One of the most notable take-aways for me was the over arching focus on the speed of innovation – and more specifically that innovation is moving so rapidly that a digital still camera released today has a product life of 3 to 6 months. iPhones have had their current 3G version publicly available for less than a year, and many are calling for a product update as soon as this week.

One of the most notable moments for me came when this card was flashed on the screen:

We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. – Bill Gates.

Looking at this another way, a lot of times adoption is more critical than innovation, and an innovator often has to be prepared to go slower in order to move faster. This can mean letting competitors achieve what is often referred to as the First Mover “Advantage,” although it’s so rarely advantageous to move first that this catch phrase becomes somewhat of an oxymoron. The (unlevel) playing field is littered with first movers who had a great technology or the next best thing but who were quashed (or bought for pennies on the dollar) by larger organizations with better lawyers.

For me, the matter of patents and intellectual property is becoming more and more distressing. Canadian innovation giant RIM had its stock – the capitalization it needed for growth – battered for years because a company called NTP claimed RIM was using concepts, specifically sending emails to wireless devices, and that this constituted infringement. They settled out of court for more than $600 Million.

Now, it’s important to note something here: NTP doesn’t actually make any technology that sends or receives wireless email. Nor have they actually developed a working prototype of such a device. In fact, they didn’t actually come up with the idea, they bought it off someone else. Moreover, and this is what gets me… NTP doesn’t actually make or do anything – their whole business is licensing patents they’ve acquired from other sources.

What does this mean for innovation? Well, for one thing, it means that businesses can be stifled even before they’re initiated! This could mean that if I have a general idea for a business, I may very well have to license the idea from someone else (if they’re willing to license it to me), despite the fact that I may have a working prototype, business model and even several million customers. Consider: What if Alexander Graham Bell had built the telephone, only to discover that someone else had patented “two-way voice communication over electric wires”? What if Thomas Edison had lit that bulb but then found out that Tesla owned the rights to “Electric Illumination Devices”. If you think that these seem far-fetched and frivolous, I would encourage you to look into Amazon’s One Click Purchasing Patent.

There’s some good news, though:

1. Patent law is under review and we should see patent tort reform and hopefully some relief soon.
2. Patents are jurisdictional, meaning that what’s patented in the US may be clear in places like the EU and China;
3. Creative commons licensing and the open source communities are gaining steam and visibility (not to mention credibility);
4. And finally, the speed of products is rendering the protection of unimplemented intellectual property relatively moot.

Marshal McLuhan said “Invention is the mother of necessities,” and as product life-cycles move faster and faster and increasingly require global adoption in order to stay competitive, the need to protect ideas becomes less important. The ephemeral nature of our consumption demands new features and new extensions with alarming frequency. This means that building the better mousetrap, and not just dreaming one up, is indeed becoming the way to get the world to keep walking that well-worn path to your door.

There’s been a lot made of the Facebook TOS update that came out a few days ago, specifically the exclusion of a line that had assured users that all content they’d posted to their profile would be deleted if they chose to cancel their account with the service. The idea is that if I leave Facebook, all my personal information would be deleted forever, and to the service, it would be as though I’d never existed. This TOS change has new been retracted, and, one would assume, any technical changes have been rolled back.

What’s at issue is that comments on photos and statuses, messages, links and even “Likes” that are ascribed to other profiles would then be deleted, and those – while trivial – are still “User Generated Content” (strictly speaking) with all the rights and affordances that entails. Indeed, that’s been what Facebook is claiming is the reason for the omission of the line that grants them the right to hang on to those materials, but I think there’s something else going on…

User-Generated Content must be “Future Proof” in order to have continuing value to the medium that carries it. In the past few months, YouTube has added a HD option to many videos. I’ve noticed a marked improvement in the video shown on my iPhone, and I’m told that those watching YouTube on AppleTV have seen similar improvements. This is all due to the fact that YouTube has retained the ‘original’ video files that were uploaded by users, even going back to the first ones. Thus, when they made the partnership with Apple (for example), they could re-encode all the videos as assets in a format iPhones and Apple TV’s could handle (i.e. not flash).

