There’s just one thing: No Flash. That means that all-Flash web sites simply don’t work at all, and it means that Flash-based video on the web doesn’t work outside of Youtube.

It’s annoying that the iPhone misses this one part of the web experience, but maybe in the end it’s a good thing.

Flash is the only ubiquitous proprietary technology that has survived on the web. The fundamental technology behind the web, the HTTP protocal, is an open standard. HTML, CSS and XHTML are built on open standards, even if the browsers often try to add stuff. And even JavaScript, once a proprietary technology, became open in order to become more consistently supported by browsers. All that’s left is Flash.

There’s a lot of noise on the Net about Flash, and in particular how even the newly introduced iPad doesn’t support it. People speak of Flash as though it were a fundamental right of the Netizen. It isn’t: it’s a proprietary technology owned by one company, Adobe. And as much as I support a company’s right to make money off it’s own work and innovation, I also think that the fundamental technologies of the web must remain open. Wouldn’t it be deliciously ironic if a notoriously closed, proprietary system like Apple’s iPhone/iPod/iPad line could finally free us from Flash?

It could happen. With HTML 5.0 supporting an open web video standard, all Apple has to do is drag its feet a little longer with the whole Flash thing and it could be the end. As soon as Apple’s mobile Safari supports HTML 5 video on the iPhone, iPad, ad infinitum, web sites will globally start supporting it, too. And that could all but kill Flash. Not overnight. But within the time of a few minor browser releases we could see Flash being replaced across the web.

But do I really hate Flash so much? No. In fact, as a technology, when used correctly (eg. for video game-style interactivity, and not as a replacement for a web site), Flash makes a major contribution to the web experience. So really, what I’m asking for isn’t the complete death of Flash, but an end to our universal reliance on a single company’s web technology. There are two outcomes we should hope for:

1. Open web video, Flash survives in games. Video is too important on the web to be an afterthought or an add-on. That’s precisely the realization that is supposed to bring video (finally) to HTML. And many of the other functions that Flash provides can be done just as easily with AJAX, meaning technologies like JavaScript that are built into the open web. The one place where Flash truly excels is in online gaming, and there’s no reason why we need to kill this off.
2. Open Flash. The other option is even more exciting: creating an open standard for Flash. Adobe has already released the specifications for Flash’ SWF format, which is a step in the right direction, but what would be needed here is a fully open standard, in the way that proprietary JavaScript gave way to the open standard ECMAScript. It’s doubtful that Adobe will go that route unless it’s absolutely necessary – but more success with Apple’s mobile products could make that happen. Of course, there’s still the question of whether major browser makers would have enough of an incentive to actually implement Flash independently rather than relying on Adobe’s plugins. But there’s a subtle difference between a proprietary implementation of an open standard, and a fully proprietary technology.

Great. It’s a step up from the blame-deflection attitudes of past decades. And leaders who calmly admit they made poor decisions can actually seem more confident. But don’t take it too far. There’s a reason why people used to hide their mistakes, and it’s not just about deception. It’s that we expect others to make mistakes. But if you can hide the effects of your screw-up from me, as far as I’m concerned it didn’t happen.

Don’t be that guy who worriedly over-shares about his inadequacies. Be the one who smoothes over minor bumps quickly and invisibly so that no one even notices the problem. That way, when it comes time to tell people about the mistake you couldn’t magically fix, they’ll take it as a sign of strength.

It’s an especially good point that there’s a difference between the consumers of these media products and the clients of the media companies. This isn’t really new, though. What’s really happened is that as each new medium has become mainstream, it’s become a medium for sales as well as communicating news. Originally it was all verbal–town criers screaming out news, peddlers shouting out to persuade buyers. Then much later it was print media, which only caught on when enough people learned to read. Newspapers have been funded by advertising for many years. The small fee we pay to buy a newspaper is largely a token to prove to advertisers that we’re actually reading the paper. It’s the advertisements that pay for bulk of the paper itself–the journalists, the editors, the photographers, the physical location, the printing itself, and the distribution costs.

