Having just come back from Japan:
When the iPhone 3G finally came out, I didn't think it would do so well in Japan for a wide variety of reasons. I haven't heard any statistics about how it is doing, but there are a number of things the iPhone will have to address for the Japanese market:
- First, a lot of mobile phone use in Japan is while riding the train. iPhone, on the other hand, needs two handed input. It's impossible to use the iPhone while riding the train, unless you happen to have a seat.
- The iphone doesn't support the very important QR code, which is used to scan for more information. By scanning the QR code in a magazine, users don't have to type in URL, and can simply get a hyperlink to the required info. This can be fixed quickly, and someone is probably already writing the app.
- The iPhone doesn't support the wide practice of using emoticons to indicate a person's emotions. But this can be fixed easily, assuming Apple is paying attention.
- There are a number of hardware design issues. There is no IR port for easy contact information exchange, no FeliCa electronic wallet for paying for train tickets and conv. stores, and there are no holes for hanging trinkets, especially for the ladies. Worst of all, the iPhone has much worse battery life than a standard Japanese mobile phone.
On the other hand, the iPhone has piqued people's interest in Japan. What it has going for it:
- Great screen, and awesome web browser. This is so far ahead of other handsets, and is the one thing that gets people really interested.
- Applications. The app store is bringing out a bunch of great games and utilities that people will find interesting. This makes the mobile phone into a true platform, which has not been done very well in Japan so far.
Check out these links for more info:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/17/technology/jiphone.php
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/08/11/iphone_3g_rocks_japanese_smartphone_market.html
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Architecture
"The purpose of architecture is to shelter and enhance man's life on earth and to fulfill his belief in the nobility of his existence." — Eero Saarinen
Monday, August 18, 2008
猪, 男人, 女人
I received this from my brother he found somewhere online:
人=吃飯+睡覺+上班+玩,
猪=吃飯+ 睡覺,
代入:人=猪+上班+玩,
即:人-玩=猪+上班.
結論:不懂玩的人=會上班的猪
男人=吃飯+ 睡覺+挣錢
豬=吃飯+ 睡覺
男人=豬+掙錢
豬=男人-挣錢
所以男人不挣錢等于豬。
女人=吃飯+ 睡覺+花錢。
豬=吃飯+ 睡覺。
代入上式得：女人=豬+花錢。
移項得：女人-花錢=豬。
结論：女人不花錢的都是豬。
综上：男人為了讓女人不變成豬而掙錢！
女人為了讓男人不變成豬而花錢！
男人+女人=吃飯+睡覺+挣錢+吃飯+睡覺+花錢（-挣錢）
=2X(吃飯+睡覺)=兩頭豬
人=吃飯+睡覺+上班+玩,
猪=吃飯+ 睡覺,
代入:人=猪+上班+玩,
即:人-玩=猪+上班.
結論:不懂玩的人=會上班的猪
男人=吃飯+ 睡覺+挣錢
豬=吃飯+ 睡覺
男人=豬+掙錢
豬=男人-挣錢
所以男人不挣錢等于豬。
女人=吃飯+ 睡覺+花錢。
豬=吃飯+ 睡覺。
代入上式得：女人=豬+花錢。
移項得：女人-花錢=豬。
结論：女人不花錢的都是豬。
综上：男人為了讓女人不變成豬而掙錢！
女人為了讓男人不變成豬而花錢！
男人+女人=吃飯+睡覺+挣錢+吃飯+睡覺+花錢（-挣錢）
=2X(吃飯+睡覺)=兩頭豬
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Using Google to check on the true age of China's gymnastics competitors
So, there has been a great deal of controversy about the true age of the Chinese female competitors in the Olympic games. Apparently, the younger the competitors, the more likely their center of gravity is advantageous in the competition. The development during puberty changes their body shape and this makes a huge difference.
I had the thought of using search engines to check on the likely age of these competitors. I first found their Chinese names, and then searched for their name with the years to see which is more likely to be their true birth year. Here are the results:
For 何可欣 (He Kexin), 1994 gives 4000 results, while 1993 gives only 2730 results.
For 江钰源 (Jiang Yuyuan), 1992 gives 11500 results, while 1991 gives only 5220 results.
