Mike Vizard, Dana Gardner, Dan Farber, Hugh MacLeod, Doc Searls, Jason Calacanis, and a visit from the NewsGang. This is the Last Gang. Recorded Friday, April 4, 2008.

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Vizard:  Hello

Gillmor:  Hey

Vizard:  Hello Mike’s here

Gillmor:  Hey how you doing?

Vizard: Good

Gillmor: So Mike, what’s going on?

Vizard: Well we talked about everything that’s going on yesterday, man .

Gillmor: Well, that’s true.  So, this has been the Gillmor Gang.

Vizard: Although, lets see.  Google came clean about playing politics with wireless spectrum.  That was kind of fun.

Gillmor: What do you mean they came clean?

Vizard: Well, according to them, they say they were only in it to make sure that their price stayed at a certain level so the spectrum would be guaranteed to be open to various devices, so it was one of those things where they didn’t want to win. It’s sort of like bidding for art that you don’t really want.  You’re just trying to drive the price up.

Garner: Isn’t that supposed to be against the rules?

Vizard: Yeah, I didn’t quite get the whole ethical side of the equation but I guess it’s ok because it meant that the telcos wound up giving the government more money which i guess is good for taxes on some level.

Garner: So everyone hates the telcos so it’s ok.

Vizard: I don’t know that everyone hates the telcos.

Garner: Well you remember Ma Bell.

Vizard: I think everyone is a litle diappointed by their approach to the marketplace.

Garner: Yeah

Gillmor: OK, alright, well this has been the Gillmor Gang.  [beep.] Damn. Who’s that?

Vizard: Are we doing the experiment again?

Gillmor: God I hope not. I still, I’m still on the fence about releasing last week’s show for that very reason.  It was much more interesting watching than I think it was listening.

Vizard: It was difficult to talk over, that’s for sure.

Gillmor: Yeah, I know, it was pretty crazy.  But, I can’t say much more than if all things go well, this is the last of those shows.  You know, we’ll change the code.  We’ll go back to the same old thing, but if nobody shows up, then it will just be the three of us, and we can talk about… how was the Yankee game?

Vizard: Yankees pulled one out of their hat yesterday.

Gillmor: So did you get to go to the second opening day or does that…

Vizard: No, it played,but we decided to hold onto our ticket and use them another day because they’re basically rain out tickets at this point. And it would be much nicer weather than what we were looking at.

Gillmor: So Dana what is your story?

Garner: So what’s my story? Well I am headed off to the IBM web sphere conference, their annual impact thing next week in Las Vegas.  So I’ve been thinking about services oriented architecture and other arcane subjects and kind of reaching some conclusions that this thing isn’t holding water and that something is going to shift and I think it’s more toward web oriented archictecture and putting data into services enablement and using web APIs and mash-ups to accomplish about 70% of what SOA was supposed to deliver but without all that backend investment and complexity. So think we’re maybe seeing a shift towards web orientation for new development and then excising and extending the data from existing applications but not really trying to fully service enable the entire infrastructure and application  stack and/or code and legacy logic assets. So I’m coming around to a different perspective on SOA, and I think it’s not quite as big as we thought it would be.

Vizard: So what replaces it? Just iterative development based on the web or what?

Garner: Yeah, I think that’s part of it but you look at what people are doing with Ruby and you look what’s coming down with some of the cloud-based services and the cost benefits they’re in that making data available and creating using rich internet application interfaces portal and web applications that can take advantage of the internal servies external services. You know, when it comes to B2C types of applications where you’re going off the web, it doesn’t make sense to wait around for the SOA to take and make legacy code and applications available, it’s really about lets make new apps and get them on the web, satisfy out customers, tap the data as best we can, and maybe that’s not SOA, but it’s a hell of a lot better than what we got.

Vizard: In the immortal words of Steve Gillmor, isn’t that kind of orthogonal because those new apps will be talking to to the legacy corprate apps on the backend and the best way to do that is to make the legacy apps SOA enabled?

Garner: Yeah, I think it’s even moved beyond that.  I don’t think we even need to make the two apps to talk together as much as it’s important for them to share common data. And let the legacy apps be the legacy apps and let the web apps be the web apps and over time more and more apps will be web apps. You can start shutting off the older apps retaining the data that’s  relevant and so it’s really that SOA is more  of a data activity in that the applications should be allowed to just move right into this whole web paradigm.

Vizard: Just use brute force to push the data across and don’t worry about any fancy, schmantzy object oriented progamming.

Garner: Yeah, I mean the data is what’s more important than the applications and to go in and try to retrofit an entire infrastructure to be services enabled or oriented is moving along very slowly and the paybacks come from the data and the web apps anyway.

Gillmor: You know it’s interesting that you’re saying this because you’re kind of channeling the debate last night between Mark Benioff and Hans of SAP at the Churchill Club here in the Valley. I wish Garber would show up because he was there as well. What was interesting about it was that Mike’s thesis was being proposed by Platner and Dana’s thesis was being proposed by Benioff and you know what Platner was basically saying was that they were going to roll out on demand real soon now and that the reason that it’s taking so long is that it’s really hard to do and that they have to have 100% of the capabilities before they can roll it out to the large companies that they support. Right?

Vizard: Yeah, so that would be case not only for SAP but also for anyone who’s been trucking along with client server and mainframe based applications.

Gillmor: Well I’m just saying… hang on one second.

Vizard: But to Dana’s point when SAP talks about it they throw a timeline around it and they wrap that all the way up to 2010 and beyond and the market’s not going to wait for that.

Garner: And the market will have moved beyond that I think,you know.

Gillmor: I’m sorry, I’m just typing the phone number in for the eight billionth time.  Tina, can you give me the code so I can give it to Doc? I need a code. Its….

Vizard: The one that says do not publish unless you like the electric chair.

Gillmor: Yeah, that’s the one that was broadcast on about UStream channels last week.  Evidently nobody cares because nobody is calling in, and Doc, of couse, never has the number no matter how many times he calls in.  Ok, well at least he’ll call in. So, I missed what you were saying, Mike, you were saying something.

Vizard: I was saying that the problem that SAP faces in terms of a challenge is that they might be mapping out all the right ideas but their execution of those ideas is timed out for sometime after 2011 and the market will move long…

Gillmor: I definitely agree with that.  The other thing he says that’s really the tell here is that, he said that they have to get to 100% or near 100% of the services in order to be able to roll it out and in order for the ROI to be sufficient enough, he didn’t say this, but this is what he meant, the ROI to be sufficient enough so that enterprises would spend the money necessary to do this.  In other words, he’s saying that he’s trapped in an anti-innovation cycle where he has to get to 100% before he can sell his product at a profit.

Vizard:  That would be called the Innovator’s Dilemma.

