How about “nothing” ?

While reading this interesting post about the history of the Internet, I realized that Napster was hot more than 10 years ago. It started in 1998 actually. Now we all know what happened with Napster and we also know what the music industry did to steer people away from Napster: they sued.

During that time, Apple came and started its own store. Taking people by surprise I guess as I suppose no one thought selling songs for 99 cents would ever be a successful idea. Oh boy… Who’s laughing now?

The music industry had over 10 years to come up with a solution to online music sharing and NOTHING is here now. 10 years is long in “Internet years”. Too long…! When people get fed up, they take matters into their own hands. Technology wise, we went from CRT TV’s to plasma to LCD to LED LCD’s that can show Youtube content. We went from tape to DVD to HD-DVD to Blue Ray. What the heck have they done..!?

They sacrificed long term profitability by using short term scare tactics. And where’s THEIR solution now?

I guess we can say they get what they deserve… Should we feel bad about them? I think we all know the answer.

Instead, there was (and there still is) a constant battle to sit on the very uncomfortable wooden chair in front of a tiny computer monitor. And all I could hear all day was “it’s my turn! – no mine! No, you had your turn!”.

See, I have a wife and 2 kids and they are watching Youtube instead of the TV. When my daughters want to watch something, they don’t even bother looking if we have the DVD anymore. They go to Youtube and look for it. They don’t understand the concept of licensing, copy protection or piracy and often innocently ask me why Mickey Mouse or Winnie the Pooh is not on Youtube. Each time I try to explain them but you see, it’s hopeless. They are true “digital natives” I suppose. It’s so funny because now, when my older daughter sees a movie or a TV show that she might like (from an ad on a website for example) she will instantly look for it on Youtube. She doesn’t even ask if we can buy the DVD. She passed that “level” I suppose. If I were a record or movie maker, I’d take this very seriously. These are YOUR future buyers.

Of course they can’t see a full DVD on Youtube but they get so much material that they don’t care. They watch previews of movies, DVD snipplets/samples, old (public domain) episodes and even people’s vacation movies. To them, it doesn’t matter. If it’s got Mickey Mouse or Pooh then it’s all fine, even if the video is about a kid in Russia hitting a Mickey Mouse pinata. I guess it’s becoming “brand entertainment” rather than “content entertainment” (you know how kids can watch the same thing over and over without getting bored?).

As for myself, I’ve been TV-free for the last 2 or 3 years. I slowly stopped watching regular programs (the poor quality made the process very easy) then I stopped watching informative TV (news and geek stuff like Discovery Channel). So now, I don’t watch news anymore, I read them on the Internet. I also read what I want to know, not about some robbery that took place somewhere I don’t care or that lady living with 68 dead cats. I basically don’t want to be fed garbage.

What about movies? Well I never was a big movie fan. I still have gift certificates that I was given almost a year ago. They might have expired and I couldn’t care less. Driving downtown, looking for an overpriced parking spot only to sit down where you can’t pause the movie or do what you want isn’t that appealing to me.

So what do we do now? Well for one, we have more activities outside the house. And when we’re at home, my family watches Youtube and I join them when they find something interesting. I should probably move the computer monitor in front of the comfy couch and put the old TV in front of the wooden chair in case my parents visit…! :) I don’t want to discriminate the “old” generation… :)

It’s really nice that Radio Canada shares their videos online. I really appreciate that aspect considering that many broadcasting stations are still in the dinosaur era.

But then I saw this:

The questions is: why bother reinventing the wheel? Flash video is pretty much THE standard.  Youtube recently introduced HD broadcasting and it works perfectly! If THAT is not good enough then what is good enough for Radio Canada? I don’t know… Why doesn’t Radio Canada inks a deal with Youtube to share revenues or something? Let the pros do their job and let Radio Canada do its own. Radio Canada is not and should not be a technological company. It is BTW a tax funded corporation and its mandate should be to investigate free or limited cost solutions in order to save taxpayers’ money.

