How do you explain something that's never existed before?

This is one of my favorite images, and largely speaks for itself.  So you can stop here (all else is commentary).  

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A "better mousetrap" is easy to explain.  The first mousetrap, like the first wheel, is not so easy.  

This cartoon is from the October 1981 announcement of the Xerox Star workstation, the productized version of the Alto, the very first WIMP (Window, Icon, Menu, Pointing device) Graphical User Interface.  (To anyone who has the full advertisement this was clipped from, I would love to have a better, more complete copy.)

Relevant to my theme of user-centered media, this gets to the idea that the user may not know what he really would like.  In many respects, Steve Jobs is a champion of user-centered media (even if maybe not user-centered business practices).  Asked why Apple doesn’t do focus groups, Jobs responded: "We figure out what we want. You can’t go out and ask people ‘what’s the next big thing?’ There’s a great quote by Henry Ford. He said, "If I’d have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me ‘A faster horse.’"”  Of course we need to think of the user, and usually should listen to them, but to innovate, one must look far in front of them.

All the best really new ideas are simple at heart, but have many aspects and embodiments.  Like an embryo, it may be all there at conception at some level, but the details that work in the world unfold as you let it grow to maturity.  Depending on context, some aspects grow faster and are more apparent than others.  But explaining them is no easy task.  I have enjoyed seeing many new ideas in early stages, but am still trying to learn how to explain them.  Steve Jobs has the advantage of being able to build them and show them off.  I have not had his resources.  And sometimes no one has the resources until the time is right.

I tried to convince Mobil Corporation to buy a Star workstation to experiment with when I was in their technology planning group in 1981, but it was too expensive, even for Mobil (which was the first company to buy a Cray supercomputer)!  The workstation cost about $100K, but  as I recall, a useful single-user system also needed a file server, print server, and communications server, totaling about $250K minimum (about $600K in current dollars).

I watched hypertext unfold since 1969.  Ted Nelson did a masterful job explaining it (inspired by Vannevar Bush's 1945 vision in The Atlantic Monthly), and Doug Engelbart spectacularly demonstrated similar techniques in what was called "the mother of all demos" in 1968.  But it was slow to reach wide recognition until technology advanced, Berners-Lee simplified it, and Andreesen packaged it.  

As to my own inventions, I have struggled with the challenge of trying to explain online/local hybrids in 1994 (now in RSS, AJAX, and HTML5), coactive TV companion devices (now emerging for iPads) in 2002, and now for FairPay in 2010.  (A companion post is on my FairPayZone blog.

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[Caption text:  "How do you explain something that's never existed before? ... He had a similar problem"]

Hyperlocal News symposium by MIT Enterprise Forum of NYC -- 2/24

Hyperlocal News: A New of World of Journalism, Sustainable Business Models, and the $30B Local Ad Market promises to be a very interesting NYC panel session.  As board organizer of the event for MITEF-NYC, I am pleased to have a very strong and diverse mix of panelists, and look forward to some stimulating dialog.  Aside from major players like the NY Times and Patch, we have a smaller startup, the Alternative Press, and Outside.in, a technology/infrastructure provider.

A very nice preview article on the event, and on the MIT Enterprise Forum, was published today by The Alternative Press.

From my "user-centered media" perspective, hyperlocal is an interesting development, with farther to go in use-centered control of locality -- as to geography, time, and context.  Instead of just a newspaper focused on my community, I want to see more context sensitivity and control.  Sometimes I want to know:

• why there are sirens in my neighborhood right now (more and longer than usual, this being Manhattan)?
• what are the fireworks I see on the Hudson now, and how do I get advance notice of them?
• what events match my interest profile (graded by distance vs. level of interest)?
• about my home location, my work location, or a location I am visiting or passing through.

I don't know that the panel will get to these questions, but there are many other interesting ones they will address.  I have been involved in various online news services since the late '80s, and what I see as interesting is not always shared by the powers that be.

One of my recent projects (with impact yet to be determined) is a radically new pricing process for digital media called FairPay.  This has strong potential for news services, including hyperlocal ones.  More on that is on the at my FairPay Zone blog.

Of course I will be at the event, and will be happy to discuss FairPay, and other user-centered issues, with anyone there.

The Daily, iPad, and Apps ...or Web browsing with HTML5 -- Which paradigm?

The appearance of  The Daily from News Corp. is seen as a big step in the online journalism business, as described in a WSJ article.