Garner: And if you flip that into what an enterprise is faced with, which would be a liitle bit different with from an ISV like SAP, is that don’t want to innovate, they want to be out in the marketplace to be fleet and agile and create new business processes but they don;t want to have to wait around to have to service enable their entire infrastructure to be able to do that, and so the quick and easy way to do it is to go web oriented archicture and create basically a skunkworks division within your IT department that can take advantage of Ruby and Python and RIIs and mashups and do RESTful interactions to the GUI and give a really nice user experience, take it out to the web, let it scale, take advantage of infrastructure as a services as you can, and then tie the data in the backend so that you can still manage this weith the context of larger business processes and legacy activities, and that to me is a much more fruitful path to higher productivity and lower costs than…

Gillmor: Dan Farber, Dan Farber does this sound familiar?

Farber: A little bit, the way I read it last night was that SAP mentality is that, as you were saying, is that they want to build this 100% solution that does wall-to-wall functionality and that’s a very big business point of view, and they’ve been very successful, $15 billion in revenues last year, but I also think that boil the ocean by having 2,000 web services interfaces and building applications out of that is a great concept but it’a question, how do they feed it out to all these companies and get to 100,000 customers which is what they want to do by 2010. And we don’t know yet because they’re still testing this part and it’s been in development for 4 years, which is the business by design. 

Garner: The problem with SOA in general is that it’s good computer science, but nobody’s going to go rip us their existing apps for the sake of good computer science so they look at SOA and they say, why, as soon as we rewrite something or we’ll roll out a new app we’ll use it on SOA, but there’s very little inclination to go back and rip things up in order to put them on SOA just because that’s the right thing to do from a computer science perspective.

Gillmor: Hey Doc, you there?

Searls: I’m here.  I’m here. So you’re taking about SAP?

Gillmor: Dana was talking about now that he’s he chairman of the SOA blog environment, that he’s giving up on it, and he was explaining why.

Searls: So the SOA environment or SAP?

Gillmor: Dana has this… you want to explain your vast podcast industry experience?

Garner: No, I was tracking SOA for a long time and of course web services before and XML before that and Java before that, so we’re just going on a constant journey here, but I think that a lot of the returns now for SOA are not spectacular. Only 25% in a recent survey of people were considering of taking it to a general, holistic or horizontal type of deployment. And it’s been 5 years in the making, and I’m beginning to see a lot more uptake in other technologies that allow companies to get basic productivity and agility and new processes out on the web and these are things like Ruby and Python and…

Gillmor:  Ok, so he’s been going on for a while. And the other thing that was being talked about is a debate last night between Benioff and Platner of SAP that Dan and I were both attending.

Searls: Did they debate like CRM stuff?

Gillmor: Yeah, basically the cloud vs. the cloud in 3 years.

Searls: Ahh. Who took which side on that one?

Gillmor: Well it started by, well obviously Platner has no choice but to be the.. he sort of sat there grumpily. It sort of looked like he was pouting for a while.  Basically, he had two things to say, which I’m of course overstating so that Farber can argue with me. But he basically had two things to say. One was that it’s not here yet and there’s no way you can scale up from a single seat or mom-and-pop shop to Fortune 100, and the only way the Fortune 100 are going to be able to rely on on-demand is going to be through some magic that is going to be about in-memory databases, large scale in-memory databases that… hail storm by the way. And of course Benioff was suggesting that there some examples of large-scale, in-memory databases that are out there right now, like Google, and that in fact it is veryt scalable and that’s it’s movinglike a freight train.  Then Platner was basically saying that well, it’s a lot harder than you think, and by the way, and Oracle is going to buy you anyway and so there’s bascially going to be a mash up between Oracle and Salesforce where Oracle gives them all the connectors that Mike and Dana were talking about having to build in, or is what Dan calls the 2100 interfaces.

Farber: That’s what they have. 2,100 web services interfaces that are immutable and you mesh them together to create the functionality.

Searls: This is SAP or Oracle?

Gillmor / Farber: SAP

Searls: Well this is off the technical topic, but the first time I met Benioff, he was at Oracle and running the Macintosh corner of it and…

Gillmor: No,that was when he was at Apple that he was a programmer

Searls: What I remember about it was that browsers has just come along, and Netscape had just come out with it’s browser, and he made the point that anyone can make a browser, and they were going to make their own damn browser, and here was a little drawing of it, and I don’t recall Oracle’s browser ever happening. To me, it’s like, one silo arguing with another silo and SAP wants to be world’s biggest silo, I think, maybe I’m wrong.

Gillmor: No, they want to protect being the world’s biggest silo.

Searls: oh, ok, that’s different. But it’s fine, I’d like to approach it all from the outside.

Gillmor: I don’t see, what I saw last night was the argument was over about two minutes in and then basically it deteriorated that Platner that said Oracle’s going to buy you or maybe we’ll buy you. What I was wandering was what is the poison pill that Benioff has in place… it is a public company.

Searls: Persuasive.

Garner: Oracle makes a lot of sense given that Alison is an early and major stockholder and supporter of Salesforce, it’s really just been a hedge for him.

Vizard: I think everyone’s sitting there figuring that we’ll see more companies come roll out various software as a services and as it gets further down the commodization line, the cheaper that Salesforce gets.

Gillmor: I think that’s a sucker’s bet, frankly. I think that what’s basically going to happen is that Microsoft is going to buy him and that he’s going to become Ballmer’s successor.

Searls: Interesting thought. That would be very clever on Microsoft’s part.

Farber: I don’t think that makes any sense at all.

Gillmor: Well that’s why they call this the Gillmor Gang, or they used to.

Searls: If it was the Farber Gang it wouln’t make a lot of sense,

Farber: Benioff runs enterprise software companies and he’s good at being a David against the Goliaths, but becoming a Goliath isn’t something he would do for very long.

Gillmor: But Microsoft has to catch up.

Farber: You’re thinking about Microsoft in the wrong way.  You’re thinking of Microsoft as oh, it’s Microsoft Office and SQL server, no it’s what’s the name of the box…

Gillmor: it’s MSN, it’s the XBox, right?

Farber: No they’re in a lot of businesses not just…

Gillmor: Oh, come on. Is this the retro argument from 2003?

Farber: I didn’t come here to get insulted, I got that last night. from who?

Searls: You get it two ways or one way Dan? Or just from the guys sitting next to you?

Farber: The guys sitting next to me.

Gillmor: Well I’m confused, I think you do come here for an argument and to be insulted. So… Why are you here anyway?

Farber: I’m hanging out with my friends

Gillmor: So, pal, you’re ful of shit.

Farber: Ok,

Gillmor: When you tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about, I mean, how long have I had to be right about Office is dead? Do I have to be dead myself that that might be true?

Searls: Yeah

Farber: You mean that billion dollar business is dead?

Gillmor: Yeahhh

Searls: Steve’s terminal diagnosis is that it’s dead so it’s a death sentence.  A death sentence and dead are the same.

Farber: It takes a long time for these companies to go away. They don’t grow but they don’t go away.  Look at CA, look at Unisys. 

Gillmor: Who?

Farber: Look at Wang, Wang is still out there believe it or not.

