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MS Youth-Culture App Gets Gushy Advance Reviews
geo writes "Newsweek first reported this new Microsoft beta, threedegrees. The surprise is, Steven Levy, well-known fan of the Macintosh (and unfan of Microsoft) wrote something almost entirely positive. So did CNET news.com.com.com.com.com. Is it possible that something good is coming out of Redmond?"
that it justifies this: "To use threedegrees, prospective testers must be running Windows XP with Service Pack 1, the new peer-to-peer update and MSN Messenger 5 installed on their computer."
No thanks.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
has been trying to develop products aimed at the "Net generation," or young people currently between the ages of about 13 and 24.
With software that can do long distance meetings, and share files and photos, it would be a great business tool for brainstorming sessions, project planning, etc. It would also be great for distance learning applications and study groups. More and more colleges are doing Internet based classes these days, especially in doctoral programs. Too bad They didn't have those in my day..
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
The most ambitious feature is called musicmix, an online equivalent of a pajama party where people take turns playing deejay. Each group member contributes favorite tunes into a shared playlist, displayed on a dashboard with a customized "skin," and everyone listens together. A click from any participant can choose a new song. Then everyone chats about the tunes.
Does this mean that everyone must already have the tunes licenced on their computer? The following quote suggests otherwise:
Interestingly, men and women use this feature differently: guys will see it as a contest--who's brought the coolest tunes?
Sounds a bit like P2P on a tiny scale to me. I wonder how this fits in with Microsoft's DRM schemes...
"Is it possible that something good is coming out of Redmond?"
Uh. I know that MS bashing is second nature here and all...
However I really enjoy using XP. I enjoy using my Intellimouse Explorer. I enjoy several Microsoft games.
I appreciate having people out there who watch every step MS makes. However I think it's taking it a bit far to imply that MS NEVER does anything right.
Just RTFA and I cringed when I saw the bit about the instant sharing of files and images to the entire group. Crap like this is going to play havoc with business networks.
Also it seems to me that MS is getting a little confused, aren't they meant to be sucking up to the RIAA? If so whats with the music sharing?
Take a look at Avril or at Blink 42. These are not people from a generation who wants to adhere to society. Consider the following quote from the article:
;)
>>>
After much negotiation, the labels OK'd musicmix, once Microsoft agreed to somewhat hobble its features. (Playlists have a maximum of 60 tunes, and the songs won't play unless the original owner is participating.)
This is not how it goes. While this stuff might be interesting for the 8-12 year olds, beyond that they will be savy enough to figure out how to do things on their own.
MS while the intention is good is also misdirected. They want to get AOL IM client back. Last I remember the teens do not seem to use AOL since, well, its, for old geezers.... You know those that cannot use a computer
If MS were to stop worrying about the legal implications and stopped looking over their shoulder then maybe this 3degrees will be popular....
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
...see, previously, P2P was controlled by those meddling kids. But if MS can become the maker of the biggest, coolest, easiest to use P2P sharing system... and wait, aren't they also trying to become the makers of the biggest DRM system? Could there be some synergy between those two things??
It... it's too horrible to think about... yet...
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Crappy bands like Avril and Blink ARE teen society, right now those horrible pop-punkish bands are terribly 'in'
Banaaaana!
Actually I just realized they might be "small webcasters" or internet rados, and they might have to conform to the rules recently established...
In the end what's the difference between shoutcasting to 10 friends or threedegreeing to 10 friends?
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
[ With deepest apologies to Mark Knofler and Dire Straits ]
David Mohring - Original authorNote: dancing like a chimpanzee - see http://www.google.com/search?q=ballmer+monkeyboy+m peg
If you have not already listened to, or read Lessig's speech on free culture. I urge you to do so ASAP. The flash presentation brings home just how much we, as a society in general, have to lose. http://www.eff.org/IP/freeculture/
When someone nitpicks to this minute level it makes me concerned for you.
We all know charlie ended up getting the factory so why do you have to be a wise ass and....jesus just get a life or if not end yours.
I guess this means another 10 projects on sourceforge, all in planning stage.
