Cloud 1 ————————————->Cloud 2

Type/Click———————————->Touch
Yahoo/Amazon—————————–>Facebook
Tabs——————————————>Feeds
Chat——————————————>Video
Pull——————————————->Push
Create—————————————->Consume
Location Unknown————————->Location Known
Desktop/notebook————————->Smart phone/Tablet
Windows/Mac——————————>Cocoa/HTML 5

Fundamental Shift in Cloud Computing

FWIW, we believe that amazon.com and Google will both thrive, and remain deeply skeptical about Twitter.

One very interesting development, is how this battle is affecting standards for rich graphics on the web. Marc notes the move to Cocoa and HTML5; we were skeptical about HTML5 but may re-examine our position given the impact of the iPad and the iPhone, as highlighted by this recent post from Gizmodo:

The iPad doesn’t run Flash. If your website uses Flash, it won’t play well on the iPad. Turns out, a lot of people want their sites to look pretty on the iPad. So the internet’s already starting to look different.

One of the more interesting effects of the iPhone was that it drove a ton of websites to format their content for the phone in at least of two ways, and often both: iPhone-optimized sites, with more finger-friendly navigational elements that look almost app-like, and actual iPhone apps. We’re seeing a repeat with the iPad, though the adjustment appears to be less about the screen size than its lack of Flash support, and there’s the fact a lot of sites will be ready on day one. (Though before we go any further, let’s be clear: Flash is sticking around, for many reasons, regardless of Apple’s opinion of it.)

As a result, I made graphical communication one of the central planks of the Systems, Leadership & Management Lab (SL&M lab) that I teach at MIT; as part of that this year the whole cohort attended Edward Tufte‘s program. In an interesting development, he’s been appointed to the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel:

The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board was created by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 with two goals:

• To provide transparency in relation to the use of Recovery-related funds.
• To prevent and detect fraud, waste, and mismanagement.

I hope that what comes out of this is fascinating and informative graphical insights into where the money’s going.

Minard's diagram of Napoleon's march on Moscow

This famous graphic shows six dimensions on a single page.

• Geography: rivers, cities and battles are named and placed according to their occurrence on a regular map.
• The army’s course: the path’s flow follows the way in and out that Napoleon followed.
• The army’s direction: indicated by the colour of the path, gold leading into Russia, black leading out of it.
• The number of soldiers remaining: the path gets successively narrower, a plain reminder of the campaigns human toll, as each millimetre represents 10.000 men.
• Temperature: the freezing cold of the Russian winter on the return trip is indicated at the bottom, in the republican measurement of degrees of réaumur (water freezes at 0° réaumur, boils at 80° réaumur).
• Time: in relation to the temperature indicated at the bottom, from right to left, starting 24 October (pluie, i.e. ‘rain’) to 7 December (-27°).

we are excited to announce that we collared another male [Snow Leopard] on the 25th of February 2010. [He] was captured, collared and released safely…

Temporarily named M7 (light blue on the map), this male is a large cat[; he] weighs 39.5 kg, though lacks any scars on his face, giving an indication that he is a big, yet possibly young snow leopard

Snow Leopard M7

Over the last several days there were, however, four related news items, some of which seem tinged with irony:

• today, its judgement against EchoStar and DishTV for $200 million was upheld – unsurprisingly EchoStar plans to appeal – vindicating the value of the key innovation that TiVo provides
• a couple of days ago, TiVo announced its Series 4  devices: demonstrating the importance of ‘over the top’ video, its new UI integrates this seamlessly into the overall user experience

TiVo Premiere

• a few days earlier, Clicker, a service that in some ways appears inspired by TiVo, aiming to bring a TiVo-like experience to web TV garnered $11m in funding

Clicker

• the explosion in diversity of content and the growth of time-shifting and now place-shifting is forcing cable providers towards switched video, which in turn threatens TiVo’s whole technical architecture because of its inability to communicate upstream

So, what does this mean? Does TiVo win the IP battle and lose the platform war? Do the innovators it inspired arise to eclipse it? Whither linear TV and OTT content?

(Parenthetically, the new UI is Flash-based, but then TiVo does control the hardware platform)

the not-quite-flip phone tricorder Vscan, which all kidding aside is one of the smallest functional ultrasound machines we’ve seen. The goal is for doctors to have better access to specialist tools, reducing the number of referrals and improving diagnoses, etc. — and we’re sure selling an absolute ton of these is probably on the to-do list as well

Perhaps the smartphone, which is in the process of eating the consumer electronics industry is, however, also going to eat at least the low end of the medical devices industry:

Smartphones could be the most important diagnostic tool of this century as part of a revolution in digital wireless medical devices, according to Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist working at The Scripps Research Institute, speaking at the TedMed conference last year. In a video released earlier this week, Topol shows off patches communicating with his smartphone to continuously monitor his vital signs.

• Adobe’s Flash – very widely used (YouTube, anyone), but not (famously) supported by Apple on the iPhone, and perceived by many as a major source of security weakenesses
• HTML5 – being advocated by Google
• Silverlight – Microsoft’s proprietary technology

In a recent assessment, we concluded that Flash was so widespread, and the standard-setting process so slow, that it would be a very very long time before HTML5 became the dominant standard.

An interesting recent development suggests, however, that a reassessment might be worthwhile – we’re always alert for these ‘triggers’ or early indicators of how different demand and business ecosystem scenarios evolve:

Start-up airline Virgin America has decided HTML is “good enough” for animating online content on its brand-new website, which went live Monday, dumping Flash.

…

It illustrates the options customers have between picking the closed Flash – or Silverlight from Microsoft – and open technologies such as HTML to serve content to a new generation of mobile computing devices

Virgin picked HTML to give users of iPhones and other mobiles the option in the future of checking in through their phone. The battle between Adobe and Apple has seen Flash deliberately excluded from the Jesus Phone.

Simhambhatla: iPhone, and other mobile, users welcome

Later, it highlights the value of Flash when you control the hardware:

Flash provides beautiful interactivity,” Simhambhatla said. “We wanted to bring a smoother application experience and modularity and be able to build up an interactive experience for the kiosk user – Flash is all these.

“Flash is really, really good, but as long as you can keep the hardware controlled…If the hardware you are trying to put your product on isn’t [controlled] then Flash is questionable.”

One of the important considerations here is the price point:

• we’re already seeing smartphones on the $99 value menu offered to consumers
• a key and closely related question is how much do these smartphones cost, to the network operators who market them, and to the vendors who build them

A news item from DigiTimes, which follows the ODM and EMS community in Taiwan and China closely suggests that prices may be falling faster than (some had) anticipated, heralding smartphones for the teeming masses, rather than just the technological elite.

Prices for Android-powered smartphones are declining at a pace faster than expected due to competition for orders from handset makers in Taiwan and China…

Huawei Technologies has pursued an aggressive pricing strategy to push sales of its Android phones, especially through telecom channels… China-based telecom equipment and handset maker is making a second customized Android-powered phone, the Pulse Mini, for T-Mobile, which will begin to market the model in the UK in April 2010 with an unlocked price [that] represents a reduction of over 54% compared to … its predecessor, the Pulse, said the sources. Huawei began to ship the Pulse to T-Mobile in the fourth quarter of 2009.

Despite the threat from Huawei, most Taiwan handset makers insisted that they will continue to focus on medium- to high-end Android models to avoid fierce completion in the low-end segment.

This investigation into the remote spying allegedly being conducted against students at Lower Merion represents an attempt to find proof of spying and a look into the toolchain used to accomplish spying.

Read it through for the updates as well, which reflect a careful and thoughtful attitude to these issues.

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