nr-pc.com

Earlier this week, Google Maps added a feature to let users see what photos, videos, and user-created maps have been associated with various places around the world.

Google has released a Google Maps application program interface that enables developers to use the mapping software in applications that use Adobe Systems’ Flash technology.

“We’ve designed it so that Flash graphics can be used for each tile layer, marker, and info window,” a n announcement by Google Maps engineer Mike Jones read, “opening up possibilities like dynamic shading, shadowing, animation, and video.”

The online Apple Store really should have a spiffy
iPhone interface like Facebook and Amazon.

Much love,
The Macalope

Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to expect anyone in as lofty a position as U.K. PM Gordon Brown to spend their time actually posting to Twitter themselves. But it appears that someone out there in Twitter-land has started an account that purports to be the “official Twitter channel for the Prime Minister’s Office based at 10 Downing Street.”

It also would seem to be in character for the PM’s press office, which already offers podcasts, e-mail updates, Web chats, and other multimedia elements. Perhaps the lack of mention of Twitter is simply because they don’t want to get flooded yet. As of now, the account has only posted eight Tweets.

If it’s not true, then the joke’s on Edelman, on me and on anyone else who fell for this.

Can heads of state Twitter?

An example: “No10 news: Sarkozy arrives at Number 10: The Prime Minister has welcomed French President.. http://tinyurl.com/36ghab.”

If this is true, then, I would say it’s definitely interesting, very forward-thinking, and a big step for Twitter and other social-media platforms.

And according to the official blog of global PR company Edelman, this is most likely a Twitter account coming from Downing Street.

Looking briefly at the official Web site for the prime minister’s office, I don’t see any mention of Twitter, but whoever is posting from that account is doing pretty much nothing except what appears to be the kind of official news that would come from the press office of a place like 10 Downing Street.

(Credit:
Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)

It seems that someone may be Twittering from the U.K. prime minister’s office. If not, it’s a pretty well-conceived hoax.

commentary

Some time ago I discovered that I didn’t like reading “the news” very much. Perhaps this resulted from reading too many British newspapers, which don’t try very hard to disguise their angle on a story. Some are pro-monarchy, some are pro-business, some are pro-Left, some are pro-Right. You choose the paper that matches your bias.

In the United States, we still pretend to be unbiased. I’m not sure why. I’ll occasionally get comments on this blog accusing me of bias in favor of Apple, against Microsoft, or whatever. Of course they’re right. I make no attempt to hide it. I find blogs refreshing precisely because, as a general rule, they make no attempt to mask bias. This is what I want: Transparency, not some purportedly clinical examination of “news.” I don’t believe the latter is possible.

Take a look to the right. CNET clearly displays my bias, as it does for all of its outside bloggers. See the disclosure link? Now go to one of CNET’s writers and bloggers’ pages, that of Ian Fried, in this case: No disclosure page.

Not that CNET is alone in this. Head over to Tom Yager’s blog at InfoWorld. No disclosure. Steve Gillmor over at eWeek? Nada.

Presumably this is because these writers aren’t biased? That they have miraculously managed to live on this planet for a few decades as a tabula rosa, writing the world as it sees itself? Let me pause while I snicker into my sleeve.

We don’t read these excellent writers because they lack bias. We read them precisely because of their biases. It’s the commentary that makes “news” interesting, and that commentary is always heavily flavored by bias.

Bias isn’t the problem. Lack of disclosure of the bias is the problem.

This is what makes Walt Mossberg’s Personal Technology column for the Wall Street Journal so great. Anyone that reads it regularly knows that Mossberg is heavily biased. He doesn’t try to hide it. In fact, unique among technology writers, he actually discloses his bias:

I am not an objective news reporter, and am not responsible for business coverage of technology companies. I am a subjective opinion columnist, a reviewer of consumer technology products and a commentator on technology issues.

Bravo! Now, this would be even better if he spelled out that he generally prefers Apple to Microsoft, etc., but at least he’s making a start. The point is that regular readers know where he stands on issues, and it is precisely when we see his opinion on a product diverge from that bias that the article becomes newsworthy, rather than just confirmatory of the established order of things.

It’s no secret that I love open source, Apple, and Arsenal (football club), and am not a fan of Microsoft’s business practices and its stance on open source. Regular readers of this blog expect to see news related to open source, and I’m sure they generally expect to see pro-open source stories. For those new to The Open Road, my disclosure statement alerts them to this. It provides instant context.

