georges' blog

The information in this post is no longer accurate. Phanfare has back-peddled on many of the lame changes they had made. I for one am very pleased about that and say as much in a follow-on post here.

I got this email today saying “Congratulations! Your Phanfare account has been upgraded.” Phanfare is guilty of misusing both the words “congratulations” and “upgraded.” Instead it should have said, “Aha! We got you. You thought we were friends. You didn’t see this coming, but we just [expletive removed] you royal! Ha, ha, ha, ha!”

Just wanted to go public on this one. Phanfare sucks. They’ve turned their backs on their loyal (and very happy) customers in order to try to grab a slice of the social networking and photo printing pie. I was one of those very happy Phanfare customers. Their ease of use was truly second to none. This was a choice feature. I wanted something that Claudia could use easily. It is important that managing your galleries is easy, so you keep them up to date. Phanfare’s client was a pleasure to use. It allowed you to edit galleries, descriptions, captions, everything while the pictures upload in the background. If you made changes on the fly. No problem, the client kept track of it. If you disconnected. It finished next time you’re connected. I wanted my galleries to be ad-free and require no login. They had it. I wanted unlimited storage and user access to my hi-res, full-sized originals. Check. If I wanted to use a custom URL, like photos.georges.nu, I could. Their only weaknesses were that their themes were a bit limited and thumbnails were cropped to a square. Other than that I was really content. I was also committed. I bought the $300 lifetime membership. Pricey, but it was supposed to be a lifetime. Little did know they’d pull the rug off from under me in less than a year.

Now they are requiring that your visitors also get free Phanfare accounts. They’ll need to sign in in order to view your galleries. You’ll be able to see their pictures as well, and keep up-to-date with any activity in their accounts. But this is not how I use my account. This is not how I ever intend to use my account. I’m not interested in trying to get all my friends and family on this service! I just want them to view my pictures!

Well, I’m done with Phanfare. I used to love ‘em. Now I hate ‘em. They betrayed me. I’m going to have to spend who knows how many hours getting my pictures moved over to a new service. I didn’t want any of my regular visitors to get sucked into Phanfare’s new scam, so I tried to move quickly. I got my smugmug account set up and a couple of my most recent galleries moved over. And I got my links at my website updated. All in less than 24 hours after receiving the bad news. Unfortunately, I wasn’t faster than my mom. She tried to check out our gallery today and was greeted with the “You must sign in to view this gallery” notice. So, she’s one of the new Phanfare 2.0 users. So Phanfare’s user stats are skyrocketing, but I predict it will amount to nothing. They’ll have 99% inactive accounts. What good is that?

Anyhow about smugmug. It has most of the features I want. And the price is essentially the same as Phanfare, only they don’t offer a lifetime membership. They have more themes and more customization. That’s good. But their user interface is not as great as Phanfare. Also you don’t get the custom URL unless you buy the $149 per year pro account. I’m not willing to pay $80 per year for that feature. You get a lot more features with the pro account, of course, but that’s really the only one I’m interested in.

Other disgruntled Phanfare users out there? You might also give zoto.com a look. They have a lot of the same basic features as Phanfare, but the price is a lot more affordable–$19.95 per year. Again, like smugmug, their client is not anywhere as cool as Phanfare, but what can you do?

On-demand video is the way of the future and anyone who says differently is smoking crack. I don’t know where Greg Sandoval of news.com is coming from. In an August 31 article, NBC, Apple play game of brinkmanship, he wrote:

…nobody has really answered the question of whether people need to watch longer-format shows on their computers when the TV experience isn’t broken.

