Declan McCullagh echos something I’ve heard several places about Google’s Gmail service:

The objections lodged against Gmail are telling, because they illuminate two different views about how to respond to new technologies. The protechnology view says customers of a company should be allowed to make up their own mind and that government regulation should be a last resort. Privacy fundamentalists, on the other hand, insist that new services they believe to be harmful should be banned, even if consumers are clamoring for them.

I’m not one of the people clamoring to ban Gmail (see previous post for my own take) but the above argument does miss the important point that email is a two-way street. Maybe you’re happy to sign away your privacy to a third-party company, but I’ve signed no such agreement. When I send email to you or to a closed mailing list you’re on I have the expectation that, at the very least, you will first read the email before deciding to share it with a third party. I trust Google, but I want that expectation of privacy to continue after all the other email-providers follow suit with their own arrangements.

Chris Pratley has an interesting Microsoft Perspective on the history of Word, in particular talking about how Microsoft beat out WordPerfect as the wordprocessor of choice when platforms shifted from DOS to Windows. Pratley joined Microsoft in 1995, but what interests me most is his version of the Microsoft story prior to his arrival — it gives a great insight into the Redmond Kool-Aid served to new Microsoft employees:

In case you’re too young to remember, Windows development started back in 1983, and it was a joke in the industry. Windows 1.0 (released in 1984 I think) was sort of a demo. Windows 2.0 (1987 or so) was much better, but it was limited in memory (286 processor had a max of 1MB addressable RAM), and ran too slowly for practical usage. It is also hard to believe now, but all the pundits in the industry thought GUI interfaces with windows and dialog boxes and menus and mice (the Mac, Windows 2.0, etc.) were for novices and were basically toys, since they lacked the power of a command line interface. Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect ruled the desktop, with arcane command sequences that a professional user could work magic with, but which new users found impenetrable. Especially interesting was the discussion that came up around the impending release of Windows 3.0 around 1990. In 1989, all the editorials talked about whether application makers should bother with a Windows-version of their DOS apps. WordPerfect was pretty clear – they saw Microsoft as a competitor, Windows as a lame horse, and they felt pretty strongly that they would best serve their customers by sticking with DOS. Their customers knew the WP-DOS interface, it was faster and more professional than the goofy toy-like Windows interface. It became a point of pride that WP would not do a Windows version.

PC-Word, on the other hand, tired of losing reviews and not being able to shake the stranglehold that WP had on the DOS word processor market, had nothing to lose by making a Windows version. Fortunately, that also coincided with the direction that Microsoft was taking: bet the company on Windows. In retrospect, this seems like a no-brainer, but remember that at the time Windows was still considered a joke. Betting the company on it was a big, big bet.

Now I love a “techie bets the company on a radical idea” fable as much as the next geek, but this version leaves out the most important part of the story: WordPerfect wasn’t sticking with DOS — just like the other category-leaders Lotus 1-2-3, dBase and Harvard Graphics, they were spending their resources developing for OS/2, the new windowing OS being developed jointly by IBM and Microsoft. And the reason they bet on OS/2 is that both IBM and Microsoft were endorsing OS/2 as the platform for the 1990s: check out this quote from Bill Gates at the Fall 1989 Comdex. At the time, Windows was seen as essentially an extension of DOS, and was touted as being for low-end computers (a 386 with 4MB of RAM, also known as next-year’s trash). Which is to say, Windows was touted as being “for novices and… basically toys,” but the GUI and OS/2 were taken quite seriously. Now cut to Spring 1992, when Microsoft ships Windows 3.1 and signs a “divorce” document from the deal with IBM to develop OS/2 (much of the technology was later licensed for Windows-NT). Betting the company on Windows wasn’t just a big, big bet, it was also arguably the biggest bait-and-switch of the decade.

Oddly enough, Pratley doesn’t mention OS/2 even in his follow-up post, though he does make the claim that Microsoft built the first office suite:

Some of the posters noted that Word was helped to success by the Office bundle. That is certainly true – that move was a truly inspired marketing decision to use our strength of having enough apps to build a “suite” – something which hadn’t existed up to that point. At first it was just a bundle of three apps for the price of 1.5 apps or so. People said it was crazy – too much of a giveaway.

