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Scratching the Surface at Microsoft

This morning I got to play with a prototype unit of Microsoft Surface. The new gadget addicts among you have already seen videos of it, featuring families and friends seamlessly sharing their digital content across cameras and phones. The concept intrigues, but the actual experience exceeded my expectations, in a Wow-I-Want-This! kind of way.

Infra-red cameras beneath the Surface track physical objects like fingers, mobile devices, paint brushes and "optical tags," so Surface can engage the user in new kinds of applications with physical movements and objects. But more importantly, those applications can be used by more than one person at the same time, enabling a level of collaboration and play that, psychologically, cannot be achieved through separate networked computers. For example, the paint program and the photo manager accommodate simultaneous actions on different parts of the Surface. I imagined an implementation of Flock on Surface where users branch off the same page in different directions, sliding their discoveries back and forth. The most fun example of a physically collaborative app was the video jigsaw puzzle, enabled by marked lucite tiles that trigger videos beneath them for assembly into a single image. Two of us worked together to identify the right position, orientation, and side of each piece (when the tile is on the wrong side, the video snippet is reversed).



I can also attest that the Surface handily withstands Coke spills. (What can I say? I was feeling naughty.)

The platform obviously does have challenges to overcome, such as initial manufacturing cost, security friction in pairing mobile devices to it, an immature developer community, and the lack of power outlets in the middle of our living room floors. But the Microsoft folks seem to have lined up enough retail and hotel partners to nurse the baby platform through its early growing pains. By Q4 next year, you'll have seen units deployed in public places (and, with any luck, my family room).

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How I Lost 160 Pounds

Yesterday I was free of Earth's gravity for 8 full minutes aboard G-Force 1, the airline of X-Prize founder Peter Diamandis that induces weightlessness through parabolic flight. Parabolic flights have been used for decades to train astronauts (and shoot film scenes like in Apollo 13), and G-Force has recently completed its 100th flight (an important milestone for me as I assessed the risk of this adventure).

Esther Dyson, an active supporter of commercial space filght and an investor in the business, had recruited Second Life founder Phil Rosedale and VC Chris Hadsell to try out this experience, and Chris in turn recruited me. I figured that if Stephen Hawking could do it, so can I. Still, I was quite anxious leading up to the flight, certain that I would spark a puke fest on board--but a single dose of scopalamine completely warded off the nausea. (Warning: scopalamine is also a truth serum, so never operate a blog while medicated!)

G-Force 1 is a hollowed out 727-200 with a re-inforced steel frame, cushy mats along the bottom, no windows, and 30 seats way in the back. After a brief training video, we boarded the aircraft and 15 minutes after taking off we reached air space off the coast where the FAA allows G-Force to swoop up and down like a roller coaster.

For the climbs, we lay down still on the mats, barely able to lift our limbs as the plane's acceleration exerted 1.8g on our bodies. I found the feeling quite restful--not unlike being pinned down by my kids sleeping on top of me. As the plane started to crest the first time, the pilots followed a course that induced "Martian gravity", or 1/3 Earth gravity. For the next 30 seconds, we all performed stunts like one-armed push-ups.

As Peter called out "Feet Down" we all found a place on the mat for the next climb. the next two parabolas were shaped to induce lunar gravity, or 1/6 that of Earth's. During these episodes we easily pushed ourselves to a standing position with our fingers, and leapt through the cabin like gold medal gymnasts.

The next dozen parabolas all simulated zero gravity. For the first one we simply enjoyed the serenity of floating. In the second parabola we released M&Ms in the air and floated around trying to catch them. Another time we squeezed globs of water out of our bottles, and watched them float around--some of them into our mouths--like levitating soap bubbles. Once we played catch--with other passengers, who curled up into balls as we tossed them through the cabin. Once I launched off the bulkhead to fly like Superman through the cabin, and another time I just sat on the ceiling. I completed a full circle by crawling up the walls and over the ceiling, and I accomplished a quintuple somersault in the air. And each time we heard "Feet Down" we'd play a variation of musical chairs, scrambling for floor space before gravity kicked in.

The afternoon was thrilling and eye-opening. I had the chance to experience something I had only dreamed of, and without the risk of a rocket launch. It was fun, pure and simple, and I highly recommend you try it.

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Experiencing Nature

My family didn't pick the Big Island of Hawaii to be adventurous--it was supposed to be a relaxing vacation. But this morning our jet lag awoke us before dawn to see meteors relentlessly pelt the earth's atmosphere. During the day we couldn't venture outdoors as high winds rehearsed for tomorrow's visit by Hurricane Flossie with 120+ MPH gusts. And then about 15 minutes ago, an earthquake registering somewhere between 5 and 6 on the Richter scale jostled our dinner, chasing us out onto the windy lanai.

We find ourselves in mortal danger from meteorites, earthquakes, flash floods and high winds. But as Maxwell Smart always said, "And loving it!"

