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Twitter co-founder Evan Williams was on Charlie Rose last Friday. In the clip above, he predicts that Twitter will be something “that normal people do” within five years. He compares Twitter to the early days of blogging (another topic he knows something about, having been the founder of what became Blogger). When blogging started, most people didn’t get it and it seemed like a huge waste of time that only appealed to narcissists. Twitter gets a lot of the same criticisms, yet somehow more and more people find it a valuable mode of communication.

Hopefully, it won’t take five years for Twitter to seem normal.

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Okay, so Amazon's Kindle is cool and it's gaining in traction and people who have one buy a lot of books. 10% of Amazon's book sales are now on the Kindle. [For books where both versions are available].

But it could be so much better. Here are my newest riffs for Jeff and Co.:

1. Give publishers (throughout this post, when I say publishers, I also mean self-published authors) the ability to insert passalong credit with a book. So, if you buy a book, it might come with the right to forward it, for free, to two other people who also have Kindles. Three clicks and you just spread the book.

Let me log in with Facebook Connect and send certain books to all my friends who also have a Kindle.

Let me see the list of the fastest-spreading books. Or fastest spreading among my friends.

2. Give publishers the ability to send free samples of new books to people who have opted in. For example, I could have a master setting on my Kindle that said, "for any book I finish, give the publisher permission to send me up to six free samples." This creates a lever for successful authors and an asset for successful publishers. It lets them start publishing books for their readers instead of trying to find readers for their books.

What happens when Malcolm Gladwell sends a note to all his readers recommending a new book?

3. Anytime I send someone a book (see #1) or recommend a book, let me (with the other person's consent) see the comments they write in the margins of the book as they read it. Imagine being able to read a novel this way with your book group, or a sales manual with your department.

4. Create dynamic pricing. As a book gets more popular, allow the publisher to give a rebate to the first # of  readers... either all or part of a book. If I get good at reading hit books first, I'll end up paying close to nothing but be rewarded for my good taste and ability to sneeze ideas.

5. Let anyone become a publisher with just a few clicks.

6. Demolish the textbook market as soon as possible by publishing open source textbooks for free. It's only natural that profit-minded professors will work to replace this by using #5.

7. Give publishers the ability to insert quizzes or feedback. This creates a certification or continuing ed or textbook opportunity far bigger than a book can deliver.

8. Allow all-you-can-eat subscriptions if the author or publisher wants to provide it. Let me buy every book Seth has written, or all the business books I can handle, or "up to ten books a week." Remember, the marginal cost of a book is now the cost of the bandwidth to deliver it, so buffets make economic sense.

9. And my last one, which I think I mentioned earlier, but it's so good, I'll mention it again: ship the Kindle with $1000 worth of books on it. I'm willing to contribute a couple of titles, and my guess is that most authors would.

It's pretty simple: many book publishers look at this new medium and ask, "how can I use it to augment my current business model." I'd like Amazon to challenge that thinking and say to the world, "how can you use this platform to create a new business model?" Jeff had a very funny appearance on Jon Stewart (it's not easy being funny with a professional comedian) but it would have been easier to tell the story if the Kindle was about community and connection too.

Jonathan Jarvis a graduate student at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, presents his thesis work for the Media Design Program. A clever, funny, simple and beautiful motion piece about the ongoing Credit Crisis.

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I am wondering what a car would look like if it was designed by Steve Jobs!

Editor’s Note: There are not a lot of fans of the $20 billion bailout of the auto industry outside of Detroit. But if the government is going to get involved, Spark Capital’s Todd Dagres believes it should insist on new leadership.

In an open letter to President Barack Obama, Dagres argues that the car industry needs no less than a Steve Jobs to save it. In fact, he suggests that Jobs himself would be the best person to fill that role if his health allows him to do so. If not, there are other capable leaders in Silicon Valley that might bring much-needed change to the auto industry.

But a product=specific approach is worth considering, even one which results in American car companies no longer building any cars, but just designing them. After all, Apple doesn’t manufacture its own computers.

The letter is below.

Barack Obama
President of the United States

Dear President Obama:

I am writing you with a suggestion on how to deal with the US auto industry crisis. The recession and the meltdown of financial markets are the catalysts, but the root of the problem is the manner in which these colossal auto companies have been managed. It’s time to face the truth: The people running the US auto companies are officious bumblers, the products stink, and the unions are a parasitic drain on the business. And yet the Government seems content to throw billions of dollars at the problem. How can we bail out the same people that presided over the destruction of the industry? It is painfully clear that they are incapable of producing products that can compete successfully with German and Japanese rivals.

