May 2008 Archives

Each time I've seen the Facebook honchos live on stage, they left me with a bitter taste, confirming that they can't be trusted with personal information.

Now one may wonder how committed FB is towards third-party developers:

Nobody knows how committed Facebook is to improving the platform or the role applications are meant to play in the overall Facebook ecosystem. Signals like the reduced level of direct participation in the developer community, increasingly restrictive developer policies, and the Facebook profile redesign seem to indicate that they are trying to regain control over some, if not all, aspects of application development while maintaining an aloof demeanor towards developers.

It boils down to this: investing most of your man-hours into Facebook at this point in time is a mistake. The potential return on that investment, a year after launch, is a fraction of what it once was. And the fact that Facebook continues to change the rules and selectively break them for their own benefit means the risk is comparatively higher.

Also when Jessy writes that "Facebook was willing to hurt independent developers when it benefitted them", I'd say that with Beacon, they've shown that they are equally willing to hurt their users for a quick buck.

Actually, it is still technically in the future tense. The day the music dies will be August 31, 2008. [...]

So what happens on August 31, 2008? On that day, Microsoft will turn off the servers that they maintain for the sole purpose of validating that the songs that people have already "purchased" through MSN Music are still theirs to play. Those people (hereafter "the victims") will not notice the change right away. The victims will only notice it when they purchase a new computer, or when they upgrade the operating system on their current computer, or when the hard drive in their computer dies and needs to be rebuilt/reinstalled. At that point -- transferring the music files they have "purchased" to another drive or a new computer -- the Microsoft music player running on the victim's PC (like iTunes, but all Microsoft-y instead of Apple-y) will make a call to Microsoft's validation servers to verify that the music files were legitimately purchased. This call will fail, since the servers are not responding, since Microsoft has intentionally turned them off. The Microsoft music player will then conclude, incorrectly but steadfastly, that the music files were downloaded illegally and that the victim is a filthy pirate, and it will refuse to play them. In this case, the left hand knows exactly what the right hand is doing: they're both giving you the finger.

Mark Pilgrim, The day the music died.

I also love this quote :

Bruce Schneier, a famous cryptologist -- or at least as famous a cryptologist as cryptologists are likely to get in this century -- once described attempts to make digital bits uncopyable as "trying to make water not wet."

Don't buy anything that is protected by any DRM that a vendor, anywhere in the chain, can lock up at will or by simply getting out of business.

Think social networking sites are fun and useful? See what happens when things get a little out of control for one social networker who might just be over the whole social network thing. Let the social networking wars begin!

Social Networking Wars by Super Josh.

The first Atlassian User Group in Paris will be held on June 19, 2008 (afternoon, time TBD) in the Publicis building next to the Drugstore and the Arc de Triomphe. The user group is open to Atlassian customers, people interested in their software, and partners.

I'm co-organizing this event with Atlassian and Publicis Consultants.

Program details are still being worked out, but you'll hear about (at least) two Confluence wiki business cases: Publicis Consultants and SFR Service Client (disclaimer: I realized both wikis :-) ).

Seating is limited, so please RSVP on the wiki page linked above if you want to attend.

A Fortune blog cited by MacWorld claims that Apple will authorize mobile network operators to subsidize the iPhone, and move away from their strategy of a launch with a unique, exclusive operator.

IMHO (I told you so ;-), Apple is simply forced by its sales numbers to recognize that the GSM markets out there don't work at all like the American ones. GSM is, to be polite, poorly developed in the U.S. and there's is only one GSM operator in Canada (Rogers, who's at last got to terms with Apple to carry the iPhone). In Europe, exclusive deals with operators are the exception for devices such as the iPhone, and they are significantly subsidized to lower their acquisition price (many comparable high-end smartphones are way more expensive than the iPhone when not subsidized).

So, at last, I may be able to get an iPhone with my preferred operator rather than being forced to forget about it (since the Orange network is crappy at my place, not speaking of their uninteresting plans and prices).