I played with it briefly and it brings me back to some key questions about the future of media.  It will be very interesting to see how it does.  There are a range of important issues, and here are some impressions.

The interesting business issue is how app models are seen as a last chance to give publishers another bite at the monetization apple (pun intended) vs. free Web content.  This depends to some extent on whether Apple and other app stores let publishers keep enough money and enough control of the customer relationship (which Apple clearly hates to do, but Google is more open to).  But with HTML5 Web apps as alternative, that may become a harder sell than Murdoch now hopes.

Underlying this is the big technology question of whether the app fad loses out to HTML5 Web browsing.  In many respects, the app/widget model is a giant step backward.  Pre Web, there were "apps" for every online service, and they were all unique and non-interoperable with a clutter of invocations and divergent UIs.  The Web/browser brought a "World Wide Web" of consistency and interoperability that still enabled flexibility and varying look/feel.  A key issue is how to benefit from apps/widgets without going back to another age of islands and silos?  I built some of the first pre-Web publisher "apps" for TV Guide (hello again News Corp), Golf Magazine, Sierra, and others in the early '90s, and saw first hand how much the Web simplified things for both publishers and users.

The question is why bother downloading apps, when it seems HTML5 will soon give pretty much the same UI with no download?  Most of the current UI benefits of apps will soon go away.  The lasting benefit of the app store is central merchandising/sales (and a home page UI), and as Google shows with their Web app store, this can be done as little more than a Web site.  A few useful links are an Engadget article, the Chrome Webstore, and its FAQ.

Check out NY Times and SI Snapshot Chrome apps for an app-like experience in a browser, with little or nothing to download.  The NYTimes chrome site actually runs in Safari on the iPad and looks/acts much like the iPad app (but seems to give a different content mix).  The only essential thing the app store really adds is the home page array of icons (and maybe a different way to get people to pay).

I will bet on the browser.  It offers the best overall and most open user-centered experience.  And I think there are other ways to solve the monetization problem.  (One in particular is my FairPay pricing process, with an example of usage for a newspaper on my FairPay Zone blog.)

The awakening of TV to the 21st Century ...Real Soon Now?

CoTV was ahead of its time in 2002...  Now the stars may really be aligning for TV "companion" apps.


When I talked about CoTV to people at major TV and Web companies in 2002-5, they thought it was a good idea and assured me "Yes, I get it."  Some did, and some just thought they did.  Like all forms of "interactive TV" it has been "just around the corner" for many years "waiting for the stars to align."  But now the stars really do seem to be aligning.


At the recent TV of the Future "TVOT NYC Intensive"  from iTVT and Canoe, it was evident that important things are happening:

• iPad has awakened he giants:  Comcast, Time Warner, TV networks, TiVo, and many others are jumping into coactive "companion" apps for tablets (and phones).  iPad and other tablets are nearly ideal companion devices, and already in millions of laps.
• Platforms for interaction (CableLabs/Canoe, ETV, EBIF, ...) are enabling real innovation and increasing openness from within the distribution establishment.  EBIF is in over 20 million homes, and growing rapidly, not only in cable systems.  ETV is getting real.  The PayPal Buy Button is a nice example.
• Over-the-top alternatives are real -- the incumbent system operators know they need to get into the 21st century or watch their content distribution business get bypassed.

At the same time, others are moving in the same direction, and users are doing it themselves, manually and awkwardly, but in growing numbers:

• External plays based on TiVo, Blu Ray (Pocket BLU), and sound recognition (Spot411 Entertainment Tonight) show how this can be done outside the cable plant, even for shows distributed on cable.
• Social TV apps (about what you are watching now) are making the viewer value proposition even more powerful.

What is missing is for a smart player to provide an "always-on" TV sync connector -- a single app and context portal that drives any companion content for any show (and any ad) to a large base of households.  The problem has been that nearly all attempts to provide TV companion apps have been siloed, and limited to a single program or network.  

• In the early 2000's ABC ETV and Goldpocket did second-screen companion apps for major network shows (Millionaire, Sunday/Monday Night Football, Academy Awards, etc.) but only if you navigated to an ABC or program-specific Web site.  Up-take was rarely even 1% of  viewership, hardly a basis for a business.
• Now iPad and iPhone apps are creating similar experiences, but for the most part it is still a different app for each show or network.

