Every month i see a new headline from the Firefox team about a new feature, tool, or platform they’re building. Some of them even look cool. The problem is I dont care. And honestly most other people don’t either.

The world is becoming 100% internet based. Apps, info, data, communication, its all online. What this means is that everything else is just foundation. Apple gets it. Google gets it. Firefox doesn’t.

The next version of OSX Snow Leopard has a few new features, but that’s not what it’s really about. Snow Leopard is all about being faster, smaller, and more stable. Apple literally is rewriting large chunks of the code just to radically increase speed.

Google is so preoccupied with performance they went out and built Chrome. And wow, is it fast. Google understands that in a world of always on information, winning is all about helping people get that information faster.

And yet Firefox, the scrappy open-source David that took on and beat Goliath (well former Golliath, sorry Microsoft) based on speed and performance, is now increasingly looking like the one that’s out of touch.

In the last month Firefox has crashed on me at least once a day. No doubt there may be a specific issue with Firefox and Mac (Im using the latest Macbook pro), but it seems to be much more wide spread than that. More importantly, compared to Chrome or even Safari, the browser is slow. Yes i know Firefox has made improvements, and will make more with FF 3.5. But the fact of the matter is Safari and Chrome are almost completely focussed on speed and stability - and that focus is starting to pay serious dividends.

For now I’ve literally had no choice but to switch to Safari (which btw is actually really nice - their developer tools are even surprisingly comparable to Firebug!). I hold out hope that Firefox will one day return to greatness. Right now though the third browser war is on, and so far Firefox’s cannons are pointed in the wrong direction.

Google Wave is the talk of the town today, and for good reason. It’s a radically smarter way of structuring personal information management and collaboration. But the most interesting part of the product might be that only Google could have built it. And I say this from first hand experience — because I tried.

Six years ago, I came up with an interesting idea: those threads in email should be shareable containers. They shouldn’t just group emails, they should group docs, live chats, photos, calendar items, etc, and each should be collaboratively shareable and editable in real time by everyone involved in the conversation. All stored, accessed, and edited in the web browser. Sound familiar?

I actually built an interactive flash prototype (slide show of it embedded below) and I spent a few months showing it around feeling out interest from investors. Unanimously, everyone thought it was a great idea and said they’d love to use the product.

But there was a problem. Actually several:

1. It’s a huge project: 2003 was pre-google docs, pre-gmail, pre-most web apps. Even today though, the size and scale of building ALL of these apps and integrating them in a web based system necessitated 100s of developers and likely $10s of millions of development dollars. Especially in 2003.
2. Chicken and the egg: What I designed was actually backwards compatible with normal email protocols and file system management. Still, to really use the value-added functionality everyone needed to be using the system. And given the huge infrastructure and raw numbers of different technologies that it would be replacing, the cost and scale of convincing millions to be the first jumpers was an enormous barrier.
3. Browser / technology limitations: In 2003 Ajax was barely possible in most browsers. Fast forward to 2009 and there are still major limitations in browsers that obstruct some key functionality needed for this type of application.
4. People don’t pay for email: Well businesses do, but the real point is that large Internet companies (Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft) give away web based email and collaboration products for free to most consumers. For companies with other substantive income streams that’s fine. But for a start-up, that’s a major barrier to large scale paid adoption, which would have been key for a project of this scale.

If you see where I’m going with this, each of the challenges above represented potentially game-stopping obstructions to building and successfully running a start-up business built around this product. But the beauty of Google circa 2009 is that they literally have built in solutions for each problem.

Google not only has the financial resources and might to build something on this scale, and give it away for free, but it also has the entire Google Apps code base to build it on. Of equal importance, Google has the clout and control over browser development to actually change the standards (which they intend to do with HTML5 to support the technologies needed to build this product).

Perhaps most important of all though, Google has the attention (and an existing user-base) of billions of people - enough that they might actually be able to pull off the greatest chicken-and-egg product problem that has ever existed.

One way or another though, I applaud them for taking this enormous and needed step towards a much smarter information management design. Despite the value of the product, and the resources behind them, the road ahead will not be easy. But if anyone can drive it, it’s them.

Last week, Nicholas Kristof wrote in the New York Times that when we go online, “each of us is our own editor, our own gatekeeper. We select the kind of news and opinions that we care most about.” This, apparently, is a bad thing, as it insulates us in our own “hermetically sealed political chambers.”

