Marc Benioff, Salesforce.com's hyperbolic CEO, has been telling anyone who will listen that the "sudden convergence of cloud, social and mobile spheres" is forcing - and allowing - companies to connect with customers in new ways, and to listen with an intensity never before possible.

I'm sure the benefits of social business are dramatic and undeniable, but am I alone in being totally creeped out at what seems to be an obvious invastion of privacy? I don't know about you, but I'm just not ready for companies - even companies I choose to do business with - to closely follow everything I do and say. Even if other humans aren't involved.

Do You Want To Be Connected To A Machine?

At a recent executive event in San Francisco, Benioff entertained customers and journalists wtih a video featuring Beth Comstock, GE's high-profile CMO, claiming her "core belief" is that "business is social." But she didn't just mean people communicating with people, she also meant people communicating with machines. 

The big question for GE, Comstock said, is "how do we connect our customers/employees to our machines?" GE's goal is to combine data from customers and data from its machines - connecting machines to social networks is very big.

The video demonstrated how GE was connecting jet engines to social networks to alert mechanics of their diagnostic status. "If you're in business," Comstock said, "you need social because it will get you closer to your customer… Feedback - that's a marketers dream."

Sounds great, right?

The Menace Of An Internet-Enabled Toothbrush

But consider Benioff's example of the Internet of Things driving social business. He cited Philips' Internet-connected toothbrush that records the time and duration of brushing. With one of these babies, when you go to the dentist and he asks, "have you been brushing" and you answer "yeah," the conversation doesn't end there, Benioff said. The dentist could reply "Let's have a look" and see exactly how much brushing you actually did.

That thought terrifies me. While such a scenario might indeed help keep my teeth from falling out, it's also profoundly creepy and invasive. After all, what if my dental insurance provider got hold of the data, and decided it wouldn't pay to fill that cavity because I didn't brush long enough?

As Benioff correctly noted, the "biggest part is trust." "With all that data about you out on the network, it gets down to another level of trust with the vendors you choose to let be a part of your life."

I trust my doctor with a large amount of intensely personal information - augmented by pretty specific laws and industry practices. For some reason, I'm less comfortable giving my dentist the same degree of trust. Philips and Salesforce? Absolutely not!

How Much Should Your Shirt Salesman Know About You?

Another participant at the event, male-apparel retailer Trunk Club, is also leveraging user information to help "guys that just dont like to shop" said COO Rob Chesney. Trunk Club's goal is to make "it really easy for you to look great" by not just tracking what he's already bought, but whatever other information may be available online. When a customer contacts Trunk Club, "we pull up this guy and find out what is he all about. We see all his social media info. "It's the future of service-oriented retail."

Not for me.

Chesney noted that having this kind of info could help Trunk Club sell higher end clothing to a customer who just got a promotion - an event it might learn of Facebook. That might not be so bad, but what is the company going to do if the customer gets laid off? Offer condolences and try to sell them cheap t-shirts? Awkward to say the least.

Social.com: Salesforce's Facebook & Twitter Tools

Salesforce also pitched its new Social.com tools, designed to help other companies operate this way. Salesforce rolled out the ability to run Facebook campaigns that target users based on what they've posted and linked to on their own Facebook pages.

On Twitter, the idea is start "buying in the moment" - spreading promoted tweets even as the larger Twitter conversation is trending. The promoted tweet shows up any time someone tweets with a relevant hashtag.

To make that work, of course, you've got to be monitoring all the time. "You can't be relevant if you're not listening," explained Facebook's Fergus Gluster (yes, that's his real name).

Jonathan Nelson, CEO of ad agency Omnicom Digital, said that these innovations are a key step toward closing the loop linking real-time advertising to real-time buying. The key, he said, is delviering "the right message for the right person at the right time."

Ironically, in a small panel discussion for journalists, Nelson noted that the "suppression of advertising" when it's not appropriate is "more than half the battle."

That's a key part of reducing the creep factor. 

Finally, just so you know, I'm not alone in worrying about these issues. Another panelist, Altimeter Group's Susan Etlinger, admitted that "as a consumer, I don't particularly want to be targeted." The key, Etlinger said, is to build a relationship over time and "be relevant when the consumer needs us, not when we need them." 

That's a step in the right direction. But if companies they really care about not being creepy, they'll learn to respond quickly and effectively when asked, and otherwise stay out of my face.

Photos - except for the toothbrush - by Fredric Paul for ReadWrite

As cloud computing dominates more and more aspects of the tech world, similar-sounding but confusingly different something-as-a-service acronyms keep piling up. You've probably heard of SaaS (Software as a Service), since it applies mostly to cloud services delivered to end users. 

But what about IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) and PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service)? Even many tech professionals can't explain the differences without babbling incoherently. 

Fortunately, this new infographic from IaaS provider ProfitBricks does a good job of explaining the differences and who uses which one for what. Enjoy.

Last September, when Apple debuted its new Lightning connector to replace the company's venerable 30-pin connector, I predicted that the move might cause surprising problems. My post attracted a lot of attention and garnered a whopping 135 comments. Many of those commenters agreed that Apple's move - while perhaps necessary, would have significant complications for the company. But many others said I was crazy to doubt Apple in any way, shape or form.

(See also iPhone 5's New Lightning Connector Is A Bigger Problem Than Apple Thinks.)

Well, according to an article by Nick Wingfield and Brian X. Chen in Sunday's New York Times, the move has indeed given Apple's rivals an edge in the push toward wireless accessories (Accessories No Longer Tethered To Apple).

In my original post, I warned that the peripheral market's commitment to the iPhone's 30-pin connector was a big competitive advantage for Apple, because being the one device that could attach directly to external speakers, clocks, stands and chargers added an extra helping of utility for its devices. I said that the new Lightning connector threatened to eliminate that advantage, and that could hurt Apple:

"The availability of all those peripherals, in turn, has helped make the iPhone even more popular. iPhone buyers know that no other phone comes close to enjoying the choices and support that the iPhone has - in cars, in hotel rooms, at airports and everywhere else. By carrying an iPhone instead of a competing phone, they have a much better chance of being able to buy and use supporting infrastructure - which can make a big difference in the overall experience. The iPhone 5’s new Lightning connector threatens all that, and not just for iPhone 5 users."

Sunday's Times' article seems to confirm that prediction:

"Apple’s iron grip on the digital accessories in hotel rooms, store shelves and living rooms is starting to slip - potentially risking the royalties it earns from accessory makers and, more significant, giving Apple customers more freedom to switch to rival products."

and

"Jeremy Horwitz, editor in chief of iLounge, a Web site devoted to Apple accessories, said Apple’s aggressive control over accessories for its products drove many makers to more open means of connecting devices, which helped feed the success of mobile devices made by other companies."

and 

"Fewer people who buy sound systems that work only with Apple devices, in theory, could mean fewer obstacles for those interested in switching to competing phones and tablets in the future."

