For those who haven't heard Gawker (a company that runs several popular web sites) is cutting 60% of Valleywag's staff in anticipation of a recession (as well as making cuts across the board).  Here's the quote...

You can guess the reason for these brutal measures: the recession. Sure, the company is currently profitable and advertising sales are up by about 30% on their level of a year ago. Our biggest clients are consumer electronics and entertainment companies that are relatively well insulated. And, yes, this is not the first time I've predicted doom: in July 2006, when we "battened down the hatches" and closed down Sploid and Screenhead; and in April this year, when we spun off Idolator, Gridskipper and Wonkette.

This inspired two unique thoughts in my head both of which are represented below...

On Gawker's Suck-iness

I haven't worked that many places but one of my first jobs was as an on-site network technician.  In that job I'd usually spend a week or so setting up a network and then go back to visit every once in a while when problems arose.  That familiarity combined with not being a constant presence made me popular for conversation among many of the companies' staff.

Everyone seems to tell their secrets to the guy who isn't going to be around long enough to share them. 

Because of that I have a pretty good grasp of office dynamics and that makes me confident in saying Gawker probably isn't a terribly pleasant place to work.  In my experience, the difference between a good work place and a bad one is how the people in that workplace feel about each other.  You don't have to love each other or even like each other but you do need to work together and look out for each other. 

A good workplace is where everyone is part of the same team and realizes that they have the same goals.  Even if members of that team don't like each other they'll be content (if not happy) as long as their work is towards a common accomplishment.

What Mr. Denton shows with this move is that there is no team at Gawker.  Don't get me wrong, even solid teams have to fire someone every once in a while but teams don't abandon their members "in anticipation of bad times" they do it because they have to.  That, to me, is where Gawker fails. 

Gawker's business may or may not actually go down in the future.  It doesn't really matter.  What matters is that they were willing to make cuts without knowing one way or the other.  That shows just how little the company actually thinks of their employees.  A message not lost on the ones who weren't fired I suspect. 

On Tom's Suck-iness

The one (terribly insignificant) good thing to come out of this is it got me reflecting even further on what I said yesterday and made me even more dedicated to being the critical jerk that I am on this blog (at least a lot of the time).  Let me explain...

The important thing here is to realize that Nick Denton believes his business will go down so he's making cuts.  But by his own admission all the facts he currently has indicate his business is fine.  To me, this is not very clear thinking and is the perfect example of an opinion that could benefit from some serious criticism. 

I can't make this point enough: Clarity of thought is the most important value a person can have and anything that brings it about (even criticism) is a good thing.  More importantly, there are very serious consequences to not having it (like people losing their jobs).  If you remember nothing else I say remember this (which I stole from countless wiser men and just rephrased to make it sound like it was mine)...

We don't live in the world, we live in our heads.

What I mean is that we all color the world based on our emotions.  The reality you actually see and the one you have convinced yourself exists is almost never the same thing.  Because you are constantly being influenced by all your prejudices.  So it's a constant struggle for anyone to see what is actually there and not a mirage brought on by emotion. 

There's no value that's more important than seeing the truth.

The UK's Guardian has a piece on Richard Stallman, founder of the GNU Project, in which he denounces Cloud Computing...

But Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation and creator of the computer operating system GNU, said that cloud computing was simply a trap aimed at forcing more people to buy into locked, proprietary systems that would cost them more and more over time.

"It's stupidity. It's worse than stupidity: it's a marketing hype campaign," he told The Guardian.

"Somebody is saying this is inevitable – and whenever you hear somebody saying that, it's very likely to be a set of businesses campaigning to make it true."

The 55-year-old New Yorker said that computer users should be keen to keep their information in their own hands, rather than hand it over to a third party.

He's not wrong.  All the issues he outlines do exist.  But I think his view on things might be a little simplistic. 

Here's the thing, Cloud Computing is smart for people who don't have a huge need for computing resources.  It's a means of cost sharing dedicated hardware, knowledgeable staff, and all the other perks of a big IT infrastructure between several other businesses.  Which in turn makes it far cheaper than the other options available.  Its an equalizer for companies that can't afford a full time IT staff or a room full of servers. 

