Big companies and Lawrence of Arabia

One of my favorite scenes in Lawrence of Arabia is “Chaos in Damascus.” The Arabs have just captured Damascus from the Turks and various civil tasks are divided between multiple tribes. Damascus in the hands of Turks was a pie-in-the-sky dream they never thought was possible, yet they are now all in the great hall trying to organize.

There is infighting among the tribes, civil tasks break down, and tribal leaders point fingers blaming other tribes or things they do not understand. The telephones do not work because they have no electricity. There is no electricity because no one will fix the generators. Finally, fire breaks out in the city but the tribes will not carry a bucket of water to put out the flames.

The Chaos in Damascus scene seems a lot like life in a big corporation to me. Tribal pride instead of a gleaming city. Here’s the movie clip on YouTube.

PodSession: eBay shopping for partners

According to The Wall Street Journal eBay is talking to Microsoft and Yahoo! about partnerships that could help the auction giant better compete against Google and its expanding offerings. EBay is a large advertising spender but sees Google’s moves into e-commerce as a threat to its main businesses in auctions, PayPal, and Skype. Should eBay and other companies be afraid of Google as the search company expands to new areas? Is it fair to eBay sellers to exclude a large referral source such as Google?

I think eBay is just asserting itself in the marketplace and shopping around for some better deals with large ad accounts. Executives from Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! will visit eBay to try and calm them down with some strategic partnerships and eBay might realize it paid McKinsey & Co a little too much.

Om and I talked about products we would love to see eBay build and we think they have the unique assets to make it happen. I’d love to see eBay develop better tools for shareware developers to easily list their software on Shopping.com or within eBay auctions, and handle software sales through PayPal. I’d also like to see eBay offer software such as Intuit QuickBooks Online to its power sellers.

Om and I discuss these issues and more in this week’s PodSession, eBay shopping for partners. The podcast is 20 minutes in length, a 9 MB download.

Facebook enters the workplace

Popular social networking site Facebook is moving beyond schools and into the workplace. A new version of the site went live this morning allowing new registrations on corporate e-mail addresses. I was able to signup using my Microsoft address and completed my profile.

Facebook at work

Basic profile information still seems geared towards college students and dating. Members can self-select what they would like to find on the network including friendship, dating, a relationship, random play, or “whatever I can get.”

My Microsoft social network on the site is currently filled with recent graduates who most likely had a profile before entering the full-time workforce but I expect more users of all ages jumping in soon to see what all the fuss is about.

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Sony PSP system update includes Flash, AAC support

Sony updated its system software for the PlayStation Portable last night. System update 2.7 includes support for Flash content inside the browser, AAC audio playback, and channel-level RSS settings.

AAC support means the PSP might soon support QuickTime chapters, allowing podcasters to add images and descriptive text to individual segments. Flash 6 limits the functionality of new multimedia features such as streaming audio and video but it should work fine within websites using Flash for navigation.

SF Tech Sessions: Timely conversations

The next SF Tech Sessions event will take place this Thursday, April 27, from 7-9 p.m. in San Francisco. I selected a group of presenters covering online personal communication in various forms including text messaging, audio/video, and entire virtual worlds. Read more details and RSVP for this free event on the SF Tech Sessions blog.

Participants will have a chance to chat with other local techies and hear 15-minute presentations from Meebo, Userplane, and Linden Lab. Each company has taken a unique approach to online messaging and you should come away with new ideas and perspectives on the technology industry.

Live Drive and online storage

Fortune magazine mentioned an upcoming product from Microsoft named Live Drive in its story on Ray Ozzie this week. It’s compared to Google’s ambitions in online storage and other large Internet companies are starting to think of different ways to search more content online. I think Google’s potential offering (GDrive) is totally different from what a company such as Yahoo, Microsoft, or even Apple might offer in terms of online storage because these large companies sell and help users create large media files. I’ll use Microsoft and its Live products, both announced and speculated, as an example but similar ideas can be applied to other companies.

I start at Microsoft on Monday and have no inside info on Live Drive or some of the other concepts and hypotheticals I’ll discuss. It’s all purely speculative.

Different types of storage

I believe online storage for large Internet companies will be introduced in stages and tied to applications developed by companies such as Microsoft. Each type of content stored requires a little different approach and different levels of involvement from teams of lawyers.

Purchased digital assets

You might buy a song, video, or image from a Windows Live product. Napster and other companies have provided access to multiple downloads of your purchased media across multiple computers and I’m sure Microsoft will offer similar features in the Urge music product or video offerings.