Core to threedegrees is the group instant messaging
Um, that's called a chat room, and it's been done. Way to build a product based on a new feature.
Other stuff sound kinda interesting, but hardly revolutionary.
Why the imposed limits, anyway? Only 10 user in a group? Only 60 songs?
How is this different from using a Gaim/Shoutcast combo?
Software Wars
While I think that three degrees seems in theory like a community building tool, what worries me is the limit to 10 participants in a "posse" will create in groups.
Unless you can join multiple "posses," and what I read doesn't seem to suggest it, your going to have groups of ten or less which get to decide who can join.
In MSNM there is not set limit to the number of people you can chat with, and you could make one on one connections. Before you could ignore a person, now you can exclude them. And if it's intended to be for 13 to 14 year olds, I think social cliques are inevitable. This fails to mention those who can't participate fully in the program, which seems to require broadband for what I personally view as the most interesting aspect, the ability to listen to shared music.
I'm not bashing on Redmond on this. I honestly think that the basic idea of the program is meritorious, but by limiting users to ten per group, and (and I could be wrong) users to one group, the collaborative aspects are blunted.
Gryftir
http://www.santacruzbynight.com/index.shtml Santa Cruz By Night Vampire Larp
but it's still ristricted.
1) you need to have licenses (maybe via media player DRM modules?)
2) you can't play more than 60 songs on the playlist
3) others can't play your songs if you are offline.
pretty stringent - but better than what RIAA have been dealing out.
What better to explain the word "clout?"
btw, Ars Technica has a small writeup on this too - so check there for more geeky-perspective.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Is it just me...
Or is this just IRC with a pretty GUI, integrated shoutcast and a channel limit of 10?
Need to get away?
Adirondack Vacations
"Is it possible that something good is coming out of Redmond?"
Is it possible that a Slashdot editor could take submissions with at least some degree of subjectivity? Whether threedegrees is good or not, this sort of opinion in the post itself surely taints the comments.
Free iPods - now in the UK!
Really for a minute i thought i was going to be reading about something that was actually interesting. But no, its just another hyped up nothing. Im sure you could modify jabber to do the same useless things as this. When they talked about "not developing technology first" they wernt kidding.. theres really not much technology involved in allowing someone to send an image by draging it onto an icon, using an existing protocol/library. The music feature is the only slightly interesting thing but it restricts what you can do so its useless to me. Usually me and my friends use the technologically inferior method of typing the name of the song and getting the other person to download it. Or, ampache.org created a simple (100KB) way of sharing playlists, and its platform independent.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Wait, you mean Microsoft reinvented... IRC?!
- cliquey little channels? check.
- play music in the background? check.
- emoticons? check.
- swap files? check.
- chat and be online all the time? check.
Makes me wonder if perhaps MS is glad to have seen the recent attacks on DalNET - now they can say 'sign up for threedegrees, we never get attacked because we are too cool' or some such marketspeak.By the way, all of the items in the checklist have both positive and negative implications.
Notes: Background Music on IRC? Yep - on the more social/chatty channels, I've seen all kinds of CTCP or in channel requests that look like "please play this music, and if you don't have it, fetch it from me via DCC" - I'm assuming that some clients have automated support for this, and they word the request such that you can still do it manually if you really want (clue for commercial software vendors that think you need a new protocol for every new feature - it's called interoperability and backwards compatibility)
Emoticons? But winks are animated! Um... yeah, so? Perhaps somebody doesn't quite understand yet - slang originates from exclusivity of communication, not 'ooo, shiney!'. Because you can make up ASCII emoticons on the fly, just as you can with slang, I actually think that the ASCII version is a better tool for the communication purpose. Maybe I'm giving the youth of today too much credit, but I don't really think they are willing to accept the limitation to language fluidity. So some will use winks, and some will use ASCII emoticons within the contect. Of course, I'm not sure how much the 'new great thing' factor will play into this.
One, where's the market? I mean rilly?