In that respect, I disagree with Mr. Stallman.  Or more accurately, I think he's right but I think the lock-in threat is outweighed by the benefits provided to small business.

As far as large business is concerned, it makes no earthly sense at all.  If you are doing enough business to be able to afford your own infrastructure and professional staff than you'd be a fool to use cloud computing as your primary system.  Because its a one to one correlation. 

If you can afford your own professional staff and infrastructure than Amazon can't undercut you unless they are cutting corners (not saying they are or would, just speaking hypothetically).  You have the same resources available to you as they have to them plus they need to make a continuous profit on top of that.  The only advantage they might have is a discount based on scale but there's no way an initial savings could make up for their profit margin over time.

With that said, there are obviously shades of gray here.  You might need slightly more storage space, or slightly more computing resources, or whatever.  Each situation is different and a dedicated IT person can make judgements accordingly. 

The bottom line is that Cloud Computing, like anything else, is just another tool for IT infrastructure.  No more, no less.  It isn't going to completely change the industry but it shouldn't be avoided completely either.  It's just another way of doing things. 

From The Register's article entitled "Adobe cites bad blood for closed Flash"

Adobe Systems' Flash has long dominated PCs and the web, but the company has been under slowly mounting pressure to open source the player's source code.

This came to a head recently when Dion Almaer, co-founder of Ajaxian.com and Google's open web advocate, delivered a talk on the state of AJAX at Google Developer Day in London. I asked Almaer why Google makes little use of Adobe Systems' Flash, YouTube aside, and he gave a forthright answer.

Flash is not "open enough," he said, explaining that the Flash player is not open source and its development is not driven by the community. Google likes the technology, he added, and its closed-source status is a matter of ongoing discussion.

I am as pro-Open Source as a person can be but this type of thing bothers me. 

When Mr. Almer says Flash "isn't open enough" I wish someone had countered with "as opposed to what?"  Certainly not AJAX (Google's tool of choice).  It's not like you can make changes to what's going on in Javascript or change the way an XMLHttpRequest is executed. 

CSS 2 was feature complete in 1998 and browsers still don't implement it right.  CSS 3 has been in development for just about ever and doesn't appear close to being done much less implemented.  I guarantee, GUARANTEE Adobe would implement features requested by Google faster than the standards group behind CSS could get it approved and implemented into all the major browsers.

So how exactly is AJAX preferable to FLASH on the "Open Scale"?

I mean, the whole benefit of open source is the ability to add things when you need them.  If Flash, closed source as it is, can implement features faster than wouldn't it be the better solution?

The problem with this, and a lot of the openness talk, is that the solution has become separated from the problem being solved.  If you focus on the actual problem (getting new features implemented in a timely manner) Adobe's Flash wins hands down.  But people have become so obsessed with the word "Open" that they've forgotten why they wanted openness in the first place.

Yesterday Scoble released a list that I found interesting...

This is my hand-picked list of the people who provide the most interesting tech blogging/tweeting/FriendFeeding. All of these point to FriendFeed. If you know someone who deserves to be on this list, please post their FriendFeed URL. Mine is: http://friendfeed.com/scobleizer

Before going on, please allow me to deflect the most obvious criticism this post may receive...

"Your just mad because you aren't on the list!"

Uh....No.  I'm a very small fish in a very large pond.  I don't expect anyone to know me and, to be honest, the few times I've run into someone who did know me from this blog is scared the ^@$@ out of me. 

So If you mention my name to Scoble and his reaction isn't to squint his eyes and ask "You mean Tom Foremski?" than I'd be a little disappointed.  What's the point of being an A-Lister if you can't ignore people like me?

That being said, on to my point...

I read about 85% of the people on Scoble's list and I can tell you for a fact that the list represents a painfully one sided view of the world.  There are maybe 5 people on there that don't agree 100% with Scoble's world view and even those 5 probably score 75% to 85% agreement.  Anyone lower than that just isn't there.

