cloud computing

Bloggers, mind control and the death of newspapers (the Internet imagined in 1965)

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Calder invites us to have a giggle, but really it’s not a bad list at all, and compared with the (cough) ‘futurists’ who have come and gone since, Calder and the participants did a good job. Alvin Toffler was repackaging these ideas, particularly mass amateurisation, many years later. As are thousands of Web 2.0 consultants … Read more

Rescuing Nokia’s Ovi: a plan

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Ovi means door in Finnish

It must be frustrating to sketch out a long-term technology roadmap in great depth, and see it come to fruition… only to goof on your own execution. But to do so repeatedly – as Nokia has – points to something seriously wrong.

Nokia spent more than a decade preparing for Tuesday this week, when it finally launched its own worldwide, all-phones application store. It correctly anticipated a software market for smartphones back in the mid-1990s, when it was choosing the technology to fulfill this vision.

That was just one of the bets that came good. Leafing through old copies of WiReD magazine from the dot.com era, filled with gushing praise for Enron, Global Crossing, and er, Zippies, I was struck by the quality of the foresight in a cover feature about Nokia. (Have a look for yourself.) WAP didn’t work out, but I was struck by particularly Leningrad Cowboy Mato Valtonen’s assessment that “mobile is the Internet with billing built in”.

“The managers responsible for putting together the Ovi Store should be put on Nokia’s naughty step – and left there for the Finnish winter”

And so Nokia has been encouraging users to download applications for users. My ancient 6310i wants me to download applications. Every Nokia since has wanted me to, too. Seven years ago, the first Series 60 phone (the 7650) put the Apps client on the top level menu, next to Contacts and Messaging.

The problem is today, it’s Apple and BlackBerry who have the thriving third party smartphone software markets. For six months, punters have been bombarded with iPhone ads showing what you can do with third-party apps. And yes, it’s like Palm all over again, but they’re very effective. So if Apple’s store is the model, then what on earth is Ovi?

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Unravelling the history behind Google’s Trojan Horse

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When people buy software – buy it in seriously large amounts – it isn’t just today’s binary they’re choosing. They’re buying what they think is a bit of the future – they’re buying a piece of risk insurance. This explains why very mature and well-proven systems often lose out to the Newest Kid on the Block. It also explains the enduring effectiveness of FUD and Vapourware.

And it’s not just software. From TP monitors, to minicomputers, to Novell Netware, recent history is full of examples of perfectly splendid systems being thrown out and replaced with something that doesn’t live up to the billing – and perhaps never will. Which sounds wacky, but that choice is being made on the rational calculation that the software or hardware of choice today won’t be made or supported, or the standards that bind the parts of the system together will become obsolete. (Which leads to the same thing.)

Sometimes a brave company bucks the trend. Most famously Microsoft refused to “eat its own dog food”, and stood firm against the move to client/server computing running PC or Unix-based databases like Microsoft SQL Server, instead insisting that its mission-critical accounts department ran on, er, an IBM AS/400 mini.

But by and large, the strategy works very well for companies that trumpet a “paradigm shift”, or “new era in computing”, and convince people that they own a secret part of the future – one that no one else can yet see. It worked for Microsoft, and Google hopes it will work for it, too. The Chrome browser today is little more than a piece of demoware, but it’s not just about “today”, is it?

Before we see what Google is hoping to achieve with Chrome, let’s take a look at a precedent from history that I find quite spooky.

Old-timers may excuse this brief wallow in nostalgia.

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The Big Switch by Nick Carr

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Nick Carr’s weblog is one of the rarest things on the web: intelligent technology criticism that you’d actually want to read for pleasure. He’s an elegant writer with a waspish wit, and I’ve a special reason for seeing him prosper. Back in 2002 I was living in San Francisco, a city that was in the … Read more