He described a way of filming sport in which the crowd collaborates on filming the event. I imagined hundreds of good quality, wireless devices in the crowd, sending the stream through an aggregator (possibly human, possibly not) that put the whole experience together into something that made sense.

The exciting thing was, the future was (crudely) already present. At that moment I was streaming the event live to 30 people who could not make it in person. I was also chatting with that group of people in the Tangler powered Chaser space that Pollenizer manages. I arrived at the event a bit late so I had a bad seat for the picture, but Stilgherrian was near the front and I was able to use uStream’s co-host feature to aggregate his stream with mine. So we had 2 cameras collaborating on the event. The future was present.

It was… salient.

Here is a recorded verison of my stream for the archive. Unfortunately it did not record the other stream.

Henry (Aged 6): Dad, I want to watch that one!
Dad: Well we need to go and watch that at the movies son.
Henry: Why can’t we just print one off?’

I’ll leave you to make your own predictions on how future generations will value and interact with media.

This debate is often masked in propaganda (from both sides) and I hoping that tonight’s show will bring some perspective. Shall we have an ‘undebate’?

Join me here tonight at 7.30pm.

Here’s the press release.

INSIGHT: MiTunes
Tuesday June 3
7.30pm

On tonight’s Insight, Jenny Brockie mediates a fascinating debate about music downloading and how the music industry will survive the digital age.

With so much music free online, thousands of Australians are downloading their favourite tracks without handing over a cent. Some call it stealing, others call it file sharing. Whatever your moral stance, the music industry has changed forever. So how are songwriters and artists making a living?

Insight tackles the issue head on , bringing together musicians, songwriters and the teenagers who download their music without paying. The Audreys, Tim Levinson from the Herd, Mahalia Barnes and Jenny Morris come face to face with fans and explain the impact of downloading on their careers.

Two teenagers admit to having over 2,000 illegally downloaded songs in their computer library. To which hip hop artist Phrase replies,

“One day I would like to buy a house and have a wife and have a kid but that’s not possible if I keep just giving to you guys all the time. I can’t just keep giving you music” .

Mikey Green, from The Audreys adds;

“I guess they’re not making that connection with what they’ve done which is stealing because it’s just a click of a mouse button. When we were younger if we wanted to steal a record we would have to walk into a shop with a big trench coat, put the wax under your jacket and run very fast.”

But most artists are aware the Internet is a fantastic promotional tool and remain in two minds about the issue. Mahalia Barnes adds,

” It really works to the advantage of an artist as everyone said, by spreading your music and getting it out there.”

Stephen Peach, head of ARIA, goes head to head with the Internet Industry Association’s Peter Coroneos over whether or not Internet services should play a role in solving the piracy issue. Says Peach,

“There are probably a billion songs a year just in Australia that are illegally downloaded. People are stealing from artists and song writers as well as labels and retailers.”

Scot Morris, from APRA, joins the debate from Europe where developments have seen ISPs and the music industry come together.

And Kevin Bermeister, formerly with the infamous pirate network Kazaa, reveals his new plan aimed at redirecting Internet users from illegal to legal music sites.

No one who loves music can afford to miss this debate.

Insight host Jenny Brockie is available for interviews. Contact Ksana Natalenko on 02 9430 3784, 0413 563 629 or ksana.natalenko@sbs.com.au

Last week, Amir Suissa of Linqia sent me the following questions (published with permission):

What is the core question that we use to project against, to determine if we develop a specific product/feature or not?

What is the user looking for?

If [insert] is our core, how does that manifest to the user?

What is your vision of the path going forward to deliver a coherent user experience on [product] in terms of product priorities, timing, resources allocation (internal/external)?

What is your vision for path to create [company] as a sustainable company, taking in to account financing, product, engineering, business model, time frame (window of opportunity/ investors cash to run the company till proof of concept and revenue generation)?

Can you answer these questions in the context of your company? It took me 2 days to get to my own answers for Linqia. I wonder if Jerry Yang can answer them?

The message: focus on people, not on technology.

Thanks for sharing the link Mike.

Thanks to everyone that attended the talk in the room, and also via The Chaser, for encouraging me to swear alot and providing great feedback.

Here is the latest deck on slideshare:

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Hells Kitchen Notes on Slides.

Here is the uStream recording from The Chaser. Its a bit hard to hear so probably not a great deal of use. Hopefully CeBit will release something better because it looked like everything was filmed professionally.

I will blog each slide in more detail in the weeks to come because I think the message is important.

In the meantime, I have had a few requests for links to the tools I mentioned in the talk. When we formed Pollenizer, we invested immediately in Confluence and Jira from Atlassian. Because we made that decision we have collected all internal IP as we go in the Confluence Wiki and tracked tasks across all projects and (globally distributed) teams using Jira. It was some of the best money we have spent. Everyone has access to the information they need and there is never a question of who owns a certain task. More on this in a later post.

Mick was a total star with his Focus or Fail talk. He juggled AND managed to smash a glass in the audience as well as grabbing our interest with some important lessons he has learned working with startups.

On a final note, it was my great pleasure to meet Jason Calacanis and Tyler Crowley from Mahalo. Frankly Jason’s reputation had preceeded him and (like a true Australian) I had him marked as a bit full of himself. Instead, he came into Sydney like a whirlwind, inspired everyone (I actually think he did meet EVERYONE in the whole city) and left, leaving us whinging a little less and getting down to business as a community of awesome startups ready to take on the world. He encouraged us to just to get on with it!

