Small Pieces Loosely Joined, David Weinberger‘s book from several years back, makes its point in the now-famous Ray Ozzie memo explaining Microsoft’s sex change (from a software to a Web company).
Big news for Small Pieces
4 responses to “Big news for Small Pieces”
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you totally crack me up doc. funny. ( mean the sex change remark.. it’s perfect).
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HTML copy of that memo.
A maker of desktop and browser software going into into online advertising is like the maker of the Walkman buying a music label.
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This doesn’t change anything for Microsoft, it merely prolongs the life of the desktop by virtualizing it a bit. You still have folders of stuff, instead of microcontent. You still have a single sign on authority, Microsoft’s LiveID, instead of OpenID. You still have a system which has to have everything virus scanned.
It really doesn’t change squat.
–Mike– -
Thanks for the pointer, Don.
I love the analogy. As Mike suggests, when you subtract the buzzjive from the memo, you’ve still got a new walled garden. Need to read it more carefully, though. It’s hard without antihistamines.
The Sony analogy reminds me of how, a few years back, I asked somebody at Sony’s CES booth why they were letting Apple clean their clock, and didn’t have handheld devices that recorded in and played back in MP3, Ogg, or something other than their own silly ATRAC codec. The guy told me they needed to “protect” their “content” products in their entertainment divisions from “piracy”. I replied, “That must be the ‘synergy’ I’ve been hearing about.”
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