" They are deep into xml, think of their site as having an API (and in fact already have partners using that API to build services that use their site). They aren't quite ready to have it documented, but they are definitely thinking ahead to the kind of next generation object web that Jon Udell talks about. And of course they are exactly the kind of company I've been looking for to study in terms of heavy scalability issues. At peak, they are moving massive, massive amounts of data, and have multi-terabits of data on file. High reliability, high speed networking, etc. All of this is their bread and butter. This would be a great company to spend time with.

They are also totally into what it means to be a next generation web company: try stuff, measure it, move quickly. They have built a lot of perl tools for understanding what people are really doing on their site, and they do a lot of experimentation. They try to release new features every day. Their original goal was 1 new feature a day; now they say they are up to 15 or 20. "

"Over time, though, I think that a growing number of artists will question their own participation in a system that really doesn't serve the great majority of them. They'll begin to experiment with more direct sell-more-T-shirts approach mocked by artists in our article last week, but serious new ideas for generating revenue for musicians: ideas like annual fan subscriptions, charges for early access to new music or special deals on collector's items, using online networking to boost attendance at shows and no doubt many others that I can't yet imagine."

"Red Hat may be the leader among Linux providers, but it remains far from clear that the company can increase revenues substantially enough to justify its price. The company sports a $8.6 billion market cap -- and that's after dipping 63% from its high-water mark. Even if Red Hat stays at its present valuation, after five years of 100% revenue growth, its price-to-sales ratio would stand at 6.4, which is higher than Computer Associates (NYSE: CA) or IBM (NYSE: IBM) .

The market has priced extremely high expectations into Red Hat. We'll have to see much better performances in the future than we saw this year."

"As Harik explains it, the decision to go with Open Directory -- just one player in a space that includes Yahoo, LookSmart and Excite, among others -- had two main drivers. One was the licensing -- it's pretty hard to argue with "free," whether you're talking software, beer or content. The ODP's evolving editorial culture was also a plus, said Harik. "We like the way submissions are made to the Open Directory, and we think it has the potential to be more accurate and more timely than other directories. The people who contribute to it care about what they're doing." The truly decisive point, though, was the Open Directory's potential to scale in parallel to the Web's hypercharged expansion."

"Lack of representativeness and lack of transparency. Unlike the federal bureaucracy in a democratic nation, you don't precisely know what the criteria for acceptance are. Criteria for progress through the ranks is similarly unknown. The Open Directory's procedures for accepting new editors or accepting site submissions are no more open or transparent than they are at private companies like Yahoo or Looksmart.

Incentive for corruption and excessive categorization of low-quality sites.Yahoo and Looksmart (presumably "closed shops") have employees performing similar functions to the Open Directory Category Editors. Think about this. Looking at it from the point of view of organizational sociology (yes, I must), the underlying reality is that these three are all organizations with rules and structures whose main output is the opinionated categorization, and importantly, rejection, of a vast number of submissions of web sites and Internet content. The key difference seems to be that dmoz category editors aren't paid. What is the likely result of this? Think about the analogy of a country whose bureaucrats are poorly compensated. Any textbook can give you examples. All moralizing aside, extremely low pay creates an incentive for the postal inspector or the traffic cop to engage in petty forms of corruption. What's my city health inspector's incentive to REALLY crack down on all the bug-infested restaurants downtown? And what might motivate a dmoz category editor to prevent their buddies' lower quality sites from getting one or even several listings? And are they likely to think about the whole mess all fits together, or is that someone else's problem? In fact, there are considerable incentives in volunteer directories to pump up one's numbers of site submissions, since that is the key criterion for advancement through the ranks. The web's best resources, therefore, are impossible to find, buried under a mountain of minutiae.