If nobody has answered that question yet, then I’ll answer it now. The TV experience is broken, badly. Sure there are still armies of people who will uncritically be spoon-fed unsolicited advertising while their televisions are on practically 24/7, however, there is an increasing number of people who are turning off their TV’s altogether and choosing deliberately and consciously what media and advertising they will consume. People are buying DVDs of movies and favorite TV shows. Many people illegally download shows via BitTorrent or other file-sharing apps. I don’t know what the numbers are, but for decades people have recorded TV shows on video cassettes and watched them later fast-forwarding through the commercials. We did this for years when the best TV was Fox Sunday night, with the Simpsons followed by the X-Files. Sunday evening we were generally in church. Thanks to programmable VCRs, we were free to schedule our lives as we saw fit, rather than let the networks do it for us. The birth of Tivo and other genius PVRs were an inevitable evolution from the crude VCR. They allow viewers to watch what they want, when they want, and commercial-free. Now, there are online services, like Apple iTunes and Joost, where people can legally purchase and download movies and TV shows commercial free.

I firmly believe that writers, directors, actors and everybody involved in making quality movies and TV shows deserve to get paid. (Just a point of clarification, yes, there is such a thing as a quality TV show. I haven’t really felt this way since David Duchovny left the X-Files, but Lost brought me back around. This is another post though.) So, since these people deserve to get paid, but many of us hate the commercial interruptions–passionately–and we are skipping the commercials any way we can, I’d say the TV experience is broken. It only makes sense that those of us who are happy to pay for the entertainment we consume have legitimate avenues by which to obtain our favorite programming. Since Apple is the leading distributor of legal media downloads it is reasonable for major media outlets to partner with them. They should have multiple channel partners. But for NBC to cut off Apple is just plain stupid and demonstrates how they are mired in a 20th century paradigm.

My post is in danger of going off in another direction here. Essentially, what is NBC about? Are they about creating quality programming? No, they are about selling advertising time. That is it. The only reason there is competition to create “quality” programming is that the better the programs, the greater the number of viewers, and the more we can charge the advertisers for time. Who are NBC’s customers? You and other viewers? Bah! Do not kid yourselves. The advertisers are the only customers NBC cares about. Viewers are like subjects in a scientific experiment. “How can we keep these laboratory animals glued to the TV screen?” That is all they care about. “But, what about ‘educational programming’ and the news?” you ask. Again, don’t kid yourselves. It’s all entertainment. The news is entertainment. There is no analysis. There is only sensationalism. However, every once in a while, by accident, they get the right people together and they actually produce something halfway decent. (Understand that this is completely different from movies, where their revenue directly correlates to how many people are willing pay to watch the show.) Also, don’t misunderstand me, NBC is not alone here. ALL the major networks operate this way.

So, now you see. NBC and the other networks are not really interested in producing and selling quality programs they are only interested in selling advertising time. NBC is clearly unwilling to observe the signs of the times and the mass migration away from commercial television. They think that if they pretend that people still only want broadcast television where they decide what you will see and when that that will make it so. They long for the good old days, but those days are fading. It is true that youtube is not a TV killer. Nor is iTunes. But, increasingly, my generation and younger will be ditching their TV’s. Our family has not had cable or satellite TV in years. We have never had more than one TV set. Now we don’t even have one. We only have a projector that we use for DVDs and streaming media. We have several PCs. Practically one for every one in the house. And we are not alone. I guarantee that in the not too distant future, the majority of Westerners will be consuming their video entertainment on-demand, fee for service, and commercial free. NBC would be wise to recognize this and continue to provide their content at a reasonable cost and commercial free via legal downloads. It doesn’t have do be iTunes. But, this is the way of the future and they had better transform themselves to conform to that or they will be a thing of the past.

