I took my laptop and other gadgets to my recent vacation thinking I would get some work, research and even blogging done. The hotel ended up not having wi-fi connection and as a result I ended up not being online for a whole week. My first reaction was frustration but as the withdrawal symptoms subsided I discovered the magic of Digital life 0.0.

Result - more time with my wife and kids; Result - ‘real life batteries’ recharged.
Holiday 0.0 = Bliss. Recommended.
Now I’m back.Next post – a little bit about my digital life theorem.

      

New school year approaches and the Collaboration 2.0 players take it to the next level.

Google has announced Google Apps -THE collaborative suite of Gmail, Talk, Calendar and Page Creator with Writely and Spreadsheets underway (read reviews by Techcrunch and ZDnet).

In the meantime, Zoho has launched it’s latest addition to their excellent online office suite. This time is Zoho Projects - online project management which racks up next to Zoho Writer, Spreadsheets and Presentation tools.

And let us not forget 37Signals, the coolest dudes in town, and their unique SME offering for collaboration.

These folks take hungry and angry stabs at Microsoft and they seem to be stepping up their gamel. It is early to tell how much Microsoft will bleed exactly, but let us all consider one significant factor here. Office apps, online, do not only eliminate cost but offer an optional revenue option with advertising. If you’re OK with adsense, targeted at your content and business, in exchange for zero cost - how can this be a bad proposition?

      

Today’s note in Techcunch about Writely finally being open triggered mixed feelings. I was happy, of course, to finally be happy to test drive the new Google candy.  I was also disappointed by not having heard from Writely directly after submitting my name twice in the past.  Anyway, I got over it, and went directly to checking it out.

Writely put together a word processor with great web-soul. They are the winner of their space in that department, meaning that they didn’t just mimic MS Word. Support for Publishing, Collaboration and Blogging is integrated into the user experience (although with somewhat unclear redundancy) - key features that differentiate web based word processing from desktop based. Tagging is also well integrated. Built in support for PDF and OpenOffice made me feel like I could finally do without Microsoft. So did the excellent experience using FireFox. The Layout is neat but I would personally go for a difference choice of colors. What really impressed me was the clean support for right to left languages. Better then Gmail!

On the flip side, it did seem the applications could use some more maturity. Zoho Writer, for example, is more impressive when it comes to complicated and heavy documents. Writely limits uploads to 500k (why?) and that, too, doesn’t seem to work that well. I also crashed a couple of times when trying to use it and we know absolute availability is a key hurdle when it comes to porting desktop experiences to the web.

Still, this market is becoming interesting. Unlike spreadsheets, I don’t think this is an easy Google cleanup. Zoho, which mimics MS Word, certainly creates a worth y alternative. For those of you interesting in full benchmarking of all players, CNET offers a thorough list. Interesting times.

      

As YouTube acquisition rumors surface every month or so I can’t help but wonder - is the king butt naked again or is there something in YouTube I just don’t see?

Don’t get me wrong, I like YouTube. I admit I don’t visit very often, but I get a lot of emails with links to YouTube instead of with attachments and that’s cool. Sometimes I follow the links to the main site and I love it’s layout and functionality. YouTube blends content searching, browsing and sharing in a way that saves a lot of footwork and bandwidth to the end user. However it’s main value is with personalized and personal INTERNET content sharing. Not TV. Same old (and conceptually free) Internet Content. That has value, of course, but nowhere near what some Internet TV visionaries associate with YouTube. I doubt that it’s the kind of value that can ever justify the huge (and recurring!) investment in storage and bandwidth.

People argue that YouTube supposedly pioneers “modern Internet TV penetration”. Ok… Many people wait for YouTube to “realize the new advertising model”, one that will finally take Internet TV to the next step and make personal content a money machine.

I don’t see it happening. YouTube is, at best, a dominant content sharing play. At the flip side it could gradually become a pile of trash and drift towards the “dark side” of the Internet.  YouTube’s challenge is with reaching the earlier. In any case there is no way I can see a serious TV play emerging.

