LSQHA Blog Reviews

Two companies outside Silicon Valley say they are the first implementors of a new open source protocol called Salmon , which allows comments to be sent over the walls of one social network to communicate with users of another. Imagine being able to post a message on Facebook to "@janedoe@twitter" and then seeing Jane receive the message in real time on Twitter. It's a vision comparable to being able to call any telephone number, whether it's part of your phone provider's network or not. Facebook isn't implementing Salmon, but that's what Canadian open source business microblogging service Status.net and Florida-based stream service Cliqset announced they have implemented between their networks this morning. Think of this as a technical foil for monopoly beginning to unfold. Sponsor Because Salmon is an open standard, any service can implement it without formal business relationships, and Google Buzz is expected to enter the Salmon ecosystem next. If a substantial portion of the technical community implements Salmon, Facebook could be under a lot of pressure to do so as well. (As it was with OpenID, for example.) If you could still message your friends inside and outside Facebook, it would be a lot easier for innovative new alternative networks to lure you away from the one big site that 400 million people use today. The Players Evan Prodromou of Status.net says his service has 1.2 million users, hosts 12,000 sites on its cloud and is adding 800 sites per week. It's a hot little startup that's fast implementing new technical protocols and making high profile hires. Status.net began rolling out Salmon support earlier this month but today announced that it was working with Cliqset on displaying the cross-network communication. "We've got disparate implementations communicating well using this open standard for cross-network conversations," Prodromou said today, "It's the first time!" Cliqset is better at trailblazing innovation than user acquisition but is a very respected member of the technical community working to create social network interoperability. Google Buzz appears to have seen a lukewarm public reaction to its launch but is most disruptive because of its support for open data standards . Salmon is still listed in the "coming soon" stage of the Buzz roadmap . Today's news isn't just about those players, it's about the Salmon protocol that would allow any social network to participate. Salmon was developed primarily by Google employee John Panzer. If you've seen the way that the Echo commenting system displays Tweets, trackbacks and other social media mentions below blog posts, that's the kind of model that Salmon aims to make open source. Interoperability as Foundation for Choice, Innovation, User Control Facebook's near monopoly on mainstream social networking means that users have limited options in how they experience social networking and they have to play by Facebook's rules. Not everyone likes how Facebook changes its rules, especially its privacy policy. Likewise, though Facebook is incredibly quick to innovate, it's generally assumed that a market with more than one competitor gives all companies in question more incentive to try to win the hearts of users. Simply put, if you could leave Facebook and still communicate with people using Facebook (you can't today) then leaving Facebook would be a lot easier and more social networks would have reason to invest in building a compelling service for you to use. If there was more than one meaningful option, those services would compete to build the best social network they possibly could. And Facebook would have more reason to be careful when considering dramatic changes in things like its Privacy Policy. Today, where else are you going to go without losing touch with all your friends? That's why interoperability is important and that's why it's a big deal that two small social networks used by early adopters have pushed Salmon-based interoperability out into the wild. Discuss

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Cracking Facebook's Dominance: New Cross-Network Commenting Protocol Could Be a Game Changer

There are six different events on the calendar this week that are offering you, yes you dear ReadWriteWeb reader, a discount. Social media, music, cloud - six different conferences giving you another enticing reason to get up from behind your desk and do some real-world learning and networking. How do you like your events calendar? As a world map ? As an iCal (and Google Calendar-importable) file? You can also import individual events using the link beside each entry. Know of something cool taking place that should appear here? Let us know in the comments below or contact us . Sponsor March 29, 2010: Portland, Oregon Social Fresh Portland The social media conference for marketers, Social Fresh is not about concept, but focused purely on case studies from the front lines. Learn what social media can really do for business bottom lines. Over the course of the day, you'll hear from 35 speakers from companies like Intel, Ford, Comcast, Nike and many more, as well as keynote Peter Shankman. Register now and use coupon code RWW15 for 15% off. April 2010 Positioning Roundtable During this weekly 60-minute online session, entrepreneurs are invited to pitch Sramana Mitra - entrepreneur, strategy consultant, Forbes columnist and author of Entrepreneur Journeys - their business ideas in a three-minute presentation. She will review the material in real time and provide feedback on each pitch, as well as address specific positioning questions from the entrepreneur. Afterwards, she will take questions about positioning from other participants. Sessions is open to 1,000 people to attend, but only the first five who sign up to pitch Sramana will have the opportunity to discuss their businesses. Register for roundtables on April 1 , 8 , 15 , 22 and 29 . 