John Bresee

And apparently my one reader was too busy to drop me a note and let me know so that I could be part of the hue and cry in a vain attempt at pulling myself closer to the dreamy digerati. Apparently someone at WP central had trouble with the “Core Router”.

In fifteen years of running sites nothing good has ever come of monkeying with anything labeled “core router“. If the site is running then just don’t touch that thing. Walk gingerly around it and speak in light tones. The one guy who understands it stopped coming in to work years ago and now just plays WoW in his Mom’s basement. He’s a level 72 warrior and a level 60 faerie named Elf Friend. He’s not handy with light social chat and no longer sees the value of fixing everyone else’s shit when there are real dragons to be slain. Leave it and him alone!

Failed core router companies

• Axiowave Networks
• Allegro Networks
• Avici Systems (changed name to Soapstone Networks in 2008 and no longer making core routers)
• Caspian Networks
• Charlotte’s Web Networks
• Foundry Networks (acquired by Brocade in 2008)
• Hyperchip
• IPOptical
• Ironbridge
• Marconi (still in business, not making core routers)
• Osphere Net Systems
• Pluris
• Procket Networks (acquired by Cisco Systems in 2004)

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Popularity: 4% [?]

Cool, Google’s new UI only shows 39 characters on the screen, including logo, TM and spaces. And I probably counted that wrong. Until you roll your mouse and then the regular UI reappears all Harry Potter and the Invisible Map style. Credit Veruus for pointing it out.

Popularity: 86% [?]

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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Popularity: 5% [?]

What’s a content blob? Oy, well, it’s just one of those made up terms that I use as a placeholder in my head for how dynamic content should work on ecommerce sites in the future. The best example I can see of one right now is on NFL.com.

Any page should be a live application, constantly changing as the world changes…with advertising melded in in such a way that it doesn’t ruin or distract from the experience. The NFL has at least started down the road.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Finally the US cellular world is settling down. It used to be a mishmash of companies and technologies; Analog, TDMA, CDMA, GSM, UMTS, EVDO, EDGE, GPRS, CDMA2000, etc. ad infinitum. But reall it was a silly mishmash of acronyms that brought no value to the consumer other than confusion.

Now we have settled into a simple world that seems to be summed up something like this:

1. AT&T – Its network sucks but they have the iPhone and it’s so much better than anything else that its customers are willing to suffer two dropped calls a week and the insufferable rudeness of not offering tethering.

2. Verizon – It begged borrowed and stole to create the largest network and it would have stomped or assimilated AT&T if it weren’t for those meddling kids at Apple. Its strategy appears to be to throw so many iPhone-like things at its customers that they will be tricked into trying something touch-screeny and that’ll lock ‘em down for another two years until it can build an actual user friendly mobile internet phone. Remember people, it’s not like thunder dome, “Break the deal, face the wheel.” All that happens if you abandon Verizon is usually a $100 charge that you can often talk AT&T into paying. Don’t be a droidiot.

2.1 Yes, I know about the Droids. I’ve got one sitting next to me but Verizon doesn’t have much coverage in Paia so I can’t use it. It’s got some cool features but overall it’s just a heavier dumber iPhone with a much worse app store. Version 3.0 of Android will be an iPhone beater if Apple sits still. And that’s what they’re known for, just kicking back in Cupertino and resting on their laurels.

3. Cingular – Really? Are they still around? Does anyone use them? is gettig a Cingular phone like getting a tattoo when you’re drunk? You wake up and realize you have a symbol for the devil on your ass, but damn, what are you gonna do. It’s gonna take two years of laser treatments to get it removed.

4. Sprint/Nextel – Push to talk? Wow, that still makes me laugh. I had push to  talk when I was 10. I used it a a communication technology that came right after my tin can and string communication phase. It was excellent in walkie talkies in my boy scout tent…on the floor of my bedroom for sleep overs. But it’s hardly the basis for a global communication strategy. I haven’t seen whether Sprint is growing or shrinking but I don’t know anybody with a Sprint phone. Do you?

5. Blackberry users– Okay, it’s not a wireless provider but it is cult like. Blackberry’s are like some disease that we know the cure for but it’s just going to take a while to stamp out. They spread like wildfire through the business world and ironically business thinkers are not real leading edge folks. It’s so painful when some Blackberry user shows me that he can too browse the web. And then on his itty bitty little screen he shows me Google with a proud expression like dog bringing you a bone when you get home from work. You pat them reassuringly and say, “good boy, yes, you’re on the mobile web, good boy.” And then you look away awkwardly.

