business

The recent actions of Apple and Amazon to punish e-book publishers that had differing views and to further control over book consumption. As well as the death of J.D. Salinger and the issues surrounding his book The Catcher in the Rye lead me to believe we should be concerned about the future of books for all of us.

Both Amazon and Apple are moving to control distribution of e-books to their respective devices, and thereby dominating delivery and consumption as has happened to music. The music business has been very happy to get Digital Rights Management services on their itunes music and we should expect the same from the book publishers. You will not own your book but instead have a possibly term limited, third party controlled access.

The unfortunate thing is that people are more likely to try and break the controls on music and not on books. The very information that we have collected to advance our society will be exactly that which is locked away. The library industry is surely fretting at its ability to continue to delivery borrowable materials in a world where the false scarcity no longer exists. But we still need the library, we need the access and we do not need it limited.

Now what does Holden have to do with this. Well for anyone who doesn't know, the book has had a long history of controversy for its content. I quote http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Catcher_in_the_Rye

  "In 1960 a teacher was fired for assigning the novel in class. He was later reinstated.[28] Between 1961 and 1982, The Catcher in the Rye was the most censored book in high schools and libraries in the United States.[29] In 1981, it was both the most censored book and the second most taught book in public schools in the United States.[30] According to the American Library Association, The Catcher in the Rye was the tenth most frequently challenged book from 1990–1999.[9] It was one of the ten most challenged books in 2005, and has been off the list since 2006.[31]"

There were then, are today, and will be books that annoy parents and various groups. But maybe next time the material will exist in an e-book DRM vendor controlled format. That makes it only one short click from being filtered forever.

Who would do such a thing? Well this is where we get back to our vendors. Amazon had pulled an entire publisher Macmillan, and Apple is well known for filtering and rejecting Apps with little or no feedback or reasoning. And they both have this power as they are the only way to get to those users.

Someday, Jeff Bezos or Steve Jobs companies will come under pressure to filter, or define material as inappropriate for their platforms. When that day comes I hope Holden and his future friends have also spilled some real ink and not just been as virtual as any other imaginary electronic world.

Techvibes.com has posted my thoughts on copying Silicon Valley -> http://www.techvibes.com/blog/why-we-dont-want-our-own-silicon-valley

I of course think it a reasonable read, so pop over and take a look. I am interested in hearing your thoughts.

In todays Guardian there is a bit about the dangers of intellectual property in science. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/26/science-shackles-int...

"The drive to commercialise science has overtaken not only applied research but also "blue-skies" research, such that even the pure quest for knowledge is subverted by the need for profit."

"For example, it is estimated that some 20% of individual human genes have been patented already or have been filed for patenting. As a result, research on certain genes is largely restricted to the companies that hold the patents, and tests involving them are marketed at prohibitive prices. We believe that this poses a very real danger to the development of science for the public good."

I personally cannot believe we are doing this to ourselves. I find the idea of someone owning a discovery ridiculous, there is no invention, there is no need to keep it for yourself. And in most cases, research is already funded through tax dollars and grants fron the public purse.

Imagine if you will other discoveries about the natural world throughout history if today's conventions applied.

So probably not my best examples. But the reality is that these are things that happened in nature. This is the world around us. Should anyone own gravity? Or be able to license breathing a given mix of air?

So what about the argument that discovery costs money? Microscopes don't just appear, science has a price. This is indeed true, but also why for thousands of years research has been performed both by the independent scientist and with the assistance of public money. Advancement of knowledge like the rising tide, lifts all minds for the better. Science must continue as a public good. Sell me your mousetrap, not license me the genes of the mouse.

As we continue the endless march into the future ask if it should be behind a pay wall and make sure to stock up on rocks.

Data Center Knowledge has a story http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/11/25/wows-back-end-10-... about the current World of Warcraft infrastructure

That is just awesome. The bottom of that story has additional links to information about Second Life and Everquest that are interesting too if you are into that.

If you have no idea what this is let me describe some things.

In the Massively multiplayer worlds you rarely have a single instance of a world with all of your users in it. So in this case what you will have is hundreds of world instances in clusters and you and your friends join a given instance to play together.

Imagine the game world like like this:

main game &
login servers ---> instance1 -------> server1/server2/db1/db2
                    |
                    |> instance2 -------> server1/server2/db1/db2
                    |
                    |> instanceN -------> server1/server2/db1/db2

And so on. Plus of course dozens and dozens of other servers for all of the non-world infrastructure.

At say 30 watts per CPU core assuming multicore processors and say at .10 kWh they are spending about $2 million on power alone. I am glad the players are sitting alone in dark basements, maybe it equals out on the energy production side :)

I made sure to stop by the Calgary Technologies 10th Annual showcase to see and meet the local innovators.

There are a lot of neat things going on around here from a lot of interesting and smart people.

Some of my favourites from last night in no particular order:

• Circle Cardiovascular Imaging Inc - www.circlecvi.com - Cardio imaging evaluation
• Pysko Audio Labs - www.psykoaudio.com - Headphones with a surround sound so real my brain and eyes were darting around every corner
• Wedge Networks - www.wedgenetworks.com - Inline network filtering appliances
• Aksys Networks - www.aksysnetworks.com - A serverless plug and play office phone system
• Aqua Screen Corporation - www.acquascreencorporation.com - I don't know much about bacterial detection, but I remember growing things on plates and that took forever
• Preo Software - www.preosoftware.com - Get your toner expense at the desktop before the job starts

The music, food and beverages were very good. So congrats to CTI for a great event and a look into the exciting developments on the local scene.

This article covering a presentation on how to grow your site covers several points that I hear over and over again when talking to folks about building products.

http://carsonified.com/blog/web-apps/9-ways-to-take-your-site-from-one-t...

The ones that stick out of every talk and presentation are the following:

1. Pick your core features and get them out

2. But don't think you know exactly how the users will use them or that you have them right.

3. Learn, iterate, learn, iterate.

4. Test, try, build something, see if it works for you and your users. You will not be all knowing.

There are a few more things that I want to add from my experiences:

5. Your customer often doesn't have any more idea than you, so don't think he isn't just spitting out random bits.

6. If you have a new product or are trying a new space, do believe in your idea and don't get dragged all over by folks trying to make your product in their image.

7. Idea's are great, but they take time to try. Focus on how to get a win before you try every adjacent market.

8. Make sure you actually know how to find your customer. They have no idea about your better mousetrap until you lay out some cheese.

9. Do you have any idea how to convert a customer, what are they buying? why they are buying?

10. Your customers or your company will get some bad apples eventually, don't worry about your awesome structure yet. Just get it going.

As illustrated here, http://www.calnewport.com/blog/?p=115 , in a post about The Einstein Principle, "We are most productive when we focus on a very small number of projects on which we can devote a large amount of attention."

Now stop reading blogs and go focus on something.

Today is my last day with the tracking company.

If you know anybody who is looking for a guy like me, let one of us know.

Otherwise, watch and see if I make some magic.

Day 2 is complete, and as promised as massive amount of information was provided.

It will take a while to absorb everything, but lots of things that anyone could put to use today.

But your take away from it, Turn the crank, get the next widget sold

Day 1 of the fall 2009 startup school from MJ is complete.

The first rule of startup school, you do not talk about startup school (or at least the secrets under NDA).

So far lots of great info. As with any teaching and sharing event too, a lot is not just learned from the instructor but also from the experiences of the classmates.

I wanted to mention that this weekend I will be attending the http://killingmichael.com/startup-school/ I expect it will be most enlightening.

Perhaps over the next few weeks I will finish up some ideas and pop out some projects and leverage the new knowledge I pick up.