現象觀測站

你是低頭族、拇指族嗎？不管你是哪一種，我們全都活在 S 時代。
當世界進入 S 世代時，接收聲光視訊對人的影響及傳播，將主導未來人與人、資訊與資訊間的流動。
某日午餐時在一家日式餐廳聽到幾位女性上班族的對話…。
「這個是什麼？」
「我最近裝的軟體啊！這個很棒耶，可以連拍五張…你知道小孩子都會動人動去，這個最好用了」
「你好厲害，連軟體都會自己裝」（其他人語帶欽佩貌）
「就是到那裡頭選類別嘛，然後就下載，它就自動安裝進來了」OL說著說著，很得意地解釋著。
「這軟體叫什麼名字？」
「相機360」
（以下略）

當人們在稱頌 Steve Jobs 時，他覺得自己也幹過很多蠢事，並不如這些被傳訟的故事的腳本上那般完美。當我們稱羨 Apple 市值如今已躍居全球科技業龍頭時^[1]，其實鮮少人知道在 iPod 問世之前，Apple 並不是一個廣為世人所知的品牌，與 Microsoft 間的主要競爭戰場，也僅止於美國。
前兩天，iTunes Store 在亞洲多個國家推出，很多人感到振奮 --- 不過，其實我們只是被傳統世界的版權思維跟遊戲規則抑制住了接觸音樂的一個管道。我相信所有音樂創作人都希望自己的音樂讓越多人聽到越好，然而，遊戲規則制訂後，似乎創作人、聽眾也跟隨著這個遊戲規則，音樂卻仍然被各種商業邏輯所包覆，我們不過是傳統版權世界圈養繞著籠子轉的動物而已。
我相信一定很少人留意到：Apple 在 2010 年 9 月推出的音樂社交網路服務 Ping，已經消失在 iTunes 了^[2]！也許是因為他不夠吸引人，也許是因為沒有本地音樂，所以我們很少去留意這個服務，不過，市場的反應，證明了這個服務的失敗。

很多人相信 "Content is King"（內容為王）是 Amazon 的 CEO Jeff Bezos 所提出的，而且 Amazon 很早就在網路上銷售書籍跟音樂，聽起來極其合理。不過，這句話其實是 Bill Gates 所創造的 --- 這是他在 1996 年 1 月 3 日寫的一篇文章裡，在哪裡發表的已不可考，不過，他開宗明義這麼講：
Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet, just as it was in broadcasting.

Content Is King
Bill Gates (1/3/1996)
Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet, just as it was in broadcasting.
The television revolution that began half a century ago spawned a number of industries, including the manufacturing of TV sets, but the long-term winners were those who used the medium to deliver information and entertainment.
When it comes to an interactive network such as the Internet, the definition of "content" becomes very wide. For example, computer software is a form of content-an extremely important one, and the one that for Microsoft will remain by far the most important.
But the broad opportunities for most companies involve supplying information or entertainment. No company is too small to participate.
One of the exciting things about the Internet is that anyone with a PC and a modem can publish whatever content they can create. In a sense, the Internet is the multimedia equivalent of the photocopier. It allows material to be duplicated at low cost, no matter the size of the audience.
The Internet also allows information to be distributed worldwide at basically zero marginal cost to the publisher. Opportunities are remarkable, and many companies are laying plans to create content for the Internet.
For example, the television network NBC and Microsoft recently agreed to enter the interactive news business together. Our companies will jointly own a cable news network, MSNBC, and an interactive news service on the Internet. NBC will maintain editorial control over the joint venture.
I expect societies will see intense competition-and ample failure as well as success-in all categories of popular content-not just software and news, but also games, entertainment, sports programming, directories, classified advertising, and on-line communities devoted to major interests.
Printed magazines have readerships that share common interests. It’s easy to imagine these communities being served by electronic online editions.
But to be successful online, a magazine can’t just take what it has in print and move it to the electronic realm. There isn’t enough depth or interactivity in print content to overcome the drawbacks of the online medium.
If people are to be expected to put up with turning on a computer to read a screen, they must be rewarded with deep and extremely up-to-date information that they can explore at will. They need to have audio, and possibly video. They need an opportunity for personal involvement that goes far beyond that offered through the letters-to-the-editor pages of print magazines.
A question on many minds is how often the same company that serves an interest group in print will succeed in serving it online. Even the very future of certain printed magazines is called into question by the Internet.
For example, the Internet is already revolutionizing the exchange of specialized scientific information. Printed scientific journals tend to have small circulations, making them high-priced. University libraries are a big part of the market. It’s been an awkward, slow, expensive way to distribute information to a specialized audience, but there hasn’t been an alternative.
Now some researchers are beginning to use the Internet to publish scientific findings. The practice challenges the future of some venerable printed journals.
Over time, the breadth of information on the Internet will be enormous, which will make it compelling. Although the gold rush atmosphere today is primarily confined to the United States, I expect it to sweep the world as communications costs come down and a critical mass of localized content becomes available in different countries.
For the Internet to thrive, content providers must be paid for their work. The long-term prospects are good, but I expect a lot of disappointment in the short-term as content companies struggle to make money through advertising or subscriptions. It isn’t working yet, and it may not for some time.
So far, at least, most of the money and effort put into interactive publishing is little more than a labor of love, or an effort to help promote products sold in the non-electronic world. Often these efforts are based on the belief that over time someone will figure out how to get revenue.
In the long run, advertising is promising. An advantage of interactive advertising is that an initial message needs only to attract attention rather than convey much information. A user can click on the ad to get additional information-and an advertiser can measure whether people are doing so.
But today the amount of subscription revenue or advertising revenue realized on the Internet is near zero-maybe $20 million or $30 million in total. Advertisers are always a little reluctant about a new medium, and the Internet is certainly new and different.
Some reluctance on the part of advertisers may be justified, because many Internet users are less-than-thrilled about seeing advertising. One reason is that many advertisers use big images that take a long time to download across a telephone dial-up connection. A magazine ad takes up space too, but a reader can flip a printed page rapidly.
As connections to the Internet get faster, the annoyance of waiting for an advertisement to load will diminish and then disappear. But that’s a few years off.
Some content companies are experimenting with subscriptions, often with the lure of some free content. It’s tricky, though, because as soon as an electronic community charges a subscription, the number of people who visit the site drops dramatically, reducing the value proposition to advertisers.
A major reason paying for content doesn’t work very well yet is that it’s not practical to charge small amounts. The cost and hassle of electronic transactions makes it impractical to charge less than a fairly high subscription rate.
But within a year the mechanisms will be in place that allow content providers to charge just a cent or a few cents for information. If you decide to visit a page that costs a nickel, you won’t be writing a check or getting a bill in the mail for a nickel. You’ll just click on what you want, knowing you’ll be charged a nickel on an aggregated basis.
This technology will liberate publishers to charge small amounts of money, in the hope of attracting wide audiences.
Those who succeed will propel the Internet forward as a marketplace of ideas, experiences, and products-a marketplace of content.

