GUI To Touch To Gesture

Steve Jobs took the lead on touch and Microsoft is playing catch up. Steve Jobs stole the Graphical User Interface - a big jump from what existed before - from Xerox, and Bill Gates stole it from Jobs. But it was Gates that won the PC wars.

But there is something beyond touch. That is gesture. And there Microsoft seems to be ahead. Gesture promises to be even more intuitive than touch. It is exciting what they might do.

Point and click feels one dimensional. Touch feels two dimensional. Gesture feels three dimensional. It is a paradigm shift.

Microsoft's Plan to Bring About the Era of Gesture Control

The company wants to make it as common to wave your arms at or speak to a computer as it is to reach for a mouse or touch screen today. ..... "We're trying to encourage [software] developers to create a whole new class of app controlled by gesture and voice," says Peter Zatloukal, head of engineering for the Kinect for Windows program. ...... "We initially used keyboards, then the mouse and GUIs were a big innovation, now touch is a big part of people's lives," he says. "The progression will now be to voice and gesture." ... A conventional keyboard, mouse, or touch screen can be difficult to use in classrooms and hospital wards, or on factory floors. ..... Microsoft needs software developers to create killer applications. Along with the hardware, the company provides a software developer's kit, or SDK, that offers a range of ready-made tools, including voice recognition and body-part tracking .... by using infrared, your apps can see in the dark now ..... Nissan has introduced a gesture-controlled system for dealerships that lets prospective buyers look inside a virtual version of a new car. ...... It even trumps voice recognition, he says. "Voice recognition is 95 to 98 percent accurate, so one time in 50 it won't work," he says. "This works like a tool—it will work for you every time." ...... "When using a computer today, we think of our bodies as a fingertip or at most two fingertips," he says. But humans evolved to communicate with their whole bodies. .... detecting fidgeting or defensive body language such as folded arms. The hope is to address the social cues that are lost when video calls replace face-to-face communication

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Bill Gates On Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 And Surface

Source: TechNet

Has Zynga Faced A Paradigm Shift?

Microsoft was a PC company and the web came along. Bill Gates fantasized about turning off the Internet, completely. It was a paradigm shift that was not going in his favor. In some ways Microsoft never came around to embracing the web. It is a big company, but it is still a Windows company.

Zynga of course is no Microsoft, but for a while it was the fastest growing company in history. That is a crown of sorts. But for now it feels like Zynga has not been able to climb the next big mountain.

Zynga, just like Facebook, has not cracked mobile.

Being data driven is good, but being too data driven can make you miss trends that are just around the corner. Because your reflexes have become too mechanical. I think Pincus might have become too data driven somewhere along the way.

But I am an optimist. I give companies like Zynga - trailblazers - the benefit of doubt. I think they retain the capacity to perhaps turn things around. The proof is in the pudding though.

Other than missing mobile, Zuck and Pincus also have something else in common. Both have dictatorial powers. That does not look like a good arrangement when things look to be going downhill.

Pincus strikes me as someone quirky. He just might be able to pull it off. In about a year or two. And a billion dollar valuation is not a bad floor to have. Just stop the f___g bleeding.

As Zynga Stock And Outlook Craters, Is It Time For Mark Pincus To Step Down As CEO?

Draw Something, a game that earlier this year was the hottest thing on the planet for about a month...... at the moment, like Zynga was a shooting star, driven by several viral hits, rather than a stable, enduring company. ..... like many recent Internet companies that went public, Zynga structured the stock ownership to give Pincus majority control. Pincus has 50.15 percent control of the voting shares. That means, ultimately, he is the decider, and not the board. ..... the valley’s prevailing conventional wisdom, which says the biggest, most successful companies are driven by strong-willed founders. Pincus has been that. And for a long time, it seemed he had the right vision in terms of gaming and social media.

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Facebook Eating Into Its Ecosystem

Image via CrunchBase

Right before Bill Gates retired he was talking in terms of baking anti-virus software right into Windows. He had been doing things like that during the entire life of that operating system. Remember when he baked the web browser into Windows and got into trouble?

