I got a nice email from Sanj Kharbanda at Wordsworth. They're right in the middle of this fire I started, and they're handling it in an admirably direct and honest way. For evidence, look at the what they wrote to Joel Spolsky.

It was interesting news to me that they were online two years before Amazon. Wow. To answer the obvious question, Sanj writes, "The only reason I can come up with it the same reason Wordsworth books has never tried to "chain" itself...we are an independent store that tries to keep the "community store" ethic and we were afraid we would loose that."

And ya know what? We all would have lost it. Thanks for saving the store, guys.

Same thing happened out here with Peets Coffee & Tea. As I understand it, the Starbucks founders came out of Peets, which has always set the high java mark for coffee house quality, at least here in the Bay Area. Today Peets is still the best, by far, and they have just a handful of stores. I've been at several, and they're all just as good as the first one in Berkeley, which I discovered when I came to California in 1985. By then it had been around almost 20 years.

Great coffee. My current fave: the Garuda blend.

With two people you just get an argument. With a mob you get democracy.

Scott Reents and Mike Weiksner of The Democracy Project, who were extremely helpful to me a couple weeks back when I needed some background for a speech I was giving, wrote to announce the launch of Quorum.org, their new online town hall. It's kinda The People's Weblog. It's up and it's working.

They use some kind of collaborative filtering. After filling out a mercifully brief questionaire, I find that I'm classed as a "pro-business progressive." Well, I'm also pro-sex and pro-crastination. Which is probably why I never get around to crastinating.

Anyway, it looks like a good site.

At least it's publicity

One prevailing wrong idea about open source software is that you can't get paid for writing it. For most of the last year, CoSource and SourceXchange have been creating markets where buyers and sellers of open source programming can find each other and do business. Back in May I interviewed the two companies' respective progenitors, Brian Behlendorf and Bernie Thompson, plus Wayne Caccamo of Hewlett-Packard, who came up with the idea for SourceXchange and brought it to Brian and others at O'Reilly. That interview is at the Linux Journal site.

I bring it up now because Thomas E. Weber took notice of the same phenomenon, and wrote about it today in his e-World column, which runs on the front page of the Marketplace section of The Wall Street Journal (for subscribers, here's the link).

It's not a rave, but it's fair.

Radio Redux

Dave has a nice piece on Vin Scelsa, a veteran New York disc jockey who I remember from when he was on WFMU/91.1 — "Free Form Radio" — out of Upsala College in Orange, New Jersey, in the late '60s. 'FMU had an awful signal (in one direction — mine — its signal slammed straight into a water tank only a few feet from the transmitting antenna) and a completely wild attitude, but it was the first and best of its type, which was basically a bunch of folks you liked playing music you liked. And Vin was the best of that breed. He went from there to WPLJ in New York, as I recall, and has kicked around New York FM ever since. Hearing he's still active gives me hope.

Also makes me realize that weblogs are a lot like free form radio. It doesn't give you that revolutionary rush that comes from occupying the neglected student station at a clueless college (which was what made WFMU possible), but the feeling of being On The Air is pretty much the same. The rest of my work is the records I play. I come here to talk between songs.

Eat your vendor

Don Marti just pointed me to this extremely funny piece at SFBG.com, the Web site of the San Franciso Bay Guardian. That site is a lot funnier, seems to me, than the paper. Or maybe it's just seeing "free market cannibalism" in a headline.

Anyway, the piece is about bad customer service at The Gap. All it lacks is a link to Gapsucks.org

Watch this hack

IBM has embedded Linux in a wristwatch, Reuters says. They talk about an IBM statement, but the "journalist" link at the IBM site goes to a 404. Bummer.

Swim in Sync

This morning Jesse Berst suggests that the next Microsoft-grade (i.e. ubiquitous) platform will be built on synchronization. He goes on to credit two companies with paving the way. Those companies are FusionOne and Roku.

[Disclaimer: I have no less than two close relatives working for FusionOne.]

Here's the meat:

• FusionOne's list of supported devices and apps
• Roku's platform and product FAQ

So far, FusionOne supports the most popular OS (not OSes) and apps, but it won't qualify as a "platform" until it provides something more than piecemeal support for non-Microsoft OSes and apps. But hey, it's still early. I've signed up, and I'm waiting to hear when they're ready with Mac and Linux support. To their credit, I get emails with progress reports. This is encouraging.

