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Beginning Web Development on the Mac Today: most of what you need to know and download

Published
by
Nick Dynice
on May 17, 2009
in Web Development
. 7 Comments

I first started messing around with HTML in DreamWeaver and Claris Home Page around 1999 to put up my own music website. But it was not until the last couple years that I updated my skills and capabilities in web development. I would like to share what I have learned.

Hosting

First, you will need hosting. I use Host Gator’s $10 a month plan. They have a custom implementation of CPanel, so it is really easy to add a domain, install and upgrade dozens of popular free and open source web apps like Wordpress or Drupal with just a couple of clicks with Fantastico. It includes the LAMP stack (Linux OS, Apache web server, MySQL database, and PHP) which any worthwhile web hosting is going to provide, as well as Ruby on Rails. phpMyAdmin is also in important app that your hosting provider should have installed so you can easily manipulate, import, and export a MySQL databases without having to know sql query language.

MAMP

If you are not ready to up a website, that is fine. You can experiment with web development on your Mac. However, to match the functionality of a $10 a month web host, there are a lot of things you have to do first. Mac OS 10.5 includes PHP and Apache, you just need to turn them ob by editing some hidden files. Then you need to install MySQL. These steps can be a little daunting. And running these platforms natively on the Mac also requires some command lines (aka the Terminal app) which I don’t know much about (and when I am ready to learn I will probably get this book). Or, you could avoid all of this and use MAMP. It is Apache, MySQL, and PHP all running in one app, with MacOS (not Linix, but very similar) running as the OS, and a control panel to adjust functions instead of command lines. You can try MAMP out for free for a month, then buy it for $60. This will let you run apps like Wordpress on your Mac while you do things like edit CSS themes or experiment with Wordpress plugins. You can see what the pages will look like by visiting http://localhost:8888 in your browser.

PHP and MySQL

I do not know much about PHP yet, but I am able to do everything mentioned in this post without basic PHP or MySQL knowledge, since most of the apps I run were developed by someone else. I am just using them. Just because you can’t rebuild a car’s engine does not mean you can’t drive it or change a tire. But soon, I will get the book PHP and MySQL from O’Reilly’s Head First series, and I recommend it to anyone else who wants to go just a little further than the basics I am covering here.

Most data-driven web apps in PHP (blogs, wikis, mailing lists) need to connect to a MySQL database. Databases have:

  • a host address
    • usually it is “localhost” which is a MySQL database on the same server
    • or a domain name
    • or an IP address
  • a database name
  • a username for the database
  • a password

If you are not using an automated script like Fantastico to install your apps, you will need to create the database in your hosting provider’s control panel. You also need to make the user, and then assign the user to the database.

Next, (unless your are using the same automated script) you will need to configure the app to connect to the database. This is usually done by editing a file called config.php, settings.php, or database.php. If one of the pieces of info is wrong, the app will usually give you an error message. You can edit this on your server or before you upload it (more on this below). There are always install instructions that are included with these apps.

SequalPro

Sometimes, you might not have access to the control panel and phpMyAdmin for a web hosting provider you might come across, like one you are migrating a blog from. In this case, you will need a database client like SequalPro. It offers some of the same functions as phpMyAdmin, but it lives on your Mac, accessing a database on a web server. It is free, but you can make a donation to the author.

CSS

Cascading Style Sheets are what tell browsers how to make a page look. CSS files contain info on what fonts, graphic boxes, and colors to use, and how and where on the page they should be displayed. CSS allows you to easily change themes in Wordpress, or easily make something ugly on a MySpace profile. CSS Garden is a good place to start, but I think the best way to learn is to experiment with hacking Wordpress themes (more on this later). When you make edits to a CSS file you need to hit Refresh in your browser to see what the changes look like. It is also good to do this in more than on type of browser when you are finalizing your design. To make some killer designs, you will need Photoshop to edit image files, but you can get by with Gimp for free. Since IE6, IE7, and IE8 render CSS differently than Firefox and the other compliant browsers such as Opera, Safari, and Chrome, get familiar with IE’s conditional CSS comments.

TextWrangler

Almost all web files are text files, but with an extension so that browsers and servers know what to do with them (like .html, .php, .xml). So, you can edit most of these files with a text editor. The best free text editor for the Mac is TextWrangler. It will color code the different parts of your code so that you know which parts are marked up properly. There is a more feature-rich text editor, BBEdit, offered by the same company.

Transmit and FTP

In order to get files to your server, you need an FTP app (file transfer protocol) to upload files to your site. When you buy hosting, you will need to provide a domain name (which you can buy from a registrar like GoDaddy). The registrar will give you a DNS address. You need to put this address into your hosting provider’s control panel. This will allow you to connect to your server via FTP. In your FTP app, you will need to enter

  • a nickname for the ftp account access
  • your ftp address (sometimes ftp.yourdomain.com)
  • username
  • password

Once you are logged in, you can edit and upload text files, photos, mp3, etc.

A lot of Mac users Cyberduck for FTP, since it is free. But I like Trasnmit since the navigation is more Mac-like. You can open files on your server in Trasmit, edit them with TextWrangler, and save them back to the server. The experience is just like editing a file on your computer locally. Command-S saves the file to your server. You can run the demo version for about a month and then buy it for $30.

