I headed over to GetSatisfaction to look at IWantSandy’s product page. What a wash of anger and sadness. The closure topic has hundreds of replies and 95 faces and 17 faces most of which were Rael’s and he doesn’t really count. Rael has made an export available for I Want Sandy but it hasn’t been up there for too long. In fact, it closes today. Something that a lot of people objected to.

This isn’t totally dissimilar to the way we closed Yahoo Photos (not that I was involved in that project). I think it’s sad that something can close in the space of a month and after that period user data is lost. The idea occurred to me that while archive.org is great for public data it sucks ass for private data. The idea of the data haven was born.

Imagine this. You sign up for the newest shiniest start-up service. When you sign up you have the option to guarantee your data will be preserved by somedatahaven.org. If that service goes belly up they can pass your data and login credentials to somedatahaven.org who will allow you login and export your data. If an independent organisation can take on the role of guaranteeing the data availability of a number of services that you sign-up to then it’ll be a huge step forward for data portability. This would be especially true if the data could be syndicated as easily transformable open standards to be accepted by other services.

So, I want to build this service. However, I’m a busy man. I might build it anyway, because I’m an engineer with twitchy coding fingers, but I’d really like half a dozen or so people that would want to sign up to such a service so I can work with some real customers and support their needs while building. If you are interested email me.

So as I Want Sandy shuts down for good today, I hope we can create a better solution for the future.

So, honey, I love you and this is to try and explain.

Imagine reading a book. It should be a real page turner, something you are completely glued too. You know the characters, you feel their pain. Then right at the crux of the story, something interrupts you. It’s a little annoying, but it’s ok. You fluff your cushion, stretch your legs and start to read again.
But no! Something interrupts you again. That’s ok. I’m just going to ignore it. But it’s won’t be ignored. You read the same sentence you just read for the third time. Now frustration moves to annoyance.

This is flow, the concept is that you need a certain amount of time to be able to do an activity well. Sure you can read at the drop of a hat but it takes a minute or so to start understanding what you are reading. If you want that total immersion of a good book it takes a bit longer, but boy the feeling is better.

Programming is hard. It’s harder than reading. In fact programming is hard than most things I know because it’s basically continuous problem solving. So programming takes longer to get into than reading, even deep reading. Some studies have shown it can take 30 minutes to achieve Flow in programming. So for a programmer the experience of small distractions can be that much worse than a reader.

To put it visually imagine an easy task (such as reading) is like a pebble and a hard task (such as programming) is like a boulder. It’s easy to push the pebble down a hill it keeps rolling until something stops it. But it’s pretty easy to get started again, because hey it’s only a pebble. Programming is like a boulder you sit and lever the boulder with a stick for 20 minutes to get it moving much at all. The last thing you want is something that stops it part way down. Sure it’s a little easier to get it going again half way down the hill, but it sure would have been nice if it hadn’t stopped at all.

So while I shouldn’t have been a jerk, I hope this explains a little bit why I was and maybe next time I’m working a little late I’ll find some space where my crotchety programmer angst isn’t going to make you feel bad.

Obviously if you are going to talk about REST you have to talk about Roy Fielding who coined the term REST in his PhD thesis. While I was at ApacheCon this year I had a chance to catch up with Roy. He was a little bit reticent about another person writing a REST book. He has been, understandably, frustrated with the widespread misuse of the term. Following his recent blogging has been insightful, and often amusing. Roy is not prone to pandering to people who don’t take the time to properly understand his work, although he was nice enough to discuss the topic in great detail in the blog comments.

Roy is something of a hero of mine, with his work on URIs, HTTP and his thesis he’s set the scene for a great deal of Web technology. So, time for my anecdote, such as it is. At ApacheCon one of the sponsors had brought some arcade machines including a Star Wars Arcade machine. Throughout the conference people would stop by and hammer out a free few games. I played a bit but never made the high scores table. There was a very good reason for this, the high scores tables started at a million points (way past my ken). The interesting bit though is pretty much every name on the high scores was “Roy”. Looks like Dr Fielding has other talents than network systems architecture.