It seems quite clear that while the Chinese NGO can change the passports of the competitors, they can't change the documents that are already on the web. In fact, browsing through the web documents written before this past year, there is plenty of evidence that it was broadly known the true age of these competitors. For the IOC to not investigate this problem, it seems they're damaging their own authority.
I had the thought of using search engines to check on the likely age of these competitors. I first found their Chinese names, and then searched for their name with the years to see which is more likely to be their true birth year. Here are the results:
For 何可欣 (He Kexin), 1994 gives 4000 results, while 1993 gives only 2730 results.
For 江钰源 (Jiang Yuyuan), 1992 gives 11500 results, while 1991 gives only 5220 results.
It seems quite clear that while the Chinese NGO can change the passports of the competitors, they can't change the documents that are already on the web. In fact, browsing through the web documents written before this past year, there is plenty of evidence that it was broadly known the true age of these competitors. For the IOC to not investigate this problem, it seems they're damaging their own authority.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
A new description of the progress in the science of understanding visual perception
This article describes visual perception as an issue around the management of limited resource of visual attention that a person has. It is now somewhat understood in the field that visual perception is both a bottom-up as well as a top-down processing process.
Chernoff faces for baseball statistics
This is one of the most terrible ideas I have seen, and unfortunately described by a publication I usually enjoy, NYTimes. This article describes the use of Chernoff faces for looking at baseball statistics. This doesn't work, in my opinion, because humans have a real reactions to depictions of faces. Instead of looking at real correlations, the depictions only confuse the interpretation of the real useful statistics.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
WebGuild: Online Shoppers To eTailers: I Want My Web 2.0
As this article suggests, shopping websites will now have no choice but embrace Web2.0:
WebGuild: Online Shoppers To eTailers: I Want My Web 2.0
WebGuild: Online Shoppers To eTailers: I Want My Web 2.0
Friday, May 30, 2008
h-Index is a new citation impact measure
Recently, in information science, perhaps due to the proliferation of easy to use biblio-tools, there is a renewed interest in understanding and measuring the impact of research publications and authors.
I learned from Dannyfest and Don Norman that there is a new tool appropriately called Publish or Perish. It is available for free-download for both Windows and Linux. Alternatively, you might use the web version of a different tool instead called QuadSearch. Publish or Perish calculates a bunch of citation impact analysis metrics, and one of them is a metric called h-index, which has gotten considerable interest lately in information science.
It is also sometimes referred to as the Hirsch Index or Hirsch number.
A scientist has index h if h of his/her Np papers have at least h citations each, and the other (Np-h) papers have no more than h citations each. So, as an example, I used the tool to calculate my h-index, and found that I have a h-index of about 19, which means that I have 19 papers that have at least 19 citations, and I have no other papers with more than 19 citations.
For comparison, Stu and Danny have h-indexes in the high 30s (39 and 36 respectively). Johan, Peter, Jock Mackinlay have in the low 30s (33, 31, 30 respectively). Victoria Bellotti, Mark Stefik are around low 20s (24, 23 respectively). You may be interested in downloading the tool and trying it out to "measure" yourself and your friends. :) Maybe it will inspire you to do greater and more impactful research! Or maybe it will just boost or deflate your ego! Use with caution!
Hirsch suggests that, for physicists, a value for h of about 10-12 might be a useful guideline for tenure decisions at major research universities. A value of about 18 could mean a full professorship, 15–20 could mean a fellowship in the American Physical Society, and 45 or higher could mean membership in the United States National Academy of Sciences. Clearly, the numbers needs to be adjusted for computer science related fields, due to the different nature of our publications (more conference papers, etc.)
PS: BTW, you should take care in choosing the fields on the left hand side, so you avoid picking up bad citations. This is one of the best tools I have seen (even better than the SCI [Science Citation Impact] one, because it appears to be more comprehensive.)
I learned from Dannyfest and Don Norman that there is a new tool appropriately called Publish or Perish. It is available for free-download for both Windows and Linux. Alternatively, you might use the web version of a different tool instead called QuadSearch. Publish or Perish calculates a bunch of citation impact analysis metrics, and one of them is a metric called h-index, which has gotten considerable interest lately in information science.
It is also sometimes referred to as the Hirsch Index or Hirsch number.
