Tech IT Easy » intellectual property

Summary of visit to Silicon Valley

Kari Silvennoinen — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 06:10:01 +0000

Last February, I was in Silicon Valley for a week thanks to a course I was taking. Here’s a summary of what happened there.

UC Berkeley: Center for new Music and Audio Technologies.

Prof. David Wessel showed us a new instrument that was basically 32 touchpads. Each was connected to a sample loop and the x- and y-axis and pressure modified that loop. It was an interesting idea, because it didn’t look like just pushing buttons to make sound.

Fail whale at LHS

UCB: Raymond Yee, “Mixing and Re-mixing Information”

A lecture from a course on web mashups. Yee has written the book, Pro Web 2.0 Mashups. The students need to plan and work on a mashup project. There were lots of interesting ideas, but I was worried that most of them were remixing for remixing’s sake and didn’t add value along the way.

Lawrence Hall of Science

Our contact at UC Berkeley had warned this place was mostly for children, and sure enough, this is a place to avoid unless you’re 7 years or less. Almost as complete waste of time as our Google visit.

We had also pizza available for but no-one from UC Berkeley came (we were too scary). Except one guy, whose name I forget. But he took some of us for drinks downtown, so that was great.

Digital Chocolate / Trip Hawkins

Hawkins really loved "Bowling alone"

Trip Hawkins talked a lot about how leverage is the key to successful business and what are the differences between the supply chain in when he was at EA and in operator-controlled world of mobile gaming. He told how he built EA so that it was NFL who wanted them to use their brand, not the other way around. This is why he sees that his competitors who just put out license games based on movies will ultimately be driven off the market, because they do not control the IP.

He thinks that the iPhone is the coolest thing in all time and how the rest don’t get it: “If you’ve played around with Storm or Android you know, wow, these suck”. In his view, the others had focused in Features (“What it is”) and not on Advantages (“What it does”) and not at all at Benefits (“Who cares?”).

Digital Chocolate’s game development doesn’t depend on the device, because they change all the time and they can publish all their games in every device. This is the only way to make the business work in the mobile space. Hawkins doesn’t see that there will be any standardization, because that would move the leverage away from mobile operators to handset manufacturers.

He also believes that the social starving that began around 1950′s because of TV is the reason people are so keen on the social gaming and internet services and is the driver for “omnimedia”. His suggested reading are The Innvator’s Solution and Bowling Alone. Even in the old days, he didn’t see gaming as waste of time. When playing, he said that “I was thinking, learning and motivated”.

He recommended that we try Tower Bloxx, their Facebook game. I was a bit disappointed, the game itself isn’t that bad if you want to kill time, but it is really spammy. Not only is more screen real estate spent on questionable ads than on the game, not only does it notify your timeline every time you play the game, not only the “social aspect” is just a high score table of your friends, but it also spams your friends every time you play to add the game. Not exactly what I’d expect from the guy who’s partly responsible for the great games EA pushed out in the early days. I asked why is it that as a former hardcore gamer, the only interesting game I played last year was World of Goo. In his opinion this down to how big corporations work and can’t innovate. If Tower Bloxx is Digital Chocolate’s answer to this, I don’t think it’s just big corporations.

Sun Microsystems / Mårten Mickos

FAQ: "If heating is a problem, why is it black?"

We were given the tour at Sun’s Executive Briefing Center. They showed the SunRays and other stuff and it was pretty nice to see up close the Black Box.

Afterwards, Mickos gave us a presentation about open source development and MySQL. He said that MySQL is like “New Orleans” of web apps in that if you want to control an important river, you need to control the important cities and this was the reason Sun acquired them. He also anticipated the question about superiority of Postgres, which is probably asked from him all the time. “When I joined MySQL, Postgres was better. Some say it still is. But who cares?”

He also started a discussion about “Why are web companies so closed?” – a poke directed among others Google, who benefit a lot from GPL software, but due to a loophole in the agreement can get away without publishing their improvements because the software isn’t redistributed. This is what he calls the hypocrisy of open source: “People just want to get stuff for free”.