The "open" directory is owned by a $300 billion company. Most importantly -- and I hate to bring this to the attention of the self-governing republic of dmoz -- the relatively benevolent overseer of its operations, Netscape, was acquired by AOL, which recently merged with Time Warner, creating a $300 billion behemoth. To repeat: the Open Directory Project is owned by AOL Time Warner. The "project" now has marketing executives assigned to it, though you won't see that openly admitted on the "About us" page. AOL Time Warner: a bastion of openness? Quite the opposite. AOL loves to be proprietary. It dislikes the "open" Internet, but just now it probably wants as much PR as it can get which juxtaposes the word "open" with "AOL." This could help a lot in smoothing things by the regulators. Fair enough. But when that's all done with, AOL, how about some truth in advertising?"

"The traditional media sources -- The Wall Street Journals and the BusinessWeeks of the world -- have opined on Amazon's recent patents. Online magazines such as Salon have run their pieces. Web sites such as stopamazon.com have been started. But the heart and soul of the movement to criticize Amazon's patents is the Weblog.

The Weblog is the raw voice of the people -- your customers. Essentially, a Weblog is an online diary with hyperlinks. It's a point of view and a collection of links to anything on the Web. It's a remarkably potent means of communication. A Weblog is a lens to view the world through someone else's eyes. "

"It's hard to find people that "get" the web anymore. Everyone's scampering for the next big profit model, doing whatever it takes to create the next successful IPO. These are people that "use" the web or "do" the web, it's just another medium to them like television or radio (remember when people used to think television could educate us?). The people that really "get" the web are the people that can still remember how magical it was to hear stories from the other side of the world, they can remember the first time a complete stranger emailed them to share experiences similar to the one's they wrote about, and they know an interconnected world isn't just about selling stuff to everyone that can operate a mouse."

"Protect the disclosure of your personal search profiles to on-line search engines by using our excellent Search the Web Service, that guarantees your personal privacy at our site.

Our Private Search Engine will never deliver an unsolicited banner advertisement to you. It will also never use cookies or other invasive Personal Profiling technologies to build any personal profiles on your search requests. "

"The Company has developed a substantial privacy-based information site with thousands of links to privacy issues, news, books and organizations. The company is constantly updating and improving this site and when it is ready for proper launch it will replace the existing search-based site as the home page and central focus of the web site in February, 2000. At such time, the existing search-based web site will be retired from service."

"Power4 is on schedule to ship in the second half of next year in IBM’s RS/6000 Unix servers and its AS/400 servers for small and medium-size businesses running Unix or Linux."

"SOFTLOCK EXPLAINED that due to extreme demand, customers would have to return later to access the story. “It’s ten times what we expected,” said Ruth Feiner of the Maynard, Mass.-based firm, though she would not be more specific.

At Amazon.com early on Tuesday, where the $2.50 charge most outlets asked for the book was waived, readers were accessing the 66-page novella, “one and a half times per second,” claimed spokeswoman Kristin Schaefer."

"Both local papers, in their own ways, exercise judgments that undermine their credibility. The [San Francisco Chronicle's] technology coverage harps on the same tired theme of amazement. My God, says the local paper, look at the wizards and their wonders. The Chron should justrun the same daily headline: "More Cool Stuff From Those Young People in Palo Alto." The [Mercury News] regards the area's newly wealthy as curiosities from another planet. The Merc's recurring headline would say, "They're Rich. They're Young. What Does It Mean for People Who Are Poor Like Us?"" "One former editor at the Merc once stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Oracle CEO Larry Ellison at a banquet, but couldn't bring himself to say a word to the billionaire. He told me later he didn't know what to say to Ellison, whom he noted was at the time the wealthiest man in Silicon Valley.

How is it possible for an editor to be so awed by power, money or influence that he could not even shake another man's hand? Such insecurity in the face of the area's increasing wealth and sophistication is a sad commentary on the people who should be telling the valley's stories"

"This is the backdrop to Chris Nolan's little stock deal. Whatever the specific rights and wrongs of her AutoWeb escapade, it's a sign of the new prosperity some technology reporters enjoy, and that really gets under some observers' skin. Maybe Nolan did everything by the book, maybe she didn't; either way, she serves as a whipping boy for the tut-tutting of old-line news hounds who resent the changes that the Internet is bringing to their business."