This media already exists online, and may even be in the same data center as Live Drive accounts. You could connect the front-end of your personal Live Drive with the appropriate storefront but instead of a 30 second preview you now have access to the complete file with some DRM limiting your personal use.

In this use case your Live Drive is a digital locker containing things you have purchased from stores owned by Microsoft. They know where the content came from, have a record of the purchase, and there is no need to duplicate the actual file. The service would be authenticated using Windows Live ID to make sure you are the only one to access that data.

Digital content you create

Microsoft has a few applications that create data you may want to backup to a secure location for later use. Your chat logs from Messenger, an audio or video chat, a Microsoft Money data file, or maybe the current health status of your PC. You could backup this content to your Live Drive and there might be an application-specific personal storage area available.

You created the content and storage it online helps make sure it persists throughout time and across machines. You own the copyright responsibilities.

Personal storage for anything

What if you could have an L: or G: drive mounted inside Windows Explorer that was really an online storage service? The concept is not that new, we’ve seen it before with MSN Groups and Xdrive, but the free storage options were fairly limited compared to the gigabytes we are now used to receiving for free in e-mail and other online applications.

You could store a Word document, a PDF, or your entire music and photo or anything you want as long as it’s under your allotted storage amount.

Desktop storage bloat is one of the reasons people hold off buying a new computer. With 40 GB or more of saved music files, photographs, and more, families are paralyzed at the thought of losing all that data when they buy a new computer. Microsoft has a little motivation to get the online backup experience right because it’s likely to lead to more purchases of new PCs to match the new digital lifestyle.

Storage others can access

So far I’ve described storage types only visible to one account holder and hidden from the rest of the world. There is also a need for online storage space you can write to and share with others. Attachments too big for e-mail or the latest acoustic performance of your band in a garage are two examples.

Sharing any file with anyone online gets a bit tricky and this is where lots of lawyers get involved. Are you sharing a Metallica song? A file with a virus? The latest hit movie?

I think smaller companies will offer this type of storage while turning a blind eye to copyright and international concerns while bigger companies work on ways to make everybody happy.

Other online storage concepts

A new company called Fabrik wants to connect a stand-alone hard drive on your home network with secure online storage. Gordon Bell and other researchers at Microsoft are working on MyLifeBits, a lifetime store of everything you do every day including a camera you wear everywhere.

Application-specific WiFi for free

I’ve read some chatter lately about free WiFi offerings by Yahoo! and others tied to a specific application. Connecting a product to an established network of connection points makes a lot of sense for companies with established branding power, and I think there will be many new partnerships to help users of specific applications stay connected on the road.

While there is a lot of talk about companies building their own WiFi networks for specific purposes I think we will instead see partnerships with existing restricted access networks with some advertising and branding swap to offset costs.

Yahoo! Messenger On-the-Road

Although just a survey question with a screenshot at this point, Yahoo! could offer similar partnerships for its ad-supported client software such as Messenger. Yahoo! already has a partnership with AT&T combining high-speed Internet with Yahoo! content and it makes sense for Yahoo! to continue that relationship with AT&T and the Boingo Wireless aggregation business to extend its reach and cross-marketing.

Yahoo! would collect money from advertising within its Messenger product to offset any costs to the network. Boingo Wireless would receive its WiFi-finder bundled with millions of Messenger downloads, increasing its ability to sell subscriptions to hundreds millions of users.

Nintendo DS

Nintendo currently offers its portable gamers free access via Wayport connections in the U.S. and Canada. As of last month Nintendo WiFi had over 1 million users connecting to play online from McDonalds, Borders, cafes, and more.

Nintendo makes money from hardware sales and software licenses and McDonalds becomes a new place for kids to play with their Nintendog while eating a Happy Meal.

Back from vacation

I spent the last week in Maui visiting a friend and having some rest and relaxation before I start at Microsoft on Monday. I spent my time scuba diving, hiking, eating BBQ, climbing volcanos, and watching movies and a few European soccer matches. It was a relaxing trip and a fun adventure but it’s good to be back in the Bay area and around familiar people and places.

I was impressed my the number of enterprising small businesses in Maui made possible by tourism. Individuals would set up a photo area with a few tropical birds and charge for postcards to send home. There were small shacks along the Hana highway selling flavored ice and bottled water right outside someone’s home. People led hikes or snorkel trips with nothing more than a map or a fishing boat and some snorkel gear, all tied into activity booking agents such as Expedia.

I took lots of photos. Some of my favorites:

If you sent me an e-mail and I was slow to respond it’s because I was out having fun.