Hell’s Kitchen: Technology and Business in Start-ups

You’ve just binned your prototype, brought on a crew of five, had your first server melt down or hired a sales guy and he sold something you don’t have. Welcome to the hellish (and common) world of mid-stage-start-ups. Get ready to deal with it. Phil will present some delicious recipes from start-ups that have already burned in Hells Kitchen.

I’ve had some Twitter feedback that the ‘Hell’ theme could be a little strong. Perhaps. But it is hard in a start-up. Under the hype where we grapple to make money and keep our infant websites humming it can be… well… hell.

Here’s the presentation:

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As a developer, the Facebook platform gives me a terrific opportunity to attract many users virally in a way that is not possible on my own domain. But am I building a business or just working for Facebook for free? Word Ads can be as low as $0.05 CPA (thanks @shalunov) and users are already at their destination (rather than on a search results page) so are not inclined to click away via an ad.

At the launch of the MySpace Developer Platform Launch in Sydney this week (nicely organised by Randal and streamed by Pollenizer) Markus Weichselbaum, the CEO of TheBroth , was asked: “What’s My Stripper Name - How did you monetise that?” 17 mins into this video of the event:

“It’s monetised by a product by IAC. IAC is a very large company called Ask.com and they have a whole division called FunWebProducts. This is a browser based toolbar that allows you to glitterise stuff, send smileys and in return, for them, basically installs a search box in your browser which will then, for them, show sponsored results. So if you do install the toolbar, and you use the search, they make money and in order for you to do that they offer you the extra stuff so you can glitterise things.”

Hmm. Sounds like an adware strategy to me. No different to the kind of business Kazaa found itself in when the value of ads in a popular social destination site were driven to nothing. I couldn’t actually find the toolbar download in What’s My Stripper Name? but did find it on TheBroth’s ClicktoGlitter. The toolbar is Webfetti. The terms of use show that it is classic adware that puts a large amount of junk on your machine to maximise revenue generation even when you are not using the app that installed it.

2. Features of the MyWebSearch Toolbar

By downloading the MyWebSearch toolbar, you will be installing a toolbar in your Internet browser (and any supported email functions and instant messenger functions) with the following features:

SEARCH BOX: This is a search box located within the toolbar that will help you search the Internet with search results from Ask.com.

SEARCH ASSISTANT: This provides relevant links and results when you make a search request in your browser address bar or if your browser address (DNS) request is invalid, misspelled or incorrectly formatted.

WEBFETTI: This feature enables you to customize a social networking profile page with layouts, graphics, custom cursors, music and video.

ZWINKY: This feature allows you to create and modify avatar characters, and use them in a social networking environment. If you use Windows XP, the ZWINKY feature will also automatically provide you with an icon that will appear in your Windows XP system tray at the bottom right of your desktop. Use of the Zwinky feature is subject to separate terms of use at http://info.zwinky.com/zwinkyinfo/tos.jhtml.

SMILEY CENTRAL: This allows you to insert smiley face emoticons and other graphics into your web-mail, Outlook, Outlook Express and instant messages.

POPULAR SCREENSAVERS: This provides you with photos and images that can be added to the user’s screensaver or PC desktop wallpaper. Also includes the ability to add personal digital photos.

MY FUN CARDS: This provides access to free electronic greeting cards that you can personalize on the Web and send to any email address.

CURSOR MANIA: Free computer mouse cursors that allow the user to change the look of his/her default cursor to something more fun and expressive.

FUN BUDDY ICONS: Free icons that can be added to an instant messenger client.

HISTORY SWATTER: This allows you to delete easily computer cookies, URL history, temporary cache, and other stored browser files.

POP SWATTER: Free tool that swats pop-up ads before they appear. Includes a “Safe List” to allow pop-ups from user-specified web pages.

SMOTOS: This enables you to post, upload, share, download and store images, and allows you to send such images to email addresses of your choice.

MY INFO: This provides one-click access to news, sports, weather, finances, horoscope, movie listings, lottery results and more, which appear in a thin window to the immediate left of your main browser window.

MY MAIL NOTIFIER: This allows you to use animated characters to alert you to new web mail messages.

MY MAIL SIGNATURE: This allows you to create signature designs to place in the footer of outgoing email messages.

MY MAIL STAMP: This allows you to insert digital stamp designs into outgoing emails.

MY MAIL STATIONERY: This provides you with background images, colors and themes to enhance the look of outgoing email messages.

Is this the destiny of Facebook applications?

Returning to the MySpace launch, Mick relayed a question from Richard McMannus at ReadWriteWeb: “Is Hypertargeting hyperhype? (19:30 on the video). Markus answered:

“I don’t think so. I’ll be very straight… Currently Facebook gives you absolutely nothing to help you monetise.  But, with MySpace and Hypertargeting, even if its just 10% as good as it sounds, it will be a substantial help for developers to monetise.”

Who can say whether Hypertargeting will work, but I think that MySpace are correctly thinking about the ecosystem in adding it. Without it, developers fail to make money, so they trick people into inviting their friends, create booster apps that have no value other than to get you to install another app, cover the screen in a cacophony of  ads and then install adware on your PC, then…  the users leave.

Am I being too simplistic?  Does anyone have any great examples of Facebook applications making money and retaining users? I’d love to hear about those if you do.