Like Hawkins, he said that the most important thing for startup business is category-leadership. One advice he gave for Finnish start-ups was “not to be Finnish”: MySQL didn’t have sales offices in Nordics, only in the US. Other thing was that if something sounds good in Finland, it takes 10-15 years for until it’s widely accepted as a good thing, so don’t go to market too early. “There’s still time to make a Google-killer”, he said.

This was one of the best sessions we had, not only because Mickos isn’t there anymore and looks like Sun won’t be either but also because we got vodka and swag. You could see there was an economic crisis, because elsewhere we didn’t get anything.

Nexit Ventures / Michel Wendell

Wendell, from Nexit Ventures, a VC firm interested in Nordic IT startups, told how the VC market works and what kind of mistakes Finnish companies usually make. He told how he ended up in the business of helping Nordic companies make it in the US. Being a VC has lot to do with knowing people.

Lots of interesting discussion, but it was late in the evening and it’s pretty hard to upstage either Hawkins or Mickos.

IDEO

We got a standard theme park tour at IDEO. If you have seen the documentaries on TV or at YouTube, there’s not much to see. I was surprised that they actually avoid any systematic or analytical approach to design and focus more on a holistic, iterative and therefore probably pretty expensive (to the client) approach. As a case study they presented Nokia N-Gage platform they did concept work for. A surprising choice, because not only being old was also a spectacular flop. I guess they thought that being from Finland and the course given by ex-CTO of Nokia, we’d be interested in Nokia or something. If we were, we probably didn’t need to come all the way to Palo Alto for that.

Stanford University / VHIL

At Stanford, we got a nice presentation from Jeremy Bailenson from Virtual Human Interaction Lab. He was talking about the Proteus Effect, or how avatars change humans and their behaviour. For example, even though Blizzard has nothing in World of Warcraft code that gives advantage to taller avatars, they nevertheless level up faster than shorter ones. Also, taller avatars get better results in the Ultimatum Game, the real world height of the human is irrelevant. As I’m interested in behavioral decision making, it was nice to see that it might be possible to do empirical studies in virtual worlds, where we can control many variables that social sciences haven’t been in the real world.

Nokia Research Center at Palo Alto

First NDA of the tour. They showed us some research projects they were working on and had the worst slides of the tour. Most of us came out there frightened how out of touch Nokia can be.

Stanford University / Entrepreneurship Week / “Next Big Thing” Panel

Tim Draper, Tony Perkins and Michael Moe talked mostly about Twitter and iPhone and how making revenue is irrelevant. Draper really loves the free trade. Apparently ad-supported business model is the next big thing.

These guys were either drunk or lived in a bubble of their own. Probably both.

IBM Almaden Research Center / Ray Strong

There's pr0n in it, I'm sure.

Strong talked about how IBM tries to predict the future. First of all, the Almaden Research Center looks like a super-villain’s secret lair from Bond movies (it didn’t help that the guy we met had a Bond-esque name). Forget Google, this is the place to visit. There was the world’s first hard drive in the lobby, which was a nice monument to how long IBM has been in the game.

The main thing Strong told was that it isn’t possible to predict technology in to deep future, only in to the business horizon of up to 5 years. This is what they told to an unnamed government agency that wanted them to do so. As government usually gets what it wants, IBM decided to find a way to do it. They brought in people from academy, futurologists and social scientists. Their approach is half scenarios and half technology landscapes, but their ideation emphasizes backcasting from deep future (>50 years) using trends that can be with high probability assumed to continue.

One problem with scenarios has been that it’s really hard to transform them into strategic actions a company should take. IBM tries to close this gap between scenario planning and strategy by using what they call signposts. These signposts are future events that are both recognizable (when they happen) and actionable.

