Dog Days
Dan Farber wrote the most frustrating post today. I'm not pointing at it, nosiree. The nerve of him to wrap all of our disruptive energy up into a nice neat ball and tie a bow around it: what do you think? Reminds me of the Times article about the John Lennon play where Lennon is described as "the sharp-tongued rock star who, during the Beatles years and for a while beyond them, defined counterculture hipness." For a while beyond? Talk about your Perfect Storm.
Dan reminds me that these are the dog days of August, where everyone is either on vacation or should be. I called Dan to complain about having to edit Friday's Gillmor Gang with Seth Goldstein. My problem: not that I don't feel like it (well, I sort of feel like it) but that it's my sense that the audience still hasn't caught back up. The previous show with George Gilder rocked in my oh-so-not-humble opinion, but I bet most of you haven't carved out the time, what with all the important stuff that's out there right now.
Me, I took a nice chunk of time reading over the Microsoft Financial Day transcripts, particularly the Gates/Ozzie fireside chat. O my g o d, Ray where have they put you? Reminds me of a tech version of the Stepford Wives, or my single most favorite scene from the movies of the past decade, in iRobot, where Will Smith is searching for a lunatic robot in a warehouse filled with endless rows of identical robots. As Will peers out from behind a line of robots, his quarry sneaks a peek out behind the 30th robot back. There you are Ray. Gotcha.
What could they possibly have on him? Did they buy the entire state of Massachusetts and sic the zoning board on him?
RAY OZZIE: One of the other interesting things that I've found and I've had the pleasure of working on in the short time that I've been here is that Microsoft is very uniquely positioned because many of the tools that you use in your life, or could use, can be woven together, because we can accomplish scenarios across these different devices that we might not be able to do if they were not all done by one vendor.
So, for example, many of the things that I do on a daily basis weave together my use of Exchange; my use of Outlook as the user interface for those messages coming in from Exchange; my use of MSN, because my wife and family use MSN, and I actually would like to aggregate some of those things into my Outlook user interface and share some things with her; and my use of my Smartphone, where, you know, today, when I'm here, I didn't bring my laptop, but I'm able to actually look at my messages and my calendar and things like that.
It's all unified through a server and services infrastructure. And because we have the ability to map out the scenarios end to end amongst all those different places in my life—you know, work life and home life—we're able to accomplish things for users that we might not otherwise be able to do.
ED LAZOWSKA: So these are things only Microsoft can do in some sense.
RAY OZZIE: I believe so. I believe so.
You're good, Bill, you're very good. It's Ray Freakin' Ozzie, the sharp-eyed tech star who, during the Notes years and for a while beyond them, defined collaborative hipness. First it was Adam Bosworth, the man who rolled Bill Gates into XML, now protecting the Google crown jewels from the inexorable logic of the AttentionTrust. Then Ray Ozzie, the first CEO to blog and the last to integrate RSS into his platform. What's next? Eric Raymond taking out the GPL? Oops.
Yes, it's the Dog Days, where the print books glide toward the soft landing of the new fiscal year while laying off the last remnants of the Golden Age of tech journalism. Replacing the old print bands are the new groups: the Maliks, the PaidContents, the AlwaysOns, the Battelles, and the session players: Beattie, Zawodny, Mernit, Clavier, Obasanjo, Canter, the Monkchips, and the new bench: MacManus' Youngbloods. Greasing the skids are the SuperSessions: Robert Scoble and the Flying Berlind Brothers, Wave Diner and the OPMLs, Jonny Schwartz and the CIOs, and Sergey, Mills, Jobs, and Yang.
BAMBI FRANCISCO: So these are things only Skype can do in some sense.
TIM DRAPER: I know so. I know so.
Soon it will be September and a new budget year. Once more the Valley will turn back to flipping startups and serving fish and chips. But this time the deals will be with the new content kids on the block, and Firefox will rule the land. And I shall be editing the new Gillmor Gang video edition, brought to you in part by SkypeSight and InMediaWeTrust.