4 April 2010: Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania ConnectNow TEDx CMU is an independently organized TEDx event that will be held on April 4th, 2010 at Carnegie Mellon University and will feature a full day of talks by prominent speakers as well as recorded videos from past TEDTalks. Confirmed speakers include Jonathan Fields (author, blogger and entrepreneur), Stacey Monk (founder of Epic Change, a startup nonprofit), Chase Jarvis (photographer, director and social artist) and Nathan Martin (CEO of Deeplocal, an innovation studio in Pittsburgh). The theme of the event is "Fearless", and we are inviting speakers from cross-disciplinary backgrounds to talk about their experiences, and tell us a little about what inspires them to be fearless in the pursuit of goals. We hope to spark discussions and foster connections between participants, encouraging aspiring individuals to follow their dreams and make a difference. The event is free to attend, and the application deadline is March 21, 2010. For more information about the event, visit tedxcmu.com or email info@tedxcmu.com. You can also find TEDx CMU on Facebook or follow us on Twitter . 7 – 9 April 2010: Sydney, Australia ConnectNow ConnectNow brings together international specialists and thought leaders in social media, emerging technologies and their intersection with business. Learn how the realtime web, location based services, augmented reality, ubiquitous computing and personalised services are changing marketing and communications. Understand the importance of trust in relationship marketing and what is "social currency". For more info email info@connectnow.net.au . 13 – 15 April 2010: Dallas, Texas PubCon South PubCon , the premier search and social media conference, features the industry's biggest names and key players shaping the future of the Web. PubCon South will include cutting-edge panel sessions exploring tracks dedicated to search, social media and affiliate marketing, an intensive professional search and social media training program, and some of the world's top keynote speakers. PubCon South at Dallas will also hold a one-day, two-track slate of intensive educational training programs led by some of the industry's most respected search professionals. The event takes place at the Richardson Conference and Civic Center. Register here . 16 April 2010: Mountain View, California Under the Radar: Cloud Under the Radar: Cloud is must-attend event for dealmakers and heads of IT from large enterprises, SMBs, service providers, carriers and media companies who are responsible for helping their companies leverage new technology and innovation in the fast-evolving IT ecosystem. Join us for the 15th Under the Radar conference, featuring a hand-picked selection of the world's most innovative cloud startups among 350 top tech, media, telcom and finance executives. For ticket and more information, visit http://undertheradarblog.com . 16 – 17 April 2010: Royal Oak, Michigan FutureMidwest FutureMidwest is the region's largest technology and knowledge conference. Founded by Adrian Pittman, Jordan Wolfe and Zach Lipson, FutureMidwest is the fusion of two successful conferences held in Michigan in 2009 - the Module Midwest Digital Conference and TechNow. Both conferences highlighted how technology and digital tools have dramatically changed the way we do business and the effect this transition has had on companies. FutureMidwest kicks things up a notch with presentations, group breakout sessions, relationship-building opportunities and influencers who are taking action to redefine business in the digital age. Register here . 17 April 2010: New York City Seven on Seven Seven on Seven will pair seven leading artists with seven game-changing technologists in teams of two, and challenge them to develop something new - be it an application, social media, artwork, product, or whatever they imagine - over the course of a single day. The seven teams will unveil their ideas at a one-day event at the New Museum on April 17. Seven on Seven Participants include, on the technology side, Ayah Bdeir (artist and programmer), Jeff Hammerbacher (Accel Ventures/ Facebook), David Karp (founder of Tumblr), Andrew Kortina (of Bitly/ Venmo), Hilary Mason (of betaworks), Matt Mullenweg (founder of WordPress), and Joshua Schachter (currently at Google, formerly at Yahoo, and founder of delicious), and on the art side, Tauba Auerbach, Cao Fei, Aaron Koblin, Monica Narula, Marc Andre Robinson, Evan Roth and Ryan Trecartin. Conference attendance includes a half-day session where the seven teams will unveil their ideas, followed by a cocktail reception in the New Museum Skyroom. Find registration information here . April 19, 2010: St. Louis Missouri Social Fresh St. Louis The social media conference for marketers, Social Fresh is not about concept, but focused purely on case studies from the front lines. Learn what social media can really do for business bottom lines. Over the course of the day you'll hear from 35 speakers from companies like Ford, Best Buy, Scottrade, Hardees, CMT and many more. Register now and use coupon code RWW15 for 15% off. 19 – 21 April 2010: San Francisco, California DrupalCon DrupalCon is the premier conference focused on Drupal, the award-winning open source content management framework that is galvanizing social publishing and web development today. For a registration fee of $195, attendees get three full days of sessions led by the best and brightest Drupal experts. Drupal has been downloaded over 2 million times since its inception, and project growth has doubled annually for several years. Drupal is used to deliver a wide variety of application types including blogs, wikis, community networks, digital media portals, and web content publishing and management. 