To be fair, though, there has been an industry-wide movement toward wireless connections to peripherals, and Apple devices are fully capable of supporting this trend. It's just that the wireless world is pretty much a level playing field, while Apple used to utterly dominate hard-wired connections. You can't blame all of that on the Lightning connector, but as the Times pointed out:

"'Even before Apple shifted from the 30-pin connector to Lightning, the market had started shifting,' said Rory Dooley, senior vice president for music at Logitech. 'Lightning came in and accelerated some of the change.'"

As for me, I couldn't get my speaker docks to work with my iPhone 5, so I ended up using a "spare" Apple TV device to let me control the speakers using Airplay. Works for me, but probably not a cost-effective solution for most people.

Evernote, the company behind the eponymous suite of notetaking and archiving apps for computers and mobile use, on Tuesday announced the Evernote Accelerator program to help promising winners of its 2013 Evernote Devcup hackathon (which began on March 10 and runs through June 28 with thousands of participants) turn their ideas into actual products.

(See also 2012 Evernote Devcup Finalists.)

The idea, according to Evernote platform advocate Rafe Needleman, who is behind the program, is to invite half a dozen two-to-three person developer teams from all around the world to come to Evernote's Silicon Valley headquarters for a month of intensive development and mentoring - along with team building and technical support. "We want to take these great ideas and help them go from the idea stage to the sustainable business stage," Needleman said.

Honda & DOCOMO Will Sponsor Evernote Accelerator Teams

Honda Silicon Valley Lab and DOCOMO Innovation Ventures will sponsor teams in two of the categories, focused on in-car apps and mobile apps, respectively. While Needleman wouldn't say how much the sponsors are contributed, he said they'll be rewarded with visibility into global entrepreneurship as well as media attention (you're reading this, right?) and the ability to work with developer teams to create cool apps.

Needleman said more sponsors are expected to join the program, but not all the teams will have specific sponsors - some will be chosen and sponsored by Evernote itself.

Not all the Devcup winners will be at the appropriate development stage for the Accelerator, Needleman explained, but Evernote will invite appropriate participants from the pool of winners. "They must win a [Devcup] prize to be invited."

Evernote will fly the teams selected for the Acclerator to the Bay Area, put them up and pay a stipend for incidental expenses. But unlike the accelerator programs and developer funds at many platform companies, it won't be taking an equity position. The Accelerator teams will get workspace at Evernote's HQ, and the ability to work directly with the Evenote developers. After the Accelerator, the company will help the teams connect with Silicon Valley funding sources and development organizations to help support the next stage in their development.

Best Case Scenario: New Evernote Apps

For Evernote, the best-case scenario is to create viable busineses that leverage the Evernote database to make it even more useful. "Evernote has eight apps," Needleman explained, but "there's a million things you can do with Evernote data."

(See also Evernote: A 0-60 MPH Guide.)

The program will run from mid-October to mid-November, 2013. Rules and signup information can be found at dev.evernote.com. Needleman hopes the Accelerator will become an annual event.

(Disclosure: From 1997-1998, I worked for Rafe Needleman at CNET.com.)

Images courtesy of Evernote.

The journalists, analysts and camera crews queued up in a chilly rain at Facebook's Menlo Park, California, headquarters to get the first look at Facebook's new home on Android - the long-rumored Facebook Phone.

The Hype Was Heavy

Would it be new "skin" software designed to put Facebook front and center on any Android device? Or an actual device in of itself - the rumor mill suggested HTC - built from the ground up to feature the social networking giant. Or would it be something completely new and unexpected?

Everyone wanted to know. Heck, the local newsradio station - not known for its tech savvy - gushed breathlessly about the event - right before talking about President Obama's visit to the Bay Area.

But when Mark Zuckerberg walked on stage, it became clear we're talking about both! "Today we're finally going to talk about the Facebook phone," Zuckerberg said. But that phone, the HTC First, is really just a reference model for the best integration of the Facebook Home software that can be downloaded onto any modern Android phone (starting April 12).

What Is Facebook Home?

According to Zuckerberg, Facebook Home consists of a few key capabilities designed to put people, not apps, first. "Today, our phones are designed aroundapps, not people" Zuckerberg said. "And we want to flip that around." He compared the change to adding Newsfeed to Facebook's website, where people started consuming about twice as much content overnight, he said. "We want to bring this experience right to your phone, and deliver it to as many poeple as possible."

There are three key components: Cover Feed, Chat Heads and Notifications.

Cover Feed: Replacing the home and/or lock screen of an Android device, it gives you an immersive experience from the moment you turn on your phone, said Adam Mosseri, Facebook's director of product. Instead of seeing a clock and maybe a snippet of a notification, you see your Facebook Open Graph stories with large images cycling across the screen. News shares, status updates (use the poster's cover photo as the background) are visible right from the get got. You can do a long press to see the whole picture or swipe to get to the next one. You can even add comments right from the home screen, seen below.

Chat Heads: These little round bubbles with the images of your friends shown below are the metaphor for Facebook Home's way of keeping you up to date on what your friends are saying. Incorporating Facebook messaging and texting, you just tap on the Head to join the conversation. (Group conversations smuch all the participant's pictures into the bubble, slightly awkwardly.) The key here is that Chat Heads show up everywhere on the phone, not just in a dedicated app. They're always available - the little Heads show up in the corner of the screen no matter what else you're doing, and follow along when you move to a new app. (You can just flick them away if you want to get rid of them.)

Notifications: If Chat Heads are about connecting to what's important to you, Zuckerberg said, Notifications are there to make sure you don't miss critical information - along with the name and face of the person who's sending you the message. Unfortunately, with the download version at least, Facebook Home will not support notifications of emails, but you can still use the native Android notification bar. It's not as pretty, but it's still effective - something may not matter to high-school kids, but it may to the older professionals who also make up a big part of Facebook's member base.

Finally, Facebook Home adds a new app launcher, for when you still want to use your phone the old-fashioned way. Apps are really important too, so we wanted to make it just as easy to get to your apps. The app launcher is just one swipe away from your home or lock screen.

Many, but not all, of these features can be switched on or off, the company said.

How Big A Deal Is Facebook Home?

While Facebook home is not a complete mobile operating system, it's not some lightweight app, either. "We're not building a phone, and we're not building an operating system, but we're also building something a lot deeper than just an app," Zuckerberg said. "We wanted this to feel like system software, not just an app that your run. We feel like theres a higher bar for that…"

That's critical, because people spend a lot of time on Facebook on their mobile phones. Some 20% of the time people spend on their smartphones is spent with Facebook - 25% if you include Instragram, the company said. And that's three times as much as with any other app.

Still, while Zuckerberg claimed that people look at Facebook 10-12 times a day, they look at the home screen of their phone 100 times a day. Facebook Home brings the social network much closer to the user - and could be expected to seriously up Facebook's engagment time for those who use it.