Take someone like Drama 2.0 (who I know Scoble's aware of because he's commented on his blog several times in the past).  The guy's smart and he's a decent writer.  A little rough in his delivery but no more so than someone like Dave Winer or Chris Pirillo (both on the list).  But beyond that roughness I don't see any reason for him not to be there.  The list has several people who post the same kind of editorial content like John Furrier and Fred Wilson (and all three are favorites of mine so I would know).

The only difference is the opinion stated in that content.

Now some will ask "isn't it ok to not share a link to someone you disagree with?"  Well, to be blunt, No it isn't.  At least, not if you claim to be open minded.  Being open minded means embracing ideas you don't agree with and embracing those ideas means sharing them with others so that others can make up their own minds.  It means recognizing the validity of those who oppose your world view and caring enough about those you share information with to give them every valid point. 

What makes this important isn't that I believe Scoble is close minded it's that I honestly believe he doesn't know it.

People assume that open mindedness just comes.  That its easy and will happen naturally.  But nothing could be further from the truth.   Open mindedness means sitting through content that is often times so infuriating that it makes you grit your teeth and then forcing yourself to reflect on it until you can see what the other person is saying.  It's not easy, it's not fun, but it is a necessary step to avoiding closed mindedness.  That's why this is important.

Finally, for those who would say this isn't a "tech topic" I beg to differ.  The so-called "Web 2.0" revolution is about information and  becoming smarter and wiser based on that information.  I'd argue (and I'd be right) that you can have all the information in the world and it doesn't do you a bit of good unless you're open minded enough to look at all of it fairly.

Bottom Line: If you only listen to people just like you than you might as well not be listening at all.

Addendum: OK, to a certain extent doofus points for me because Scoble does specifically say that he's pointing to FriendFeed users and (as was pointed out in an e-mail to me) Drama 2.0 doesn't have a FriendFeed account.  That said, I was just using him as an example and if I were willing to dig through my Google Reader account I know there are others (with FriendFeed accounts) that make the same point.

I don't read Don Reisinger as a general rule.  I used to but his pieces just became more and more thoughtless.  I got to the point where I simply found them agitating.  A good example of that is this quote from his post entitled "Why iPhone developers should defect to Android"

But the main problem with developing for Android is that the hardware isn't uniform. Some Android-based phones will sport touch-screens, while others will not. That makes developing applications far more difficult, considering the possibility of dealing with a wide array of hardware. But then again, who cares? Rejected iPhone app developers can still create touch-screen Android apps and for those that don't have a touch-screen Android phone, well, they're out of luck.

But perhaps the most compelling reason why developers should defect to Android is because it will finally wake up Steve Jobs and company. Right now, I don't know why Apple should even care about all these developers crying about their beloved apps. The way I see it, they need Apple; Apple doesn't need them.

But if they defect to Android and the Android market becomes a real powerhouse, the whole game will change. Suddenly, Apple will need to take notice and realize the error of its ways.

Look, I haven't really commented on the new Android phone and there's a good reason for that.  It's irrelevant. 

Sure tech pundits will talk about it ad nauseam but the reality is this: The smallest cell phone network in the U.S. is releasing a phone built by a generic phone manufacturer that costs only $20 less than an iPhone and which is, according to every review so far, inferior to the iPhone. 

Looking realistically, I honestly don't understand how anyone can think this will be relevant in the broad market.

Sure you'll hear a lot of people say "but it's open and the iPhone's not" but to that I say "who cares?"  People don't buy a phone because it's an open platform.  In fact, people don't buy a phone based on available applications period.  They buy a phone for how good a phone it is (and more and more how good the built in applications are). 

Which is the biggest point: Cell. Phone platforms live and die on actual phone sales not available applications.

So even suggesting Developers should target Android over the iPhone right now is irresponsible.  It assumes that the number of developers moving over is somehow relevant and its simply not. 

Beyond that you're suggesting developers target a market of maybe, MAYBE a million Android phones vs 14 million iPhones plus who knows how many iPod Touchs (those are estimates through the year 2008).  It's foolishness.

For all those who think their opinion means something to Apple, I submit this...

