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Category: value

The Doc Is In: Health Vault

Published October 10, 2007 by cgerrish

Doc Searl’s weighs in on Microsoft’s HealthVault. The same issues come up over and over again. Big companies like to build systems that lock you in. They call it stickiness (In the manner of a fly trap). The questions are obvious at this point— can I take my data and leave? Can I run my data through a value-add analytic provided by another provider? If I can’t move it, in what sense is it really mine? Searls calls health info the holy grail of vendor relationship management. I call it the official definition of Web 4.0.

Jon Udell answers some of Doc’s questions. Leave it to Jon actually read the fine print. But when it comes to stuff like this, we all need to remember what Tom Waits said: “What the big print giveth, the small print taketh away.”

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Inconvenience Doesn’t Scale

Published October 10, 2007 by cgerrish

Ian Roger’s of Yahoo is mad as hell and he’s not going to take it any more. He’s not going to spend any more of Yahoo’s money on Music Industry control of the user’s experience of digitial music. Roger’s piece was well timed, first Prince, Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails, then Oasis and Jamiroquai. The RIAA has won a lawsuit, but they’ve lost the war. This is a general truth of interaction design: inconvenience doesn’t scale. Only a small percentage of users will tolerate a high level of inconvenience and friction. The music industry has never been creative, they’ve fed on the creativity of others. Because they can’t innovate, they call their lawyers.икони

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Music Unchained

Published October 9, 2007 by cgerrish

Prince gives away thousands of free CDs to support his tour. RadioHead decides that fans should pay whatever they want for their new CD. Nine Inch Nails starts selling directly from their website. There’s CD Baby, and even the Pod Safe Music Network. Something is happening, and you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?

With very few exceptions, musicians don’t make money by selling recorded music. Musicians make money by playing live shows. Records are promotional items. Don’t buy advertising, give records away. Music isn’t a recording, music is live. It’s different every time.

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Reading Paintings

Published October 8, 2007 by cgerrish

Field Study

I have a vested interest in introducing people to the idea of owning art. I like articles like this one on Reading Paintings. It brings art within reach. But I’d like an extension of the concept to art that you can buy and live with. It’s one thing to read a painting in a museum, it’s another to live with art and read it deeply over time.

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