So it's Google and Adobe at the moment.

Makes sense.

Good interview with head of Google.

Interesting :

Example: Google is obliged to share with Apple search revenue generated by iPhone users. On Android, Google gets to keep 100%. That difference alone, says Mr. Schmidt, is more than enough to foot the bill for Android's continued development.

Yuck! :-(

"I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions," he elaborates. "They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next."

Boooo!

Isn't the future of the Internet wireless these days? Isn't wireless the very basis of the new partnership between Google and Verizon, built on promoting Google's Android software? But Google has now broken ranks with its allies and dared to speak about the sheer impracticality of net neutrality on mobile networks where demand is likely to outstrip capacity for the foreseeable future.

Google's Lotus Notes opportunity.

Using cloud computing to launch cheap DDoS attacks. It's surprisingly affordable.

David Weinberger :

So, because Google is growing a TV business, it now gets to decide that TV needs to shoulder aside all other traffic on the Net.

:-(

Essential reading from Dave Winer on the cycle.

After IBM gave up being the platform vendor, that's basically what they did -- they became a consultancy and investment banker. Microsoft will eventually move there as their investors get fed up with quarter after quarter of flat growth. Google will get there as well, but first they have to get this tidal wave of fear out of their system ...

(I've commented over there.)

Sweet! LinkedIn just offered me a widget to embed my Behance portfolio.

I like this for two reasons :

1) I'm about to start taking my Behance / artistic portfolio more seriously. (More on that soon, over on Composing.) So it's handy for me personally.

2) LinkedIn and Behance are a good complement. LinkedIn still fascinates as an example of a successful YASN which isn't competing directly with Facebook. And Behance is another example of a purposive social utility which seeks to tie its portfolio hosting to more specific products and services for creative people.

I wonder if this signifies any deeper connection between the two companies, or whether it's just that the OpenSocial Behance widget became available for OpenSocial containers such as LinkedIn.

Dare Obasanjo on many social graphs. (Or what I used to call "typed links", but will probably start calling "tagged links")

I commented :

Surely it depends if Facebook succeed in getting people to tag (or classify) their social links.

There are ways to do this on FB, but it doesn't promote it much. But someone could write an app. which could somehow classify the relationship between two people based on things you tell it, even what your interests are etc. Then it could export that knowledge to widgets on the Engadget site.

Why not even make this a query option on the widget : "show me things that work-colleagues like", or "show me things that geek buddies like" or even "show me places that friends with higher than 85% similarity to me on the RockYou survey of "best things to do on my day off" like"

Another package manager for Windows.

How hard would it be for a third-party to build an app-store on Windows that effectively wrapped it? That placed itself and its brand between the customer and Microsoft?

Disney buying into social gaming.

Pandas and Lobsters : Why Google Cannot Build Social Applications...

Compare what I wrote here.

Facebook + Amazon : Social Shopping

Interesting, ZDNet has an article about Debian / Ubuntu package management.

There are some interesting comments about why this wouldn't work in the Windows ecosystem. They're good arguments, but I think Apple just proved that a closely vetted app-store *does* work.

So, sure, an official M$ app-store wouldn't be the only place you could get Windows apps. Maybe Microsoft would only certify a handful of them given that there's an implied approval. Maybe M$ would have to be able to see the source-code and compile it themselves as part of their approval process. Nevertheless I think the app-store model would be incredibly valuable to Microsoft.

Question : Why the hell don't Microsoft have an app-store?

I don't mean why they haven't built an entirely new distribution network for some projected new Windows mobile phone operating system. I mean, why didn't Windows 7 Desktop launch with a complete "give us your credit card number and we automatically install, manage, upgrade everything for you automatically" sort of thing?

I had managed applications from a central repository of packages on my Debian system in 2001. I have it seamlessly on Ubuntu (and have had for a good while). When Apple came along and showed the world that owning an app-store was a great business to be in, all the other mobile providers rushed in and started building their own.

What M$ could have done, is set a few engineers building something similar, for integration with Windows 7. I don't mean a website, I mean something more like win-get (or Debian's apt-get).

I'm installing software on my wife's new Windows 7 laptop today, and I'm amazed, now I come to think about it, that there's no "buy apps" option under the Windows Start button, right next to the list of already installed applications. Why is there no search-box built into Windows to let me find Microsoft-approved 3rd party applications to buy?

Think what a feature this could have been for Windows 7. How it would have driven corporates to upgrade (too expensive to pay our own IT people to install software, better to pay for the new Windows and let Microsoft sort it out.) How it would have energized the MicroISVs and lone developers to continue to invest their energy in Windows (rather than start dabbling on Android and iOS). How it would have given M$ a cut of all the software sold in the Windows eco-system.

The more I think about it, the more this seems like it would have been a good idea, and the more the absence of an app-store in Windows 7 seems like an extraordinary oversight. Was one planned but not finished in time? Was Microsoft too scared of potential legal implications to do with competition? Did they just slip up?

Some great insider anecdotes on Google's 20% time.

Gamasutra on Google's investment in Zynga, possible games platform.

WTF? Why are Google doing this? Smells very wrong (ie. defensive / me-too-ism) to me. And not at all core. (How is this organizing all the world's information?)

But let's see if they have an angle.

Update : I guess Farmville et. al. as a social gaming network that's folded into Google TV might make sense.

Stowe Boyd quickly summarizes the Flipboard debate.

Someone *ought* to be getting ready to buy this.

More on Apple getting into the Enterprise.

This is important. iPads getting into the Enterprise.

iPads are an ideal vehicle for "corporate dashboards". Expect to see every senior(ish) manager want to control their own little empire from one.

It will be very problematic for Microsoft if the iPad becomes the aspirational machine for executives. Here's why : Excel. If M$ don't get Excel onto the iPad, soon, then the iPad will pull people away from Excel. (Rather than Excel keeping people on Windows.)

Suddenly, as well as those dynamic dashboards, executive summaries, quick to-do lists and project plans will all be migrating to whatever catches the imagination of iPad users.

And if M$ lose Excel, then the whole Office edifice starts to collapse.

Very good Douglas Rushkoff talk.