這篇應該可以算是我原本構思想寫的「我在 Yahoo 與 Google 學到的十堂課」之一。
Snippet 其實原本是一個程式設計的名詞，它的原意就是「小碎片」、「小片段」。工程師常喜歡把自己看到、寫過的一小段程式、方法，或是一個子單元保留起來，以後可以在其他程式裡頭重複使用。這套方法被套用在 Google 內部的工作流程裡，原本只是方便組織運作，不致於浪費太多時間在開會^[1]，不過並沒有什麼特別漂亮的軟體或系統，只是單純利用最簡單的 Email 來進行。
這樣的好處是：隨時隨地都可以回報。不管你是透過 Blackberry、筆記型電腦，或是在家、在旅行，只要想到都可以記錄下來，snippet 的形式非常簡單，只是跟原本工程師習慣記錄 code 的方式很像：很簡短、扼要。這樣的好處是避免過於冗長，每次都得要花上很多時間來「解讀」，如此一來就失去了 snippet 的意義了。

我是 iPhone 使用者，也有一台 Macbook Air，我不崇拜 Steve Jobs，但是對於 Apple 這家公司的市場與產品策略一直都非常感興趣。iPhone 5 幾個月後將問世，有關其螢幕及外觀的猜測，隨著產品推出的日子逼近，也逐漸明朗化。
日前，以報導有關 Apple 公司產品 Jailbreak（越獄）為主的 cydiablog 在部落格上揭露一張疑似 iPhone 5 的設計藍圖^[1]，引起了很多人對於幾個月後將推出的下一代 iPhone 的外觀的猜測。三天後，cydiablog 在部落格上^[2]試著用號稱疑似的設計藍圖，用實際的 iPhone 4S 手機進行對比，猜測未來新一代的 iPhone 的螢幕將可能會拉長為 1136 x 640。

很難得 Kevin Kelly 來台灣，網路上已經有人整理 Kevin Kelly 的演講內容^[1] [2]，我就不重複貼了。

幾個月前，我曾經在 Facebook 上寫著：
創辦人 = 讓員工（夥伴）高興
執行長 = 讓公司（董事會）高興

這是早在一月份就盛傳的一個舉動，看起來與上個月 Facebook 提交上市的計劃書^[1]當然有很大的關係。不過 Yahoo 卻在最近大動作提出了專利侵權訴訟，指控 Facebook 侵犯其早年申請的多項專利。
兩家公司所擁有的專利數，差距極大 --- Yahoo 擁有超過 1,000 種以上的各項專利（其中有不少是透過併購取得），Facebook 卻只有 21 種。

台灣的網路界很久沒有波瀾了，三月初卻發生了Now.in被控犯著作權，遭檢調搜索的事情，一直想對這個事件發表一些看法，各方見解眾多，Mr. Friday 剛好發表了一篇「我看 Now.in 爭議」，誘引我把自己思考的一些觀點彙整後跟大家分享。
首先，同意 Mr. Friday 文中大部分觀點，但拿美牛跟民粹相比喻不太恰當^[1]。