26 April 2010: San Francisco, California Future of Money and Technology Summit The Future of Money & Technology Summit will bring together the best and brightest thinkers around money, including visionaries, entrepreneurial business people, developers, press, investors, authors, solution/service providers, and organizations who work where cash and commerce collide. We meet to discuss the evolving ecosystem around money in a proactive, conducive to dealmaking environment. Featured speakers include Jolie O'Dell, formerly of ReadWriteWeb, as well as representatives from Wells Fargo Bank, Kiva, SharesPost, Jambool, Founders Fund, Outright.com, SoftTech VC, and many more. Use discount code "rww" to get 10% off registration . 7 May 2010: Mountain View, California ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit 2010 Hurry, register now and save $100. Early bird pricing ends March 31! The ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit 2010 will be an exploration of the latest Mobile development trends - both the technology and the emerging business applications. Get ready to explore, think and create the future of Mobile with the brightest in the industry, your peers! As in our last Summit, The Real-Time Web, the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit is an unconference. An unconference is a participant driven conference where the agenda is created on the day, in real-time and discussions are lead by conference participants. Read about the history of unconferences . We will have two main tracks at this Summit - Development and Business - so the Summit will be of interest to managers, marketers, developers, innovators, entrepreneurs and thought leaders alike. Here's a sample of some of the topics we'll explore in both of these tracks. Geo-location services - what can you do using location as a platform ? Commerce & Marketing - as more and more consumers use smartphones, how can businesses utilize this channel? Content, Publishing & Recommendations - the technologies and best practices. Mobile Social Networking - how to tap into communities on mobile devices. Internet of Things - the emerging opportunities from sensor and RFID data. Augmented Reality - the technology and business applications of AR. Native App vs. Browser Based - Including iPhone, Android, RIM, Palm, Windows Mobile and Symbian. Click here to register now , or to become a sponsor , or to help shape the conference . 11 May 2010: San Francisco, California FinovateSpring FinovateSpring 2010 will again showcase the most cutting-edge financial and banking technology innovations to Silicon Valley and the world. With Finovate's signature mix of short, fast-paced onstage demos (no slides are allowed) from handpicked companies and intimate networking time with their executives, this conference packs a ton of unique value into a single day. Come see the cutting edge of banking and financial technology and network with hundreds of the leading financial executives, venture capitalists, press, industry analysts, bloggers and fintech entrepreneurs. Early bird registration rates are available. May 17 2010: San Francisco, California SF MusicTech Summit The SF MusicTech Summit will bring together 700-plus visionaries in the music/technology space - the best and brightest entrepreneurs, developers, investors, service providers, journalists, musicians and organizations who work with them at the convergence of culture and commerce. We meet to discuss the evolving music, business and technology ecosystem in a proactive, conducive-to-dealmaking environment. Enter the discount code "rww" to get 10% off . 25 – 27 May 2010: Denver, Colorado Glue Glue is the only conference devoted solely to exploring the problem-sets facing architects, developers and IT professionals in a "post-cloud" world. Glue focuses on the APIs and protocols (Twitter, Facebook, Websockets, PubSubHubBub, XMPP), formats and standards (RDF/Linked Data, JSON, Microformats, HTML5), platforms and providers (Amazon, Rackspace, Google App Engine, Salesforce.com, Eucalyptus), Identity Protocols (OAuth/WRAP, SAML, OpenID, SPML) emerging NoSQL data models (Cassandra, CouchDB, MongoDB, Riak, HBase), and other mechanisms that are building the post-cloud world. ReadWriteCloud will be blogging live from Gluecon and CloudCamp, and ReadWriteWeb's Alex Williams will be moderating the "Managing Complexity in the Cloud" session. Please join us May 25-27 in Denver, Colorado. ReadWriteWeb readers can receive 10% off of registration by using the code "RWW12". 27 – 28 May 2010: Beijing, China Global Mobile Internet Conference The Global Mobile Internet Conference is designed specifically for entrepreneurs, executives and influencers to understand and capitalize on the growing opportunities in mobile internet. Though focused on opportunities in Asia, much of the conference dialogue is intended to compare and trade best practices across borders, especially between the East and West. Around 1000 industry leaders from Asia, Europe and North America are expected to attend. The conference will be in English, Chinese, Japanese and Korean. 