Internet Web Help

Had to install iTunes to set up an iPhone for a friend the other day, finished it all nearly 100Mb of bloatware and 1 hour later. WTF sez I, what could possibly justify such a huge program just for that? Well, I stumbled upon this Xconomy post about the Why:

If you’re not convinced about iTunes’ cruftiness, let me take you on a tour of the program’s main functions. This is a long list, but bear with me:

• It lets you rip CDs to digital formats and play the new files

• It lets you burn new CDs from your digital files

• It lets you print jewel-case inserts for your newly burned CDs

• It gives you several ways of visualizing your media collection, including Cover Flow

• It lets you curate your music collection with ratings and the like

• It lets you create playlists from subsets of your music collection

• Its “Genius” feature can automatically create new playlists based on your listening habits

• It includes a music equalizer and other sound processing features

• It stores copies of your purchased albums, TV shows, and movies

• It stores copies of your downloaded podcasts and iTunes U videos

• It stores copies of the iBooks editions, PDFs, and audiobooks that you may be consuming on your iPhone or iPad

• It stores copies of all of your iPhone and iPad apps

• The Genius function can suggest apps you might like based on your past downloads

• It stores copies of your iPhone ringtones (but it doesn’t let you make your own ringtones anymore)

• It connects to hundreds of streaming Internet radio stations

• It is the leading podcasting client, automatically downloading new audio and video podcasts to which you have subscribed

• It is the gateway to the iTunes Store, which is really seven separate stores for music, movies, TV shows, apps, podcasts, audio books, and university lectures

• It’s the only way to access the new Ping social network

• It’s the hub for sharing music across your home wireless network

• If you have a new iPhone or iPad, you have to use iTunes to activate cellular or data plans

• It synchronizes the music, movies, or TV shows that you buy on your computer to your iPod, iPhone, or iPad, and vice versa

• It can transcode video in certain PC formats such as QuickTime into formats that are playable on iPods, iPhones, iPads, and Apple TV

• It synchronizes your iCal calendar with the calendars on your iPod, iPhone, or iPad; it also synchronizes your address books and any content in your Notes app

• It is the conduit for installing the MobileMe control panel, if you want to synchronize data automatically across your PC and your Apple devices

• It stores voice memos recorded using the iPhone’s built-in voice memo app

• It’s the repository for music and video files embedded in documents created using Apple’s iWork and iLife productivity applications

• It interacts with the Remote app, which lets you control your media collection from an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad

Any program that can print jewel case inserts and share my music preferences with my friends is starting to sound a lot like that giant clot of bubble gum.

As Tim O’Reilly notes, iTunes bloatware may be the undoing of the Apple bid for Global Domination. And it starts insidiously – I wish I’d read Jas Dhaliwal’s post on how to avoid megabloatage first:

Many people do not want to install the other applications. However, Apple does not allow the option to install individual components. The good news, is that it very easy just to install the individual components that you want.

Firstly, you need to install Winrar. This application will allow you to ‘unpack’ your downloaded iTunesSetup.exe file. Locate your file, and right click on it. You will be presented with a number of menu options, select ‘Extract Here’.

(Jas’s post has pictures n’ all, so go there if you want to unbloat your iTunes)

Winrar will now extract the iTunes installation package and will reveal the individual MSI setup files. You can now double click on the iTunes.msi file to install iTunes without the other applications.

Please excuse me now – me and iTunes are going to have a little tete a tete about slimming……

The New York Times on Location based services:

Venture capitalists have poured $115 million into location start-ups since last year, according to the National Venture Capital Association, and companies like Starbucks and Gap have offered special deals to users of such services who visited their stores.

But for all the attention and money these apps and Web sites are getting, adoption has so far been largely confined to pockets of young, technically adept urbanites. Just 4 percent of Americans have tried location-based services, and 1 percent use them weekly, according to Forrester Research. Eighty percent of those who have tried them are men, and 70 percent are between 19 and 35.