Two, this is supposed to make cash for MS how?
news.com.com he say:
Well the first thing is, does this market even exist? You see such people using AIM, ICQ etc all the time. This software is junk. Do the 'Net-Gen' (sic) care? No. They have other things to do than learn any more than the most trivial UI. As for heavy teenage net users, what about this, from the other article: What's with the arbitrary limitation? My kid sister's 'posse' (blech) is easily twice that big. Sounds like a mess. What are you supposed to call your group? 'J. Sixpack's buddies'? It doesn't work - that's like having gang leaders in the playground. That's not how kids do instant messaging. Is it? Drag-n-drop ('push') filesharing is a nice idea, but the kids already know about Kazaa, especially the heavy users. For anyone with enough bandwidth to stream nice audio to 10 buddies, they're way better off getting redistributable files from real P2P and letting friends/randoms pull them back off at their leisure.Right, point two... well hello, profit model? Looks like this is just another MSNIM-a-like project to be rolled into the OS. I don't see this as making any legit cash for Microsoft - it's not something the kids will pay for (and it's not corporate P2P). Can we say 'bundling'?
3 degrees might be great, especially if it has better than the usual godawful Microsoft UI. I suppose I shouldn't knock it till I've tried it (or a Linux clone...). And surely MS have got some market research to go on. But while making money out of kids is tricky (e.g. no-one likes adware), MS's strategy is obviously just to bundle, embrace and extend. And that rankles.
Is it possible that something good is coming out of Redmond?
From the article:
There's your answer, Timothy.Regardless of who she works for, I applaud her drive and use of technology. Three Degrees seems like fun, er, cool, software. Her research into the project was intriguiging.
If this were through some startup, more people would think it was cool, but she'd be plagued with a lack of resource and substantiation. Now, she has the flipside of all that with Redmond behind her.
I hope it succeeds though my deepest desire would be for it to be platform independant.
People wonder why the state of commercial software is so sad -- I think that this article sums it up.
The fact that one of the largest, if not the largest, commercial software companies needs to be told that "the needs and attitudes of the customers should determine what software Microsoft should produce" denotes a total lack of clue on the whole issue of software production.
Software exists to automate or otherwise make better THE THINGS THAT PEOPLE DO. Thus, these things should be what drive the software. Hence the thrust toward usability, contextual design, the user stories of XP, etc.
I'm in agreement with z_gringo, but in a sorta oblique way.
The description of the software indicates that threedegrees is a P2P app with a desktop interface. Groups are represented by icons that live on your desktop. Dragging files onto an icon causes members of that group receive copies of those files. This is slick.
Imagine having several groups--Thursday night bowling tourney, monthly staff colloquim, ad hoc governance committee, family, extended family, in-laws, etc.--all of whom could receive some set or subset of different files you choose. You send the files and then chat about what you've received. This is a low-fi version of virtual reality conferencing.
Popular chat clients do have a feature like this, but one of the most popular--AOL Insant Messenger--requires you to invite people 1 by 1. Seems to me threedegress admirably leverages P2P communications technology by means of a GUI.
I am anti-Microsoft as they come: their history makes me so. But threedegrees seems to be a significant application of a GUI to P2P technology. I also think the idea of musicmix is *very* interesting, given that it seems to preserve fair use without infringing on copyright (original owner must be online in order for threedegreed files to be heard).
I'll withhold final judgement until I can test a threedegree client on my Mac. Until then, threedegrees sounds pretty cool, so I'm game. (ugly EULAs and software hiccups notwithstanding)
blog
We already have something similar to this in Sweden, called Lunarstorm. It's got picture uploads, friendfinders, guestbooks, discussion forums, interaction via SMS and mobile phones, voting, voice messages - you name it. It's a very feature-complete site and it's got an incredibly high market penetration among the youth of Sweden and I don't think I'd be exaggerating if I say that at least 70% of Swedish teens have a Lunarstorm account. It's a "community" on the outside, but Lunarstorm is used almost solely for meeting chicks (or guys, depending on gender/preference :)). Recently they've recently adopted a pay model where you can pay a small sum each month to get access to the 'plus' features. They're doing pretty well.