As you well know, if GM and Chrysler fail, the US auto industry will suffer a fatal blow – along with our entire economy. We must find a way to not only save the industry, but also make it competitive in the global marketplace. Cars are part of our national fiber, based on an industry that includes a massive ecosystem of vehicles and parts that stretch across our people and economy. However, bailing out the US car makers and investing tax payers’ money in inferior products is no solution. We must strive for a level of competitiveness in the auto industry similar to that which we have attained in the Information Technology industry. Our country’s leadership in the auto industry lies in developing future cars that are more like computers with wheels than mechanical sleighs addicted to dinosaur juice. The future of the automotive industry will be defined by electronics and software. The good news is that there is no country with more talent and capability in this arena than the United States.

Now the suggestion: Draft Steve Jobs (his health willing) to run a combined GM and Chrysler. After all, who has done a better job developing and marketing products consumers want to buy? Who has been more successful keeping the US ahead of other nations in competitive, technology-based markets? Mr. Jobs has also done right by his shareholders. GM and Chrysler have far too many product lines, most of which are uncompetitive. To compete in the global auto industry, they must develop Macs, iPods and iPhones with wheels. Rather than pouring billions of dollars into these failed companies, why not replace the current management with people capable of changing the way cars are designed, manufactured, powered and sold? I believe Mr. Jobs is the best choice to lead this effort.

As has been widely reported, Mr. Jobs has some health issues and it is possible that he may not be able to dedicate the time and effort required to put the US auto industry back on firm footing. Only Mr. Jobs knows if he is up to the task. If anyone can convince him to take this on, I suspect it’s you. Should Mr. Job’s be unable to take on the position, in my opinion, great technology leaders including John Chambers at Cisco Systems or Craig Barrett at Intel would also be worthy of your consideration. Both are great Americans and capable of leading the charge.

It is time for us to put tax payer money behind an executive capable of transforming the automotive industry. I respectfully submit that neither the current leadership behind these companies nor government officials are the answer. We need entrepreneurs, consumer product savants and creative managers capable of effecting change. We need great leaders who can transform cars into computers rather than horse-less carriages. You were elected to the Presidency based on a mandate for change. Making the necessary moves to transform the US auto industry would be a great way to walk the walk. This challenge is a once in a lifetime opportunity to save hundreds of thousands of jobs, hundreds of billions in future GDP, and prevent further deterioration of our nation’s manufacturing sector. This is the time for great Americans to be called upon to serve. I can think of no better leader than Steve Jobs to support America in this time of national crisis. President Obama, I urge you to seriously consider recruiting Mr. Jobs to manage the revitalization of the US auto industry that is so desperately needed. Thank you for your consideration of this suggestion.

Respectfully yours,

Todd Dagres,
Founder and General Partner,
Spark Capital

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

For those that don’t know, Union Square Ventures is an investor in Boxee and I am on the board. For the past several weeks I have watched Boxee's management try their hardest to convince Hulu that Boxee is a big step forward for Hulu and Hulu's content partners.

Unfortunately, Boxee has yet to be successful with that effort and later this week Hulu content will disappear from Boxee. I hope it is a short separation that leads toward a long and happy relationship. Boxee's management is committed to working with Hulu to make that happen as Avner, Boxee's CEO outlined on the Boxee blog.

Boxee is a browser optimized for the 10 ft experience. Much like mobile browsers on phones, Boxee renders the content it finds on the web in a way that optimizes it for the device it runs on (in Boxee's case that is the TV). Boxee is also an RSS reader optimized for the 10 ft experience. Content owners may initially see broswers and RSS readers optimized for TV viewing as disruptive and threatening, but just like mobile browsers are the friend of content owners, so are TV browsers. And Boxee is by far the best TV browser out there for a host of reasons that I outlined in this post when we made our investment in Boxee.

Here's how I came to understand the power of Boxee.

I used to watch Hulu on my living room TV in the Safari browser:

Now I watch Hulu on my living room TV in Boxee:

It's the same content on the same device coming through the same pipe and the only difference is safari is a browser optimized for a computer with a keyboard and a mouse and Boxee is a browser optimized for a TV and a remote.

I spent some time this evening reading the comments on the Hulu blog post. I commend Hulu for being open and transparent about this decision and allowing the community to discuss and debate this decision out in the open. That's the way to do this kind of thing. Naturally, users are upset. There are over seventy comments already on the Hulu blog and over two hundred comments on the Boxee blog. As I tweeted earlier tonite, I hope that Hulu and its content partners take the time to read these comments and think about them.

