All items by Alistair Croll

Posts

There’s lots of speculation about Twitter’s business model, from the serious to the comic. The firm’s backers claim the company has plenty of money for the long haul. In fact, given the openness Twitter has traditionally shown with its APIs, the model could be to let all of us speculate about it, then pick the winners.

But I’ll bite. I have an idea how Twitter could make money.

Most of the business models I’ve seen charge the publisher. Why not charge the audience?

We live in an attention economy. We’ve moved beyond the information economy — now, anyone can get access to anything. Instead, we want to know what’s worth our time. Google makes money by ranking information based on relevance; Paris Hilton makes money by pointing us at the scandalous; newspaper editors make money by selecting topics they think their readers will find interesting.

Lots of people are experts on things. I’d pay to follow someone smart and knowledgeable. Maybe only $10 a year, but in return, they’d search for useful information and tell me about it. They might be an expert on cloud computing, or web monitoring, or sustainable food, or transparent government. I’d follow them. I’d get links from them (which only susbscribers would receive, of course) to reports they’d written, or news they’d found.

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I’m listening to YouTube. And I’m loving it.

Funk producer/performer Kutiman released Thru-You, a remixing of YouTube audio that’s what would happen if Girl Talk, DJ Shadow, and Thievery Corporation surfed the web together.

This is what the Internet is good at. It’s a wonderful example of what Clay Shirky calls Organizing without Organizations — millions of video clips of people showing their chops, selected by an editor with decent taste. And with modern editing tools that can combine video and audio, it makes for interesting viewing, too. It’s a ready-made collaborative video.

It also underscores the huge gulf between how people are using technology today and where copyright law stands. With Girl Talk, the artists’ source material was recognizable; in this case, the clips were uploaded with members’ express approval, saying they had the right to them. But they probably didn’t envision them being re-used in this way; some of the clips are from music teachers hoping to promote their classes.

Within a few hours, the site had the following message:

Due to overwhelming traffic we had to go down to re-charge (again). Working on it. Check back later.

Well, it’s back. Manager Boaz says “at this stage there are no plans for an official release of the “Thru-You” project.” Wanna support the guy? Go buy his stuff from Amazon, iTunes, or eMusic; it’s similar, although he plays most of the music himself. But first, give the site a listen.

Posts

You’ve seen bad metaphors for the Internet. Pop culture is filled with films where special effects show computer networks as highways, with towering servers encroaching on light-filled roads. These scenes try to represent the Internet as, well, a series of tubes (Play this clip from Hackers to jog your memory.)*

This happens a lot in Hollywood, and in too many cyberpunk novels (like one I’m finishing now just to spite myself.) I forgive William Gibson’s “collective hallucination” and Neil Stephenson’s Metaverse because, well, they’re good books.

But maybe the UI of the future will look like this after all, at least for certain applications. Check out Britain from Above by way of the folks at Flowing Data. Warning: clicking this video may make your browser lock up for a minute for some reason. Be patient, or go to the Youtube playlist.

There are clips for telecommunications, air traffic, and even shipping on the site itself, which is well worth the visit.

I’m a huge believer in visualizing information and making the world more understandable, and the convergence of things like geomapping and GPS are making understanding even easier. These clips resemble nothing if not an RTS for the real world. It makes me want to click and drag routes for cars and boats.

I used to think Tron was a great movie, but not really a UI. Now I’m starting to wonder how these flying-through-data approaches, first conceived as a network metaphor for the non nerd, can become user interfaces.

This is how the prescient visuals of Minority Report slowly become reality.

We’re about to drink from a firehose of positional data as location-aware personal devices replace traditional cellphones and we move towards a sensor-driven world. We have the cloud computing infrastructure to handle massive computing and fast data retrieval. How long until Britain From Above becomes a live Google Earth overlay?

Oh, wait. It already is. Here’s the site’s Google Earth layer. When will web analytics catch up with this?

(*For real fun, check out the eighties-era Mac copy dialog at 8:18 in that Hackers clip. Anachronisms, FTW!)

