Posts filed under 'Misc'
This is a long overdue announcement as I joined Pivotal Labs in 2006, after I left Nominum. But we are trying to raise our profile recently as we no longer want to be “the best kept secret in software.” (This is a quote from more than one client.)
Anyway, check out the following links. (In particular, note my personal Pivotal Labs blog as I plan to blog mostly there.)
April 9th, 2007
While at the Riya launch party, I got into a conversation with a few people about “Why now?” and “How is this different than the last bubble?”.
My take on the first question is that it is an issue of convergence; the demand for a user centric web, where sharing, communication and a rich experience is the norm, is intersecting the availability of technology, such as RSS and AJAX, to make it happen.
Consider blogs. I’ve heard / read about the proliferation of individual ramblings, ideas, streams of conscious, etc.; it seems everyone has an opinion about everything and wants to share it with everyone. The part that surprises me is that this phenomenon surprises others. I think people have always had opinions they wanted the world to hear, but now the mechanism for sharing these ideas is easy and cheap. The technology, combined with the demand, has given people a voice via blogs.
So, the Web 2.0 pehenomenon is the eruption of demand for such applications being released by the technology to make it possible. While this is not at all an original idea (though I did think of it on my own), the second question is the interesting one.
I think Bubble 1.0 was partially the result of the Costo-Style Programming / New Toy Effect. There was a “build it and they will come” mentality, driven by a “build it because its cool and we can.” The absense of business models was evidence that there wasn’t a real market need, or at least, market need wasn’t driving much of the development and companies. (Combine this with the The True Believer, by Eric Hoffer, and you have a pundit worthy theory.)
This is the big difference when comparing the current hype and the previous collapse. I think much of the innovation today is being driven by actual user needs and demands. Riya is a perfect example of this; the prevalence of digital cameras and resulting huge picture inventories drove the need for good photo search.
Some think that idle developers invented cool new technology and that’s is driving the timing of Web 2.0. This would be the “Costco / Toy” effect all-over again. But I disagree. In the wake of the Internet bubble, consumers were introduced to the Internet and the seed was planted regarding its potential. During the quiet of recent years, those seeds have grown and a more mature understanding of user’s own needs is developing. The core of AJAX and even RSS was first offered by Microsoft in the late 1990’s (IE offered XML feeds in JavaScript and remeber Active Channel?), but didn’t have an impact then. But these technologies are maturing and being applied well because of user need, not technical availability.
There are some different explanations and perspectives, such as David Cowan’s blog entry. However, I don’t think there will be a bubble as long as Web 2.0 continues to be market driven, even if VC speculation is not.
November 20th, 2005
I went to the Riya (www.riya.com) launch party on Friday night. Besides the usual party goodies and interesting people to talk to, the real highlight for me was the demo of Riya.
I haven’t been fortunate enough to be an alpha user, so this was my first chance to actually see the service. I am really impressed. First, I think the concept is amazing. While it may seem a bit obvious when you see the demo, photo search, they are doing it in an actually useful way. I think the real challenge to any ambitions like Riya’s, to index and provide search for the world’s photos, has been the collective action problem; tagging is tedious and thus a dis-incentive for any individual, which culminates in not enough indexed mass to be useful, even for the individual. The facial recognition / training aspect of Riya’s solution addresses this directly. It’s easy to use Riya’s service to index a large volume of photos.
Anyway, I hope to be an alpha user soon.
November 20th, 2005
JetEye (www.jeteye.com) offers a different kind of search service. Now I realize these days there are lots of people offereing a different kind of search service, but this one appeals to me. I might be a little biased as I am on their Technical Advisory Board, but I joined as a technical advisor because of my interest.
The basic idea centers on JetPacks, which are annontated collections of links based on search results. The annotations can include images, notes and even other JetPacks. You can search other JetPacks or the Web (they just delegate to existing search services).