The Fist Generation services (Loopt, Dopplr etc) have by and lerge failed to gain traction. So far what has worked with 2nd generation location based services is game based rewards (eg becoming mayor of a place) but these rewards are ultimately about bribery (eg becoming mayor gets you a free offer). Shopkick plays for the endgame by giving you money off coupons when you shop at a certain shop – it’s the online equivalent of newspaper coupon clipouts.

But never fear, the CEO of Loopt claims that people born after 1981 (ie below 30) have lower privacy requirements, and thus a larger demographic will emerge year by year:

“The magic age is people born after 1981,” said Sam Altman in a New York Times article. “That’s the cut-off for us where we see a big change in privacy settings and user acceptance.”

So, two contradictory views – the NYT arging that the market is limited, the CEO of Loopt arguing that the only way is up. I have another explanation for the people after 1981 being less privacy aware, and this is simply that they are young and have less to lose – as the NYT notes:

Stephanie Angelucci, who is 30 and lives in North Beach, Md., updates her MySpace page with photos of her babies, news about her health and testaments to her love of sailing. But she won’t use location apps.

“I don’t like broadcasting where we are or when my husband’s gone, just for safety reasons,” she said. And privacy concerns aside, she doesn’t see the need: “We go to playtime, the park and the grocery store. My life isn’t exciting enough to broadcast where I am and what I do.”

In other words, perhaps at (about) 30 people start to have responsibilities, and for various reasons become far less interested in displaying their location.

WSJ on the Inconvenient Truth about location based services:

Will business continue to use the service? Several other pieces have to fall into place for the services to become more mainstream, said Sree Sreenivasan, a digital media professor at Columbia University. “You need customers who buy into the technology and are willing to use it, and you need businesses that are savvy enough to use it in a smart way to harness that,” he said.

………..

Can the marketplace support multiple location services? Many doubt it. “These smaller guys have to show the immediate value pretty fast so that there’s this notion, this momentum that keep people there,” Sreenivasan said

And think of Location generation 1.0 – anyone remember Loopt, Dodgeball and Dopplr?

Still, anyone who is still going when the Dotcom boom 2.0 starts is bound to cash in. Everyone sing after me – Ah, Ah, Ah, Ah Staying Alive

The poor form of “Wisdom of Crowds” Prediction markets and Performace Statistics

We have been reflecting on the poor performance of “Wisdom of Crowds” prediction markets and on historical Statistics to predict future occurrences, as shown in the chart above (see the original article here)

News reached Broadstuff Towers yesterday that a new, and better, prediction method has been found – an octopus:

The creature, known as Paul, has correctly chosen all of his German homeland’s results so far. This time hie is predicting Spain vs Holland

With food in both boxes to attract Paul, it is then a matter of waiting until he opens one of them to determine his predicted winner. The eight-legged mystic has a perfect record at this tournament – and is said to have had an 80% success rate during Euro 2008.

Here he is on YouTube

I recall a test done many years ago – the Monkey Market Fund – where stocks were picked based on where monkeys were looking, and it outperformed the stock market average. Maybe ancient soothsayers had it right after all – who needs algorithms when you have entrails.

This being South Africa’s World Cup, I am surprised that there have been no stories of the local sangomas divining the Footballl results…..

Update – And, of course, Spain won………..

Prediction market Inkling’s view on world Cup predictions

All the angst about England going out in the last 16 of the World Cup has me befuddled, as its exactly what was predicted statistically by its rankings over the last 18 months (Germany has been Top 4 on average, England nudging Top 8 ). Its the same old litany of English football – the British media overhypes the team above what the odds say is plausible, then there is the predictable and inevitable disappointment, the ritual sacrifice of the Manager, the FA Inquest, the Reports, the Burying Under The Carpet, the New Favourite Manager appointed to the hysterical plaudits of the Football press, and the same sad cycle again 2 years later.

