Changing the World by Spreading the Knowledge of Innovators

Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly media spoke at Microsoft Research earlier today. It was a great, wide-ranging talk pounding through 103 slides roaming from social networking, through sensor and ambient computing, to Web2.0.

Four themes for the talk:

· Thoughts on social networking

· Sensors and Ambient Computing

· Web 2.0 and Wall Street

· Open Source Hardware

“The future is here. It’s just not evenly distributed yet” — William Gibson

Thoughts on social networking:

· Social networking sites are becoming personal CRM

· Need to have it reflect my REAL friends vs acquaintances, hangers on, etc.

· “What’s new” is going to be everywhere

· Need to be able to have groups of friends based upon what “type” of friends they are. Where they were met, what context, more dimesions, etc.

· Want sharing of data with control across different social networking sites (need data portability)

· Want to make social networking applicable to enterprise problems (huge opportunities in that the existing tools are weak)

· Open social is weak. We’re bringing together 60 or 70 social networking sites to get sharing that works

· Wallop was a GREAT as a research project but seemed to have lost what was cool about the original ideas when spun out.

· Photosynth is very cool as well. Use ‘em and don’t lose ‘em?

· Need to bring social networking features into Outlook. It would be killer!

· What differentiated Web 2.0: real time user-facing services based upon data

· How do we take deep wells of data that all corporations serving customers have and turn it into value for your users.

o Note: my phone and my email know who my friends are. They should be running deep heuristics on this data. They should know who my real friends are.

· We grew up where the answers were black and white. We’re entering a world where the answers are softer. We need close enough and more “pretty good” …

o I shouldn’t have to tell the system who my friends are

o Xobni does a pretty good job in this dimension

· There are huge opportunities to re-invent enterprise software along Web 2.0 lines

o Social networking meets Web 2.0.

o Exploit the vast wells of data

· ½ of all mashups are Google Maps based (programmableweb.com)

· The most useful APIs:

o Aren’t about you are your services

o Let developers try new things

o Exist to be stretched out of shape

o If someone violates your TOS, perhaps it is wrong

· Amazon AWS is doing this best (S3 is great)

· P2p hasn’t been close to fully exploited yet.

· Amazon ASIN is an extension of ISBN. It’s a name space for all products rather than just books.

· On the web, open source doesn’t matter. It’s from an old era. What matters today is open data.

· Open Source was the solution to software distribution over a fragmented set of computer architectures. It’s no longer the problem. If I gave you the source to Google, you couldn’t run it. What’s interesting today is large aggregate data sources rather than access of the programs.

Sensors and Ambient Computing

· We are moving out o the world of people typing on keyboards. Increasingly apps will be driven by new kinds of sensors.

· There will be more and more sensor based applications.

· For example, Nintendo WII

· Photosynth is this amazing Web 2.0 application. All of our cameras become sensor in this large collective DB.

· Pathintellegence is using Gnu Radio to track cell phone carrying customers (everyone) to track shopping patters

· Jaiku is a smart presence application (using cell tower triangulations)

· LastFM delivers results (the music you like) without asking me to enter data. Just watch me using sensors. This is the future.

o PageRank found meaning in hidden data (page links). Finding data from large aggregations and extract meaning statistically.

· It’s about “Programming Collective Intelligence”

Web 2.0 and Wall Street

· It’s all about networked intelligence applications

· Dark Pools are used by Hedge funds to avoid moving the market by doing large numbers of small trades through a dark pool. Liuqidnet, for example, does several multiples of the traffic of the NYSE. Dark Pools are ultra-high speed, anonymous trading markets. Dark Pools are used by hedge funds to operate privately and anonymously. I expect to see a backlash across the web2.0 economy and a bigger focus on privacy and anonymous operation.

Open Source Hardware

· Didn’t have time to cover it in this talk.

WS-* was a failed attempt by big companies to make it so hard that we needed their tools.

Why doesn’t my address book, email, and phone software tell me about interesting things that relate to me. For example, I know Elop who just took over Office. Why couldn’t this be done automatically?

There is LOTS of innovation happening right now in hardware. It’s the next big frontier.

–jrh

James Hamilton, Windows Live Platform Services
Bldg RedW-D/2072, One Microsoft Way, Redmond, Washington, 98052
W:+1(425)703-9972 | C:+1(206)910-4692 | H:+1(206)201-1859 |
JamesRH@microsoft.com

H:mvdirona.com | W:research.microsoft.com/~jamesrh

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