I think the noise-to-signal ratio is growing way too fast; it is harder and harder to find something. I like the idea of looking for product reviews and browsing existing JetPacks and shortcutting to relevant information instead of swimming on sites that happen to text match my search. I remember reading about the recent John Robert’s Supreme Court nomination online, only to find out , with a little digging, that someof the sources that appeared independent bloggers had strong ties to very biased political groups. (This didn’t suprise me either.) A JetPack could tell me this upfront in the editor’s annotations in the JetPack. JetEye’s recently added a JetPack rating feature so you can sift through the possible noise in JetPacks too.
The biggest thing that appeals to me about JetEye is that they aren’t accepting the status quo of “one size fits all” in the search world. I found it very disappointing that in the last ten years the search experience hasn’t evolved much: from the days of Alta Vista and Excite to the current ones of Google and Yahoo, the user’s search experience and tools are pretty much the same. Though search speed, and sometimes relevance, has improved, I still have text box in which I input a search string that is executed against some big index of the Internet, which has been collected through bots and spiders.
Information Retrieval has been a pet interest of mine since college and I am excited to see JetEye and others offer other ideas, models and tools. I can’t wait to see what is next.
November 20th, 2005
This is a cross post from my Agile blog.
Okay, so my title may be little exaggerated, especially since there isn’t officially an Agile 2.0. However, for the agile development community, there are many shifts, trends and new ideas that make it feel like a new generation of agile development. (More on this later.)
Anyway, I’ve been following some of the Web 2.0 developments lately; I’ve read many blog posts (http://web20workgroup.com is a good place to start for those interested), heard gossip about VC funding, and know a few people working on Web 2.0 projects. All of this information makes me think an agile approach is perfectly matched for the development of Web 2.0 applications.
Agile development emphasizes the need for feedback, discovery and adaptation. A common agile credo is “release early, release often.” Agile development is basically a genetic algorithm (for more on this, read this post); an agile approach evolves its software. Evaluating the “fitness” of the application with each iteration is critical. Real user feedback is one of the best indicators for making such an evaluation.
Most Web 2.0 projects (or at least those I have seen) are consumer oriented. Consumer oriented, service-based software markets are generally accommodating (and sometimes welcome) frequent releases, assuming each release is at least as good and as stable as the previous. Agile development favors short iterations and core practices such as automated testing and continuous integration develop the ability to release early, often and reliably as a core competency of its adopters.
Most projects in early stages are based on a vision and skeleton of a possible solution; success is largely determined by how quickly the application can evolve into what user’s need. Quick delivery is necessary to compete and not miss windows of opportunity. I think the best software process to support this is based on an agile model. One of my former clients (when I was a consultant) believed this as well and feels that their agile adoption was a key facilitator of their IPO last year. I also know some very large, high profile, Bay Area web companies who are adopting agile software development and see it as necessary to remain competitive.
I think others support the complementary nature of agile and Web 2.0. The canonical book on Ruby on Rails, one of the popular Web 2.0 enabling technologies, is Agile Web Development with Rails and it describes how Rails development embodies and accommodates an agile approach.
I noted that I believe the agile community is undergoing Agile 2.0. Last year the 2nd edition of the XP white book was published, in which Kent Beck revised and updated his description of XP. Mary Poppendieck’s keynote address at XP/AU 2004 described agile as “crossing Moore’s chasm”; it is shifting from early adopters to mainstream. While some feel this shift may water down agile, I think it can amplify its effectiveness; many in the agile community have updated and evolved their ideas to better support the software development process.
Finally, I have also adopted a more mature understanding of agile development. I’ve had many successes in my career applying agile methods, but have been challenged in my current job and our agile adoption. These challenges have caused me to reflect on many assumptions and ask many questions. Though I have more questions than resolutions (which I think is a good sign you are actually learning), my understanding and application of agile software development has evolved into its own “next generation.” I know a few others who share many of my ideas and are working in the Web 2.0 space. For these instances, I am excited to see how the combination of Agile and Web 2.0 turns out.
November 20th, 2005
