Yesterday the Republican-controlled Senate voted to allow ISPs to sell customer data including browsing history without prior customer consent. I tweeted that in response it is “Time to tunnel all home traffic through a proxy.” First let me explain for a less technical reader what that means. At the moment your ISP can see every web request you make. They can’t see inside encrypted requests and much of the web is encrypted these days (https versus http). But they can see whether you are going...

Yesterday the Republican-controlled Senate voted to allow ISPs to sell customer data including browsing history without prior customer consent. I tweeted that in response it is “Time to tunnel all home traffic through a proxy.” First let me explain for a less technical reader what that means. At the moment your ISP can see every web request you make. They can’t see inside encrypted requests and much of the web is encrypted these days (https versus http). But they can see whether you are going...

Facebook recently released Messenger as a separate mobile app. Google+ launched with multiple separate mobile apps (Google+, Huddle, Places). What’s going on here? We are seeing the results of limited screen real estate combined with effective notification systems and a fully logged in user on mobile. Unlike on the desktop (Microsoft) and even the browser (Google, Facebook) this means that large integrated apps or even “suites” have no advantage from a usability perspective. For instance, whe...

Facebook recently released Messenger as a separate mobile app. Google+ launched with multiple separate mobile apps (Google+, Huddle, Places). What’s going on here? We are seeing the results of limited screen real estate combined with effective notification systems and a fully logged in user on mobile. Unlike on the desktop (Microsoft) and even the browser (Google, Facebook) this means that large integrated apps or even “suites” have no advantage from a usability perspective. For instance, whe...

I believe I have discovered an important reason why the government has a hard time making good use of the Internet: people who design systems for the government abhor messy data. They are used to setups in which every record is complete because the people populating the records are forced by law or regulation to fill them out entirely. As we are learning on the web though, the best systems arise from rather messy data. Let’s say you are a marketplace site. Should you have a listing process th...

I believe I have discovered an important reason why the government has a hard time making good use of the Internet: people who design systems for the government abhor messy data. They are used to setups in which every record is complete because the people populating the records are forced by law or regulation to fill them out entirely. As we are learning on the web though, the best systems arise from rather messy data. Let’s say you are a marketplace site. Should you have a listing process th...

A lot of web startups have interesting data but they don’t make good (or any) use of it. That’s a big mistake. If you have data – flaunt it! Releasing some interesting piece of data, ideally something unexpected, is a wonderful way to attract attention. With a nod to Caterina’s Biz Dev 2.0, I think of this as PR 2.0. My friend Alan Gould, the founder of IAG Research (now part of Nielsen) was a master of this. IAG does advertising effectiveness research and to this day, when you go to their si...

A lot of web startups have interesting data but they don’t make good (or any) use of it. That’s a big mistake. If you have data – flaunt it! Releasing some interesting piece of data, ideally something unexpected, is a wonderful way to attract attention. With a nod to Caterina’s Biz Dev 2.0, I think of this as PR 2.0. My friend Alan Gould, the founder of IAG Research (now part of Nielsen) was a master of this. IAG does advertising effectiveness research and to this day, when you go to their si...

When it comes to files we are beginning to take synchronization as a given. You work on a file at work and through the magic of Dropbox or similar services the copy of that file on your personal laptop winds up reflecting the changes. Increasingly we are expecting the same for applications. For example, when you have read a Direct Message on a Twitter App and then notice that it is still shown as unread in the web applications we experience that as a bug. This enduser expectation of data and ...

When it comes to files we are beginning to take synchronization as a given. You work on a file at work and through the magic of Dropbox or similar services the copy of that file on your personal laptop winds up reflecting the changes. Increasingly we are expecting the same for applications. For example, when you have read a Direct Message on a Twitter App and then notice that it is still shown as unread in the web applications we experience that as a bug. This enduser expectation of data and ...

One of the great things about running any online business is the amount of data that it throws off. In fact, this is now true for pretty much any business, as processes such as supply chain, CRM, etc are all running through systems that collect tons of data. But I am also finding that it is far too easy to get lost in the data:It is easy for discussions to get stuck in the data weeds, for instance, obsessing why a certain conversion rate went up or down relative to the previous month.With eno...

One of the great things about running any online business is the amount of data that it throws off. In fact, this is now true for pretty much any business, as processes such as supply chain, CRM, etc are all running through systems that collect tons of data. But I am also finding that it is far too easy to get lost in the data:It is easy for discussions to get stuck in the data weeds, for instance, obsessing why a certain conversion rate went up or down relative to the previous month.With eno...