The move has been made. I am on a new blogging platform, which does not mean that I will return to blogging some more though ;) It’s just that I wanted to get away from Squarespace and be back in full control of my site. Then I heard about Octopress and always wanted to try out Heroku and then had an excuse to look at Ruby … all in all, no downside :)

So welcome to the new site, back in my control. And yes, thylmann.net is still very bare bones. That is coming next.

Bitcoin is on an upswing, both in terms of valuation as well as volume (see Bitcoin Report or Bitcoin Charts). But what are Bitcoins?

I first read about them from the Launch Newsletter L019: Bitcoin the P2P Currency. Most importantly the article said:

Bitcoin is a P2P currency that could topple governments, destabilize economies and create uncontrollable global bazaars for contraband.

The article provides a great overview and yes this system is really interesting. Another good one is in german from Der Spiegel.

There are a few problems though. Because bitcoins are theoretically anonymous (they can likely be tracked with some work), there is now a site where you can buy drugs, called Silk Road, run on TOR. Great writeup right here.

Now comes the bad side. Adam Cohen thinks it is a scam. He talks about a deflationary spiral, on which Bitcoin actually has a counter argument. The argument is also countered in the MIT Technology Review article titled: What Bitcoin is, And Why it Matters. Still Adam Cohen raises some very valid points in his Quora post.

For me it is still largely unclear of where this is going, but it surely is something to follow.

Boy oh boy has it been a long time since I have last blogged here. And you know what? The only reason I am writing again is the new Squarespace iPad app :)The second part is that a lot of people have put out resolutions that they will start blogging again in 2011 and hell, I might just try to do that too. You can of course follow me on Twitter and all links I tweet or share elsewhere end up in my pinboard account. What I might try to do is go back to a bit deeper analysis. I see this not working already but with this nice of an app ;)Looking forward to reviving this blog :)

After an email to Robert Scoble, Mark Zuckerberg has written an oped for the Washington Post. He is going into detail about what they have learned and what they will change in te coming days/weeks.

Sadly he is missing out the biggest problem the diggerati who have left, e.g. Leo Laporte or Jason Calacanis (ok ok, also done for marketing purposes, but that’s just Jason ;)) or Ryan Block, have. The problem is the steady and slow erosion of privacy.

What once was, no longer is just for friends. Just take a look at this fun post showing how the defaults have changed. And that is the true problem. The defaults are changing. Actually they are not changing so much in Germany where all the recent changes were all opt-in, but that is more in relation to the flack Facebook got in recent weeks here.

All I really want is to share stuff with family and friends and keep everyone else out. Sure people can find me via my name or email, but that does not mean it needs to be shared, just to be found when searched for. But why is my friendslist public or my likes? I don’t understand. Just check out FB Privacy Checker. It will ask you to log in, but more or less to just know who you are on Facebook, getting your user id. They just want access to your public information.

So now check what the Privacy Checker shows me.

Scary isn’t it? I’d love for somebody to prove me wrong and show me the privacy settings to change that. I actually don’t even want to show up on somebody else’s friends list. If I ever plan to share my friends list with the public it will be with people who also do that and on my own site based on open standards.

Hence my privacy settings are easy. Everything friends only please. Give me a like button on a website but it should only tell my friends I liked something and not the website or some public.

These thoughts and more actually resulted in an interesting conversation I had with @taospace about why we have the problems we do with facebook and not with google. I still suggest you read Jeff Jarvis’ post on defining "a public" as people use in facebook.