FlickR does the same thing, and one would presume that MySpace and Facebook are doing the same with all the content that is contributed into their systems.

Here’s the question: If I link to a video to share it with my friends (who presumably enjoy it) and they share it with their friends (assuming the privacy setting is appropriate), and I delete my account, shouldn’t that link to the video survive? It’s essentially ‘content’ that I’ve generated, even though I may not be the author of the original content, it’s link and the associated context I place it in, plus any comments I’ve made on it are effectively my content.

Facebook’s next big challenge will be how to distribute all this user-generated content into new devices and applications. Already, I can’t watch Facebook videos on my iPhone or someone else’s blackberry, and moreover, accessing any of the existing social networking features through the set-top devices (Walled gardens like XBOX360, PS3, AppleTV, Tivo, etc) is impossible.

Being able to access social networks through off-web devices is a fundamental and critical strategic consideration if social networks are to continue to have relevance in the next 5000 days of the Internet, and in order to do that, ensuring content can survive into each of these other mediums in perpetuity is a critical legal hurdle.

Michael Geist – Canadians Face Triple Lock on Apple iPhone

“Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and NTT DOCOMO announced today their intent to unite Symbian OS(TM), S60, UIQ and MOAP(S) to create one open mobile software platform. Together with AT&T;, LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone they plan to establish the Symbian Foundation to extend the appeal of this unified software platform.”

Where Mr. Ingram focused on the implications to Google and Apple, I wonder if there isn’t something more at play here.

The big deal here is that with all of the talk of Web 2.0 and SaaS, most in the know tend to think of these as relatively closed systems that are for the most part, Web only, with limited inputs and outputs to other devices and network points. This is certainly for good reason: The examples we’re often given for successful implementations of SaaS, namely Salesforce.com, Google Apps, and even Amazon’s AWS ‘computing cloud’ are all, at their first glance, Web-based.

Nokia, et al, recognize that if any revolutions are going to happen, they’re going to be mobile. And just like the browser wars of the late ’90′s, there is tremendous reason to think that the battleground will be the mobile handset.

Just as Salesforce.com beat entrenched CRM application providers by using the platform to extend the value of their services with third-party apps and widgets, and Facebook surpassed social networking leaders MySpace and Friendster in part by extending the value of the interaction with mini-applications that plug into people’s social networks and enable other forms of non-linear interactions (oh what would the world be without Scrabulous?).

But the iPhone has started to change our concept of Web 2.0 as a web only proposition. This is not because thinking is changing in the technology space, but rather because consumers have awoken to the power of these devices, largely due to the homebrew community that first hacked the iPhone last year. Indeed, once Apple saw the power (and the desire) they needed to open up the platform, and thus the tightly controlling SDK. Now, people realize that mobile phones are powerful input and output devices, and are the Conduit for generating and consuming Content and Commerce anytime, any place. The network provides access to the platform which, in turn provides the appropriate distribution to any device, including IPTV, Web, Digital Signage & Kiosks, and yes, Mobile devices.

Nokia and the rest of the gang are eying the other giants, Apple, Google, RIM, and yes Microsoft with wary eyes, and are firmly aware that the next big thing in mobile won’t be the handset, and it won’t be the content per se… It’s the platform and the network.

Mathew Ingram on the buyout

…there is a flurry of speculation about improvements to a minor icon an the Apple Pantheon: the .Mac online service. For six years, .Mac has been a $100 a year bundle of handy Internet services, now including e-mail, online hosting, backup, photo sharing, and tools to synchronize calendars and address books. Industry reports say Apple has between 1 million and 2 million subscribers.”