It also expands on Facebook's Mobile First mantra to what Zuckerberg called "Mobile Best." "We think this is the best version of Facebook there is."

The Facebook Phone

Facebook Home will be available for free download from the Google Play store on April 12, but that's only part of the story. Facebook Home is also the HTC First (seen on the left, below), available the same day for $99.99 exclusively from AT&T - pre-orders start today.

As the first phone with Facebook Home built in, the HTC First offers deeper integration than the downloadable version. The key, Zuckerberg said, is that users don't have to download anything or sign in to anything to get started. In addition, the built-in integration means Facebook Home can (unlike the downloadable version) incorporate notifications from other apps, such as email or Spotify. The email issue, particularly, will be a big deal to some people.

What's Next For Facebook Home?

The April 12 launch date is only the beginning for Facebook Home. Zuckerberg promised that like all Facebook software, it will be updated monthly (not yearly like mobile operating systems). Updates will likely expand Cover Feed to include video, group joins, friending stories and other actions.

Another thing to expect? Ads. While Zuckerberg said there would not be ads in Cover Feed at launch, he didn't dispute a question that they could be added at a later date.

It also makes sense to expect more smartphones with Facebook Home built in. The company made no mention of an exclusive arrangement with HTC or AT&T. The company also promised a tablet version of Facebook home within the next few months. As for a version of Facebook Home for the iPhone and iPad, Zuckerberg was non-committal. That will require working with Apple, he said, in ways that talking to Google wasn't necessary to do the Android version.

And that could actually make some waves in the mobile platform wars. "I actually think this is really good for Android," Zuckerberg said. Even though there are more Android phones out there, he explained, a lot of people do their best work on iphone first. "This could bring more innovation to Android."

Facebook will be working to lead that. "This is a deeply technical problem, and its also a deeply social problem," Zuckerberg said, adding that his company is uniquely positioned to deal with that combination.

Images courtesy of Facebook. Lead image by Fredric Paul.

This Fusion-io video (Whiteboarding With The Woz — Virtualization: The Basics) stars Apple co-founder and Fusion-io chief scientist Steve Wozniak explaining the little-understood concept of server virtualization. (Go ahead and click on that link to see why virtualization is little understood. It's not really that complicated, but not exactly intuitive to the layperson, either.)

Server CPUs keep getting more powerful, but they can't get enough data to keep them busy. So, as Woz explains it, an underutilized CPU is like a mansion with just one resident. The owner decides to rent out extra rooms to maximize use of the house — and that's like virtualization. But the house has only one bathroom. So imagine the bottleneck when everyone tries to get ready in the morning....

And that's where a Fusion-io sales pitch rounds out the video. It's still a good, plain-language explanation of what server virtualization is all about up to that point.

As Google tries to make Google+ a viable place to learn about local businesses, it seems to be having trouble getting enough reviews of local businesses. At least in New York City, anyway.

Google+ Local Needs Reviews?

That's the only explanation I could come up with for the awkward, uncomfortable and bizarre Google+ Lounge on the second floor of the posh Time Warner Center on Columbus Circle just off Central Park.

The Google+ Local Lounge, which is just a half-heartedly cordorned-off area of the second-floor lobby, has some card tables, some folding chairs, some brightly colored stools, a few Chromebooks and a handful of preternaturally cheerful Googlers (or contractors, who knows?) encouraging passers-by to sit down right there and start writing reviews on Google+ Local.

Some folks, including me, clearly just wanted a comfortable place to sit for a few moments, but one of those scarily perky attendants told me that they often get dedicated reviewers who come and bang out 40 reviews.

"They get caught up and don't realize the time," she said.

All About The Prizes?

Or maybe they were all about trying to win the cheesy premiums Google was giving away. Post those 40 reviews and you get an umbrella - a big draw on the rainy Tuesday when I was there. But I could only manage to do one (Museum of Modern Art: great collection but looooong lines and indifferent customer service), and all I got was a Google+ sticker.

Other prizes included Google-branded t-shirts, socks (15 reviews each), gloves, headbands, pens, cups and even what looked liked swizzle sticks.

Will this be enough to help Google+ Local catch up to leading local-review sites like Yelp? I doubt it. No matter how many Google Lounges there are, they can't possbibly give out enough tube socks to make a difference.

But if I get caught in the rain near the right mall, you may suddenly find 40 new reviews attached to my Google+ account.

All images by Fredric Paul

According to Autodesk CEO Carl Bass, creating free smartphone apps is much more difficult than building expensive professional and enterprise software.

"People are more demanding for a low-cost consumer thing than they are for [expensive] profressional products," Bass told me in a sit-down at the company's slick gallery space in downtown San Francisco. "The cheapest things have to be the easiest to use," he explained. They don't get a user manual or training classes to show people how to use them.

From AutoCad To Apps

That's a big deal to Autodesk, which made its name with high-end design and engineering software like AutoCad and Revit, but has made an aggressive move into smartphone and tablet apps in the last few years.

And it's especially releveant because on Tuesday morning the company introduced Autodesk ReCap, the "industrial strength" version of the free consumer product called 123D Catch, introduced in 2012. The products are designed to create "intelligent 3D data" from captured photos and laser scans.

To me, though, the most interesting part of the story is what the heck a professional software company like Autodesk is doing mucking around with free mobile apps for consumers.

Bass said the company first got into the area almost by accident. "The first thing we did was Sketchbook - a piece of professional software that was relatively unsuccessful… Nobody knew about it. Then two guys went and turned it into an iPhone app," Bass said. "If I had been asked," he added," I would have said it's the stupidest thing I'd ever heard of. Who would want to fingerpaint on an iPhone?"

That product now has 15 million users. Overall, Autodesk's mobile products have gained some 100 million users in three years, compared to 15 million users of its professional products gathered over 30 years. The company is now building apps "as fast as we can," Bass said.

Why Build Apps?

Sure, the apps are popular, but why would an professional software company dive into apps? It certainly isn't for the money, at least not yet. While Autodesk's consumer revenue will double this year, Bass said, "We don't make enough [on consumer apps] to pay the rental on this floor."

The real reason? "A huge amount of learning about how people really want to work with their tools," Bass said. Autodesk needed to figure out "how quickly you had to get someone from knowing nothing to satisfaction" in order to eliminate the learning curve and make professional software as satisfying as consumer apps. "If it's easy to do in your personal life, why is it so hard in the business world?" he asked.

Compared to modern consumer apps, he said. "Enterprise software sucks." The message has become, "less expensive means easy to use, more expensive means really difficult to use," Bass said. "We have to remedy that!" Increasingly, professionals want the ease and convenience they get in their personal lives in their business environment as well - and are intolerant when the don't get it. Business software companies that don't give them that "will be losers," Bass warned.

