Open source education

MIT's OCW (MIT OpenCourseWare) initiative is growing fast and expanding internationally through OCW consortium.

How disruptive this might be for the existing university "business-model"? What other open-source inspired models/initiatives would be promising? [No anwers, only questions]

From IT to ET (and back again)?

A recent NYT article discusses the funding, interest, and human capital attracted by Silicon Valley alternative energy technology (aka cleantech) start-ups lately. It feels like 96 but now for ET? We'll see in a few years. Independent of its future success, ET is complementing IT by making it more efficient and helping it scale; certainly not displacing it.

From the article:
"In the Internet boom, the mantra was to change the world and get rich quick. This time, given the size and scope of the energy market, the idea is to change the world and get even richer — but somewhat more slowly."

thinking about Internet analysts

So I attended a talk by Safa Rashtchy, a well known Internet analyst, a couple of weeks ago in NYC. Safa became famous by tracking Google and predicting a 600 price (GOOG) 1-2 years ago.

Some points:
- People use search as an exploration tool, thus making themselves attractive adevertising targets. - Google is obsessed about customer experience, and they are willing to sacrifice revenues if it is to improve that metric. Does this set them appart from competitors such as Yahoo, Microsoft etc?
- Search lowers ecommerce profit margins (bad for Amazon etc?), and this effect will intensify with the growth of "local search"
- Google's video business (youtube) may take off in 2007, although optimal way to do video advertising has not been figured out yet...
- Panama will help Yahoo improve monetization per search and increase search volume. But is will not shift customers from Google to Yahoo... [Why???? What is the rational here????] [By the way is there a systematic difference between advertiser's profile on Yahoo vs. Google?] [Marketshare only is not the whole story...]
- Google has distinct technology, culture, and brand advantages over their competitors [explanation? which of these are sustainable and why?]
- Mobile search is a significant trend (2007-08). Google did not pay much attention to that!
- Difficulties in China. Any recovery?

Safa is certainly a smart analyst, but here is an afterhought. There is a crucial distinction between the mantra of an analyst and a scholar. Here it is:
Analyst mantra: "If you can predict it, you dont have to explain it" (it = future, etc)
Scholar mantra: "If you can explain it, you dont need to predict it"

Technorati Profile

Can Open Source enable "The Thinking Machine"?

Wired 15.03: The Thinking Machine discusses the new company of Jeff Hawkins, called Numenta, which aims to create a "general purpose" AI platform. Numenta follows an open source strategy.

"Its platform, which has three main components: the core problem-solving engine, which works sort of like an operating system based on Hawkins’ theory of the cortex; a set of open source software tools; and the code for the learning algorithms themselves, which users can alter as long as they make their creations available to others. Numenta will earn its money by owning and licensing the basic platform, and Hawkins hopes a new industry will grow up around it, with companies customizing and reselling the intelligence in unexpected and dazzling ways."

Linux on Desktop, China, and Dell

A recent WSJ article discusses the growth of Linux on Desktop PCs. Some points:
- "IDC said licenses of both free and purchased versions of Linux software going into PCs world-wide rose 20.8% in 2006 over the previous year and forecast that licenses will increase 30% this year over last."
- CIOs using Linux as a server operating system (eg. financial industry) are more comfortable with adopting desktop Linux especially in "PCs for workers who don't require most of the features offered by Windows and other Microsoft software, such as the Office suite of programs."
- Desktop Linux adoption surged in China in the past year, partially because of the governments fight against piracy of Windows (which shows once more the complex unintended impact of piracy fighting strategies)

Meanwhile Dell asks for user feedback on devising a Linux PC strategy [besides a promise for Linux, this is another brilliant example of openness as a strategy: let your users/customers participate in the design of your strategy]

Open source Search?

Can the Search business model (capitalized so brilliantly by Google) get commoditized by and "open source" search model?

Can an "open source" community beat the technological sophistication of Google (and of the followers Yahoo, Microsoft etc) and disrupt one of the most successful business model in the history of the Web?

Check: search:Community Portal

HP & Desktop Linux critical mass

"We are involved in a number of massive deals for Linux desktops, and those are the kinds of things that are indicators of critical mass. So we are really looking at it very hard" HP Director, 2007

Are the next 2 years crucial for Linux desktop?

Tech investment: Scale this!

I had fun reading Andy Kessler's book "Running Money". He describes managing his tech hedge-fund from 1996-2001, one could say during the first Internet revolution. So if you are interested in technology from an academic, engineering, or other perspective, this book will add the money-management (good luck!) perspective.

How do you invest? "I just try to know the headlines before they appear" learns the author. Conviction about few long-term trends that scale can be a source of performance, but you have to identify the cycle early and better jump-out after everybody knows about it.

I liked a Doug Engelbart quote: "the combined knowledge of the human race scales, and if computers can augment people, then that scale is enabled". Isn't that evident in the case of the Web used for collaboration and sharing (e.g. Open Source Software, Wikipedia etc)?

Linux desktop avalanche?

Initiatives that facilitate developing applications running on more than one Linux desktop environments, and making applications easier to install by users, will certainly make desktop linux more attractive to users. However it might be early to talk about avalanche yet.