Gillmor: Wow. They are? [beep] Who’s on the call? Is that you Jason?

Searls: Speaking of Wang and CA, is Charles Wang still around or is he in jail or some other place?

Vizard: I think he fled the country didn’t he?

Garner: No, he’s ok. It’s the other fellow who went to jail.

Searls: I think you’re right, I think you’re right.

Garner: Sanjay Kumar.

Searls: Ok

Farber: Athough there were some pretty interesting articles in either the Journal or the Times about Wang and I’m not sure he’s actually out in public much.

Vizard: Everyone’s going to get a get out of jail free card in a few years.

Gillmor: Who’s that?

Calacanis: It’s Jason.

Gillmor: It sounds like you’re talking through a muffler.

Calacanis: I thought you guys are talking about mufflers.  If you’re talking about mufflers, isn’t it appropriate?

Searls: Yes, we’re talking about Charles Wang, the former founder of Computer Associates.  The guy not in jail,but he owns the NY Islanders hockey franchise.

Calacanis:  It’s pretty much the equivalent of being in jail. That’s pretty much a crime right there.

Gillmor: Are the Nets still a team?

Calacanis: They’re still a team, moving to Brooklyn.

Vizard: Says here that Bill Gates somewhere in Florida is saying that Windows 7 will be out in about a year or so.

Gillmor: Windows 7. What are we on now?

Vizard: I guess we’re on 6 if it’s 7.

Gillmor: Is 6 XP or is it that one that didn’t work, Vista?

Vizard: 7 is Vista light isn’t it?

Gillmor: I don’t know, I mean I don’t follow Windows anymore. I used to.

Vizard: Speaking at the annual meeting of the InterAmerican Development Bank in Miami, which is always kind of funny, cause they still don’t have Vista out in any kind of adoption cycle, and they’re already starting to market the next version.

Gillmor: Well they kind of have to, don’t they? Because of all that revenue from Office is going to go away.

Farber: This is next platform for the next dead version of Office that they’ll make billions of dollars off of.

Gillmor: This is where SAP is going to become oraface.

Searls: That will happen if they buy Benoiff and the company with it.

Gillmor: Well I seriously want to know if Salesforce can be bought by anybody. Can a public company be bought by anybody? Isn’t that what the lesson of Yahoo is?

Searls: They still around, Yahoo?

Gillmor: No, they were bought by Microsoft.

Vizard: Google.

Searls: Ohh.

Gillmor: That’s the head of the chicken yes.

Vizard: According to the blogosphere, ya know, it looks like ya know with project Albany here Google’s dead, right?  So if Office is dead, then Google’s dead, and along with Albany.

Gillmor: Well, then who said Google’s dead? 

Searls: No, no nothings dead until Steve says it’s dead

Gillmor:  that’s right,

Searls: That’s my theory (laughter)

Gillmor:  But who said Google’s dead? (Laughter)

Vizard: I’m just playing

Gillmor: Who in the Blogosphere said that Google’s dead?

Searls: It’s only sleeping, It’s only sleeping.  I’m sorry jumped the gun. Only Steve is allowed to declare things dead.  Go wake it up it’s only sleeping

If Google’s lost it’s(hit?) that’s a big indicator

(Inaudible)

Gillmor:  What did you say?  Wait a minute, Jason’s being scrambled…

Calacanis:  I think this Gilmore Gang is being limited to 1999 and 2019.   (Laughter) All of our opinions have to exist in those 2 years.  (Inaudible) 

Searls: A dyslexic’s version of it…

Gillmor:  All right so, all right so, I’m going to take that one and I’m gonna run with it.  So you’re basically saying that either this is all about shit that we don’t care about because it’s been gone for a long time or this is about my fantasies of what’s going to happen and it’s all irrelevant to right now for some reason.  Is that what you’re saying?

Calacanis:  Basically, I’m saying that not even with in the 10-year time frame of reality. (Laughter)

Gillmor:  1999 to 2019 is a 10-year time frame, well I agree with that one.

Vizard :So, alright, speaking of yahoo and google and Microsoft and all that, but is it me or is it like yahoo finally does something interesting once Microsoft starts to acquire them.  I mean is like are they just…

Calacanis:  are you talking about (shine?)  (inaudible) 

Vizard:Yeah the new voice driven stuff and some of the contact search they have on mobile.  It’s like they’re actually talking like

Calacanis:  It’s all going to get ripped it up and thrown all away

Vizard: In time it’ll get ripped up and thrown away?  Yeah, well, that’s a bummer coz it seems like they actually have something relevant to say for a change

Calacanis: It’s kinda sad actually coz a lot of these people who are working there are (in audible) are working really hard on all this content stuff, but Microsoft will not be in the content business so anything they do in content they’re just gonna rip out and throw away just like they do at Slate and MSNBC and others.  Microsoft doesn’t want to be in the content business just like Google doesn’t.  Once you’re in the content business you create this massive channel conflict with your ad network.  Google is not buying Yahoo to get into the content business, they are buying yahoo to get into the search application, web application, and ad network business in reverse order.  The ad network business is the most important.

Vizard: Not competing with your partners doesn’t seem to bother Google since they have this new search in the search feature.

Calacanis: That’s a technicality, I don’t think that’s a big deal because you can opt out of that so it’s another one of these like, you know google does something that they think is the best for the user, and they let people opt out of it.  So and then people assume that the opt out feature isn’t and therefore so google is trying to encroach, but the opt out feature is right there.  It’s not encroaching, it’s like people saying like, “Oh you’re in google stuff and google news,” and they’re like, “Unless you don’t want us to” they know you’re there because you want to be. You know all these French newspapers are crying and suing google (French accent) “Mon dieu, you’re stealing our content! Mon dieu!”

Vizard: Well, what’s his name … but I think Zell when he bought the Chicago papers said pretty much the very same thing.

Calacanis:  Well, that was the most idiotic statement I’ve ever heard when he was like “What if all the news papers, ya know, didn’t give the content to Google” Well, number one are google stock stealing other content, uh you can turn off the google bot from looking your site any time you want and that’s the equivalent of committing digital (seppuku?)

Gillmor: Uh, MacLeod, I can see your IM but I cannot hear you…

MacLeod:  Ok, can you hear me?

Gillmor:  I can hear you now.  Are you still talking these days?  You seem to be leaving the blogosphere; you know you’ve got a ton of these difference projects.  What’s going on with you?

MacLeod: Oh yeah, I’ve need to (inaudible) to Alpine Texas. And I

Gillmor: We’ve been following that on twitter, you have been communicating that but everyday there is a new pronouncement on further withdrawal from anything that people can understand

MacLeod The short answer is Steve, I got a book deal but I can’t go public with it for another 48 hours. 

Gillmor: ok excellent

MacLeod: And it’s quite a big deal ok and so I know it’s but um … it’s really … and I’ve talked to Steve about it before I’m kind of It’s not so much the blogs I don’t like, it’s kinda what I call “blogospherics” where you have to kinda keep track of everything whereas I’d much prefer twitter if I’m being social

Searls:So as we know the blogosphere is dead, so we just move over to the twitter-sphere. 