Not only that but they are using SilverLight. ANOTHER technology… Why…? We’re already struggling to make Flash work on all browsers and platforms (including mobile devices & cellphones) so why cut yourself from the rest of the world?

Why be different? I’m not a Youtube fanboy but when there’s something out there that WORKS for millions of people, why make something different? And best of all, (listen Radio Canada) it’s free!

I think that with cloud computing being more and more present, we won’t be seeing computers nor TV’s anymore but just a specialized display that is IP enabled. In a way, it would look more than a TV than a computer but with optional peripherals like a keyboard and a mouse (wireless of course).

Call it the next-gen dumb terminal or what you want but I think this is what’s coming up. I look at what I do theses days and I’m amazed at the waste of computing resources. Word processing, web surfing, email and other simple tasks. I don’t need a 64 core CPU with 4G of RAM to support this environment.

A perfect example is the iPhone. What is it that you can’t do on the iPhone? Obviously very CPU intensive things like gaming and we now have specialized platforms to do that (PlayStation and so on). Most of your day to day tasks can be done on an iPhone especially if you use a Bluetooth keyboard. Now look at the iPhone closely and you’ll see that it’s got only 128M of RAM and it’s running on a 620Mhz CPU that is actually DOWNCLOCKED to 412Mhz.

Wow, 412Mhz. Think about it for a second. I don’t even remember when I had a computer that slow. I was the proud owner of a Pentium 500 Mhz back in the days but I don’t recall exactly when. Probably 10 years ago or so. The average 2.4Ghz CPU is 6x more powerful in terms of "hertz". I over-simplify here but that’s a big difference nonetheless.

Forget Windows, MacOS or Linux. What’s coming up is the Cloud OS. No more synchronizing files between your work PC, your laptop and your mom’s computer, no more crashes, no more hanged applications or messing with drivers. It will all be magic to you.

I also predict that since "computers" will be so simple in the future, they will obviously become a commodity and big brand names will start selling their own version. Your mom might be using a Louis Vuitton computer in the future. Who knows? Acer already has Ferrari laptops and LaCie Porsche external hard drive.

So should you sell your Dell stocks? Perhaps not yet but I see companies like Sony or LG having a competitive edge because they are in both markets and they understand those markets very well.

I’m sure many people remember this. In the early days, each BBS was independent. This means that if you wanted to leave a message to a certain person, you had to visit that BBS and leave a message there. Pretty innefficient as you can see (compared to email).

Then came "network messages". There were various network message providers. Some very local which deserved many sites in a single city level and some were international. FidoNet is one that I remember. It was fantastic and please remember that this was back in the early 90’s…

Fast forward in 2008. Facebook, MySpace and all those so called "social" sites use local messenging systems that are not interconnected to each other.

History does repeat itself after all…!

That’s probably a very bad argument on my side as many sites are using fancy domain names to gain some attention or to have interesting names such as d.e.l.i.c.i.o.us (which I can never get right) but we’ll see how it goes.

So, what’s better on Identi.ca? So far I like the way we can reply to a specific notice. It makes conversation slightly more organized. I wish we could have a threaded view, that’d be better for low attention span & memory people like me. If I get an update, I might not even know what it was referring to…! :)

How about you? What would make you jump ship permanently?

There will be a “5 à 7″ coming soon. So if you want to know more about the event or if you don’t have a team yet and want to team up then please stay tuned for more details!

Also, please tell your friends about this! It’s going to be great!

Blitzweekend is scheduled this spring (March 1st and 2nd) in Montreal, Canada. We expect it to be a very exciting and innovative event. Developers, designers and entrepreneurs are invited, in the spirit of StartupWeekend and rails rumble, to team up and build a product in just 48 hours.

Why should you be there?

1. For innovation

We will have geeks, gurus and entrepreneurs eager to work on latest technologies and try to come up with new software, algorithm, and designs of their own. Cool? You bet!

2. For the challenge

Do you have what it takes to design, build and deploy in 48 hours? Can you quickly solve technical problems? What about team dynamics? This is most certainly not an easy feat, and you will need to deliver your best and bring your best tricks. Excited yet?