Firefox and add-ons

If you are only using Safari, you should start using Firefox for web development. You can still test in Safari, but Firefox will be one of your main tools. Since it is open source, it constantly being updated so that newly discovered bugs and be fixed, and so that new web standards can be implemented. There are many plugins available for it that make it easy for development. Firebug lets to see the CSS of an element of a page just by clicking on it, and let’s you change values (font size, colors, widths and heights, padding and margins) on the fly to see what the change looks like. Then you go into you text file and edit in the changes. You can also turn off any CSS property and instantly see what change this makes visually. This is really great when you are trying to edit a page behavior and you can’t figure out what is causing it, you can just start turning off properties. You can see page load times, and see which files are taking the longest time to load. Web Developer is a toolbar that re-sizes your browser to typical sizes that most people use, disable java script or caching, display image paths and dimensions, and a number of other things. If you are a visual person like I am, and need help visualizing divs within divs, you might like the View Source Chart plugin.

Parallels

Mac OS is great, but the one thing it does not do is run Internet Explorer 6/7/8 for Windows, each of which has bugs that make pages look and behave differently than Firefox. At this time Windows XP is running on 68% of the computers that access the web. But, if you have an Intel Mac and a Windows XP CD-ROM, you can run Parallels and install Windows XP. This is better than running BootCamp, since you can use Mac OS and Windows at the same time. Parallels runs Windows in its own app. Strip down the Windows installs so they do not bog down your Mac too much. You can run the full-featured demo version of Parallels for about a month, and then buy it for $80.

Each version of Internet Explorer makes changes to the Windows OS. Therefore, it is not possible to run more than one version of Windows on one virtual machine. You will want to have a virtual machine for each version of IE. That is fine, since there is no limit to the number of virtual machines that Parallels will let you have installed, and at no additional cost. This does mean you will need to install Windows at least 3 times within Parallels. On my first machine I have IE6 (this comes with Windows XP) and Netscape Navigator (just for kicks), and Multiples, an app that lets you run IE3, IE4.01, IE5, IE5.5, and IE6 all on the same machine and keep all of their quirks. On my second virtual Windows machine I have IE7, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari and Flock. The rendering of Firefox and Flock are pretty much the same, and if things look and behave good in Firefox, it is usually the same for Opera, Chrome, and Safari. If things look good in Safari Mac, they will probably be ok in Safari Windows. On my third virtual Windows machine I have IE 8. If you are developing in MAMP, you can look at your sites in your Windows browsers by going to http://localhost:8888. (update: this does not work, see comments). Keep track of the month-to-month browser usage trends at WC3 Schools Browser Statistics page to know which browsers are most important to check. You can also install Ubuntu Linux as a virtual machine in case you have been curious about that and test your site with browsers in Linux if you feel inclined.

Google Analytics

This is a free service from Google that will tell you where your traffic is coming from, what pages are popular, the screen size, browser, and OS your visitors are using (so you can allocate testing resources mentioned above more efficiently).

Wordpress

One of the most important things you can do to have a web presence is to have your own domain name. And from a marketing perspective, one of the most important things you should say on your site is what you are doing or thinking. The best way to do this is with a blog. And the blogging platform that is easiest to set up and use is Wordpress. There are thousands of free Wordpress themes to pick from, and with some practice, you can edit them pretty easily. There is a huge Wordpress developer community that are creating plugins, themes, and can help you on the Wordpress forums. Do you have a Wordpress.com blog? You could host it on your own hosting and have more control over the look and feel. Here is a post that explains the difference between the two versions of Wordpress: Wordpress.com hosted and self-hosted. You can export Wordpress blogs as XML files to go from any one Wordpress host to any other. It does not matter where you chose to start, you can always move it very easily.

Drupal

If you need to make a website that is more than just a blog, Drupal is the way to go. Sites like MichaelJackson.com, Obama’s Recovery.org site, over 100 of Warner Brothers’ Record’s artist sites, and our own company site are just some sites using Drupal. Drupal is a free and open source content management framework bases mainly on nodes (pieces of content) and modules (custom plugins that let you do different things). There is pretty much a Drupal module (most are also free and open source) for any function or features you might need in a website. Just do a Google search for: drupal module [function you want]. Like: drupal module photos, drupal module ecommerce, or drupal module calendar. You can be on your way to a custom, functional website just by installing Drupal, uploading the modules and a theme via FTP to your site, and checking off some boxes in the admin, all while not needing to editing any code. If you want to be a web developer that can make real money by building websites which can later be maintained by the client, learning Drupal is a great investment of your time.

Get help from the Community

There are communities you can participate with for almost any question you might have regarding web development. I mentioned the Wordpress forum above. You can also sign up at Drupal.org, or reach out to people on Twitter. You can join IRC chats for Drupal and Wordpress using Colloquy IRC chat client. Please be patient when asking questions. There might be multiple channels for each platform. Make sure you are on the right channel by reading the channel descriptions. You can find channels by doing a Google search for: irc [name of subject]. There might be some high level discussions taking place. Don’t be too demanding. No one is obligated to help you. People only want to help nice people. Just hang out, read the discussions taking place, and learn. There might also be a local community of developers in your area. Search on Meetup, Facebook, or Upcoming for groups meeting in your area, or start one yourself. It is ok if you are not an expert. Woody Allen says “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” Donate money to any open source projects you would like to see continue.