(Inaudible)

Gillmor:  I want a moment of silence while Doc Searls declares the blogosphere dead…

Searls:  No, no, no, no, no the twittersphere.  I’m distinguishing between the blogosphere and the flogosphere; the flogosphere is alive and well. 

Gillmor:  Jason are you calling in from Mars through a uStream gateway, I cannot understand you

Calacanis:  It’s skype, can you not hear Skype?

Gillmor:  are you trying to save money on the 800 call?

(Laughter)

Gillmor:You literally sound scrambled, Jason, you’re part one syllable later syllable comes ahead of the former one that kind of thing.

Calacanis: Are you saying I’m scrambled?

Gillmor: Back to Doc Searls…what do you mean the twittersphere is dead but the flogosphere is alive? 

Searls:  Well, no, I’m just saying for my own purposes find myself less and less interested in twitter, but mostly because I’m busy and there are just too many people I’m following with and too much of a following consists of finding out what somebody had for lunch so it’s not that interesting to me.  But something’s happening in the blogosphere that is interesting to me which is that I really do think that the way too much of it has become about uh flogging and not blogging.  Let’s all just pile onto drive something up and drive something up on digg, let’s all go for

Gillmor: this is old news

Searls: I think there is a need to differentiate between writing that contributes to the increase of understanding between people or even just delivering new and useful information and flogging for advertising money, or joining the general flogosphere because that’s what’s expected of you when you’re blogging.  I think there is a difference between those two and I’d like to make that distinction, and an interesting thing, I made that distinction in an article in Linux Journal that got exactly no comments whatsoever so that was interesting to me too.  Sort of as the traffic and all the stuff that’s good commercially in Linux journal goes up the stuff that is journalistic is not.  And so the ratio between the two in that little controlled environment is becoming interesting to me. There is some good stuff on there but there is the, it seems to me like the commentosphere is more, has kinda joined the flogosphere.

MacLeod:The way I use my blog is I use it to post new cartoons and then if I got something I really, really want to say then I use the blog.  If I’m just telling you what I had for lunch, Twitter is great for that stuff, or if I just wanted to say hey check out a link, then I’ll use the twittersphere for that

Searls: Yeah, I’ll use that for too, but I’m not talking about what I use it for but rather what it on the whole is about and what it’s good for and it think there has been a sea change for the worse in the blogosphere.

Gillmor:  this reminds me of 4 years ago when John (Udell?) and I would sit and worry about the fact that all the content in the blogosphere was going to shit.  It’s just such bullshit, you know, just because Dave (Werner?) says it doesn’t mean it’s true.

Searls:Uh, Well, I’m not quoting Dave…

Gillmor:  Well, you kinda did when he wrote the post on the blogospheres

Searls: Yeah, well, he kinda pointed at something but I didn’t go back to that I’m looking more at what happens with what I write and where I write it and …

Gillmor:  yeah, well you and I have talked about your…sense that you’re not having as much fun writing in that space. There are a lot of dynamics here which probably can be extrapolated to include a larger you know trend but it’s not clear to me that the idea that because this is about clicks, page views and advertising and retreading ground that ‘s been covered by other primary sources which is the usual mainstream media stream spin about what the blogosphere is or isn’t I just don’t think any of that is any different than what it’s been in quite a while.

Searls: I think it is, I think something has changed and I think more importantly that it’s important to distinguish between what is essentially editorial and what is essentially a carrier for advertising and I even recognizing there is a gray area between those that there is an increased need to make that distinction.  That’s what I’m doing, I’m trying to make a distinction, and if you all don’t give a shit then that’s fine.

Gillmor:  No, it’s not that, you know I thought that article you wrote most recently, in fact two of them that you wrote in Linux Journal, first of all I was wondering what is it doing in Linux Journal as opposed to being on your blog, was among the best writing that you’ve done in years. So…

Searls: There are two reasons and it’s also interesting, I’m getting paid for it, that’s the first one, you know as a writer, and the other is I’m trying to help them out.  It’s those two things.

Gillmor:  Right, so there’s a political aspect to what you’re doing and there is an economic aspect to what you’re doing

Searls: And there’s an editorial aspect to it as well, and that’s the one that I care the most about

Gillmor:  But you’re making the decision where the bits are hosted, and what I’m suggesting to you is that when people start to bifurcate content or writing into various silos and pigeonhole it around mainstream versus blogosphere versus whatever, I think there it’s a distinction largely without merit.  You’re the same brain the same, same finger, same computer, doing the same thing you want to do picking the release media.

Searls: It’s still the blogosphere Steve.  It’s one click away…   

Gillmor: Say it’s based on an economic deal that you have. You’re getting paid to do it.  In some quarters, that’s considered to be high treason as far as the blogosphere is concerned.  Ther’s a lot of religious and political can’t going on about this arguement and to some extent, you’re feeding into it with what you’re saying.

Searls: The bottom line, Steve is that I’m trying to make a distinction and where I make it, there’s a point to making it where I made it, and part of it is to help an editorial enterprise to maximize its usefulness as an editorial enterprise as well as an advertising one, and to understand the distinctions between the two. And I think that’s an important thing to do, and that was the place to do it. I would be very surprised if I had any different reaction if I had it on my own blog.  I think I would have gotten 5 or 6 comments.  I get really low comments on my blog in any case, it’s sort of, I mean I could get a lot more comments if I was talking about popular shit, but I don’t. But I do sense, and I sensed it in that thing written by Mark Evans, and even had to put a little disclaimer when I realized that he works for a company that I’m on the board of but it’s so hard to come up with original content… and it’s so much easier to come up with stuff that’s not original but is all part of the great buzzosphere, and that was interesting to me that, even while acknowledging that doing original work is good and rewarding and all that, there was implicit if not explicit in what he was saying, a distinction between original and unoriginal, and between stuff that’s fodder and stuff that actually contributes.

MacLeod: That’s the secret weapon to the cartoons.  It’s much harder to draw a Gaping Void cartoon than it is to have an opinion about Robert Scoble. Even though I like Robert Scoble.

Searls: I’ve seen some fun cartoons about Robert Scoble actually.

MacLeod: Or maybe it’s not Robert, maybe it’s like Microsoft is in talks with Yahoo.  Whooo.  I know there are people who profit hansomely for having opinions about them but the barriers to entry are not very high to have an opinion about that.  You know, get in line.  Every time there’s a big story on TechMeme there’s like 50 other bloggers writing about the same stuff.  THere’s nothing wrong with that since it part of the quote conversation, but in terms of getting paid for that stuff, you have a long line in front of you. All the interesting blogs have that same problem.  For whatever reason, they all seem to be on Blogger right now.

Searls: Well Blogger has hardly changed in a number of years, and it’s…

MacLeod: Well all these crazy, esoteric ones are on Blogger

Searls: I think once you start paying money for Typepad or Moveable Type, your expectations are slightly different, I think.