How can anyone really expect significant uptake when users must know there is a particular app, bother to get it, then bother to use it, and then do the same every time they change channels or programs?  Even now at TVOT, I spoke to someone from Canoe who seemed to think I must be some kind of idiot to view this as a problem.  Saying (my paraphrase): "The user can just get the right app, or just go to the right Web site.  That BMW ad you want to sync to is a network ad, not a cable ad, so the network has to provide the app -- or the viewer can just go to bmw.com. That is simple -- why can't you see that???"  

One more time:  The viewer should not have to switch from a Comcast app to an ABC app to an MTV app to a BMW app (or enter a different URL) every time a program or ad changes. Only when there is one app (or Web portal) that seamlessly syncs enhancements for any show and any ad will this be easy for the viewer.  I should just be able to turn enhancements on, and have them appear on my tablet with no further effort (until I turn them off).  And when it is that easy, companion enhancements might quickly grow to 10-20-30% of viewership or more.  Just the linkage revenue from linking those ads would be worth many billions.

So does anyone get it yet?  Yes.  My contacts with well-placed industry players indicate that more and more of them now do get it, and some see it beginning to happen in the next year or two.  The cable operators have finally recognized that set-top boxes are good MPEG engines, but hopelessly inadequate platforms for user interfaces, and that they must open up to partners using Web-based technologies.  Canoe is seeking outside partnerships and ideas.  Maybe the system operaors will actually do what they need to do.  One interesting hint of this new direction is the eBay companion TV app, which can sync an iPad with any program on an EBIF-enabled set-top.  A demo by RCDb at TVOT Intensive showed a similar app for syncing iPad enhancements to deliver IMDB pages and other content.  Cable operators are starting with companion program guides, but a program guide that does not know what you are watching right now is pretty lame (as they are aware).  Once they provide that added smarts to the companion, linking to program-specific enhancements will be (relatively) easy.

And if the distributors do not get their act together, outsiders will do it.  The Spot411 effort shows one approach, and there are many others.  TiVo is well positioned to do it (and could still win big if it did).  And if it comes too slowly to the legacy providers, the IPTV players will soon have enough viewership on big screens to lead the way.

So who will it be that realizes this is a critical race, does it right, and wins it? TV is ready to be reborn for the 21st Century.  Once someone makes it easy to use across the board (and does not cripple it), it will happen very fast.

Introducing FairPay: An adaptive pricing process that can change the game in the media/content industry

I have started a new blog for my latest project, which I think is very exciting, and will be posting more actively there.

This project is called FairPay, which is a radically new adaptive pricing process that I think has great potential, and both business and intellectual interest. I also have a mini Web site devoted to FairPay.

Repeating the first post from the new blog:

The Internet has led to a crisis in revenue models for media/content -- but the Internet also enables a way to create a radically new kind of pricing process.

What is needed in a revenue model, is not to choose the right price for digital products (free or not), but to create an adaptive pricing process.

1. Selectively offer to let the buyer set any price he considers fair after the sale (Pay What You Want, post-sale).
2. Let the seller (or a collective of sellers) track that price and use that information to determine whether to make further offers of that kind to that buyer in the future.

Instead of a fixed price, this process generates a cooperative and adaptive series of pricing actions, each based on feedback on how fairly the buyer sets his prices.

Call this enhanced process Fair Pay What You Want, or FairPay for short.

Because FairPay variations on Pay What You Want set prices after the sale, the buyer can have the product, use it, and verify its value, with no risk -- and then pay whatever he thinks fair.

• By adding FairPay feedback, the seller gains reduced risk and indirect control. The buyer develops a history, a FairPay reputation, that affects his future opportunities.
• That gives the seller the control needed to make FairPay offers only where his expected risk/reward profile is attractive. Instead of static pay walls and freemium schemes, this process supports seamless and dynamic hybrid models. Those who pay fairly, rise above the pay wall -- those who do not, must face it.

FairPay creates a win-win dynamic that can make both buyers and sellers much happier, and the economy much more productive.

• Sellers can profitably sell to everyone who sees a potential value, at a price corresponding to the perceived value to that individual buyer.
• Some will pay well, some will not. But sellers can expect that many more people will buy, and they will pay a fair price because their reputation is at stake.
• FairPay can take many forms, and can enable free sampling and blends of free and paid that are more dynamically adaptive and effective than ordinary “freemium” models.

The result is that total revenue, and total profit, might be significantly higher than with a fixed price (at least for products with low marginal cost, as with digital media) -- and that total value created can be maximized.

A fuller introduction to FairPay is provided at the FairPay Web site.

Building on Google TV: TV meets Webpad. Webpad meets TV.

As the Google blog says, "these features are just a fraction of what Google TV can do."

