We spend a lot of time talking about “computers in the home” as part of our Digital Life theme.  Over the past year, I’ve heard the phrase “Home Networking” with increasing frequency.  It made the rounds a while back (anyone remember when it was called a HAN – home area network) but seemed to fade into the background for a while.  I’m not sure what caused it to show up at our party again (although I’m suspicious that it is Windows 7), but it’s back.

My mother doesn’t know what “home networking” is, nor does she care.  And she is an example of a typical user.  Virtually any home that has a broadband Internet connection now has a HAN because of the router involved in the broadband connection.  These routers are generally wireless at this point so people now have wireless networks in their house, whether they realize it or not.

When I time travel and find myself in 2015, I notice that every electronic device in my home is “network enabled” and connected to the Internet.  For example, I just bought a new Withings Connected Body Scale which connects to my “home network” via Wifi (and subsequently to the Internet.)  Yeah, I get all the old cliches about my refrigerator being connected to the Internet, but as the Jetson’s have proved over and over again, the future that was envisioned in the past often eventually arrives.

Calling this stuff “home networking” is kind of like calling the electrical closet in a house a “home power plant.”  While I realize that make the technology disappear into the background is part of the mission, I’ve always felt that “getting the words right” as things go mainstream also matters.  All of us nerds (and our marketing friends) playing around with “home networking” probably have another shot to get the language right.  I’m going to spend more time talking to my mom, Amy, and other non-techies about what they call it other than “that fucking computer shit.”

I ingest a ton of information on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual basis.  My process for doing it today is entirely manual.  I’m starting to look around for a way to automate this using the metaphor of a “personal dashboard”, not dissimilar to the idea from the 1980’s of an EIS (“executive information system”).  Let me explain.

• Daily: I have an information processing routine each morning that is web-based.  I open a folder in Firefox that contains 14 tabs.  I then go through all of them – most, but not all are news related.  A few are interactive and require data from me.  I then scan through my tweets from the previous night.  I then review my “Daily” email folder – most of the items are “daily reports” from a variety of companies I’m an investor in.  Next up, my RSS feeds.  Finally, I process whatever email came in from the previous night.
• Weekly: I have a weekly tab in Firefox.  There are only 5 tabs here and they shift around a little.  But – they reference a variety of text and numerical data that I check on a weekly basis.
• Monthly: I get financial statements (balance sheet, income statement, cash flow statement) along with board packages from all of the companies I’m an investor in along with all of my personal financial information.
• Quarterly: Similar to monthly, but for the quarter. 
• Annual: Similar to monthly, but for the year.  I also generate a variety of other “annual data” much of it to do with either money or fitness.

My Daily routine takes around an hour.  Weekly, which includes reviewing my upcoming calendar, takes about 30 minutes.  I don’t know how long Monthly, Quarterly, or Annual take as they are usually spread out over multiple days.

In theory, I’m using Firefox and Outlook as my personal dashboards to get to this data and then viewing it in a variety of apps including Excel, Adobe, and Word.  However, this is really unsatisfying as the data is (a) in different formats, (b) impossible to search effectively, (c) not persistent, and (d) difficult to handle or manipulate.

My guess is I need both an (a) ingestion and (b) presentation layer.  The ingestion layer seems straightforward – the software I’d use for my personal dashboard should be able to generate an XML template for each “type of data”.  I should be able to configure this (or – optimally – the ingestion layer should be able to figure this out automatically).  The ingestion layer should be able to handle different types of inputs – html files, xml files, emails, or some other quasi-API.  So – “Glue”.

The presentation layer is a little harder for me to get my mind around.  A year ago I would have said “hmtl is fine – just give it to me in Firefox via a web page.”  In some cases this is fine, but I want finer grained control over how this stuff is displayed.  Some of the web pages I look at are formatted worse and are less flexible than the DEC-based EISes I played with in the 1980’s.  In many cases we haven’t made any progress on the presentation layer not withstanding all the efforts of Edward Tufte.  So – “HCI”.

I’m hopeful that in a decade I’ll have a much more effective way of dealing with my periodic information routine.  Until then, I’m searching for companies working on both the ingestion layer and presentation layer (preferably both).  Feel free to give me a shout if this is something you are working on.

While I’m delighted that my iPhone syncs with my Exchange Server, I’ve been struggling to figure out why Microsoft licensed ActiveSync to Apple (and Google).  For a long time, I used a Windows Mobile device because of the integration with Exchange (I’ve never been a Blackberry fan).  Once the iPhone integrated with Exchange, that was it for me and I switched to the iPhone.