Enterprise Software Can Be Sloppy

That's a challenge for Autodesk, because "we are an enterprise software company," Bass acknowledged. Thirty percent of company revenues come from 1% of customers. "The very biggest companies in the world," including huge automotive and aerospace manufacturers, buy thousands of licenses, he said. And they run their businesses on that software.

In the development process, he explained, "you can be a little bit sloppy with professional applications," figuring that "they use it all the time, they'll figure it out." Developing the variety of devices makes you pay more attention to detail, Bass claimed, particularly when something doesn't work. Consumer app users want "instant gratification," he said, and "we're trying to push that into our professional products."

The company is already translating what it's learned in apps to full-scale software. One example is so-called Marking Menus: Rather than put the menus at the top of the screen, the idea is to overlay the menus on top of the place where you are working. "It makes even more sense when it's your finger," Bass said, "but why not the mouse?"

Getting Ready For Touch Screens

Autodesk also needed to learn how to take full advantage of multi-touch interfaces, Bass said. "Clearly, the next generation of desktops will have multitouch," he said, and "we will change our products to take advantage of that… Direct interaction is a more natural way for people to work with their models."

The transition isn't as simple as you might think. For one thing, there's a more "emotional connection" with touch screens, Bass believes. "You interact with it in a slightly more intimate way. You actually touch it - that's different than a keyboard and mouse."

And there are also practical considerations. On Windows, for example, many things are called up by hovering the mouse over an area of the screen. That generally doesn't work with touch.

Finally, despite the fact that consumer apps aren't a big money maker right now, "if you have an attentive, engaged audience of loyal consumers, you can find a way to make money on it", Bass predicted. "Look at Twitter."

Will The Enterprise Go Social?

The final frontier for enterprise software is probably social. These days, we get constant access to social information in our personal lives, but that turns opaque in our professional lives, Bass said.

But he believes that professionals "want to and are willing to share - even though that's a little taboo in the enterprise world." So Autodesk is bringing social aspects into its professional tools. Upcoming products, including Autodesk 360, now in beta, will translate the "social graph" to the "design graph," letting users Like and share on an ad hoc basis, he said.

Put all this together and it begs the question: Is there any real difference between consumer apps and enterprise software? Looks like we're about to find out.

Top image by Fredric Paul

Back in the day, Nolan Bushnell invented Pong, founded Atari and created Chuck E. Cheese. But now he says that new tools and cultural norms are enabling creativity in ways never before possible - and offers hints on how to make your company more creative.

We spoke on the occasion of the release of Bushnell's new book: Finding the Next Steve Jobs, written with Gene Stone (more on the book's unusual publishing model later).

As many people know, Jobs worked for Bushnell at Atari in the mid 1970s before moving on to Apple. Bushnell uses Jobs as a symbol of creativity at tech companies: "Steve Jobs showed that an innovative company can create the highest market cap company in the world." Despite Jobs' passing in 2011, Bushnell says today's best companies are far ahead of where we used to be.

"In the early days of Atari," Bushnell recalls, "engineers came to work in a coat and tie and were working 9-5." Venture capitalists willing to give cash to help innovative startups were just a tiny niche, he says, "All the real financial clout was controlled by big banks in New York, but now we have vibrant angel investors, Kickstarter and crowdfunding."

And that's only part of the change. Even as we eliminate the gatekeepers, Bushnell contends, the costs of creativity itself are coming down as technological tools get cheaper and more powerful. Individuals and small groups can now shoot a movie or create a software company on their own. "In many cases, that's the most important thing," Bushnell says.

Unleashing Creativity

But there's still a lot more to be done. "The problem isn't creativity," Bushnell explains, "but creating the environment for creatives to work in… too much [good stuff] ends up on the cutting room floor."

"I believe we have literally thousands of Steve Jobses," but we don't empower them to create. "Look at the way we treat creative people! We just have to detoxify our companies and we'll have innovation flowing out of the ground like oil."

Hire Obnoxious People

One key considieration is to value true creative talent over mere niceness. This flies in the face of the "no assholes" rules now gaining popularity The problem, Bushnell says, is that "a lot of really brilliant people are obnoxious. They're used to always being the smartest person in the room and they may treat other people with disdain."

And Bushnell says that separating brilliant and obnoxious from just plain obnoxious is actually easier than you think.

The Importance Of Hobbies

Their contribution is one clue, of course, but Bushnell also suggests looking at what creative types do on their own time. "Enthusiasm is kind of the mitigator" for the obnoxious people, he says.

What you want is someone who truly has the companies interest at heart and just happens to be dismissive of people less capable of achieving those goals.

Bushnell points out that many people used to complain withering criticism from Steve Jobs. But Bushnell adds that it turns out that most of the time, Jobs was right. His victims just didn't like the way he critiziced them.

Today's Most Creative Company?

"Google. There are so many things going on at the Google campus right now that exemplify the right track. A lot of true craziness coming out of that company, but it's crazy like a fox. Autodrive cars? That's going to happen in a short amount of time… and think about what it took! That represents a large corporate commitment."

Book Publishing As Startup

Clearly, Bushnell tried to be creative with his book, as well. Rather than signing with a big publisher or going the self-publishing route espoused by folks like Guy Kawasaki, Bushnell chose to be the first example of a new startup publishing model that distributes the risk and the rewards.

Instead of doing all the work yourself, or having a traditional publisher pull together all the skills needed to put together a book, Net Minds works by trading equity in the project for the required work. Editors, designers, etc. get points, not just cash, and participate in any upside. According to co-founder Tim Sanders, Net Minds has 17 more books in the pipeline - not all of them attached to well-known names like Bushnell. According to Sanders, the team-publishing model lets freelance publishing professionals optimize their available time to earn passive income from successful projects.

Sanders claims to have 400 freelancers signed up, both new players and established veterans like Bushnell's co-author Gene Stone. While Sanders says the company is working on software to appraise a book's commercial potential, it's hard to see how it could pull in top-notch talent for anything but the sexiest, easiest-to-sell projects.

Disclosure: Many years ago, Nolan Bushnell wrote a column for me at Electronic Entertainment magazine.

The SXSW interactive festival in Austin, Texas, is famously sprawling, crowded, hectic and intense. Not surprisingly, that can make it hard to sum up the impact of the entire event in any meaningful way.

But the folks at Mutual Mobile did their best to try in this infographic highlighting attendee tweets covering the best product launches, the most popular panels, the buzziest conversation topics and the snarkiest commentary.

I just wish they'd found a way to leave in the barbecue!

Top image of keynote speaker Jennifer Pahlka courtesy SXSW/Mindy Best.

Connected cars are hotter than turbo-charged V6 running at 8,000 RPM. The hype about how they're going to change the driving and passenger experience is accelerating faster than Danica Patrick coming out of a turn at a NASCAR race.