Having just witnessed an interview with Second Life’s CEO and founder, Phillip Rosedale, it is incumbent upon me to finally get to my post about PC Magazine’s recent series of less-than-flattering articles about Second Life. As I recall the word “hype” was mentioned multiple times. The bottom line of PC Magazine’s critique was that the figures that Linden Labs uses for Socond Life usage are deceptive. Currently, the number of Seocnd Life residents is over 5 million. That figure reflects the total number of times that a new avatar has been created. It includes all the people who logged in once and tried it out for an hour and have never been back. It also includes avatars who have the same real person behind them. Essentially, this figure is meaningless. It doesn’t really give any idea about how many people are really using Second Life. Even the figures for who has logged in in the last 7, 30, or 60 days aren’t that helpful, since a single real person may have multiple avatars for any number of reasons. Anyhow, PC Magazine estimated that there are around 135,000 real people using Second Life. This represents a terribly small number of people relative to the PLANET EARTH. Meaning that, by comparison with, say, television, advertizing in Second Life isn’t gonna reach too many people. A business considering opening shop in Second Life needs to consider this. There are only so many people in Second Life. More importantly are these the kind of people we are trying to reach? My guess is that this probably isn’t that great a place for a company like Cisco to try to sell routers, switches, and enterprise VOIP solutions. [Point of clarification: Cisco agrees. See the comment below. Cisco and IBM, for that matter, mainly use SL as a means of adding value for customers though meetings, trainging, tech-talks, and soliciting user feedback on new products.] I mean, is your average 13 year old or your average unemployed, living-with-their-mom, socially debilitated 35 year-old really making decisions about enterprise information architectures? I mean, I’m trying get my mind around what kind of person hangs out in a virtual disco or strip club drinking virtual beers? Are these the kind of people who are likely customers for IBM, Cisco, Xerox, and Dell? Ok, so if you elliminate these guys, oh, and also the guy who owns the Star Wars shrine island how many real prospective customers are there? One PC Magazine contributer observed that every virtual store front he visted–Sears, Circuit City, Dell–had no customers when he visited.

What are IBM, Cisco, and other banking on? Well I think that what everyone is longing for is the next great break through. Afterall, the Internet is now mainstream–websurfing, chatting, P2P filesharing–the 2D web. What everyone is waiting for is the 3D web–the web a la “Lawnmover Man,” “The Thirteenth Floor,” “The Matrix,” or even William Gibson’s pre-Interne, early 80′s, novel Neuormancer. I suppose that everyone is banking on Second Life as the world’s best hope for the 3D web. If enough people get behind this and Linden Labs makes the right strategic decisons, they will get credit for the next great break through for infromation revolution. However, if adoption is not there, then Second Life will just be a ghetto on the Internet, a niche for freaky 13 and 35 year-olds.

I personally am not sure that the 3D wed is really all that better than the 2D web. I mean, I can buy a song or album on iTunes with one click. I don’t think that walking into a 3D music store is easier or more compelling than iTunes. The same can be said for Amazon and Froogle. Also since interaction in Second Life takes place through text, how is this so much better than AIM, MS Messenger, or Yahoo Chat?

The bottom line is that it looks like there are major players trying to propel Second Life forward but for me it is not clear that it will replace much of the 2D web. Its a gamble. Early adopters are staking their claims. But, time will tell if Second Life has real staying power. I’m sure similare things were said about podcasting, wiki’s and blogging and those things are pretty-well mainstream now. It will be interesting to see how this develops.

I just left a very hard-hitting seminar by Gartner analyst, Thomas Bittman–very deep and thought provoking. Basically he and Gartner are predicting that the future of IT infrastructure and operations is shifitng from a physical paradigm to a virtual one. The orientation is basically taking into consideration that businesses and organizations are shifitng to a business and service focus. Essentially business has an “I don’t care as long as it works” attitude toward IT. IT should be invisible.