Here is that conversation:

• othylmann: I sadly doubt facebook can do the right thing as long as their business is advertising and our data is perceived as valuable for that.
• taospace: Yes. Now substitute Google for Facebook and it’s even more scary.
• othylmann: the difference is that google needs to get content online and this means working with us all. More content = more ads = more money
• othylmann: for facebook the don’t have this logical chain. More users just means more costs. Unless they can use their information.
• taospace: Very good point. Still people are trusting Google to handle their content (mail, docs) for free as well so there is some of that.
• othylmann: yes and no. They do not have to break our trust to make money. Facebook currently has to because they need to use the data for ads
• taospace: Google infers Facebook-style info too. No need for permission that way. Why wouldn’t they use it for growing revenue?
• othylmann: my social contract with google is different and they need my content and behaviour more than my private data.
• taospace: But doesn’t that just mean Google is smarter about doing the same thing but ends up in the same place all the same?
• taospace: Agree that FB has no choice. I think Google will end up there as well, purely through market forces.
• othylmann: google is organizing information. Facebook was mention to allow me to connect to friends and family. Adv. has no business there
• othylmann: google will try to make sure that whatever profile we gave with google is the information we are willing to share publically.
• taospace: True, but content+behaviour leads to mostly same data as FB’s. You+me see different social contract, but what about Joe Average?
• taospace: Adv. has no business in private data, agreed. Users perception of what is considered private is a problem though.
• othylmann: they see that even more. Ask your wife if she wants goog profile, whether she believes all her likes and friends in fb are public
• othylmann: and that’s the thing. In fb you believe stuff is private and not shared with advertisers. But yes there is a lot of learning to do
• taospace: If she is told what info is public she’ll of course be upset. If she was told what info is inferred she’d be just as upset.
• othylmann: possibly but I am not sure. But yes, that will still lead to problem for google eventually. But it’s in their interest to be nice

This also lead to a side conversation on launching a new social network and whether people would be paying to keep their data private and not having you rely on advertising. This again turned into a bit of a discussion of how much people value their privacy, but that again is another post.

All in all, it should be clear that I have been thinking about this and am very much with Jeff Jarvis on some points and with Thijs obviously with whom I had many great conversations about these fun subjects. This is tricky but Facebook needs to open up to monetize (or so they believe) and this goes against what they want out to do.

Of course as Mark points out in his WaPo piece: * If people share more, the world will become more open and connected.*

So we really shouldn’t be suprised if stuff on facebook is suddenly public. Take a look at Evil which samples public cell phone numbers from facebook, something the users surely didn’t intend to do. Maybe I should really delete my Facebook account afterall. Not to protect myself but to protect those of my friends that are less tech savvy. The problem is that at least for friends I would need an alternative. Currently none exists that is truly closed and private short of installing my own Noserub instanz.

Oh, and while we are at it, what about this? Removing stuff from Facebook that says how to delete an account? Read the comments people.

Never mind. This is complicated. I am really looking forward to what Facebook suggests the solution is. I want stuff closed damn it. That is what Facebook was about. Public stuff goes on Twitter, Public Profile on my Homepage.

It is starting to get annoying. Both Google and Apple are just too good at influencing people’s thinking that I needed to post a few more than 140 characters.

Google just started to push the newest release of Android, 2.2 or Froyo for Frozen Yogurt, to owners of the Nexus One. Sadly @teemow is currently on holiday so I cannot take a closer look at it in the office, but it is surely nice.

To start off here are the two amazing posts I have read on Android 2.2, Google I/O and the iPhone/Apple:

• Sayonara, iPhone: Why I’m Switching to Android
• Post I/O Thoughts by Gruber

I am trying to start of by commenting on a few of the points from these posts.

Let’s start with Flash. As I already sent on Twitter, Google is a quasi Adnetwork. Their business is in pleasuring agencies and advertisers in general. Pleasuring consumers is just something they have learnt is the best way to get to the more important point. Agencies are using Flash for ages. They have the right people internally. Those are Flash Designers/Flash Developers and they do not know HTML5 and actually have the wrong skill set in many cases to learn HTML5 efficiently. Google NEEDS flash to work on Android and they couldn’t care less about draining battery there. If they go to an agency and say: "Let’s do a million dollar deal for some campaigns via Admob.", the client answers: "But I really like the idea of iAd.", they now say: "Sure, you can do that, needs a bit of training, might be interesting, but while you do that, just use us because you can just use your Flash Developers because we know Flash." Easy sell. Done.

