Microsoft’s new product, SURFACE, is a crazy computer with a tabletop interface. Does this mean MS is looking to compete with IKEA? Perhaps, if IKEA gets in to the $10,000 table market. The features on this thing seem too good to be true, but if it does half of what MS says, then we’re looking at a quantum upgrade in how we interact.

Their website says that Microsoft has been working for more than five years on a super secret computer table that can do all sorts of cool things, and you can put your feet on it. Check it out:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqVNAnuQQyg]
It reminds me of the old Pac-Man tabletop games I used to play when I was a teenager — perfect because you could set a slice of pizza right next to the controls. I don’t think I’d put pizza on the Surface’s surface, but they show some interesting applications with cocktail glasses, so who knows?

A popular belief maintains that to do something quickly means to do it sloppily. That’s an interesting insight, since we are constantly being asked to do things faster and more efficiently. Remember the days when we had to communicate by mail, and it could take a week or more for people to get our information? Neither do I, but I hear it used to be like that. The point is that technology and innovative thinking have always helped us do things faster.

The same “speed means sloppy” misconception is now being applied to e-learning. Just like the PowerPoint of the past, people are wondering: “How can e-learning be any good if you have to make it rapidly? Rapidly means crapidly!”

I think this is a myth, and my buddy Tom Kuhlmann agrees. Okay, I don’t really know Tom, but his article, “5 Myths About Rapid E-Learning”, debunks the idea that you give up quality for speed. He breaks down five common myths many of us have about rapid e-learning development. Money quote:

. . . noted e-learning archaeologist, Werner von Oppelbaumer, is quick to point out that crappy e-learning existed years before the rapid development tools came on the scene. In fact, he goes on to say that crappy training existed before e-learning was a form of training . . . I’ll admit there’s a lot of bad e-learning out there. I’ve even created some. However, it doesn’t exist because of the tools. It exists because the training isn’t designed well. You cannot blame the tools for poor learning design. The secret is learning to use the tools appropriately.

Exactly right, Tom! Today’s tools let almost anyone quickly develop e-learning. Just like in the past, however, its the substance, not the speed, that determines whether or not it’s good. The best e-learning–at any pace–has to be built on dynamic design and strong content. Think of it like car repair: If you want something that really works, sometimes it’s best to leave it to professionals. Keep that in mind if you need effective e-learning in a hurry.

Here’s the scenario: You have website. So does your primary competitor. Most of your customers buy, or at least shop, via the Web. So how should you approach your Web presence? For starters, make sure it works better than your competitor’s.

And by “works better,” I mean it makes it easy for customers to do what they came to do. Period. That’s why we use the Web—to DO stuff.

For this year’s annual beach trip, my family is looking to rent a house on the beach. Having spent many July 4ths in south Myrtle, I had some idea where I wanted to stay. I also know the names of the two big rental shops. Time to get online, right?

Today I checked out the two rental agency sites (let’s call them Rental Company A and Rental Company B), and I’m amazed by the discrepancies. They’re especially perplexing when you realize both sites are built by the same company.

Regardless, here’s the rundown of how Company A trounced Company B in helping me do what I wanted to do: (more…)

Here’s a question I’ve been pondering for quite some time: If everyone is acting like the Lumière brothers, where is the Sergei Eisenstein of broadband video?

Let me explain what I mean:

Four days before the end of 1895, the Lumière brothers held what would come to be known as the first commercial screening of a movie—actually, a series of ten short films approximately 46 seconds each in duration, and more akin to a primitive style of reality television, since the language of film had yet to be invented.

The Lumières, considered to be among the first filmmakers, made film history as such. Much more accurately, however, they were really inventors and early technological pioneers; according to Wikipedia, the brothers were responsible for patenting a number of significant film processes, including the creation of sprocket holes for the advancement of a film strip within the camera and projector.

It’s also clear that the Lumières, pioneering as they were, failed to understand that the technology they had helped invent wasn’t just a mere extension of photography, but a brand new art form. Their contributions were incredibly important, but they thought of the moving picture as more of a novelty and ultimately declared that “the cinema is an invention without any future.”

The Lumières were correct in assuming that the novelty of seeing people projected onto a giant screen clambering in and out of trains (as is the case with one of their most famous shorts, Arrival of a Train at a Station) would soon wear off. But it took a mind like Eisentein’s to understand that the invention—the technology itself—had the potential to become a powerful art form and so much more than just a novel technique for recording human activity.

