsoft, then the hardware manufacturers will have to sell their products based on mundane things like ergonomics, battery life, communications capabilities and, God forbid, color. Sounds an awful lot like the laptop business to me.

This is a shame, because I honestly think that the PDA market is the only place we’re seeing any real innovation in consumer electronics, where the software and the hardware are being designed in tandem, to work together. The Pilot, for example, is built from the ground up to be a fast, easy-to-use peripheral. Half of the machine is the cradle that connects it to your PC. The Pilot isn’t out to pass any Turing tests, it’s only designed to serve up your schedule, to-do list and your address book. The software on the handheld is quick, simple and intuitive. No “Start” in sight. Just a simple green power button.

Hmmmm…if Windows CE doesn’t fly as the uber-operating system for PDAs, maybe Microsoft should take this compact, limited memory O/S and make it run on all those 386’s that the nation’s grade schools and libraries are stuck with.

November 21, 1996

Size Matters

Consumer marketing (and media punditry) tends to feed off itself. Marketers and writers read the same trades, follow the same trends, and, in an attempt to fry new fish daily, cannibalize each other’s ideas. And those ideas keep getting smaller all the time. The ’90s mantra “less is more” has led to ever-shrinking marginal physical products of capitalism. Food is smaller. Toys are smaller. Dishwashing detergents are smaller. Even books are smaller. And since people spend most of their time in front of some version of a cathode ray tube, publishers of pulp are looking for new ways to get into the pocketbooks of consumers. Literally and figuratively.

While some might express surprise that canon-fodder feeder Penguin Books would squeeze themselves into this shrinking ring of literal downsizing, it’s only fitting that they lead the way into the land of tiny imprints with their “60s Classics” line - they invented the paperback 60 years ago. And with these diminutive documents, they’ve entered the content repurposing hall of fame. The strategy is so obvious it hurts: use the small format (and cheap price) to market the classics to people who probably never read them when they were assigned in high school. Dostoyevsky may have been too difficult to wade through back in 11th grade, but now that’s he’s dressed down in a little palm-sized package, he’s just too damn cute to pass up. Just like Ritz Bits, miniature Oreos, and bite-sized Chips Ahoy, the Penguin 60s series is a marketer’s dreamsicle: “Since they’re smaller, they’ll buy more of them.”

The small size seems to make even the most forbidding literature palatable. Most readers don’t have the time or patience to wade through all nine circles of Dante’s Inferno. With the 60s version, they can limit their apprehension of the unknown to the first three circles. Then again, maybe Penguin is practicing some sort of twisted “upgrade” strategy: The unbaptized, the virtuous pagans, the lustful, and the gluttonous will learn their hellish fate for under a buck, but the hoarders, the spendthrifts, the wrathful, and the violent will have to buy the complete version to find out what in store for them after the big sleep.

It’s surprising that the Inferno made it on the title list in the first place. Most of the titles in the 60s series lend themselves to light commuter reading. Who needs to be bogged down by the entire text of Beyond Good and Evil when you can plow your way through a few of Zarasthustra’s Discourses on the train ride home? Is Heart of Darkness too challenging? Well, then get your dose of Conrad with a copy of Secret Sharer you can stash in your shirt-pocket. The 60s Classics become the quick and easy way for your average office temp to be able to namedrop at cocktail parties: “Reading Nietzsche on the train the other day, I realized that it’s time for me to dye my hair blonde and work on my upper body strength…”

Penguin’s point-of-sale displays for their little nuggets of canon have prompted a few retailers to rethink the way they sell books in the first place. A recently noticed handwritten sign next to one of the cardboard racks at a green-carpeted, espresso-hawking airport bookstore suggests that you “send a book instead of a card.” At 95 cents a pop, a title in the 60s series is half the price of your average Hallmark missive, and the possibilities for creative message management are endless. Substitute the usual holiday card to your parents with Balzac’s The Atheist’s Mass, your spouse’s traditional Valentine’s Day card with Rimbaud’s A Season In Hell, and your boss’s customary get well card with De Quincey’s The Pleasures and Pains of Opium - you’re bound to at least raise a few eyebrows. But why stop at greeting cards? Anonymous mailings of Benjamin Franklin’s The Means and Manner of Obtaining Virtue could be used to subtly alert friends or coworkers that their behavior has been a little less than Ivory pure.

Speaking of virtue, how many classics are bought in a fit of either self-flagellation (“I need to read something other than Danielle Steele”) or self-improvement (“I need to read something other than Danielle Steele”) and then merely left on the shelf to gather dust? If the 60s line catches on, people could read through a couple abbreviated classics a week, without ever having to shoulder the guilt of not making it all the way through The Temptation of St. Anthony. Not only that, but a healthy library of classic literature could be shelved in the space it takes to hold the average household’s collection of Madonna discs.