I think it is but natural for Facebook to eat up into its ecosystem. Instagram owed no small amount of its user base growth to the fact that it used the social graphs on Facebook to spread the word. And guess what happened.

Mark Zuckerberg Reveals He Is Open To A Radical Change In Facebook Strategy

Facebook's sudden openness to owning more of its platform

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Not Entirely A Lost Decade

Image via CrunchBase

Steve Ballmer is no Steve Jobs, and Steve Ballmer is no Bill Gates. You needed a Steve Jobs to spring forth the iPhone and the iPad. And those two have taken Apple into the stratosphere. You can't fault Steve Ballmer for not having come up with the iPhone or the iPad, although he has made some strategic mistakes even in those two spaces coming in as a latecomer.

But I think Microsoft might be able to do with gestures what Apple has done with touch. 3D computing might see a better day for Microsoft.

Steve Ballmer's number one failure though is the corporate decadence at Microsoft. There is too much red tape in Redmond. That is something Steve Ballmer is capable of rectifying but has not. Most of the lost decade sting he has earned through that inaction.

Steve Jobs paid Ballmer the ultimate anti compliment by calling him Sculley.

Mark Cuban, Television, And The Internet

Image via WikipediaThis was in the late 1990s. Bill Gates was trying hard to marry television to the internet. He called it WebTV. He failed. This was before broadband became mainstream. And still broadband is not there yet. I think gigabit broadband is where TV and the Internet become one.

This was in the late 1990s. Larry Ellison was after something he called the network computer. You would not have much of anything on the desktop. The network would have all the software you would need. Steve Jobs told him the technology just did not exist to support that. The richness possible on the desktop was leaps and bounds ahead of the richness on the browser. Again, this was before broadband, way before HTML5.

5G + HTML5 = Magic

Two titans were not seeing it straight. Positive spin would say they were futurists ahead of their times.

Mark Cuban Replies To My Tweet
Mark Cuban: Contrarian On The TV Business

The conventional wisdom in the industry is that we are almost there. We nailed the phone. Now TV is next. And we are almost there. Even Steve Jobs says so much in his biography. I finally cracked it, he declares.

Not so fast, says Mark Cuban. By personality Mark Cuban is someone you can expect to take a contrarian stand. As he does now. He makes some good points.

Mark Cuban: The TV Business Keeps Getting Stronger!

This is how I summarized his blog post earlier today in another blog post.

(1) TV shows are high quality stuff. Not just anyone can produce them. People like them.
(2) Video is content king. People like consuming content in video format. Much faster broadband might stand a chance but not the broadband we know. The Internet pipes just are not there yet.
(3) Ease of use is supreme. People want to be able to just turn on and watch. No browse and click.

I think all these points are valid. But by the time we hit universal gigabit broadband all three points will have fallen by the wayside.

(1) There's plenty of great quality music on the web. In fact, all the great music is there.
(2) Faster broadband will mainstream video. Video is already big on the web.
(3) People who design smartphones are better positioned than the cable TV people when it comes to simplifying the video consumption experience. I mean, we could get rid of the remote. Voice control, gesture control. There might even be mind reading.

Mark Cuban though makes a solid point that the TV people are not standing still. They are working hard to ease the complexity from another angle.

It is true that for the masses there are times when you just want to sit back and watch.

My Take On AirTime (3)

Image by Getty Images via @daylifeMy Take On AirTime (2)
My Take On AirTime
Sean Parker's AirTime Could Net Him Tens Of Billions

AirTime will stand at the intersection between software/internet and group dynamics in the raw. That is an exciting proposition to me.

My Web Diagram

Also the timing will be right. As broadband's speeds get faster we will increasingly feel as casually about videos as we do about photos today. I am predicting an Instagram for short videos, for one.