Conclusion

So, for about $280 in software, along with all of the free and open source software, and many hours of reading and experimenting, you can start learning how to develop modern, data drive, interactive websites on your Intel based Mac.

MAMP $60
Parallels $80
Transmit $30
Windows XP on Ebay $100
First month of LAMP hosting $10
—
$280

Update:
Smashing Magazine has a great post on How to do web development on a Windows PC.

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Google Granted Dangerous Monopoly, DMR Requirements in Settlement with AAP

Published
by
Nick Dynice
on February 24, 2009
in DRM Rant and Disruptive Business Models in Content
. 0 Comments

Timothy Lee reports that Association of American Publishers and Google have reached a tentative agreement with the courts regarding the class action lawsuit between the two. The point of the suit by the AAP was to stop Google form innovating and making books more useful on Google’s own terms. The terms of the settlement were negotiation in secrecy, and the voice of the public was left out. This is troubling on many levels.

The stodgy book publishing industry and copyright owners, who themselves recognize that their books are no longer commercially viable to reprint, are handed a solution by the courts to Google to once again see income generated. The real value publishers provide is in the act of publishing physical books. They could just use Google’s data to figure out what books to actually reprint, since this admittedly would not be a competence of the publishers. While the publishers have every right to assert a copyright claim on these works, they had no motivation commercialize since, to them, commercialization in mainly in print sales. If the publishers were not as short-sighted, focusing solely on the sale of new, scarce goods, they would have a their solution to make out-of-print books available digitally. However, this was a job for a company like Google to develop and create terms for. I trust Google much more than the courts and the AAP on how to make this knowledge available in a manner that is fair to all parties. Google bypasses inefficiencies, it does not prop them up unnecessarily. Most web publishers understand this, and allow search engines to scan and cache web content for this purpose, and without having to opt-in (only to opt out with robots.txt). Now, there is a double standard: one for content that is printed in a book and registered with the US Copyright Office, and another for html on the web. Why? Only because of the print industry’s lack of foresight. All web content automatically receives copyright (with the exception of license such as Creative Commons), without the need for bureaucracy. Google, will you pay me to cache this post?

Google will receive exclusive right to profit from orphaned works. This would seem to go against Google’s own motto: Do no evil. Google themselves should understand that creating an exclusive right for work that should either be entered into the public domain or to not allow competing services such as the defunct Microsoft book scanning program does not jibe with their own ethical compass. Google seeks only to win by meritocracy. Google search points to the better source, and most if the time it is not Google’s own content. Google wants competition. It should want to allow it to find the best interpretation or organization of orphaned works. For this reason, I could not imagine it sending DMCA nastygrama to sites that republish these works. Google would want to open the orphaned works to the general public and to any developer so that they may mine even more public value from it. There is now a Books and Interest Registry for copyright holders and publishers of any book to register their works so, they too can get a cut of Google profits on sales to orphaned book access. Now, anyone can receive this welfare, just write a book.

The settlement of this suit grant protection to foreign, non-US works, but if is a domestic work, it has to have been registered with the US Copyright Office. No doubt, this is to “live up to international treaties” at the cost US publishers’ convenience in comparison.

Lastly, Google will be providing works to libraries and selling book access (not downloads) to individuals, but with DMR. If and when the Google Book program is terminated, so will the access to purchased books be terminated too. While we have the technology to preserve writings for an eternity, short-term commercial interest seek to limit access to knowledge when it no longer suits them. And since Google will have the exclusive right, to orphaned works, these digitizations lost forever, or sold to another private party. We all know when happens when DRM servers are shut down. Digital media become less useful than real, physical media.

These terms are still modifiable, and the court will hear objections up until June 2009. But you have to wonder if Google’s own Dan Clancy has any objections to the monopoly that they will be unnecessarily granted. We all lose out, just because AAP does not want to spend resource to whack another questionable mole.

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An Evaluation of Web Strategy in the Musical Instrument Business

Published
by
Nick Dynice
on January 19, 2009
in New Marketing and Social Web
. 0 Comments

Crossposted at the Heavybag Media blog.

With NAMM taking place over the weekend and several of our clients in the musical instrument business, I thought it would be appropriate to evaluate the participation level in social media and web strategies of musical instrument companies. (Disclosure: a few of these companies are Heavybag Media clients, noted below.)

As part of this evaluation, we have set up a site bringing in RSS feeds from as many musical instrument related companies we could find at TheyAreTheMusicMakers.com (a reference to an Arthur O’Shaughnessy poem) using Sweetcron.

Many corporate websites are becoming irrelevant, serving as static brochures. Visitors are expecting more than just information and positive spin. Social media, blogs, syndicated news, widgets, and videos are just some of the ways these companies are participating, along with a new approach to sharing and conversing with customers. Using the network effect of social networking sites allows content to be more discoverable than being on an island (aka, your website). More searches are happening on YouTube than on Yahoo (Google being first place). For this reason, along with zero bandwidth costs to you, there is no reason to not have your brand’s content on YouTube.