The 60s line is a triumph of sizzle over steak, especially since the meat in question is not only bite-sized, but “free-range.” Penguin has filled the 60s line with literature that’s in the public domain, eliminating from the value chain those pesky living authors. Why go through the trouble of slaughtering, butchering and packaging fresh beef when you can get it off the shelves, perfectly preserved in a pale yellow package? The dead ones aren’t screaming for a new dust-jacket photo every few years, either. That faux-Rembrandt painting does just fine, thank you very much.

For Penguin, small books will translate to big bucks, and not a moment too soon. Because just when everyone seems to be yammering on about the “death of the book,” along comes the perfect collectible. The 60s line with its “Own Every Title!” aesthetic, appeals to the segment of the population that accumulates pop artifacts like Pez dispensers and Mini M&M tubes. The only difference is that instead of doling out little gobs of sugar, the palm-sized pale-yellow tomes dispense pebbles of thought.

If we ever did kick our nugget habit, throw away the dispenser of choice, actually read the entire Inferno, we’re afraid that we’d find a circle of hell custom-designed by Carol Pogash. A nightmarish place where media pundits, consumer marketers, and other idea cannibals stand in a circle, holding up mirrors to one another.

On second thought, pass that Pleasures and Pains of Opium, please.

November 18, 1996

Digital products

Some of you may think I’m nuts, but one day I actually want to go to Comdex.

I can only imagine the wonder of it all… Bright lights! Big names! New products! Earth-moving keynotes! Craps tables! OK, maybe it’s just that I’ve never actually been to Vegas, but something about the mixture of neon, consumer electronics, cheap booze, gambling and Elvis impersonators makes me thrilled to be an American.

Instead, I’m stuck with the web-based dregs…slowly sipping the news headlines (read: press releases) off the wire. The real pundits have been saying for years that nothing exciting happens at Comdex anymore, but I’m convinced they say that just to keep the fake pundits away. I mean, something big’s gotta be happening when Bill Gates and Masayoshi Son sit down to hear a speech by Andy Grove. Something really big, right?

Like something on the order of 10-Ghz?

The paranoid one is at it again. At Comdex on Monday, Grove was doing what he does best – proclaiming visions of silicon glory, with a 200-fold increase in processing power by the year 2011, fitting 1 billion transistors on a chip and flying through 100,000 million instructions per second. Not one to put the cart before the horse, however, Grove admits that they have to produce this chip…not just for the consumer’s sake, but to keep their company. “In the future, [chip] plants are going to cost $10 billion to build, we have to figure out how to keep these plants filled. Intel has to help lead development of technology to find the compelling PC technologies which would keep these humongous plants humming along building millions and millions of chips,” said Grove.

What are we going to do with all this processing power, you ask? Well, Grove has an interesting answer…and one that we need to pay attention to. In perfect paranoid form, Grove reports: ““My paranoia is that some day the [PC] cycle may sputter and applications may get boring. This is a battle for the eyeballs of the consumer.”

For Grove, going after the eyeballs of the consumer means video. And not just TV-quality video on your PC, but an experience that’s better than television. A three-dimensional “lifelike,” networked, interactive experience.

Sounds wonderful, if you’re into that sort of thing. But there’s a catch. Some sort of logic would dictate that for us to be living, working, breathing and (most importantly) consuming in this 3D, interactive, lifelike, networked world by the year 2011, that we’d have some sort of primitive version of it here, now, on the information superhypeway we call the Internet. I mean, heck…I may not have a 100 gigahertz chip, but my 133-mhz Dell at least lets me imagine what’s possible.

So, where’s the nascent digital economy that will eventually bloom into the full-blown digital nirvana that Intel needs in order to survive? Shouldn’t we be seeing the beginnings of that world here and now? Where are the digital products? Sure, you can order things online. Books. Records. Flowers. But what have you had delivered digitally to your desktop? A subscription to the Wall Street Journal? An occasional piece of software? Does this constitute a digital economy? Where’s the “convergence” we were promised?

The answer is plain and simple, really. The digital economy is being held up by the lack of widely used and trusted copyright protection schemes. Imagine you’re a software provider. For you, the net is just another distribution network, albeit with a fairly thin pipe to the consumer. But thanks to the zealous efforts of the Software Publisher’s Association, you can sell software on the ‘net without worrying too much about piracy. Now imagine that you’re the Wall Street Journal. You’re not terribly worried about protecting your content, because it has limited value outside of your database and search engine. Sure, an article or two may get lifted from wsj.com and posted on an email list, but the only thing that’s doing is building your brand. Pretty nifty, huh?