(You may be able to lie with statistics, but its a lot easier without them ;-0 )

Anyway, it may be interesting to see what the Prediction Markets are saying about the Last 8. I looked at the Inklings market, mainly because its data is publically visible unlike Yahoo’s much heralded Predictor (Note to Yahoo – putting stuff people pay for behind a wall is sensible, but free stuff????)

As you can see in the diagram above, the prediction market is fairly clear about Brazil’s probability of winning, and about Spain’s. The probabilities for Argentina v Germany and Uruguay v Ghana are far closer. Incidentally, FIFA results largely agree except they place Germany (6th ranked) above Argentina (7th ranked), and Spain (2nd ranked) way above them).

(erratum – I have Spain beating Argentina (FIFA prediction) whereas the Prediction Market has it the other way)

So, thats the prediction market view as of close of play today…..lets see how it turns out.

Update 1 – Holland beats Brazil, totally against the predictions

Update 2 – Uruguay beat Ghana in a very close game by a cynical handball stopping a certain goal. In Rugby that would be a penalty try, game to Ghana. Football is not a “sport”, and its laws are an ass.

Update 3 – Germany hammers Argentina 4-0 against prediction

Update 4 – Spain narrowly beat Paraguay 1-0

Network World reporting on news from Gartner:

Sixty percent of virtual servers are less secure than the physical servers they replace, the analyst firm Gartner said in new research Monday.

This state of affairs will remain true until 2012, but security should improve substantially after that point, Gartner said.

Gartner predicted that by 2015, only 30% of virtualized servers will be less secure than the physical machines they replaced.

The basis of the issue is the new layer of virtualizing middleware that is emerging to help such virtual systems operate easily. These are new pieces of software, largely untested, and 40% are developed by people who know not a lot about high end system security.

There are 5 other main risks identified (see the press release here)

- A Compromise of the Virtualization Layer Could Result in the Compromise of All Hosted Workloads

- The Lack of Visibility and Controls on Internal Virtual Networks Created for VM-to-VM

- Workloads of Different Trust Levels Are Consolidated Onto a Single Physical Server Without Sufficient Separation

- Adequate Controls on Administrative Access to the Hypervisor/VMM Layer and to Administrative Tools Are Lacking

- There Is a Potential Loss of Separation of Duties for Network and Security Controls

Quite why its going to get amazingly better in 5 years is not made clear in the press release, I would have thought there is at least 5 years of FUD and Greed in there. The report is sitting behind a $95 paywall – so here’s a free opinion:

There will be a load of cowboys entering the game in the next 3 years, by 2015 there will have been some major security f*ckups, and by 2015 many customers will have been spooked – and the big players who do this stuff in their sleep (they are called Telcos and Web 1.0 Hosters) will enter the game and just integrate it all as part of their infrastructure.

Network World reporting on news from Gartner:

Sixty percent of virtual servers are less secure than the physical servers they replace, the analyst firm Gartner said in new research Monday.

This state of affairs will remain true until 2012, but security should improve substantially after that point, Gartner said.

Gartner predicted that by 2015, only 30% of virtualized servers will be less secure than the physical machines they replaced.

The basis of the issue is the new layer of virtualizing middleware that is emerging to help such virtual systems operate easily. These are new pieces of software, largely untested, and 40% are developed by people who know not a lot about high end system security.

There are 5 other main risks identified (see the press release here)

- A Compromise of the Virtualization Layer Could Result in the Compromise of All Hosted Workloads

- The Lack of Visibility and Controls on Internal Virtual Networks Created for VM-to-VM

- Workloads of Different Trust Levels Are Consolidated Onto a Single Physical Server Without Sufficient Separation

- Adequate Controls on Administrative Access to the Hypervisor/VMM Layer and to Administrative Tools Are Lacking

- There Is a Potential Loss of Separation of Duties for Network and Security Controls

Quite why its going to get amazingly better in 5 years is not made clear in the press release, I would have thought there is at least 5 years of FUD and Greed in there. The report is sitting behind a $95 paywall – so here’s a free opinion:

There will be a load of cowboys entering the game in the next 3 years, by 2015 there will have been some major security f*ckups, and by 2015 many customers will have been spooked – and the big players who do this stuff in their sleep (they are called Telcos and Web 1.0 Hosters) will enter the game and just integrate it all as part of their infrastructure.