Brian Lowry of Variety got in the act two days later. Mr. Lowry also seems terrified that the news experience is becoming more personalized, and that people might actually get to choose what they want to read. He specifically called our site, Veritocracy, a “worrisome tool” that “limits online exposure,” creating “hermetically sealed thought-bubbles.” (Is it possible that “hermetically sealed” was the term of the week at big media’s weekend getaway?)

To be honest, I’m not sure either has actually used social media. Mr. Lowry, in particular, says that users of sites like Veri “never need see an article or link that challenges their existing opinions.” This is one criticism I never expected, given that we built Veritocracy to make it easier to find multiple perspectives on the topics you want to read about (from blogs, mainstream media, readers, etc). This is possible today only because there are so many unique and diverse perspectives in the blogosphere and social media.

To some extent, this feels like old media looking for a boogeyman, and not taking the time to learn about why these new technologies are so popular. The idea that mainstream media provides a noble, unbiased, universal truth, is simply wrong. If anything, sites like Veritocracy are making better information more accessible, and eliminating the inevitable biases that come from having a limited amount of human editors deciding what people should read.

This isn’t to bash mainstream media — it still has a tremendous amount of value, and I personally read the NY Times, WSJ, BusinessWeek, and, yes, Variety (among others). But it’s now just one form of consumption among many, and I think that scares people who a) work in that space, and b) don’t understand the other side.

Mr. Lowry never talked to me directly about what Veri does or how it works. Instead, he seems to have cherry-picked bits of information from an email that a friend of ours sent out to his own list the day we launched. That’s unfortunate, because as I’ve said, Veri’s goal is simply to help people get better information about the topics they care about. That, to me, is something we all should be rooting for.

More Perspectives: Is Social Media Trustworthy?

Mark Cuban thinks cable will continue to be the dominant platform for TV. He makes some compelling arguments, but he’s wrong on one account: Personalization. Cable’s one-to-many distribution technology makes it a very efficient way to distribute video, but it fails on personalization, and that is the Internet’s killer app for both consumers AND advertisers.

In a world where all the world’s video content is available on embeddable Hulu-like sites, really creative people and companies will create technologies that give us the convenience of TV with the personalization of the Internet. You might watch Joe’s Channel one night, Jane’s Channel the next, and CNBC’s during the day. More powerful systems will give you Pandora like stations. Choose a genre (comedy or sci-fi or action) and get a personalized stream of tv episodes and movies chosen specifically for you. The point is technology moves towards convenience, and Internet TV has the ability to give it to us in personalized ways.

One of the big reasons newspapers are dieing is not because every one of their old subscribers decided to follow them online; it’s because many of those subscribers DIDN’T. The NY Times used to be able to depend on the fact that if you want 10% of their articles, you would be willing to consume all 100% of their paper. Now you find those 10% through links from thebusinessinsider.com, Twitter, or maybe Veritocracy, and the other 90% comes from other papers and blogs. It’s personalization from increased choice (even to make less of them sometimes!) that is the killer app of the Internet, and the reason old distributions platforms will fade away.

The beauty of this transition is that personalization also enhances the experience for advertisers. Combine all of the information about you on Facebook, with the complete history of EVERY tv show and movie you have ever watched, maybe even what you’ve purchased before, and what web sites you visit, and all of a sudden that 15 second ads becomes exponentially more effective. In fact in a world where ads are so much better targeted, you can show less of them, which means people are more likely to actually pay attention.

None of this is easy, but there is nothing technologically that cable will be able to do, that the Internet eventually won’t. The same is not true in reverse. And while Mark does make a good point that standards for video monetization have not progressed quickly, there is enormous economic incentive to do so. Anyone (include some big companies like Facebook and Google) can work on this right now - and many probably are. It’s a big technical challenge, but if i had to bet on either a few cable companies, or millions of entrepreneurs getting there first, my money’s on the latter.

We’re still at least a couple years away before we start really seeing this happen first hand. And I dont fault cable companies and content providers for maximizing large, exisiting revenue sources. BUT and this is the big but, the trend is there, and it will only continue to gain steam. The decision content owners (and cable operators) have to make, is whether they want to stay ahead of that trend and try to exploit it, or fall behind and watch others do it instead.

More Perspectives: Will TV Over the Internet Challenge Cable?

Its official… Veritocracy has officially opened up to the public. Check it out.