But imagine for a moment that you’re Disney. And you sell images. Images of lions and mice and spotted dogs. To you, convergence means that your images can be reproduced digitally, all over the planet, with a touch of a button. Sure, Negroponte may argue that bits are bits are bits, but some bits are different than others. The key difference between Microsoft bits and Disney bits is that the core value of Microsoft bits aren’t splayed all over your monitor in 16 million colors. You can take screenshot after screenshot of Microsoft Excel and it won’t do you any good – you won’t have a copy of excel.exe. But take screenshot after screenshot of The Lion King, at say, 24 frames per second, and by golly, you might just have something of value there.

The thing is, Grove is absolutely dead on. For companies like Intel to make it in the long haul, they need to keep building plants to keep building chips to keep driving more advanced applications. And increasingly, those applications will have to be entertainment based, since there’s only so much processing power you need to throw at a spreadsheet or a word processor, or even a web browser, for that matter. The key for Grove is eyeballs, he said it himself. And what’s he competing with for eyeballs? Television. But without adequate copyright protection and payment schemes, you can bet your bottom dollar that the major media outlets aren’t going to start digitizing their corporate assets and plastering them all over the Internet. But a standard for protecting intellectual property isn’t going to emerge without a critical mass of users.

Usually, I’d say that the consumer is the one that’s missing breakfast in this chicken and egg scenario. But you know what? Consumers have television. The only folks that are aching for the convergence are the technology companies…

November 11, 1996

CFAR form and function

It’s about time I start practicing what I preach. Enough writing about writing about writing. There are things actually getting done out there. Things that make an awful lot of sense. And it’s high time I start writing about them.

In my previous life, I was responsible for investigating business opportunities relative to the Internet. The company I worked for delivered portfolio management and trading solutions to “buy side” investment management firms. It was hard core vertical market stuff – about as far away from online publishing as you can get. We were selling things that people would pay for, for one.

The financial services market is very information intensive. Since 99% of all the actual physical shares traded on the exchanges are stored in a vault in lower Manhattan, the industry is almost entirely bit driven. And it has been for quite a while. So, when you talk about moving financial data over the Internet, people ask why. As in “why the Internet? We already have secure networks…”

It’s a good question, actually. When some business people talk about how they’re going to use the ‘net, they’re not thinking about vanity publishing or building community. They’re talking about moving bits around, to and from customers, using a public network instead of a private one. And it becomes a question of Internet form matching business function.

A perfect example: CFAR, or Collaborative Forecasting and Replenishment. A joint project of Wal-Mart and Warner-Lambert (the makers of Listerine), CFAR is a proposed set of standards to enable retailers and suppliers to effectively manage inventory.

Imagine this scenario: Wal-Mart sells Listerine in its stores all across the country. They have some ideas about the historical demand of Listerine, and base their orders for Listerine based on their estimates of future sales. Meanwhile, Warner-Lambert sits on the other side, with its own set of demand information, and its own sales forecasts. And since Wal-Mart is, well, Wal-Mart, their orders most likely comprise a good chunk of Warner-Lambert’s Listerine business.

As most folks know, holding too much excess inventory is an expensive proposition. As is the foregone profits from holding too little inventory. Retailers work incredibly hard to avoid carrying excess inventory – they’d love to perfectly meet demand every month. Not to mention shelf-space, promotion and transportation issues. The goal is simple enough: have just enough Listerine on hand for every mouth that needs it, and is willing to pay for it. Now – imagine that Wal-Mart and Warner-Lambert could collaborate on their forecasts, eliminating the risk of uncoordinated inventory management. That is the promise of CFAR.

CFAR goes beyond traditional EDI, by allowing suppliers and retailers to recursively collaborate on inventory projections. And it goes beyond traditional collaboration tools (like Lotus Notes and plain old email), by providing structured message layouts and defined procedures for publishing and revising inventory forecasts.

Technically, the CFAR concept could run on any network. But it gets the biggest form/function bang for the buck when it runs on the Internet. Here’s why:

  • Pervasiveness. Wal-Mart has obviously realized that the Internet is the most common-sense choice to link together stores, distribution nodes and suppliers across the country, and potentially around the world. When a new Wal-Mart goes up, it’s going to be a lot easier to drop in an 128k ISDN connection to the Internet than a 56k leased line into a private VAN.

