Cafe Bucky

Ah, how remiss of me to go so long without posting …

Early rising commute bus work get home at dark blur.

My other excuse is the Olympics.

The post that’s been percolating in the noggin for a while is about the Widening Web Gap. It’s not quite brewed, but the gist of it is:

• When I started looking at the web around 1993, it was a very simple place. We didn’t even have frames or tables, and AJAX was merely a cleanser. The gap between the simplest web page and the most complex wasn’t that wide. User expectations were low. We were all just flat out fascinated to see pages from far flung places.
• The types of sites, and those using them, has absolutely exploded, and will continue to do so.
• The gap between those who barely use and understand the net, and those who are pushing the boundaries every day, is widening by the second. The 20th Century Web crowd are happy with bare minimum functionality — they’ll be damned if they have to learn a new concept, such as making use of an RSS feed, or rearranging options on a default start page. The Fast Forward Button crowd can never get enough. Pity the designers in between who try to appeal to both.
• I think we’ll see an increasingly tiered web. Some sites will consciously punt on the entry level users. Some will keep things so stripped down and basic that they’ll make AOL look like rocket science. Some will try to appeal to everyone and have the toughest job of all.
• I’ll be paying special attention to ETech next week, and am hoping to get the time to lay this out in a coherent way. There’s a lot of experimentation going on out there (check out any 10 sites from Kottke’s “The secret to Web 2.0″ post.) I am thinking we’ll hit a sort of saturation point soon, and that the next major bit will be “Web 3D”. More to come on all of this …

So I was wondering why my PowerBook was down to 5gb of space. It’s very simple: dl.tv with Robert and Patrick is a video podcast, and they’re frikken prolific with the 45 minute shows. Those guys are taking up 7gb of my space! It’ll all resolve when I start commute busing to the City, armed with a Video iPod. Then I’ll catch up. Scouts Honor, I will.

Of course, that leads to the question of When to get a video iPod. The idea of a touch screen that’s 3x bigger is very appealing. But maybe it’s vapor. It seems real enough, and close enough (April 1st, perhaps?) to wait. Decisions x 2.

With a little more practice, Luca could lay down the olympic rings in rubber. From the Opening Ceremony in Torino.

2/18 - apparently this video has been pulled from YouTube …

A friend pointed me at GTalkr.com, which is a flash-based desktop/home page. It’s great in the way it imports Flickr slideshows, YouTube videos, and GMail. It’s basically a personal portal. It’s easy to add new RSS feeds, such as a personal del.icio.us collection.

There was one obvious thing I didn’t see right away: how do I make a simple list of bookmarks? (as in, drag a link into some module in GTalkr) Sure, I can just add it to del.icio.us, and get it through a feed. But I’m talking about a simple list of links. Aside from that, it’s pretty usable, looks good, and it seems reasonably stable.

I’m not sure if the site will “stick” for me. It’s a bit heavyweight - really gets the PowerBook fan going. The AJAX variation on this idea is Protopage, which I like for its freeform approach.

Huh? It’s Super Bowl Sunday? Oh, yes. That.

At some earlier point, I used to care about the NFL and the Super Bowl. I was a big 49′ers fan (sitting in the rain at Candlestick for a big game versus Green Bay was a highlight - going to a couple of Championship parades down Market Street, etc.)

But then I went to 6 World Cup games at Stanford in 1994 … I probably have more of a handle on what’s happening in the English Premier League than the NFL. Maybe the sports authorities will have me deported to the UK for some sort of Unpatriotic League Allegiance. Yeah, and I much prefer to Formula One to NASCAR! (ed note: digging a hole here.. just got dropped from a lot of party invites) In both cases, I’d say the level of skill is higher! (ed note: well, that’ll do it, just got added to lists of parties involving English, Brazilian, Dutch, Italian, and German fans).

But aside from all that, I’ll watch the Game for the Ads. I’ll also root for Seattle, because I love that town - almost bought a house in Green Lake once. By the way, Pittsburgh, I like your Warhol Museum and the river and hills, and hope to visit again someday.

Go Madison Avenue! Go Seahawks!

I’m pretty happy to say that I have started a gig with Friendster. It’ll be great to delve into a well-known web site and be able to make a contribution.

I’d been picky about where I was going to go. I didn’t want to help some advertising agency send out spam more efficiently, or work on something that would never get seen. It had occurred to me to move back to NYC, because that seems to be where a lot of cool gigs are located. Friendster is moving to SF/SOMA pretty soon, which will give me the option of bus or ferry commute (podcast catch-up time). I also believe in what they do, and what they will be doing. I like the people, and it’ll be a fun challenge!

Until we move, the office is in Mountain View. I’ll be going there 1-2 days a week. Driving down on 280 brings back a flood of AOL-era memories: the route, the traffic, and the “programmers at every other table at the lunchtime chinese restaurant” vibe. Although a Silicon Valley Office Park has its own sort of industry charm, it’ll be much better to be in the City, and to see the positive effects of the move. On the surface, it’s a bit comparable to the AOL/Moviefone folks in White Plains, versus the AOL people in Rockefeller Center in Midtown. Give me the City buzz! (alternating with the quiet of country/home)

So CBS has decided to do downloadable shows …. Let’s see if they understand this brave new world. For the most part, Apple’s got it down. So what about CBS?

The Ondemand page gives an overview of the service. Let’s see what we can do with it:

• You can download a show at midnight after it airs
• The files are about 600mb for ~45-50 minutes, so the quality is likely to be decent

… and.. that’s about it!

There are a number of things about their plan that indicate they haven’t done their homework:

• Windows only - Windows Media with DRM. No Mac or Linux. Strike One!
• Can’t play on portable media devices, such as the Video iPod. Strike Two!
• It’s a rental?! The show expires after 24 hours?! Are they not looking at the iTunes video store? Strike Three!

It’s astounding, right? :-) Never mind that all they have is “Survivor”. It’s a bit like they’re dipping a hangnail in the water. Hopefully they’ll get it right in their next iteration. In the meantime, they’re providing a great example of what not to do in the downloadable content space.