The same goes for TV programming, and now the model has moved online. The only major difference is that with newspapers and TV, we were a captive audience. Now the fight for consumers’ attention has intensified, in part because of media saturation, but also because we have so many options to fight back. The fact that we can install ad blockers, is part of that fight, just as the ability to fast forward through commercials is.

But the other problem is that it’s still a young medium, and the harder advertisers fight for our attention with pop-ups and messages flying across windows, the more desensitized we become. The ads have become more obnoxious but click-through rates have continued to drop steadily. This is in part because, with sites deriving all of their revenue from ads, they have a continual incentive to encourage their users to be distracted by them.

And that’s not infinitely sustainable. However, I disagree with Michael’s assertion that paid models are the right way to go. What really makes sense is what has become increasingly standard across the web: the freemium model, where the basic essential service of a web site is offered for free, but users can sign up for premium services. Often those services are more business-oriented, or simply give the user an ad-free experience.

It’s essential on the web because we’ve gone beyond channel surfing: it’s not just cheap to switch web pages like TV channels, it’s actually hard for users to stay focused on a single web page for any length of time because there are a practically infinite number of other web pages that can waste our time.

Finally, Wagner makes a good point about how news media are driven by what will attract more viewership for their advertising, rather than what is truly newsworthy. Michael Jackson’s passing is arguably an example of this, with stories about the (admittedly highly influential) pop icon bumping out important political news. But this has also always been true to some degree: newspapers publish stories that sell papers. And just as before, some of us choose to buy papers and magazines that cover stories of real merit. It’s a kind of addendum to the freemium model, that rare sites such as the Wall Street Journal offer such perceived value to a wealthier audience, that they’ve succeeded while requiring a paid subscription from the beginning.

In the meantime, the unlettered masses watch stories about Britney Spears, and enter private data into “fun quizzes” as red blinking airplanes fly across the screen urging them to “click now!’

The bottom line is that right now, everyone’s right. The privacy advocates are right to be concerned when a large company learns too much information about too many people. But in many ways online advertising is going in the right direction, and Google has been at the forefront of this. When so many advertisers thought that the solution to declining ad revenue was more aggressive pop-ups, Google realized that subtle and better-targeted ads, placed where and when people were interested in them, were the real solution.

Lately some advertising providers, including Facebook, have even gone to the point of letting users vote up or down ads. This is leading in a much more positive direction for advertising. (Especially for Facebook, whose advertising targeting is so far particularly bad.)

People complain a lot about advertising, but what we don’t like is annoying, aggressive advertising at the wrong time for the wrong product. We actually appreciate advertising when it’s tasteful and entertaining, and when it’s shown at a time when we can benefit from it. People buy entire magazines mostly for the ads–including fashion and tech gadget mags. Movie trailers are the best example, though–they’re pure advertising, yet many people voluntarily seek out trailers online.

The message: show me ads for stuff I might want! (And get rid of the other crap.)

Back to privacy, though. It’s great that Google, Facebook and so on are finding ways to better match ads to people. That part makes everyone happy. The problem is that they keep that information.

Right now our options are essentially three:

1. See ads all the time, mostly tasteless annoying ones for things you don’t want.
2. Block all of the ads with a browser ad blocker (or selectively once an ad has already annoyed you).
3. Let companies like Google and Facebook take care of finding the right ads for you, and hope they play nice knowing everything about everyone.

It’s easy. I prefer the HTML widget because you can play with it a bit more within your own design, etc: http://twitter.com/widgets/html_widget

I’ve made a quick hack to the JavaScript that comes with the widget:

1. No replies – I didn’t want it to display replies to other Twitter users. After all, the people seeing these messages on my site will have no idea who these other users are, or probably even what the strange @ symbol means.
2. Wrap the links – Putting the full URL for the links seemed archaic, so I took the URL for links out of the message, and instead wrapped the whole Tweet in a link, if there was a link in it.