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We started Veritocracy based on a simple idea: to create a personalized news site that really worked. There were and are a lot of social content sites and news aggregators, but we believed it was possible to build a site that wasn’t just finding popular stuff — it was finding the highest quality and most relevant content, specifically for you.

It took a lot of testing, tweaking, designing, and building, and quite honestly it proved a lot more complex than we originally expected. But today, we’re really thrilled to allow everyone in to see what we’ve been working on.

Simply put, Veri gives you a personalized view of the topics and news stories that interest you. The system brings together articles from the blogosphere, mainstream media, and readers, and then helps group them into specific and narrow topics (like a news story, a stock or a movie). As a reader, you simply vote up on the articles you like and down on the ones you don’t, and Veritocracy automatically learns to feed you the best articles on the topics that interest you most.

Instead of searching for information and hoping that what you read is credible and complete, Veritocracy creates a rich and full picture of each story you read about. And of course, since Veritocracy is a social content site, if you have a better perspective on any topic, you can always submit your own. In fact, for bloggers and publishers, Veritocracy automatically helps build organic traffic by connecting you with other publishers and readers interested in the topics you’re writing about.

At the end of the day, we believe that if you create a site that can deliver the best information on a personalized basis, you create a true meritocracy of content distribution as well.

We have a lot more in store in the coming weeks and months, so stay tuned and definitely let us know what you think.

Interesting TED talk (embedded below) explaining the innovation that went into making Benjamin Button’s face entirely digital. Essentially the tech works like this:

1. Brad Pitt’s face and facial movements are scanned in 3D into a computer, which then creates a library of every possible facial expression for Brad.
2. A makeup artist’s models of Brad’s face at every age are scanned in 3D and the computers extend the library to include every possible facial expression for Brad, at every possible age.
3. Brad’s face is recorded acting the film.
4. The computer renders the library of Brad at various ages and facial expressions over Brad’s live action recording.

Amazing stuff, and it raises a really interesting question: how long until step #3 is no longer needed?

If CGI animators can already create accurate facial mannerisms on purely digital characters, it’s only a matter of time before those same animators can create indistinguishably human virtual actors. And of course virtual actors, unlike their human counterparts, have no physical limitations, can be summoned to act and shoot a scene anytime/anywhere, and don’t require multi-million dollar paydays.

We’re several years away from nailing the visual side of this technology (let alone the vocal), but it’s easy to see how the profound benefits of this transition (lower cost, more flexibility) will quickly force a transition to it. Like digital vs. film, as the technology matures, many will reject it, but in the end the better solution will always win.

In the bigger picture, it’s interesting to note that this is another example of technology and innovation leveling the playing field. In a world where fame is completely a product of artistic/intellectual creation, not physical genetics, there will be vastly more people supplying the product, and far more meritocracy for how dollars are allocated amongst them.

Shawn made some compelling points today that Major League Baseball is an excellent example of a new media entertainment company. Its TV product (like all sports) is Tivo-Proof (most people won’t DVR a game), so there’s no skipping of commercials. When and if cable dies at the hands of Internet TV, MLB’s has the market power to sell/stream it directly to consumers over the Internet. And of course its live events are piracy proof cash generators.

Of course MLB still has a long way to go before they become a truly digital-friendly company. But its interesting to think that one of the oldest media companies may have one of the most future-proof business model.

Right on the heels of pulling the plug on their TV.com syndication deal, Hulu apparently just requested that their content be removed from Boxee. From the Boxee blog:

two weeks ago Hulu called and told us their content partners were asking them to remove Hulu from boxee. we tried (many times) to plead the case for keeping Hulu on boxee, but on Friday of this week, in good faith, we will be removing it. you can see their blog post about the issues they are facing.

our goal has always been to drive users to legal sources of content that are publicly available on the Internet. we have many content partners who are generating revenue from boxee users and we will work with Hulu and their partners to resolve the situation as quickly as possible.

we will tell them how users love Hulu on boxee, why it represents a great opportunity for them to better engage with fans of their shows, how boxee can help in exposing their content to new people, and why they should be excited about future opportunities of working with us.

While it seemed like (we all hoped!) the studios were wising up to the inevitability of IP distribution, it isn’t entirely surprising that they cut Boxee off. Internet based TV on your computer can be rationalized as just another marketing channel. Internet based TV on the TV, on the other hand, means the end of the local affiliate stations and cable companies as we know them (both of which contribute significant earnings to, or directly own many of the studios producing TV content).