A scientist has index h if h of his/her Np papers have at least h citations each, and the other (Np-h) papers have no more than h citations each. So, as an example, I used the tool to calculate my h-index, and found that I have a h-index of about 19, which means that I have 19 papers that have at least 19 citations, and I have no other papers with more than 19 citations.
For comparison, Stu and Danny have h-indexes in the high 30s (39 and 36 respectively). Johan, Peter, Jock Mackinlay have in the low 30s (33, 31, 30 respectively). Victoria Bellotti, Mark Stefik are around low 20s (24, 23 respectively). You may be interested in downloading the tool and trying it out to "measure" yourself and your friends. :) Maybe it will inspire you to do greater and more impactful research! Or maybe it will just boost or deflate your ego! Use with caution!
Hirsch suggests that, for physicists, a value for h of about 10-12 might be a useful guideline for tenure decisions at major research universities. A value of about 18 could mean a full professorship, 15–20 could mean a fellowship in the American Physical Society, and 45 or higher could mean membership in the United States National Academy of Sciences. Clearly, the numbers needs to be adjusted for computer science related fields, due to the different nature of our publications (more conference papers, etc.)
PS: BTW, you should take care in choosing the fields on the left hand side, so you avoid picking up bad citations. This is one of the best tools I have seen (even better than the SCI [Science Citation Impact] one, because it appears to be more comprehensive.)
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Microsoft Live Mesh syncs folders and files
A central concept in computing these days is syncing between the myriad of devices and storage locations that a user might own. The reason why this is a good idea is because users want to get away from the problem of having to keep track of where data lives. They simply want the information that they need to be available at their fingertips. I have been using Foldershare for a number of years, which was acquired by Microsoft. Now based on the same technology, Microsoft have released a new service called Live Mesh, which syncs not just folders and files, but also applications. These types of services are also being developed by startups in the valley, including SugarSync, which I beta'ed, and also Dropbox.
Of these, only Foldershare and SugarSync currently support the Mac.
I believe this is an important step forward for end-users, as this relieves them from having to worry about where the data is located, and they can simply rely on the background services to make the data available. This is the concept of content-based computing and networking, which Van Jacobson here at PARC has talked about.
Of these, only Foldershare and SugarSync currently support the Mac.
I believe this is an important step forward for end-users, as this relieves them from having to worry about where the data is located, and they can simply rely on the background services to make the data available. This is the concept of content-based computing and networking, which Van Jacobson here at PARC has talked about.
Monday, May 5, 2008
Service excellence can be defined as what a business chooses not to do well
Harvard Business Review (Apr 2008 issue) had a great article on service design: pick a niche, make sure your system doesn't
just scratch an itch, and then serve that market by optimizing for that niche. I think there is a lot of interesting lessons in here about service design. The article agues that in service design you must pay attention to four elements, and they're often driven by the idea that "Service excellence can be defined as what a business chooses not to do well."
(1) the focus on offering. The offering here is to find out what customers want out of their service experience. If customers want longer store hours, you may be able to offer them out by trading off a higher cost to the products. It cites Walmart as an example, where they traded sales help for cheaper prices.
(2) the focus on the funding mechanism. The focus here is on understand who is going to pay for the service. For example, it uses Progressive insurance as an example, that they send vans to assess the damage on the accident scene. This turns out to reduce their fraud rate as well, and that's how they pay for the improved customer service experience.
(3) employee management system. Having your employees be of a certain type might mean you have to trade off on other attributes. For example, Commerce Bank focuses on having a great teller experience, so they don't select for the smartest straight-A students, but instead selects for people with great attitudes.
(4) customer management system. The key here is to design a way to modify customer behavior. Discounts and late fees is one way (instrumental) to modify behavior; Another is to use normative means such as reputation, shame, and pride to motivate customers to do the right thing. It cites Zipcar, the car-sharing service, as an example here.
The sidebar on how incumbents in a business react to more focused entrant firms was really educational, as it reflects well with how big companies sometimes react to threats to its current lines of business.
just scratch an itch, and then serve that market by optimizing for that niche. I think there is a lot of interesting lessons in here about service design. The article agues that in service design you must pay attention to four elements, and they're often driven by the idea that "Service excellence can be defined as what a business chooses not to do well."