One hint, reported in the Wall Street Journal, is that "Linkages between Android phones and Google TV bring some unusual benefits. A Google engineer, for example, demonstrated how a person could use voice recognition in his cellphone to search for a TV program by speaking its name.

I see this as an opening for the kind of rich "Coactive TV" (CoTV) applications that coordinate TV viewing with enhancements and controls on a second screen device, such as an Android phone or tablet or notepad. While putting the Web onto the TV is desirable for some use cases, the real opportunity for convergence is to coordinate a Web device with a TV device. This can provide content and Social Web services on a Web device that knows what you are watching (such as to tweet about a program), and let the Web device control what you are watching) such as to swing a video from your tablet or phone to your TV.

Hopefully Google is well aware of this potential. I spoke to some senior people about these ideas some time ago (and as noted in a prior post, there is some interesting Google research, including a paper by some guy named "Brin, S"). But in any case, independent developers should be able to provide this (as long as the app police don't prevent them).

As noted in my previous post, iPad is beginning to show what a Webpad can do as a second screen. Google TV seems another big step in the right direction.

Comcast, Time Warner on iPad -- an ideal device for Coactive TV

The 5/12 announcement of Comcast's Xfinity iPad app, and comments by Time Warner that all cable operators are going to have similar offerings, looks like a big step toward a platform for Coactive TV on a mainstream basis. Two videos show the current steps.

First, this looks like a major step to position iPad (and presumably future tablets from other sources) as a well-integrated second screen for use with TV viewing. It will offer a rich remote control usable on the sofa for enhanced control of the big-screen TV, with full program guide and DVR control functions having an excellent UI, including its handy soft keyboard.

Second, it looks like a first step toward a simple coactive Social Web app. The Comcast demo shows how it lets you send an invitation to a friend, so he can tune in to the program you are watching with just a single click (if he has equivalent service).

iPad looks like a poster child for the kind of Webpad that would be an ideal second screen for Web services related to what you are watching on TV. With this device, and the level of TV context awareness in Comcast's demo, it would be very easy for the cable operators to add a full suite of coactive services. This could enable the iPad to show arbitrary Web content related to what you are watching on your TV.

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Some related news that is also encouraging in using such mainstream devices as TV adjuncts is from Crestron. This leading high-end whole house entertainment control company is embracing iPad as an alternative to its very expensive custom tablet remote controls.

Coactive viewing of TV and the Web -- the stars are aligning?

MTV, Sony, Verizon, Twitter, Facebook and others are moving into position. Some of the stars seem to be aligning, even if the full impact is still mostly unrecognized (even by many of them).

• A majority of people multitask while watching TV, increasingly using the Web while on TV
• Much of that is driven by the Social Web -- tweeting and IM-ing about the TV shows (or other video) we are watching.
• Some of it is driven by other services, such as looking at IMDB or other Web content related to what you are watching.

Some basic aspects of this are now widely recognized, as noted in a 2/14/10 front page NY Times story: Water-Cooler Effect: Internet Can Be TV's Friend. There has been a drumbeat of announcements by large and small players in support of this. Some are specific to a particular TV program, but some recognize that what we really need is a platform that works for whatever we are watching. Just as with the Web, what we need is not isolated apps for each program or network, but a platform that, like a browser, works for any content. You don't get mass audiences on niche platforms!

I have been seeking to develop such "Coactive TV" services since before 2002, and am happy to see more and more steps toward that vision.

• One of the most important milestones is the Verizon FIOS Twitter and Facebook widgets. These are TV widgets that run on your TV (if you have FIOS) and can be triggered to sense what program you are watching and send a tweet or update your Facebook status to inform people that you are watching it. Right now, these are for interaction on the TV, with limited integration with a PC or phone.
  -- That should be easy to add -- all it takes is a widget that talks to a Web server that coordinates other Web services with whatever is on your TV. There is no limit to what the Web services might be. Wouldn't someone like to be in the middle of that dynamic? ...Verizon? ...Anyone else?
• Another interesting step is by a startup called Spot411, that uses audio recognition to figure out what TV program or DVD you are watching, and link you to a Facebook page with others who are also watching that. They got some visibility with a PC and iPhone app done for Fox DVDs that is called FoxPop. Now they are doing the same thing for TV. These guys get the idea that we don't want different apps for each show -- we want one app that works for any show.
• Sony is doing an interesting variation for their Blu-ray discs, building on BD-Live Internet connectivity. It started as movieIQ, announced last June with IMDB-like information from Gracenote (the people who tell your PC what song is on the CD track you are playing). Soon they will be adding an iPhone app called movieIQ sync that will let you get the movieIQ information on your phone. Great for Sony discs, but what about all the rest? Repeat: You don't get mass audiences on niche platforms!
• Many media companies have iPhone apps that tie to their specific TV programs, DVDs, or games. Repeat: You don't get mass audiences on niche platforms!
• Miso is an app that lets you "check in" to any TV show or movie and send it to Twitter, Facebook, or foursquare. You have to manually enter or find the show (unlike Spot411), but it is an interesting start.
• MTV is one of the first of what may be a wave of companies building similar apps for the iPad, which they suggest "could be the appendage that makes interactive TV a reality." A nice start but...One more time: You don't get mass audiences on niche platforms!