Now consider a post I wrote about usability in software, in which I laud Microsoft and chide the open-source development community. On its face, the post may not be interesting, but it becomes so because of my bias. “Wait, this guy doesn’t like Microsoft and he thinks open source can do no wrong. Except here he’s saying the opposite. Maybe there’s something there.” Or what if Mossberg riffed on how great the
Zune was? We’d take notice.

Bias makes the news interesting, because it adds commentary. Bias provides context to the news, and makes it personal. Bias allows Les Miserables (French revolutionaries are cool!), A Tale of Two Cities (French revolutionaries are whack-jobs!), and The Scarlet Pimpernel (Keep those French revolutionaries away from those sweet, noble families!) to tell different slants on the same or similar things, and yet all be excellent in their own rights.

It is an unfortunate sham to pretend that journalists can morph into robotic automatons that record the news without sham. Instead of trying to suppress it, we should celebrate it…so long as we disclose it.

The poet Emily Dickinson once suggested:

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant.

I couldn’t agree more. Tell it from one’s own, personal perspective. I don’t care what CNET thinks - I care what Stephen Shankland, Ina Fried, and Charles Cooper think. Perhaps the media would make more money if it spoke person-to-person, rather than pretending to speak automaton-to-mindless sheep.

Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio announced on Tuesday that they closed their long-awaited merger, ending a 17-month saga since the deal was first announced to bring the nation’s only two satellite radio companies together.

The combined company, with more than 18.5 million subscribers, is now called Sirius XM Radio. It is set to rank as the second-largest U.S. radio company, based on annual revenues.

Sirius XM Radio will offer more than 300 programming channels spanning exclusive shows, such as those of Howard Stern and Oprah Winfrey, and a la carte programming. Subscribers will be able to select certain programs from each of the two former companies under one package.

“By offering more compelling packages and the best content in audio entertainment, we are well-positioned for increased subscriber growth,” Mel Karmazin, CEO of the newly minted Sirius XM Radio, said in a statement.

The new programs, expected to begin rolling out in early fall, will not require a new device. And as the companies previously stated, subscribers can continue to maintain their current service plan.

While the merger is designed to bring cost savings and synergies to the newly formed company, it was the consolidation of the nation’s only two satellite radio companies that raised concerns with the Federal Communications Commission, which approved the deal in a 3-2 vote on Friday.

XM investors will receive 4.6 shares of Sirius for every XM share they currently own, and the ticker symbol will now trade under “SIRI.” Sirius XM Radio will be headquartered in New York, and its wholly owned subsidiary XM Satellite Radio will remain in Washington, D.C.

Something was going to give.

As Beijing prepares for the Olympics and the attending flood of foreigners, many of them reporters, expected to arrive this summer, the government’s controls over the Internet have become increasingly sophisticated. But would the Olympic organizers really be OK with dozens of stories about reporters and athletes unable to reach Wikipedia and BBC?

Apparently, decision makers are indeed worried about press regarding censorship. AFP quotes an Olympic organizing committee representative as saying, “I believe you will be able to (access banned sites such as the BBC), but I can’t give you a promise yet. The relevant government departments are still working on it.”

The story is unrevealing, especially because of the parenthetical inserted in the above quote, which is attributed to Wang Hui. (Was she really referring to BBC? To all banned sites? To specific sites not including the BBC?) This also doesn’t tell us anything about whether keyword filtration, another common censorship method, will continue.

I won’t list the sensitive terms here, because I don’t want this post (or on an unlucky day, CNET at large) to get blocked, but they include phrases about sensitive historical events such as the one in 1989. Too many mentions of two things that start with a T–an island with a U.S. security pact and a Himalayan region home to a famous form of Buddhism–can also get a site or individual page in trouble. Names of dissidents, especially when rendered in Chinese, often result in a block.

So if keyword filtering continues, but IP and domain blocking are turned off, browsers in China will be able to access Wikipedia, Blogspot blogs, Wordpress-hosted blogs, the BBC, and many other sites that I currently have to use proxies to access.

Keyword filtering is more directed and less likely to be detected by visitors not used to the restrictions. Here’s how it works:

A browser requests a page on an unrestricted IP address.
In transit, one node in a network of checkpoints and filtering software (not a monolithic Great Firewall of China suggesting 100 percent coverage) detects filtered keywords.
That node, through which data packets are being routed, sends a “reset connection” command to both the browser and the host.
The transmission stops, and the browser displays a connection reset message, making it appear as if there may be a transmission or Web server glitch, not censorship, at work.