It wasn’t difficult but I thought I’d share the code in case you want to do the same!

function twitterCallback(tweets) {
  var statusHTML = [];
  for (var i=0; i<tweets.length; i++){
    var username = tweets[i].user.screen_name;
        //Skip replies
        if (tweets[i].text.search(/^@/) != -1) {
            continue;
        }
        //If there's a link, remove URL from message and the make whole tweet a link
    var url = tweets[i].text.match(/((https?|s?ftp)\:\/\/[^"\s\<\>]*[^.,;'">\:\s\<\>\)\]\!])/g);
    var status = tweets[i].text.replace(/((https?|s?ftp|ssh)\:\/\/[^"\s\<\>]*[^.,;'">\:\s\<\>\)\]\!])/g, '');
        if (url) {
            status = '<a href="' + url + '">' + status + '</a>'
        }
        //Push the Tweet into the status box
    statusHTML.push('<li><span>'+status+'</span> <a style="font-size:85%" href="http://twitter.com/'+username+'/statuses/'+tweets[i].id+'"><em>'+relative_time(tweets[i].created_at)+'</em></a></li>');
  }
  document.getElementById('twitter_update_list').innerHTML = statusHTML.join('');
}

In order to use it, you can enclose it in script tags like this:

<script type="text/javascript">
--Script Here--
</script>

In my case, I put it in a separate .js file so it can be shared by different pages.

Let me know if it’s of use.

It talks about some of the interesting characteristics of groups (in particular online communities), such as how essentially groups need some kind of government, otherwise they’ll spend all of their time talking about “enemies” or sex or how awesome their values/heroes/etc. are, and virtually no time actually pursuing whatever the group was created for. The article was written in 2003 in reference to online communities, but the points are timeless and extend beyond online groups.

It also got me thinking about online social networks and different ideas to build better-quality conversations intrinsically into a network.

For example, you can go with two numbers that seem to come up a lot: 2, 8 and 150.

Two is an obvious number: the best, most intimate conversations happen one-on-one. When you want to get to know someone, you have an intimate dinner, just the two of you. And most online social media reflects this, from Facebook “friends” to text messaging and the way people use email most of the time. The Extreme Programming methology advocated the use of paired programming to take advantage of the power of “dyads.” Two is the ideal number for getting things done.

Eight is the number that In Search of Excellence quotes as being the ideal size of an ad hoc, task force or skunkworks style group–or essentially any productive group.  Five to ten people is a good range–beyond that, you start having to manage people so much that the quality of work and communication drastically decreases. An eight-person group is big enough to combine different skill sets and ideas without getting bogged down. (Interestingly, I’ve noticed that most swing and salsa dance troupes are composed of 5-8 couples, combining both the number 2 and the number 8). Eight is the ideal number for a group project.

Finally, the tribal number: 150. This number has been quoted in numerous places. The Tipping Point refers to it as the “Magic Number” and quotes religious groups, business leaders and evolutionary biologists all coming to the same conclusion: our brains aren’t designed to understand the interactions of groups larger than 150 people. And 150 is bigger than you might think, because it’s not just about remember 150 names and faces (we can handle much more than that). The hard part is keeping track of the relationships between all of those people, from the fact that Johnny likes Lisa but won’t acknowledge it because she’s a Republican, to the differences in how two sub-groups of friends feel about Myspace vs. Facebook.

We see the stress-tests of many social networks right now. Facebook users often have hundreds of “friends” that they barely know, which means being inundated with party invitations from halfway around the world and annoying “which of your friends is the hottest pirate?” applications. Many Twitter users “follow” vastly more people than they can actually read, which means that the conversational nature of Twitter disappears (something that Twitter clients all try to fix).

The problem? When our social networks spiral into uncontrollable hugeness, the whole two-way interactivity of social media is stifled, and in time the network itself will die if the technology doesn’t adapt to fix it. Facebook has been trying to tweak its interface to reflect this need for users to see exactly enough information to keep them interacting with their friends, but not so much that the site is useless.

One of the keys to social groups is that they need structure. Ad hoc groups aren’t really unstructured, they’re just free to evolve a new structure that fits their needs. All groups either evolve structure or die, and the best social media networks are the ones that evolved the best structures for interactions.

Why not take the three magic numbers and put them to good use?

Two (1:1) – Actually Facebook does a great job of this. You have 1:1 friendships, Facebook messages (which don’t have to be 1:1 but usually are), and even the Wall-to-Wall feature that helps to isolate two sets of broadcasted messages into one conversation. Brilliant.