Right now it is still a zero billion dollar industry, but we have come a long way from the days when people asked why anyone would want to use the Internet while watching TV. I have been seeing movement in the right direction for a long time, but it seems things are heating up rapidly all around this space, and flashover may not be far off. iPad may be a very nice base for some of this, but there are many ways to skin this cat. ...What is the missing link? Hmmm...

Sent BMW into the shop -- but it was a server problem

Thinking about The Internet of Things, as IBM is promoting it, it struck me that my recent automotive service experience was a telling landmark in the coming of the new order.

My new 3-series has a BMW Assist feature with its navigation system that lets you find a destination on Google Maps in your home or office, and then send it to the car, so the guidance system can take you there.

I tried it several times, but could find no messages in the car from Google Maps (which said they were successfully sent to my car). BMW Customer Service remotely fixed some errors they had in my account email address, but it still did not work days later, so they said I had to take it to the shop. Seemed like a server-side problem to me, but that is what they wanted...

After a couple phone calls while working on my car (over the course of 3 days), the dealer service rep finally called to say the messages were there, but that it was hard to find them (he had never worked with the feature before). We assumed I must have been looking in the wrong place. He suggested I come in for instructions, but I suggested I call from the car when I could. BMW needs to hire some people from Apple to work on UI, but wait, there is more..

After getting the car back and sending it a new destination to look for, I got in and looked around, starting with the same menu selection I had looked into before ("BMW Assist/Messages"). Lo and behold: there were my previous message, a couple dealer test messages (opened), and my new message (unopened) -- right where it kept saying "No messages" before.

I can only conclude that the car had been fine, I had been using it properly, and something changed on BMW's end (either in some server, or in the setup entered into some server by BMW Assist staff.

Imagine the cost of sending thousands (eventually millions) of cars into the shop for problems that could be diagnosed and fixed remotely! BMW does not yet realize they are in the network services business (and selling network node devices). I hope they realize it soon.

Internet of things, Internet of computers, Internet of people. ...Convergence every which way ...I can't wait for the next release.

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Debunking the 'Patent Troll' Myth

The bad rap on so-called "patent trolls" is nicely countered in this 2/1/10 Business Week article by Ron Epstein.

My exerience in this area supports Ron's arguments, as was summarized in my 2008 post "'The Six Phases of a Technology Flop' ...Patents, and Plan B".

Bringing advertising back to the future

There is a growing sense that advertising will soon be dead as a major way to fund news and many other content services. I suggest that reflects not the true direction of media technology, but just a temporary gap in such technology.

Today's conference on "Creating a New Model for News and Information" had a very interesting discussion by luminaries in the news business addressing the apparent reality that advertising could no longer support their media, and how new models are needed.

That is a major issue in the short term, but advertising will be reborn as a key source of funding as technology improves.

The problem is that current "new" media do not present ads in a way that effectively serves the reader. Screen real estate is limited, and there is no place to include ads that are rich and informative without seriously detracting from the content. But what is forgotten is that that will change, as technology improves.

Unlike Web pages, newspapers and magazines were able to present very compelling ads adjacent to content, without detracting from the content.

• Their weakness (as Wanamaker is famed to have noted) is lack of targeting. Targeting is still reasonably good in special interest sections and trade magazines, but such special interest content has heavily migrated to the Web.
• I have always been struck by how in trade magazines and special interest magazines, the ads can often be as valuable as the content. Even on TV, ads can be better than the content. In visual media, advertising is not necessarily a negative -- it can be a positive to the viewer.
• Internet media have greatly improved targeting (look at Google), but have lost richness, at least on the surface (look at Google). They match (and even add) richness only when you bother to drill deeper by clicking a link (or doing a mouse-over).