Roku's site reads like it was written by BuzzPhraser. I can find no technical information whatsoever. They have a press release that says software can be downloaded from the site, but ... where? How? I have no idea. They talk up Java, Python, XML and SOAP, but what do they do with them? Clues are welcome.

Meanwhile, the Web continues to feature a huge lack of directory infrastructure. We have domain names. That's it. Everything to the right of the next / is a haystack. No email app, cell phone or other hand-hyeld device is built to share directory info with anything but their own kind. It's a huge mess. When serious infrastructure comes along, it will express and embody the virtues that uncredited programmers (not companies that want to "own" ubiquity) built into the Net in the first place:

1. Nobody owns it;
2. Everybody can use it; and
3. Everybody can improve it.

Microsoft's .Net strategy looks like a move in this direction, but it smells uncomfortable with virtue #1 (and it doesn't have to be — those virtues are themselves what qualifies the Net as a ubiquitous platform).

What FusionOne does will be terrific, once it supports enough OSes, apps and devices. What Roku does... I have no idea.

By the way, I tried to post a talkback &:151; my first — to Jesse Berst's page, but went straight to the broken link page.

Markets are Technography

Last week I talked with Bernie DeKoven on the cell phone from Goleta to King City, while driving back home from Santa Barbara. I think that was more than a hundred miles. It was a long, terrific and much overdue conversation.

Bernie, who created the concept of Technography, and (I believe I have this right) co-conspired with Dave Winer to create the presentation category (which left Microsoft unencumbered by patents) by giving us all the concept of turning outlines into bullet charts, has been steadily improving CoWorking.com.

If Bernie had been technographing my conversation with Dave a day or two earlier, it would have made starting today's fires even easier. I probably would have also had an article or two out of it.

Technography has always been an extremely useful concept. It should be making Bernie rich. Instead, it's just made him fun. Plus influential and stuff like that.

Anyway, he's an ace and a True Original. So hire his ass.

To make that easier, read Of Magic and Meetings, which I am humbly pleased to see was informed by the very conversation I just mentioned.

Then contrast this...

The magic weÕre attributing to the business meeting is similar in almost every way to that reported by Bill Russell when recounting moments of shared excellence during a game of basketball:

ÒThe game would move so quickly that every fake, cut and pass would be surprising, and yet nothing could surprise me. Even before the other team brought the ball in bounds, I could feel it so keenly that I'd want to shout to my teammates, "It's coming there!" -- except that I knew everything would change if it did. My premonitions would be consistently correct, and I always felt then that I not only knew all the Celtics by heart but also all the opposing players, and they knew me. There have been many times in my career when I felt moved or joyful, but these were the moments when I had chills pulsing up and down my spine.Ó (Bill Russell, Second Wind: The Memoirs of an Opinionated Man, Random House, 1979)

... which Bernie posits as an ideal for business meetings, with this...

They overflowed with ideas about how we might 'work together'; it was a free-for-all of notions and ideas and opportunities for all. I left the meeting with point people assigned and follow-up steps in place.

"Thank you," I told Spain. "I appreciate that. they seemed really receptive."

"'You'll never hear from them again,'"he said.

... from Michael Wolff's Burn Rate.

Which would you rather have?

That's why you need Bernie.

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http://www.scripting.com/2000/08/07

Nice try, but it should really be:

http://scriptingnews.userland.com/backissues/2000/08/07

Dave ought to get a redirect up, it's pretty confusing. Just thought I'd let you know.

Also, what's with all the links to (Empty Reference!)? Is it something Manila adds or are you just waiting to add a link in?

Thanks, Aaron.

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Doc, I agree with that statement. I would love to be an Amazon customer and promoter again.

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Okay, my logic may be circular. But anything the USPTO says is a is a patent until a court rules otherwise or the office changes its mind in some legally binding manner.

For Amazon.com to not pursue limited innovations - and let's be clear on that - in the realm of business model patents is for them to throw away a current economic advantage.

I don't like it. But it's the current reality.

Now on the limited innovation front, I am really sick and tired of reading about the "associates" patent and "one-click" patent as if they are monolithic. They are not. Read the patents. The supported claims involve a fairly discrete and specific set of steps as befits a patent. Amazon.com claims innovation, uniqueness, and non-obviousness about certain methods of implementation of these two ideas.