But most of the promises I've heard so far center around relatively prosaic things like better entertainment systems and integrated navigation. I like a great car stereo as much as anyone, but that just doesn't seem particularly revolutionary to me.

(See also Cars & The Internet Get Together At SXSW)

So I was looking forward to the connected car presentation at the Cisco Editors Conference in San Jose, Calif., on Wednesday. Much of it turned out to be pretty technical, all about how Cisco plans to support the back end of the process. That's important, but I was more interested in the some of the passing comments on the actual benefits connected cars are likely to deliver.

Why Driving Stinks

Maciej Kranz, VP and GM of Cisco's Connected Industries Group, laid out some of the grim statistics plaguing the world yet-to-be-connected cars:

Between 11% and 13% of commuting time is wasted in urban traffic congestion, for a total of 90 billion hours. (It just seems like of half of that is on the 101 Freeway between San Francisco and San Jose.) Some 7% to 12% of urban congestion is caused by people looking for parking. (It just seems like all of that comes in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood.) Between 10% and 17% of of urban fuel is wasted at stoplights when there is no crosstraffic. Eighty percent of accidents (6.3 million) are caused by driver distraction.

"The good news," Kranz said, "is that we can actually lower all of these numbers quite dramatically."

How Connected Cars Make Driving Better

For congestion, that means traffic management and optimization of road networks. For parking issues, connected cars can link apps identifying the closest, most affordable available parking spaces to the vehicle's navigation. And the vehicles can intelligently adjust driving speeds to boost fuel efficiency.

Intelligent stoplights, for example, would know if there were 10 cars waiting in one direction but only 1 in the other, and adjust light timing to keep traffic moving. Along straight routes, Kranz said, they can build "green waves" of traffic signals to keep lanes flowing efficiently.

There's also the idea that if one car knows what other vehicles. traffic lights and other road infrastructure are doing, they can all adjust more efficiently. For examply, if your car knows that the car in front is about to make a turn or start braking, it can begin reacting even before it actually senses the action.

Cisco estimates this could lead to 7.5% less time wasted in traffic congestion and 4% lower costs for vehicle fuel, repairs and insurance. The benefits are particularly obvious in fleet settings, Kranz said. For example, a company with 10,000 delivery trucks would find it very valuable to be able to use connected technology to schedule preventive maintenance.

As for preventing accidents, vehicle-to-vehicle communications could enable a connected car to alert you if you get too close to the vehicle in front of you. If you don't respond, Kranz said, "at some point the car will make a decision to hit the brakes and avoid the accident."

Cisco estimatd 8% fewer accidents, 10% lower road costs and a 3% drop in carbon dioxide emissions.

Not Just Connecting The Car, But Also All Its Parts

The key to making all this happen, Kranz said, is not just connecting the car to the Internet, but also connecting together all of the various siloed subsystems in the car. When you connect a car to the Net, he said, "good things happen. More good things happen when you connect all of the systems," including telematics, diagnostics and driver assistance systems. Looked at this way, a self-driving car is just an advanced application of a connected car, taking over a higher-than usual proportion of the required tasks.

Cisco is pushing DSRC (Dedicated Short-Range Communications) technology to tie together the vehicle's various systems with the wider Internet.

Heck, if you ask me, though, even if connected cars just help me find a parking space on a Saturday night, all the development effort is totally worth it.

Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Networking giant Cisco predicted Wednesday that as we move into a "fundamentally mobile and video" world, the "Internet of Everything" — which combines the so-called Internet of Things with the Internet used by people and their mobile devices — will create $14.4 trillion in value and boost overall corporate profits by 21%. All by 2022.

Those are some pretty big numbers, shared by Cisco executives at a press event in San Jose on Wednesday. But while the vision makes sense, quantifying the changes to be wrought by growth of the Internet of Everything seems, well, fairly abitrary. To say the least.

What Goes Into $14.4 Trillion?

Rob Lloyd, Cisco President, Sales and Development, broke down the $14.4 trillion figure this way:

• $2.5 trillion in better asset utilization
• $2.5 trillion in employee productivity
• $2.7 in supply chain logistics
• $3.7 trillion in better customer experience.
• $3 trillion in enabling new innovations.

Perhaps we can start by seeing which industries benefit first and most dramatically. According to Lloyd, the top candidates include manufacturing, the public sector, energy and utlities, healthcare, finance/insurance, transportation and wholesale/distribution.

The Internet of Everything combines several trends, including the growth of connected devices, the increasing use of video, cloud computing, Big Data and the increasing importance of mobile apps compared to traditional computing applications.

Lloyd did lay out numbers to support the importance of the trends. But though these are also all giant numbers, connecting them to the $14.4 trillion figure still requires a leap of faith.

In terms of connected devices, he said, we've gone from 200 million in 2000 to 10 billion devices today, to a predicted 50 billion by 2020. On the mobile side, Lloyd said, 20 billion mobile apps were downloaded last year alone. By 2017, he added, two-thirds of mobile traffic will be video.

New Levels Of Complexity To Support New Uses

That complexity will make today's issues "look very, very minor," and pose historic challenges to manage, Lloyd said. That statement, at least, is easy to grasp. "We've been warming up for this for the last five years." The company already has a number of projects in the works demonstrating key elements of the trend, including installing smart meters and pole-top routers for BC Hydro in Canada, and a single auto plant with 50,000 IP devices.

Cisco's Sean Curtis demo'd live data from San Carlos, Calif., showing a heat map for mobile connections using "dwell time" metrics to track how efficiently pedestrian traffic was moving through the suburb's commuter train station. Curtis said similar information mashups have been applied to San Carlos' farmers market, offering insights into how many shoppers showed up, how long they stayed and which stalls they visited — information that would be of great use to both retailers and city planners.

The next step, Curtis said, is to link that kind of data with store data as well as parking and traffic information to help shoppers optimize their experience. The idea is that eventually shoppers could see the best route to the least crowded store with the best prices on the items they were looking for.

As apps like that come online, the Internet of Everything should indeed spur growth. Maybe even trillions of dollars worth of growth. Exactly how much and when, though, seems a Big Data question of the highest order. 

Rising Expectations, Bigger Security Issues

The rise of the Internet of Everything is already changing corporate expectations, Lloyd said, not to mention who pays for technology advances. "The Internet of Everything will be driven by business funding, not just IT funding," Lloyd said.

What about security for all this connected information? Padmasree Warrior, Cisco's chief technology and strategy officer, said "the data will be collected whether we want it to be or not. How will it be used? That is the security question."

Photos by Fredric Paul

At the RSA Conference in San Francisco last week, I got the chance to sit down with Stephen Cobb, a distinguished security researcher for the IT security company ESET. We talked about a lot of things, including Android security issues and how walled gardens have their uses.

(See also In The Security World, Android Is The New Windows.)