  • Scalability. If CFAR takes off as a standard, it potentially could be adopted by retailers and suppliers both small and large. A 28.8k line hooked into a laptop could be all the small retailer needs.

  • Piggy-backing on other players. Users of CFAR can take advantage of the tremendous amount of work that’s going into Internet technologies. In the area of security, for example, you can bet that engineers at Netscape and Microsoft (not to mention a group of folks in Soda Hall) will continue to hammer on SSL and other forms of key cryptography.

While not required, the CFAR protocol calls out for a custom-written software application to manage the collaboration and communication process. Benchmarking Partners, the consulting firm who is working with Wal-Mart and Warner-Lambert to implement CFAR, has designed the CFAR Workbench as proof of concept. What’s interesting about their decision to develop a piece of client software is that it speaks to the “dumbness” of the standard browser. Sure, Netscape Navigator may be fine for reading your favorite web zine or grabbbing a stock quote, but it falls short when faced with difficult business management tasks. I’ve said it before: some information isn’t meant to be browsed, it’s mean to be used.

The good news in all of this, besides the fact that your local Wal-Mart will most likely never run out of Listerine again, is that here we have an example of how the Internet is being used for a specific, high benefit business activity. While CFAR may not have the name-recognition (or the Hendrixized television commercials) of a certain search engine, it is an illustration of how the Internet can not only help solve business problems, but also open up opportunities for third party application developers, technology consultants and (dare I say it), supply chain re-engineering.

Damn, it’s not even been three months and I’m already spouting a new language.

November 04, 1996

Getting vertical

Excuse the pun, but are you tired of reading about Wired?

First came the prospectus. Then came the email. Then came the pull. Then came the flood. One after another, writers with a “cyberspace beat” lined up to feed us their perspective on the withdraw of the IPO. Scott Rosenberg at Salon. David Hudson at Rewired. Even everyone’s favorite practitioner of press-release journalism, news.com, labeled Wired’s IPO “conceptual.”

Way back in June, Carol Rogash published a piece on Hotwired in American Journalism Review titled “Cyberspace Journalism.” While much of her article reels off the usual doubts about the viability of web publishing, she does conjure up a nice image of the web “newsroom:” “A basic difference between [Hotwired] and a traditional newsroom is that these people don’t go out to cover stories. They largely cover what’s on the Internet, which is what many sites do. It’s as if most of those working on the Web are standing in a circle holding up mirrors to one another.”

Despite the downright annoying subtext that people that write about the web don’t bother to leave their workstations, Rogash has a point. Most of the high-profile writing that’s happening on the web is only about the web. Salon writes about Hotwired, which hosts a talk with the editors of Feed, which writes about Word, etc., etc. It’s probably just a function of my bookmark list, but I’m getting the sense lately that there’s entirely too much back scratching going on.

I’ll admit it – I’m as guilty as anyone. From day one, theobvious has been writing about writing on the web, about other people writing about the web, and about all the tools that people use to read all the stuff that all of us writers write about on the web. And I’ll also admit that I’m just as much a sucker for back scratching as the next guy, because it feels so good. But you know what? Unlike real journalists, I can afford to be a self-obsessed nabbering nabob, because I’m not relying on this to make a living.

While everyone sits around and ponders the future of Wired, I’ll pass some (unwanted) advice on to the bevy of generalist technology writers out there. Wake up, folks. People have read enough stories about way new journalism and way new paradigms and way new web sites and way new visionaries. Your time is nearly up. It’s time to do some real reporting.

It’s time to “get vertical.”

It’s simple, really. If you’re an net.reporter, it’s time to take all of that knowledge you’ve gained as a regurgitator of press-release hype and put it to good use writing about stuff that actually matters. When was the last time you read a decent story on how the financial services industry is using the web? Or how HMOs are using the web to communicate with their plan participants? Or how the steel industry and the automotive industry are using electronic communication to streamline inventory management?

In my last job, I had the opportunity to be interviewed by a reporter for Wall Street and Technology about Java. The reporter didn’t know the first thing about distributed computing, and I had to spend half our time on the phone explaining what Java really meant for the software industry. A monthly glossy, WS&T shapes opinions in financial services. If they had a reporter with a strong background in Internet reporting, they could be reporting on issues that are much more interesting than yet another story on the impact of the year 2000.

In the business world, the Internet is facing a serious relevance test. Companies just aren’t seeing the benefits in large investments in corporate home pages, T1 access for their employees, or even Intranets. A new focus by mainstream Internet editors and reporters on how vertical industries are using the Internet could help stem the tide of Internet cynicism. Instead of sitting around holding mirrors up to one another, we should be writing about ways the net are actually being used.