Once the game is over, I rewind the tape or jump to the start of the TiVo / DVR and start fast forwarding at 16X to find the commercials. I watch each one and hope there is something truly funny. The Budweiser frogs were funning in the beginning … not so much any more. “Cat Herder” was a good one. Even Apple did a nice one 24 years ago.

I no longer have a TV so I had a moment of panic that this year, I’d miss out. Then I realized, my old habits were so 20th century. I’m sure, within about 15 minutes of air time, each commercial will find its way onto YouTube just like the frogs, the cats, and the apple !

5.”Anyone can participate in this debate.”

That quote is from David Bohrman of CNN, which tirelessly promoted the event. Truth is, not everyone can. There’s a rarely discussed digital divide in America. In Charleston, 40 to 45 percent of the population subscribes to a high-speed Internet service, about the same as the national average. In a state where half of the primary voters are black, a study released last month by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that broadband use among blacks, though rising, continues to lag behind whites and English-speaking Latinos. In many parts of the country, particularly rural areas and poor inner cities, access to high-speed Internet is not the norm. In fact, less than half a mile from the Citadel, the site of last week’s debate, sits the Cooper River Courts public housing project, where owning a computer and subscribing to the Internet are considered luxuries.

Source Jose Antonio Vargas  (vargasj@washpost.com) The Washington Post

This Serves as another example where we must be careful that we not take the Internet for granted. As soon as we make the Internet a prerequisite for participation in society, we create a class strata. It comes back to “those who have forgetting about those who have not.”

The idea is not new and I don’t take credit for it. One example to demonstrated the value was a simple “setup your home wireless security” video. It was not more than 3 minutes long. Another example was “building a Google Maps application”. Again, the instruction was under 10 minutes.

The idea never took off at my company. But, it does seem to have a live on the internet. LessonBites has come up with an interesting business model for the idea …

LessonBites provides a marketplace for instructors to sell their lessons using internet-based video. LessonBites provides lessons in bite sizes (like individual tracks of a CD) so you can learn what you want. The price of each video is 99 cents.

The product model is the same as “just in time education”. What is interesting is the business model. At 99c a lesson, the price might be right for personal training.

I’m not keen on their solution to piracy but I’m sure they felt they needed to do something.The quality of  some videos is not what I would expect and there appears to be some bandwidth issues. The value wil only come from volume of lessons.

Of course, YouTube and other sites may have made this business model moot. Of course, “content” is still the big issue. There is more “how to” videos for bad things then generally useful things <uh oh>. If you are looking for “how to” videos, here is a “top 10 list” of places to start.

The interfaces can take on any number of implementations. Lotus 123 supports macros. Photoshop supports plugins. Google Maps has its a JavaScript API. MySQL can be accessed using PHP interfaces. IBM Lotus Connections uses REST. Other products leverage RSS, Atom, and publish AJAX and REST mechanisms.

There are two types of interfaces - “service interfaces” and “user experience interfaces”. An example of what I mean by a service interface would be ‘creating a blog entry’. Another example would be ‘map a location’. An example of a user experience interface, as I define it, would be ’skinning WinAMP’. Another example would be ’a theme for WordPress’. Before we go on, I should admit that a WordPress theme can go well beyond just “look and feel” to include new functions. In this case it becomes a combination of both “user experience” and “service”.

Interfaces make the fundamental assumption …

You never know everything your customers want to do.

If you support the right interfaces, “not knowing” is “no problem”. More importantly, “not knowing” allows your customer to surprise you (in a good way). The trick is providing stable interfaces and listening to your users - they will tell you what interfaces to expose !

Dave Winer recently blogged about closed systems …

… these things point in one direction, esp Facebook. Closed systems are fine in the early stages of a new technology. They’re the training wheels for a new layer of users and uses. But, as we always see, the training wheels eventually come off, explosively, creating new systems … an explosive unbundling of the services that make up social networks. What was centralized in the form of Facebook, Linked-in, even YouTube, is going to blow up and reconstitute itself.

Source: It’s time to open up networking, again (Scripting News)

I’ve been on both sides of the “interface debate”. As a software developer, I struggled with creating “enough” interfaces to enable a wide variety of customer solutions while not making the interfaces overly confusing. As and end user, I used a number of interfaces.

When an interface impedes my ability to create a solution or takes more than a day to be productive, I throw it out and find something else. I have no tolerance for things that make me less productive rather than more. I think this is why there are more creative solutions being launched when the interfaces are exposed in scripting languages like PHP, JavaScript, and PERL and Internet interfaces like CGI, Web Services, REST, and AJAX. These methods are faster to adopt and require less “infrastructure” than the Java and C++ based solutions of the “heavy hitters”.

How many mashups would there be with Google Maps if you had to program in Java ? How many deployments of Wordpress would you find if it were written in C++ ? How about databases ? Would startups built on Oracle or IBM DB2 or MySQL ?

Price aside, easy deployment and interfaces weigh heavy on the choice.

In the “audition round” Paul Potts sheepishly walks on stage in a somewhat rumpled gray suit. When asked what he would do to demonstrate his talent, he said, “sing opera”. That left all three judges afraid. Needless, the anticipation of an “average Joe” wanting to sing opera had them preparing for something on the order of William Hung. The music started and Paul opened his mouth and everything stopped and listened. Before it even ended, the audience erupted.

To see and hear for yourself, click on the video above or check out this YouTube search.

What I was most impressed with was the audience, not just of blue hairs, but equally filled with teeners and twenty-something’s. They all exploded when they heard Paul sing. The shy mobile phone salesman had a dream and a voice and years of training. He now had his chance.

Paul wins some money, will get a recording contract and more important to Paul, he next performs for the Queen. Yes, Britain does have talent. And after seeing the audience, they have class too.

I see this announcement as yet another “community space” being gobbled up by big corporation. It follows on the heals of Google buying YouTube. When YouTube was small, companies like Viacom saw them as a nuisance. Once Google was the head office, Viacom sees it as a lawsuit opportunity.

Now Tabblo seems destined to be next. I am not anticipating some controversial lawsuit to pop up but I do anticipate Tabblo to become less about a community of artistic content creators and more of a “publishing” service - ala ShutterFly.