MacLeod: I just noticed that the crazy interesting stuff is on Blogger, whereas maybe like with WordPress there’s much more of a we’re a part of this big community, host and train, and kind of consultant, opinionated pundit, aspiring pundits.  I don’t know.  The only thing that I always have to tell myself, because I’m always going off in different directions, is just keep drawing the cartoons MacLeod and you’ll be just fine.  Forget about everything else.  Or don’t worry about anything else, just keep doing the cartoons, all of the other blogging business will happen.  I got to Alpine, Texas and I hadn’t really seen the blogosphere for like 3 weeks. I just said, “eh, eh.”

Searls: And how was that for you?

MacLeod: I was just kind of getting to know the lay of the land.  It was kind of a fascinating place.  There’s only been two places where I’ve felt at home right away.  One was New York City and one was Alpine, Texas.

Searls: Really, wow.

MacLeod: Well, the whole town is WiFi.  There’s a big hill, right on the outside of town that they call WiFi tower.  So you can go to the old barbershop and while you’re waiting in line to get your haircut, you can surf.  And, they’ve got a couple good bars, a couple coffee shops, they have a small university here.

Searls: Wiffy as in WiFi?

MacLeod: WiFi, yeah.

Searls: Oh see, I didn’t get that.  I thought you meant something else.  Go ahead, sorry.

MacLeod: Yeah, you know.  It’s just kind of…you know those restaurants that are really cheap and really good?

Searls: mhmm.

MacLeod: Like Las Menitos in Boston.  It’s just cheap and good.  That’s kind of how I feel about Alpine. 

Searls: I hear a country song coming now.

MacLeod: Also, I think, this is something I’ve been thinking about a lot, is maybe I’ve just spent too much time online in the last 5 years.  What do you think?

Searls: I think that’s true for me.  So, I’ll project it on you. 

MacLeod: (haha) So maybe [inaudible]. I don’t know, there’s just something about being in the desert that kind of clears the mind and I think I needed that.

Vizard: And you’ll be blogging about that shortly.

Searls: Yeah, exactly.

Gillmor: Or not.  I mean there’s this retro, back to not even mono, back to zero.

Searls: Back to silence.

Gillmor: That’s just bullshit.  I cannot believe that we’re actually even giving you the credibility of the time we’ve already spent on the show.  I seriously, I just think that it’s nonsense.  Twittersphere is so not dead.  There are people who are trying to figure out how to get off Twitter because they’re so addicted to it.

Searls: Right.

Garner: Steve, 4 weeks ago you were saying the same thing about Facebook.  Why don’t you talk about that anymore?

Gillmor: What do you mean? Facebook is fantastic.  I love going to Facebook.  Somebody comes in and say their, I’ve already said this, but you haven’t been listening to the other shows so I’m not going to repeat it. Go listen to Newsgang yesterday and you can hear what I say about that.

MacLeod: Well what I have done, I’ve bought a Flickr Pro account, I’ve bought myself a camera so I can take lots of pictures of the desert.  That’s my new Twittersphere.

Searls: So you’re there now then.  Right? I have been following you on Twitter, but not as…Steve I’m saying it’s easy ok. I don’t think Twitter is dead at all, but I just wanted to change the subject.

Gillmor: Yeah, I was saying it to pick a fight with you, because picking a fight with Doc Searls is like picking a fight with Ben Franklin over who’s got the next ticket to the marry-go-round

Searls: Ok.

Garner: You want to retry that metaphor?

Gillmor: No, I’m glad we got one theme up in silence.

?: I’ve got a question for the Gang.  Seesmic’s buying Twhirl. Is that big news or not?

Gillmor: It’s huge, as long as he doesn’t ruin it with all that video shit. 

Calacanis: Next! Unimportant.

Gillmor: Oh come on.  Give me a break. Jason, do you have one of those modern handsets now that you’re using?

Calacanis: Yes, is it not good?

Gillmor: Now it’s much better.  Either speak up or press *4

Calacanis: *4, *4.  Am I good now?

Gillmor: Perfect, ok.

Calacanis: Let me just educate everybody on the phone call for a sec. Number one, the blogosphere has always been a mud pit, it always will be a mud pit, it’s always going to be rough and tumble and the point in time that which you say the blogosphere is dead or the blogosphere is over, is basically the time you don’t feel like mixing it up anymore.  So Steve didn’t feel like mixing it up at one point and now he’s back in mix it up mode.  It’s just a basic raw shock test.  If you like a rough and tumble environment you can go there.  If you don’t, you don’t.  It’s like being a member of the Hell’s Angels.  Some people love it for portions of their life, some people say they’ll never go back.  Number two, Facebook ends when your logical conclusion on real friends stop adding you. What 80% of what people do on that service is add their friends and the other 20% is like people who play videogames on it and casual games.  There’s really not much else there, except e-mail and that…

Gillmor: Except all of the friendship relationships and the hierarchies that are implicitly established become more and more useful as you start getting into [inaudible].
Calacanis: Yeah, thank you to Professor Gillmor.  That’s a really interesting discussion for graduate school.  It has no impact on people’s day to day lives.

Gillmor: Ahh, I love being [inaudible] about economic juggernauts that are about to overwhelm everybody and the…

Calacanis: You can’t get away from the fact that people are investing in it’s actual real value.  The real value is e-mail, instant messaging, and adding your friends.  And if you already have an e-mail or instant message client, you already have your friends all done and it starts to lose its value.  Moving to Twitter, Twitter is the new namespace.  Twitter is evolving and the original understanding of Twitter was tell us what you’re doing right now…I’m eating scrambled eggs and bacon and I’m going to see a movie, whatever.  That is not the use of it anymore.  People have evolved it to be a chat room and there is a war going on between the people who still look at it as a status updater and people who look at it as a chat room.  The people who are looking at it as a chat room are getting huge numbers of friends and are also pissing off that small minority that want it to not be a chat room.

Gillmor: It happened over and over again.  You know the people from Usenet before that 5-0 net, after that CompuServe, the so called Internet when all of the civilians came in, there was blood in the streets for what? 3 years about? The AOL epidemic of idiots who don’t know what they’re doing with a command line and it just goes on over and over again.  These technologies are used by people who figure out that they are useable and they take them over and that’s what’s happening right now.  There’s no war in the Twittersphere and that’s what’s happening right now.

Searls: Who won?

Calacanis: You’re saying the way has ended?

Searls: Who won?

Gillmor: Absolutely.  The people who are there right now developing brands and establishing a real time information news network which is profoundly more disruptive and interesting and powerful than any cable network.

Farber: Ok, let’s unpack that statement.  It’s profoundly more disruptive than any cable network.

Gillmor: That’s right.

Farber: What cable network is disruptive?

Gillmor: Well, I’m talking about the last paradigm.  Do you watch Countdown with Keith Olbermann?

Farber: Yes, occasionally.

