12 Jesse Vincent -- igbos m_

Slide 1: Web 2.0 is Sharecropping Jesse Vincent jesse@fsck.com

Slide 2: (That’s bad)

Slide 3: This is a rant.

Slide 4: The bad old days:

Slide 5: Pic of sharecroppers

Slide 6: You farmed land you didn’t own...

Slide 7: ...with tools you couldn’t really afford.

Slide 8: You paid for it with part of your harvest...

Slide 9: A pretty sweet deal...

Slide 10: ...until things got bad.

Slide 11: (Things always got bad.)

Slide 12: In a bad year, you got further in debt to the land owner.

Slide 14: The (more recent) bad old days:

Slide 15: pic of mainframes

Slide 16: Things got a little better:

Slide 17: Pic of PCs

Slide 18: Things weren’t all rosy:

Slide 19: Pic of BSOD

Slide 20: Sometimes new versions of software killed features...

Slide 21: ...so you were locked in to old versions.

Slide 22: pic of win 31?

Slide 23: Things got ‘better’:

Slide 24: rms che

Slide 25: Now, things are getting worse again...

Slide 27: What happens when your favorite service goes down?

Slide 28: pic of twitter being down

Slide 29: ...or stops accepting new signups?

Slide 31: ...or gives all your data to the secret police?

Slide 32: Pic of yahoo.cn

Slide 33: You don’t own the services you use.

Slide 34: When the service provider cuts you off, that’s it. No recourse.

Slide 35: Not so secret shame: I’m a really bad zealot.

Slide 36: My calendar lives at google.com.

Slide 37: I make a web 2.0 tasklist service called Hiveminder.com

Slide 38: pic of hiveminder

Slide 39: Using hosted apps is going to hurt you.

Slide 40: Data access is important.

Slide 41: APIs are great.

Slide 42: ...but easy access to a service just makes it easier to get locked in.

Slide 43: What about Google Gears, Adobe Air, etc?

Slide 44: Great. now you can use your word processer while you’re offline!

Slide 45: Pic of wordperfect

Slide 46: Real offline apps shouldn’t need servers.

Slide 47: Real offline apps should sync like you do.

Slide 48: I’ve been hacking on an open source database called “Prophet”.

Slide 49: It has an API like Amazon SimpleDB or Google App Engine’s...

Slide 50: It’s designed for “team-scale” apps.

Slide 51: It’s built for P2P replication and disconnected use.

Slide 52: App #1 is the canonical “offline bug tracker”.

Slide 53: App #2 will probably be a BBS you can sync over sneakernet.

Slide 54: bestpractical.com/prophet

Slide 55: Make sure nobody can take away your right to use your software. Thanks!