:)
So what am I getting at? Well, Sweden's a pretty small country, but the sheer momentum of teenagers registered on Lunarstorm creates a singularity that draws everyone in. I wouldn't be surprised if their market penetration among teens reaches 90% in a year or two, if they're not already there. If all your friends have Lunar accounts, you're going to get one, too. If Microsoft can gather the critical mass of teenagers, and deploy something like this in the ol' US of A, it could be massive. They'd get an instant reputation boost among younger people, a chance to market stuff to the teens (Lunarstorm has many insidious ways of doing this), a way of sneaking new software on people (Microsoft DRM mp3's are even in the article!) and, if they've got the balls, a new source of income provided they adopt some sort of pay model. Could be a smart move! Or, it could flop, of course. I'm no genie
I'll dare state this, however: it's all about the critical mass. If Microsoft are clever, they'll subtly make it about the boy-girl interaction. Powerful stuff, that!
I can see it now... a million gullible teens buying and installing Windows XP so they can test a beta. What an ingenius marketing plan.
The truth doesn't care what I think.
A group can have no more than ten members
Songs will be played from the participants' hard drive, rather than illegally swapped.
So, you're going to be streaming MP3s to ten people at once? The bandwidth requirements for that are going to narrow their market considerably. That would kill my 768k/128k ADSL, it would almost certainly kill a cable modems' outgoing bandwidth, and you could forget about dialup entirely.
So do they expect these "trendy teens" to also be fantastically rich and have their own personal T3 lines?
Ubi dubium, ibi libertas.
Only a myopic, narrow-minded fool would ask such a question. Microsoft has developed and released some excellent products that continue to kick the fanny of most "free" applications. If all Microsoft software is crap, why do "free" software people keep trying to clone Word and Excel?
Upon occasion, I've been known to rag on Microsoft for their business practices, security holes, and over-featured monstrosities. They ruined Visual Studio with .Net (it's now REALLY slow and clunky), and Microsoft is often paranoid and downright nasty in their tactics. Word, for all of its good features, is a bloated corpse of technological excess. So hey, I'm no Microsoft shill, and more of my systems run Linux than run Windows.
Yet for all their faults, Microsoft has accomplished a lot in the last two decades, producing some useful and powerful software. Denying that is simple bigotry, seasoned with jealousy.
All about me
What, was sixdegrees too much?
I'm right in the middle of the "Internet Generation", so I would expect this software that's targeted at me to appeal to me. It doesn't. Again, Microsoft shows its thorough incapacity to innovate (and I type this on my WinXP machine). Pretty much, they're saying that this threedegrees has three features: Chat, Winks, and Musicmix. The chat thing has already been done by n-1 different programs, (Trillian, AIM, MSIM, Yahoo!IM, etc.). All of these I find to be imperfect (tho' functional; I'm using AIM right now). I'd really like a messenger service that's tuned to fuse instant messaging and e-mail; that is, if I'm at my computer, I can communicate syncronously with a friend, but if I'm away, my friend can always leave a message. I don't see that happening with threedegrees. Winks? Winks? Are these animations supposed to excite me? Or insult me? 'nuff said. Musicmix? I don't really get that. From the looks of things, it's not well implemented. I could see a lot of fights breaking out over which song gets played when (at least, with folk like my friends). Will music actually get played, or will one person turn off another's music and play his own? So what would be a good product for the "Internet Generation?" I like messaging my friends. I can type a lot faster and more accurately than I can speak, and IMing allows me to carry on coherant conversations with half a dozen people simultaneously. Still, the messaging ought to be able to flex; good messaging should be able to allow for clear, effective communcation both synchronously and asynchronously. The Musicmix thing might be pretty neat, but it looks to be horribly implemented at the moment. I'd like to see some functions that allow moderation, and perhaps hosting privilges. I'd like to see something that can play games. Even board games like Chess, Checkers, Backgammon, or card games like Hearts, Rummy, Spades, and Spoons would be pretty cool. (Of course, original games would be welcome!) When I'm with my friends in real life, we normally wind up playing something; I'd like to do the same online. Do any 13-24 year olds think the threedegrees is cool? If so, speak up. I might just be odd.