Verdict: The iPhone Is Not Open, Flash Is Not Cutting Edge

Steve Jobs: Thoughts On Flash

.... we met Adobe’s founders when they were in their proverbial garage. Apple was their first big customer ......Apple invested in Adobe and owned around 20% of the company for many years. The two companies worked closely together to pioneer desktop publishing and there were many good times. ....... Mac users buy around half of Adobe’s Creative Suite products – but beyond that there are few joint interests. ...... why we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. ...... Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. While Adobe’s Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system. ....... Apple has many proprietary products too. ..... Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript – all open standards. ...... Flash is the number one reason Macs crash....... Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers. ..... Besides the fact that Flash is closed and proprietary, has major technical drawbacks, and doesn’t support touch based devices, there is an even more important reason we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. We have discussed the downsides of using Flash to play video and interactive content from websites, but Adobe also wants developers to adopt Flash to create apps that run on our mobile devices. ....... Flash is a cross platform development tool. It is not Adobe’s goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. ...... the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short..... Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

Adobe: The Truth About Flash

The Adobe Flash Player runtime was actually originally created as a technology for tablets with touch interfaces ..... For new content developed specifically with touch in mind, Flash Player 10.1 will provide a complete set of multitouch and gesture APIs. ...... Seventy-five percent of all video on the web is viewed via Flash Player, including videos encoded in the most popular codecs such as H.264 and VP6. ...... H.264 is a video codec (which requires a player), while Flash Player is a complete multimedia runtime that can play back H.264, among other codecs. ....... Flash Player 10.1 will include support for hardware-accelerated video playback across devices from mobile to desktop environments. ....... since Flash Player runs across platforms, all of the optimizations made for mobile will also benefit content on desktops, laptops, netbooks, and tablets when they run Flash Player. ........ The Symantec Global Internet Threat Report for 2009 found that Flash Player had the second lowest number of vulnerabilities of all Internet technologies listed (which included both web plug-ins and browsers). This is significant when you consider that Flash Player is among the most widely distributed and used pieces of software in the world. ....... Flash Player is part of a rich ecosystem of both open and proprietary technologies. ..... The core engine of Flash Player (AVM+) is open source and was donated to the Mozilla Foundation, where it is actively maintained. The file formats supported by Flash Player, SWF and FLV/F4V, as well as the RTMP and AMF protocols are freely available and openly published. Anyone can use the specifications without requiring permission from Adobe. Third parties can and do build audio, video, and data services that compete with those from Adobe. ....... Flex, the primary application framework for the Adobe Flash Platform, is also open source and is actively maintained and developed by Adobe and the community.

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The Truth About Flash
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Fred Wilson: An Unassuming Kind Of Guy

Today Fred Wilson has a post on his blog that should have you drooling: Bits Interview.

Nick Bilton
Joi Ito
Twitter Buys An Analytics Company

the company now processes more than 65 million updates daily from its 190 million users

Taking On The Gulf Oil Spill With Kites And Cameras

The kites are flown to around 1,500 feet where they snap images of the area below at regular intervals....... give citizens access to technology that will let them document the effects of the spill themselves. He is putting the kite images into the public domain so they can be accessed and used by anyone without paying a fee.

My last email to Fred went something like this: "Fred, I think sometimes you underestimate the size of your presence in the NY tech ecosystem. You touch so many lives by simply being in town." There is evidence of that underestimation plenty in this blog post.

I don't really like being profiled much. I would prefer people write about the entrepreneurs we back and the companies they build. That's where the interesting stories are....... he got me to talk about being broke right before hitting it big with Geocities in the late 90s, falling in love in college and following the Gotham Gal to NYC, and why my refusal to carry an iPhone is a "political statement."

I am glad I beat Nick Bilton to profiling Fred, although my profile can hardly be called that, it is a sketch with maybe three strokes on the page: Meeting Fred Wilson In Person.