AirTime's launch will open a whole new era of web innovation. This will be new territory. It will be almost as fundamental as Google's search and Facebook's social, if it is done right. AirTime's social will be of a vaster scope than Facebook's social.

But it has to be done right, and I am angling for a formal advisory role. I have been "advising" all sorts of startups for free here at my blog. But now I seek an advisory role, something formal. It is because when it comes to group dynamics, I am as good as they come. I know group dynamics like Bill Gates knew software. Or, rather, I know group dynamics like Sean Parker knows music and software. I am that good.

Bits And Pieces
White Male Conspiracy To Drive Me Homeless

The Next Big Thing For Apple

Image via CrunchBaseThe PC/laptop is done. The smartphone is done. The tablet is done. I don't foresee any major transformations with any of those. What is not done is the TV screen. That is the next frontier. But I am not sure Apple - or any other company I know - is in a position to do it. The TV might get done by some startup not launched yet. Or it might get done by Apple and Google. Right now it is too early to tell. And the wrist watch might not see magic before nanotech really takes off. Which brings us to the big movie screen, but then the problem with movies is outdated business practices, less technology. People are okay watching movies on smaller screens.

And I Am Not Even An Apple Fanboy
Steve Jobs — 1955-2011
Seven Screens

Bill Gates retired, but Steve Jobs died. Tim Cook might be a better groomed successor than Steve Ballmer, but the guy still has a tough nut to crack. Ride the iPhone and the iPad wave for as long as you can. That is at least two good years ahead.

Steve Jobs — 1955-2011

Image by Getty Images via @daylifeI just got back from an event near Times Square. I had some roadside momo - dumplings - with a ton of hot sauce. Usually I burn the midnight oil - it is a body clock thing. But today I was hoping to go to bed early and to wake up earlier than usual to work out some - I do freehand.

I guess I decided to log into my computer just as I gulped the last dumpling, and there was a Google Talk message from a friend out in the MidWest, someone I have yet to meet, a doctor from my hometown in Nepal. A few weeks back he mailed me a book he has written - Enduring Everest - about enduring ethnic prejudice as a Madhesi in Nepal.

"Steve Jobs died," the message said. It was not a new message. His status said he was idle.

My first reaction was disbelief. I expected the guy to retire, not to die. I felt sad. No, I did not see this coming. I was expecting him to stick around for years. This guy truly, truly stands out among the tech titans of my lifetime. It is going to take me days to digest the news.

Walt Mosberg: The Steve Jobs I Knew
Larry Page
Mark Zuckerberg
Bill Gates
The White House: President Obama on the Passing of Steve Jobs: "He changed the way each of us sees the world."
Dick Costolo

Path + Instagram + Color

Image by jdlasica via FlickrMark Zuckerberg is obviously the man to watch. The guy wants nothing less than to own the decade. I am not sure the decade can be owned by any one person, but I have no doubts he will be one of the people who will.

TechCrunch: Exposed: Facebook’s Secret iPhone Photo Sharing App (Which Looks Amazing): Path meets Instagram meets Color meets (Path’s new side project) With — with a few cool twists. And obviously, it’s built entirely on top of Facebook’s massive social graph.

Behold: Facebook’s Secret Photo Sharing App Facebook, which is by far the largest photo service on the Internet with close to 100 billion photos, to make their own dedicated photo app. ..... Facebook’s focus on mobile photos going forward is very clear. ..... Given their talk of commitment to HTML5, Facebook likely wants to make an app that is as portable as possible. That is, while it may be built first for iOS, it can easily be ported to Android and other platforms with the HTML5 elements in place. ........ Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom was once approached by Mark Zuckerberg about working at Facebook way back in 2004 ...... Systrom declined the invitation, and now Zuckerberg is a Instagram user ....... the location elements, likes and comments, multi-picture mode, filters, multi-user albums, face-tagging, and more

What's Up With Pictures?

This is Mark Zuckerberg showing Bill Gates tendencies.

Microsoft's Second Act?

Image via CrunchBase
(Article first published as Microsoft's Second Act? on Technorati.)