(1) the focus on offering. The offering here is to find out what customers want out of their service experience. If customers want longer store hours, you may be able to offer them out by trading off a higher cost to the products. It cites Walmart as an example, where they traded sales help for cheaper prices.
(2) the focus on the funding mechanism. The focus here is on understand who is going to pay for the service. For example, it uses Progressive insurance as an example, that they send vans to assess the damage on the accident scene. This turns out to reduce their fraud rate as well, and that's how they pay for the improved customer service experience.
(3) employee management system. Having your employees be of a certain type might mean you have to trade off on other attributes. For example, Commerce Bank focuses on having a great teller experience, so they don't select for the smartest straight-A students, but instead selects for people with great attitudes.
(4) customer management system. The key here is to design a way to modify customer behavior. Discounts and late fees is one way (instrumental) to modify behavior; Another is to use normative means such as reputation, shame, and pride to motivate customers to do the right thing. It cites Zipcar, the car-sharing service, as an example here.
The sidebar on how incumbents in a business react to more focused entrant firms was really educational, as it reflects well with how big companies sometimes react to threats to its current lines of business.
Hadoop at the heart of Yahoo Search
Hadoop running in production on the Yahoo! Search Webmap
Doug Cutting used to work at PARC, and we have been using Hadoop heavily in our research as well.
"The Webmap build starts with every Web page crawled by Yahoo! and produces a database of all known Web pages and sites on the internet and a vast array of data about every page and site. This derived data feeds the Machine Learned Ranking algorithms at the heart of Yahoo! Search. Some Webmap size data:
- Number of links between pages in the index: roughly 1 trillion links
- Size of output: over 300 TB, compressed!
- Number of cores used to run a single Map-Reduce job: over 10,000
- Raw disk used in the production cluster: over 5 Petabytes"
Doug Cutting used to work at PARC, and we have been using Hadoop heavily in our research as well.
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Friday, May 2, 2008
Early work on Social Bookmarking
I just dug out this early work on social bookmarking and social indexing:
Wittenburg, K., D. Das, L. Stead, and W. Hill (1995) Group Asynchronous
Browsing on the World Wide Web. In Proceedings of Fourth International
World Wide Web Conference, Boston, MA., December 11-14, 1995, pp. 51-62.
http://www.w3.org/Conferences/WWW4/Papers/98/
key points:
- The obvious move for providing access to personal or general subject-oriented indices is to manually or automatically collect them into a database and then provide query or browse capabilities over this database.
- we have created a server that collects and merges bookmark/hotlist files of participating users and then can serve (subsets) of these merged bookmark files to either standard HTML client browsers or to a client built with the multiscale visualization tool Pad++.
- we have included one general purpose subject guide in our initial experiments as well, namely, Yahoo [18], whose role we will subsequently explain. Such a database combined with a World Wide Web server, which we call a Group Asynchronous Browsing (GAB) server, can then provide access to a merged subject tree structure in various ways. This collection of tools is intended to address the issue of how to utilize the browsing activities of others to discover resources, some of which themselves may be guides to further World Wide Web resources.
- The essential point to note with respect to information discovery is that, starting from some particular resource, new resources that have a good chance of being similar to it may be discovered by navigating "up" to any of the subject headings that include this starting resource and then navigating "down" from those subject headings to other, potentially unknown, resources.
- One of our goals then is to explore World Wide Web services that might be based on such merged subject trees.
Wittenburg, K., D. Das, L. Stead, and W. Hill (1995) Group Asynchronous
Browsing on the World Wide Web. In Proceedings of Fourth International
World Wide Web Conference, Boston, MA., December 11-14, 1995, pp. 51-62.
http://www.w3.org/Conferences/WWW4/Papers/98/
key points:
- The obvious move for providing access to personal or general subject-oriented indices is to manually or automatically collect them into a database and then provide query or browse capabilities over this database.
- we have created a server that collects and merges bookmark/hotlist files of participating users and then can serve (subsets) of these merged bookmark files to either standard HTML client browsers or to a client built with the multiscale visualization tool Pad++.