Back to the book, I’m so glad I’m around so many people that inspire me. Right now I’ve been talking a lot with Seth Fitzsimmons who works at Yahoo’s Brickhouse. There is some awesome stuff Seth’s been working on that will be around soon. It’s really great working with someone who is such a trooper for churning stuff out. I’ve also really enjoyed my occasional discussions with Jeff Lindsay who’s been talking a lot about “web hooks”. I’m not sure I’m convinced yet, but Jeff talks a good game and knows his stuff. It’s definitely good brain food. So look out for some sample chapters soon. If you are interested please email me.

One of the things that really struck me is like most conversations about “Open” it means different things to different people. In the context of various standards bodies they use the term to mean drastically different things. In order to reset expectations I’d like to see a common set of terms we use to talk about this stuff. Interestingly David said that’s why the Open Web Foundation (OWF) choose to create “Specifications” rather than “Standards”. By avoiding the existing term they escape the implications that their specifications are mandatory or industrially definitive.

Looking at the way standards/specification organisations use the word “Open” I see 4 key behaviours:

• Open Working Groups
• Open Consultations
• Open Availability
• Free (as in beer)

Open Working Groups

Open Working Groups are those that are available to anyone who wants to participate. The exact barriers to entry vary across different standards organisations. A group like WHATWG sets absolutely no barrier to entry. W3C only allow member organisations to contribute to their specifications. However, membership is open as long as you make a financial contribution (related to the size of your organisation) and agree to the member charter. These terms include release of intellectual property rights and some other clauses. The W3C also allow invited experts from non-member organisations to contribute (without paying a fee). Such people are normally industry experts who are invited to share their subject knowledge.

Some groups also publish public minutes of their meetings with attendance, topics, conclusions and other details about the inner working of their standard/specifications organisation.

These approaches can be contrasted with a group like the British Standards Institute which selects a group of people designated as subject experts to write a standard. The membership of such a group is not expected to change throughout the process of writing a standard. They also do not share their internal working outside BSI until they publish a standard.

This, of course, means we know what open isn’t in this context, but we still haven’t defined exactly what open is; Or at least given the grades of open participation specific names.

Open Consultations

While working groups vary in their openness, many of them also do open consultations. By this I mean they publish draft of their standard and invite commentary. The W3C is notorious for this as they publish many stages of draft, from regular “Working Drafts” to “Candidate Recommendations”, the stage before final publication. By soliciting participation in this way organisations are allowing open input on their work periodically rather than constantly as in the case of open working group participation.

This approach can reduce the amount of time taken to create a standard/specification by allowing a core team to develop a model to be critiqued by the larger community rather than trying to find rolling consensus on all issues.

Open Availability

The ability to gain access to a standard is not guaranteed. Some standards are restricted to organisations in certain industries, such as telecoms or with membership to certain industry groups. Open standards are freely available to read or implement.

Free

Some standards are open but cost money, such as many of those published by the BSI. The money used from selling the standard pays for the cost of developing it. The majority of Internet and Web specifications and standards are free, the cost being borne by the corporations which sponsor the development for their own use.

Terms to describe standards and specifications

There is also an interesting distinction between standards and specifications. This was something David was keen to point out on behalf of the Open Web Foundation. The OWF builds specifications not standards, this is because they are focused on rapid problem solving. By creating a consensus around a technical issue, a specification if you will, they enable standards bodies to take that existing work and use it as the basis for standardisation amongst their members. I think this is the key distinction between a standard and a specification.

Member organisations contribute to standards bodies in order to help shape the direction of standards they know they actively want to use. This means that standards bodies often have large amounts of people engaged in the work on a standard. This can make the process unwieldy and highly politic. Groups like the OWF on the other hand write specifications, usually with a small group of highly motivated people at the core of each specification. Since the goal is technical consensus there is less politics and a sensible specification can often be reached quickly.

While the only difference between a specification document and a standard document is wording, the difference in process can be huge.

Pulling it all together

By outlining the different usage of Open I hope I have given everyone an idea of the concepts. As such I now want to tie those concepts back into a set of terms people can use to understand Open in the context of standards and specifications.

Working Groups

Open Working Group

A working group to which anyone can participate regardless of company affiliation or other status. The meeting records (such as they are) are Open and freely available.

Members Working Group

A working group which is limited to members organisations of the standards/specification body. Meeting records may be Openly available or restricted to the Member organisations.

Private Working Group

The working group is invitation only and minutes and other records are restricted to member organisations or the working group.

Membership

Open Membership

Anyone/organisation can join the specification/standards body to contribute. Agreement to a common membership agreement may be required (to release IP for example, or set a code of conduct).