Microsoft buying Skype could still fail, and we will know in a year, but something tells me this purchase that was pushed behind the scenes by Bill Gates himself might help Microsoft become a post PC company, a player also in the smartphone and tablet spaces. Skype's deepest possible integration with the Windows phone just might work wonders.

Watch Out For Steve Ballmer

Image via WikipediaStepping into Bill Gates' shoes was going to be a tough act to follow for anybody. It just was not possible. Bill Gates ruled the industry for a decade and a half. 1995 was the high point. Windows was the only game in town. And then the guy went into philanthropy where he has been as amazing as he was in software. It has been a second career to him.

Microsoft pretty much missed out the smartphone and tablet trains. But then competing with Steve Jobs is as hard as succeeding Bill Gates. Steve Ballmer has had to do both and I feel for the guy. He was an Economics major at college. And there is a cultural bias against fat, bald people. So people end up thinking he is less smart than he actually is. And he is a non coder in a coding business.

There is this story from the mid 1990s. Ballmer returned back to Redmond from one of his trips visiting with customers. And he got a group of his engineers together and said, "I don't know what TCP/IP is, I don't want to know what TCP/IP is. Just make the pain go away." Everywhere he had gone people had been talking about TCP/IP.

Could Skype Be Microsoft's YouTube?

How Wal-Mart Got Started

Image via Wikipedia"In 1962, four new retailers were born. One called Kmart was started in Garden City, Michigan, another called Target was started in Minneapolis, another from Woolworth, the big name in retailing at the time, called Woolco was started, and the final one in rural Rogers, Arkansas, called Wal-Mart. Thirty years later, Woolco had met its demise and one of the other two was the largest retailer in the country. Surprisingly, the top retailer was the one from Arkansas."

The Guardian: It all began in a small store in Arkansas...: Four of the world's top 15 billionaires are from one family. ..... retail is a good place to be. Of the top 15 billionaires, nine made their money the old-fashioned way, by selling us clothes, food and furniture ..... together, the clan are nearly as rich as Warren Buffett and Bill Gates (the top two on the list) combined. ....... Sam Walton began his conquest of the world in 1945, with a loan of $20,000 from his father-in-law and a small variety store in Newport, Arkansas, where he established the practices that define present-day Wal-Mart: he kept prices as low as possible, stocked a wide range of goods, and stayed open longer than anyone else. His margins were small, but he sold large quantities, which meant he could bargain for even lower prices from wholesalers - policies that still drive smaller local stores out of business. ....... Even in his later years, when he was worth $24bn, he was famously frugal, opting for $5 haircuts (no tip), and cheap food at his local Wal-Mart. He drove an old pick-up and often borrowed money from his employees. And he was ruthless. "Some people try to turn it into this 'Save the Small-Town Merchants' deal, like they were whales or something that have a right to be protected," he wrote in his autobiography. But he was having none of it. "What happened was as inevitable as the replacement of the buggy by the car." When he died, in 1992, the state got almost nothing in taxes, because he had divided his wealth between his wife Helen, who died in 2007, and his children. ....... Wal-Mart employs more than 2 million people worldwide, meaning it has twice as many men and women in uniform than the US army. ...... A reporter for Fortune, strolling round Bentonville, Arkansas, was hard put to even find the offices from which their fortunes are run. ....... Rob Walton, company chairman (the CEO is a non-Walton, Mike Duke), worked in a small windowless room,
Image via Wikipedia 10ft by 10ft square ..... in fact, anyone who lives in Bentonville probably shops in Wal-mart for food, clothes, furniture and electronics, banks at Arvest, and, until recently, read a Walton-owned paper. They can drive down Walton Boulevard to watch sport at the Walton Arena. They can wander around the Walton Arts Centre, or go to the Wal-Mart Museum, where old Sam's office and pick-up are preserved exactly as they were the day he died. They can study at the Sam Walton business school, or fly from the Alice L Walton terminal of the airport.

