The Invention of the Flickr Scoop! -OR- Webaroo, what's it to you?

A Seattle/India based based Wireless Applications startup called Webaroo has been carefully keeping their plans for bringing "a breakthrough capability to your mobile world," under careful wraps.

Or so they think.

What little we know about the company stems around the fact that the founders have extensive experience in start-up technology firms, which have been largely successful mixed with perhaps a bit too much focus. I mean, as Wavetheory puts it, would you want to be known as the guys who turned down a chance to buy Google?

Currently Webaroo is a venture capital funded company that is supposed to be in stealth mode. However, with the power of Google just a few key strokes away, I was curious to find out, just how stealthy could they be? A quick search turned up the search interests of one of their engineers who is obviously watching Technocrati to see if there are any leaks about his company.

Up to this point it seems the John Cook's interview with the founders was the most in-depth interview of the pre-launch company to date.

Another possible chink in the armor was removed when "chirag's" blog referring to a misguided email and European tests of Webaroo was deleted (removed?) from the Google record. Originally spotted on the aforementioned engineers bloglines list, about half-way down the page, see "mysterious emails" The only artifact that remains stands here. The post is as juicy for what is omitted as what is present, beginning with "I often get emails intended for other people." Which leads up to the tidbit "Here's one I just received which pertains to a company callwed Webaroo, apparently a 'stealth mode startup' " With other ghost references to testing their service is in Europe, it is clear that whatever the startup's plans are, they are not necissarily small.

What the big T won't tell our trusting engineer is how some enterprising Webaroo engineers from their temporary headquarters in India put up 3-Megapixel pictures of their whiteboard from orientation up on Flickr! While fuzzy, the pictures clearly show several channels or demarcation lines one of which is labeled "desktop" and a box labeled "packages". Is this just remedial object oriented design work or the inner workings of the mobile world's next killer app?

Well, of course I've saved the best for last. It seems our engineer friend has posted to the python board about getting help pushing out a distribution of something called "webroo.btdownloader" Could it be the (not so) stealthy company is working on the thorny problem of getting a torrent client on to mobile phones?

Um...clean up on aisle 3! Anyone want to break the news to Rakesh Mathur before their April big announcement? Anyone? Anyone?! Bueller?!?

Now, enough about the dish. What does the prospect of a torrent client on a mobile device mean? What if you could kick off your download of large files to your home PC remotely? Updates to applications, legal downloads of large, multimedia content, could be pulled down with the incredible efficiency of Torrent networks.

An amazing concept really.

Whether or not that is what Webaroo is up to, Cook from Seattle's Post Intelligencer reports it will be early April before we can see.

Your feedback is appreciated.

ZDNet reports PayPal to support payment by text messaging.

Online payment company PayPal is preparing to offer a service that will let consumers make purchases or money transfers using simple text messaging via mobile phones, the company said on Wednesday.

More here... link

Wednesday, March 22, 2006


Towards A Common Core: Step One - Solidifying Expression through Unifying Identity
Category: Web, HTML, Tech

Before this week, I had never heard of the term "Attention". I like Seth Goldstein, Michael Goldhaber and AttentionTrust's pioneering work in codifying what they believe will be the principle object of Web 2.0: building, managing, sharing and exchanging the myriad interactions that we have with information.

This information about our information, our unique metadata stream, when properly harnessed is the first step in building out the Core in such a way that personalization and affinity have specific meaning. My interest in Audi's may be just like ten million other people, or it may specifically only be in the GmbH developed quattro line. Or it may more specifically only revolve around the new 2006 RS4. If my attention is only drawn to the RS4, then on an aspirational level, Audi may turn me off as a customer if they start presenting "special offers on the A3 for qualified buyers" to my attention stream.

How, then does one narrow attention?

Man, as it turns out has three natural demarcations along the edges of his complete persona. They are the following:

1. The view of myself, I alone see. (aka the "mirror").
2. The view of myself, I allow others to see (aka the "face")
3. The view of myself which the world sees (aka the "avatar")

In this approach, the most goverened represenatation of self, of attention, is the closely guarded "mirror-self". These are the actions for which I am willing to take direct responsibility and own the reprecussions. This is my conctractual and financial view of myself. This self can enter into binding agreements or execute my estate. Views of this self would be limited to myself and profoundly trusted organizations.