Apple has gotten a significant amount of critical press surrounding its rejection policies in the App Store. A few high profile rejections have been widely reported and inspired at least one amusing comic.
Apparently, Apple has now started labeling their rejection letters with Non-Disclosure (NDA) warnings

Now THAT is classic Apple.  Take all the complaints and rather than respond to them, do just the opposite.  Become even more dictatorial about the whole thing. 

Here's the thing about Apple.  In a nutshell, they're control freaks.  That fact probably makes them bad people but it's exactly why they make great products. 

Apple isn't going to do what you want.  In fact, if you criticize Apple on something (see above) they may very well do just the opposite of what you want just to spite you. 

One of the facts I've come to accept in life is that most of the truly talented people in this world owe that talent more to their faults than their virtues.  Great leaders are almost always egomaniacal, great artists are almost always emotionally unstable and great product designers are almost always control freaks.  That's the way things work. 

The well-adjusted get to be well-adjusted (a reward in itself) but they rarely get to be great. 

So my advice is to accept it and move on.  Apple's contributions still far out weight the company's character flaws and that's really all that matters in the end.  The rest is just whining at the inevitable. 

On the whole SanDisk slotMusic venture I think it's a loser.  So much so I'm not even going to comment on it (see the whole Techmeme thread here if you're interested).  But what I did want to comment on is this quote I found on Mathew Ingram's blog...

You have to give SanDisk some credit for trying, I suppose. Just about everyone else — including the four major record labels — seems to have given up on the business of selling actual physical copies of music. Why? Because it’s a crappy business, that’s why.

Hmmmmmm...that's interesting.  I did not know Record Labels had completely given up on Physical CD sales.  Thank God I had someone who has no involvement in the music industry whatsoever to tell me that.

:)

Seriously though, What Mr. Ingram is no doubt referring to is the fact that (a) Digital Sales surpassed Physical Sales in the last year and (b) Physical CD Sales declined by 14% overall.  This is a common argument made by the so-called "Freetards" to suggest that music is going all digital which they believe to be a step towards the eventual adoption of music being entirely free. 

But here's the thing, those numbers are skewed.  Lets look at them for a second.  Here's a quote from Ars Technica on the numbers in question...

In both the US and Britain, digital sales saw nearly a 50 percent boost over the 2006 numbers. 844.2 million digital tracks were moved in the US and another 77 million in the UK. While this is good news in the face of physical CD sales that declined by 14 percent from 2006, the more significant issue at stake here is the decline of full album sales. With digital stores allowing customers to purchase just the tracks they want, record labels may have to be content with lowered revenues as people reject the high prices and fluff tracks found in all too many albums.

Sounds good but what they don't tell you is that they're talking Unit Sales.  In other words, Digital Sales mean 1 track while Physical Sales mean 1 CD.  If you look here you'll find the actual numbers for Physical CD sales in 2006 which was 703.9 Million Albums.  Using the Ars Technica numbers above (of a 14% decline) that puts the 2007 number at about 605.3 Million Albums in the U.S (you'll hear 511 Million but that number doesn't seem to cover the deep catalog sales). 

Now, assuming 12 tracks per Physical CD that means 7,263 Million Physical Tracks were sold vs 844.2 Million Digital Tracks.  That's close to 9 times as many Physical tracks being sold.

Now, for the record I do think Physical CD sales and album sales as a whole are due for even more drops in the future.  Music companies have gotten away with "padding" CDs with lackluster tracks for a while now and the digital market is now taking that ability away.  Obviously there will be fall out. 

But to suggest that CD sales are so bad that the labels have "given up" on them is just comical.  That, along with the Ars Technica numbers above, show just how far people are willing to entrench themselves into an obviously false version of the world in order to justify believing what they want (as opposed to what is true). 

Ted Dziuba has a post today entitled "OpenSocial, OpenID, and Google Gears: Three Technologies for history's dustbin".  I'm going to take each one of those technologies separately...

Hey, does anybody remember Google's OpenSocial? Come on, it hasn't even been a year since it was announced. OpenSocial was supposed to unify social network application developers behind one common API. Revolutionary, innovative, all that sh*t.