Nominal Fee Membership

Membership is open to any organisation/individual but a nominal fee may be required in addition to a membership agreement.

Closed Membership

Membership is limited to an invitation list of participants. This may be a limit to members of a particular industry (such as telecoms) or it may be private consortium of companies.

Participation with the community

Open Consultations

The working group will periodically release a version of its standard/specification for public review and comment. Each comment received will be publicly addressed

Member Consultation

The working group will periodically release a version of its standard/specification for review and comment by members of the standards/specification body. Each comment received will be addressed to the members

Private Consultation

Specific experts will periodically be asked to review and comment on a version of the standard/specification and their comments will be reviewed by the working group

Availability

Openly Availability

The final version of the specification/standard is freely available at no cost

Nominal Fee Availability

The final version of the specification/standard is freely available at a nominal cost (the value of nominal may vary from industry to industry)

Member Availability

Available to members of a specification/standards body. There may be a charge.

Examples

Open Web Foundation

The Open Web Foundation have been a buzz in the blogosphere recently so they can be our first example. The OWF:

• Publish Specifications
• Use Open Working Groups
• Use Open Consultation
• Provide Open Availability

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

The W3C are one of the leading providers of Web Standards, such as HTML, XML and CSS. They have been criticised in some quarters for taking to long to publish new and updated versions of standards. Their profile is different to that of the OWF. The W3C:

• Publish Standards
• Use Member Working Groups
• Use Open Consultation
• Provide Open Availability

British Standards Institute

The BSI produces a lot of industrial standards such as the “kite mark” which governs the safety of children’s toys and other items in Britain. They have also produced a number of technology standards such as PAS78 which helps organisations purchase accessible Web sites. They mostly have a very different model to the OWF and the W3C. My understanding is that BSI:

• Publish Standards
• Use Member Working Groups
• Use Member Consultation
• Provide Nominal Fee Availability

Conclusions

I think that this terminology makes it clearer and easier to describe a number of existing standards bodies. By using the same terminology people and organisation can have better expectations of the various standards/specification organisations.

It’s been a feature of politics for a long time to suggest that many of the world’s problems are insolvable. This is because many of the those solutions are not popular in the short term. In order to compensate for the treasury deficit of striking third world debt we need raise taxes. Raising taxes has, and I suspect, and will remain the easy target for opposition candidates. As such no politician is willing to attack these hard problems.

This means a large part of the solution has to be down to us, the people. We may not have enough sway over popular opinion to fix political short-termism. However, we can set an example and create calls for action for other regular people. Giving time or money to organisations like One is something that I suspect many people would find surprisingly rewarding.

The main thing I can tell you is in your life considering that helping others is worthwhile may be the most important choice you ever have. Until you’ve tried putting yourself in the service of other you can’t know how much of an impact it also has on yourself.

I called them to see if they could upgrade my triple.fi 10s that are in for repair to triple.fi vi for my iPhone. I was told that unless I had bought them directly from Ultimate Ears this was not possible. Remember I bought them in the UK, so I wouldn’t want to buy them from their site to be shipped to the UK only to have to pay import tax. That would be silly.

The reason she gave was that she didn’t want to become “an iPhone wire supplier”. Since the wires only fit their earphones effectively the message is that people should buy the new models. Given that UE is a premium brand that sell high-end earphones I think this is a very poor attitude. I bought my earphones based on a recommendation of a friend on the quality of the customer service. Apparently it’s not as good as he thought.

It’s sad that I feel I have to write posts like this because their earphones are awesome.

In August it seems Logitech bought Ultimate Ears, which isn’t a bad thing in my mind. I’m sure a larger company will happily see them through the financial crisis. What does bother me though is that they have quietly reduced the lengths of all the warranties.

Right now my Triple.fis are with UE to be fixed. When trying to get a foam tip off the casing catches snapped. No problem, send them back, get a replacement pair. This is one of the reason I was willing to shell out the not inconsiderable money they cost. They came with a recommendation from a friend that UE were fantastic at dealing with customers. Mine have a 2 year warranty.

When I looked at the web site this week to see if they were going to support a model with a mic for my iPhone (they now have the triple.fi 10v, not that they will sell me the mic wire separately) I noticed that all the warranties are now 1 years only. That includes the custom moulded monitors which I think used to have a life time warranty, or at least 2 years.