The second trust sphere centers around the "personal" self. That is the social self that interacts with trusted members of a social network. Friends, buddies, partners, those with whom I freely share a portion of my personal information in order to build comraderie and general community. On a day to day basis the Expression of the social self can lead to the sharing of data on people, objects and organizations that is the key value of the Core.

The final trust sphere is the public or professional self. This is the self that is most accessible because of the multitude of instances it interacts with the world. Yet at the same time, by design, this is also the least knowable Expression of the self. The Avatar is not the face, but a mask over the face because key private or personal data is not necessary for exchange of attention information at that level.

This blog begins with the title of "Unifying Identity" yet what I have presented here is a three-fold view of identity. So now I can imagine the reader is parroting a question that his been asked throughout the ages, "How can trinity represent unity?"

This is not coincidence. Because the Core will contain the published Expression of all creative, original data, it is critical that there be a codification of the interaction between individuals and these attention streams at a fundamental level. The natural demarcation of the trust spheres allows for that.

A very simplified example of the benefit of trust spheres is messaging. Basically in their various forms there are three types of messages which are the following:

1. One-to-One messages. Such as most emails and most text messages, phone calls and chats.
2. One-to-Many messages. Such as blogs, announcements or bulletins Comments are a reverse Many-to-one message.
3. Many-to-Many messages. Such as message boards

With time one realizes that these three distinct Attention streams parallel the three Expressions of the self. My private, secure self transmits and receives one-to-one messages. My social self transmits and receives one-to-many/many-to-one messages. My public self, being the most gregarious and common Expression of my attention gives and receives many-to-many messages.

The true power of Expression of the self in the three realms comes when one begins to incorporate the users rules-based view. If I set filters on the kinds of many-to-one messages I can receive "I want to know JenX's Amazon purchases but not her eBay auction wins", then I filter the messages that receive my Attention based on the rules I have tied to my Expression in that trust sphere. The power of this unified, rules based approach to Attention, which is the fundamental of Expression is enormous. No organization or individual really needs to know my address to deliver goods to me: They simply need to know that the Avatar has expressed interest in their goods or products. The correct routing and fulfilment of physical goods or even electronic messages should happen has a result.

So then Expression, is the rules-set based filtering of Attention based on the three realms of Self.

In the next post we will come back to Expression and deal with the Unifying Identity aspect.

Your feedback is appreciated.

Tuesday, March 21, 2006


Towards a Common Core: Step Zero - Defining the problem
Category: Web, HTML, Tech

Not unlike a supernova, the rapid expansion, explosion and then eventual collapse of a star into a smaller, much denser core, the web will eventually collapse upon itself under its own weight. This is not in one of Metcalfe's cascading network or transport layer outages, but rather when the sheer volume of information available is drowned by the noise of attention deficiting ads, porn, spam, etc.

During this collapse, which is necessarily post explosion, there will be the deafening wail of the user to be able to locate accurate answers. Not just information, but raw, unfiltered data that presents the true words, opinons, specifications and actions of individuals, objects, and organizations.

In order for the post-collapse web to be anything usable, it will have to have some order. This Web 2.0 or intelligent, semantic web is what I would prefer to refer to as "the Core". The core will consist of original content in its pure, unadulterated form. Derivative works will sit outside the core in the corona.

In order to get to the core there will be an ensuing battle and victor among two emerging, opposing forces: The force of portals to absorb all content and publish it as they see fit and the opposing force of individuals to directly publish their individual works. The emergence of Google Video is an example of the former and YouTube the later. Another example would be Yahoo! Image Search vs. (now their own) Flickr. The power of the portal is their inherent scale and reach: there ability to discover and deliver data en masse. Whether the data is hosted on their servers (as ever more of it is)or not, their spiders are actively crawling the web seeking to catalogue, contextualize and categorize all manner of data and tie it, via links to the search portal.