I doubt that the entire censorship regime will be shut down during the Olympics. Communications on the sensitive issues I noted above will likely be closely monitored for fear of demonstrations timed to distract attention from the national showcase in Beijing. But perhaps, if the government learns that it can handle things through keyword filtering alone, the irritating bans on Web sites central to my daily reading load will cease.

Just to be clear, though, I find the statement reported by AFP to be entirely inconclusive. We don’t know what will happen yet. Perhaps the government will announce details, and it seems likely that some or all filtering will cease during the Olympics, but we’ll just have to wait and see.

(Hat tip to Richard at The Peking Duck, where an alert commenter has noticed that while news.bbc.co.uk has been blocked for a long time, the identical site newsvote.bbc.co.uk is available. A small victory for my news-reading diet.)

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.–Two titans in the enterprise software business faced off Thursday at a Churchill Club event at the Computer History Museum here, and a bit of history was made.

The sage, 64-year-old Hasso Plattner, co-founder and Chairman of SAP, and the upstart, 43-year-old Marc Benioff, co-founder and Chairman of salesforce.com, debated the future of enterprise software, fielding questions from Quentin Hardy of Forbes and the audience.

The history footnote of the evening came from Benioff, who challenged Plattner to build SAP applications on the Salesforce.com platform. “I want to figure out how to get SAP to build on our platform,” Benioff said. “SAP needs to write its new apps on our platform, and I need to help him do that because there is no way he can figure that out…we will be in a war to get more developers on our platform.”

Debate partners: Marc Benioff and Hasso Plattner

(Credit:
Dan Farber)

Plattner, who was writing software when Benioff was in grade school, wasn’t biting, and became a bit exercised. He questioned whether Salesforce.com could keep thousands of on-demand service interfaces consistent as its platform grows and as customers write code to integrate with the platform.

“All 41,000 Salesforce customers are on the same version. When we release the new version in June, we don’t break the links. In some cases they have to re-implement, but you still have a managed environment,” Benioff countered.

“I would be scared at what you just said. If you extend that to whole enterprise system, I would be scared to death,” Plattner responded.

Benioff, who I declare the debate winner by nontechnical knockout (no references to in-memory database systems), stuck to his vision of the future. “You have to buy into the fundamental premise that the world has to change, and because we have a global network and a new architecture with massively parallel servers, we can build technology with a level of automation previously unimaginable.

The evening started off more calmly, with Benioff describing the new generation of enterprise software companies, which he said will look more like consumer companies, such as Google, Yahoo, and eBay on the back end, but serve up traditional business functionality.

Plattner rambled on about betting on modification-free software with SAP R/3 in 1993, only to find that customers wanted to customize it. SAP’s plan today is to provide 2,100 service interfaces in Business ByDesign, its forthcoming hosted suite of applications for the mid-market. Those interfaces will mesh with each other but will not be customizable. He differentiated Business ByDesign from Salesforce.com by virtue of the completeness of the SAP suite. SAP has been working on Business ByDesign for four years with 2,500 developers on the project, and it won’t be generally available until later this year or 2009.

“We have many things in common. Let me give you some advice, but you might not take it because you are younger: don’t overestimate your platform.” –Hasso Plattner to Marc Benioff

For SAP, software is about serving larger businesses with a complete, integrated suite of applications with “wall-to-wall functionality,” Plattner said.

Benioff claimed that the Salesforce.com platform could run any kind of enterprise application. He asked Plattner why Salesforce.com beat out SAP for the Dupont business. “We had a shitty CRM system,” Plattner said. He then said that the new SAP CRM 7.0 is the best product in the field. “You had a good time and now we are. If you are really successful how much are you worth?” Plattner said.

Benioff said Salesforce.com is aimed at all sizes of companies and across industries. “We have been passionate about moving obstacles out of the way of the old enterprise software companies,” Benioff said. “We are at the verge of a breakthrough, and it is as big as the software-as-a-service business has been. We see platforms emerging where we can accept customers and ISV code and run it natively, just as R/3 ran natively on Oracle. This means you can run the business processes of any company in the world. We are moving now to platform-as-a-service, and it’s biggest the threat to SAP, MS, Oracle, and BEA architectures.”