"Nathan Myhrvold, a physicist who is on leave from his job as the chief technology officer at Microsoft Corp., said in an e-mail interview, "People have made apocalyptic predictions about technology constantly for as long as there has been technology. I think it is because change frightens them. What is more, the most common form these dire predictions take is 'this next generation of stuff -- wow! that is really different and really scary.'""

"In the telephone interview last week, Joy said he doubted that the development of advances could be reined in in the commercial world, and he criticized scientists as being largely silent on the inherently destructive potential of rapidly evolving technologies.

Asked if he thought a technological species could expect to survive the ever-accelerating evolution of its market-driven technologies, Joy said: "The answer is 'yes, but not without additional care.' I think it's possible -- but it's not a given. Survival won't come for free." "

"All around us are ordinary phenomena that can astound us if only we attend to them with the seriousness they do not typically receive: letters and letter-writing, street scenes, routine family life, artistic and cinematic depictions of how we live our lives, everyday work and commercial situations, sociable occasions, nonprofessional sports activities, transportation contexts, venues of legal and political action, viewing televised entertainment, consuming information from various media, and so on. The study of the extreme, outlandish, and "profane" aspects of late 20th century existence has been well-developed and has given rise to many useful theoretical and research tools. Here, we want to turn these analytic tools to the level of everyday life, to examine in microscopic and graphic detail the more mundane, habitual, and quotidian aspects of our existence - including how we define what is "mundane". These unnoticed, unmarked aspects of our lives are often the most political and yet depoliticized, and it is one of the goals of this journal to expose these processes."

"This paper analyses the cultural significance of male facial grooming, the arts of shaving, clipping and trimming, and the meanings of full beard growth. It draws upon a semiotic interpretation, and reconfigures the overlooked and personalised ritual of daily facial preparation and presentation. The analysis sees facial hair as a signifier of masculinity, but one which does not remain fixedly within the masculine realm. The radical politicisation of facial hair has been effected through both the gay and the feminist movements, so that the figures of the "bearded fairy", the "goateed club bunny", and the "drag king" are their assigned subcultures, but bleed via the mass media into dominant culture."

"Despite the call from many thoughtful folks for us to give up our patents unilaterally, I don't believe it would be right for us to do so. This is my belief even though the vast majority of our competitive advantage will continue to come not from patents, but from raising the bar on things like service, price, and selection -- and we will continue to raise that bar. We will also continue to be careful in how we use our patents. Unlike with trademark law, where you must continuously enforce your trademark or risk losing it, patent law allows you to enforce a patent on a case-by-case basis, only when there are important business reasons for doing so.

I also strongly doubt whether our giving up our patents would really, in the end, provide much of a stepping stone to solving the bigger problem.

But I do think we can help. As a company with some high-profile software patents, we're in a credible position to call for meaningful (perhaps even radical) patent reform. In fact, we may be uniquely positioned to do this. "

"On an important meta-level, one thing to note is that this episode is a fascinating example of the new world, where companies can have conversations with their customers, and customers can have conversations with their companies. I've been saying for 4 years now that, online, the balance of power shifts away from the merchant and toward the customer. This is a good thing. If you haven't already, read the cluetrain manifesto. If you want the book, well...you can get it at several places online..."

"I do want to commend Jeff for listening to his customers. He didn't just hide behind his lawyers, or a PR spokesperson, but engaged directly, demonstrating that he does understand the new rules of the Internet economy."

"Weblogging by nature has been a solitary pursuit, and its practitioners are mostly independents. But as Gillmor and Cooper are showing us, the model can work on a corporate level — if news organizations are willing to be more free with their notion of what is acceptable content for their Web site."

Gillmor says eJournal is an experiment in what the Web experience can be. "We're still trying to figure out what it is," he says. "That's part of the fun." While the columnist is (obviously) at the center of the Weblog with what he writes, Gillmor sees it as facilitating a multi-way conversation between he and his readers, and readers and other readers.