6. Microsoft –Okay, we’ll save the hardware vendors for another post but simply: BAHAHAHAAHAHAHAA!

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Popularity: unranked [?]

Wow. When Goliath finally decides to step up and kill David you expect some fireworks. I mean Motorola isn’t exactly new at cell phones. They practically invented the Bat phone and those huge things that Crocket and Tubbs lugged around on ‘Vice. So when Google and Verizon and Motorola teamed up for the wireless Malachi Crunch I expected something really cool. Unfortunately the first go round with it suggests that it kinda sucks.

I remember my two year-old son was able to operate my iPhone and unlock it on his own. He was quickly navigating through the interface without any help. I was able to make the iPhone work without resorting to a manual. I was annoyed by the touch screen typing but I got used to it in a few weeks. Already I’m jonesing for my touch screen QWERTY. The Droid is confusing and awkward and lacks, well, UI. As the CTO at my company often says, “soft is hard”. And boy the User Interface just plain stumps someone with my room temperature IQ.

The hardware is okay. The flash on the camera is nice and the speaker is better. There’s a nice use of vibration/haptics in the interface that  I like. And it’s got a nice heft to it so when I finally get annoyed enough it’ll go clear through the window as opposed to bouncing off as the iPhone might.

I will say it’s better. The iPhone has forced the rest of the world to raise the level of their game. But all you Verizonites who can’t seem to understand that it’s only about $100 to break your contract will be happier on the Droid than on the DOS like Blackberry. But it’s no iPhone. The droid is the Corvette of phones…which is nice if you’re into that kind of thing.

The game isn’t over.

Popularity: unranked [?]

(Full disclosure: I’m long goog and aapl).

Two billion downloads. You can’ t really say that enough. It’s hard to appreciate the magnitude. Most of my life growing up I watched the Mcdonald’s sign change from 10 Million Hamburgers Sold to 100 million and finally a billion. Then one day they gave up and just said, billions of hamburgers sold…but that took me from the 70s to the 90s. And yet Apple served up two billion iPhone apps in less than a year. It can’t be overstated, this is the fastest consumer growth the world has ever seen. It’s amazing.

Popularity: unranked [?]

If you don’t have an iPhone then you are one of the teeming masses of the world that has missed yet another crucial juncture in technology. I don’t want to love Apple. They’re smarmy and pretentious in an icky way. Were they on the island in Lord of the Flies they would have been Piggy and that’s no way to get ahead in a uptight society. But the truth of the matter is that Piggy made fire with his glasses. He was damned handy to  have around.

And in this world Apple is quite simply the best product company on the planet. They make beautiful brilliant products. Okay, they kinda suck at customer service and their web site is oh-so hip circa 2005. But when it comes to stamping out a product you can hold in your hand it dwarfs all others…whatever the category. *For all you sad wannabes toting your BoysenBerry Crescendo and saying, “it has a touch screen too”, please, please just shut up and click away on your miniscule QWERTY keyboard. I know, it costs you $150 to get out of your contract…yawn again. It’s worth $150 to stop the bleeding and join the world. Simply put Apple is five years ahead of the nearest competitor in wireless. It’s like Icarus boasting about having Greek bees wax with a one degree higher melting point while Daedalus is kicking it in a G5.

Rather than get your dander up and say things like, “there are 11,000 apps in the Android app store”. Yawn. Apple has sold or given over 2 billion apps. The competition is laughable. It’s like Manchester United taking on my sons team, the Condors. There is no competition in wireless smart phones. It may burst to life again in a couple of years, but I haven’t seen signs of it.

And it’s the App store where the love resides. It’s so good that I check it at least daily. And when I find a new app; in whatever category; my life becomes instantly better in that way.

The momentum behind apple is enormous. They have created a better UI, a better way to navigate the web, a mobile eco-system that works and ultimately the one portable computer that we must all own.

I had a Blackberry for quite a while. And it had as much in common with Apple’s communication platform as my first tin can and string phone. Good luck wireless world. You’re going to suffer for a long while.

*Apple, you suck at mice and that is inexcusable. The Apple TV is cool, but not cool enought to bear  your name.

Popularity: unranked [?]