Strong also talked about how predicting future, it’s important to stay in the qualitative side of things, not only because quantitative side of things usually doesn’t work and might be harmful because of the tendency to use numbers to calculate expected values or other figures, even though they are full of uncertainty and can be harmful.

This was by far the best visit during the tour.

Google

NDA. It was a standard theme park tour. It was pretty clear that Google is exactly as “open” as SEC demands it to be, not an inch more. I guess many for many of us the myth of Google was totally burst.

To be fair, this was the only place where our contact wasn’t executive level so we might have gotten a better experience with a more suitable contact. Even though our host was great and all that, he probably wasn’t the right one for our group.

HP Labs

Runner-up in best architecture for a research lab.

NDA, but they mostly showed published academic research about nanophotovoltaics or something to that end. Our guess is that they didn’t want to tell us anything but out of courtesy showed something. When they talked about things I could understand, they talked about MagCloud and how HP is transforming from a printer and computer company into printing and computing company.

Next day, couple of us went to see the garage (more like a shack) Hewlett and Packard started from and what is considered as the “Birthplace of Silicon Valley”. Not much to see, but at least it had some historical value.

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What would an Always-On Device look like? Do we even want it?

Vincent van Wylick — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 03:18:47 +0000

It’s funny how our thoughts evolve from one day to the next. Which reminds me that we need to adapt our About page to reflect that a little more, as it’s about 2 years old. My thinking about Always-On Devices comes from a simple pain that I feel when I miss “a moment.” Sometimes I wish that I could… well Andy Warhol in Miraclemen phrases it much better than me.

In Alan Moore’s & Neil Gaiman’s graphic novel, Warhol’s existence is not painted in a very colourful light (pun intended). He has been resurrected as a machine into a society where money no longer plays a role and is very depressed. So his ability to record everything is really not very meaningful to him. Having only read this part of the comic last night, already my sentiments about Always-On are changing towards… and what would it accomplish?

I recently visited an Art Exhibition of independent artists in Maastricht and tested out a little what an Always-On Device would look like to me. I used my camera, a Canon 870 IS, as a recording device, which I held in front of me while walking through the crowd.

I managed to capture the people experiencing an exhibition, a piano player who was adding atmosphere to a room full of art, just hypnotically playing a few notes over and over. What actually intrigued me the most, I captured maybe two dozen miniature sets for the Maastricht Opera house. It was very surreal, the sets which were made out of cardboard and wood mostly, were 3-dimensional, and I was floating with my camera device around it and through it even, capturing it all at angles never deemed possible to me before. As if I was my own film-director.

Of course, apart from the disappointing battery-life on my camera, clearly not designed for video-recording, and the occasionally funny looks that I got, the real challenge is to make that data actionable—a big priority in everything I do. It is a matter of transforming the raw footage into a tight package that can be consumed by others, and the question is really, should this be the responsibility of the creator or of the consumer…?

With us having reached and surpassed the age of the mashup, it makes less and less sense to continue to try and re-invent the wheel, rather delegating that task across far more… interested people (in the area of video-editing at least), of which there is no shortage, as long as the tools and the specific community exists. Clearly, that kind of methodology requires a lax attitude about copyright.

To recap, so that it doesn’t seem like I’m entirely floating in thoughts, an Always-On Device would need:

A willing human recorder
A recording device designed for capturing experiences
A way to process that information into “usable bits”
A favourable legal environment
And a willing consumer

I’ll leave the question of “do we even want it?” for smarter people than me to decide. In the mean time, I will continue my search for point 2 and 3 on that list (more on this blog, if successful).

Until after Paris,
Vincent

Next up on Tech IT Easy!