Hosting a Weblog is a way to add a personal voice to the corporate face, says Jim Romensesko, one of the most widely recognized Webloggers."

"This paper establishes a context for the work of Eric Raymond and his description of the Linux phenomenon, by examining the emerging science of complex adaptive systems pioneered by John Holland, Christopher Langton, Robert Axelrod, among others. Raymond's evolutionary view is given an extended and more formal treatment under the terms of chaos and complexity, and chaos and complexity under the terms of sociology. In addition, this paper presents an ethnographic account of Linux, amassed from a series of electronic mail interviews with kernel developers. These interviews examine Linux as a social phenomena, which has prompted wide interest and become a subject of heated discussion. Comments and feedback of this paper can be found at http://www.cukezone.com/kk49/linux/contents.html."

"While there has been much talk about the digital divide by race, we find that gaps between blacks and whites under age 60 are more pronounced in the home than at work. We also find they are more pronounced at lower-income levels than at higher-income levels. There is a gap of 11 percentage points between blacks and whites using computers at work (46% vs. 57%); but there is a larger, 22 point gap between blacks and whites who have a computer at home (51% vs. 73%). Similarly, a gap of 8 points exists between blacks and whites using the Internet at work (21% vs. 29%) compared with a larger 19 point gap in access to the Internet or e-mail at home (38% vs. 57%). Although there is a 17 percentage point gap in home-computer ownership between low-income blacks and low-income whites, the differences virtually disappear at upper-income levels."

Tim: With the Web we've had this incredibly fertile period marked by a great deal of sharing and consequent innovation, most of it by independent developers who've learned by looking at what others were doing, imitating it and then playing leapfrog. And it is these developers whose efforts are most harmed by the fear that they may be sued by a player like Amazon.

Jeff: We aren't going after those developers. There are lots of people using 1-click purchasing on their sites whom we aren't suing. We're just going after the big guys who are going after us, the guys who are not innovating themselves but just copying us and working to crush us.

Tim: Would you be willing to make some kind of public promise that you won't be going after other people about this?

Jeff: I'll think about it and talk with my lawyers to see if there's any way we could do that without harming our suit against B&N.

1. For Amazon.com to think hard about what kind of assurances they could give to independent developers about their safety from patent lawsuits.

2. To continue our conversation about patents, openness, and software innovation.

3. For me to write up our conversation so far and share it with the public, even in its inconclusive state. After all, one of the rules of the Internet, as articulated so brilliantly in The Cluetrain Manifesto, is that a market is a conversation. We don't have an answer yet, but we're talking.

Contrary to popular belief, business-method patents have flowed from the Patent and Trademark Office for over 100 years. Many appear at least as obvious as Amazon's. For example, patent 44,778, awarded to Isaac Bates on October 25, 1864, covers a "method for teaching penmanship," specifically an innovative position of arm, pen and hand. Meanwhile, patent 660,255 protects a method for teaching speaking and reading to the deaf. It was issued in 1900."

The only way to have a conversation with the Web is to put your own words on the Web. An actual interview or essay, clearly stating Amazon's position. It's great that he talked with Tim, but it's no substitute for a direct response to their customers."

"The idea behind the contest is that the rigid constraints of designing for the web are what force us to get truly creative. Between servers and bandwidth, clients and users, HTML and the DOM, browsers and platforms, our conscience and our ego, we're left in a very small space to find highly optimal solutions. Since the space we have to explore is so small, we have to look harder, get more creative; and that's what makes it all interesting. Just celebrating that is all."

"Well, I think he's completely wrong. And he's completely wrong because of who he is. First of all, his books are terrific. But they're the books of an analytic historian. He is not a graphic designer. He is not an information architect. He doesn't have any ideas about graphics and what's going to happen in the future." [via xplane]

"Every time he quotes statistics from an unrelated study to prove a point about Web usability, take one drink." [via rc3]