As salesforce.com evolved from CRM to application platform, Benioff has been making that claim the client/server model is doomed. Plattner touted SAP’s developer community. “We have 1.2 million software developers on our platform, 2,000 partners developing addition software,” he said. “We have the largest software development project in our history, with 2,500 developers developing on demand,” Plattner added.

“You have 2,500 developers and 2,100 interfaces. All that and no customer success,” Benioff taunted.

In a moment of calm, Plattner said, “We have many things in common. Let me give you some advice, but you might not take it because you are younger: don’t overestimate your platform.” Sage advice.

Plattner was asked if he would consider buying Salesforce.com. “It always makes sense to look into something. If the Apex platform (the Salesforce.com platform) is really as good a he thinks it is, we should look even more,” he said. Plattner also said that he thinks Oracle, where Benioff worked for 13 years, will end up acquiring Salesforce.com

To put this debate in historical context, Benioff has been known to disparage SAP, which generated $15 billion in revenue for 2007 with a 26 percent margin, as a company that doesn’t innovate. In an interview with News.com’s Charlie Cooper and myself a few weeks ago, Benioff said:

With SAP, you really have not seen innovation in the last 10 years. If you think about what is the one thing that SAP has ever innovated, what have they created that’s unique to the industry or value-added technology? I have a hard time thinking about what SAP is going to be known for at the end of the day.

In August 2007, Plattner’s proxy, SAP CEO Henning Kagermann, characterized Salesforce.com as follows:

Salesforce is like best of breed in the old days. It’s always an advantage, but you cannot be best at everything worldwide. That’s our advantage–we can run an entire business.

Speaking of old, SAP was founded in 1972 and Salesforce.com in 1999. Salesforce.com is approaching $1 billion in annual revenue, and a much smaller margin than SAP, with its software-as-a-service platform and subscription business model. SAP has been slow to adopt the software-as-a-service model, but is prepping to launch Business ByDesign. It will be more directly competitive with NetSuite than Salesforce.com, which is built primarily around CRM applications.

Benioff summarized the future of enterprise software during the debate in this statement: Software-as-a-service will not happen without Microsoft, Oracle, or SAP. But they are holding on to the past. The new Internet companies–Amazon, Google and ebay–what they have done and the new young internet companies is really the next generation.”

Fundamentally, companies will find it more practical and cost effective to deploy enterprise software from the cloud over the next decade. As I said earlier, Benioff won the debate, but he has a long way to go to unseat Plattner’s company.

HP now sells an HP 12C calculator app for the iPhone.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

It looks like a fourth generation of my family is going to be introduced to the ways of reverse Polish notation calculators.

That’s because my three-year-old son, an iPhone fan in his own preschool way, is about to be exposed to Hewlett-Packard’s new
iPhone application that fully emulates the company’s 12c financial calculator. The $14.99 application is accompanied by a $29.99 emulator of the 15c scientific calculator, which is better at handling trigonometry and integration than mortgage payments and net present value.

All that’s missing is the pocket protector-like iPhone case, my colleague Ina Fried cracked as she mocked my nerdish tendencies.

In vertical orientation, the calculator app shows a basic set of functions.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

The software versions of HP calculators, announced Thursday, are clever applications for HP to sell for a number of reasons.

First, HP attracted a lot of engineers, scientists, real estate agents, and Wall Street brokers with its calculators in years gone by, and the tool is genuinely useful still to those folks. Of course, they’re a lot more likely to have their mobile phones with them than their calculators, no matter how pocketable they are, if indeed they still have the calculator at all.

Second, software comes with famously plump profit margins compared with hardware, even when you have to share a cut with Apple. The 12c new costs $80 in its physical incarnation, but HP must pay the cost of making each one. With software–once it’s developed–HP gets to sell it over and over for much less extra cost.

I find the app prices high, and it’s annoying the 15c costs twice the price of the 12c, but I guess HP is considering that a used 15c costs between $66 and $289 right now on eBay; the models aren’t for sale new anymore.

Third, there’s relevance. With all the alternatives to pocket calculators, HP’s line is probably as endangered a species today as the mechanical slide rules became decades ago when HP’s first pocket-sized electronic calculator, the HP-35, arrived in 1972.