3. For the experts

Each team will have “joker cards”, allowing them to call an expert in technology, design, marketing, business plan, finance, interface design etc. Do you feel that the challenges are overwhelming? Just raise the joker card, and you’ll get expert advice, allowing you to go forward in no time.

4. It’s an unconference

We won’t select attendees. We won’t ask for your resumes, your past experience or diplomas. Instead, we view each attendee as a co-organizer, bringing his or her own experience and skills and making blitzweekend the best event ever. Did we mention it’s free?

5. To learn

Blitzweekend will be an ideal opportunity to try out technologies and frameworks you never had time to try out previously. We will also be planning keynotes during the event, given by select experts and professionals.

6. To connect

Needless to say you will work, meet, and mingle with the most talented people in design, programming and in business. This, in itself, is worth the trip. If you are looking for co-founders, for a project or if you are hiring gurus for your startup, this is most certainly the event to be at!

7. Launch pad for you startup

The most promising teams who want to take their project to the next level and start a company will have access to resources such as venture capitalists, angel investors and business consultants. Got a good idea? Prove it!

8. Because it’s the future

Do you think people can’t build something in 48 hours? We don’t think so. Think rapid development frameworks like Ruby on Rails, Django, Merb and so on. Leaders like Facebook, Netvibes, Apple or Google released APIs that allow third-party developers to quickly develop an application on their platform. We think that it’s just the beginning, and we will see in the near future extremely rapid and agile tools allowing developers to launch applications in just a few days, if not hours. Come explore this world with us!

9. For the freedom

We will provide facilities, rooms, wireless access and food during the event. There are no rules on the projects themselves, apart that they should be in technology and they should be innovative. You can choose to either experiment or make stuff. If you want, you can write a business plan and create your own startup! It’s your choice!

10. For the fun

Yes, fun is they keyword here. If you go through the official website, you will see that it’s designed to be a game where teams compete to make something in a pre-determined amount of time. Attendees will get to vote on the most promising project at the end. We will even have a fun prize for the winning team.

So if you are in Montreal or planning to visit the city on March 1st and 2nd, then blitzweekend is a must attend event. For those of you who are interested, you can register on www.blitzweekend.com (it’s a wiki, so you can simply add your name)

It’s quite time consuming to create a new system as captchas are somehow easily defeated and not user friendly especially to vision impaired/challenged visitors (i.e. blind or color blind). So because of this, I’d like to stay away from images and color questions although I have many great ideas involving images and funky color tests. Text is probably better for everyone and was wondering what kind of “text-based challenge” would work best?

So I thought about it for about 5 minutes and came up with a few example:

A) Math – What is X + Y? Very easy to implement but easy to break as well. Unless you combine with option 2 below. Also, if you go too far (what is the square root of 2?) then you’ll lose some visitors. I’ve seen this one personally and I’d be curious to know if it really works or not.

B) Logical multiple choice – Like “Passe partout” (if you’re from Quebec you know them). You have to click on the only sentence which makes sense. For example:

1. There’s a cabbage in my ear
2. There’s a cabbage in a microwave
3. There’s a cabbage in the toilet

Only #2 really makes sense. Option #3 DOES makes sense but #2 overweights #3. I think this is quite hard for a bot to defeat. However, building enough sentences takes some time. Building a good algorithm help but you will need to come up with groups of words, verbs and so on. if you don’t have a big enough database of sentences, it will be defeated. Then again, there are many ways to write cabbage, I could get inspiration from my spam folder! I haven’t seen this technique on any site so far.

C) Complete the missing word – Like above but you have to find the missing word. This solution was also mentioned on the ISC web site. For example:

The ____ is stuck in a tree.

1. kite
2. dog
3. carrot
4. ham

The obvious answer is #1 although all possible choices are somehow possible. Same problem with the above solution: you need a lot of sentences to keep up with spammers. I also haven’t seen this technique on any site so far.

That’s about all I could think for tonight as my brain is already asleep. So if you have any solutions, please let me know as I’d like to hear from you. Let this be the challenge of the week!

Croisons-nous les doigts!