Power drain can be dealt with over time. Actually it just a temporary problem and Google is doing that for the long run.

Tethering is supported by the iPhone too but the network does not want it. Did you ever tether your laptop to your iphone and look at the bandwidth usage? Just Dropbox starting a sync will pull down megabytes that are not happening on the phone. It is absolutely clear that networks do not want Tethering enabled by default. And everybody that complains about AT&T network problems should shut up about Tethering very quickly because it would surely not improve the situation! I would be surprised if the Mifi functionality would arrive anywhere outside of the Nexus One, meaning on the network specific phones.

Still, the Mifi bit is wonderful and Apple should do that. Especially with the iPad they should. I do believe that they don’t to keep good relations to networks. This is actually also the problem with OTA iTunes, meaning streaming your library. This puts strains on the network. I actually do believe that while it is super geeky and fun, it is three years away to being really usable. For now the priority (if you do not need the press buzz) should be low. Especially if DLNA is continuing its growth, you will have DLNA Harddisks at Home and just need to open up your DLNA device to the outside and you can stream from your home.

But .. Apple is chasing Google. At the same time, Apple and Google are chasing Nokia in many things! There is one and only one reason why Android sells so well. It is the best touch screen open source thing that can be licensed free by the carriers who can then adopt it to their liking. That’s why the Nexus One didn’t sell. Carriers sell phones. Not manufacturers. Carriers/Networks will push them through all the channels they control and make it sell no matter what is on there. Google has noticed that and changed how they sell their phones.

As for the advertising platform. Come on people. Steve Jobs is just protecting his own market because you know what, GOOGLE IS TAKING OVER THE ADVERTISING WORLD AND CANNOT BE STOPPED! At least hardly by one player alone, which is why we are using a more distributed model at Adcloud. It’s just economies of scale. But that’s another post. I do believe Apple is delusional though in how they approach it. But let’s see how it goes. I applaud them for doing it themselves and not caving in to Google.

On the other side, of course Apple is doing stuff for their own good. That’s the point in being a business. You can just hope that you can align your own good with that of your other stakeholders. For Google that seems to be working. For Apple it works in the sense that people want great stuff that works without a flaw.

While Google’s Cloud-to-Device system is nice, I do see security experts drooling about getting fun stuff into Android and taking it over. But still, the entire cloud thing needs to be dealt with by Apple. I presume they will, but not sure how, especially keeping it easy.

But there is one positive note to leave at the end. There are two companies at the moment that are almost printing money that are in the phone space: Google and Apple. As Gruber said Microsoft seems to be left in the dust but would have the money. Back to the two big ones. Google bleeds cash via it’s advertising systems and with Admob it quasi owns the Display (Doubleclick), Text (Adsense) and Mobile (Admob) Market. They just need to make sure that everything is connected to the internet to make more money. As we love stuff on the internet, this is good and good for the mobile ecosystem. Apple on the other side gives us amazing products that just work, asking for a premium for them. See something? Nobody is killing anyone here? Google needs size. They actually need the more normal people rather than the geeks that are raving now. Geeks don’t click on Ads. But it’s the first step. Apple needs to remain focussed on their closed system that works.

As the first article said, Jobs is becoming a bit draconian but I do believe that is what is needed for the iPhone. As much as a love the Android as a Geek, I do know the new iPhone will work and work really well.

On top of that, both Google and Apple have the money to really innovate, to just hire people because they might end up doing interesting stuff. They need to and that is good. I thank Google for putting pressure on Apple and Carriers (Mifi stuff) but really hope that Apple will not cave and do the same thing they did last time: license the OS, starting copying the Windows system for distribution, … . That can’t be it. I have almost only Macs in the office and that is because they just work. Support costs are simply lower. They might not have all the features of others but they just work. I want that in my phone even more so.