One On One: Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures

Wilson blogs daily ..... I started in 1986, when I was 25 years old. ...... When I showed up at this firm, it was a sleepy old firm, and they still didn’t use computers. ....... My first investment was a company called Software Developers Company. We put about $5 million into the company, and it wasn’t a good investment. ....... I didn’t think I was a good investor for several years until I had to navigate my way out of the software bubble that burst around 2001. When I came out of that experience in 2003, I really felt like I’d figured the business out. ....... The PC hardware bubble, the software bubble and the biotech bubbles all burst in the mid-80s and 90s. ........ we haven’t seen major risky mobile investments, yet. ...... That’s the beautiful thing about working in the financial markets; eventually, stupid stuff happens. ....... (Geocities) .. Before the sale, we were completely broke. We had to move out of New York City because we just couldn’t afford to live in the city. We had three kids, and I was barely scraping by to pay the mortgage. ........ Right before the Geocities sale went through, my wife went to the cash machine to buy groceries for the week and there wasn’t any money in our bank account. I told her to put groceries on the credit card because I knew we were going to sell Geocities the following week. But before that happened, we were living hand to mouth. ........ (New York City) .. I fell in love and followed my wife here. ....... I thought if I paired engineering, software and finance, that would make me an interesting package. ...... When we started Union Square Ventures in 2003, we didn’t envision the industry would be as big as it is today. Between mobile, social, location and other Web properties, these businesses have become huge staples in people’s everyday lives. ....... The businesses that become profitable are largely influenced by the entrepreneurs, and we are largely along for the ride with their decision. But, when companies are not sustainable, we have a lot to say. We don’t necessarily put a gun to their heads, but it’s not that far from it. ....... We looked at Tumblr before we met David Karp, the founder. When we met him it made the entire company make sense. ...... I sat there that morning and thought, hmmm, what am I? And I thought, I’m a venture capitalist; I’m A VC. ....... I’m not sure I could be a VC without the blog. You have to be out there in the hearts and minds of the entrepreneurs, and that’s the scarce resource with what we have as investors; it’s certainly not the money. ...... it angers me when I go to a Web page with a Flash video and I can’t watch it. Plus the whole porn thing. I’m a free speech bigot ..... I don’t like censorship ....... (Chatroulette) ... We met with him; he didn’t really know what he wanted to do with Chatroulette. I was eager to meet him, but after meeting him I didn’t get the impression that he knew what to do with it.

Fred is a nice person. I used that bland adjective on purpose. Even his niceness is the unassuming kind. As for him being not a story, I seriously doubt that. I would rather read a profile of Fred Wilson than that of most tech entrepreneurs in town, but I would rather not have to choose. There is no dearth of space in cyberspace, we can profile them all. Fred is one of the early people in town. He helped set the ball in motion. I once compared him to Scorsese. He is like a really good movie Director, only he is not a movie Director, he is in the venture capital business. He is really, really good at what he does. You can admire that excellence without being in the tech scene. But if you are in the tech scene, you will admire it even more.

He probably says no to 1,000 or maybe even 10,000 pitches made to him to every one pitch he says yes to. If he invests in two companies a year, and he gets maybe 250 pitches a week, even the 10,000 figure is an underestimate. That is the nature of the beast. Perhaps there has to be a better screening mechanism and he should not have to go through as many pitches. (The Panel Pile Up)

One on One: Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Square

co-founder and chairman of Twitter, an angel investor in Foursquare and chief executive of Square ...... The goal is to build another utility like Twitter that will scale to any kind of usage. Anywhere from coffee shops or clothing retail stores, to someone selling their couch on Craigslist, or getting paid back from a friend. ...... The hardware is fairly simple, the software is extremely complex. ...... One of the most successful mobile payment continents in the world has been Africa. ..... Right now we’ve created a really easy way to get the information into Twitter. I think the next big challenge is helping get the information out in a relevant way. ...... I said a long time ago that Foursquare can make cities better. ... Foursquare has started to replace Yelp for me. .... (2010) .. Hopefully a lot more start-ups in New York City. I think the start-ups here are building a really great foundation. .... In terms of technology, we’re going to see a better and more immediate experience around the everyday things we do in life. For example, health care. I expect we’ll see a lot more innovation around health care after the latest initiative goes through Washington.

One on One: Anil Dash of Expert Labs

formerly of Six Apart, which created the popular blogging software Movable Type. Mr. Dash is now the director of Expert Labs, a Government 2.0 initiative that aims to connect United States government projects with citizens who want to become more involved in the political discussion. ....... Apes will always need to groom each other, and Twitter is great for that. So while Twitter is important, a lot of what it’s used for today is not new content. It’s re-Tweeting or sharing links to content outside of Twitter. Gestures like re-Tweeting or “liking” something on Facebook are more akin to applause than to dialogue. I don’t just write for applause, I like to write to start a dialogue. ........ They have iPhones and use Twitter. ...... Bit.ly ends in .ly, which is actually a Libyan domain name. ....... Before Apps.gov, it used to be a very laborious process to distribute applications to the federal government. Now, the entire process is actually more open than the iTunes App Store. It illustrates the huge radical shift that’s happening in what people call Government 2.0.

One on One: Brian Lam of Gizmodo.com

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"Where Was This Google All This Time?"

