I take perverse pleasure in the times I've been spectacularly wrong. Not just mistakes -- I'm human. I make those every day. But sometimes I make spectacular predictions that turn out to be boldly, obviously, and completely wrong. Three examples come to mind:
RSS. I loved RSS as soon as it hit the market. RSS offered a way to subscribe to a website the way you subscribe to email. It was a great way to follow a dozen, two dozen, or hundreds of blogs and news sites every day.
Around 2005, I wrote a paper for this company talking about how we could take advantage of RSS. I predicted that RSS would become as important a channel for distributing Internet content as email and the web. All RSS needed was some precipitating event, like support in Outlook or Google. That kind of thing would open RSS to the mass market, I said.
Outlook got RSS support, and Google Reader launched in 2005. I thought Google Reader would for sure drive RSS to mainstream acceptance. Hahaha! Didn't happen. I loved RSS, and still do, but it remains very much a niche technology.
RSS received another blow as Google announced yesterday that it's shutting down Reader, setting off a storm of protest from loyal fans, who are acting like Google is going to cut off one of their legs.
And the situation has spawned the inevitable Downfall parody. This video is funny, and it also provides pretty good analysis of the situation:
I don't agree with everything fake-Hitler says. He smears Google+, which I love. I find Google+ to be humming with discussions and interesting people to watch.
But fake-Hitler is mostly right: Google Reader and other RSS readers are like having your private slice of the web; Flipboard, Zite, and social platforms aren't quite the same.
But RSS never caught on with most people because it is too complicated, and too difficult to explain. Also, most people don't have the need to pull in massive amounts of web content, like other journalists and I do.
That last point should be sadly familiar to anyone who's ever worked for a big company. Some companies are blind to developments that come up from the grassroots of employees and small, internal projects. Upper management is always focused on the competition and their own pet projects. It goes like this:
Upper managament: "We need to focus the company on pink, fuzzy bunnies."
You: "Good news! I just happen to have been growing pink, fuzzy bunnies under my desk. Here they are!"
Bunnies twitch their noses.
Upper management: "I'm sorry, but we'll have to fire you so that we can free up resources to find the pink fuzzy bunnies which I am not seeing we already have."
And blogger Marco Arment says the Google Reader shutdown is actually "excellent news" for RSS lovers. The availability of a pretty-good RSS reader for free from Google made it impossible for competitors to survive. Death of Google Reader will clear the way for innovation, he says.
I mentioned at the top of this article that I've been spectacularly wrong three times. RSS was one example. What were the other two?
Second Life. I was one of the people who thought virtual worlds would go mainstream. In retrospect, virtual worlds like Second Life suffered the same problems as RSS: Too complicated for most people, too focused on a niche market of enthusiasts. In the case of Second Life, that niche market was people who wanted to play with identity. That's a fine market -- you'll never, ever hear me diss the Second Life community, and if I'm sometimes bitter about it, it's coming from frustrated love.
The Segway. Remember that? I was one of the people who was incredibly excited about the Segway prior to its release in 2001. We thought it would replace cars for short-distance travel, and transform cities and society. Didn't happen. But the Segway (like RSS and virtual worlds), has a small, but devoted user base, among suburban cops and tourists.
Loves His Segway
Not a bad movie.
I try to remember hype about the Segway when I read the current round of hype about self-driving cars.
What failed technologies have you been enthusiastic for?
I'm thinking as much of information as opinions. It occurred to me recently that I wasn't seeing much news from outside the States and Europe. This was because of the selections I'd made in setting up my various feeds, and they needed to be adjusted.
It's possible to completely overlook whole subject areas, if you're not careful.
magneticnorth - I have tried Google Currents. It's not very Reader-like at all. It doesn't let me click through items one at a time in order. It's more for browsing.
Yes, read a newspaper! Limit your exposure to information, perspectives, and opinions that someone else has selected for you!
Sorry, you've pressed one of my buttons here. The notion that personalization makes people more narrow-minded in their choice of what to read is a myth. The reality is that people have access to opinions across the political spectrum -- far more so than in the pre-Internet days -- and studies show that the stronger people's opinions are, the more likely they are to seek out contrary opinions.
Mitch, have you tried Google Currents? I read somewhere that it's a potential replacement for Reader, though it's only for mobile devices. I wonder if it would be as functional for your purposes.
