[I’m at the O’Reilly Emerging Tech Conf in San Diego for the next three days. Keynote MP3s here. Conference wiki. Digital Democracy MP3s.]

Tim O’Reilly, who is one of my heroes, is giving his welcoming keynote. He says the aim of O’Reilly is to change the world by letting the world know about what the techies are up to. But he does more. Communities just happen around Tim. Of course, they don’t “just happen” at all.

Tim’s going to talk about what’s on his radar.

When he asks who uses Linux, about 30% of the hands go up (surprisingly few!). 100% of hands go up when he asks who uses Google and Amazon. His point: Since Google and Amazon run on Linux, we’re all Linux users. “The Internet is the platform.”

Key principle: Harness the power of the user community. E.g., Amazon has “features” contributed by users (LinkMania) whereas Barnes & Noble doesn’t. MapQuest hasn’t achieved an Amazon-like dominance because it doesn’t have any social software aspects; eTech is running a collaborative mapping workshop. “How the real and the virtual interpenetrate will be huge!” [Cool. I just wrote an issue of Esther Dyson’s newsletter on exactly this point. I feel so validated!]

Tim’s hot on social software. He points to the Dean campaign but ppokes fun at Orkut where 50 people he don’t know are waiting to hear if Tim will be their friend.

He likes WordSpy as a “view of pop culture.” It lists the first use of new words. E.g., “blujejacking”: stealing someone’s BlueTooth connection.

iPod is on Tim’s radar because it pulls together so many trends. “Here’s an application that from the gitgo was conceived as a multi-device app.” Rich client front end on PCs, Rendezvous-enabled, big back end…(Rendezvous lets you llisten to music on the machine of anyone on your LAN.) But there’s no “architecture of participation” in iPod. And Apple distributes its features unevenly: Buddy lists are in iChat but not in iTunes.

Also on his radar:L Network-enabled market research. We can figure out what the servers are telling us: Microsoft NetScan, Technorati, Alexa. He’s found that Google AdWords are good predictors of book sales. He’s found, btw, that 23$ of OS books are about Mac, far larger than its market share. “Maybe this is the OS Enthusiasm Index.” [Or it’s the Novel OS Index or the OS Difficulty Index.]

Hacking is on Tim’s radar. E.g., FirstMile in Cambodia picks up email from offline villages. Tim’s seeing more hardware hacking. E.g., the Segway has been underhyped in some ways. “It brings computers into the real world.”

Software is becoming commoditized, he said, but the contributions of users and participants is not (Amazon vs. B&N). (I like time’s “architecture of participation” phrase. Someone send it to WordSpy!)

Categories: Uncategorized dw