For an Intranet TV play to be interesting, it needs to contain TV ingredients - qualified content that is reliably renewed on somewhat of an expected schedule. More importantly, it needs to offer at least a few hits. Right now it’s still about bloopers and cliplets. Stuff that promotes TV and not stuff that replaces it. When real channels - commercial or personal - will start broadcasting through YouTube that will be a very positive sign.

Then there is the advertising riddle. Sure, YouTube are spending millions a month on infrastructure, but wait ’till they start monetizing the content with targeted video advertising! Right? Wrong! Attaching video ads contextually like broadcast TV has been doing for ages is a long way from happening on the Internet. And video ads, like other forms of advertising, are effective when they reach a qualified, known, target audience. ESPN Motion viewers are qualified. YouTube visitors are not. With YouTube the distribution and context is so eclectic, it will take years to figure out an ecosystem and roll out the necessary tools. Google and Yahoo are so much better positioned to harvest that market when that happens and chances are YouTube, unless acquired, will only pave the way.

So my novice advice to YouTube is simple. If your only strategy is exit, take a good offer when you see one!

      

“Patriotism is the last resort of a villain”, Samuel Johnson

I never thought I’d tackle this subject in Degardener and still have some doubts about infusing politics into what is supposed to be a blog of totally different mindset. These days, however, I simply can’t avoid it.

I grew up on the left side of the political spectrum. As a teenager I used to play John Lennon on my guitar and wear a big peace sign earring. I grew my hair and considered myself a flower child, even though I clearly wasn’t. I voted for the first time in 1992 and for the first 10 years could consider nothing but left side choices. Like many people, I started drifting towards the middle as I reached my 30th birthday. But what happened since was nothing I could expect.

I always thought it was all about freedom and economics. Immanuel Kant suggested that the free to choose (hence: democracies) do not go to war. Growing up in Israel I always believed that once we level the plain field, meaning once we withdraw from Palestinian territories and reach a democratic, Palestinian state the conflict would be over. After all, who wants to jeopardize comfort and freedom? Who can argue against occupation leading to war?

The war in Lebanon, as well as the recent turn of events in Gaza is just another evidence that I had it totally wrong. This war is not between Israel and Lebanon and it is not between Israel and the Hezbollah. This war is about religion and fundamentalism and not about territories, self proclaiming or equal opportunities. It is not even about occupation. Occupation is wrong, but in many ways is the inevitable result. Yes, Shiite Lebanese are victims as are Palestinians, however not of external colonialism but of Darwinism. In very simple terms they are simply jealous and sick of lagging so far behind. It’s impossible to compete with western civilization without democracy, westernized education, cultural assimilation and acceptance of individualism. Is there decadence involved? sure. But let’s all take a look at Nassralla (smart, educated and charismatic) and see ourselves what the alternative is.

While Hammas and Hezbollah robbed me of my innocence I do have to thank them. I remember now what the hassle of keeping Israel safe at all cost is about. No, I don’t believe peace will be reached in our days, not anymore. I don’t believe the fundamental Muslims are interested in reaching independence or Peace to begin with. Yes, I am not as sensitive to the pain of the other side as I used to be because the “other side” has to make a different choice first.  World War III has already started (even if the French are still in denial). Israel is not just the Jewish state, it is the middle-eastern front of western civilization. Of Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Of Freedom, Equality and Brotherhood. I know we do lots of wrongs, but at least I am reassured that we are on the right side.

And of that, I am a patriot.

      

I received a lot of verbal feedback about my last post. Many people pointed me to rebuttals arguing that the Blockbuster hit is very much alive. An interesting recurring argument attributes the decline in record sales and box office turnout to “external” factors - the creation of eMule, iPods and DVDs, etc. As if these are not indicative of long tail economics and their drivers.