Gillmor: He’s reacting to the Twittersphere now. Do you watch Bill O’Reilly? I’ve never seen him, but I hear he’s an absolutely reprehensible pig. And I heard that mostly from Twitter, not from watching that network.  I never watch Fox News.  All of those cable networks are now reactive to the real time information network, which is what Twitter is.  It’s dominant.

Gardner: So Steve, you’re saying everything you know you’ve learned on Twitter.

Gillmor: I’m saying Twitter is the most dominant network on the planet right now.

Farber: Forget your Blackberry.  Blackberry is a Twitter machine.

Gillmor: Ok, there you go.  So was there anything else you wanted to hear?

Searls: So how long before Twitter will be dead? What other vital signs do you look for disappearing?

Gardner: About 4 weeks.

Gillmor: Well, I do think the feedback loop is tightening dramatically.  The speed which these networks are establishing privacy and then being incorporated or folded into something else.  I don’t know that Twitter will be folded into something else because it’s simple and tech oriented.  I think it’s going to remain the connected tissue between all of these networks.

MacLeod: Can they fix it technologically?  I understand it has a lot of problems.  Do you know more about that?

Gillmor: They seem to be much more stable.  It’s just text for Christ sake. 

MacLeod: mmk.  So why are they always breaking down?

Gillmor: That’s a thing of the past.  They’ve been up now nonstop for about 2 years.

MacLeod: Ok, if you say so.

Gillmor: No, obviously I’m being facetious, but it’s definitely more stable.

MacLeod: Ok, that’s good news.  I’m quite attached to my Twitter.

Gillmor: Look, how long did it take Windows to get stable? About what? Version 3 was the first one that was even remotely stable? That was…

MacLeod: Yeah.

Gillmor: Ok, so Twitter has gone through its iterations in about 6 months.

MacLeod: Right.  Yeah, I guess so.  That’s good news.  I want Twitter to succeed. It’s got God knows how many followers and I follow people and it’s quite a vibrant community.  Much more so than Facebook.

Gillmor: Well when I go into Facebook now, somebody will friend me and I will go click on my favorite link, which is the who are the friends we share in common.  That’s amazing, that’s amazing.  Just take a look at that sometime.

MacLeod: mmk.  I have a question for you.  I remember you blogged somewhere that you pretty much use your iPhone for most of your computing now.

Gillmor: Actually I lied about that.  I’m using the MacBook Air now for most of my computing.

Searls: By the way guys, I have a new laptop so you don’t have to worry about it anymore.

Gillmor: You do?

Searls: Yeah, I do.  It’s just a loaner, but it works, it’s good.  It’s a MacBook Pro.  The next step is to get a ThinkPad so I can get Linux again or get parallels running on it.

Calacanis: Great.

Gillmor: Well that’s fantastic.

Searls: Yeah it is, it’s good.

Gillmor: Who on the call has used the Air?

Searls: I’ve tried it.

MacLeod: I’ve picked it up and it’s very, very small.  It really does fit in a little envelope.

Gillmor: Jason, do you still use yours?

Calacanis: Use my what?

Gillmor: You’re Air.

Calacanis: Yeah, it’s fantastic.  Game Changing.

Gillmor: It’s amazing, but it’s really hard to describe why.

Farber: I think it’s the most profound change in the industry since Twitter.

Calacanis: The iPod or the iPhone?

Gillmor: Farber likes to come on here and insult me.  That’s why he likes to be here.

Farber: That’s why we’re all here.

Gillmor: You’re all talking at once and it sounds like “ah-uh-ih-ah”

Calacanis: Stop going into schticks Steve.   Every time someone makes a comment you into schtick or you reprimand them taking the show in a direction you don’t want them to go.  Now just cool it for a second. (pause) Ok, I forgot what I was going to say.

Searls: It must have worked.

MacLeod: Jason, why is the Air a game changer for you?

Calacanis: Ok, here’s what it is.  It is a full size keyboard and a full sized monitor that weights so little that you are willing to take it in and out of your bag, put it on your lap, hold it in one hand while you’re in Starbucks and use it constantly.  Where, if it was literally 50% or twice as heavy, you wouldn’t do it.  There’s literally something about the lack of weight on your body, on your lap, in you’re hand, taking it out of your bag that makes the device a pleasure to take out.  Secondly, most of the time with these small, light laptops, like I have the Sony one, come with a keyboard that is 60-70% of the size of a normal keyboard and a monitor that 50-60% of the size of a normal one.  This has a full on monitor.  It’s so lengthy that you take it everywhere.  I never would take a computer with me to work, because I have a computer there and a desktop computer at home.  Now I take it with me.  I used to look at my bag in the seat in front of me in the airplane and would be like, “do I want to drag that thing out?”  or when I’m in Starbucks, “do I want to drag it out for 5 minutes?” and the answer is yes you do.  And the solid state hard drive removed grinding mechanical hard drives in your computer. So when you open up 20 windows and you have 3 applications going, it never slows down.  You never get the spinning wheel of death.  And so that’s a $1300 option, it’s absurd, it doesn’t make sense, however it does make it a game changer on all of those levels and what happens is, this is where the tech industry starts to eat itself.  People think more is more when in fact less is more.  People put the number of ports and go “I get 3 USB ports vs 2 on this one, I get this Firewire port, I get this port, I get that port, it doesn’t have a DVD player.”  I don’t use DVD players, I don’t use Ethernet cables.  You don’t need that stuff.

MacLeod: I remember when the iMac everyone mentioned there was no place to put the floppy disk.  Same form of evolution.

Calacanis: Precisely.

MacLeod: I think the thing that hits me is two things.  I’m interested in mobility and I’m interested in sovereignty.  In other words, I’m interested in being able to live in the middle of nowhere and be able to do my thing rather than having to move to a New York or San Francisco suburb and pay those kind of prices and have those kinds of people around me. And so I’m interested in someone like yourself Jason, who maybe a generation ago would have had to live in Connecticut and have to go work for Time Warner and would have to have an office with all of the gold club memberships and all that stuff and someone now like you, fairly successful throughout your career can live in a very mobile, lightweight kind of way, so you can create all of this stuff, without have all of this clutter around you I suppose.  Am I making any sense?

Calacanis: Yeah, I mean the thing about business was businesses was a lot about infrastructure, business was a lot about management and going back through my career, if you wanted to be a magazine publisher you needed to learn how to deal with your printer, you needed to learn about insertion orders, you needed to learn about film, and PageMaker, and Quark Express and you needed to have a photo editor.  There was this massive infrastructure and the real task was learning how to manage and leverage infrastructure and then you spent 20% of your time on the content.  Now the infrastructure has become some seamless, so easy to use, so transparent, so free, that what’s happening is that people are left to their actual substance and content and that’s why so many people who succeeded in the infrastructure era are now failing when there’s no infrastructure era.  The knowledge era favors people with true talent, the infrastructure era favors people who can deal with infrastructure.

MacLeod: I’ve got one more question for you Jason and then I’ll shut up. [inaudible]

Calacanis: Yeah, I was the first person to publish him.  He wrote his first column for Silicon Alley Reporter.