When it’s time for me to crunch some numbers, my computers and phone already have serviceable calculator applications; spreadsheet software will probably let me do something more useful with the numbers if they actually are important to me; and Google, Yahoo, and Bing will all do some math. Heck, Wolfram Alpha knows how to understand the command “integral sec3x dx.”

Alternatives there may be, but I, as you may have detected, like the calculator application for sentimental reasons. I still haul my HP 11c out of the desk drawer for this and that.

My original HP-35 calculator, dating from 1972.

(Credit:
Stephen Shankland/CNET)

I imprinted on HP calculators at a tender age. My mother’s father was an early adopter of the HP-35, despite its high initial price tag, and I inherited the still-working machine a few years ago. My earlier contact came through using my father’s, though, including my endless mashing down of the sum key to see how high a number I could make the display count to.

Then I got my own in 11th grade, the HP 11c, a lighter-weight scientific calculator than the 15C still for sale today. Maybe it’s just what you grow up with, but I find the HP calculators’ reverse Polish notation method (PDF) of performing calculations easier and faster.

A quick primer on reverse Polish notation, which stemmed from the work of Polish logician Jan Lukasiewicz: there’s no equals key. If you want to add 2 and 4, you type 2 “enter” 4 “plus.” I fear the idea is doomed, so I won’t belabor the point, but it really shines when handling lots of numbers.

It should be noted that HP also announced versions of its HP 35s scientific calculator, 12c Platinum financial calculator, and 20b business-consultant calculator for Windows computers, too. They of course work with HP’s touch-screen PCs, too, if you want to get closer to the original calculator experience.

And being full-fledged emulators of the original calculator hardware, the software products perform all the originals’ functions, such the 15c’s ability to run primitive programs. And tapping the HP logo on the calculator application shows the condensed reference guide that appears on the back of the real-world calculators.

The Windows versions are nice, but I like the iPhone version better. It’s just about the right size, fitting neatly in your hand for that old-school calculator feel and making a satisfying clicking noise when you push the buttons. It goes where my phone goes.

And even if he never learns reverse Polish notation, my son will get to see how high he can make it count.

Tapping the HP logo on the calculator shows the condensed reference guide that appears on the back of the real-world calculators.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

The Aliph Jawbone 2. Is its radiation harmful?

(Credit:
Aliph)

Q: I’m curious as to whether Bluetooth headsets also emit radiation, which could prove harmful to one’s health. What can you tell me about this?
- Craig

A: Bluetooth headsets do emit radiation, but they do it at a much lower power than a cell phone. In fact, it’s so low that it’s almost negligible. Keep in mind that while cell phones need to connect to a tower that could be a couple of miles away, a headset has an effective range of just 30 feet. However, if the prospect of Bluetooth radiation really worries you, I would suggest using a wired headset instead.

Q: Why do Sprint and Verizon Wireless appear to get sloppy seconds when it comes to the best and brightest new smartphones? It seems as if AT&T and T-Mobile get the most interesting phones, even though their networks aren’t as extensive as Verizon and Sprint. I know Sprint has the Samsung Instinct, but that phone has no Wi-Fi. Will Sprint be getting something like the Samsung Omnia for the holidays?
- Eric

The Samsung Omnia could come to AT&T.

(Credit:
Samsung)

A: Though the selection of Sprint and Verizon Wireless smartphones isn’t quite as extensive as with the GSM carriers (AT&T and T-Mobile), I’d say they have some very decent options. Verizon has the XV6900, the RIM BlackBerry Curve 8330, and the Samsung SCH-i760, while Sprint offers the RIM BlackBerry Curve 8330 and the Motorola Q9c, to name a few. And though it’s not a smartphone by our standards, the LG Dare is a solid option as well. I’d agree, however, that the CDMA phones are lacking in Wi-Fi support. AT&T in particular does better in that department. And incidentally, if anyone is getting the Omnia, Bonnie Cha thinks it will be AT&T.

Because CDMA has a smaller global footprint, some cell phone manufacturers are less inclined to make CDMA phones. Just look at Nokia and Sony Ericsson, for example. Nokia has dabbled in CDMA phones, but it has never had a clear-cut strategy for doing so. And Sony Ericsson, on the other hand, shuns CDMA completely. The technology does get attention from Japanese and Korean manufacturers like Samsung, LG, and Kyocera, but that’s mainly because they have CDMA in their own back yards. Moto spends a good deal of time in both sectors, but there again, Moto operates in a country that uses CDMA.

