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Offline Cookies

September 30th, 2009 @ 1:39 pm
Categories: News, Technology

This New York Times article and the survey it covers reminds me of a blog post I wrote for my old blog about what I referred to as offline cookies. I may be in the minority on this one, but I actually am OK with user/consumer behavior tracking, just as long as people are not identified by name in the data. I know it’s a short step between being user 098733 and actually being identified by name, and often it’s not technically difficult to figure out who user 098733 really is. But still, tracking user behavior can be very valuable. We, those of us in the internet industry, just need to use this power for good and not evil. Here’s my blog post from January 28, 2002 titled Offline Cookies:

A few years back, Levis opened the new and improved Levis Store in San Francisco. Along with tailoring your jeans, the store would also remember your measurements. You could go into the store, walk up to a terminal, and via a DHTML interface, place an order to have new jeans made up on the spot, just for you. The system would let you choose between relaxed fit versus snug, black versus blue, strait leg versus tapered, etc. And you could bet that this info was stored for marketing purposes. I think this info was even available online for a while, so you could order more custom fit jeans. But the idea of storing info about customers for use in retail outlets never really caught on.

Now, the world of online/offline commerce is a little older and a little wiser, and a little greedier. CNN is running a very interesting article about the use of smart shopping carts and loyalty/discount card programs in grocery stores. Both of which are designed to collect information on, and in some cases make recommendations for, what individuals buy. Some of this info is collected anonymously, most of it not. This info is then used to determine how people shop, what they shop for, which promotions work and who the most loyal customers are. Much like online cookies, the potential to use and abuse of this information is huge. Is this information kept confidential, or is it sold to various marketing data collection groups? How complex are the customer profiles, do they know I’m a vegetarian? If I buy Tide, lighter fluid and a box of nails all in one visit to the store, are they going to call the cops? Or are they going to give me, and me alone, special discounts on oatmeal raisin cookies cause I buy them so much? Or how about reminding me when I haven’t bought toilet paper in a few months, so I don’t have to deal with the ugly and embarrassing consequences of completely running out? Should we fear or embrace this technology?

Microsoft’s Super Secret Tablet Thing (Courier)

September 23rd, 2009 @ 2:04 pm
Categories: Cool, Technology

Gizmodo has gotten their hands on a video demo of super secret project inside Microsoft called Courier. Courier looks to be an evolution of the tablet PC only designed more like an actual notebook. It’s composed of two touch screens hinged together (at least they look hinged together, the demo never shows the device in any kind of closed state). Though the two screens seem operate independently of each other, but the demo does show items being dragged from one to the other. The demo also shows that Courier supports both multi-touch and the use of stylus. All in all it looks very slick.

I’ve been a long time fan of the concept of a super PDA. I had a iPaq pocket pc back in the day, I have both an iPhone and a netbook now. I always thought there was a market for something that was as functional as a laptop, but would fit in your pocket (or maybe small hand bag). Ideally what I had always envisioned was something that was as small as a PDA and as fast as a laptop, that could be used on its own while on the go and used with a dock with a monitor and keyboard when at a desk. One computer that does everything everywhere. Or at the very least one computer that could take the place of my laptop and PDA/smart phone.

When the Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC) platform was unveiled a couple years ago, I thought maybe my dreams had come true. But UMPC’s never took off, I’m guessing because they were too expensive and overpowered for a PDA but underpowered for most everything else. The iPhone/iTouch is easily the best phone/PDA I’ve used, but it’s not going to replace my netbook. There are still a lot of things I need a bigger screen and a little more processing power to do. Netbooks got the price right but, but not the form factor, they are still too big, I still have to have a laptop bag. With that said, my main complaint with netbooks is that the screen resolution is too low, 1024 x 600 is just a little too low to be practical.

Which poses the problem, how do you make a small, reasonably fast computer with a usable screen resolution. I think Microsoft maybe on to something with Courier. It’s not the the dock-able super PDA I was hoping for, but it’s still looks pretty cool. A tablet that can be folded up means it’s much easier to carry when not in use. And when it is in use, you have the real estate of two 7-inch-ish screens to work with. And with the nifty UI possibilities shown in the demo and I could see this being a killer device. The Courier could fill that awkward gap between PDA/smart phone and laptop, or for a lot of people, replace them all together. Assuming MS can keep these things cheap (like netbook cheap), they might have a winner on their hands.

RockMelt, Funny Name, Serious Browser?

September 19th, 2009 @ 11:49 pm
Categories: News, Technology

Netscape Founder Backs New Browser
Marc Andreesen is backing a start-up called RockMelt, which is supposedly working on a new browser. It’s browser wars 2.0!

When Google released the Chrome Beta they positioned as more of a web app development platform than a browser, I wonder if that’s RockMelt’s plan as well. I could see room in the browser market for browsers that are for specific uses and end up being transparent to the end user.

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