As I asked folks about this, I heard two reasons:

1. The government made them.
2. Ego: Microsoft wanted to be able to say “Apple licensed something from us”.

Neither of these is very satisfying to me.  No one said “licensing fee” – and I can’t image the magnitude of the license fee is material to either party.  Some people are speculating its a clever move by Apple but that leaves me perplexed as it is so obviously useful to Apple users that I can’t believe Apple didn’t do it years ago.

When Apple released Snow Leopard and we started talking about the upgrade for the Mac users in our office, one potential reason occurred to me.  After some discussion, we realized we needed Exchange 2007 to be able to have Snow Leopard connect to Exchange natively.  Hmmm – we have been running Exchange 2003 (very nicely, thank you very much) since – well – 2003. 

As a result, the only thing that motivated us to upgrade to Exchange 2007 is Apple Snow Leopard integration of Exchange ActiveSync.  If this is the reason, it’s a smart strategic move on Microsoft’s part.  As part of our Exchange 2007 upgrade, we are buying a two year “upgrade insurance” package so we’ll get an upgrade to Exchange 2010 for free.  Microsoft defers any discussion around switching to Google Apps for us for at least three more years.  While Microsoft runs the risk of losing desktop clients in the enterprise, I think they were going to lose these clients anyway to a Mac + Internet based solution so now they at least get to keep the server piece firmly in place.

While Microsoft has finally announced a version of Outlook for the Mac, it seems like a completely irrelevant thing at this point given how miserable and hated Entourage is (e.g. Mac users have already figured out a different email solution.)  Now with native Exchange integration into the free (and perfectly adequate) Mac email client, the discussion around this seems to be over.

Of course, I could be over thinking this.  Microsoft’s press release around this reads like “hey – look – we are licensing our IP – isn’t software IP great – aren’t we nice?” so there could be something here around software patents.  I’m struggling to reconcile Microsoft’s 2008 Interoperability Principles with the notion that they are licensing the IP to access these “interoperable software components.”  Per the press release:

“The Exchange ActiveSync IP Licensing program is another example of how we are continuing to deliver on our commitment to increased openness and collaboration,” said Horacio Gutierrez, vice president of intellectual property and licensing at Microsoft. “This technology is being sought out by our partners and competitors alike because it enhances their value proposition to their customers, and we believe that to be a testament to the innovation taking place at Microsoft.” 

It feels like there is a deep master plan going on here.  I just can’t seem to figure it out.  Now, if Apple would just implement Exchange Task sync on the iPhone, I’d be really happy.

There is a great article by Timothy Lee, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, out today titled The Case against Literary (and Software) Patents.  Lee, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute who is also a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at Princeton, totally nails it. 

Here’s the beginning:

“Imagine the outcry if the courts were to legalize patents on English prose. Suddenly, you could get a "literary patent" on novels employing a particular kind of plot twist, on news stories using a particular interview technique, or on legal briefs using a particular style of argumentation. Publishing books, papers, or articles would expose authors to potential liability for patent infringement. To protect themselves, writers would be forced to send their work to a patent lawyer before publication and to re-write passages found to be infringing a literary patent.

Most writers would regard this as an outrageous attack on their freedom. Some people might argue that such patents would promote innovation in the production of literary techniques, but most writers would find that beside the point. It’s simply an intolerable burden to expect writers to become experts on the patent system, or to hire someone who is, before communicating their thoughts in written form.

Over the last 15 years, computer programmers have increasingly faced a similar predicament. We use programming languages to express mathematical concepts in much the same way that authors use the English language to express other types of ideas. Unfortunately, the recent proliferation of patents on software has made the development and use of software legally hazardous. That’s why many of us are hoping the Supreme Court definitively rules out patents on software when it hears the case of Bilski v. Doll this coming term.”

And here’s the conclusion:

“The writing of software, like writing in English, is a creative activity practiced on a vastly wider scale than other activities commonly afforded patent protection. Small businesses and nonprofit organizations far removed from the traditional software industry have IT departments producing potentially infringing software. The Brookings Institution’s Ben Klemens has documented that this is not a theoretical problem. Entities as diverse as the Green Bay Packers, Oprah Winfrey, Kraft Foods, and J. Crew have been sued for developing or using ordinary business software.

Regulations that work well when applied to a handful of large, capital-intensive firms can become an intolerable burden when applied to millions of small organizations and individuals. It’s not reasonable to expect hundreds of thousands of small businesses to vet the software they produce for patent infringement, any more than it would be fair for them to face liability for publishing a brochure with an infringing turn of phrase.