“Now is certainly a great time to expand and rename .Mac. Much of the energy in software development is around online applications, which would be a logical evolution for Apple’s iLife and iWork software. Moreover, the iPhone and iPod Touch are particularly suited to services that blend small local applications with storage and other processing handled on an Internet server.

I find this analysis much more consistent with my own than with Forrester Research’s speculation about Apple’s shift towards home entertainment services. The gorgeously designed, yet deceptively useful devices that are entering the marketplace courtesy of Jobs et al are all but useless without some hefty services to make them sustainably unique.

As an example, I was aghast to discover that I couldn’t directly subscribe to a podcast on my iPhone, with Apple preferring me to sync through iTunes on the desktop. There is a third-party app that will let me download and listen to podcasts over my data or WiFi connection, but Apple does not natively support it… This is due, I believe, to Apple wanting to maintain control over what content enters its media player. A .ME service suite (with a web-service-based iTunes) will take us a long way towards the ubiquity of service that Mr. Hansell is speaking about.

Will Steve Jobs Set Me Free? – NY Times Bits

“In many ways, the iPhone saga merely confirmed what many Canadian consumers and businesses have known for some time. Mobile data pricing in Canada is among the highest in the world, creating a significant barrier to the introduction of new mobile services and causing many consumers to carefully ration their mobile use for fear of being hit with a hefty bill at the end of the month.”

I was VERY surprised (and disappointed) to learn the following:

“The impact of uncompetitive pricing is felt beyond the consumer market. Last month, the World Economic Forum pointed to problems in the wireless market as a key reason for Canada’s slipping global ranking for “network readiness” (Canada has moved from 6th worldwide in 2005 to 13th today). Canada ranked 75th in the number of mobile subscribers, trailing countries such as El Salvador, Kazahkstan, and Libya. It also lagged behind countries such as the United Kingdom, Singapore, Italy, Sweden, and Norway on mobile pricing.”

Link

“‘We’re thrilled to announce that we have a deal with Apple to bring the iPhone to Canada later this year,’ Rogers chief executive officer Ted Rogers said on Tuesday in a statement. ‘We can’t tell you any more about it right now, but stay tuned.’”

Taken in line with the recent commentary from Rogers Wireless Prez. Rob Bruce, I’m not sure that this deal has been fully fleshed out. It wouldn’t be the first time that Rogers jumped the gun on this announcement tho…

Link to G&M; Article

“It has been widely speculated that the stumbling block was Rogers’ wireless data plans, which typically cost more than those offered by carriers in Europe and the United States – a disparity that critics blame on a lack of Canadian wireless competition.

As well, most of Rogers’ wireless data plans have usage caps, with users charged by the megabyte if they go over their allotment.

“We’re not fans of unlimited plans,” Rob Bruce, president of Rogers’ wireless division, told analysts during a February conference call.”

I’m not one to tell a business that they shouldn’t take whatever they can get. If they’re in a position to charge that, and get it, then they should: It’s what the market will bear. If I don’t like it, my choice as a consumer should be to go elsewhere.

My lack of consumer choice in this matter, and this is the big one, these sky-high prices are actually hurting the wireless telcos! Why, do you ask? Well, first, they’re not going to own this game forever, and people in Canada have long memories. Second, and more importantly, wireless data represents some of the biggest opportunities for innovation since Web 1.0, and these guys are the gate-keepers. I think that rather than squeezing the network for cash, they need to get as many people ON the network. It’s only through tremendous girth that they will have value to big-boy wireless app (and I don’t mean game) developers.

This means that it’s also hurting Canada. Why? Not because we’re funneling huge sums of cash to Rogers, rather, because a cottage industry of innovation around wireless application development SHOULD be happening here, in the great white northern home of RIM. Such an industry could pay off BIG for wireless providers – Consider, they control the network, they could demand a cut of all mobile commerce transactions for eBay sales – Snipe from your Samsung!

Instead, we’re stuck with companies that would rather gouge us than encourage a fledgling industry that could help them make a lot of money in the future.

Link to Toronto Star Article