I have a further evolution of my Rememberall. It’s really staying mostly the same but I have added three things to further allow me to work efficiently.

You have to remember that I am a text nut. I like stuff in plain text files. I like writing down stuff quickly and knowing its there somewhere without worrying where.

So one of those apps I added, via MacBreak Weekly or TWiT I think, is Notational Velocity. It’s a mouseless text entry system just made for quick text entry and retrieval. You have one search box, searching all your notes. Whenever you press enter a new note is created, when you press down you go into the list of notes. Simple as that. The fun extra thing is that you can tell Notational that it should store all texts in text files, which in my case get stored in a special directory that is synced to Dropbox. Oh the joy ;)

I have been working with notes like that for some time, but mostly in TextMate. The thing that is missing is easy access to the notes from the iPhone. Welcome Simplenote! It’s a website where you can write text files and see them and they have an iPhone app and an API. Hence, now my Notational Velocity Syncs with Simplenote on my iPhone, and thanks to the pro Account all text files are backuped and I got an email I can simply send stuff to and have it converted into a Simplenote. I can also get an RSS Feed from my Notes. Oh the joy! :)

So finally I have the solution I needed to have my written notes with me all the time.

The other one I just bought for the iPhone is Momento. It’s not perfect yet but it is going in the right directly. It is kind of a personal diary but the nice thing is that it can backup all your twitter items and flickr items and last.fm items. Now I am not using last.fm that much, but this really makes me wonder. I already suggested to the developer that they integrate more services and make me pay one by one. I would happily do that for Foursquare for example to add location to the diary. It might also solve my full backup bit.

Oh the joy! ;)

But I am repeating myself.

It was nagging me for some time and now I found back the pages about the wonderful BeIA. Remember the time Apple bought Next? The other company that was in the pitch was Be, Inc. At the time Be, Inc. had BeOS as a Desktop operating system and was getting ready to release the first versions of BeIA, a tablet OS.

<img src="/storage/post-images/beia_webpad.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1265834176909" alt=""/>Source: Be to be on Web Tablets

Just check out this little bit from the BeIA FAQ:

Why won’t everyone just use a computer to log on to the Internet?

The PC, although it is a wonderfully expandable and open device, has several drawbacks as a dedicated Internet device. First, it takes an inordinate amount of time to get on line. It requires a large amount of knowledge to use it. It is not responsive and stable like a consumer electronic device. The PC forces people to work in ways that may not be right for the task at hand. For instance, you do not have to "boot" your television or "shut down" your CD player. PCs are often in the wrong part of the house to accomplish what you want to do. In order for the web to truly become ubiquitous, new classes of devices, with purpose-built user experiences, will be created. The PC is great for business style applications, but it isn’t the right tool for every use.

You can look at other parts of like the BeIA Datasheet and find more things. I could have pasted more things but I presume you can read it yourself.

It has already been said that Apple did not think about using the iPhone OS on the iPad otherwise they would not have named it iPhone OS. What Jobs might have thought is that Jean-Louis Gassee had a nice idea with BeIA but wanted to wait for a time when hardware is ripe to really allow for this kind of tablet to exist. Be was seriously too soon with it as the device itself would have been too clunky and ugly, but still. See the icons on the screen? The simplicity? Always on? No boot times?

Not bad for an idea of 2001 ey?

I am starting to wonder if people have no clue or if I am just clueless and I seriously do not want to believe that. The thing is that everybody is complaining that Apple’s iPad is not doing multitasking. Fine by me. Most things do not really need multitasking though and if the modal screens for push messages is improved you can stay online in your skype account or do other things. Sure it would be nice to be able to move a video to a small screen and continue browsing the web, but we will survive.

What drives me nuts though is people starting to speculate that Chrome OS will kill the iPad because it has multitasking or doesn’t have flash? What?

First the multitasking. Yes, Android does multitasking, but Chrome OS is a browser and you can do multiple tabs, but that is not multitasking and something the iPad can do just fine. So this is really a non-point. Chrome OS is first still in development and second focussed on all being in a browser and hence not multitasking as such.