Well, OpenSocial was designed as a stopgap for the Facebook API and in that sense it worked.  Facebook opened up it's own API to compete which in many ways created the commoditization of the API that Google was targeting to begin with.

So OpenSocial will probably end up on the dustbin but it served it's purpose just the same.

Still nothing? Ah, okay. What about OpenID, the best damned federated authentication scheme the world has ever seen, but nobody in the world can figure out how to use?

On this I think he has a somewhat valid point.  He goes on to say that "If there's one thing all engineers love to do, it's create APIs" and I think there's some truth to that.  The problem with OpenID from the start has been that it solves a problem that users really don't seem to care about. 

Of what value is OpenID to a bunch of people who keep their password written down on a post-it stuck to their monitor? 

Beyond that OpenID takes something from the vendor that they value very much:lock-in.  Someone with an established Amazon ID is more likely to buy from Amazon than Buy.com.  But if Amazon and Buy.com both adopt OpenID than the user can just as easily purchase from either.  So why would Amazon allow users to sign up for an OpenID on their site?  They wouldn't and that's pretty much the global problem with OpenID. 

Users don't care enough to force its adoption and Vendors do care enough to block it.  Given that I have to ask how they thought they'd succeed in the first place. 

If not, surely you must have heard of Google Gears. This was the Firefox plug-in that was supposed to establish Google as a first-rate operating system vendor, even before Chrome was supposed to do the exact same thing?

Now we get to the ignorant part.

Gears (Sans the Google now) has actually been enjoying a lot of success for a platform in what is essentially an early beta stage.  The point with Gears is that it actually does solve a problem that developers have and I think that will serve it well in the future.  With all the companies that have adopted it or have announced plans to I don't see any reason to declare it dead.

Also, Gears was not just a  Firefox plug-in.  It is currently supported in IE, Firefox, Safari and Opera has even gone so far as to build support into both its desktop and mobile browser. 

Finally, Gears is being designed to converge with the (long in coming) HTML 5 spec.  Meaning that Google is actively submitting the various pieces of Gears as standards and there's every reason to believe they'll be adopted.  Making it even less likely that Gears will "disappear" in the future.

So Bill O'Reilly's web site was hacked in response to his attacks on the people who hacked Governor Palin's e-mail a little earlier this week.

From Wikileaks (where the proof was posted)...

The file provides proof that the Fox News demagogue, Bill O'Reilly, has been hacked.

Wikileaks has been informed the hack was a response to the pundit's recent scurrilous attacks over the Sarah Palin's email story--including those on Wikileaks and other members of the press. Hacktivists, thumbing their noses at the pundit, took control of O'Reilly's main site, BillOReilly.com. According to our source, the security protecting O'Reilly's site and subscribers was "non-existent".

One of the ongoing themes on this blog is the idea that it's very important to think through exactly what the end result of your actions is going to be.  On that note I'd again encourage the folks doing this hacking to consider what they're trying to accomplish and ask themselves "Does what I'm doing accomplish that?"

Does this hurt Bill O'Reilly?

Not Really.  The screen shot shows there were 205 subscribers to the site which, at $50 a year, comes out to about $10,250 total.  Assuming every one of those people turns around and leaves the site it still wouldn't mean much to O'Reilly being he makes $9 million per year. 

You could say it was an embarrassment to him and that might be slightly true.  But lets look at the end result  of things.  He'll have to apologize which everyone will pretty much accept because "being hacked" has become one of those things that people accept these days.  What he'll get in return is a huge audience tuning in to see how he reacts and a chance to endlessly plug the fact that "he was right" and that these evil hackers are "the scum he said they were" (see more on this below in "Does this hurt the Hacking Community?"). 

Does this hurt the Hackers obvious Political Agenda?

Yes, to be blunt it does.  This, and the hacking of Governor Palin's e-mail earlier, has nothing but a positive effect on the victims of the hacking.

First, it will hurt the Democratic cause (who will be unfairly grouped with the people who did this hacking) by giving Republican's something to flame on.  Mark my words, in the coming weeks Mr. O'Reilly will go on and on about how "liberals are immature" and "this is just proof of that" while using all that to support "do you really want these people running your country?" 