The Musical Instrument industry (including makers of brass and woodwinds, guitars, basses, drums and percussion, keyboards, synths, pianos, recording and effects, live sound reinforcement, DJ, karaoke, and all related accessories and educational products and services) is using a variety tools and tactics to execute their web strategy for marketing and customer contact. They can be classified into 12 areas:

Newsletter/mailing lists with a public news archive

You can tell these companies have been using the web to engaged with their customers for years, because at one point newsletters were the easiest way to reach out to customers, back when sending and managing e-mail was easier than posting a blog. I would still recommend both newsletters/mailing lists and blogs to make content available in as many formats as possible. Feedburner allows publishers to be notified of new posts by e-mail.

Bias: news, press releases, newsletter
SKB Cases: news and mailing list
AKG: mailing list, news
Sony: mailing list, press releases

Newsletter/mailing lists with no public newsletter archive

You need to sign up for the mailing list just to see if any news is happening. This strategy means that there are fewer pages for search engines to spider, and then other sites have a better chance of receiving search traffic about a companies’ product, like Harmony-Central forum.

D’Addario
Ovation Guitars (Disclosure: Heavybag client)
Korg
Dean Guitars
Dipinto guitars
Gretsch Drums
Toca Percussion
LP Percussion
Steinberg Software
Roger Linn Design

Hosting Forums

These are a great way to get search engine queries from users that helps them find answers to product questions saving companies repeated support inquires over time. They do take some time to manage, but they are a great way to show customers that you are listening and willing to help. Several of these brands below are with the Harmon Group.

Fishman: news, forum
Jackson Guitars: news, forum
Lexicon: news, forum
Digitech: forum, news
dbx: news, forum
TC Electronic: forum (more below)

Using a blogging platform or good content, but no feed

This is coming from a good place, but for blogs to live in the blogosphere properly, they need to have feeds and comments. Wordpress is free, runs on any commodity LAMP server. There is no reason to re-invent the wheel here. Although, there is one blog in my survey that seems to be using Blogger.com but has disabled the feed. This is no way to get people to go to your site. Allowing people to subscribe to your feed makes your content stickier. (Update: I spoke to Rick at PreSonus and he is now aware of the problem).

PreSonus: blog, YouTube
Access

Blogs on Blogger, MySpace, or Wordpress

These guys are seeing the light. In some cases, maybe it is a rouge employee in the marketing department who is living the “better to ask for forgiveness than permission” rule. It is really easy and free for anyone to go on to these sites, start a presence, and link back to the main site.

Epiphone blog, Twitter
BC Rich: blog
Jomox: MySpace (no posts yet), news and newsletter
Seymore Duncan: MySpace blog

RSS syndicated press releases

These companies understand the benefits of syndication. Both musicians and publishers looking for news updates and stories can subscribe to news feeds directly from the sources by subscribing to RSS feeds. This has less management headroom in comparison to having a mailing list. But some are just putting out the same type of content they have always put out: product launches, personnel changes, partnerships, and promotions. And these sites are not using a full blown blog platform so there are no comments or trackbacks.

MoTU
Akia (with bonus Digg button)
Crown Audio
ElectroVoice
Monster Cable

RSS syndicated news and newsletters/mailing list

From an infrastructure perspective, these guys have everything covered. Some are also using social media. But some are not using blogging platforms, so there are no comments or trackbacks.

Behringer has a blog posts by Uli Behringer himself and three other Behringer personnel so far. It looks like they just started the blog in December 2008. They are also on Twitter.

M-Audio: news, newsletter
Moog Music: MySpace blog, YouTube, news (no feed or newsletter)
Digidesign
Alesis
Native Instruments: news, newsletter

Blog on the company’s site, used as a channel to push promotions

These sites have a full blog platform such as Wordpress, allowing comments and RSS feeds, but still the content is not helping or teaching potential customers. In some cases the companies are well-known companies in their categories. Maybe they think they can only push awareness of promotions, which may result in a spike in sales, but does little to help build a long-term relationship with their user base. Some posts are about events and profiles on organizations that use the companies’ products. Most do not have comments or have them disabled.

Mackie
Fender
Taylor Guitars (featuring ShareThis.com links on every post)
Ernie Ball

All of the Conn-Selmer brands have at least an RSS feeds on their news pages. Some have Facebook fan pages:

Blog on the company’s site (or on Blogger/Wordpress.com), with content that helps or teaches

If a company is doing this, in my opinion, they have seen the light. They are using their brand’s influence to help their user base, teach them why they should pay more for finer features, and help them kick ass with their products after the sale. These blogs are also not afraid to put a face on the companies’ personnel. Some blogs have an actual byline from an person in the company.

Kessler:blog, written by the owner’s son
Gibson Guitars: MySpace, news, Twitter, YouTube
Dixon Drums: blog, YouTube (disclosure: Heavybag client)
Propellerheads Software: artist profiles, YouTube

Roland has 8 different content channels, all with feeds, and most with a newsletter option, each one for a specific market need. These include:

They certainly offer the widest range and best frequency of content if you count ever channel. Roland has a long history of content production with their RUG (Roland User Group) print magazines. They are also one of the only companies profiled here to have a support channel as content available in a feed. This makes sense since they are a technology company. These notifications are are mostly software updates. They specifically cater to the church musician niche with their Worship Connection content channel, offering advice on live sound that fits in well with their organ products. They have a link to Worship Northwest 2009, a conference sponsored by many audio companies.