Eight – This is the first number that is under-exploited. What about a social network where certain types of groups were limited to just 8 people? It seems like an annoying restriction, but then look at Twitter’s success in limiting posts to 140 chars.

150 – Here’s a radical thought: what if you were limited to a maximum of 150 “friends” in your social network? Or what if certain groups or networks were limited to 150 people?

We love to hate restrictions, but from Haiku to Delta blues, sometimes there’s great beauty in simplicity.

From 1980 to 2008, startups, defined in this case as companies less than five years old, accounted for all net job growth in the U.S., according to the Kauffman Foundation’s Business Dynamics Statistics[.... The] average annual net employment growth rate for startups was about 3% a year while the growth of the rest of the U.S. private sector for the same period was about 1.8%.

The message here is clear: big business loses jobs, and small businesses make them again. As someone who’s started a few companies that are still increasing employment, I’m proud of the role that entrepreneurs have in making jobs. Still, two things bother me:

• Doesn’t anyone remember the Dot Com era? That whole bubble was built on startups. Sure, they employed a lot of people, but how long did that last? Do we really need to give startups even more money?
• How much of the employment gains from startups are simply at the expense of bigger businesses? It would be great to get some figures on that.

Funding startups to fight the recession and increase employment could be a stroke of brilliance if the kick-start follows these rules:

1. Loans are better than grants. Obviously as an entrepreneur, I’d rather receive a grant than a loan. (Free money, anyone?) But the way companies are funded in North America is too much about VC money, which is about spraying money around and seeing what sprouts up quickly. It favours short-term payoffs. Long term loans are more likely to build solid companies.
2. Focus on the long term. The whole point is to have a permanent effect on the economy, not stimulate yet another bubble. The solution isn’t to fund a hundred “could be the next thing” companies. It’s to support companies that are likely to be around in five years.
3. Don’t focus just on tech companies. Sure, high tech is sexy. And it’s important to stimulate that kind of growth. But tech companies–hardware, software, biotech–are where the VC money is already going. And not everyone in the US is ever going to become an engineer, so we need to create more jobs outside of tech. Peter Lynch has said that the best bets are companies that use technology, not the ones that make it, because the margins on any given technology consistently decrease.
4. Do fund resources for entrepreneurs. Successful entrepreneurs tend to be experienced in their field but not experienced running businesses. They are also likely to already have families, which makes them sensitive to needs like health care. Resources such as business education and subsidized health benefits could go a long way towards encouraging the creation and growth of new businesses.

Thanks to Guy Kawasaki for Tweeting the Businessweek article.

But if life is a game, it’s not really the kind game theorists look it. It’s less like chess and more like… Calvinball–and entrepreneurs need to keep this in mind. There’s a very insightful conversation described in The Black Swan that I enjoyed reading, between the author Nassim Nicholas Taleb (“NNT”), a successful businessman from the Bronx named “Fat Tony,” and “Dr. John,” an engineer working as an actuary in an insurance company:

NNT: Assume that a coin is fair, i.e., has an equal probability of coming up heads or tails when flipped. I flip it ninety-nine times and get heads each time. What are the odds of my getting tails on my next throw?

Dr. John: Trivial question. One half, of course, since you are assuming 50 percent odds for each and independence between draws.

NNT: What do you say, Tony?

Fat Tony: I’d say no more than 1 percent, of course.

NNT: Why so? I gave you the initial assumption of a fair coin, meaning that it was 50 percent either way.

Fat Tony: You are either full of crap or a pure sucker to buy that “50 pehcent” business. The coin gotta be loaded. It can’t be a fair game.

NNT: But Dr. John said 50 percent.

Fat Tony: (whispering in NNT’s ear): I know these guys with the nerd examples from the bank days. They think way too slow. And they are too commoditized. You can take them for a ride.

You can simply call it “street smarts” or “thinking outside the box” but that’s the kind of big-picture thinking that seems to help people in business–and in the game of life, the game without rules.