I went to an amazing, amazing event earlier in the evening (NextGen Africa Forum @ NYU June 14), and I am blogging away, sipping - more like gulping - mango lassi I made. Mine does not look as good. I put too much yogurt and ice cream and not enough mango pulp into it.

You had to be there to feel the magic of the moment. Online video will not be able to replicate it. When was the last time I went to an event in town this amazing? It was that good. And the four people on stage, I had never heard of their names only two days ago.

I was hoping some of the crowd would spill over to the after party, but there were maybe a half dozen people there and I left.

I was a few minutes late. Somebody was already speaking. She was in the process of introducing the Vice President of Malawi. After the event was over, I walked over to shake her hand. I tried to muster some protocol, or at least my version of it, in the process.

"Madam Vice President, it is an honor to be able to meet you in person, and shake your hand like this," I said.

"Thanks for coming," she said simply and moved to shake the next hand. I took two steps back, lingered around for about five seconds, walked sideways three steps and walked away. Then I spotted the Goods4Good leader, the emcee of the event.

"You are in some kind of an ad," I said to her. "I looked you up on YouTube yesterday, and that showed up first thing."

She looked amused.

"Good question," she said.

I had asked one of the questions from the floor.

"Hi, my name is Paramendra. There has been tremendous buzz in social media about this event which is how I found out about it, there has been buzz all the way to The Huffington Post. Until yesterday I had never heard of the four of you; that makes me an ignorant person. I looked all four of you up on YouTube yesterday. I am very impressed with the work you have done ...... My question is, would it be possible to scale your good work, because the number of affected children is just so large, or do we not have a big solution to the big problem?"

Ann Veneman gave the best answer. She said ultimately these problems have to be tackled at the policy level. But Dr. Jane Aronson gave the most heart warming answer. When I met her in person later, I said that to her in different words.

"The take away lesson for me with you is," I said, "you have to maintain good spirits, you have to be cracking jokes, and you have to having good time, while you work on big, hard social problems, or you are going to not be able to do much good."

That spirit is exemplified in Jane's funky green Gandhi glasses. Blue? It was green at the time I talked to her.

A few minutes later when I got to pass by Melissa Kushner, the emcee, one more time I said to her, "I sent you a tweet earlier." She reacted like I had sent her a parcel.

"Thank you," she said.

I made small talk with a few people from Malawi. So I met this one woman from Malawi, she said she did her college in Arkansas. I have been to Arkansas, I said. A minute later another woman from Malawi walked into us. I asked if they knew each other. They said no. So I introduced one to the other. One lived in the Bronx, the other in Westchester.

I told them a Westchester story. A family friend of mine - a doctor - from my hometown in Nepal lives in Westchester, bought a house, is raising his family and stuff. Somebody new from that town showed up in New York City a few months back. He got taken to the house.

"He lives in the trees," the new guy said later. He was not impressed. So much for the aura of suburbs.

I showed up for the event dressed formally. Well, that means putting on a white shirt. Otherwise my favorite form of attire has only one thing missing from what I was wearing: the white shirt. And the tie stays out of range. The tie is the most useless piece of clothing ever. Maybe it is good for wiping your nose or something.

The take away quote from the event for me that gave me a belly aching laugh did not come from the main part of the event, or from the four featured panelists, and this might reflect my tech bias.

A Tom Rielly got to talk for a few minutes towards the end, and he showed eight minutes of a film about the guy who is now headed to Dartmouth College.

William Kamkwamba, author, "The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind," and......
William Kamkwamba - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
William Kamkwamba | Profile on TED.com
African Leadership Academy - William Kamkwamba

So this guy goes through hell and high water, and years later he gets to access Google, and does a search on windmills, and tens of thousands of diagrams show up that could have saved him so much work, and so he says,"Where was this Google all this time?"

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
William Kamkwamba
www.thedailyshow.com
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Employment Authorization Card: It's Here

So my Employment Authorization Card arrived earlier today in the mail. What that means in my case is I can't go anywhere outside America for the next year. As a practical matter, I don't see me going anywhere outside New York City. There is so much to explore right here.

But ultimately I do want to have been to all parts of the world just like I have been to all parts of America. I got time. I plan on staying thin.  

Then I show up in immigration court in June 2011 and hopefully the judge waves a magic wand and turns that piece of paper into a green card. Then I become eligible for entrepreneurship. Before that I get to blog about it.

The next best thing to entrepreneurship is joining a small, early stage team. You can not be the founder, but you sure can be a founding member.

There has been more drama behind this little piece of paper than I would have liked. But I am glad to have it in my hand. Now let's go get a job.

"I will prepare and perhaps my time will come."
- Abraham Lincoln

Lady Liberty Whispers
Immigration Status
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