On the other hand, the enterprising user, with the rapidly democratized distribution of technologies such as digital still and video cameras, can through a common interface, such as YouTube, provide a similiar experience with more diverse, original content which may or may not have ever been mediated through either traditional media or even contemporary web distribution channels. This allows for more creative content, not limited by the revisions of a media producer or web editor, and creates a more effective "many to many" channel for data distribution based on interest and affinity. With the added advantage that tagging by content creators and commenters provide the human-defined relationships between disparate data that will always trump machine-defined ones.

Over my next several posts, I will discuss the key processes, technologies and transition points that will guide us toward the user-created core and away from a regimented hosted-portal core future.

Your feedback is appreciated.

I used to send out an occassional e-mail that included some of my thoughts and musings on business and technology. With recent developments, I thought I would return to this practice, but now in blog form. enjoy...

It is inevitable that Google, being so much like, yet so much more ambitious than its competitors, will at least partially succeed in its attempts to collapse the Internet. Not unlike Yahoo, Google has made tremendous strides in its attempt to provide, via its own ubiquitous interface all of the informational tools the typical Internet user will need in one place on the web. In doing so they made an early commitment to blogging by purchasing Blogger, but so far have not made a commitment to social networking. Why they didn't get Myspace before Rupert Murdoch, we may never know! Google will be like the Palm OS to Microsoft's Windows Mobile: A useful function based approach, vs.a bloated systems based approach to accessing information. By publishing the most important functions that users are looking for via lightweight web-based applications users will find the data and tools that they need, not simply a platform to build and by the tools for. Many say Google buying Writely is really no big deal. What they may fail to see is that by drawing the sources and orignination of information closer to Google's core of search, with web users potentially storing all of their newly created documents directly on Google's servers, one could envision a future where the "operating system" will be replaced from the inside out, with the Google login replacing the Windows login as the primary gateway to one's information. Here are some relevant articles:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/03/08/exclusive-screenshots-google-calendar/

http://news.stepforth.com/blog/2006/03/googles-growing-online-office.php

http://blogs.zdnet.com/web2explorer/?p=134

By providing infinite storage, a usable set of web-based tools, and a single, secure login, Google has the opportunity to provide a much more universal form of information than the traditional stalwart Microsoft or its web-based competitor Yahoo--the latter of which currently trumps the newer upstart in the amount of functional information tools by at least 130 to 32. Having once possessed the "King of the Web" crown, Yahoo of course will not take this lying down.I wonder if iRows will be left out in the cold for long?

In a recent article on CNET the reporter Martin LaMonica says, "growing a hosted Web application beyond a few hundred, or even a few thousand, users requires substantial resources and technical expertise." However, with the powerful vector of social networks, at least the slow growth part no longer has to be true. By simpling using tools such as YouTube and Flickr on their social networking sites like MySpace, users are driving millions of hits to these new player, by what is affectively "word of web." These web functions are using the web to promote themselves. What an exciting time for computing and information!On the other hand, for those of us not living under a rock, you may have heard that The new improved Microsoft may have recently come out with a new technology, category-killer of their own called the "Ultra Mobile PC". Formerly known as the "Origami Project," this handheld PC definitely has a somewhat ambitious name, but it is also an ambitious product. Featuring a go-anywhere PC form factor with a function-based overlay on top of Windows. One of the more promising notes: Microsoft's decision to use the robust Windows XP Professional as the core operating system, not the slower, infectious XP Home (which is almost useless whether used at home or abroad). At a target price of $599-$999 this may prove a compelling counterpoint to the webcentric view of Google. By placing all of your information in the palm of your hands, who needs to go find it on the web? Early versions have been shown incorporating both WiFi and Bluetooth. Of course I will be even more interested if I can get one with XM radio, EVDO broadband and iTunes. Then what else would you ever want ?Well, an Optimus keyboard to plug into it for starters...

Next time, we'll talk about the new "portable terminal" power that is available via the most recent cell phones.Until then, enjoy...

Finally, Is it just me, or in the course of recent events, did Intel get Apple-ized as opposed to the other way around? Check out their new logo: http://www.intel.com/homepage/nav/pix/logo.gifand tell me what you think!