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[FiRe] Conversation with Ray Ozzie, Chairman of Groove Networks
These are notes from the Future in Review conference. More here.
Update, Clarification: Ray Ozzie had a conversation on stage with the moderator Mark Anderson, not with me, and that's why the title of this entry was copied directly from the conference agenda. Sorry for the confusion. Unfortunately, I didn't have the chance to talk to Ray Ozzie personally.
When talking about the future of computing and communications, Ray Ozzie put up two interesting models, which users right now expect their computers to work across: First, a model of n devices to 1 person, which means that each person has multiple devices (home computer, work computer, PDA, mobile phone, fixed phone, laptop etc.) and expects all data, information, and configuration to work across all those computers. Second, there is what he called a kiosk model, i.e. 1 device to n person, which means that most people except to go up to any computer and use that very computer as their own. Think about travelling and such applications.
Thus, a new architectural model is needed to cope with the decentralized, n-to-n nature of collaboration ("rebuild the decentralized Internet one layer up").
He also mentioned that right now synchronization is a major challenge of course, but actually, synchronization should not even be visible to the user when those models of computing shall become reality. It's a cumbersome progress, but one that needs to be always-on, invisible and seamlessly working. -> My thoughts: Very obvious, but an important issue. It might explain the early success of Palm (which was very good at synchronization at that time). It might explain why smartphones have a future. And it is also an important issue regarding the usage of 3G and WiFi, when 3G will provide always-on, everywhere coverage for smartphones and laptops and cars and so forth, but most synchronization will probably happen in bursts when the respective device crosses a WiFi zone, because WiFi traffic is cheaper than 3G traffic. Yet another challenge for software players, but one that users will certainly demand.
Furthermore, when explaining Groove, he explained how they got about designing the product so that it would succeed. Right now, most people use eMail for collaboration. eMail just works, although it's a paradigm that should be replaced by a better one. Groove tries to take what works about email (decentralized n-to-n communication) and transfer it to XML communications.