As for flash, yes some sites will not run but Youtube is already working as they are making special iPhone versions of videos and many others will try to incorporate HTML5. Just check out the SublimeVideo Player to see what is possible. Amazing stuff.

Oh and one thing for everyone: Not everyone has to or will buy an iPad and it is not the end-all device and not built as such. I actually chose a Mac because I wanted it to work after hacking around in servers and linux and windows boxes for ages. The iPad is just taking it one step further. Talk to people who have an iPhone. Most of them stopped hacking them because it is fine as it is or you move to e.g. Android. And Android is multitasking.

Boy do I love Blippy! Seldom has there been a service where I am so pissed that internationalization is hard. The thing is the only account I have that works with the service is my Amazon.com Kindle account. Even iTunes doesn’t work as it is the German one. If you are unfamiliar with Blippy read this intro on Techcrunch as well as the follow up where Blippy announces tracking $1 million in transactions only one day after opening their doors. People are already talking about Blippy being the next Twitter, which is really mostly to mean that the Twitter idea is starting to be so big that it can be split up into more tiny niches, with Blippy being one.Many people will wonder why Blippy is so good or why anyone would share all this information about themselves and I suggest, just read the stream by Leo Laporte or Matt Cutts or Jason Calacanis (who recently purchased a Canon 7d by the way) or Philip Kaplan one of the founders.For all their credit card stuff they are using Yodlee as do most of the other things out there that interact with US bank accounts. Sadly I do not know of any such service in Germany at this time. Might be somebody that should do this but I am unsure about the German privacy laws. To finish it off here is a video interview with Pud (Philip Kaplan). He also founded Fucked Company and Adbrite by the way. With Adbrite being so well copied all over Germany I see now reason why this will not happen soon here in Germany for Blippy, expect we don’t have Yodlee.Actually I hope somebody will start a Yodlee in Germany and give the account access to Blippy so we keep it integrated!Update: and just now they twittered about international support for iTunes. Germany was missing but added minutes after me telling them. Congratulations! So blippy went international in 2009! cool :)

All focus is currently on Google Chrome OS and what it will mean for our beloved NetBooks. I somehow have the feeling people are not thinking far enough because our geeky NetBooks are totally irrelevant.

Google does stuff with very much focus, a lot more focus than often is visible on first sight. You can actually always think back to a) making all content available and b) more people online means more ads to display.

And there are a lot of different implementations of Google Chrome OS that will further those goals. First of all you can obviously tell people to attach their digital cameras and pictures and videos are automatically uploaded to Youtube and Picasa, but that is the braindead move.

Remember that they are building very clear hardware specifications allowing them to say that the system is rock solid if the specs are used. The important part here is x86 or ARM and solid state drives. In summary, that means a good CPU that can also render diverse video streams in high quality as well as a totally silent drive that is cheap in small sizes and only holds the OS. The OS itself will be rock solid as there is really nothing much installed.

This as such is the perfect implementation for TVs! Just imagine having your TV and being able to turn on Chrome OS to read your mail, look at youtube, search the web, automatically upload your photos, and so on. That in a silent system that boots as quickly as your TV turns on, or almost. It doesn’t need to be running at all time then which saves energy and Google is suddenly in all living rooms. Hell the OS is free or even better than free with Google paying the TV company for ads served to the user. The TVs have network interfaces already anyway.

The other thing is that there are LARGE groups of people in developing countries that might not have the money for a full blown PC and Google could potentially make this thing very cheap and possibly even free together with a data provider. They would get millions of new users that are available to their advertisers that are probably really begging for more users to advertise to in these countries.

I am really looking forward to seeing where they are going with this. Because I will keep my Mac, no questions there, but in my TV … sure … in my car … of course. Imaging this being the one laptop per Child system. Things get interesting when thinking further than normal Netbooks.