That’s another impressive claim, considering when Microsoft Works came out in August 1986 (for Mac, the DOS version was 1987) there was already Innovative Software’s SmartWare Suite (1983), Electric Company’s Electric Desk (1984 or earlier, later reborn as AlphaWorks and LotusWorks), Ashton-Tate’s Framework (1984), Migent’s Agility (1985) and Lotus Symphony (1985).

Pratley mentions a few suspect his blog is just a “marketing ploy,” but I figure his admiration for Microsoft’s history is genuine and his posts are from the heart — he just needs to get out of Redmond a little more. Perhaps his blog will be just the thing to cure the memory gaps that are so often caused by years of Kool-aid abuse…

Edit: changed typoed August 1996 to August 1986.

• Let’s talk about Word (Chris Pratley, 27 April 2004)
• Word Myths and Feedback (Chris Pratley, 28 April 2004)
• “We believe OS/2 is the platform for the 90s” [WAV file] (Bill Gates, Fall 1989 Comdex)
• Computer History (1980-1990
• DOS Abandonware: Integrated Suites
• 30 years of Windows: a retrospective (Matt Lake, CNET Special Report, 22 June 1998)
• Timeline of Microcomputers

The AGNULA Project (A GNU Linux Audio distribution, originally funded by the European Commission) has just released DeMuDi 1.1.1 Live, a full music-recording, editing and playback suite all on a bootable CD-ROM. It’s all made from existing Open Source components, built on top of a Linux low-latency kernel, the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture, and the JACK audio-connection kit, with applications ranging from soundfile editors & MIDI sequencers to sound-synthesis software, sheet-music preperation software and media players. Pop it into your Intel box, regardless of native OS, boot from the CD-ROM and you’ve got your editing suite! (A Mac-G4 version is in the works.)

• Overview
• ISO Disk Image

(Thanks to Steve for the pointer…)

I’ve wanted something like iMix ever since I burned my first Lindy-Hop CD mix. Absolutely brilliant.

Now if we could just shift from $0.99 / track to something that suits better for radio-style “let’s see what’s on” kind of play we could give ClearChannel the heave-to once and for all.

(Some of the other new iTunes features look nice too)

Cute security technology from Beepcard:

The Comdot™ solution is easy and convenient: Users simply hold the card in front of their PC, phone or other networked microphone and squeezes the Comdot™ — a flat button on the card — the card uses sound, carrying a one time 3DES encrypted code, to identify the user to the destination server.

Bruce Schneier’s comments:

This is perhaps the coolest security idea I’ve seen in a long time. They have a demo application where you go to a website and purchase something with a credit card. To authenticate the transaction, you have to put the card up to your computer’s microphone and press the button. The sound is captured using a Java or ActiveX control — no plug-in required — and acts as an authenticator. It proves that the person making the transaction has the card in his hands, and doesn’t just know the number. In credit-card language, it changes the transaction from “card not present” to “card present.”

Even cooler, they are making an enhancement to the system that also includes a microphone on the card. This system will require the user to speak a password into the card before pressing the button.

Why do I like this? It’s a physical authentication system that doesn’t require any special reader hardware. You can use it on a random computer at an Internet cafe. You can use it on a telephone. I can think of all sorts of really easy, really cool applications. If the price is cheap enough, BeepCard has a winner here.

Sony and TOPPAN have just announced a 25Gig Blu-ray Disc made out of 51% paper:

Hideaki Kawai, Managing Director, Head of Corporate R&D Division, TOPPAN CO., LTD commented: “Using printing technology on paper allows a high level of artistic label printing on the optical disc. Since a paper disc can be cut by scissors easily, it is simple to preserve data security when disposing of the disc”.

Masanobu Yamamoto, Senior General Manager of Optical System Development Gp., Optical Disc Development Div., Sony Corporation said: “Since the Blu-ray Disc does not require laser light to travel through the substrate, we were able to develop this paper disc. By increasing the capacity of the disc we can decrease the amount of raw material used per unit of information.”

Details will be announced at the SPIE Optical Data Storage 2004 Conference next week.

TOPPAN is also working with E Ink to produce their paper displays.