A Social Graph For When Everyone Is Connected

Image via WikipediaBill Gates thinks the world population will stabilize around nine billion people. Let's say he is right. Already two out of six billion people are connected to the internet. Say the penetration goes above 90% by the time world population hits seven billion people. Would that have implications for the social graph? You bet.

The Color Social Graph Might Work Better For Books, Movies, Music

There is an old saying that everyone is connected to everyone else through six degrees of separation. Every random person out there knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows you. That magic number - six - might be lesser if the group size were smaller.

TED Talks: Wael Ghonim, Bill Gates

Bill Gates On Education: Making Sense

Image via CrunchBaseBill Gates: The Washington Post: How teacher development could revolutionize our schools

Over the past four decades, the per-student cost of running our K-12 schools has more than doubled, while our student achievement has remained virtually flat. Meanwhile, other countries have raced ahead. ...... For more than 30 years, spending has risen while performance stayed relatively flat. Now we need to raise performance without spending a lot more. ....... When you need more achievement for less money, you have to change the way you spend. ....... the single most decisive factor in student achievement is excellent teaching. It is astonishing what great teachers can do for their students. ...... we do very little to measure, develop and reward excellent teaching ....... The value of measuring effectiveness is clear when you compare teachers to members of other professions - farmers, engineers, computer programmers, even athletes. These professionals are more advanced than their predecessors - because they have clear indicators of excellence, their success depends on performance and they eagerly learn from the best. ....... t. The United States spends $50 billion a year on automatic salary increases based on teacher seniority. It's reasonable to suppose that teachers who have served longer are more effective, but the evidence says that's not true. ....... Perhaps the most expensive assumption embedded in school budgets - and one of the most unchallenged - is the view that reducing class size is the best way to improve student achievement. ...... get more students in front of top teachers by identifying the top 25 percent of teachers and asking them to take on four or five more students. Part of the savings could then be used to give the top teachers a raise. ..... 83 percent of teachers said they would be happy to teach more students for more pay

Google, GroupOn: Say No The First Time

Image by jdlasica via FlickrHotmail was hot. So Bill Gates wanted to buy it. The joke in the industry for a decade and a half had been that Microsoft was always one step behind.

Sabeer Bhatia was summoned for some face time with Bill G. Bill Gates offered $200 million.

"Can I sleep on it?" Sabeer Bhatia replied. He flew back home to the Bay Area where he lived.

Google, GroupOn: GroupOn Perhaps Was Not The Next Big Thing

Image via WikipediaApple and Microsoft were born around the same time. They were not at peace. Netscape came along. Microsoft killed Netscape. Google offered to sell itself to Yahoo. Yahoo refused. A few years later Bill Gates offered to buy Google "at any price." Google refused. Google tried to buy or bury Facebook. Facebook survived. Facebook tried to buy Twitter. Twitter refused. So Facebook hunkered down and "learned" as much as possible from Twitter. Facebook has tried to buy FourSquare, more recently it has tried to bury it.

See, there is that buzz factor. The company that had the crown seat in the buzz kingdom until recently is able to spot the next taker and gets uncomfortable.

Facebook's Gmail Killer? Wow

Image via CrunchBase

TechCrunch: Facebook’s Gmail Killer, Project Titan, Is Coming On Monday: @facebook.com email addresses ..... a full-fledged webmail client ..... Facebook has the world’s most popular photos product, the most popular events product, and soon will have a very popular local deals product as well. It can tweak the design of its webmail client to display content from each of these in a seamless fashion (and don’t forget messages from games, or payments via Facebook Credits). And there’s also the social element: Facebook knows who your friends are and how closely you’re connected to them; it can probably do a pretty good job figuring out which personal emails you want to read most and prioritize them accordingly.

Facebook has a huge advantage when it comes to email. Not all people who send you email are equal. And Facebook's social graph lets you determine your social concentric circles. And once you introduce the caste system into your inbox, you are in a much better shape.