- we have included one general purpose subject guide in our initial experiments as well, namely, Yahoo [18], whose role we will subsequently explain. Such a database combined with a World Wide Web server, which we call a Group Asynchronous Browsing (GAB) server, can then provide access to a merged subject tree structure in various ways. This collection of tools is intended to address the issue of how to utilize the browsing activities of others to discover resources, some of which themselves may be guides to further World Wide Web resources.
- The essential point to note with respect to information discovery is that, starting from some particular resource, new resources that have a good chance of being similar to it may be discovered by navigating "up" to any of the subject headings that include this starting resource and then navigating "down" from those subject headings to other, potentially unknown, resources.
- One of our goals then is to explore World Wide Web services that might be based on such merged subject trees.
Teresa by Sergio Endrigo
Was in Vernazza in Italy and was introduced to this beautiful song by a restaurant owner.
Teresa
quando ti ho datto quella rosa [When I have given that rose to you]
rosa rossa, [Red rose]
mi hai detto
prima de te io non ho amato mai.
[You have said to me
Before you I have not never loved]
Teresa
quando ti ho datto il primo bacio
sulla bocca,
[When I have given the first kiss to you
On the mouth]
mi hai detto
adesso cosa penserai di me.
[You have said to me
Now what you will think about me]
Teresa
non sono mica nato ieri
[At all they are not been born yesterday.]
per te non sono stato il primo
nemmeno l'ultimo
[for you they have not been first the not even last one.]
lo sai, lo so.
[you know, I know it.]
Teresa
di te non penso proprio niente,
proprio niente,
mi basta,
[Of you not task just nothing
Just nothing
Me enough]
restare un poco accanto a te, a te
[To remain beside you, to you]
amare come sai tu non sa nessuna
[To love like you know no one else.]
non devo perdonarti niente
[I have no regrets]
mi basta quello che mi dai
[For me that's enough]
Teresa, Teresa
Teresa
quando ti ho datto quella rosa [When I have given that rose to you]
rosa rossa, [Red rose]
mi hai detto
prima de te io non ho amato mai.
[You have said to me
Before you I have not never loved]
Teresa
quando ti ho datto il primo bacio
sulla bocca,
[When I have given the first kiss to you
On the mouth]
mi hai detto
adesso cosa penserai di me.
[You have said to me
Now what you will think about me]
Teresa
non sono mica nato ieri
[At all they are not been born yesterday.]
per te non sono stato il primo
nemmeno l'ultimo
[for you they have not been first the not even last one.]
lo sai, lo so.
[you know, I know it.]
Teresa
di te non penso proprio niente,
proprio niente,
mi basta,
[Of you not task just nothing
Just nothing
Me enough]
restare un poco accanto a te, a te
[To remain beside you, to you]
amare come sai tu non sa nessuna
[To love like you know no one else.]
non devo perdonarti niente
[I have no regrets]
mi basta quello che mi dai
[For me that's enough]
Teresa, Teresa
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
managing your PDF of research papers
Do you have dozens of PDF files from your favorite scientific articles scattered on your harddrive? Do you also try to desperately organize them by renaming and archiving them in folders? But like the piles of printed articles on your desk, you can't keep up with all the new papers you download, and despite all your efforts it has become impossible to find that one article.
I was just told about this awesome program called Papers for the Mac. It manages your research papers on your computer in a way that you will not believe. It makes so many tasks like searching and organizing your citations and PDFs of research papers extremely easy.
Papers contains everything you need to get your favorite articles in your personal library. Importing PDFs that you already downloaded before is easy, you match them using your favorite online article repository like PubMed, Google Scholar, Web of Science, etc. and all the metadata is automatically added.
It won the Apple Design Award. It's simply amazing. Check it out.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Live Blogging Chris Anderson's talk at PARC Forum
Today Chris Anderson (of the Long Tail book fame and Wired) is giving a talk at PARC. Here are my live notes:
being away from the medium carried a cost.
- can't be too tall or too short
long tail distribution
- outcome of network effects, preferential effects
- word of mouth, tend to amplify
distribution channel limits
- most effective use of the channel - example: blockbuster
- only a small # of entities pass thru that filter
But the internet has an infinite shelf-space.
- [what about limited attention?]
- first time, we actually have data that can measure what people really want. Since consumers can choose instead of the middlemen / distributors choosing for us.