It was a great conversation, touching on a wide variety of fascinating aspects of online and mobile security, and I wanted to share as many of them as possible.

This list seemed like the best way to do that. And while not every one of the dirty-dozen points presented here may surprise you, I can pretty much guarantee that few people will already know - or agree with - everything on the list:

1. Big Data is not new to the anti-virus industry. Turns out the anti-virus companies have been doing traffic analysis, incident sharing and code sharing for decades, Cobb claims. They just didn't call it Big Data until the term become fashionable.

2. Anti-virus companies have been practicing co-opetition since the 1980s, when they realized there was no percentage in one company being able to stop one virus while you needed another company to stop a different virus. They quietly began sharing virus signatures and other information, Cobb says.

3. All the major Web browsers share information on malware sites and other threats. Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox and the others all share which URLs to flag, for example. That's why when NBC.com was hacked recently and started spewing malware, everybody was able to block it almost immediately.

4. One of the hardest parts of securing Big Data is knowing where the data is actually stored. In the old days, when data was collected and stored, it didn't really move much. Now, in the cloud, Cobbs says we don't really know where data is stored. Malware creators are intent on exploiting that, but what form that will take remains to be seen.

5. One reason more high-value targets haven't been hacked is that there is still so much low-hanging fruit for the bad guys to go after. According to Cobb, so far, there hasn't been much need to try and crack the hardest targets.

6. Most attacks take the form of malware or hacking. Of the hacking attacks, Cobb says, 80% go after passwords that are either non-existent, guessed or stolen.

7. Anti-virus hasn't been about matching virus signatures for years. Some people say the anti-virus model doesn't work because so much new malware is coming out all the time that anti-virus solutions can't possibly keep up. But Cobb protests that most anti-virus software is continually detecting previously unseen malware.

8. People who know what they're doing on the Internet might be able to get by with no anti-virus software. But Cobb says people are fooling themselves when they claim: "I don't run anti-virus software and I've never been hacked." "Are you really OK telling everyone you know - your mom, for instance - not to run anti-virus software?" he asks.

9. There's still an incredible amount of spam out there. You don't see it, but it's still there. It's using a a huge amount of datacenter power to block it, but it's built into the network security appliance and you don't have to deal with it.

10. The overall trend is for increasing levels of security to be compressed into the core, to become part of a standard install. That's happened to anti-spam, to firewalls and it's happening to anti-virus, too.

11. It's a lot harder to write 64-bit malware than it is to write 32-bit malware. And that could help lower the number of attacks on 64-bit systems.

12. In many ways, hacking behavior seems to have gotten better over the years - at least in the United States, Cobb says. But we are now increasingly exposed to other, more dangerous places. The globalization of the Net has caught up with us even as the value of hacking has one way up. Today, hackers aren't just messing with us, Cobb notes, they're stealing from us. And that's a big new incentive.

First Yahoo. Then Best Buy. In the last two weeks, two high-profile but seriously troubled companies have made very public crackdowns on employees who telecommute or work remotely.

(See also Forget Trends, Is Yahoo's Workplace Policy Right For Yahoo?)

Telecommuting Is Never The Real Problem

I'm not saying the moves weren't necessary to help the struggling companies recover, but everyone knows that telecommuting per se is not the problem here. The problem, in both cases, is a company culture of negativity, "coasting" and lax management.

How can you tell? Easy.

Lots of companies - probably including yours - have sensible policies allowing telecommuting for certain workers under certain conditions. Heck, increasing numbers of companies are run totally virtually, with no central offices at all - people work from wherever they are, and get together whenever and wherever they need.

In those kinds of companies, people mostly work remotely to avoid long commutes or to work for companies where they don't happen to live. Companies save money on office space and other fixed costs and get access to talent they might not otherwise attract.

It's a win-win situation for everyone. And they have productivity studies and management consultants by the bushel to prove it.

That's what happens in a well-run company, one with a future, and one where the vast majority of employees are committed to the company's success. No doubt, that's what it was like for Yahoo and Best Buy. In the beginning.

Telecommuters Get Blamed When Things Go Bad

But Yahoo's and Best Buy's fortunes soured and management clearly lost control over their increasingly disillusioned workers - who often wanted nothing more than to spend as little time as possible at the office. According to a New York Times story on Tuesday, many Yahoo telecommuters were working harder on side projects than their actual jobs. The Times claims that new Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer "made the decision not as a referendum on working remotely, but to address problems particular to Yahoo."

That's exactly it. "Problems particular to Yahoo." And Best Buy. And whatever company announces a policy like this next.

(See also Another Reason Best Buy Is Doomed - And Why That's A Problem)

If your company starts to make noises about banning telecommuting, you can be competely confident that it's not about telecommuting at all. You can also be confident that your company has some serious cultural and productivity problems that it feels powerless to fix without drastic action.

They Had To Do Something

Do Yahoo and Best Buy know that their Draconian new policies will turn off some of their best workers unfairly targeted by telecommuting bans? That they won't be able to hire some valuable people who desire or require more workplace flexibility? That the polices will make them look technologically backward and borderline incompetent? That the policies actually mean they are technologically backward and borderline incompetent?

Of course.

But they've decided that things are so bad that they don't have a choice. That if they don't do something about their real problems, things will only get worse. These companies aren't in trouble because they banned telecommuting. They're in trouble because they had to ban telecommuting.

You could look at this as smart management taking required corrective action. Or you could look at it as a giant, lit-up red flag that the company is reeling out of control, sacrificing its long term reputation and success for a short-term shakeup.

Either way, one thing is certain: If your company bans telecommuting, your company is screwed. After all, do you really think a little thing like banning telecommuting is going to fix a company so messed up it had to actually ban telecommuting?

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

For decades, Microsoft Windows was the computer platform of choice — not just for the overhwelming majority of computer users, but also for a growing legion of malware creators. As the dominant computing platform, it offered the fattest, most lucrative target, and some of its fundamental architecture decisions made it vulnerable to many kinds of malware.

With the transition to the mobile era, Windows is no longer at the center of the computing universe — for users or for hackers. That role is now occupied by Android. According to Stephen Cobb, a distinguished security researcher for the IT security company ESET, "Android is like early Windows." It's now the locus for security attacks and prevention — even if it's not getting as much attention in this regard as Windows used to.

Flying Under The Radar?

"There's so much malware on Android, you'd think it would be a huge deal," Cobb said. And the growth of is "huge," he added, "both in the number of malware exploits and their increasing sophistication. The rate of growth in Android malware is impressive, and scary."

(See also Sloppy App Development Leaves Android Owners At Risk)

At this week's RSA conference in San Francisco, ESET did a live demo on Android, downloading an infected app that roots the phone and opens it up to whatever the attacker wants to do with it — including dumping out its entire contents in a few seconds over the Internet.

