The Blog of Burgher Jon

The chart above is from (unfortunately) the last AdMob report on phone trends.  It is built based on the number of times each OS made a request to AdMob, which until Apple’s iAds get moving, is a fairly accurate measure.  The entire report can be accessed here.

You can look at this chart two ways.  From the first perspective, Apple still has a 50% lead on Android, and this is before the iPhone 4 release.  From the other perspective, there’s only one platform with consistent momentum over the course of the last 12 months, Android.  This is going to be the case for as long as it takes Android to catch Apple (probably 18 months give or take 6 months).  Apple’s chart will continue to be spiky because it relies on a single set of hardware.  A single set of hardware means sales will be closely linked to new releases.  Android on the other hand will continue a steady rise, at an overall faster pace.  New Android phones come out every other week or so (informal guess).  They aren’t as big of a deal when they do, but it’s a tortoise and hare debate.

I read a post this morning on TechCrunch that stuck out to me.  It seems Google has a desktop client for Google Voice ready to ship, but they’re not moving it.  They’re not shipping it because it violates an internal policy, “We don’t write desktop software.”  Google instead prefers to write browser-based or at least mobile applications.

This argument makes it sound like a religious debate, it’s not.  What Arrington doesn’t point out, is that if Google builds a desktop application that people become dependent on (certainly possible given all the possibilities that a Google Voice application opens up) they no-doubt will effect sales of Android and Chrome OS based systems.  If you make a competing operating system (or two), it’s probably sound business to avoid producing something that makes people crave their Microsoft or Apple based systems.

On the other hand, this isn’t what’s good for the market as a whole.  If Google Voice were still Gizmodo5 and Grand Central (the startups that Google acquired to form Google Voice), they wouldn’t hesitate to launch this application.  Then when Google computers based on Android and/or ChromeOS hit the market everyone individually, and the market as a collective, could decide what works best for them.  That’s the way a market economy works; Google instead is holding a product that people want because it messes with their vision of the future.

For the record, I’m not saying that what Google is doing should be illegal.  In fact on Monday, I think I’ll write a “Why Big Companies Exist” post.  What I am saying, is that as a long-time Google advocate, I’m disappointed in what they’re doing.  This also shows one of the ways that Startups are more effective in driving innovation then big companies.

I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be happy. I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be compassionate. It is, above all to matter, to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all.
- Leo Rosten

I found this quote on Caterina Fake’s blog, and I had to share it in some form or another; since it’s too long for Twitter, here it is.  I very much identify with the sentiment about happiness.  I think how you define a “difference that you lived at all” is a very personal thing, but I suppose I agree with the latter half of the quote as well.

I read very few blogs that aren’t technical or related to Pittsburgh, but one of the few exceptions is Caterina’s blog.  Though she is both a native of Pittsburgher and a technologist (co-founder of both Twitter and Hunch), her blog posts tend to be about literature or introspection.  She doesn’t post often, but if you’re looking for something to supplement your functional feeds, you might try http://www.caterina.net/.

There’s a question I’ve been wrestling with a lot over the last few years, can a ground swell of talented, motivated individuals without the profit motive seeking to do what is right take on the behemoth corporations.  It’s a battle that’s been fought a number of times and will continue to be fought as long as individuals have good ideas that conflict with would-be profiteers (forever).  Off the top of my head, I can think of several such battles:

• Wikipedia against Encarta
• Linux against Microsoft
• FireFox against Microsoft
• Blogs against Newspapers

For the most part, we’re talking about opensource vs. proprietary software, however I would not call that the only aspect.  The question of who will win is not as easy as you’d think.  Both sides have their advantages and disadvantages.  Opensourcers are generally agile and broadly sourced.  Much of the time they actually have more developer hours available then the big guys.  Unfortunately, they don’t have the loyalty of a company paying for a man’s bread.  The big guys have centralized management, available equipment and existing user-bases to piggy-back on.  They also have short-sighted stockholders;  stockholders who force them to stick with bad ideas as long as they’re profitable and prevent them from exercising necessary (and even popular) innovations that can’t be profitable.

The reason for the post is the new movement of Diaspora, to try to create an open version of Facebook’s OpenGraph.  I think it is one of the most pure fights ever in this space.  The big corporation (Facebook) has GIGANTIC potential profits on its side, but also must sacrifice many individual privacy rights to accomplish it.  The opensourcers have wide public appeal (raising $110,000 from small donors) and a real case against that the giant is evil.  It’s something that we could all agree would be “better” being a public service then a private service.  So grab some popcorn and let’s see what happens.

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If you like old wines or vintage cars or antiques you know that some things only get better with age.  I have a certain respect for those who can appreciate something as it ages.  I have a collection of cigars and one of Scotch Whiskeys, both of which I cherish more and more the longer I’ve had them.  I also have an appreciation for history, in fact the inspiration for this post is the stream of consciousness sparked by noticing that the Mon Incline is turning 140 at the end of this month and at that ripe old age it is both a functional form of transportation and a tourist attraction.

The thought that this sparked is the fact (simple as that, it’s a fact) that the products and probably the companies that I work for in my career will probably not exist by the time I retire, let alone 6 generations from now.  Think about the IT systems (hardware or software) were in place 10 years ago.  These systems are considered old and ugly and few are still in place today.  There is very little reverence toward them, if you see a site that’s clearly built in FrontPage (the tool of the time) or one of its equivalents you turn your nose in a way very much unlike the way you look at your favorite car that they stopped production of ten years ago.

The good news is that this lack of reverence is a symptom not a cause.  We’re not insensitive chaps, it’s just that we leave little to be reverent about.  We, the IT world, are not changing IT the way the Mon Incline changed the world.  We aren’t taking a 100 year old concept (train/trolley) and applying it to a new problem (going up a hill).  We are creating new concepts as quickly as we find new problems to apply them to.  Think about something like social media, the very concept is no more then 5 or so years old (yes, I’m aware that it had its roots in other things, but I challenge anyone to find an example of social media as we know it that’s older then 5 years).  However, 5 years later the landscape is completely different.  Companies have come and gone and been acquired and people are already talking about HTML 5 enabling a Web 3.0 of sorts.

I love this type of climate, we’re not in the business of aging wine, we’re in the business of mixing great drinks and moving on to the next one.