3 rules of long tail
- if you can lower cost of distribution, you can offer more stuff / variety.
- more variety means the ability to satisfy more minority taste, and address more granular markets
- “vanishing point of relevance away from me.”
- there is a lot of room at the bottom and all of the most interesting things come from the most unexpected places.
The new growth market
- rhapsody
total inventory: 4.5m tracks, walmart 55k tracks
- netflix
90k dvd, blockbuster 3k
- amazon
5m books, 100k barnes and noble
total sales
- rhapsody, netflix, amazon, have sales of 45%, 25%, 30% respectively not in the traditional market
A market for diversity out there
long tail ablation division
1997 budweiser
2007 products micro-brew,
- shift in our culture toward more discriminating tastes
- more affluent - more discriminating
one size fits all to one size fits me
just in time sales - bar codes - shipping in smaller units
- more variety but no more inventory costs
- more information technology, allowed them to figure out where to stock glutton-free beer “redbridge”
5 mistakes
- it's the end of blockbuster. No, It's just the end of the monopoly.
- you can make money in the long tail. people create things other than for money.
- long tail is full of crap. (sturgeon's law) absolutely true. but it doesn't matter
production quality is not the point; people care about relevance more than quality.
- say's law: the hits are becoming more important than ever.
- surrounded by curves that have long-tails [sourceforge example] log-log scale plot
something special about the power law
you have a test everytime you plot
[long known]
Joe kraus - the focus has been on dozens of milliion markets, now millions of dozens
next book: free
- we don't have good economic theory about free
- king gillete, invented the cross-subsidy model for razors
- king of free!
the future, circa 1954
- it is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy electrical energy in their homes too cheap to meter.
- trojan nuclear plant, portland, oregon.
- thought experiment: too cheap to meter is right.
how to waste transistors
- c:\> command line
- alan kay, xerox parc, we should waste by drawing icons, GUI, democratize PCs
- honeywell kitchen computer, recipe card management
- make technology cheaper, more ubiq., easier to use
- all you can eat web hosting, yahoo! webhosting, feb 6, 2008.
IT establishment has not internalized the notion of “free”.
Waste bandwidth
- stuck in broadcast mode
- lonelygirl15, everyone loves raymond, only reason why this happened is because there is no standard on YouTube.
- surprising things are going to emerge.
for the first time in history, complexity is free
- econ 101: in a competitive market, price falls to the marginal cost
storage price (per GB)
- 2002, yahoo $30 year for 25MB
- 2004 offers 1GB for free
- 2007 offers unlimited free
webmail is done.
“round down” - if the unitary cost of something is approaching zero, treat it as zero and sell something else.
- how are you going to compete with free?
a taxonomy of 'free':
- cross-subsidy (razors)
- ad-supported (media)
- “freemium” (upselling; old model: give away 1% to sell 99%; new model: give away 99% to sell 1%)
- “digital economics” (underlying cost of manufacturing and distributioin dropped near zero)
- “labor exchange” (consumers create something of value in exchange for free goods or services, GOOG-411 train their algorithm on voice recognition)
[our MT work, Luis von Ahn]
- gift economy (wikipedia)
understanding it here is a big deal of the last decade
Every abundance create is a scarcity of attention and reputation
- attention, traffic, ads
- reputation, links pageranks, traffic to ads
- attention economies
redefine the business you're in:
- Prince - free inside - prince's new album in the Daily Mail
- RyanAir - flew for 5 euros - make money from cargo, ads, car rental, sandwiches, gambling (like free drinks in las vegas)
- second life - being in the game is free - land in it is not
business model
scarcity - ROI model
abundance - we'll figure it out
rules
scarcity - everything is forbidden unless it is premitted
abundance - everything is permitted unless it is forbidden
social model
scarcity - paternalism (we know what is best)
abundance - egalitarianism
decision process
- scarcity - top down
- abundance - bottom-up
Management style
- scarcity - command and control
- abundance - out of control
------
Q: environment? disposable culture?
being away from the medium carried a cost.
- can't be too tall or too short
long tail distribution
- outcome of network effects, preferential effects
- word of mouth, tend to amplify
distribution channel limits
- most effective use of the channel - example: blockbuster
- only a small # of entities pass thru that filter
But the internet has an infinite shelf-space.