There's a consistency to the comments and it is confusion first and foremost. Hulu users don't understand the distinction between watching Hulu through Firefox or Safari and wathicng Hulu through Boxee. And many of them are coming back to watching TV because they can watch over the internet, when they want, and how they want. They feel liberated by Hulu and Boxee and see them as a match made in heaven. Which they are. And I sure hope that Hulu and its content partners come to that realization quickly.

• Doing hard things (Hulu Blog) (techmeme.com)
• Techdirt weighs in on Boxee/Hulu
• Hulu asks Boxee to pull content, it complies (engadget.com)
• Hulu Requests Removal From Boxee (centernetworks.com)
• Boxee to remove Hulu content (downloadsquad.com)
• Content Owners Force Hulu To Kneecap Boxee (techcrunch.com)
• Boxee forced to remove Hulu (tuaw.com)
• Hulu cuts off Boxee, Old Media takes one step forward, two steps back (inquisitr.com)
• Hulu Blocks Boxee, TV.com, Kicks Early Adopters in the Face [Hulu] (lifehacker.com)

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A little window into the future (aka HTML 5).

Continue reading Google demos HTML5-based Maps on the Palm Pre

Filed under: Cellphones

Google demos HTML5-based Maps on the Palm Pre originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Feb 2009 20:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The beauty of playing with building blocks when you're a toddler is that those simple wooden cubes can be anything you want: A skyscraper, a car, a robot.

BUGlabs' new BUGsound, designed by ECCO, is a building block of a different sort, filled with tech goodness: "A flush-mount 20-mm speaker and omnidirectional microphone with hardware stereo codecs and four 3.5-mm stereo jacks for third-party inputs, outputs, headphones and microphones." Give the thing some juice, then you decide what it is--a portable music player, speakerphone, mic, audio processor, or whatever your little hacking heart desires. Conversation is already underway on their blog, here.

More on BUGlabs:

BUGlabs and ECCO

BUGlabs and IDEO go open source

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It's true that Toy Fair was a bit lackluster this year--with the pall of the economy hanging over the convention, the smaller exhibitors downstairs had a decidedly more desperate vibe than last year--but there were still a few notables, mostly in the categories of vehicle design and eco-consciousness.

HaPe International is a company sticking to their green guns. Their bamboo E-Racer Vehicles are more difficult to produce than wood toys, as bamboo presents challenges in sawing, filing, dyeing, and bending, but after putting years into studying how to design for bamboo and get the production methods down, the company is proud to roll the line out.

Sprig Toys' vehicles and characters all smell like fresh wood, but they're actually made from recycled wood and even plastic, adhered together with special glue made from sawdust. And there's no batteries required to power the toys' on-board lights; kinetic energy provides all the juice needed.

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The Golden Grid is a web grid system. It’s a product of the search for the perfect modern grid system. It’s meant to be a CSS tool for grid based web sites.

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Very nice magazine
with every time a different topic
Brought to my attention by amai

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Kraft Foods, one of the largest food and beverage companies in the world unveiled yesterday a new corporate logo. I emphasize early that the change applies only at the corporate level, the uppercase oblong logo, used for both the corporate and brand identity, will stay as the consumer brand, so you won't miss it when you are buying your Macaroni & Cheese. So let's get started with some press releasing.

With a new purpose and values setting a fresh direction, Kraft Foods also gave its corporate logo a facelift to more clearly deliver "delicious." Starting today, people around the world will begin to see the new identity that deliciously features a smile, the natural reaction to delicious foods and experiences, and a colorful flavor burst. It signals to employees, consumers and investors what the new Kraft Foods is all about.
— Press release

There really isn't anything good to say about this logo — if I had to dig really deep I would offer that the lowercase "k" is very pretty, but that's about it. This is such a wimpy logo for such a large corporation. The red "smile," the colorful burst, they are all hackneyed and friendly to a degree where they are just childish. And, ohmygod, is that Tekton in the tag line? I haven't seen that typeface used without sarcasm or irony in a long time.

Brandweek has a nice slideshow of all of Kraft's previous logos and AdAge has a picture of the logo being, literally, unveiled. No specific credit for the identity has been given, but London-based Nitro gets mentioned a few times as the creative agency. It's logos like this that make you wonder if corporate identity in the 1960s had it right: Just make everything Helvetica.

Thanks to all that sent in the tip, first call goes to David Airey.

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Tim Jarvis shows a slick collection of identity and branding work: Identity_

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Fangohr came up with a microfiche viewer concept, that let's you take a close look at the pressing issues, science, politics, and design will face in the year of the ox.

Enjoy The Universe in '09