A few days ago we remarked on the inevitability of Twitter looking at the best 3rd party Apps areas and grabbing them for itself. News comes today of Facebook throttling developers ability to virally market (aka spam) their apps – All Facebook:

Just over 24 hours after Facebook turned off application notifications, developers are reporting a dramatic decrease in traffic. Speaking to a number of developers, we’ve heard traffic has decreased in the range of 10 to 50 percent, depending on the application, most hovering between an 18 to 27 percent decrease. While our poll sample was small, Facebook developers are now entering the “post-notifications era”.

And why do this? To regain control of their own distribution channels and put their own castles on them of course:

With an estimated $350 million in revenue last year from performance advertising, Facebook is heavily focused on this space. However, virtual goods are also an area which Facebook is hoping to experience a large amount of growth.

While it’s not known whether or not Facebook will force developers to use their Credits platform, there’s a very good chance Facebook will become the primary payment provider of all virtual goods on their site. This means Credits could very well become a business worth over $300 million a year if the platform is expected to generate over $1 billion in revenue each year.

…………..

There are two parties now who are “paying to play”: developers, who will now purchase more ads to drive traffic to their applications, and users, who will increasingly pay for virtual goods in games. While it appears that application requests and other channels still drive traffic, developers have become one of the largest buyers of Facebook ads.

Do developers have other options? In theory they can decamp to other platforms but of course those have their own dominant ecosystems so new entrants have to spend even more resources to clamber up the greasy pole, and it is probably inevitable that all ecosystem holders will increase rents over time. But in the sort term….

…developers will have to deal with the short-term implications of the removal of notifications and figure out ways to regain traction, as they always do. The entire time it’s important for developers operating on the Facebook Platform realize: this is Facebook’s world. If you don’t want to put up with the challenges of the platform, you can just set up your application off the site.

So – for app developers a caveat. Its a jungle out there – and its their jungle, not yours. As an ecosystem matures, life is probably going to be nasty, as the interests of customer and ecosystem holder do not align with that of the developer once the Ecosystem is functioning. Its also going to be brutish, as its about who gets (a lot of) the money, and – if you are a funding VC you will need to take this into consideration – its probably going to be short. In this eat-or-be-eaten world, there is probably only one App in each category that can sell itself to the Ecosystem, the others will have real problems surviving.

Article in the latest McKinsey Quarterly on The IOT, its interesting insofar as McKinsey looks at it with a bit more economic responsibility than many. Expurgated version:

Information and analysis

1. Tracking behavior

When products are embedded with sensors, companies can track the movements of these products and even monitor interactions with them. Business models can be fine-tuned to take advantage of this behavioral data. Some insurance companies, for example, are offering to install location sensors in customers’ cars. That allows these companies to base the price of policies on how a car is driven as well as where it travels. Pricing can be customized to the actual risks of operating a vehicle rather than based on proxies such as a driver’s age, gender, or place of residence.

2. Enhanced situational awareness

Data from large numbers of sensors, deployed in infrastructure (such as roads and buildings) or to report on environmental conditions (including soil moisture, ocean currents, or weather), can give decision makers a heightened awareness of real-time events, particularly when the sensors are used with advanced display or visualization technologies.

3. Sensor-driven decision analytics

The Internet of Things also can support longer-range, more complex human planning and decision making. The technology requirements—tremendous storage and computing resources linked with advanced software systems that generate a variety of graphical displays for analyzing data—rise accordingly.

Automation and control

1. Process optimization

The Internet of Things is opening new frontiers for improving processes. Some industries, such as chemical production, are installing legions of sensors to bring much greater granularity to monitoring. These sensors feed data to computers, which in turn analyze them and then send signals to actuators that adjust processes—for example, by modifying ingredient mixtures, temperatures, or pressures. Sensors and actuators can also be used to change the position of a physical object as it moves down an assembly line, ensuring that it arrives at machine tools in an optimum position (small deviations in the position of work in process can jam or even damage machine tools). This improved instrumentation, multiplied hundreds of times during an entire process, allows for major reductions in waste, energy costs, and human intervention.