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Arnold's Angels

Driving up scenic highway 280 yesterday reminded me of my first, glorious day ever in California, when my friend Ken Rudin recruited me to Oracle. (Ken, who was also my T.A. in CS141 Hardware Architecture, now runs Lucidera a SaaS B.I. startup.) Ken confessed to me that on his first day in California, he had mis-understood some advice that if he wanted to take the highway, "he could drive up to 80."

So that's what I was doing in the fast lane when suddenly my car started shaking as though I was driving on rubble. I tried changing to a non-rubbly lane but my car still shook like the '89 world series. It finally dawned on me that the problem might not be the road, so I pulled onto the shoulder as wisps of smoke drew my attention to the few remaining shreds of tire that had once protected my rear left wheel.

I smoothly finished the phone call I was on, yielding no hint of a problem and steeling myself to change the tire as traffic whizzed by. But just as I said my goodbye, a shining white tow truck pulled up behind me. At first I thought I was in for a negotiation. I certainly didn't need a tow, but perhaps I could enlist some assistance...

Well, there turned out to be no need for negotiation. The driver Steve Pauley politely introduced himself and the Freeway Service Patrol--a fleet of 83 contracted tow truck operators patrolling 550 miles of Bay Area freeways during peak traffic for motorists in need of assistance. Sponsored by C.H.P. and Caltrans, the Freeway Service Patrol tows disabled vehicles, supplies gasoline to poor planners, and tapes hoses and refills radiators all for free. When Steve saw my problem, he immediately descended from his chariot, jacked up my car, and installed my spare tire faster than I could say, "Now what does this doo-hickey do again?"

The good Samaritan accepted my thanks, but refused to accept a gratuity. I couldn't have been more impressed by the whole experience. It was yet another wonderful day in California, as glorious as my first nearly 20 years ago. Maybe this year I really will file those state tax returns!

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SPIT and SPAM

As a guest today on Talk of the Nation, I covered a variety of topics relating to spam, which is growing faster than ever.

Responding to a call-in question about open source software, I speculated that Firefox is no more secure than IE. I based this on theoretical arguments that might apply if Firefox were as popular a target as IE, and if the settings were as flexible, but in reality what I said is wrong. Contrary to the suspicions of one angry podcaster (who issued a fatwa on my head!) I have no financial motivation to "lie" about Firefox. In fact, as an investor in Flock which builds on the Mozilla code, I am happy to be corrected about the security of Firefox.

I guess I also provoked disagreement from the other guest, Dechlan McCullagh of CNET, who was articulate, well-informed, and clearly more comfortable on radio than I. I made the prediction that one day email spam will pale in comparison to SPIT (SPam over Internet Telephony). With free VOIP calls, spammers can now use computers overseas to generate voice messages that they broadcast to every 10 digit telephone number in North America.

"Press 1 to join Party Chat! Sexy Singles are standing by..." "You've been pre-approved for a low-rate credit card! Press 1 to complete your application..." "Why pay so much for prescriptions? Press 1 to get a free month of medicine from Cayman Islands Pharmacy..."

They needn't pay for the calls, the human reps, or the lists of valid phone numbers (so unlisted cell phones are vulnerable). Email spam is bad enough, but when our phones ring constantly, the intrusion on our lives will be profoundly greater, and unlike email spam, SPIT will carry payloads that cannot be examined until after we accept the call.

Anyway, I predicted that one day we'll be forced to turn off our ringers altogether, marking the end of real time telephone conversations. Dechlan pointed out that we could simply choose to ignore calls from people we don't know, as one of his buddies does. Good idea, except that the spammers will use our friends' and family's phones to call us, just as they do today with email.

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Business Weak

I hate to poke at a well-read journalist (again), but I must take issue with the way in which Aaron Ricadela mis-quoted me, obviously to support the hypothesis of his recent Business Week article titled "Fogeys Flock to Facebook."

Here's what I said to him:

"Clearly, Facebook has lots of traffic and a lot of that traffic is from the same group of users as on LinkedIn. But Facebook is a social application--it doesn't offer the same professional tools that make LinkedIn so popular, and so we see very little effect on the usage and growth at LinkedIn. In fact, LinkedIn continues to grow beyond the numbers Reid had projected at the time of our investment."

Here's what he wrote:

Even Facebook's competitors acknowledge change is afoot. "Clearly, Facebook has lots of traffic and a lot of that traffic is from the same group of users as on LinkedIn," says David Cowan, a managing partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, a LinkedIn investor (see BusinessWeek.com, 1/29/07, "LinkedIn Reaches Out"). Yet during Facebook's most recent growth spurt—it has added 1.3 million visitors since May, according to ComScore—LinkedIn's audience hasn't declined, Cowan says.

C'mon, Aaron. Next time please just report what I really said, instead of paraphrasing it to suit your story.

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