The high overhead of the patent system demands that it be limited to relatively concentrated and capital-intensive industries in which most participants have the means to comply with the requirements of patent law. Patents on English writing would not meet this requirement. Neither do patents on software.”

There’s plenty of good stuff in between.  Go read it.  I just got invited to go to the Supreme Court and listen to re: Bilski.  Psyched!

I retweet a lot of stuff – hopefully it’s useful to the folks that follow my twitter stream.  I try to keep the retweets relevant – either useful business stuff, funny things my friends said, or stuff from companies I’m an investor in.

As more and more companies start using twitter as a promotional channel, I have one simple piece of advice. 

Make the maximum length of your tweet 130 characters minus your username

The reason to use this simple formula is that there is currently no standard for “retweeting”.  I use Twhirl, so a retweet ends up being RT @username: the_tweet.  TweetDeck uses the same format.  But sometimes the retweet is something slightly different (e.g. RT the_tweet (via @username)). 

Using the RT @username the_tweet approach, you essentially use up 5 characters (R,T, two spaces, and a colon) plus the length of your username (e.g. mine is 5 – bfeld).  So – the longest tweet I could do that can be automatically retweeted is 130 characters.  But, since this isn’t the standard, give your retweeters a few more characters to play with (hence the 130 characters – username).

For example, earlier this morning Return Path, a company I’m an investor in tweeted the following:

Need a quick refresher on deliverability? Join us for a 30 minute webinar tomorrow on why emails get blocked at the gate. https://ow.ly/kA6D

Here’s what my effort to simply retweet this in Twhirl looked like:

15 characters too long.  Oops.  So I had to manually shorten it.  Here’s what I came up with:

RT @returnpath: Need refresher on deliverability? Join for a 30 minute webinar on why emails get blocked at the gate. https://ow.ly/kA6D

Same general message, but it took me about a minute to edit it, make sure it fit, and make sure I didn’t lose any of the message.  I’m seeing this regularly now and know I bail out of retweeting stuff because I don’t feel like spending the minute getting the size right.  So – leave me at least five characters + <username> for the RT<space>@<username><colon><space>, but preferably 10 – <username> until this gets standardized.

And – if you need a quick refresher on deliverability and why emails get blocked at the gate, check out the Return Path webinar tomorrow – https://ow.ly/kA6D

I don’t know who’s managing the District 9 twitter marketing campaign, but their abuse of twitter (via their creation of Twam – “twitter spam”) just caused me to decide not to go see the movie tonight.  Here’s the history of the experience.

On August 15th, I tweeted “has anyone seen District 9?  Worth it?”  I got a handful of generally positive responses including one that said "@bfeld district 9 was very good.  stylistically a bit reminiscent of 28 Days Later.  well done  and entertaining.  also, go see hurt locker.”  I didn’t recognize the handle of the person that tweeted it to me but I noticed it since it was more descriptive than others.

Over the past three days I’ve now gotten over 20 tweets from people I don’t recognize that say exactly the same thing.  For example, I just got one from Joanne ODonnell (apedvatu).  I don’t know Joanne (if she even exists) and her twitter account is garbage. 

Or how about the tweet from Dominique Arnold.  Exactly the same text.  Same drill – no clue who Dominique is and her tweets are a bunch of district 9 crap.

This is classic marketing spam.  No different than all the email garbage we get every day (that a whole industry has been created to deal with).  To date, Twitter has done a great job of dealing with twam but it’ll logically get worse, especially now that all you need to be a “social media consultant” is a twitter account. 

As I was writing this, I saw a tweet pop up on a TechCrunch article titled “You’re Doing It Wrong Part 348: Complete And Utter PR FAIL”  I think the dynamics around social media marketing are now going to get a lot worse now before it settles down.

Guess I’m going to see Julie & Julia tonight instead of District 9.  Amy told me that District 9 looks too scary for me anyway.

I haven’t written about software patents in a while.  I still hate them and think they are an illogical construct.  But first, a haiku from xkcd to warm you up (and make you smile).

I woke up this morning to the announcement that Microsoft can’t sell Word anymore.  Apparently a judge in that hot bed of intellectual thought and discourse, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, has ordered a permanent injunction that "prohibits Microsoft from selling or importing to the United States any Microsoft Word products that have the capability of opening .XML, .DOCX or DOCM files (XML files) containing custom XML.”

Wait, is this the same Microsoft that was forced to change their doc formats and make them “more open” by some judiciary somewhere for antitrust (“anticompetitive”?) reasons.  Ok.  But wait, the rabbit hole gets deeper.