Why aren't we hearing more about Android's security problems? "It's death by 1000 cuts," Cobb said. Instead of emptying the bank accounts of infected users, the malware is more often used to for premium-rate SMS fraud against mobile carriers, "which isn't bankrupting anyone immediately. They're flying under the radar."

"I don't think the criminal underground is sophisticated enough that it is holding back," Cobb said. It's just that when a mobile platform is the target, "the model is many times a smaller attack — or you can look at it as part of a larger attack."

(See also Where Has All The Mobile Malware Gone?)

For example, if a criminal wants to insert himself into a small or medium-sized business doing $40,000 bank transfers, he'd run into the fact that many online banking systems use two-factor authentication — i.e., they require a code sent to a client's mobile device in addition to a password. But a mobile hack can help defeat that.

Your Mobile Platform Does Matter

Just as on computers, which mobile platform you use really does make a difference on security. "The Apple model of a closed shop, from a security standpoint, is a very good thing," Cobb said. Apple's OS X and iOS are both pretty secure to start with, and with iOS and the App Store, "Apple is moving that from a physical environment to a software environment."

Even as Android takes the lead in global sales, it's been much less successful from a security standpoint. "We sell an anti-virus product for Android," Cobbnoted. "No one sells anti-virus for iOS."

What will it take for Android to clean up its act? "Quite frankly, I expect to see it improve when sales start getting impacted," Cobb said. That obviously hasn't happened yet on a mass scale, as Android sales continue to outstrip its smartphone competitors.

But Cobb said that "In some circles it is already having an effect… I wouldn't use an Android phone for my personal stuff."

Meanwhile, Windows Is Getting Better

Ironically, as Android's secuirty issues grow, Windows is actually getting better. "Microsoft deserves kudos for making Windows more and more secure," Cobb said. And with the move to Windows 8, Microsoft is shifting toward a more closed, more secure model, specifically by by not allowing apps unless they are from a legitimate developer.

Plus, Windows' issues over the years have had the effect of training people to be more careful. "Someone who's been using Windows for the last 10 years is probably better protected than a Mac person," Cobb joked. "They've had to learn the hard way."

The problem is in that in an ostensibly protected environment, people can get a false sense of security. They are still vulnerable to "some big hack" that overrides all the existing protections, or to "social engineering" attacks, Cobb noted. That's why many of the bad guys are changing tactics. "Instead of trying to break into the computer, they're now trying to break into the person."

Ultimately, that's only one reason Cobb thinks that concentrating on mobile malware may be the wrong angle. "What the bad guys really want," he said, "is the device out of your pocket." If they can physically get ahold of your device, they can do all sorts of bad things.

Image of Stephen Cobb by Fredric Paul.

In a post on Evernote's offical blog, the company said it has "discovered and blocked suspicious activity on the Evernote network that appears to have been a coordinated attempt to access secure areas of the Evernote Service." While post author Dave Engberg said the company has "found no evidence that any of the content you store in Evernote was accessed, changed or lost," Evernote decided to require all users to reset their passwords.

Engberg explained that Evernote had "no evidence that any payment information" was stolen, but that usernames, email addresses and encrypted passwords were accessed. The encrypted passwords were both hashed and salted, Evernote said, so they should be very difficult to crack.

Nevertheless, in order to continue using their accounts, Engberg wrote, all users will have reset their passwords. That can be a hassle, of course, as many people use Evernote apps on multiple mobile devices as well as over the Web. Engberg said the company was working on app updates to ease the process.

Security Breaches Becoming More Common?

Evernote - a popular app for personal and professional productivity - is only the latest in an ongoing string of high-profile security breaches. Other recent victims include Twitter, Microsoft, NBC.com, the U.S. State Department, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Burger King and many others. It's not entirely clear to what extent the various breaches are connected, but the trend has to be worrisome to everyone from corporate security managers to consumers to everyday online consumers.

Without some resolution, security concerns could increasingly threaten the growth of the online economy.

(See also World War III Is Already Here - And We're Losing.)

Depending on where you live, using the wrong mobile carrier can be an expensive, frustrating nightmare. And if you listen to the anecdotal evidence, it seems like a whole lot of mobile users live in crappy-service hell.

But there's more to the story than all those complaints. To find out what's really going on, ReadWrite recently ran a survey of our readers to see how they really felt about their mobile carriers, and how open they were to change.

(See ReadWrite Mobile Carrier Survey: What Would It Take For You To Switch?)

The 179 responses we got do not represent a scientific sampling, but they painted a clear picture of a world where most people are surprisingly okay with their mobile carriers, and not inclined to jump ship without a good reason.

Undeserved Bad Reputations?

Despite the sketchy reputation enjoyed by many mobile carriers, the vast majority of respondents were either Very Satisfied (23%) or Somewhat Satisfied with their service. Only 13% were Somewhat Unsatisfied, and a paltry 4% were Very Unsatisfied.

And they had lots of reasons for staying put - ironically, the very same reasons that mobile users seem to complain about the most.

Just over half (50.3%) actually cited Network Coverage as a reason not to switch carriers, followed by Service Rates and Plans (45%). Some 27% were convinced to stay by their carrier's device selection, and 21% cited the benefits of sharing a carrier with family, friends and co-workers. A significant minority (37%), though, said they weren't switching because of the hassles involved.

Money Talks

So, what would make you switch? Money, mostly.

65% said they'd dump their carrier for a better deal, and 24% were looking for more inclusive Network Coverage. Note that those are also the top two factors helping to keep people from switching as well. Obviously, those two factors trump everything else when choosing a mobile carrier.

Perhaps because the iPhone 5 and most of the top Android models are now avialable at a variety of carriers, only 4.5% said they'd consider moving for a better selection of mobile devices.

Finally, fewer than 1% were interested in sharing a carrier with others - I guess those family plans and free calling to other users of the same carrier don't carry much weight.

Ultimately, it seems, only network coverage and cost really make a difference. And a surprisingly high percentage of survey respondents are relatively happy with what they've already got in both areas.

(For more surveys, see ReadWrite Survey Results: What A Typical BYOD Program Really Looks Like)

Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Savvy – and even not-so-savvy – mobile and online users know that most Question & Answer platforms aren't worth the time and effort it takes to scan them.

But the good folks at the Butler University Business Accelerator set out to learn exactly how bad they are, and which ones suck the least. 

The Butler University Q&A Intelligence Index aims to measure how accurately and quickly various mobile Q&A apps could provide quality answers to a variety of questions. The idea was to measure "the likelihood that a user could expect to receive a correct answer in a timely manner to any random query using natural language."

The contenders included Ask.com, Answers.com, ChaCha Google, Quora, Siri and Yahoo Answers, among others. Questions covered advice (“What if a girl doesn’t want to talk to you?”), objective (“What are the 10 most common names?”), and subjective (“Who would win in a fight, The Hulk or Superman?”).