The Best are using two or more: blog, forum, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, Facebook

These companies have embraced the tools of social media. I don’t like the content style of all of them (some are too press release-ish), but they are going to where their users are. They do not need to reinvent concepts, and are fine using open source software or free web 2.0 services. Their blog content is decent as well.

ElectroHarmonix: YouTube, MySpace blog
Ludwig: MySpace, MySpace blog, Facebook, news, Twitter
Yamaha: The Hub: podcasts, blogs, and videos
Kaces: blog (disclosure: this is our client)
Rock n’ Roller Cart: blog (disclosure: this is our client)
Line6: news, Twitter
Reunion Blues gig bags: blog, wiki (a directory for touring musicians), Twitter, MySpace (disclosure: this is our client)
Sabian: news (no feed), forum, Twitter
Taye Drums: blog, community, Twitter, MySpace, Facebook

D’Addario bands have MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and forums for most of it’s brands. They are listed on their ToTheStage.com community site along with a directory of sites that teach you how to play better:

TC Electronic has news across multiple categories available in one RSS feed, a forum, videos on YouTube, a Netvibes Widget, and a newsletter: news (on the home page), YouTube, Netvibes news widget, newsletter, forum, news page for the TC Helicon brand, and a Flickr stream. These guys really get it, and I think they are the best example of a company that is really participating in the social web, allowing their brand to be found across many platforms. I especially like how their news is part of their homepage. They understand that the context of their web presence is immediacy.

Newspage and newsletter/mailing list, no feeds

BSS Audio: newsletter and news
DM Pro: newsletter, news
Focusrite: newsletter, news
Mapex: newsletter, news
Marshall Amps: newsletter, news
Novation: newsletter
Peavy: newsletter, news
Soundcraft: newsletter
Sabian: newsletter and news
Zildjian: newsletter and news

Non-syndicated news page with press releases and/or collection of press mentions, no feed or newsletter, no forum

When companies can speak directly to musicians from their sites, why do they need to write a press release? It’s as if the only other place the musicians will read about new products is magazines and other niche sites. These news pages are written for them. There could also be content for end users.

Allen and Heath
Audix USA
Buffet-Crampon
Dave Smith Instuments
DW Drums
Fostex USA
Gibraltar Drums Hardware
Hosa Cables
JBL Pro
Johnson Guitars
KRK Systems
Kurzweil Music Systems
Middle Atlantic
Novation
Nord Keyboards
Numark
OC Drum and Percussion
Ovation Guitars (disclosure: this is a past client)
Pearl Drums
Paiste
Premier Percussion
ProCo Sound
Samson Audio
Shure
SennheiserUSA
Sony Professional
Tama Drums
Tascam
Ultimate Support

Some of the tools we use

For Heavybag Media clients, we use Twitter for “ambient awareness,” Wordpress as a blogging platform, PHPList for mailing lists, YouTube for free video hosting and syndication, MySpace for demographic outreach, Google Analytics and Feedburner to track visors and subscribers.

Our Favorite Picks

We are happy to see Conn-Selmer syndicate all of it’s news. TC Electronic has done a fair job using social media and RSS syndication, and YouTube. Yamaha has not only great videos that help to educate customers on their products, but podcasts also. Roland has the richest and longest running content channels.

Comments and Suggestions?

If you have any suggestions on companies we forgot to include, corrections, or would like help with your web strategy, leave us a comment.

(photos by synthesizers, psycht, Squiggle, and TCElectronic on Flickr)

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Atari complains about having to compete with itself

Published
by
Nick Dynice
on December 3, 2008
in Disruptive Business Models in Content and Innovation
. 0 Comments

GameIndustry.biz reports that Atari is complaining about second hand sales at it’s event Atari Live in London. Their proposed solution? Add features that make it more useful to the users that rely on one sort of online social features that players would need to pay for.

It is a great idea, but the tone of the complaining seems rather childish, since it is Atari’s own fault for not keeping up with the pace of the industry. Competing with the sale of second hand items is just the cost of doing business for any type of product that has a resale value. If they don’t want customers to resell games, it is only going to force the companies like Atari to make more compelling games. Atari is perhaps one of the oldest game companies still around. It got to where it is by selling packaged goods. Upstarts have outmaneuvered by creating more innovative, compelling, and profitable games like World of Warcraft, Guitar Hero, or Rock Band.

In a way, Atari is complaining about second hand game reselling the same way it might complain about piracy. It admits that it can’t deal with it’s own externalities. At least they are not trying to outlaw game reselling which is clearly legal in the US under the First Sales Doctrine.

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The Uncanny Parallels Between Israeli Archeology and Innovation Challenges

Published
by
Nick Dynice
on July 27, 2008
in Creativity, Disruptive Business Models in Content and Innovation
. 0 Comments

I recently caught three interesting episodes of Simcha Jacobovici’s Naked Archaeologist on History International:

  • Episodes #5: “Real or Fake?”
  • Episode #6: “Fame & Forgery”
  • Episode #7: “Accidental Archeology”

Israeli ArcheologyEpisodes 5 and 6 are about the Israeli Antiquities markets where each player strives for the right to participate in a free market of goods within the context that the goods are authentic and that the sale was legal, or allowed by the authorities. Archaeologists are shackled by protocol and the need for proper financing. Targeted claims about forgeries can make or break a collector, archaeologists, or exhibit. Episode 7 covers the construction projects that discover ancient ruins and the chilling effects that jealous archaeologists cause when they discredit discoveries are made accidentally by non-archaeologists.