Apparently this injunction (filed by i4i – a company that according to their web page provides “Labeling Conversion, Collaborative Authoring, Document Management and Publishing Solutions to support your global regulatory compliance requirements.”) is based on an assertion that Microsoft willfully violates a 1998 patent (No 5,787,449) about how to “create and edit XML content from a word processor.” 

Pause for a second.  Note the irony and weirdness of all of this.  There have been a spate of specific XML related patents recently (I’m going to bet that Microsoft has a few of them – why not, gotta keep that patent group busy.)  Um – isn’t XML an open standard?  Aren’t there a bunch of document processors that read and write XML (like all of them)?  Seems like it should be illegal (or at least invalid) to be granted a patent on something built on top of an open standard!  Nah – let’s just argue about GPL and its various forms for a while – that’s more fun.

It gets worse.  The judge in the case, in addition to enjoying torturing Microsoft with an injunction, ordered Microsoft to pay i4i over $290 million in damages.  At this point I paused and pondered why a Canadian company was suing Microsoft in East Texas.  Maybe it’s warmer there.  I certainly know the beer isn’t better.  I could keep going, but I’m running out of sarcasm (has someone patented that yet?)

In one of my fantasy parallel universes, long time software thought leaders – ranging from individual software artists (you know who you are) to the very largest companies would get together and decide how to take an approach to this absurdity that could be proposed to the appropriate government entities (we’ll start with the PTO and Congress, but it’s always worth a trip to the Supreme Court if necessary.)  To do this, some of the largest software companies need to step back from their stupid case by case legal strategies and decide to try to reform (transform?) how this works.  Until then, it’s probably going to just going to go on and on and on.

Q.E.D., Bitches! indeed.  That’s often how I want to just end my argument on software patents, but I know this particular universe doesn’t work that way.  Too bad for me.

Oh – and did anyone notice that a different judge (Patel in this case) ruled against RealDVD and “granted a preliminary injunction in favor of the major motion picture studios and DVD-CCA in their legal battle with Real Networks over its RealDVD products.”  I’m going for a run now – maybe that’ll make me happier.

If I told you that I had just filed a patent for “a system to sell equity in domain names”, I’d expect you to laugh at me.  I haven’t ranted and raved against software (and business method) patents for a while because I got bored of doing it.  The PTO has gotten so far behind on responding to patent applications that the whole notion of a four year cycle to get a software patent approved just underscores how ridiculous the whole thing is given the pace of innovation in software.

But – today’s silly patent popped up somewhere and I just couldn’t resist poking fun at it. Go Daddy has filed a patent for a method of selling equity in domain names.  I can’t wait to see what the SEC has to say about this one.

I sure do hope the new regime in Washington D.C. has the balls to address the software patent issue this time around and end this madness.

I’ve been a delighted iPhone user since they upgraded the software to have mail / contact / calendar sync with Exchange.  With the 3.0 version of the software, I’m even more delighted.  I’ve had an iPhone 3GS since the day they came out (thanks Ross for standing in the non-line at the AT&T store for me) and – with the exception of the crappy AT&T 3G network – I find new little magic happy things every single day. 

As my app portfolio continues to radically expand and I endlessly fiddle with placement, I thought it might be useful to reflect (and memorialize) the apps that are currently on my first screen.  Here’s goes – left to right, from top row to bottom row.

1. Calendar
2. Messages
3. Maps
4. IMExchange: Finally, someone got Outlook Task syncing with an iPhone app.  Worth the money.
5. Camera: Much improved – actually good pictures!
6. Photo
7. Weather
8. Kindle: Yes, I can actually read books on this.
9. Brightkite: I use this to post pictures to Twitter.  And occasionally log where I’m at.
10. Clock
11. 100 Pushups: Damnit – I will get stronger.
12. FlightTrack: Indispensible when used with TripIt.
13. Vlingo: Apple Voice Control is good, but Vlingo is great.
14. iPod
15. App Store
16. Settings
17. Phone
18. Mail
19. Safari
20. Tweetie: I’ve tried them all and this one is the best.

Page Two are my “less regularly used, but at least once a week” apps (like Fandango).  Page Three are apps from our portfolio companies (have you played Mafia Wars on the iPhone yet?  or Vampires?  or used your Pogoplug?)  Page Four is a bunch of random other junk, although I’m pretty aggressive about deleting apps I never use.

I wonder what Page One is going to look like a year from now?  Any gotta-have-em apps that I’m missing that you guys out there in blogland would recommend?