As for the lack of Wi-Fi on Sprint and Verizon phones, I’d blame that on the peculiarities of the carriers. In my experience, the CDMA carriers tend to be much more controlling and protective than T-Mobile or AT&T. Verizon was the last carrier to remove Bluetooth restrictions in its phone and it was only last year that Sprint and Verizon said they would start allowing unlocked phones on their networks. I’d theorize that they’re slow to adopt Wi-Fi because they want to keep their customers using their calling minutes.

Q: I bought a new unlocked phone and would like to start a new account at AT&T. Can I get out of paying an activation fee and signing a contract?
- Elisa

A: As a new customer you will have to pay an activation fee, even if you’re using an unlocked phone. Yet, you might be able to avoid signing a contract that includes an early termination fee. The only reason carriers charge an ETF in the first place is to recover the cost of selling you a new phone at a discount. But, if you’re not getting such a discount or rebate then there’s no reason you should be stuck with an ETF. If AT&T tries to press you with one, I’d argue that point.

Kent German, CNET’s cell phones guru, answers your questions about cell phones, services, and accessories and reports on the state of the industry. Send him a question.

Earlier this summer, just as Twitter started to really pick up steam, the microblogging service began to have major stability problems.

The more users who signed up, the more the site seemed to be down, and it became nearly as commonplace to see the so-called “fail whale”–signifying that a desired operation wouldn’t go through–as it was to have the service work properly.

For countless users, this was extremely frustrating, as Twitter had become the live conversation medium of choice for many early-adopters. And into this vacuum jumped a series of other microblogging services, each trying to pick up where Twitter seemed to be leaving off and hoping that large numbers of users would migrate to these new choices.

Evan Prodromou

(Credit:
Evan Prodromou/Indentica)

One such service that seemed to come out of nowhere and get instant buy-in from influential digerati around the Web was Identica, an open-source microblogging alternative from Montreal resident Evan Prodromou, who in 2003 had co-founded Wikitravel, a wiki-based travel service that gained a widespread following and that has since expanded into printed guidebooks.

For Prodromou, Identica began as a side project that leveraged his experience with open-source software and free software projects and quickly became a popular place for people looking for a stable microblogging service to go.

Now, Twitter has regained much of its footing, and it has a huge name recognition advantage over any of its competitors, but Prodromou thinks his model could eventually take the microblogging genre to its natural next evolutionary step.

Q: What is Identica?

Prodromou: Identica is a microblogging service, a way for people to publish small messages about themselves. The messages are limited to 140 characters or less, so one to two sentences, maybe three sentences about what you’re doing, what you are interested in right now, and you can broadcast it to your social network. I launched Identica in July, and of course, microblogging has been around for probably about two to three years right now with some leading services like Twitter, Jaiku, and more recently Pownce and Plurk.

How do you differentiate yourselves from Twitter and the others?

Prodromou: Recent numbers show there are already around 110 microblogging services, and with others that have been announced, there are probably 200 different services right now. What we’ve seen with other kinds of social software is this kind of fragmentation and we are seeing that now with microblogging where you are on Twitter, and I am Jaiku, and we can’t be friends and we can’t send each other messages. That’s not the way the Internet is supposed to work. We are seeing these information silos happen around microblogging just like we’re seeing them in other social media and my goal is to see that not happen with microblogging because I think it’s a very valuable kind of communication.

Isn’t that where something like Friendfeed comes in, to aggregate all the different services into one place?

Prodromou: Friendfeed is a great way to listen to multiple places, but to me, that’s a stop-gap solution where we’ve got lots of silos, so you can listen to lots of silos. I want one microblogging place, where if I’m on one and you’re on another, we can still communicate and still be friends. That’s the long-term solution to the problem. It should be up to the services to talk to each other. That’s really the difference with Identica. I made the software open source, so you can take the software that runs Identica and install it on your own server. Maybe you’re involved with a Web community or you have a group of friends that like to talk or maybe you’re in business and you want people in your business talking to each other in the enterprise. You can install the software and tailor it just for your group. I built a protocol called OpenMicroBlogging, so if you take the software and install it on your server, people on your server can still subscribe to other people on Identica and vice versa, so we’re no longer having these little silos that are fractured and different from each other.

