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Why? Businesses come and go all the time. Most startups fail. It has always been this way. The only difference is that many more dumb startups got funding (and huge PR) in 1999-2000, and now more of them are toast now.

Here in SF everyone wants to dump on the dot-coms, because they brought too many of the "wrong" (smart, educated, young) people into a city that the locals think is exclusively theirs. Certainly many of the stupid startups were a waste of time, money, and office space. But you have to put up with a lot of failures to get the diamonds in the rough.

So while I think it's fun to make fun of the bad ideas, we shouldn't forget the good stuff. Think of the auto industry: 100s (maybe 1000s) of companies have failed between the invention of the auto and today, but autos got vastly more reliable by 1950 than they were in the 1920s - in no small part because of this innovation.

Tech is no different.

I think IT is a robotic transportation device -- but not for people. For a cost of less than $2000, it would be very difficult to make a product that can be assembled in 10 minutes and is also safe, clean, and competitive with a car. Many of the trips that people make are to pick-up and deliver THINGS that could instead be handled by a small automated robotic vehicle, perhaps even one that flys. IT wouldn't need to accommodate hundreds of pounds or the safety requirements of people. This also fits with all of the details mentioned in the article about problems with existing regulations, and retrofitting cities, companies and campuses for IT. IT could bring instant gratification to e-commerce and would transform or replace a million things like Mail, UPS, Fedex, pizza/food delivery, and video rental. Think Kozmo for everything and more. Hordes of robots zipping around the streets, sidewalks, or even the sky would certainly be revolutionary!

I could get cynical about MPAA delving into the motion picture industry, but I won't. Fact of the matter is that the movie industry needs to change even more radically then the music industry. Theatres (at least to my understanding) do not generally turn a profit - especially on movies that don't attract large crowds. And for movies that do attract large crowds (E.g. X-Men) the theatre is unable to turn a profit due to licensing and fees imposed. Movies are a growing industry in the making part, but the actual showing of them has become so terribly expensive and overrated that most people do not want to go to see one - they will just kozmo it =).

Being that as it is I imagine that we will see AppleSoup be a completely different method of being able to buy a movie. Something like pay 20 dollars for a theatre ticket, and get the ability to download the movie - or get the DVD for an extra 3 bucks. This would piss off video rental stores, but remember they haven't been turning a profit lately either.

The eventual dream (as I see it for AppleSoup) is for movies to become more pervasive such as what Napster did for the music industry. Regardless of if the music industry will accept it. Napster has created millions of loyal music fans most of whom I guarentee buy more CD's now then they did prior.

What it comes down to is this, old media is no longer profitable, and entire industries would rather not kill the cultural significance that a movie theatre generates. And I doubt that MPAA wants to go out completely - so who knows it could work.(technical impossibilities aside)

Guess who? :-)

The only good category is the Services category where Epinions and Kozmo fight it out for the most revolutionary sites on the web this year.

Does slashdot deserve a webby? Is it revolutionary in design or concept? I don't think so! Personally, I wrote-in a vote for PayYoBillz in the Communities category! =) It may not deserve it, but do any of the others? Maybe some write-ins for Usenet will have it win. ^_^

- Jeremy Fuller

• Ethernet run through the walls for the network
• Entertainment computer in living room for:
  • Playing DVD's
  • Playing CD's
  • Playing MP3's (see below)
  • Streaming Video
  • Listen to KFOG over the net
  • Look up movies/actors/etc in the IMDB
  • Check out movies and music at The Listology
  • Rent videos from Kozmo
• WebCams in my Dad's bedroom so I can keep an eye on him while working (and kids, eventually)
• Kitchen Computer for:
  • Looking up recipes at SOAR
  • Ordering groceries from WebVan
  • Listening to music while I cook (see above)
  • Maybe hooking up my BarCode reader for easier ordering
  • Be ready for the controllable microwave oven, coffee pot, etc.
• Bedroom computer (possibly an iMac?) to:
  • Do all the stuff that the living room machine does
  • Read Slashdot in bed
  • "etc" (nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more...)
• My work computers and my wife's
• The internet gateway machine (I wish I could afford a FreeGate box!)
• The File Server with big hard drive to share files and hold 400 CD's worth of MP3's (for instant access anywhere in the house)
• Wireless link to my Land Rover to upload stories, pics, etc. from the road

Okay, so it's not that high-tech, but some of the technologies that make it possible for someone with no time to figure out include:

• IP Forwarding
• Samba
• NetATalk (eventually)
• The overall elegance of ethernet
• A lot of very helpful friends

All I need now are simple instructions for setting up a webcam under Linux (and a source of cheap webcams), to get NetATalk up and running (My wife's a school teacher, and has mac's at home to match the ones at school) and to find something that will let a Linux box see a directory on another system as if it were one of its one (like mapping a network drive with Windows/Samba.)

This is fun stuff!