John Bresee

Every since AOL spammed the planet with discs, et al. there has been an never-ending strata of web users who just can’t seem to get the simplest aspects of the web. I’m not sure if people have stopped explaining it to them or if these things are real stumpers. I’ll try to clarify. It’s not that I have extra knowledge, I failed algebra four times in college. There are plenty of simple things that I just can’t get the hang of, like shoe-laces and brussel sprouts.

For the web stragglers, here are a few simple things:

1. Facebook‘s message queue is not email. Really. It can forward to email for some. But for many of us Facebook is kind of losing it’s appeal. So I never check the message queue. Yet my siblings write away as if my email address has in some way changed. It’s just another private message system, no better than the one at Ebay.com. Worse actually, Mom doesn’t write me at Ebay and the get teary-eyed when I don’t respond.

2. The navigation bar and Google‘s search input are separate things. Really. You can type a company’s domain (company name) in the navigation bar and press enter, and skip the step of typing it into the Google search field and then clicking their number one paid result. Save the world some money and save you time.

3. Etsy is the new Ebay. Sorry Ebay. You had it all for so long and we all miss you.

4. Never reveal anything on Facebook or a blog that you wouldn’t happily chat about with your manager or someone who you may have to interview with someday. In fact, don’t say anything to anyone that you wouldn’t like to share on TMZ or some such thing.

5. Give Your Child a Pseudonym: He or she deserves an ability to make mistakes and have them photographed or videoed and yet not connected with their real name for the rest of their life. We all did things when we were younger that we wouldn’t want to have on Facebook now…at least I did.

6. Internet is to the mobile internet as silent film is to TV.

7. www is dead. Long live direct navigation. When you are typing www before an address your just trying to be old school.  and away from specialization was just wrong. And I wish I could fix it immediately.

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The iPhone is the most beautiful design and business exercise I’ve ever seen. I am happily humbled by Apple for their vision and incredible operational excellence. They saw and created a future of which I hadn’t even dreamed. The iPhone set me free.

And yet…so did Compuserve in its day. Compuserve and the Mosaic browser let me run about the web as fast as my 14.4k modem would allow, from one Star Trek fan site to another. And it became both my vocation and avocation. The iPhone, ten years after I first started working on the mobile web finally delivered on the promise of the richness of the web combined with dynamic community and localization. Thank you Apple.

When we take our first timid steps in a new technology we seek safety, familiarity and comfort; and the iPhone delivers. It lets us safely download apps that have been approved and search around the well lit corners of the nice part of Internet town…but it’s a bit like a cruise ship. You can’t ever really get in trouble. It’s kinda fun for a while, but the captain never invites you up to steer it or do donuts with the thing. And eventually you want to see the whole ocean.

And the Droid…well, it’s like Netscape 1.0. It crashes more than I did in high school, which is to say, a lot. And it lets you get the full unfettered internet, location and community access. Want to download an app that steals your private data…go ahead. Want to download an app that instantly violates federal wiretapping statutes…it’s one click. Seeking something really unsavory, it exists or is in development right now. I don’t even dare to imagine the things that are to come.

The world of Adult entertainment has often been the north star of the internet, showing us where web business is going. Take a look at the origins of most video streaming software or even internet traffic tracking companies.

And trust me, the iPhone’s bevy of bikini girl apps is really not going to satisfy the seemingly insatiable cultural appetite for prurient content. And in that part of the world the Droid wins hands down. The porn world has gotten a seat back in the game.

In the 90s Yahoo failed when it couldn’t keep up with the endless requests for sites to be added to its directory. It was excruciating to wait and see if your site would get accepted and practically business death if you weren’t. And Yahoo was unblinking as they ignored every request for information on how or whether you would get in. Even when they started charging $300 to get guaranteed placement it still didn’t really satisfy a webmasters desire for instant inclusion. Which is why DMOZ came about and eventually things like Wikipedia. The community does a better job policing massive amounts of content then a small group of censors with unclear by-rules.

And the four week wait for a developer to see if their efforts to fly in the Apple world just isn’t going to work. In the Web3.0 world we are being trained to expect real time in absolutely everything.

Android delivers the vicious one-two punch of instant inclusion and boundless content. And that is too mighty for Apple to beat. In the late 90s we ran as fast as we could from AOL into the arms of Earthlink and Comcast so that we could get the full web and not the pre-chewed variety. In 24 months or less the iPhone will be the choice of fussy Meerschaum pipe smoking ascot wearing professors and the rest of the world will be carrying Android 4.o phones that allow us full unfettered access to the world of content and applications.

It seems likely that a wikipedia of applications will come to fruition with a community of trusted testers and a standards body run by the community will come about. And when we see that BBB of mobile web, we will find trust. Until then, buyer beware.

But it’s going to be a cool winding road getting there…filled with missteps, crashes and eventually government intervention.

And Google will become a bevy of little Googlets, split up by the privacy fear mongers. This is the coolest movie I’ve ever not seen and I can’t wait.

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