Thoughts about D, Surfurce and Other

It's been a couple interesting days on the web, we're seeing lots of acquisitions, like last.fm and photobucket. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs speaking together at D and really talking about the last 30 years and the future of computing. We've also seen the new Surface computing initiative from Mircosoft. It's generated a lot of great discussion as well as a lot thoughts about the future.

As I see it we're are truly in another special time with the internet, trying to make sense of our online offline selves, creating new understanding of how we interface with computers and how future devices will look. I definitely see mobility, natural interface and online/offline connectivity as the next stages of computing/the web. Part of me really sees an opportunity within the operating space. I think Microsoft has really lost touch with Vista, it's and operating system that doesn't do much except for creating a more visually pleasing UI. I really hope one of the big players, google or yahoo or someone takes on this challenge. The idea of hierarchy file systems and even the Desktop is sort of an old idea. If I asked you the first thing you did when you sat down on the computer, you don't go to your desktop, you open your email or go to your browser. I think the Desktop needs to morph into a new idea that gets away from useless icons. I see how widgets are starting to to that, but I just think they are part of the story. We really need someone to rethink the desktop and the issues with online/offline information, why is it that I have two copies of everything everywhere. I would love to just store all my information in the "cloud" of the internet and not store it in a hierarchy but just tag the information and throw it up there. I make my information either public or private and that's it. That sure would make it a lot easier than uploading, not to mention sharing with friends and family. Well, let's hope someone takes this one on.

Lastly, if you are passionate about the entire climate change issue, you need to watch this video by John Doerr at the TED conference. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/128.

Memorial Day Thoughts

So, first let me send my thoughts to all those serving our country. It's been a tough couple years and let's hope our government is smart enough to make things better. It's strange because thinking about today has made me take stock in where things stand and also reflect on the 07 so far. Looking at Cardvio, we've created some great momentum and I can't wait to see what happens over the next few months. It's been amazing watching people share and contribute through Cardvio. A lot of people said that we could never make Cardvio personal enough because we can't replicate someone's handwriting. After months of watching people send cards, I have to say that's just not true. I have seen people pour their hearts out, say I love you and ask for forgiveness. I hope we can continue to make it easy for people to express themselves in a very unique way.

Also, I would like to make some predictions about 2007. First, it's definitely going to be the year of the widget, sites are now becoming extremely modular and you now take your favorite parts and put them on your site, blog, etc. I also think the web will finally start coming to the desktop and it needs to happen. This idea that we keep duplicate information on our desktop and on the web is crazy. I wish Vista would have created more tools to help people do this, but we are talking about Microsoft.

Speaking of which, if someone out there wants to create the next operating system, I think this is a great opportunity, with the failure of Vista this is a great time to innovate. Yes, there are companies like Ubuntu and others doing pretty good job of duplicating a Microsoft like operating system. But I truly think someone needs to really start over and rethink how people use their computers. The reality is that we should never save anything locally again, we should all be saving our content to the internet "cloud" and then be able to access it from anywhere. Tagging our data instead of organizing it into folders and making it private or sharing/contributing with others.

Alright, enough thoughts for today, hope all of you having a good day off.

Encyclopedia of Life

Today, I was blown away by E O Wilson's wish at the very popular TED conference to create the Encyclopedia of life. The demonstrations and screen shots look amazing and the idea of cataloging the 1.8 million species on earth is mind blowing thought. The site, eol.org, will be backed by 50 million from various scientific organizations and I imagine some day it will be as well known as Wikipedia. I look forward to seeing the project evlolving and hopefully being able to participate at some level.

This actually brought up an interesting discussion I was having with a co-worker about doing something similar with the history of the world. Essentially building a virtual globe that becomes a catalog of human history and being able to go to any point in time and read about human events. I think it would be a fascinating project not to mention the differences you would run into regarding how people view historical events.