I love this TED talk by Patrick Chappatte, who described the newspaper (for those of us who may have forgotten) as a "sort of paper-based reader... it's lighter than an iPad and it's a bit cheaper."
"5 Google Reader alternatives: 1. read newspaper by campfire 2. total guesswork 3. make stuff up 4. some sort of hovercraft? 5. bababooey" - @ditzkoff
"Guys I found the best Google Reader alternative: Throw all your computers into the river and come with me to start a new life in the North." - @adrianchen
I do most of my feed-reading on my Nexus 7 tablet, so I need a good RSS client there.
Both Feedly and Newsblur clients are unacceptable. I like to start with the newest update and just tap the next button to read the next one, and the one after that, and the one after that. Both Feedly and Newsblur make it hard to do that.
I haven't found anything else that looks like a likely replacement.
For now I'm sticking with Google Reader and reading it with the Press client on the Nexus 7, and occasionally NetNewsWire on the Mac. I'll revisit the decision as the Readerpocalypse gets closer.
People talk about the death of Google Reader unleashing innovation in the RSS market. But I like my RSS readers simple.
Without any doubt, diversification is necessary. Entering into 5-6 projects that will attract users and build company's reputation is truly an effective step towards diversifying product market risk but entering into over 40-50 projects is a diversification strategy which might not turn out to be fruitful. Anyways, I am merely discussing a strategy based on my opinion which may be wrong. Google's financial analysts may prove it wrong on the basis of results based on factual numbers.
The ThinkerNet does not reflect the views of TechWeb. The ThinkerNet is an informal means of communication to members and visitors of the Internet Evolution site. Individual authors are chosen by Internet Evolution to blog. Neither Internet Evolution nor TechWeb assume responsibility for comments, claims, or opinions made by authors and ThinkerNet bloggers. They are no substitute for your own research and should not be relied upon for trading or any other purpose.
Facebook and Twitter are great for posting cat pictures. But are people really using social media for life-changing communications? Like, if a hurricane comes by and blows down their house?
In a standout presentation at the Jefferies 2013 Global Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in New York this week, the UK government talked about becoming a "very intelligent client."
A consumer business would have to be crazy or desperate to change call-center software in December, the peak of the holiday season. But that was exactly Positec's position.
To help enterprises deploy software faster for mobile, social, big-data, and cloud applications, IBM this week acquired development tools vendor UrbanCode.
Facebook's Graph Search may face some profound challenges and risks, first, because Facebook users haven't been thinking of their posts as product reviews; and second, because Facebook will now have to contend with the social-network equivalent of SEO "gaming" of results.
A recent release of the popular TweetDeck app for Twitter power-users gives new life to software that had previously taken a wrong turn. Here's a quick walk-through of the new TweetDeck, to show you why it should be at the top of your Twitter toolkit.
"Social Enterprise" is an increasingly trendy term, and Salesforce.com has been leading the way. At its Dreamforce conference last week, the theme was clear: From here on, enterprise applications must have social capabilities built in.
Based on reactions in Nicole's Newsfeed, everyone hates this version of Facebook. This should matter to Facebook now that there's a real competitor on the scene named Google+.
Mozilla has a bold strategy to create a new model of mobile OS by making HTML5 essentially a part of the operating system, creating an open developer framework for future apps. The question is whether they're sincerely trying to elevate HTML5 or to get back at Google for Chrome's success.
Google's Chrome and Web Store for Chrome are illustrating a new model for online services, a model based on payment and not just on ads. That may be critical for the Internet’s expansion, but will people really pay?
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
Expert Integrated Systems: Changing the Experience & Economics of IT In this e-book, we take an in-depth look at these expert integrated systems -- what they are, how they work, and how they have the potential to help CIOs achieve dramatic savings while restoring IT's role as business innovator. READ THIS eBOOK
your weekly update of news, analysis, and
opinion from Internet Evolution - FREE! REGISTER HERE
Wanted! Site Moderators Internet Evolution is looking for a handful of readers to help moderate the message boards on our site – as well as engaging in high-IQ conversation with the industry mavens on our thinkerNet blogosphere. The job comes with various perks, bags of kudos, and GIANT bragging rights. Interested?
To save this item to your list of favorite Internet Evolution content so you can find it later in your Profile page, click the "Save It" button next to the item.
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
Email This