The winner – or, if you ask me, the least terrible – was ChaCha, while the ultimate loser was Quora. Apple's Siri was second worst, while the oft-reviled Yahoo Answers came in a respectable fourth – which certainly makes me wonder about the strength of the competition.

Here are some highlights from the research:

ChaCha Rocks: “ChaCha delivered the highest-quality responses consistently across the largest group of categories and question types,” Trent Ritzenthaler, operating director of the Butler Business Accelerator, said in a statement.

Objective Questions: Ask.com did best on objective/temporal questions, such as “When does summer end?”

Tough Questions: Quora was best able to answer "difficult questions that require expert and extensive explanations," but answered only 24% of all questions and consistently failed to answer at all – and often presented matches that did not include a viable answer.

What Is Siri For? Siri accurately answered only 37.5 percent of the questions posed, but Siri’s biggest strengths are considered to be in local discovery and operating system commands, which were not highly represented in Butler’s study of more mainstream questions.

100% Google: Google’s response rate was 100%, but the first organic result was correct only about half the time.

Choosing the right mobile carrier is a big decision for everyone from individuals to small and large corporations. There are lots of factors to consider in making the right choice, from coverage areas and reliability to speeds and technologies to what handsets are available. Just as important, the choices you make can make a huge difference in the cost of your mobile service.

For individuals, you could be talking differences of $40 per month or more. Multiply that by every mobile worker in your company, and pretty soon you're talking about real money.

That's why ReadWrite wants to know about how satisfied you are with your current mobile carrier, and what might entice you to switch. And that's why we put together this little 9-item questionnaire: the ReadWrite Mobile Carrier Survey. (There are also a few demographic questions included at the end, so we can better analyze the results.) Once we have enough responses, we'll put together a post detailing the insights we gained, so if you'd like to share additional thoughts about your mobile carrier choices in the comments, we'll be listening.

Take the ReadWrite Mobile Carrier Survey now!

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Jim Whitehurst, CEO of Linux vendor Red Hat, has never been shy about sharing his vision of the future of enterprise technology. But at a recent lunch in San Francisco, Whitehurst extended his outlook well beyond the next quarter or two - he looked ahead two decades to predict big changes in the balance of power in enterprise technology - and wonder about how we're going to get there.

(See also 7 Open Source Questions With Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst.)

Who Will Own Big Data?

In 20 years, Whitehurst predicted, Big Data will have gone mainstream. We will be increasingly able to use analytics to better orchestrate how a business collects, analyzes and distributes information. Bascially, everything important about how it operates.

Who will be the winners and losers in such a world, Whitehurst wondered?

Will there be a couple of big winners? Giant companies like IBM, for example, that are able to supply that kind of analysis to a wide variety of customers?

Or will we have lots of small, vertical applications that leverage insight into particular products and markets?

Who Will Own Enterprise Technology?

For the enterprise, Whitehurst said, the challenge is to use that Big Data to do everything from marketing to logistics and beyond. And then the question becomes who in the enterprise will be responsible for it? Will the Line of Businesss (LoB) owner get the data from something that resembles today's IT organization? Or will Chief Marketing Officers buy the technology they need directly from those Big Data service providers mentioned above?

If that's the case, Whitehurst asked, Why have a CMO and a CIO? Why not have a single marketing/analytics organization? Instead of having a separate IT organization, they merge, leaving just a rump IT organization that is primarily in charge of support.

Either way, Whitehurst predicted, it's the data scientists who are in charge. The only question is whether they work in a central IT (or IT/marketing) department or directly in the Lines of Business. Whether those essential functions are company wide or organized around vertical markets. "The lines blur," Whitehurst said.

Big Changes For The IT "Factory?"

How it plays out depends on which side does a better job of leveraging Big Data: "Will marketing get tech or will tech learn business?" Whitehurst asked.

The challenge for CIOs, if they want to remain in the picture, is to find a way to bring in business people - not just tech people, Whitehurst said. And to change the structure of their organization to deal with the new reality.

Fact is, Whitehurst said, most IT shops today feel like factories. They look like manufacturing operations, organizationally and culturally in terms of process and quality. "Marketing organizations don't work like that," Whitehurst noted.

Of course, marketing has its own challenges: "IT vendors try to hide the complexity," Whitehurst said, but "dealing with Big Data is still a different skill set from traditional marketing."

Information Changes Who Gets Rich

These aren't merely academic questions. In fact, Big Data is likely to become the core of many businesses, Whitehurst said.

He cited the CEO of a big retail chain who told him that, "my entire business is about 'How many red sweaters in size XXL should we have in a store in zip code [60611] in March.' Everything else is seconday to that kind of interactive data query."

There's more. The creation of true information businesses leads to a massive bifurcation of wealth, Whitehurst said. As we build a new productivity system around information, more wealth goes to companies that produce the data-collection and analytics expertise - and less to the end customers, who end up being genericized. (Whitehurst credited Marc Andreessen for the idea that "Software Eats The World.")

Where will that expertise come from? Most companies will use outside sources, unless they can create a competitive advantage by doing it themselves.

And in that scenario, who is supplying the competitive advantage? Who makes the money when the real value is in the information analysis, not the end-user organization?

"In 20 years, I think it's decentralized," Whitehurst said. "Right now, XYZ industries may have a source of competitive advantage. But data analytics pulls value away from that."

Whitehurst came to Red Hat from Delta Airlines, and he uses the airline industry as an example. In the era of value management and global distribution, he said, airlines are losing the ability to gain competitive advantage. In an online booking system, "Your brand is reduced to a two-letter code at the moment of purchase." It's barely a factor in the buying decision, it's all about price.

That kind of wealth and power transfer will play out in industry after industry over the next 20 years, Whitehurst predicted. The share of GDP in software keeps growing very quickly, he said, and "very few companies can invest in IT that is better than what the leaders offer."

That means that the technology industry's share of global profit will grow, Whitehurst said, even as the industry becomes less structured, predictable and controlled. Instead, it becomes a more chaotic, wide-open marketplace, like Silicon Valley… or the open source community.

Not an entirely surprising viewpoint for the head of an open-source software company.

Bonus Question: Who does Red Hat Really Compete Against?

Forget Microsoft's ongoing battles against Linux. According to Whitehurst, "We rarely compete with Microsoft." The two companies address "different workloads" and address "different parts of the datacenter."

"We never compete on deals, Whitehurst said, "If they hate us, I'm not sure why." After all, "If it weren't for Linux, they would probably have massive Department of Justice issues."

So who does hate Red Hat?

Whitehurst fingers Oracle. "They're turned their guns on Linux," he said, "so we don't go to market much with them."

But Whitehurst claims that he doesn't think a lot about Red Hat's market share vs. competitors. Instead, he says, he looks at larger issues like Linux vs. UNIX, free vs. paid and how to address new enterprise IT workloads.

Lead image by Fredric Paul.