2. Optimized resource consumption

Networked sensors and automated feedback mechanisms can change usage patterns for scarce resources, including energy and water, often by enabling more dynamic pricing. Utilities such as Enel in Italy and Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) in the United States, for example, are deploying “smart” meters that provide residential and industrial customers with visual displays showing energy usage and the real-time costs of providing it. (The traditional residential fixed-price-per-kilowatt-hour billing masks the fact that the cost of producing energy varies substantially throughout the day.) Based on time-of-use pricing and better information residential consumers could shut down air conditioners or delay running dishwashers during peak times. Commercial customers can shift energy-intensive processes and production away from high-priced periods of peak energy demand to low-priced off-peak hours.

3. Complex autonomous systems

The most demanding use of the Internet of Things involves the rapid, real-time sensing of unpredictable conditions and instantaneous responses guided by automated systems. This kind of machine decision making mimics human reactions, though at vastly enhanced performance levels. The automobile industry, for instance, is stepping up the development of systems that can detect imminent collisions and take evasive action. Certain basic applications, such as automatic braking systems, are available in high-end autos. The potential accident reduction savings flowing from wider deployment could surpass $100 billion annually. Some companies and research organizations are experimenting with a form of automotive autopilot for networked vehicles driven in coordinated patterns at highway speeds. This technology would reduce the number of “phantom jams” caused by small disturbances (such as suddenly illuminated brake lights) that cascade into traffic bottlenecks.

And the conclusion (italics are mine)?

The Internet of Things has great promise, yet business, policy, and technical challenges must be tackled before these systems are widely embraced. Early adopters will need to prove that the new sensor-driven business models create superior value. Industry groups and government regulators should study rules on data privacy and data security, particularly for uses that touch on sensitive consumer information. Legal liability frameworks for the bad decisions of automated systems will have to be established by governments, companies, and risk analysts, in consort with insurers. On the technology side, the cost of sensors and actuators must fall to levels that will spark widespread use. Networking technologies and the standards that support them must evolve to the point where data can flow freely among sensors, computers, and actuators. Software to aggregate and analyze data, as well as graphic display techniques, must improve to the point where huge volumes of data can be absorbed by human decision makers or synthesized to guide automated systems more appropriately.

Its that price thing…..we last looked at The Internet Of Things in economic detail about 2 years ago, came to the conclusion there were 2 or 3 cycles of “Moore’s Law” still to go before it was cheap enough to take off. so we’re looking at 2012 – 2014 before things really start to take off outside of large industries like Chemicals etc.

Interesting article from Salesforce.com’s Marc Benioff about why Enterprise Social media software is so cr*p. The headline we used – “Lotus Notes was conceived before Mark Zuckerberg” – is a quote and says it all really, but he makes some other points:

We need to transform the business conversation the same way Facebook has changed the consumer conversation. Market shifts happen in real time, deals are won and lost in real time, and data changes in real time. Yet the software we use to run our enterprises is in anything but real time. We need tools that work smarter, make better use of new technology (like the mobile devices in everyone’s hands), and fully leverage the opportunities of the Internet.

We actually did quite a bit of work on the benefits of real time services in business about 2 years ago, and the issue is this – most businesses do not operate in true real time, and in fact most of the software back-end infrastructure works quickly enough most of the time – but the presentation layers to the users are just cr*p compared to modern consumer software.

But this is due to a different dynamic – when you are giving away free services to users, the User Experience is absolutely critical to takeup – which is why consumer Web 2.0 companies obsess about this. Enterprise software economics are based on getting through client ticklists, and user delight is seldom a criteria for this.

So – when user delight becomes a key differentiator in company software selection, Lotus Notes will finally be thrown out.