Back when I was in university, a friend of mine–to protect his name I’ll call him “Naaron Drigglenslaw“–and I were interested in expanding the scope of our interactions with the computer network of our alma mater. He ended up succeeding in bypassing the login screen merely by pressing Control-Break, a key combo that in DOS was originally used to end programs. I was frustratingly jealous because it never occurred to me that any self-respecting programmer would make a SECURITY screen vulnerable to a interrupt like that. It’s kind of like building a steel padlock that requires two keys and a combination, but also spontaneously opens with insistent shaking.

But Naaron didn’t make the assumption that the login screen was built intelligently. Looking back on my software development days, his was the smart guess. He now runs a great Interweb company which I’ll call the “Miracle Factory,” not to be confused with “Miracle Whip” which is a nutritional supplement for university students. Naaron’s company produces cool things like Ask500People.com.

Curiously, they don’t make any security software.

While Seisetsu was the master of Engaku in Kamakura he required larger quarters, since those in which he was teaching were overcorwded. Umezu Seibei, a merchant of Edo, decided to donate five hundred pieces of gold called ryo toward the construction of a more commodious school. This money he brought to the teacher.

Seisetus said: “All right. I will take it.”

Umezu gave Seisetsu the sack of gold, but he was dissatisfied with the attitude of the teacher. One might live a whole year on three ryo, and the merchant had not even been thanked for five hundred.

“In that sack are five hundred ryo,” hinted Umezu.
“You told me that before,” replied Seisetsu.
“Even if I am a wealthy merchant, five hundred ryo is a lot of money,” said Umezu.
“Do you want me to thank you for it?” asked Seisetsu.
“You ought to,” replied Umezu.
“Why should I?” inquired Seisetsu. “The giver should be thankful. (From Zen Flesh, Zen Bones which you can read here.)

When I use my Ubuntu computer, my brain goes into Ubuntu context. When I switch to my MacBook, there’s a conscious change of context: I start using Apple’s Command Key combinations, for example. That’s why I look for MacOS apps that feel like MacOS programs. It’s not hard to change context; it’s hard when the  behaviour doesn’t fit the context.

What I like about Gmail is that it uses some of the same ideas from applications like Outlook, but the interface is strongly based on the context of the web browser. That means that there are a lot of things Google added that made sense for someone using web mail–such as the Webclips or Google Talk built-in; and also that they avoided trying to do the drag-and-drop things that didn’t make the same intuitive sense.

Still, web developers aren’t as limited as they were before, and as MacOS, Windows and Unix have stolen relentlessly from each other, we should expect Web Apps to copy from the offline app world. The main thing is not to falsely imply via the interface that the web interface reproduces a native interface more faithfully than it does. The Uncanny Valley effect isn’t just visual: it’s most frustrating when the visual metaphor breaks down.

An important concept in design is affordances: the obvious characteristics we can intuit about an object from its design, just by looking at it or even feeling it. A door knob affords a turning and pulling motion, whereas a flat plate suggests pushing. When you’re used to certain appearance (blue underlined text) in a certain context (web pages) affords a certain action (eg. clicking sends you to the linked page), it becomes a matter of instinct.

In Windows, you learn that certain objects can be right-clicked, and certain actions can be undone. So if your interface looks like a Windows app, then users will be disappointed when they can’t do those things. Not to mention that MacOS users may not have the same expectations.

The solution isn’t to avoid adding new features: it’s to keep the interface consistent, and to keep in mind the context of the web. A great example is the original PalmPilot. Rather than trying to make a tiny, feature-poor knock-off of an existing desktop operating system, PalmOS created a whole new way of relating to small devices. Rather than disappointing users by implying expectations that couldn’t be met, they created a new context. Similarly, the iPhone uses a specialized interface that’s different from the desktop interface, not just in behaviour but also in look.

Bottom line? Here are my guidelines for web app design without Uncanny Valleys:

1. Do include features like drag ‘n drop, cut ‘n paste, right-click context menus, etc.
2. Don’t make your user interface look too much like a Windows or Mac application.
3. Do copy some of the common design features of modern apps, like a File/Edit menu where appropriate.
4. Don’t forget it’s a web app, and don’t try to convince the user that it’s not.
5. Do embrace the advantages of being a web application, such as links, working back buttons, mashed-up web content, etc.