So will Indentica users be able to communicate with Twitter users?
Prodromou: That’s my goal. If we get enough people using these open standards and open systems, perhaps Twitter sees it as a business advantage to join this kind of open network. We’ve seen that before on the Internet. In the early 1990s, there were lot of silos around e-mail and if you had an AOL e-mail address and I had a CompuServe e-mail address, we couldn’t send e-mail to each other. But e-mail became so ubiquitous that even the companies with the biggest groups and users had to allow their users to send and receive Internet e-mail and I think that that’s going to happen with microblogging, too. But it means that we have to grow the rest of the system.

It seems you had the good fortune of launching Identica last summer right when Twitter was having major stability and scalability problems.

Prodromou: Yeah.

But as Twitter solidifies itself, why won’t people just say, Okay, Twitter is working, I’m just going to stick with that because most of my friends are there? How do you fit into that dynamic?

Prodromou: I’m a big openness advocate and I want to make sure that we follow the winning solutions. With social-networking sites, in around 2003 or 2004, Friendster was probably the only one worth caring about. But they had big scalability problems. That gave openings to alternatives like MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, and so on, all the ones that have become very big since then. Twitter’s gotten back on its feet, but there are other players now, and some Twitter users got accounts on Identica and others went to Plurk. A lot have gone back to Twitter, but as we saw with social networking, the growth wasn’t in those early adopters, the early, say 2 million, that are using Twitter. There are a billion people online, and there is a lot of room for growth in that billion people. You can’t just have a bunch of players fighting over the same small pie of early adopters. Eventually the market grows, and the MySpaces and Facebooks grow beyond the early adopter market, and I think that’s what’s going to happen with microblogging.

Explain what Laconica is?

Prodromou: Identica is the name of the service and, it’s open source. I’m very interested in ways that service providers can give their users the same kind of autonomy as people have using open source software. So, one thing I did when I started Identica was made the software open source. It’s called Laconica. The software is available for download from Identica and it’s pretty easy to set up. It runs on PHP and MySQL, which you can get on pretty much on any hosting service. So my goal is to make it very easy to install and have lots of people installing their own systems and using it. I believe that if that becomes the case, as the network grows and gets stronger and it’s advantageous to everyone.

What’s your business model?

Prodromou: I have four possible revenue streams. The first is a premium services model. Some things cost us money, like file sharing, or heavy SMS use, so we have to limit that. But we may let people buy their way out of those limits. The second is enterprise deployment. A lot of companies are interested in microblogging but they’re concerned about putting their company data out on third-party Web services. But if they install Laconica inside their firewall, they can have more control of access to the data. The third business is the WordPress.com model, where we provide hosting for online communities using this open-source software, like if, say Boing Boing wanted to provide microblogging services for its community. And the fourth one, which is probably not as attractive to me right now is advertising. One other thing that I think could be very good, is helping companies or brands have a presence on the open microblogging network. So if Levi’s wanted a new campaign, we could help them set up micro.levis.com and they could have people subscribe to their messages.

Which of these models are you going to follow?

Prodromou: I’m actively pursuing all of them, except for the advertising one. I’ve already started approaching people for doing white label hosting. I’m already talking to people about doing pilot enterprise deployment and we’re at a point where we’re going to be doing some multimedia file sharing later this month so I should be pushing it out. I hope to push it out for trial on Identica soon. So that will be a point at which we would start talking about premium services.

So you founded Identica by yourself?

Prodromou: Yes. My background is in creating open content. I started a Web site a few years ago called Wikitravel, which is the Wikipedia of travel sites. I’ve also been involved with conversations about open network services and running free software on Web services. I wondered what I could do with this, and at the time, the most popular Web service with the digerati was Twitter. So I decided to try writing an open-source Twitter. I really did it in my spare time and invited about 150 people to check it out. But one morning Twitter was down and so the time was right to have the users start blogging about it, and TechCrunch and Mashable and ReadWriteWeb and CNET did, and we had a big explosion right at the time when Twitter was having a hard time. We’re about two months in right now and it’s looking like we’re just about feature complete compared to Twitter. We’ve got a really good group of 50 people on our developers mailing list and we’ve got an IRC channel that usually has about 50 or 100 people in it all the time.

Do you have investors?

Prodromou: I’m definitely seeking investment right now, I’ve got some very strong leads, I haven’t finalized anything yet. So my hope is that I’m going to have an announcement to make probably in less than a month.