Vincent van Wylick — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 13:15:29 +0000

The coming weeks, I’ll be pretty busy with a business development project in the technology sector. As usual, I cannot discuss it in depth (ok, it’s Fight Club, we bash each other half to death every week and can’t talk about it), but I want to discuss some stumbling blocks that we’re sure to be hitting. To give you an idea, some of the questions are now:

Patents and their limitations: while we have filed for a number already, the issues are whether there is prior art and how to deal with it, as well as whether patents are really enough protection against competitors. Since, I’ve attended a pretty interesting New Venture seminar last week on IP, I think that will be my next post.
The usefulness of market research: I breached this topic before already, but I don’t believe in researching innovations that consumers cannot touch yet, and will instead focus on expert-input, I think, as well as getting a testable prototype ready as soon as possible (we’ll be looking for subjects!). I hope to have something more to write about it soon.
Pricing strategy: this is really exciting! I’m reading the excellent book “The strategy and tactics of pricing” and am in the position to apply some of it’s lessons now. Thoughts about it to follow on Tech IT Easy soon, but to give you an idea, it’s about the battle between costs, what the competition charges, and what your customers want to pay for your product.
Dealing with bureaucracy: Since, we’re going to be applying to an incubator, it might be interesting to see how that process goes.

In other, equally important news:

Verteego: You may have noticed a new badge on our site. It’s the Verteego sustainability badge, which links to a report analysing our weblog. I’ll be trying to increase our grade a little there/here and will write about my impressions. I didn’t even know that I can take leave for pregnancy-reasons, wow!
Public transport in the Netherlands: I don’t know how it is in your country, but we’re doing exciting RFID-related stuff here. Starting February, we’ll be going through the transition of going from a stamp to a beep, and I’ll write a little about my impressions here.

That’s all I can predict for now, and I hope to make it all a reality soon! Until the next time, on Tech IT Easy!

Vincent

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An IP risk-free summer and tips for safe-knitting

Georgia Psyllidou — Thu, 29 May 2008 01:12:35 +0000

Hello la’ys & gtnlmen,

summer is here (!) and so are various risks associated with UV, swimming, pool-walking, heat, diet, etc.

Did you ever think how knitting could be dangerous for you? Ok, it may be quite weird to consider knitting during summer, unless you are a doily enthusiast or just want to make a personal gift to Jeremy’s artist elephant (an elephant-sweatshirt takes some time)

Think twice before picking up your needles, think about Mazz…

Mazzmatazz, a Dr Who fan with a talent for knitting, published photos and pattern directions of Ood and Adipose, on which BBC Wordwide had copyrights,since they are Dr Who characters. This got her an email in her inbox alerting her on the legal consequences of this act.

Mazzmatazz removed these elements from her website and searched for support from the Open Rights Group on this intriguing situation. It’s not everyday that you risk legal prosecution for buying into a brand symbol.

Is this an exaggerated situation indeed ?

I would say it is, since it interprates the motivation : the “Mazz did nothing more than contrefacon” attitude reduces the creative transformation process to a simple copying reflex.

Then, it sets a miserable legal granularity that drives semiotic diversity to extinction. If nobody can speak, sing, sketch, imitate moves of Adipose without buying copyrights beforehand, then Adipose will not fertilize any other ideas, and will be a symbol quickly forgotten. Save fat !

but wait,

Do we actually have somebody playing tennis in the swimming pool? eh, I mean mixing up the rules of two different business models: If BBC Worldwide is getting royalties from the brand and paraphernalia, it seems to me that Mazzmatazz did not monetize this artwork by selling it directly. If she goes for indirect revenue generation (let’s say from traffic on her site, or publicity, or from boosting her productivity by having a fulfilling hobby, or whatever), let her play on her field. Or else, BBC is bullying “we are competitors, either you like it or not”.

On the other hand, BBC Worldwide, may have needed some field exercises on applied IP law on digital content (mesure the image impact, the propagation speed, the volatility of its arguments). Fair,because when a real crisis is in, I suppose it will be too late to test the legal function.

Or maybe they are doing some buzz about the new cycle of Dr Who series. Knitting is a rather cult activity, exactly like the audience of Dr Who.