MacLeod: There you go. So, about 4 years ago Gothamist interviewed him and their asking about stuff and said what do you think about blogs.  And Clay just said, I love this quote, “Forget about blogs and bloggers and blogging and consider only this.  The cost and difficulty of anyone anywhere publishing something as a global medium just got a lot lower and the social implications of that will be vast.  I always liked that quote: implications will be vast.  I always wanted to send her email saying “Can you elaborate on vast”.  Since, she is not here so I am asking you.  Let’s say somebody is not in the publishing business like yourself.  How is all this going to affect regular Joe? What would you say?

Calacanis:  The fact is regular Joe, one of the people who used to work for me right? He wrote column for me.  He doesn’t need Jason Calacanis anymore.  D. S. used to work for me, doing conferences what not and writing report, she doesn’t need Jason Calacanis anymore.  She did better when she didn’t have Jason Calacanis around.  Then, R.A used to work me.  I hired him on his first job.  He doesn’t need Jason Calacanis anymore.  Joe Leach who works on ………He is incredible and he has got huge job offers from ESPN, Washington Post and other places for quarter million dollars now.  Who made probably twenty five thousand dollar when he first started working for me on his first job.  And he doesn’t need Jason Calacanis anymore.  Jason Calacanis doesn’t need investors anymore necessarily.  Jason Calacanis doesn’t need infrastructure anymore.  So it basically, for everybody who is in it, it gets just more real.  There is less infrastructure, there is less machinery.  It is like, you know, if you are on the computer business in 60s or 70s, you are in the business of air conditioning, and raised floors and suction comes to raise the floors.  If you are in the local network area business in the 80s into the 90s, working for Novel…All that stuff that were used to be in these businesses is gone.  When all that noise goes away, you probably left with a blank sheet of paper. 

MacLeod: I had a conversation with the guy who was the former vice-chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi, the advertising agency in London in 80s.  He is like a big shot in the 80s.  And then he got set up working for Saatchi.  So, he wanted to start his own little business.  He says is really funny.  When he started at Saatchi, he ran one of the most plausible agencies from his basement apartment in London.  He said that technology that I own costs me fifty thousand to hundred thousand pounds.  He said twenty years ago, it wouldn’t be hundred thousand pounds, it would be ten million.  And all of a sudden a lot more people have hundred thousand pounds and they have ten million dollars.  All of a sudden what happens in London is ………People with huge infrastructure like Saatchi, they didn’t know what to do because there are actually five or six people who could handle that level of infrastructure and they had a lot of fun because the barriers of entry was so high. 

Calacanis: Why don’t we talk about mufflers anymore?

MacLeod: Explain.

(Inaudible).

Calacanis: I need to tell you something very important.  I was on audible.com and they have got really great books.  And if you go to audible.com/twit, you can get discount on three months subscription.  I really love audible, audible.com. 

(Noises.  Inaudible)

MacLeod: My fax is calling you. And some other fax got through.  

(Inaudible Connection Problems)

Gillmor: Mike Vizard, are you saying something?

Vizard:This has been a great conversation but I got to run.  Thank you all.  I look forward to a life time of no infrastructure. 

(Noises.  Inaudible)

MacLeod: I have to go. Bye

Gillmor:  So everybody gone?

Terenzio: Matt Terenzio is here.

Gillmor: Hi Matt.  How is it going?

Terenzio: Pretty good.   It was a rough day you know.  When you talked about newspapers dying, I don’t know if you know, I have been working for a newspaper for the last ten years, and also, as a web developer for newspapers.  Someday, I just think that there is no way in the world that they are going to be able to adjust.  And other days, I think I am making progress.  Some days, I think I just move to a completely web based company.  Other days, I feel like that there is something to save within this industry.  I don’t know but today was a rough one.  That is all can say about that.   So what is going on? Everybody left the call, the whole gang.

Gillmor: I have no idea.  Jason, are you still there?

Calacanis:  I am.  Who is talking right now?

Gillmor: Matt Terenzio from news gang. 

Calacanis:  I don’t know who that is. 

Gillmor:  He is from the early days of the attention movement. 

Calacanis:  Does he have a Twitter account. 

Terenzio: Terenzio. T-e-r-e-n-z-i-o.

Calacanis: Let me look at it.  I feel figure out who you are. 

Terenzio: Now, I am going to jet lag 2000 new followers because Jasan Calacanis…

Calacanis:  I am not going to Twitter it. 

(Laughter)

Terenzio:  I don’t care whatever.

Gillmor: He works for a news paper. 

Terenzio:  Yeah. I work for a local newspaper and we are independent and in Southern Connecticut. 

Calacanis:  Ohh. I am sorry.

Terenzio: Well. That is what I was saying.  You know what Jason; I guess you could look at it in that way.  I am very happy with the work that I do.  By the way, anybody who is listening to this, if you go…

Gillmor:  I don’t know how anybody could be listening

(Laughter)

Terenzio: I have been working for this company for about six months and we are about to launch in about two weeks so that would be more of my work.  It is not exactly, I would have made it much more of a flow type of more like a blog homepage than a traditional newspaper site.  But you have to make some compromises.  You know, there are a lot of people who are important in newspaper hierarchies where there is money coming in and they get to have a …In the board meetings, someday I feel like I am one against the number of people.  But if I continue on my course, I can make a difference here.  Other days, I feel like there is no chance. 

Calacanis: They won’t even do what they should have done in 2004 and it is 2008.  They still can’t get what they should have done in four years ago.  Why are you wasting your time? Anybody who believes in psychotherapy, to believe in behaviorism or somebody who believe is Skinner to believe in cognitive in psychology you know.  If the paradigms do not die, people do.  You will not convince them.  They will never understand it. 

Terenzio:  Well, I respect your opinions Jason.  Not that you are the only opinion

Calacanis:  Well, I am in fact

Terenzio: So, you think I should give up?

Calacanis: Yeah, of course. 

Terenzio: OK, you got a job for me?

Calacanis: Surrender

(Laughter)

Calacanis: If this was a board meeting, I would say I have new strategy that is really going to help us to get out of this battle and going to make things easier, Surrender.  You guys are friends, you need to surrender. 

Terenzio: Well, we are going to change our homepage to a blog.

Gillmor: You think they are still going to pay you when you make that change?

Terenzio: Well, are they going to pay me? I don’t know.  I could do anything and they would probably pay me.

Gillmor: Then you should strongly consider this.  If I could be paid for what I am doing, I would stop doing what I am doing right now.  I would do a lot less of it.  If I can get paid for doing what I am doing, I could get paid doing half of that.  And you know, If I can get paid for half of it, I could do a quarter of it. 

Terenzio: Well tell you what; I am launching the site in about a week and a half.  An after that, we will come back and talk about this again.  I am going to make certain demands and if not, I am jumping ship.  And I think if I jump ship,

Gillmor:  What kind of a ship, you would jump to?