28 May 2010: Beijing, China Global Mobile Internet Conference - Innovation Show & Startup Competition The Global Mobile Internet Conference Innovation Show intends to be a launch pad for innovative mobile internet startups from around the world. Innovation Show finalists will have the opportunity to present their company to an expected 1,000 investors, industry leaders, and press. Finalists will be judged by and receive feedback from a team of respected venture capitalists and angel investors. The judges will choose one company as the GMIC Innovation Show Winner. Startups must apply by April 4. 15 – 16 June 2010: New York City Corporate Social Media Summit The Corporate Social Media Summit is a two day conference focused exclusively on how big businesses can take advantage of social media to enhance their marketing/comms strategy. Featuring: Practical and relevant insights from peers who have already used social media successfully 20-plus corporate speakers (including PepsiCo, Whole Foods, Dell, McDonald's, General Motors, Citi, Johnson & Johnson), Best practice, benchmarks and practical next steps you can use to take advantage of social media in your business A tightly-focused agenda with 14 in-depth, practical workshops giving you knowledge on only the most critical business issues surrounding corporate use of social media Save $400 if you quote RWW400 when booking. Book here . 29 – 30 June 2010: London Cloud Computing World Forum The 2nd annual Cloud Computing World Forum is the perfect event to learn and discuss the development, integration, adoption and future of cloud computing and SaaS. Building on the success of the 2009 show, this two day conference and free-to-attend exhibition will provide a focused platform for the global cloud and SaaS industry. Show highlights include: Co-located with CloudCamp London Co-located with Green IT conference Free-to-attend exhibition with seminar and scenario theatre Free-to-attend evening awards presentation Hear from leading case studies on how they have integrated cloud computing and SaaS into their working practices Learn from the key players offering cloud and SaaS services Evening networking party for all attendees 5 October 2010: New York City FinovateFall FinovateFall will return to Manhattan on Tuesday, October 5 to showcase dozens of the biggest and most innovative new ideas in financial and banking technology from established leaders and hot young companies. The Fall event is the original and largest Finovate and features a single day packed with our special blend of short, fast-paced onstage demos (no slides are allowed) and intimate networking time with top executives from the innovative demoing companies. FinovateFall is a unique chance to see the future of finance and banking before your competition and find the edge you need in today's market. Early bird registration rates are available. Download this entire events calendar in iCal format. Discuss

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ReadWriteWeb Events Guide, 27 March 2010

It's no longer a secret that China's online gaming industry is booming, and growth is set to continue with companies such as Shanda Games , Netease and The9 leading the way. In 2009, China's online gaming industry earned nearly $4 billion, growing 39.5% from 2008 . Each day, millions of high school students trying to forget the pressures of college entrance exams and young adults discontent with their jobs flock to Internet cafes to play online role-playing games. They're part of China's 384 million netizens , and they sit in front of rows of computers in dimly lighted smoke-filled rooms for upwards of eight hours at a time, living in virtual worlds to escape the pressures of contemporary Chinese life. Sponsor Guest author Joel Backaler writes The China Observer , an award-winning blog focused on Chinese technology trends and consumer culture. His writing has appeared in and he has been quoted by the Wall Street Journal China Journal, BusinessWeek, and Seeking Alpha. Joel is a Mandarin-speaking former Fulbright Fellow who has worked and lived in Taipei, Beijing and Singapore with Frontier Strategy Group. Follow Joel on Twitter . But beyond the Internet cafés, social games have emerged as a convenient alternative for students and workers alike to gain a sense of release and revitalize themselves before tackling the next assignment of the day in their everyday lives. They take breaks to tend to their garden on 5 Minutes' Happy Farm (Kaixin Nongchang) farming game, or steal their friend's car parking space on Kaixin001 's Qiang Chewei. RenRenWang (formerly Xiaonei), Kaixin001 and Tencent's QQ Xiaoyou are leading SNS portals, and are the go-to sites to access China's most popular gaming applications. The widespread popularity of social games is not solely limited to white collar workers in their 20s - social gaming appeals to China's youth, their middle-aged parents, and even elderly retirees looking to share a common hobby with relatives spread throughout the country. The social gaming landscape is developing at an extremely rapid pace, with competition growing increasingly fierce by the day. What Makes a 'Winning' Social Game in China? The most popular social games in China are simple to play and appeal to a broad audience. These winning games take place in easily recognizable environments such as kitchens, gardens and parking lots, and only require a few clicks of a mouse to have a shared social gaming experience with your friends. Happy Farm is the most popular Chinese social game to date. Created by Shanghai-based social game developer 5 Minutes, the game is quite similar to Zynga's FarmVille. Players own a virtual farm where they plant fruits and vegetables. They purchase supplies like seeds, pesticide and fertilizer at a virtual market. While part of the game is about growing and protecting your own harvest, the real fun is sneaking into your friends' farms to steal their vegetables. The game is easy to learn, taps into traditional Chinese farming culture and is extremely addictive - appealing to the young, the old and everyone in between. Which Social Game Developers in China You Should Know About? 