Recently in Internet Category

One day before US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton's speech on Internet freedom, the New America Foundation has hosted a panel discussion on Chinese censorship of the Internet with Alex Ross of the State Department, Rebecca MacKinnon of the Open Society Institute, Tim Wu of Columbia University, and Evgeny Morozov of Georgetown University. The discussion was moderated by James Fallows of The Atlantic Monthly.

Authority, Meet Technology: Will China's Great Firewall Hold?

For those who prefer the audio, you can download the MP3 Recording of This Event.

Tangos Chan over at China Web 2.0 Review is reporting on a new 1 Billion RMB or $150 Mil. USD fund to invest in free software run by Sequoia China, Highland Capital and Qihoo 360. Note that this is 'free as in beer' free software, not 'free and open source software' such as Linux or Apache or Mozilla. It's interesting to see these 3 particular entities working together on such a large fund for "free software." It seems to imply that the "free software" market in China is at least significantly larger than that fund, and if there is a fund that large for free software, anyone in China hoping to make money on non-free software has to fight all of the current challenges as well as this new 1 billion RMB fund.

Fascinating.

After the GLOCOM event on Oct. 20th, I'm headed to the Good Ideas Salon, Tokyo, where three people I know are speaking. I've known Peter Rojas since the early days of Gizmodo, where I was an early contributor. Danny is also a good friend as is Mark Dytham. Should be an interesting evening.

Just a quick note to mention that I will be attending the GLOCOM Forum 2009 event, as Kevin Werbach (who I know via Jerry Michalski) is speaking.

The NY Times has an interesting article up on Why Japan's Cellphones Haven't Gone Global.

Techmeme and Twitter shows a decent amount of interest in the article, which is news for most people outside of Japan.  It's all the more interesting because NTT DoCoMo have just launched the first Android phone in Japan, and the iPhone 3GS has been somewhat successful for SoftBank.  Probably not as successful as SoftBank would have wanted, but with NTT tied up with Google, SoftBank was smart to tie up with Apple, leaving AU looking disheveled and weak with no significant smartphone in it's lineup.

So the key question is what should Japan Mobile Inc. (i.e. the companies that make Japanese cellphones) do?  Sadly for those Japanese businesses, it's too late to develop a new mobile OS and to try to compete on that because none of the Japanese companies are strong enough to develop a compelling mobile platform on their own (or they would have done so already).  Tie-ups such as Sony-Ericsson have been less than compelling.  So if there's no reasonable way to compete on the OS level (try to convince me I'm wrong), and competing on hardware manufacturing is a losing game due to cheaper production in Taiwan or China, then there's only competing at the application level.  Sad reality.

Time and time again, Japan's lack of prowess in software development (with the lone exception of console gaming platforms and their games) creates a barrier for Japanese businesses to be successful beyond Japan. Takeshi Natsuno's solution for the Japanese mobile industry is to:

"focus more on software and must be more aggressive in hiring foreign talent, and the country's cellphone carriers must also set their sights overseas."

How can Japanese mobile hardware manufacturers focus more on software when they are tied to a schedule where they are releasing new models many times a year? The current staff can't do anything more than what they do now, which is add a feature, add a new piece of hardware, and then recycle everything else. How can the existing developers, who do not make compelling software today, suddenly make compelling software tomorrow?  This is not a solution.

Regarding "hiring foreign talent", until Japanese phone manufacturers can pay globally competitive rates and can draw developers away from places like Apple, or Google, or Nokia, or Samsung, they can't do what Natsuno suggests. I submit that this is a hollow solution- toothless.

For those who are in Japan, and know how domestic (i.e. not international) the 3 main Japanese carriers are, the thought of them effectively competing in the consumer space outside of Japan (especially KDDI) is ludicrous. Japanese carriers are competitive globally in a few areas, KDDI in submarine cable laying via their KOKUSAI CABLE SHIP CO.,LTD. (KCS) subsidiary, and NTT via Verio in the US and other telecommunications subsidiaries around the world, but these are not consumer-facing businesses. These are B2B.

So Natsuno's "solution" isn't really a solution in my opinion.

So what is a solution?

I don't have a quick answer, because it is clearly not a simple problem.  But I do believe that whatever future path for Japan's software development, be it for mobile phones, or other devices, investing more in open source software development is a critical path towards a) getting Japanese developers to a global level of skill, and b) gaining prowess in software projects that will underlie the key devices of the future. 

That Japanese developers already contribute around 15% of the Linux kernel code (self-link) is a great step, and Japanese businesses and universities should be encouraging more of their developers to join key OSS projects. 

I welcome your constructive criticism and ideas on how Japanese companies can be more competitive.  This is not an issue only in mobile software development- this is an issue across all of software development in Japan.  Desktop software and Internet services all face the same problems.

Relevant information at Wired.com: Why Is Obama's Top Antitrust Cop Gunning for Google?

"I think you are going to see a repeat of Microsoft."

Christine Varney's blunt assessment sent a buzz through the audience at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Varney, a partner at Hogan & Hartson and one of the country's foremost experts in online law, was speaking at the ninth annual conference of the American Antitrust Institute, a gathering of top monopoly attorneys and economists. Most of the day was filled with dry presentations like "Verticality Regains Relevance" and "The Future of Private Enforcement." But Varney, tall and professorial, did not hide her message behind legalese or euphemism. The technology industry, she said, was coming under the sway of a dominant behemoth, one that had the potential to stifle innovation and squash its competitors. The last time the government saw a threat like this--Microsoft in the 1990s--it launched an aggressive antitrust case. But by the time of this conference, mid-June 2008, a new offender had emerged. "For me, Microsoft is so last century," Varney said. "They are not the problem. I think we are going to continually see a problem, potentially, with Google."

I wanted to take a moment to recommend a 1 hour documentary, US Now, which bills itself as, "A film project about the power of mass collaboration, government and the internet.

The film is a good look at how the Internet is impacting the way people communicate and collaborate in fundamental ways and asks if and how we might have more participatory governments due to these changes in human behavior. The open source software model is discussed but is only one of many examples used.

I especially enjoyed Clay Shirky's time on screen as he is clearly the leading thinker in this new arena.

Us Now is viewable on the Internet for free (at vimeo).

Google reshoots Japan views after privacy complaints

Wed May 13, 2009 6:09am EDT

TOKYO (Reuters) - Internet search engine Google said it would reshoot all Japanese pictures for its online photo map service, Street View, using lower camera angles after complaints about invasion of privacy.

Google's Street View, which offers 360-degree views of streets around the world using photos taken by cruising Google vehicles, has already run into privacy complaints in other countries and activists have tried to halt the service in Japan.

Google said in a statement on Wednesday it would lower the cameras on its cars by 40 cm (16 inches) after complaints they were capturing images over fences in private homes.

Wonderful news!

Susan Crawford (wikipedia, her blog), is rumored to be joining the Obama administration. What's important about this is Susan is both someone who understands the Internet at a fundamental level (via her time as a board member of ICANN) and also understands the web at a fundamental level. She is also a strong proponent of network neutrality, which I believe to be critically important for the future of the Internet.

OneWebDay Founder Tapped By Obama

Not with a whisper...

I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can't operate in an environment like that. I've grown tired of debating such miniscule design decisions. There are more exciting design problems in this world to tackle.