We have been asked many times in the last couple of months if Orb is going to release our smart phone applications: OrbLive and OrbController on Windows 7 Mobile.   We would love to be able to do that but unfortunately, Microsoft’s SDK for Windows 7 Mobile does not offer the network features that are required for our applications.  Specifically, Microsoft does not expose the network sockets and we need access at that level.   You might be thinking that Orb requires some unusual deep level of integration, but for perspective, every other smart phone OS offers support for a socket API.  iOS, Android, but also WebOS, RIM and even Symbian ( perhaps Nokia should be rethinking their switch to Windows?, but more on that in a future blog).

Microsoft, what are you thinking?  You are coming from way behind in this market – an also-ran at best.  Why aren’t you going the extra mile to put your best foot forward?  It isn’t like your mobile OS is first generation, or that you are a start up lacking sufficient resources.  Well, although there is no official statement about this from Microsoft, here is what you find from them in the developer forums.

“We are well aware that Sockets are a big want. As a reminder, this release is not targeted to business users so printing is also not a priority. I absolutely agree Sockets are a must eventually, but they are not exposed for this release.

While I understand you frustration that this decision has not been explained to your satisfaction, the fact is that sockets are not supported this release which should be all the information you need to to make development decisions for your plans on this platform”

That kind of response just makes you feel warm and fuzzy all over.  Nice partner feeling.  Just the attitude that someone desperately behind in the market should be projecting, don’t you think?   And what is all of this bs about business applications?   The network sockets are a critical piece to many serious consumer apps that have been available for a couple of years on Apple and Android.

So, if you want to see Orb apps on Windows 7 Mobile, your job is to bash away at Microsoft to try to get them to wake up and put some priority on this and at least get a delivery date.

Answer:  c)

When Hulu was originally announced, all the technology pundits scoffed.  They said that it was doomed from the start.  We had all seen this movie before.  The success of YouTube and its many brethren had irritated the big content companies. They didn’t think that young upstarts should be able to make fast inroads into their oligopoly.  They needed to do something about this.   They were big and powerful.  Better yet – strength in numbers – they would band together into an always unwieldy consortium to fend off the fast moving newbies.  Please!  This will never work.  If the entire effort isn’t still born, they will do a design by committee that will take forever and in the end will be stupid and boring.

To everyone’s surprise, it didn’t turn out that way.  They hired a great leader, who built a great team.   The owners gave them almost complete freedom.  And guess what?  They produced a great service.  Wow!  How did this happen?

The key was that at the outset the company and the team was given very wide latitude to do what it wanted.   Why?  Because in the early days the owners didn’t think that there was anything serious at stake economically.  The owners had one mission.  They wanted to blunt the inroads of YouTube and the like in delivering premium video content and becoming the defacto source for their content on the web.  It wasn’t about money.  It was about bragging rights.  And the team created just what the doctor ordered – bold, exciting and quickly the mind and market share leader.

But the times, they are a-changin’.  Slowly but surely the owners are re-making the company in their own image.  This is the danger when any new enterprise is wholly owned by the gatekeepers and power holders of the last generation.  Everything is fine as long as the golden goose and business as usual isn’t threatened.  But whenever the new company wants to do something that doesn’t align with their current interests, it will get suffocated, reined in, have its balls cut off.   Revolutions aren’t sponsored and sustained by the powers that be.  The bold, exciting stuff won’t be allowed to overthrow the status quo.

Today streaming of premium content over the internet into the home is becoming mainstream, thanks to Netflix, iTunes, Hulu and Amazon.  It isn’t just bragging rights among the geeks.  This is becoming a real part of the media ecosystem.  The economic stakes are getting higher.  And that means that the big company owners need to exert more control about policies and directions in this new market segment.   The bold and exciting era is almost over.   We are starting to get what everyone expected – something less and less inspiring designed by a committee of prickly content companies and worse, a cable company.

Look at the problematic recent history.

First a few of the content companies decided to pull some of their content because they thought that they could make more money and get more buzz delivering it directly from their own sites.  Next the content owners each started doing their own deals instead of working together.  Each piece of content came with its own set of rules. Some of the content could go on computers, some on smart phones and pads, some streamed to the TV.   It is a patchwork of exceptions that is confusing, confounding and frustrating to the consumer.  And again the stakes were getting higher.  The content guys and especially the cable guys didn’t like the content going everywhere. They didn’t think that they were getting enough of a return from the ads on Hulu.  They forced a subscription model – Hulu Plus – on the company.  But Hulu Plus is weird.  Not only does it cost money, but it has ads and it should have been named Hulu Minus because it has less content than Hulu  — huh?

Now step back for a moment.  Forget the fact that the original Hulu was a really cool web service – a refreshing surprise.  What if the consortium of content companies announced the current Hulu today —  a subscription service providing limited amounts of cable shows online and forcing you to watch ads?  Essentially, they have built a mini-cable company on line, but it is worse because it is a hodge podge of content with holes and exceptions that seem to make no sense.  How exciting would this announcement be?  The answer is that everyone would say, “This is stupid.  We knew these big content and cable guys would create a disaster.”  So we are ending up exactly where everyone thought we would.  It took three years because in the early days the owners actually didn’t believe that this “internet delivery to computers” had legs. Now that it does, they are killing their own creation.  Things are turning out the way everyone expected.

If you want real change, you need revolutionaries, not mercenaries of the powers that be.