5 Minutes (五分钟) , CEO: Shaofei Gao 5 Minutes was founded in 2006 by three college students. In November 2008 it released Happy Farm (below) and achieved immediate success, partnering with leading SNS portals, and receiving a one-time multi-million Chinese RMB payment from Tencent for full rights to the game on its QQZone platform. At the end of 2009, 5 Minutes received $3.5 million in venture capital funding from Draper Fisher Jurvetson . Rekoo (热酷) , CEO: Yong Liu Founded in 2008, Rekoo is one of China's leading social gaming developers with several domestic partners: RenRenWang, 51.com, Alibaba, Baidu and Sohu . Rekoo also has strategic overseas partnerships with Facebook, MIXI, Myspace and Cyworld. Rekoo's most successful games are Sunshine Ranch and Animal Paradise. IsMole (奇矩互动) , CEO: Edwin Chen Founded in 2008, IsMole started off as a market-leading game developer for social networks, but quickly lost its competitive edge to others like 5 Minutes and Rekoo. IsMole's is best known for its Xingfu Chufang (below) cooking social game that has been released in five different languages across seven countries on thirteen different SNS platforms. Kingnet Games (恺英网络) , CEO: Yue Wang Founded in 2008, Kingnet first released Tower of Babel in April 2009, and within three months had over 500,000 users. In July 2009 Kingnet received venture capital investment from KPCB China. In October 2009, Kingnet had over 2 million users on Facebook. Challenges Facing Social Game Developers Social game development in China has entered a period of tremendous growth, but it has yet to fully mature. Companies compete fiercely with varying levels of experience and capital to create the next winning game. Two major challenges have arisen as a result of this environment. 1. Lack of Innovation: There is an overall lack of diversity in gaming context. Copying is rampant amongst competitors - once a social game is proven successful, competitors begin producing their own versions. For example, there are numerous games that take place in farms such as 5 Minutes' Happy Farm: Rekoo's Sunshine Ranch, Kaixin001's Kaixin Huayuan, and Zhiming Xingtong's Happy Farmer. 2. Lack of Continuous Improvement: There is a tendency for developers to stop investing in the game after it is on the SNS platform. In some cases this is due to lack of sufficient capital, while others stop because they're trying to make multiple games to obtain a quick return on investment. This lack of continuous improvement creates short game lifecycles, as user experience ultimately suffers, and a short period of success finally leads to replacement by the next popular game. To win in this environment over the long-term, it is unavoidable that operational costs will continue to rise, as developers must continuously improve the quality and uniqueness of their games to fend off domestic competition and maintain their market share. This Is Only The Beginning Despite these challenges, there is tremendous growth potential in social gaming in China. The first years of growth in China's social game development have served as a foundation. The next few years will see a convergence between social games and 3G mobile gaming. The social game user base that is predominantly comprised of students and young white-collar workers will continue to grow with even more older players joining the crowd. While Chinese companies will continue to face a competitive market at home, the best companies will develop unique winning strategies domestically and localize them to win success overseas. In a recent interview, 5 Minute's CEO Shaofei Gao was quoted as saying : "China's netizens are becoming more mature, they are gradually becoming more accustomed to paying for gaming, and social gaming market opportunities will definitely continue to increase in the future." Discuss

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China's Social Gaming Landscape: What's Coming Next

It's a sunny afternoon in San Francisco and health care is in the air. I'm sitting at the the Peet's in the SF Ferry Building eating a vegan ginger cookie and waiting for Matthew Holt, founder of The Health Care Blog and the leader of Health 2.0 conference to show up for an interview. He arrives wearing shorts and a Health 2.0 t-shirt, and has his dog with him. He tells me he jogged to our location on the bay from Health 2.0 headquarters seven minutes away. It's a beautiful day - and here in the United States, the health care reform bill just passed. ReadWriteWeb's founder and leader, Richard MacManus, joins us, and we dive into a conversation on the revolution underway in cloud, mobile, and social health tools. By the end of the day, we were left with one question: Will health care reform build a health Internet, or will entrepreneurs do it because they can? Sponsor A Brief History One nice thing about profiling the thoughts of bloggers is that they leave a trail to track them down. Here are