The Long Tail theory is not set out to prove that the blockbuster hit is dead. Whether or not this is true can be argued, but like I said it is not the point. The more important insight is with barriers to entry, and more importantly to domination. Those, in many industries, have left the hands of the elites. As such, these industries are now open for everyone - journalism, books, music, movies - all are but examples of alternative mediums which compliment the traditional channels. Sometimes in a way that makes the older channels even obsolete. 

There are 4 main factors which contribute to the creation of a long tail:

1. Production costs declining dramatically due to digitization, home equipment and ease of replication.

2. Distribution costs nearing zero due to virtualizations, efficient supply chain and online delivery where possible.

3. Automatic filters replacing human filtering chains. 

4. Real time, free, global communication.

The result is almost infinite choice and vivrant markets. A continuous demand curve matched by dynamic and organically growing supply, thus creating what we refer to as “The Long Tail”. One could argue that these conditions are only applicable to a narrow set of “modern” products, but I very much disagree. As a matter of fact, I believe every “Brick and Mortar” dominated market is a Long Tail opportunity, even if somewhere down the road.

I believe The Long Tail is a 101 book, as is Small is the New Big, by Seth Godin for anyone who is interesting in really understanding the new dynamics and how to play them right.

A more interesting discussion revolves around the forces that catalyze the creation of advanced markets. In the The World is Flat, Tom Friedman suggest the top 10 shaping events that contributed to leveling the plain field  (Thanks Guy Horowitz for urging me to read the book already). Friemdan coins the term of “Globalization 3.0″ as descriptive of rapid flattening of the world in terms of markets, supply chain, communication, consumption and overall opportunities. I haven’t finished the book yet but I am pushing off sleep to do so.

The top 10 catalysts Tom Friedman suggest are:

1. Collapse of the Berlin Wall - which was the shaping event of the overall triumph of capitalism and democracy.

2. Foundation of Netscape - which brought the power of Internet to the people.

3. Work Flow program - from protocols to services - that led to easy continuity across companies, industries, programs and every other meaningful process with multiple contributors

4. Open Source - which led to the collaborative development of organic software.

5. Outsourcing - which took a quantum leap due to the international need to tackle “2000 Bug”

6. Job Mobility - across cities, companies, countries, environments.

7. Multiple Particles Supply Chains - result of easy communication and outsourcing.

8. In sourcing - focusing on creating core value on top of the supply chain, not just focusing on managing it.

9. Self education - in real time, organic, using tools like Google.

10. “Steroids” - power devices like iPod, Blackberry, Laptop - which put power technology at the hands of the masses.

A fundamental book at the level of Clash of Civilizations by Samuel Huntington (only a much easier reading). I am certain it will catalyze a few posts at own merit. 

      

It feels great to read a good book once in a while. And The Long Tail by Chris Anderson is indeed a must book for everyone involved with web 2.0. It tackles the long tail from a cultural and business perspective, creating the first high quality research I, at least, have seen about the subject. I enjoyed the analysis, but just as importantly the exact writing which was filled with finesse.

Short version - the transition from scarcity to abundance drives greater selection and personalization. The shift is responsible for ground shaking changes in the business and cultural climates. Niches become, surprisingly, a source of much greater potential then hits. Data collected from Amazon, Ebay, iTunes, Rhapsody and Google confirms. How do we classify or add to the value chain? For that you would need to read the long version.

Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief of Wired and a former senior international journalist at The Economist, not only argues that the future of culture is with selling less of more. He offers a set of practical tools. The classification to fundamental roles (producers, distributors, filters) is eye opening. So is the simple overview of our transition from pre-filters (PC Mag, for example) to post-filters (Techcrunch is the ultimate post-filter for web 2.0 applications). 

The book has been praised by Guy Kawasaki but also critiqued by Lee Gomes of Wall Street Journal. Chris Anderson addresses the critical view in his popular blog, using yet another educating analysis, mathematical this time, by Andrew Odlyzko.

I have a hunch The Long Tail is underway to becoming a 101 text book.