Totally Wack

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Shanghai Sunset

An organization's reason for being →

After a long silence, it’s time to revive this blog. I want to start off by sharing a question that I’ve been pondering at work for the past couple of months: why do we exist as a company?

“Cloud” is one of the most overhyped words right now, quickly becoming a synonym for “internet server”. It’s driving me nuts. I know this is technically arguing about semantics, but it does matter. Using this word just because it’s popular devaluates its meaning.

I’ll try to show what a cloud service means to me through examples. In order to be considered a cloud service, I have to be able to use the service from any device or platform without having to manually synchronize, transfer or copy anything. In other words, it provides all my data and a great user experience no matter where, when or how I’m using the service.

You can find a list of services and software that I use daily behind the link.

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The Finnish countryside during a summer evening.

Lots of Finns are sharing this video of Steve Jobs announcing the Apple/Microsoft deal in 1997, probably wanting to compare Nokia to Apple. What struck me about the presentation was how well the message – the piece of decidedly bad news for the audience – was built to cause the least amount of damage in a fragile situation. I recommend that you watch it in case you haven’t seen it yet.

Jobs starts off with some talk about partners and relationships, then quickly moves on to the bad news. In order to lift spirits, humor is used along with some good rationale for Apple’s move.

He then moves from the generic to the specific, getting into the details of the deal. Not everything is disclosed, just the points that affect the audience members and the general public the most. Starting off with some positive points, the second one is especially popular among the audience: a concrete example of a product that can be developed cooperatively. Right after that, the worst news of all is delivered: the new partner using its power in the relationship, i.e. getting its browser as the default choice in the operating system. The expected booing ensues, but damage is minimized as quickly as possible by making the bad news less horrible: users still have choice.

Once the worst news is out of the way, the rest of the points are positive. This helps leave a positive impression on the audience since they are more likely to remember the last things that they heard. The ensuing speech by Bill Gates is surprisingly well received, given the circumstances. Then it’s Jobs’ turn to conclude. He does this masterfully.

Jobs returns from the specifics to a more general topic. He praises about how this whole deal is for the greater good, how it’s better for the whole desktop computer ecosystem. It’s a message that most people in the audience can stand behind. He talks about how Apple and its users have acted foolishly in the past and how they should change their ways. How it’s not only Jobs and Apple that need to do something, but users as well.

Finally, Jobs reminds the audience about their core values as Apple users, their sense of I: they’re different, unique. Even though they need to cooperate with “the rest”, they don’t need to change who they are.

In addition to fine tuning the order of messages, tempo and amount of humor, the whole presentation was built using the common communication pattern:

1. Draw the audience in with a general topic
2. Drill into specifics
3. Return to the surface with a general, positive message as a conclusion

It gives depth to a difficult message by gradually moving to a technical level, but still leaves listeners with a generic message that is easy to remember and spread.

Was the presentation a success? I’d say so. Delivering such an unpopular message and ending up with a standing ovation that left most people in the audience feeling hopeful instead of cynical is a pretty amazing feat.

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Cooling down in the summer heat

What's been keeping me busy. →

It’s been a bit quiet here, mostly due to the fact that all my writing energy has been focused on getting the above out the door.

But now that it’s done, it’s time to start working on that draft queue…

Putting Online Privacy in Perspective →

A great piece from Tim O’Reilly about what I wrote about before. The current media frenzy about online privacy isn’t only mostly superfluous - it’s a red herring, diverting attention away from subjects that really matter.

Privacy - An easy excuse

Spotify, the awesomely fantastic music streaming service, released new features yesterday that lifted the service to a whole new level. The main change — integrating Facebook into the service — really helps the music become a social object. The ease with which one can form a social experience around a song or album cannot be praised enough.

As soon as I learned about these new features, I shared the news on Facebook. A couple of people liked the news, but the first comment that I received regarding it floored me. A friend commented: “There goes our privacy once again”.

Privacy has become the new “think of the children”. For many, it’s an easy excuse, when what they’re really objecting to is change. There are, of course, times when privacy is a valid concern, but what I’m referring to is the huge outcry that occurs whenever user data — most of it voluntarily submitted — is used in a meaningful way, one that enhances the user experience significantly. The expectation is that user data simply sits in a silo somewhere, hidden by obscurity. But now that the data is easily accessible and something actually useful can be done with it, users are finally realizing how much of their lives they have been publishing online all along.

I’m sure many people will react to this realization by removing some of their data or tightening their privacy settings. And that’s fine — the decision as to what is public and what isn’t should always stay in the hands of the user.

Don’t want to share music with your Facebook friends? Then don’t opt-in and link your Spotify account to Facebook. It’s as easy as that. But don’t go around shouting how your privacy has been violated once again.

Truly mobile

For most people, mobility means having some portable device in your pocket that gives you the power to accomplish things wherever you are. I want it to mean more than that: I want it to mean the ability to continue doing whatever it is that I’m doing - reading, writing, listening, talking - without interruption when moving from one location to the next AND one device to another. If I start a task on a desktop computer, why shouldn’t I be able to continue exactly where I left off once it’s time to move over to the sofa or leave the house?

Thankfully, saving and restoring state is a feature that is supported by many of today’s applications. Thanks to Instapaper, I can continue reading that interesting article on my phone once I leave the house. Tweetie 2 opens to whatever tweets I was reading last. What I’m really hoping for, however, is that this stored state, this snapshot of what I am doing, would be stored off of the device, in a place where it would be available anywhere (I’m trying so hard not to mention the overhyped word “cloud”). It’s like Apple’s new state saving and restore feature from iPhone OS 4, but device and location agnostic.

Why doesn’t Mobile Spotify continue at that exact beat where it left off when I walked away from my desktop? Why can’t Desktop Tweetie be launched at the same scroll position as where it was closed on the mobile version? Microsoft showed a rather impressive demo of the same game being played on a computer, game console and phone, with the state being preserved when moving from one device to the next.

All of these examples, however, depend on your devices using the same software - or at least, software from the same company. The real novelty would be to take it one step further and make state syncing tied to the type of task at hand. Make TweetDeck sync with Tweetie, Kindle sync with iBooks, Chrome sync with Safari. Make the software that works best on one device sync with the software that works even better on another device for that specific task.

I don’t know, it’s probably too idealistic. Maybe the solution is an open-ended architecture or protocol. Online Growl for state syncing or something.

In any case, you can add one more term to that wish list: true mobility, in my opinion, is device, location and software agnostic.