While this move isn’t likely to kill Boxee in the short term, the question is will other major networks now pull their content from Boxee as well (ABC, NBC…)?

As much as the existing TV distribution system would like to delay it, the day of free, IP based based TV on the TV, is coming. The irony of the situation is that innovators like Boxee are ones that will ultimately save the studios. Even if it means saving them from themselves.

In the technology world, deflation is a given. We get exponentially more computer power, bandwidth, and storage for less money every year. The same thing happens across the economy, and it’s an equally positive force for consumers and businesses alike. Yet the government’s actions lately are 100% directed at spending and printing money. I’ve wanted to write about this for a while, but Michael Shedlock at Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis beat me to it:

The idea of a deflationary trap is in and of itself complete nonsense. Deflation is actually a natural state of affairs. As productivity increases, standard of living rises and prices fall. Absent government intervention, productivity would actually increase the amount of goods produced, causing prices to drop. Falling prices are a good thing not a bad one.

Fed and government policies rob taxpayers by promoting policies of inflation. Look at what accompanies rising prices: rising property taxes, rising sales taxes, and rising income taxes. Is that a good thing. The answer is no, especially when wages fail to keep up, which is exactly what happened.

Who benefits from inflation? The answer is government, banks, and already wealthy because they are first in line to receive money. Everyone else is screwed. Inflation is theft from the middle and lower classes for the benefit of government and the wealthy.

Over time, the government and the Fed so distort the economic picture, that a mentality sets depicted in the often heard phrase for a few years’ back “Better get that house now, before it’s too late”.

The problem is not falling prices, the problem was the excess of debt that led to massive speculation and ever escalating prices. Krugman continues to put the cart before the horse in this regard. Indeed, Krugman Is Still Wrong After All These Years.

It is impossible for government to spend one’s way to prosperity. Proof can be found in the failed practices of Russian and Chinese central planners over the years, and more recently the failed policies of Japan.

This is not only a clear and demonstrable reason to avoid “stimulus spending,” but it also goes a long way towards explaining the rising inequalities between the upper class and everyone else. From food and clothes to medical care, the gap between what the rich and poor have access to has exponentially declined in recent years. The same forces should have created similar equality of income and net worth as well. Unfortunately, low-interest rate inflationary policy has ensured the opposite.

Thank goodness we now have an inflationary stimulus package to support the middle and lower classes though.

President Obama entered stage left yesterday on a message of hope and change, and by the end of the day, the market delivered on that change, closing down 4% or to its lowest level since December 1st. While one day moves in the market are rarely broad indactors, yesterday’s action was telling of a more fundamental economic psychology problem: The government’s economic policies are increasingly rooted in short term actions, not long term results. And that is a major problem when the present value of the market and the long term growth of the economy are both rooted in our expectations of the future.

Obama recently said that we should expect “Trillion Dollar Deficits For Years to Come”. While proponents claim that the US can handle increasing deficits and expanded national debt, few believe that there will be no future consequences from these actions. In the words of bond king Bill Gross, who openly supports stimulus spending:

More regulation, lower leverage, higher taxes, and a lack of entrepreneurial testosterone are what we must get used to – that and a government checkbook that allows for healing, but crowds the private sector into an awkward and less productive corner.

In fact while we are simultaneously increasing our future debt, we are also radically increasing the money supply. At some point we will have to either sharply reverse this course or allow the supply and demand of dollars to significant erode the value of the dollar. The best case scenario is that we quickly recover, and can afford to start contracting the money supply, which will immediately start putting the brakes on our recovery. The worst case scenario is far less rosy.

And if these policy decisions were not enough to dampen long term optimism, Obama’s clear support for economic redistribution, combined with a fully democratic-controlled government, ensure that when and should the economy start to recover, the government will be waiting with a fleet of new taxes and regulations.

So the question is this: If the only way to solve to our problems is economic growth, then why not focus on that long term objective? Imagine a world where instead of short-term stimulus, bailouts, and printing money, our government came out and acknowledged the inevitability of short term pain, but committed to a long term policy of lower taxes, smaller and more efficient government, and increased foreign trade. Its hard to believe that the market and the economy would not see a bright outlook in that future.

While the US may very well be resilient enough to simply grow out of the current situation, true economic recovery can not happen until people believe the future will be better than the present. If we want people as a whole to invest in future growth, the government should begin to promote that objective as well.