Posts

A group of social networking mischief-makers are bringing a panto to Twitter for the whole world to see.

If you’ve never been to a British pantomime, here’s what to expect:
 

  • A central cast of actors take common themes and familiar stories, and twist them in new ways
  • Men play women and vice-versa
  • Old jokes are updated with topical humor
  • Everything has a second, and decidedly naughty, meaning.
  • The audience is expected–nay, commanded–to participate.
  • Famous people show up unexpectedly.

 
It’s a perfect prototype for Twitter, with 140-character repartee and fast-flying innuendos.

And on Tuesday, December 23, a cast and audience are coming together on the microblogging network to put on the first Twitter panto. In true social network style, there’s only loose direction and gentle nudging from the directors. The brainchild of social media consultant John Bounds it’s an interesting holiday experiment.

Posts

If you’re wondering about the reach of Twitter (clocking in at over 3 million users now) consider the tragedy that’s happening right now in Mumbai. Apparently the police (and perhaps the attackers) are not only aware of Twitter — it’s also part of the problem.  The Indian government is asking that the #mumbai hashtag be shut down.

What’s more, with Twitter being an excellent medium for short messages but lacking the space for details, Internet users are now repurposing Wikipedia to maintain a frequently edited page.

Posts

There’s such a thing as TOO open

From the Register, by way of Broadsight, it seems that Google has patched an issue with Android that interpreted text you type as commands. So you can type “reboot” and reboot the phone.

Really? Really?

I mean, I’ve heard Android is supposed to be an open platform. But if the tale is true — and there isn’t some kind of double-backflip configuration knob you have to fiddle with to make this work — it’s a big deal.

Consumer electronics don’t like to be open. Openness breeds complexity. The iPhone is criticized for being closed, but it’s usable (despite this post to the contrary) in part because it’s locked down. The button-bar iPhone resembles nothing so much as the old Compuserve menu. It took us years to move from consumer adoption of buttons to comfort with the open web.

If you let humans play with the guts of things, they tend to break in new and creative ways. Social engineering is the new hacking; now that many operating systems are patched and scanned, hackers exploit human weaknesses to send drive-by malware links to Facebook users. (Good thing the bad guys are after Warcraft passwords, then.)

But back to Android. Apple locks it down; Google opens it up. One approach delivers a seamless experience, the other so much flexibility you can hurt yourself. Apple assumes people will use its devices on a busy New York subway, jostling for handholds and bouncing in purses. Google assumes people will hack together scripts and plug-ins, finding new ways to use tag clouds and APIs. Apple partners with monopoly-scale carriers; Google lobbies for free spectrum.

The two philosophies couldn’t be more different. It’ll be fascinating to see whether integration trumps flexibility, or vice-versa.

Posts

My favorite thing on the Internets today (aside from Stallman’s tinfoil-hat rant about cloud computing being evil, which I’ll get to later) is this video of the Mythbusters crew researching sobering-up techniques.

When you’re done laughing, think about the first part of that. A member of the media (admittedly, a pretty irreverent one,) showed a roomful of people the illegal content on his hard drive. And they cracked up.

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Posts

Human 2.0 is the Next Big Thing

We’re about to upgrade the human race. It’s more than a technology shift, it’s a cultural one. And it’s perhaps the first step on the singularity. This is most of what I’ve been thinking about lately. We’re sliding into it day by day, without noticing. I firmly believe it is the most significant change the human race faces, and it’s going to drive a tremendous amount of business and fuel wide-ranging ethical discussions. Most of the other technologies we cover here and elsewhere are simply building blocks for Human 2.0.

This is the first of many posts on the subject, and it sounds a bit muddy. Hopefully we can clarify that in the coming months. But if you’re willing to wade through some still-addled thinking, read on.

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Does Big Search change science?

Matthew Ingram at the Globe and Mail takes Wired to task over a recent article that implies Big Search will save the world and change the way we solve problems. I think Matthew’s right, and that the way we can now mine vast amounts of data isn’t a substitute for science — merely an accelerant.

I think this for two reasons. First, Google can’t solve the problems with machines; and second, correlation is not causality.

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