These topics are interesting because there are many parallels to the challenges facing business; in particular, the ones that rely on intellectual monopoly in the age of digital abundance and the success that can be had by amateurs. Producers of text, music, film, business methods, systems, and apparatuses are still at odds with where they want the market to be, and where it is today.

Bureaucracy Slows Progress, Maybe on Purpose
Archaeological excavations on new sites sponsored by the state or by western universities need to do everything by the book, and in accordance with the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). As a result, the excavations never find anything worthwhile. There must be funding, and it must come from the right sources. Permission must be granted, official documentation must be made, and so on. The cynical may believe that the excavations that are permitted will be fruitless, planned so there are fewer pieces in the marketplace.

Keeping the Marketplace Artificially Small
There is a perceived right by some to stifle the market. Dealers and private collectors such as Oded Golan, owner of the controversial James Ossuary. His collections rival the IAA’s own collection. The IAA, in its position as the authority, does not want such rivals. So, it goes after the best private collectors and their collections by claiming that some artifacts are either forgeries, or artifacts were purchased from tomb raiders who’s digs were not authorized by IAA. The IAA website goes at great lengths to document their victory in catching and apprehending unauthorized excavations like this man found using a metal detector in the middle of the desert. Such publications seems like a simple scare tactic. In any case, the IAA is taking moral authority over their competition in the name of propping up monopolies.

Unauthorized and Accidental Discoveries
If a tomb raider (particularly Palestinians) are caught on the streets in Israel, they can be punished. However, there is some sort of strange exemption they receive if they make into a dealer’s shop without getting caught by the authorities. Perhaps the Israeli dealers are covering for the tomb raiders who my be bringing them valuable items the dealer can resell. The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered by accidentally by a goat herder, and for this reason, we ignored by the larger archaeological community at first. Similar things are happening with companies that innovate in digital distribution who are at first blown off by incumbent content industries, and then sued instead of creating alliances, and then insist on doing it themselves.Siebenberg house

Jealous archaeologists discredited the discovery that are not made by one of their own, such as the 2nd Century BC mansion found under a home in Jerusalem known as the Siebenberg House. Without much interest from the archaeological community since it was not discovered by one of their own, the Siebenbergs conducted the excavation themselves over an 18 year period. Now their home rivals some museums.

With the rapid commercial development, there is a cat-and-mouse game between archaeologists and contractors. Contractors are sometimes quick to secretly destroy ancient ruins so that projects are done on time. Discoveries that do get reported usually hold up new construction projects indefinitely, such as a the construction of new walkway for the Temple Mount which uncovered remains of the first temple.

“Pirates” Push the Boundaries
As with the artifacts that are sold by tomb raiders, forgeries also compete for prestige, sales dollars and attention in the Israeli antiquities scene. Corrupt officials could deem an artifact as a forgery in order to simply take it away from or to discredit a dealer. The irony is that some older forgeries themselves are now artifacts. In the 1880’s, Moses Shapira, an entrepreneurial antiquities dealer, knew that there was a great demand in antiques for Holy Land tourists but not enough authentic pieces to go around. He and his associate, Salim al-Kari manufactured thousands of fake antiques, selling hundreds of pieces to German museums. He was eventually caught by investigative journalists and outed in London newspapers when he tried and failed to forge a piece of parchment with Bible passages. In shame, he killed himself soon after. However, this is not a cautionary tale, since today’s pirates that push the boundaries are not claiming to pass originals. The irony is that this rich history now accounts for a demand in original Shapira forgeries, as they are shown at his one-time historic home, the Ticho House in downtown Jerusalem.

Conclusion
The market for antiques is abundant. The ability to discover them and fill voids is natural. Authority and protocols keep the rights to discover and sell antiques scarce, thus creating even greater scarcity of antiques themselves. The more abundant new discoveries become, the lower the value for pieces currently owned by museums and dealers.

Anyone can think up ideas and digital technology makes it easier to execute on ideas. Unnatural limits emerge to keep incumbents in control of the marketplace, and this is a danger to us all because it limits our liberty and ability to innovate. It is not the privileged that innovate. It is the “pirates,” early adopters, and amateurs who break the rules and forge ahead by breaking barriers disguised as rules.

(top photo by heatkernel)

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AP proves: Lawyers suck at long-term business strategy

Published
by
Nick Dynice
on June 17, 2008
in Disruptive Business Models in Content, First Amendment, I heard it on a podcast and Innovation
. 0 Comments

Associated Press (AP) has send DMCA notices to The Drudge Retort for quoting too much from one if it’s articles and then linking to one of it’s paying customer’s website (more at Techdirt). This, of course, interferes with the APs business model. They think The Drudge Retort should have to pay just like other AP syndicating news organizations.

I see many parallels to the recorded music business. Some people might download music for free while others are willing to pay. Today we have the luxury of trying music before we buy it. If we download from p2p and we don’t like it, we never were a lost sale. But if you like the music enough, you want to buy special physical items (like vinyl) , go to shows, and become an evangelizing fan.

Most news organizations that are paying to syndicate AP’s content are probably advertising based. They depend on traffic for their business model. If people are willing to give traffic to the AP’s customers, the AP should be willing to ignore a “copyright violation” in order to help it’s customer reach it’s goal of receiving traffic.