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The stakes can get very high:

The company, Purdue Pharma, agreed to pay $600 million in fines and other payments to resolve the criminal charge of “misbranding” the product

Caveat brandor!

I never saw that famously viral “Lazy Sunday” bit from Saturday Night Live on an actual television. I saw it about a million times on YouTube or when friends emailed it to me. In a way, I cheated the system. I got the entertainment without having to endure any commercial or network promotion. Somewhere, a sponsor is weeping.

In the editor’s note of the April/May issue of Streaming Media magazine, Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen covers the ongoing debate about protecting intellectual property in the days of user-uploaded video sites like YouTube and Joost.

I’m down with the point he argues, but he cops out before tackling the biggest piece: monetization. He writes:

Heaven knows that the ability to catch clips from Comedy Central’s The Daily Show and The Colbert Report only helped boost the overall market awareness of those Viacom properties. And “Lazy Sunday,” the Saturday Night Live clip that made YouTube a household name in late 2005, brought more publicity to that show than NBC could have ever dreamed of.

True points, both. Then he wraps up with:

But while up-and-coming filmmakers and musicians have seized the web as a means of promoting their art, er, intellectual property, so should the major entertainment players recognize that, like terrestrial radio, the web serves as a way for fans to find new favorites they’ll then invest in either directly with their wallets or indirectly by turning to the “official” as-supported sources.

I think he stumbles here:

1. There’s a huge difference between up-and-comers and major players. Up-and-comers need exposure, and lots of it, so they give away their content on purpose. It’s like handing out demo CDs. So that comparison is off base.

2. The issue with user-upload sites goes directly against Schumacher-Rasmussen’s suggestion. If the major players could control where their content went and how folks access it (like streaming a terrestrial radio station via a radio station website), then they wouldn’t be crying. Control of the content means you can get a viewer to either pay money or watch an ad, something that earns money. The way in which the major players make money may have to change, but they do still need to make money in order to continue making programs.

User-upload sites take away control of the content, and as a result take away the ability to make money, in either the advertising or pay-per-view models. You may be a big fan of free access to content, but I look at it by comparing programs on HBO to the cable access programs produced by high school kids. You pay for one, you don’t for the other.

At the end of the day, which would you prefer to watch?

If you’d like to feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of “Web 2.0″ sites, see this collection. It will be interesting to see which of those sites fail and which succeed. Does the volume of competition and the proliferation of niches imply a bubble? If so, the typically American manic optimism that fuels it is an economic plus, according to Slate columnist Daniel Gross.

And it’s driven by technological innovation:

…the excitement of a new technology interacts with some of the more unstable components of America’s character—boundless optimism, a tendency toward entrepreneurship, a tolerance of creative destruction, and greed—to produce a kind of mania. So, every time a hot new technology comes along (whether it’s the telegraph or the Internet), Americans collectively lose their minds—and then lose their shirts.

Looking back through the last 150 years, a familiar pattern emerges. A wonderful new technology or economic idea arrives. A few good years of solid growth help engender a sense that things are different and that new rules apply. Hype and rosy projections—from Irving Fisher’s 1929 prediction of a “permanently high plateau” to Dow 36,000­—justify investing at stratospheric levels. The trend, previously confined to the business community, crosses over into popular culture. Everyone’s buying stock, investing venture capital, refinancing a mortgage, installing compact fluorescent light bulbs. And then, pop! The bubble bursts, heroes become goats, and bankruptcies spread. As corruption and venality are exposed, self-loathing and recriminations rule the day. (See: subprime lending, spring 2007.) And that’s when all the moralizing narratives about the tragedy of bubbles get written.

But that excitement leaves behind something permanent and useful, according to Gross: infrastructure. And in fact Web 2.0 may be the offspring of the last decline:

The Internet pop has left us with Web 2.0—Facebook and Skype, MySpace and YouTube, and, most of all, Google. Each of these companies either was started or gained critical mass after the Internet bubble burst. Each gained tremendous scale overnight thanks to all the cheap excess capacity built during the 1990s bubble.

Last month, while sifting through all the buzz about MySpace’s planned presidential primary, I was struck by this info bit from TechCrunch:

MySpace has more registered members than Mexico has people. If it was a country it would be the 11th largestin the world.

I knew that MySpace was enormous—but bigger than Mexico?

Then, just last night, per its nod from Ze Frank, I checked out something even more striking: Webcomic Randall Munroe’s incredibly cool Map of Online Communities and Related Points of Interest.

I hear the Gulf of YouTube is lovely this time of year.