There’s been a lot of hubbub over Gmail, Google’s new free (advertising-based) Not An April Fool’s Joke email service with 1Gig of disk space. The biggest issue is that Google hasn’t properly communicated where they stand on protecting email privacy, especially in relation to their plan to automatically scan email and present relevant advertisements as a sidebar. In response, a host of privacy organizations have written an open letter demanding that the service be suspended until privacy issues are addressed. The EFF has also been asking some important questions, and Google says they’re “batting about a number of options”.

On the surface, Gmail isn’t that different than existing online email services. It’s a free email account run on company-owned-and-operated servers, just like MSN Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail. It automatically scans and annotate email, just like spam-filters do already. And in spite of criticism about Gmail’s privacy policy, it’s not that different (and in fact more explicit) than the ones you find at MSN or Yahoo!. But look just a little down the road and Gmail isn’t an email service at all, it’s a personal information archival service. This is the real service Google is looking to provide. As they put it: “Gmail is an experiment in a new kind of webmail, built on the idea that you should never have to delete mail and you should always be able to find the message you want.”

My first reaction is “it’s about damn time someone’s doing this.” Since 1995 I’ve kept every email I’ve received or sent (yes, even spam), for a total of over 1.6 Gig and almost 200,000 non-spam email messages. I index it all with the Remembrance Agent (my PhD thesis project) so whenever I get email on, say, some hot new technology I also get links to what other friends, colleagues and mailing lists have said on the subject. (On a different note, when I write love letters I see what I’ve written to previous girlfriends, which is sometimes quite educational.) I’d love to have this kind of thing hooked up not only to my own email but also, say, my favorite 1000 RSS feeds that I’d like to read but don’t have time for. That’s clearly the direction Google is heading (they even cite me — I love it when that happens!)

Systems like Gmail face two problems, both of which are also strengths. The first is that my personal and work email archives contains some of the most sensitive information there is in my life. They include email confirmation of purchases, trips I’ve taken and investments I’ve made. They include love letters I’ve sent and later regretted, discussions of medical issues, and drunken emails complaining about people with whom I’ve lived and worked. They include research ideas not yet patented and drafts of papers not yet published. Often these emails are sensitive precisely because they are powerful and useful, but more often than not information that empowers me can also empower my enemies, competitors and parasites.

The second problem is Google’s centralized architecture, which is easier to maintain and deploy but requires me to trust them with my most sensitive assets. This is a general problem with indexing the Deep Web of proprietary data, and I suspect it was the main failure point for Autonomy’s short-lived Kenjin system and the main reason they moved to an inside-the-firewall search system. This is not to say a centralized approach is untenable; we already have institutions that are trusted with sensitive data, namely doctors, lawyers, and financial institutions. But what these three have in common are a combination of legal and institutional guarantees of privacy, security and longevity of the data they keep. By improving on the usual web-mail model Google plans to join these institutions in terms of trust required, but so far they haven’t improved on the old and inadequate web-mail privacy guarantee. It may not even be possible for Google to make the necessary guarantees without Congressional support, an unlikely prospect given the Justice Department’s current lust for total information awareness.

If Google manages to innovate new trust models as well they do technology, I suspect Gmail will be a good stop-gap technology, though it will never be as trustable as a combination of my personal local data cache, an encrypted backup service, and trusted friends or services who keep backup keys. Call me picky, but I’m still holding out for my personal server. How much longer before I can have the Web in my pocket?

References

• About Gmail (Google, 1 April 2004)
• Google’s Web mail no joke (Stefanie Olsen, CNET News, 2 April 2004)
• Twenty Eight Privacy and Civil Liberties Organizations Urge Google to Suspend Gmail (World Privacy Forum and 27 others, 6 April 2004)
• Google’s Gmail and Your Privacy – What’s the Deal? (EFF, EFFector 17(12), 9 April 2004)
• Google to consider Gmail changes (Evan Hansen, CNET News, 13 April 2004)
• Why I Wouldn’t Consider Google’s E-Mail (Dan Gillmor, eJournal, 3 April 2004)
• Gmail Privacy Policy
• MSN Privacy Policy
• Yahoo! Privacy Policy
• Remembrance Agent Page (your faithful correspondent)
• Query-Free News Search (Henzinger et al, WWW2003, 20 May 2003)
• Autonomy claims the search is over (BBC News, 29 March 2000)
• Autonomy Active Knowledge Page
• What can you do with a Web in your Pocket? (Brin et al, Data Engineering Bulletin 21(2): 37-47, 1998)