There are companies who’s business strategy encourage would-be offense, such as the dreaded deep linker, or the free and open source software hacker, or the Creative Commons music sharer. But if your lawyers are not crying foul, ruining your business model for heir own short term gain, for you, you carry on as you wish. Threatening potential customers is no a sustainable business model. Laws are made by people, and the spirit of laws can be rationalized by people. The way to behave on the web (which came from the way the web was designed) existed before the arrival of traditional news organizations, and they need to play by these rules.

If the AP really want bloggers to buy a license in order to quote them, they need to do two things. First, They really need to improve their offerings, giving something more than just permission to quote them. Sites like Reddit and Digg encourage linking as part of their business plan and they give blogger tools that help them accomplish their own goals rather than fight against them (granted they are not sources, but they leverage exiting behavior). AP does not do this. Second, they need to understand the the resources to police the use of their quotes is going to cost for more than it is worth, and they are better off not doing it at all. People will link and/or take entire articles wholesale. This is not your target customer. Google will eventually figure out that a site is spam and ban it, and then the motives for scraping are gone.

If the AP wants to play with bloggers on the internet, it needs to play by the bloggers’ and Googles’ rules. We link to sources, and we quote as much as we see necessary. Where we come form, respect is earned, regardless of the interpretation of copyright law or fair use. Help us kick ass, and we’ll be your biggest fans. Figure out how to monetize that, and your golden.

Sean’s opinion.
Profy takes AP’s side and choose to site the part of fair use that cannot interfere with “potential market value.”
Arrington says: AP is banned.

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Using Social Media to Market Music

Published
by
Nick Dynice
on June 9, 2008
in Consumer Electronics, DRM Rant, Disruptive Business Models in Content, I heard it on a podcast, Innovation, My Projects, New Marketing, Photoblogging, Product Support and Customer Service, Social Web and Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

My colleague at Heavybag Media, Jackie Peters has a post about the great opportunities record labels have in using social media as a marketing strategy. The challenges they are facing: they must switch from selling music in physical packages to selling musical experiences, allow fans to interact with the music in meaningful ways, and allow music to be an experience to share with friends. The convergence of downladable, infinitely available music along with the ability to learn about new music via word of mouth/social media in the form of music blogs, podcasts, recommendation (both algorithms and friend) is the perfect fit.

But for now, the transition is rough for music industry veterans. Almost every week for the past two years the music industry manages to make one puzzling move after another, while independent artists are free to make decisions who’s only stockholders are themselves along with their artistic and commercial aspirations. Increasingly, independent artists commercial strategy is not in selling CDs, but in the more scarce goods such as early access to new releases, performances, and limited edition vinyl or DVDs, reliable discovery and immediate access to files on iTune or Amazon MP3 . They now they need to sell their fans something they cannot get for free.

People love to talk about the music they love. Allowing them to share it easily and legally, and talk about it online, and put it in new contexts is the new path to commercial success.

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When the cost of making ideas can be zero, the fee to use an ideas should be zero

Published
by
Nick Dynice
on May 24, 2008
in Creativity and Innovation
. 2 Comments

As AgainstMonopoly and Techdirt like to say: when the marginal cost of producing a product, service or experience drops to zero, the price the market is willing to pay will drop to zero. For those that can craft ideas in their heads or on a napkin, the cost of this production is zero. However, what makes an idea valuable is the idea crafter’s ability to execute on the idea successfully. This requires scarce resources such as time, skills and maybe materials. Coming up with ideas and executing them successfully should be allowed to be mutually exclusive activities.

However, regimes such as patents put an artificial price on ideas and slow down innovation. One great example is the push-back on copyright by artists who license their works under Creative Commons. They are aware that someone else might be able to execute on their ideas better than themselves, and the license grants these permissions. Open APIs (application programming interfaces) allow 3rd party developers to use applications in ways the original application developers did not yet imagine. Execution is the natural and scarce barrier that differentiates competitors. It should not be an artificial price on ideas, methods, abstract processes, or the discovery of naturally occurring mathematics, physics, or biologies. The patents that are most dangerous to innovation are software patents. When patents first came on the scene in the US, it was intended for mechanical processes or methods, not necessarily for abstract ideas. Patents on software methods and business process are more akin to abstract ideas.

All of the money spent on patents and the barriers they creates for others is useless in “promoting the useful arts and sciences” unless you can successfully execute on them. And failure for one party to successfully execute holds everyone back, thus prohibiting the promotion of the useful arts and sciences. Your R&D resources are also a waste if you fail to execute. But this is the risk business must take. Even if you have a patent or a copyright, you can fail in the execution.

One might argue that there is a cost to making ideas, since you need to pay for R&D. This may be a leftover thinking from the industrial area. Sure, even for the development of abstract systems such as software applications and business methods, the time resource of engineers and the scarcity of their skills are necessary. But in a situation where one party has spent resources to come up with the same ideas that someone else might develop with fewer resources, and without any influence for the first party, it is as if the act of spending any resources whatsoever means that the idea deserves exclusive rights to execute. The context for protection comes from the belief that party A can “steal” ideas or the fruits of research from party B. These protectionist schemes make no room for the fact the two parties can come up with similar solutions independently, nor do that allow for the ability for some to ideate at no cost, and there is an automatic assumption that they are “anti-market”. It is as if the shareholder value for a couple individuals or firms is more important than the health and well-being of the world over. Or, the appearance that if the executioner is following protocol is going to covers some of their liability for failing and the false stigma of failure.