Now businesses, our organization included, are making a shift toward server and application virtualization. Toward that end we are delivering most of our end user appliacations via Citrix and migrating as many servers as possible to virtual machines. We now have about as many virtual machines as we have physical boxes. In any case, virtualization will continue in the future. Many applications vendors are now also virtualizing thier applications. Java VM is an early example of this, but many vendors are now lookig to run their apps on a virtual OS–a layer of abstraction between the OS and the application–making the application OS independent. VM Appliaces are manefestation of this. More and more vendors will produce their software apps as single function VMs. Here are some bullet take aways from the seminar:

• Business policies driven
• Service oriented
• Reduce costs, increase quality of service
• Provisioning: workload, resources, and identity management–users get/lose access automatically as they come and go
• Availability
• Unified communications
• By 2010 the majority of businesses will have integrated communications into thiet busines strategies
• In the future unplanned downtime will be caused by application failure rather than operations failures and errors
• CMDB (Configuration Management Database) and RBA (Run Book Automation)
• Virtualization
  • Abstraction between applications and OS: SUN containers, MS Softricity, Virtuozzo
  • Abstraction between OS and harware: VMWare, Xen Server, Virtualiron, HP integrity VM, IBM, MS Veridian
  • Appliances–single function, thin/hidden OS, segregating applications onto VMs

• Remote access, software streaming
• Thin OS: JEOS
• Agility and costs: pay for services based on usage. As the business grows the costs grow incrementally. You only pay for waht you need.
• Economics was the only thing driving IT, now there is a shift to agilty, and quality of service.
• Need to have a maturity model, what is your plan for managing this evolution.

There weren’t a lot of major shockers at the Megatrends seminar. Perhaps the most interesting point that was made was that the number one priority for CIOs is how they can use IT to fuel business growth. This is a trend from the past few years. However Gartner predicts that in five years, the number one priority for CIOs will be using IT to grow their customer base and relations. Here are some quick sound bites from the Megatrends seminar:

• Greatest growth economic growth is in the developing nations, nations like India, China, Mexico… No surprise here.
• Economic growth in the west is predicted to be lower than the overall global growth rate. The US growth rate is predicted to be 2.2% which represents a major slow down from previous years.
• CEOs are confident that their companies are likely to experience revenue growht over the next 12 months and 3 years.
• IT budgets will get greater scrutiny. IT budgets are expected to grow 3% globally.
• By 2008, nearly 50% of data centers will lack necessary power and cooling.
• Growing disatisfation with outsourced IT among customers of the top ten providers.
• Prediction for the future: Should I as CIO server IT operations from my responsibilities? The CIO would still be responsible for design, planning, or implementation, but operations would be handed over to another business unit, like the COO.
• CIO’s are asking how do I reduce the cost of IT security. This is heading in the wrong direction. IT security already does not have adequate attention from the CIO.

This is my first Gartner ITxpo and Symposium and they’ve made a good first impression. The main keynote auditorium is very professionally set up. It’s like a rock concert–the sound and video system is top notch with bass you can feel. I am also grateful for comfortable chairs at the Moscone Center since my butt is going to be in one for eight hours a day all week long. In February, I attended the Southwest regional conference for Educause and the chairs at the Omni in Austin were murder. After about 45 minutes your glutes were asleep–it was genuinely hard to pay attention. In any case forget about the seats and the eye candy. The content of the kick off address was powerhouse–attention getting. Gartner CEO, Gene Hall, started things off by telling us that IT was in trouble. We are looking a decline in IT growth from 4.8 % in 2007 to 4.2% in 2008 with that trend continuing for three more years for a total of 5 years of declining growth in the IT sector. Considering that the IT sector is growing in Asia, this is very bad news for IT in the US and Europe. The problem in a lack of innovation and ideas. Innovation is stagnant in the west. Generally speaking IT vendors are afraid to be the first movers… they are risk averse.

Here are a few of the take aways from the first keynote:

• The current trend is for decentraliazed decision making
• IT projects are never finished. Implement when they are 80% ready. “Beta is beautiful.”
• Consider IT from the perspective of business impact for the dollar. Use finacial metric, ROI.
• 30% of all IT budgets are spent at the businessunit level.
• Integrate IT in business decision making–IT is not secondary, but should be viewed as foundational to business success
• “IT has the power to destroy business”–It has the power to destroy your competition when leveraged properly; it has the power to destroy your own business if it is not utilized properly
• The customer must be at the center of decision making
• “Be a hero of the IT revolution.”