a few of Holt's social and technology posts on The HealthCareBlog : A new campaign against childhood obesity Aneesh Chopra on txting in Haiti PatientsLikeMe buys ReliefInSite Here are a few of MacManus' posts at ReadWriteWeb that track to health care: McKinsey: Get Ready For Sensor-Driven Business Models iPhone Apps For The Masses: Health & Fitness Health 2.0 Through the Eyes of a Diabetic - One Year Later Health Care Reform is like Ice Skating in San Francisco A phenomenon I see every year in San Francisco in December is the setup of the ice-skating rink. Palm trees and skaters. For children and adults alike, it's a way dream about a past and present, whether real or fiction. And, yet, while good for humanity, something about it doesn't quite hold the spirit of the pristine pond and cabin by the lake. We know, even though the ice is icy, generators are pumping along the edges. It's not quite pristine, and it's not quite ours. That's how health care reform feels - a victory indeed - but for some reason not a personal win. Somehow, reform feels artificial and hard to grasp. A small part inside of me wants to scream out, "is there an app for that"? Is it One Big Health Cloud? To get the conversation started, I asked Holt and Macmanus, "What is your take on cloud computing for healthcare?" Holt asked in return, with a grin, "What exactly is the cloud? Is it a thing, or is it a collection of services that are connected together?" We discussed this question in practical terms Holt : "Here's a question: Will Salesforce's cloud be merged with other organizations' contacts, and will we have shared controls? Is that the difference between cloud computing and SAAS?" We came back to our business, blogging. Blog software like Moveable Type (RWW) and WordPress (The Health Care Blog) generate common feeds in simple formats (RSS) that can be used and mashed up in all sorts of ways. But, that doesn't mean that MT and WordPress themselves are hot swappable, as there are controls, widgets, and other tools that are optimized in the application layer. Perhaps, in this way, EHR (Electronic Health Record) systems can be thought of as a blogs, where people are the categories, and events are the posts. If so, what is needed for health care information exchange is a basic feed for key members of the exchange: doctors, patients, pharmacies that connects new systems on top of it. For health care exchange, connecting patients is so much more than connecting infrastructure, platforms or software. Like all good software, it's about finding the shortcut. We should endeavor to find, build, and monetize the simplest exchange that will drive the future generations of meaningful interoperability. As we spoke, a light turned on. Is Health Part of the Internet of Things? Macmanus : "Health devices are one of my favorite use cases for the Internet of Things. Let's take the example of a blood pressure monitor. It's a portable device that augments your life and well being, and the promise of connecting to other things and streams is real". Holt : " ...and look at these devices closer - we see they are intelligent, self adjusting, and include feedback loops and reminders. Thse devices are starting to connect to the Internet and to people." "And what about the Wii," he continued. "The Mii is already virtual me, and the WiiFit is compelling and network enabled". All of us noted that Nike's work in this area is inspiring - from ease of use to business model implications, there is something great going on with the Nike + sensor and the company's broader ambitions. We realized that technology has already started a revolution in health - and it's getting traction. Macmanus : "I'm fresh from SXSW and have location on my mind. We heard that FourSquare is at work on a next-generation feature on websites, where checking in will connect virtual and real worlds. Also, with innovations like self-tagging StickyBits and Microsoft Tag floating around, real-world augmentation is starting to take form and connect with the Internet world." Holt : "UPC tag scanners, such as mobile phone bar code readers like ScanAvert connect real world things to facts about them, such as ingredient and nutrition information." We were reminded of the Quantified Self movement. This is a meetup that has growing momentum in the SF Bay Area and around the country. It is a place where self-reporters get together and share war stories. Organized by Gary Wolf and Kevin Kelly, it combines what's on the cutting edge and our overwhelming fascination of creating a digital diary through logging data about oneself. And, best of all, the meetings focus on "What did you learn about yourself," which focuses the meetup on us, not just technologies or business models. We learn that our motivations matter. Let's Run it All on Amazon and Get Scale The tools are ready, entrepreneurs are on board, and we all believe that the cloud is here. But, what about the data? That is a tougher question, and a familiar storyline of permissions, identity, matching, EDI, XML - it's enough to make you sick considering all of the potential work to align it all. In the spirit of the shortcut, the three of us came up with an idea: What if instead of connecting all of the hospitals, instead we connected every person in the U.S.? What if we would each have a server in the cloud, tuned to receive and share our own health transactions? This health server on the network would run software to receive files, add streams and connect devices under our direct control. The three of us did a bit of back of napkin work and believe that we could