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Great Design Spoils Us and That’s A Good Thing

Published
by
Nick Dynice
on May 16, 2008
in Creativity and Innovation
. 3 Comments

Great design along with great user feedback and iteration makes me intolerant of bad design, even when there is no alternative.

In the web app space, new entrants continue to appear, competing with each other and incumbents, each tweaking their strategy slightly. One thing that will separate each app is the quality of the user experience and user interface. Thus, users of these apps are increasingly spoiled. The best-in-class app emerges in a Darwinian competition. The web app space has to be the most fast-paced example of this paradigm, but it could be true of other products, services, or experiences who’s design can be constantly re-iterated.

I know I am spoiled. I have Google apps (search included) at my fingertips. I can use 37Signal apps to communicate complex ideas around my projects. I can communicate back and forth with web power users in an instant from almost any location without e-mail by using services like Twitter.

However, as I look at other apps I have no choice to use such as the web interface for my bank, government websites, or the CRM software at my last job, I am very intolerant of old, bad software. I expect that this software should not make me think. I only want to think about how to solve hard problems once, and then have have a software solve the problem when it comes up. In other words, I think software should do the repetitive mental heavy lifting.

When a great design ecosystem along with a great feedback channel to the designers and developers is available, we become even more spoiled. But I don’t think the spoilage is a bad thing. It creates an awareness for good design. It creates an awareness for the need for UI and UX designers. It creates awareness of the advantages of user feedback channels. It creates an awareness that rapidly releasing new code helps designers make better choices.

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How Open Source and Social Media are going to Eat SEOs’ Lunches

Published
by
Nick Dynice
on April 23, 2008
in Consumer Electronics, DRM Rant, Disruptive Business Models in Content, I heard it on a podcast, Innovation, Social Web and Web 2.0
. 4 Comments

(Sphinn this)
Search engines react to behavior of its users and site owners. Search engines measures these behaviors to deliver value to each, but ultimately to serve the search engines’ best interests. At first, search engines used what they could by implying relevance and rank by link behavior. But as the web evolves to the social web, social media connections are going to have an increasing weight on search result relevance. Let’s face it: social media strategy is going to cannibalize black hat and some current white hat SEO strategy. Social media strategy is the new way to do SEO (figure out how to give value to your client’s web strategy). It is Matt Cutt’s job to figure out how to measure this relevance, and he is seeing that it is social media.

Right now, there are a bunch of SEOs listening to what Danny Sullivan has to say about social media strategy because they trust him. But some SEOs refuse to re-evaluate what brings value to their clients, (note: this Sphinn user was not in attendance) even saying that Jason should not be allowed at conferences. These sentiments just prove to him that what he is doing is right. It is innovators dilemma. SEOs got where they are today by being great at SEO strategies. Asking them to adopt social media as a new strategy is new and foreign. As Danny tries to lead his followers to new territory, some think he is betraying them and the strategies that made them the stars they are today. Some might be too afraid to go back to their clients to tell them they are going to try some new strategies to help their clients succeeded. They should remember that this does not mean the work they did in the past did not allow for successes or was a bad idea. SEO definitely has been one of the main ways to help clients succeed on the web for the past 10 years. But, there is no need to defend past actions with future ignorance. They need to redefine their metrics. The longer they wait, the more likely they will get their lunch eaten.

Thus, the knee-jerk reaction to Jason Calicanis’s rhetoric that SEO is a dying or bad strategy. Yes, let’s admit that Jason loves to agitate people by rubbing strategy decay into SEO’s faces, bad Jason ;) . No one is going to tell an SEO that they are not giving value to their clients using SEO techniques. It just that the tactics they are using need to evolve.

Less attention is going to be paid to traditional SEO because (especially in the creation of static pages) now it is so much easier and valuable to create site with an open source blog, CMS, wiki or other application platform that may or may not rely on search engine traffic. Sure, even with these there are some ways to tweak them from an SEO perspective, but not as much as you might have needed to do 10 years ago. This is disruptive technology, bad news for the traditional SEOs that build sites from scratch, sprinkling in their elusive, magical SEO code. But, the developers of these open source CMS apps have figured out how to do the complicated SEO work for you (why else would Matt Cutts speak, attend, and endorse Wordcamp?). Here (along with social media application designers) is where good SEO needs to happen, and smart web strategists will realize that this is where it should continue to happen, because it scales and eliminates redundant work. You just need to wait for the search engines to spider your site. Now, traditional SEOs (which should now be called web strategists) should have more time available to add additional types of value for their clients by either engaging in social media on their behalf, or teaching them how to engaging with their prospects in a way that will help them efficiently meet their goals over the web. This is done by creating “meaningful relationships” (for lack of a better term) with people. At this point, SEO is just one of many tactics used by a web strategist. So calling a person an SEOs or SEM will soon be a way to show how outdated or limited that person’s strategy toolbox is. SEO competes with other value-adding strategies if all you do is SEO. Thus, SEO people see social media strategy as a threat. Being a web strategist is where it’s at.

Update 4/25/08: Oh yeah, add semantic web to the list in the title.

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