Terenzio: That would be non-traditional, print newspaper based company of some sort.  Well, what I am saying is that a company that isn’t trying to make the transform from the print world to the online world.  I tell you what if I jump ship, I would say it is all over and I don’t think there is anything including the New York Times, ….I don’t believe that anybody would make…It is kind a weird because it sounds like I think too highly of myself.  But that is not the case.  The case is I am just telling you, I have been holding on strong in a very frustrating environment.  And if I jump ship, I think it is a sign that it is all over. 

Calacanis: Let me say something to you.  When Titanic was going down, nobody ever held on to a guard rolls as hard.  Okay? Titanic is sinking, get off the ship.  Going down.  It is going down.  They are not going to get it right. 

Gillmor:  But New York Times is not going down.  New York Times is going to grow. 

Calacanis: Well, I guess that would be why they cut a hundred jobs ten percent of the news room.  News paper advertisement is down. 

Terenzio: Wait a second Jason.  I agree with what you are saying in theory.  However, I think, you can disagree, I know what is going on and I think I have a better chance of affecting.  New York Times, let’s not talk about certain companies.  I came from Tribune Corporation.  And I know that there were so big and could got turn the ship that I felt like I should go to a smaller place where I can make an impact.  That is why I moved from a large corporation to a small one. 

Calacanis: It is not about if people can make a change.  Microsoft took a much bigger ship than Tribune, and turns it around to attack internet and kill Netscape.  And they are doing it again to go after search.  Tribune could do it, New York Times could do it, and Wall Street journal is doing it.  It is the matter of the leadership at the top.  If you look at the leadership of the top of your company, and they don’t understand blog and they don’t understand about it and they are not going to get it, get out now.  That is the very easy way to look at it.  If you go to those board meetings and they don’t read blogs, they don’t write a blog, then leave.  If you go to a board meeting and less than half of the people have a blog, then get out because they are not going to get it.  You have to live it and breathe it.  Go into that board room, how many people have a Twitter account, zero hand will go up.  How many people have a facebook account, two hands will go up.  How many write a blog, one hand will go up, two hands go up.  You have to get out there now.  You could go down with the ship.  Create a blog about their market and just blog the hell out of from the biggest advertiser they have which is probably real estate.  Who are that real estate person say you are going to do a blog post on real estate every day, you are going to give free ad units per page and you are going to let them do a weekly column on what they think the real estate market is.  For a thousand dollars a week, you got your new job. 

Terenzio: Yeah, I agree with you.  You are right about that and that is a good indication.  They are just not involved in what is going on.  Interesting note about Microsoft, kind of a different subject.  You know Steve, last week, I said to myself let me try to develop something in silvelight and I felt a sleep with my laptop, trying to figure out how a Mac developer could develop something for silverlight.  It is completely Windows developers, not like .NET. 

Gillmor:  I asked Scott G. about this.  You know. What is the capability of all those gadgets that they have?  Do they open up in Firefox? The answer was I don’t know.  The reason I asked the question is not because I figured they knew the answer.  The answer has to be yes.  So, you are a little head of the game.  Once it works in Firefox, then you will be able to develop on Mac possibly because you will be able to know that it works.  Let Luic le Mour go out and screw Thwirl and then develop it.  Twirl is fantastic what the need to do is do not break it.  Tina found a post by Luic that says they are not going to break it.  When they add the video stuff, they are not going to break it. 

Calacanis: Seesmic already broken?

Gillmor:  That is my thought.

Calacanis: I mean I can’t even log into the service.  I talked to him; he is going to get a new designer because it is like a jack pop up to login.  It is like…

Gillmor: Do you know what is going to happen.  He is locked into a..you can call it a lock, obviously he is not all locked but he is locked into something in the same way that Evan Williams locked into Twitter.  He should throw away all that video and just that Twirl and build a platform around it. 

Terenzio:I tell what I would like to do Steve.  I would like to just crown the Gchat, the Gmail chat turn it into a web based twitter client that based on XMPP so you can sign in with your gmail sign in.  Just add links for the @ sign people.  Then, I will be happy for six months.  Well if they can’t do it, I am going to do it. And I will be happy for months.

Gillmor:  You will be happy for six months? Six months that is a life time. 

Terenzio:Than I can have one more feature after six months. 

Gillmor:  It has to come with the Google level, the discussion that I have already started to have with them. 

Terenzio: You talked about how you didn’t like them backing into the social network.  Now, they are backing into social network and you are helping them with this client.

Gillmor: Of course,

Terenzio:  See, play both sides.

Gillmor:  No I am not.  They came to me and they said that they want to discuss this with me.  They went out of way and they are fixing that right now.  When they come back and say how is that? I say well there is just one more thing. 

(Laughter)

Terenzio:  Well. I got to take of Steve.  Thanks

Gillmor:  You are welcome. 

Calacanis:  You don’t like doing short videos.

Gillmor: Which one?

Calacanis:  Like short videos.  I am going to write you a video message. 

Gillmor: Ohh.  You are back on Seesmic.  I wasn’t invited.  I haven’t got an invitation to it.  So, I am not in there.  I have just seen 1938 videos, occasionally.  So now, Lauren is on his way down to Southern California.  Are you excited?

Calacanis: Yes, of course.  He is staying with me. 

Gillmor:  Ohh, excellent.

Calacanis: No, he is not.  Are you kidding?  I am not having him in my house. 

Gillmor: You may need to. 

Calacanis: What he is doing with ShelIsrael.com ……Shel Israel is getting all upset about it. I tell Shel: Shel, I didn’t know you have a show in Fastcompany until I saw the parody.  And maybe watch the show.  I am begging Lauren to do a Jason puppet and do a daily show.  Keep the domain jcalacanis.com or thejasoncalacanis.com.  Please do a puppet show about Jason.  I am telling this to employees for a long time.  I am begging.  Everybody who I have to fire, please go write a book about how terrible I am as a boss.  Shel Israel got it and he is like going crazy and he has to stop doing it.  When he stops doing it, you are irrelevant. 

Gillmor:No.  It is important that Shell takes this all the wrong way because without comedy, we will stop flowing.  He needs to really unhappy with this in order for it to continue to exist.

Calacanis: Ohh. I see.  If he is fighting.…

Gillmor: No. I mean if he is outraged, it gives him more material.  This is about material. 

Calacanis: No. I think Shell is upset. 

Gillmor: I am sure Shell is upset. 

Calacanis:  What I am saying is Shell has this great thing. 

(Laughter)

Terenzio: I just got a comment on my gmail box.  Comment on my blog, comment about cloud computing moves forward.  And the person who comments is home insurance.  What do you think? They wrote a real comment about it.  It is a real comment.  I have span blocker there but I still get the notice when they comment. 

Gillmor: Okey, now it is Jason’s term.

Calacanis: see you next time if there is a next time.  Thank you to our sponsors.  Rest in peace. Of course Audible.com, audible.com/twit.  See you again next time if indeed there is a next time. 

 

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