I find it astonishing that Logitech expects people to shell out $400 for triple.fi headphones and $800+ for customs with such a short time to be able to get them repaired.

To contrast this all Shure headphones from the $119 SE110s to the $499 SE530 come with a 2 year warranty. I really hope Logitech renege and sort this out. I have been considering getting some customs from UE. I think I’m going to continue to consider for a while longer now.

Now that I’m here I’m sure this blog is going to get a lot more love and things settle down into some normality.

What I think is particularly interesting is that neither of these things are products or applications in themselves. Neither of them tries to control what you do with your data and in fact they will happily let you to use the information anywhere on the web that supports it.

I think Yahoo is actually creating an interesting market here. I don’t think I’m going out on a limb to say Yahoo is a brand perceived as safe and family friendly. By providing tools to let average people safeguard and manage important parts of their identity Yahoo is creating a new trend in middleware.

There has been some discussion recently about once you put something online how hard it is to manage thereafter. Conceptually Yahoo are positioning to help become your identity provider for the Web. Pick a brand you trust and let them act as a middleman between you and everyone else. Sites can put data in and sites can take data out but only if your middleman lets them.

Many people who support Open ID have stated an aim like this. Open ID allows SSO but it can also facilitate “attribute exchange”. This is where the Open ID provider passes the relying party¹ a number pieces of information (attributes) about the user logging in, assuming they say it’s ok. Right now Yahoo’s Open ID provider service allows users to pick a number of IDs they can use, from their Yahoo username, their Flickr username, to a random anonymous one. There is nothing that would stop Yahoo allowing you to associate a unique profile which each of these users. There is already a certain amount of evidence to show that the youth of today already do this kind of segmenting by hand and manage multiple online profiles.

I’d be interested in seeing what techniques can be applied to this information management. If you’ve ever seen the Facebook application TOS they are pretty harpdcore. You are allowed to store virtually nothing about the user in your own database. This is because Facebook are aware of the simple truth that once you share information you can’t unshare it. Look at the music industry, the properties of bits are not the same as those of physical objects. As such the only real protection you can offer the user is legal.

That said, obviously most people are happy to share information with many sites they use and let them store it. I’d like to see a much better way to represent the TOS so that a user could effectively review it before they share information. This a topic I discussed, yet again, at Leeds Barcamp. I want to see terms of service use a number of creative commons style attributes. Any additional terms they required would then be easy to identify and read. If you were using Open ID to sign in, it would be easy to define what you were happy to accept from a site and what you weren’t. Your Open ID provider could then easily flag any discrepancies to you before you login/signup.

Despite all of this I am not suggesting to say that Yahoo should own this potential market. However I think they are being extremely progressive in it. I’d love to see providers competing for consumer’s love. And, of course, since it’s all about being Open it’s not like anyone would stop you swapping providers. Not at least if they were sensible. I read a quote by a Sun exec (that I can’t seem to find) about making it easy for customers to leave, because they are much more likely to stay if they come back.

¹The site that lets you login with Open ID

Mitch is a great person to bounce stuff off, especially if it has some relevance to innovation. We had some great brainstorming about what is useful or necessary for a vibrant startup community. We really like the idea of collaboration spaces, and there are a number of places where you can rent a desk. What I dislike about such place is it’s still office space rental, even on a micro-economic scale. It’s good that freelancers can get out of their houses because you can go a little mad never seeing anyone during the day.

Mitch was telling me about his club the Institute of Directors which provides some desk space for its members. He pays a yearly fee to be a member and one of the perks is the space in central London to work from. I really like this idea, almost treating a collaboration space like a gym. It would be easy enough to have an online status of the amount of empty desks available at every location.

This idea in itself is pretty cool, but I still don’t think it’s enough to begin to provide that environment for collaboration where startups are citizen number one. As cliché as it is I still think that a cyber café is essential. Not everyone can base themselves in temporary desk space, and startups need to meet corporate shills (like me) as much as we need to meet them. Startups can learn a lot from the deep technology understand a lot of people working in corporations have, in return startups often have a firmer grasp of innovation and cultural hygiene.

Now I am of course just gassing right now, I have no idea if this is a viable business, but I think it certainly is something government should look at funding. The more collaboration space that encourage new and existing business to talk to each other the more vibrant our communities will become.

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