Anyway, just in case you got as impressed as I were by this story, remember not to facebook any monument-like castles your cousins built on sand this summer. And let’s hope that this IP hot stream will begin to settle down until Halloween / carnival because I want to pose with my Pink Panther costume. Tara rara, rara…

Georgia

( for a more in-depth legal analysis on the issue, see Andres Guadamuz content, enjoy)

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Creative Business In the Digital Era

Georgia Psyllidou — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 22:52:50 +0000

Unlike other Mondays’ reputation, March 17th was a bright one in London.

…Post-reporting from the “Creative Business in the Digital Era” seminar, in 01zero-one centre in Soho.

The idea in the CBDE was to bring together people from different walks of the creative industry (music, cinema, publishing, photography…) whose common point is the zeros and the ones: digital works and concepts.

…so as to exchange on intellectual property, open rights, business models, digital marketing, creativity, its stimulation, its canalisation…

If it wasn’t for Suw Charman-Anderson and Michael Holloway from the Open Rights Group (a growing NGO community focusing on Digital Rights Issues) I would have probably stayed home and the other guys may have crossed each other on the pub. So thank you guys for setting up and animating the whole day!

The project has a wiki, at our disposal beforehand – a great thing, given the variety of the people attending.

On Monday we warmed up with a notion-shower by Suw, then got in the shoes of Radiohead and their In RainBows experiment and finally had some real entrepreneurs of the digital era sharing their vision:

A great Tom speaker and Reynolds author of “Blood, Sweat and Tea” distributed under a Creative Commons Licence.

John Buckman, multi-entrepreneur, mostly known as Magnatune CEO and as Bookmooch owner.

And finally, David Bausola and Rob Myers, the principal conceptual stormers behind the project “Where are the Joneses?”.

What are the Joneses? Based on a series-like format, it is mostly a transmedia chameleon; the product is shaped by its environment and its audience, the significance changes depending the angle you choose to look at it.

Nobody knew in advance where the joneses were, the public decided the how-what-where, sending them around Europe to find their siblings, participating themselves in the scenario, in the acting etc.

Mr and Ms Jones, if you came to France you might have recognised Laurent Godard as your sibling : he’s the father of Flateurville, a “discussional” building of a village to finally come up with a film. How? Through regular interactions with the audience, in a “salle de jeux” every Thursday evening. More to discover “sur place” if you happen to be in Paris.

The whole experience made me more aware of the fact that prediction is a quite autistic procedure in digital business, you’d better keep it away if you want things going on smoothly. Well I suppose that it had always been like this, long before I woke up, but in digital business where cycles are faster and faster, prediction seems really outdated.

So, just for the pleasure of philosophizing a bit, prediction may have been only a temporary solution for the industrial first era of business, serving to bridge the gap of the missing dialogue with the “consumer”.

John Buckman made this quite clear to me when discussing on his Magnatune and Bookmooch activities where he applies a trial-error-adaptation schema.

“listen” and “reply” in a way that makes sense, seem to form the principia of digital business for those who do it. The commercial transaction being replaced by a commercial natural language dialogue? trial and error this question as well…

Shall this be confirmed, does it mean we’re finally moving on from Industry to Internet? spring feels good…

(to be internetically correct, if someone who reads this is on the south hemisphere, enterring fall, please replace the season by the metallic mecanism as far as spring is concerned, it also feels good)

To get back to last Monday,

My personal favourite gadget presented that day is CCMixter, a pool-tool of music creativity on a “molecular” level : you can post and find samples, remixes, a capellas and build on them since they are licensed under creative commons. Quite solid concept, as it connects the two extremities of the 2.0 value chain: the artist with the user. Plus it teased some of my memory parts referring to other music tools, like C-sound. I wonder what applies in the case of music-code copyrights…

Cheese.

Accuse me of writting cheese, “come on Georgia, stop name dropping and all”

Nope nope, cheesy or not, the sensation of this seminar was like a cute baby incarnating the taste for openness, the playfulness of creativity and the cosiness of legally-correct digital business.

loved it.

Cheers.

Georgia

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