I don't think I need to tell you a lot of people will answer "No" to that questions

Second, it generates sympathy for those being hacked.  Maybe not O'Reilly because he's so loud and belligerent but definitely for Palin (which this hacking refers back to and hence reminds people of).  I'd bet that sympathy will be worth a bump.

Does this hurt the Hacking Community?

Yes.  This type of hacking used to have a noble goal.  It was to demonstrate to the world that pretty much all current computer security is woefully unprepared.  It was a calling and while I didn't agree with the people doing it I respected them for doing what they thought was necessary.

But the O'Reilly thing is just petty.  "He called me names so I ruined his website" comes across as childish and greatly diminishes the reputation of the people doing it (and all those who get grouped with them).

Moreover, it actually does damage to the cause of computer security.  As more and more of these little hacks take place the end result is to diminish them.  Now "being hacked" has become synonymous with "being in an Earthquake" or "being his by a hurricane." 

People don't blame the victim anymore in a hacking and that's the exact opposite of what they should be doing (since it was the security of the so-called victim that lead to the hacking in the first place)

What's My Point?

My point is a simple one.  These people set out to hurt Bill O'Reilly and maybe hurt Conservatives while they are at it but in turn ended up doing exactly the opposite.  More importantly, had they given the end result of all this a little thought they would have seen that for themselves. 

Fred Wilson has a post today entitled "It's Time To Open Up The Feeds To Marketers".  In it  he says the online experience is increasingly being built around "feeds" like the one found in Facebook and that marketers should be allowed to exploit that for highly targeted Ads.  He further believes these marketers won't want to do business with each individual feed provider which opens an opportunity for a company to step in and be an "Ad broker". 

Here's a quote from Mr. Wilson...

So what we need to happen is the web services that render these feeds for us; google reader, netvibes, friendfeed, twitter, outside.in, facebook, etc, etc need to provide api accesss to these feeds to services that will serve marketers who want to get their messages targeted into them.

The targeting is the key and I am not entirely clear how this should work. In the case of search driven feeds, it should clearly be keyword based. In the case of geo feeds like outside.in, it should be zip code or neighborhood based. In the case of things like facebook or google reader, I think the targeting is more likely to be behavioral.

Mr. Wilson concludes his post by saying his venture firm would be interested in funding a company that provided such a service. 

Here's the thing, if someone really wants to try this than more power to you.  But in my opinion, it's a waste of time and resources.  Here's why...

The inherent problem is that both the Feed Generator (Facebook, Twitter, whomever) and the Advertisement Provider have conflicting interests.

These "feeds" that Mr. Wilson refers to aren't like web pages that use Adsense.  They often contain very personal information and because of that they represent a trust between a feed generating service and the people who use that service.

Handing that personal information over to a 3rd party ad provider would certainly be a violation of that trust (as has already been proven).

That brings you to the Ad provider.  They could, in theory, allow the feed generator to submit just the information needed to customize ads.  Then an ad could be created based on that info.  But in doing so they'd have to trust the Feed Generator to provide accurate information which puts a huge question mark on their service.

How effective can a service that tailors Ads be if that service doesn't control a vital part of their process?  More to the point, how can they hope to sell Ad space if they can't guarantee a certain level of accuracy?

It becomes a no win situation in the end.  Either the feed provider has to compromise privacy or the Ad provider has to compromise effectiveness. 

In my opinion this is a situation where people are turning to tech for a solution that business people are more qualified to solve.  Better to let each feed provider control their own Ad policy and allow advertising firms to sell that space in various packages (like is done with Print, Radio and TV now).  Then would be advertisers still wouldn't have to deal with every provider.

I love tech but it isn't necessarily the solution to everything.

For the Record...If I was going to do this (try to be an Ad Provider) I'd probably make a Javascript library that could be given to the Feed Generators to run internally.  That way they could run it themselves and not have to compromise their user's privacy while still using my algorithm to generate the results on which ads would be based.  With that said, this approach still leaves a question mark (since the process can't be verified by the Ad provider) and forces the Ad provider to give key Intellectual Property to their customers (who could then pick it apart if they so desire).