- [what about limited attention?]
- first time, we actually have data that can measure what people really want. Since consumers can choose instead of the middlemen / distributors choosing for us.
3 rules of long tail
- if you can lower cost of distribution, you can offer more stuff / variety.
- more variety means the ability to satisfy more minority taste, and address more granular markets
- “vanishing point of relevance away from me.”
- there is a lot of room at the bottom and all of the most interesting things come from the most unexpected places.
The new growth market
- rhapsody
total inventory: 4.5m tracks, walmart 55k tracks
- netflix
90k dvd, blockbuster 3k
- amazon
5m books, 100k barnes and noble
total sales
- rhapsody, netflix, amazon, have sales of 45%, 25%, 30% respectively not in the traditional market
A market for diversity out there
long tail ablation division
1997 budweiser
2007 products micro-brew,
- shift in our culture toward more discriminating tastes
- more affluent - more discriminating
one size fits all to one size fits me
just in time sales - bar codes - shipping in smaller units
- more variety but no more inventory costs
- more information technology, allowed them to figure out where to stock glutton-free beer “redbridge”
5 mistakes
- it's the end of blockbuster. No, It's just the end of the monopoly.
- you can make money in the long tail. people create things other than for money.
- long tail is full of crap. (sturgeon's law) absolutely true. but it doesn't matter
production quality is not the point; people care about relevance more than quality.
- say's law: the hits are becoming more important than ever.
- surrounded by curves that have long-tails [sourceforge example] log-log scale plot
something special about the power law
you have a test everytime you plot
[long known]
Joe kraus - the focus has been on dozens of milliion markets, now millions of dozens
next book: free
- we don't have good economic theory about free
- king gillete, invented the cross-subsidy model for razors
- king of free!
the future, circa 1954
- it is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy electrical energy in their homes too cheap to meter.
- trojan nuclear plant, portland, oregon.
- thought experiment: too cheap to meter is right.
how to waste transistors
- c:\> command line
- alan kay, xerox parc, we should waste by drawing icons, GUI, democratize PCs
- honeywell kitchen computer, recipe card management
- make technology cheaper, more ubiq., easier to use
- all you can eat web hosting, yahoo! webhosting, feb 6, 2008.
IT establishment has not internalized the notion of “free”.
Waste bandwidth
- stuck in broadcast mode
- lonelygirl15, everyone loves raymond, only reason why this happened is because there is no standard on YouTube.
- surprising things are going to emerge.
for the first time in history, complexity is free
- econ 101: in a competitive market, price falls to the marginal cost
storage price (per GB)
- 2002, yahoo $30 year for 25MB
- 2004 offers 1GB for free
- 2007 offers unlimited free
webmail is done.
“round down” - if the unitary cost of something is approaching zero, treat it as zero and sell something else.
- how are you going to compete with free?
a taxonomy of 'free':
- cross-subsidy (razors)
- ad-supported (media)
- “freemium” (upselling; old model: give away 1% to sell 99%; new model: give away 99% to sell 1%)
- “digital economics” (underlying cost of manufacturing and distributioin dropped near zero)
- “labor exchange” (consumers create something of value in exchange for free goods or services, GOOG-411 train their algorithm on voice recognition)
[our MT work, Luis von Ahn]
- gift economy (wikipedia)
understanding it here is a big deal of the last decade
Every abundance create is a scarcity of attention and reputation
- attention, traffic, ads
- reputation, links pageranks, traffic to ads
- attention economies
redefine the business you're in:
- Prince - free inside - prince's new album in the Daily Mail
- RyanAir - flew for 5 euros - make money from cargo, ads, car rental, sandwiches, gambling (like free drinks in las vegas)
- second life - being in the game is free - land in it is not
business model
scarcity - ROI model
abundance - we'll figure it out
rules
scarcity - everything is forbidden unless it is premitted
abundance - everything is permitted unless it is forbidden
social model
scarcity - paternalism (we know what is best)
abundance - egalitarianism
decision process
- scarcity - top down
- abundance - bottom-up
Management style
- scarcity - command and control
- abundance - out of control
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Q: environment? disposable culture?
Monday, March 24, 2008
Monday, March 17, 2008
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