outsource the entire thing to Amazon for about US $1 billion yearly. This would cover server fees and data access for every American to have their own instance of server optimized for transmitting health information Here's our math: 300 million people [multiplied by base fee of $30.00 per year multiplied by the .1 concurrent utilization rate. Build a cloud architecture that reduces the cost by 10 times by leveraging computing systems that spin up on demand and therefore dramatically reduce physical costs. We think this type of math, however crude (and perhaps wrong), is worth thinking about as we spin up the servers for health care reform. We're Convinced: People Eat, Sleep, Pirouette, Take Pills By the end of our conversation, Macmanus, Holt and I were left with an invigorating idea about the new health care reform: It isn't a thing, it's a moment in time. Innovations for health care are already springing out of the Web and will thrive on their own merits, so the job of health care reform technology should be to instigate this innovation, stat. What would you do if offered a fixed bid contract for $1 billion annually to build a new health cloud for America? Who would you bring along to get the work done? Photo credit: abhijittembhekar Discuss

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Healthcare Reform is a Cloud: Interview with Matthew Holt & Richard MacManus

This is the third entry in our exploratory series " Will One Company Dominate the Cloud ". Today we're blinking twice after reviewing the innovation engine at Amazon. The Amazon AWS product is all about services. While others are marketing the cloud with an explanation point, the cloud leader is focused on the raw building blocks. This includes everything from storage to people. Amazon is learning how to find new ways to optimize connections and monetize them in increments of time. Sponsor Amazon, the Verb: Motion When thinking of Amazon as a verb, one word stands out, motion. When Amazon was first introduced as the Internet bookstore, it immediately created a change in the landscape. It seemed like the writing was on the wall for brick and mortar retail, and to a large degree, it was. In a mere 15 years, it has disrupted the entire book vertical with an end-to-end digital system. Amazon is now in the position to completely automate the flow of content bits from upstream to downstream. Now let's look at the AWS services to see if can it do the same for computing. We'll analyze the services Amazon offers and how they work together, specifically in four areas: computing, storage, networking, and people. (Although we didn't include several areas in this roundup, including database and monitoring, we see them as clear signs of momentum and scope of Amazon's evolution.) Compute We signed up (again, as a new user,) for EC2 to refresh ourselves with its offerings and to remind ourselves what it means to be utility-based. Amazon defines workload in relationship to the types of instances the company offers in the EC2 solution. Windows on EC2 is optimized around bringing a three-tier Windows web environment into the Amazon stack. It supports ASP.Net, AJAX, IIS, and SQL Server. Amazon has also tuned it's network and storage offerings to nicely plug into the Windows on EC2 package and offer seamless integration with existing Amazon EC2 features like Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS), Amazon CloudWatch, Elastic-Load Balancing, and Elastic IPs. IBM WebSphere is also supported on EC2 , and hosts a lineup of enterprise computing tools including the WebSphere Server, Portal Server, DB2, Tivoli Monitoring, and Data Quality products. IBM mentions that one of the targets is getting developers to use this model for getting development or proof-of-concepts projects up and running quickly. The patterns for firing up a new instance are defined as AMI (Amazon Managed Instances) so the software has been appropriately targeted the infrastructure instance it will run within. IBM and Amazon have set up Have extra licenses, or want to retire legacy hardware? IBM has an agreement with Amazon to allow you to migrate your licenses to EC2. The EC2 MapReduce is a service that targets large data streams and optimizing processing of these data sets. It leverages the Hadoop Map Reduce project and provides as an example of breaking the computer entirely into services. The Map Reduce service doesn't just host an application stack, but is automatically configured using Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). This is an example of an open-source implementation project (though Apache) optimizing in such a way that it fits on the EC2 stack as a core feature, and it has become a peer to the WebSphere or .Net patterns. Storage The storage offerings include S3, Elastic Block Storage, and Input/Output. Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) has been out there several years serving web based applications as their simple cloud away from home. Customers of it have famously stood up their entire data solution for images and other key storage tasks based on Amazon's S3 service. It's popular, well known, and evolving to include additional features that enforce data level integrity like databases. Elastic Block Storage is another storage service offered by Amazon. Instead of being a simple, writable data service in the cloud like S3, it is focused on EC2 instances that need storage as part of their footprint. An EBS can be built alongside the EC2 instance that is 1GB to 1TB in size and can be mounted from that service. This is designed for applications that expect raw physical storage locally addressed by the server. Network Amazon offers Elastic Load Balancing . Considering Amazon's power as an elastic compute provider, this is a critical piece of the puzzle. Here, load can be configured to continually monitor and self heal across a set of hosts, moving the resources towards optimal performance. The company also offers Virtual Private Cloud , which enables an enterprise to segment access to a portion of Amazon's cloud with access control and security enforcements (such as subnet, encrypted VPN). People An amazing thing about all of these services coming from Amazon, is that Amazon is a consumer facing company with an amazing relationship with consumers. Amazon has the ability to learn about us. We share our ideology (books we buy), lifestyle (products we consume), and financial position (credit cards we use). The company has also implemented an important part of identifying consumers by going deeper with services and verifying identity. The company implements a two-factor signup process that goes the extra step in granting authorization to a user to change compute resources. This second factor gives Amazon some assurance that the person really is that person, because in addition to getting the credit card and password (which are network resources), it also calls out to your phone to verify that the person logging in to the network has the phone (physical resource) at the same time. Here is step one: Signup Here is step two: Verify PIN on your mobile phone: And, step three, proceed (you are now free to spin up resources): When combining these two things together, Amazon is in a position to easily bring its current customer base to a two-factor security solution, and providing a service that meets government level controls. And, with two factor credentials it's less likely that there will be automated bots being deployed in Amazon's cloud by scripts or hackers. Amazon is in the unique position to view the next generation computing fabric from the consumer sales process. Amazon may be the only company in a position to see how it all pieces together, even perhaps a longer view of the future supply chain than its new book competitor, Apple. In addition to consumers and developers, Amazon also has the power of people as resources, with the Mechanical Turk marketplace. Need a simple task completed and queued for the Internet (of people) to execute on? Get started with one of these sample scripts and draw legions to your command. We find it compelling that Amazon has connected consumers, verified individuals, and tasks to be executed on. These pieces are perhaps foundations for a broad appetite for connecting workers with resources and optimizing along with way. Banking with Amazon - or - Selling Time Instead of Licenses The time value of money is the value of money figuring in a given amount of interest earned over a given amount of time. When signing up for the AWS features as a new user, we found ourselves asking looking at pricing options that reminded us of bank products. Earn more by committing to 1, 2, or 3 years. Are the Amazon Web Services an economy, and the individual services themselves currency? First, let's look at Microsoft and its revenue. A server is sold, Microsoft gets a piece by the sell of the OS. Part of this business model is very predictable (company gets x% of all PC shipments. And part of it is a bit lumpy. Where consumers have choices, they may choose to exercise them. For example, choosing Google Docs as an alternate to Microsoft Office, or bypassing an entire OS update, such as Vista. These choices represent risk to Microsoft in its revenue position. Amazon, is increasingly using something more predictable to sell it's services, time. And the nice thing about time, is that it's always ticking. So, instead of waiting for an entire "new PC", or "OS update", Amazon's implementation of selling resources is triggered to contracts. And, if this works, the consumer of the risk chooses the service longevity and the risk is reduced for Amazon. To put this in financial terms, the time value of money states. "The method also allows the valuation of a likely stream of income in the future, in such a way that the annual incomes are discounted and then added together, thus providing a lump-sum "present value" of the entire income stream." What this means, is that Amazon is going to understand value for its AWS users over the entire life of their contract and can start to model interaction patterns against future events. For example, if Amazon knows you have a 3 year contract for EC2, but you're 50% more likely to renew it if it also has SimpleDB services, it can trigger events and discounts based on these service connections. Here we see the EC2 reserved instance pricing chart. There is heavy discounting for committing to a term. From what we see, Amazon will be successful in gaining new efficiencies in pricing of computing resources, like it did with books. We expect the company to successfuly squeeze out hard costs that exist in the middle. We feel that Amazon is the quiet cloud company that you can "go long" with in terms of it's future value. Like the market itself, Amazon is a prime innovator in sharing the future into the terms of the present. Will cloud computing re-factor how we look at the technology stack for good, and will "payment" be in the middle? If so, is time the business model? Photo credit: wwworks Discuss

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Rulers of the Cloud: Will Amazon's Computing Fabric Become a New Economy?