It doesn't matter who came up with them first. Many many many patents rely on expanding prior art in non-obvious ways. (For instance, NO ONE had or has a patent on the paper clip. There were original patents followed by reams and reams of new ones over the last 100-plus years. Does a square paper clip truly innovate? Dunno. But it's patentable, and it's a reasonable case to be made that it's discrete and non-obvious.)

Anyway, I want to urge clarity of thought and expression over this matter. I believe Amazon.com is acting correctly within the constraints of current USPTO guidelines coupled with a capitalist economy.

I also think that Jeff Bezos is a kind, decent, smart guy, whose intellect and ethics I respect, so it's hard for me to see him as a ravening fiend devouring business left and right. That's my bias.

But his move to work with Tim O'Reilly and others to try to essentially remove the current benefit of business model patents and to increase the amount of available prior art are both good faith efforts to change the system from within.

I own maybe 10 shares of Amazon.com in an IRA. As a tiny tiny tiny shareholder, I *do* want them to pursue these patents even as I want the system to change to prevent it from happening again.

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(netacgi [sic] link)

Let's look at a key independent claim, #10. Distilling out the essence from patent-lawyer speak:

10. A method of selling items with the assistance of associates, the method comprising:
a Web site system with stuff for sale online with a catalog,
a CGI form and interface for signing up associates (including the agreement, assigning a user an ID, storing the results, sending confirmation and instructions),
a method for compensating the associates for referrals.

While they've included some detail about this method, it does not look to me as if any of the components are non-obvious; much of the detail went without saying as web commerce developed.

If each component is obvious and pre-existing, what would make this claim defendable is if the combination is innovative, unique, and non-obvious (and did not exist as prior, public "art"). I don't know the specifics of the history of web commerce, and unless Amazon challenges someone, and puts up refutation in court, we won't know if their claim is truly valid.

But from a brief inspection, it looks to me like Amazon got very broad protection here, and I don't agree with your deprecation of this patent as not that big a deal.

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There are two issues at work here.

1. Claims are merely summaries of the formal material presented elsewhere. So a claim is, prima facie, not the actual claim being made but a summary relying on pages of supporting art and prior art citation later in the patent.

2. A claim is the set of all behaviors made in the claim, so even if you describe something that, in its parts, is non-unique and obvious, the collection may be unique and non-obvious.

With respect to method 10, I do have the ecommerce history behind me but don't let me say "don't teach your grandmother to suck eggs." I'm not trying to be a knowledge bully or one of those guys who claims to know everyone and everything.

Nonetheless, I've known Jeff Bezos since late 1994, known the company's functions since early 1995, and worked at Amazon.com from Oct. 96 to May 97. I've followed and worked in ecommerce from June 1994 when I launched a Web development company.

The affiliate program they developed was unique in its nature and implementation, in my experience, until well after they deployed it - at least a year, maybe more. Many aspects of their system weren't duplicated by others until much later. Most innovation came originally from Amazon.com, but I believe that BeFree or maybe another firm could claim a patent on the method of self-reporting affiliate sales, as Amazon.com reporting was terrible until just several months ago. (They used email to report weekly sales instead of a self-serve feature tied to a database.)

With my intimate knowledge of the insides of their affiliate program coupled with my pretty decent contemporary knowledge of similar systems, I'd say that they can rightly claim that claim #10 (not to mention the others) was an innovation that, before they did it, wasn't done in that manner.

It wasn't obvious, because it didn't happen until they pioneered it. Many followed; they burned the path.

But, let me finish by saying that I think it's ridiculous that a simple set of actions as they describe is patentable. Blame Congress, the courts, and the USPTO. Amazon.com is right to assert their rights to this invention in order to forestall claims against them later that they violated others' rights. This would be possible if they hadn't filed the patent.

Also, Jeff has clearly stated, but not yet codified, his intent to allow most businesses to use these patents they've made; their intent has been (and I believe it) to prevent companies in direct competition with the scale to beat them from employing their business methods. But Jeff has said on multiple occasions that he has no desire to invoke the patent against mom and pops. I hope they codify that more clearly, but a patent (as I understand it) doesn't have to be uniformly prosecuted, unlike trademark. It's more like copyright: you own it regardless of what you do with it, but what's the point of owning it unless you're trying to prevent litigation against yourself or prevent someone else from using the invention.

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