How will technology change that?

• Think back to newspapers and magazines: They have enough real estate to let content and rich ads have effective adjacency, while still conveying a substantial message.
• Think about emerging screen technologies: ever larger screens, ever lighter and more flexible -- literally more flexible, as OLEDs enable large screens that fold up -- that will mimic newspapers and magazines within a few years.
• (My suggestions for "Coactive TV" also provide expanded real estate in the form of a second screen that can be coordinated to show ads related to the first screen.)

Once we have such screens, we can revive rich ads, plus add a new layer of personalized targeting that print media never had. When that happens, ads can be immediate, relevant, interesting, and informative -- more than ever. We will have targeting, immediate surface richness, and hyperlinked depth. With that, ad-funded distribution will again be a powerful engine for revenue -- and a desirable experience for users.

Of course the media need to survive in the short term with less (or no) advertising, but don't be blindsided when ads are reborn!

Tags: Media New Media Web/Tech Internet Media Technology Journalism

Full Frontal Reality: how to combat the growing lunatic fringe

There is a growing problem of polarization of the public into lunatic fringe groups that are losing touch with reality. This is fueled by new forms of media, and I suggest a need for media to enable a new kind of direct frontal attack on this problem.

Today's conference on "Creating a New Model for News and Information" had a very interesting discussion by luminaries in the news business that touched on the problems of the Internet and "The Daily Me" in which people increasingly filter their news sources to support their viewpoints. This is a technology-enhanced form of "confirmation bias."

Perhaps this can be countered using the same technology to find ways to create, direct, and select materials coming from contrary viewpoints that are tailored to directly counter such bias in constructive ways.

The angle here is that confirmation bias is very easy and comforting, but reality usually offers more survival value.

• Systems that can find complementary information and demonstrate that it offers survival value could be very influential, at least to the subset of holders of extreme views that have not totally severed contact with reality.
• The idea is to encourage them to reality-test -- to seek serendipitous exposure to balanced and well-reasoned antidotes to the biased material they usually see, and to demonstrate the practical value of more balanced viewpoints.

One thing this needs is content creators willing to speak to the heretics, and not just preach to the choir, or even to the middle. Extremists on both sides of any issue generally seek to reinforce their base and to convert wavering middle of the roaders to the extreme. An underexploited counter strategy is to speak directly to those who are moving toward the extreme, but not fully committed to an extreme mind-set, to demonstrate in a non-threatening or off-putting way that reality is not so extreme (or so black and white). This method is underused because it lacks a way to reach the audience that needs to see it.

So the other thing needed is a smarter delivery service, a new media filtering tool that specifically aids in bringing such materials to those who need to hear them.

• Filters that give you food for thought, in a way that is constructive, interesting, and not threatening
• Services that demonstrate the folly of extreme views

With such tools, when you personalize your "Daily Me" to know what you want, it will also give you some of what you need, stuff you don't know you want. Some people will have no interest in that, but some will find it valuable and stimulating to get a breath of fresh air that does not reek of the biases of the opposite side.

...If there are already delivery services developing with this aim, I would be very interested to hear about them.

Tags: Media New Media Web/Tech Internet Media Technology Journalism

User-centered to the limit

While arguably off the topic of user-centered media, I had to publish this incident observed by a friend:

In the early 1970's when the Jaguar XK-E was still in production (the quintessentially sexy sports car that Enzo Ferrari called "the most beautiful car ever made"), my friend told me of the time he passed one parked on the street as two small boys marvelled at it.

He overheard one say, "Boy, wouldn't you love to have a car like that?"

To which the other replied. "Have a car like that? I'd like to be a car like that!"

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I offer this as too classic to remain unpublished. The incident was reported by my late friend Walter Ensdorf, who was always a very keen observer of the world.

The Smart Money of Crowds, April 7, 2009, NYC, MIT Enterprise Forum Symposium

Collaborative Investing Startups

Can we exploit the Wisdom of Crowds on Wall Street? -- especially now that the "smart money" no longer looks very smart?

Historically individual investors have been a good indicator for what not to do -- Can the Social Web make them smarter?

I am assisting David Teten organize this event, and we have a very interesting panel. Come on April 7 to learn from a group of innovative startups that are leveraging the Wisdom of Crowds to provide investment counsel you can believe in - or so they claim.

Register at http://www.mitef-nyc.org/mc/community/eventdetails.do?eventId=211129&orgId=mefny