Mena Trott: Interop is essential for blogging tools; we say yes to everything our users ask for; also things they want but haven’t asked for. We provide import to and export from Movable Type. Our customers are webloggers; they don’t want lock-in, so we gave them import/export. That kept us on our toes for the last two years. It hasn’t hurt us.
The death of HTML
Cory: “can Macromedia overcome the web’s limits without destroying what makes the web the web”
Kevin Lynch, Macromedia: HTML for documents, Flash for applications. URI not good for data; conflict between application model and page model.
RJ Pittman also describes the death of HTML. Applications will be inherently connected… breaking the page barrier. Self-adusting user interfaces (what does this simplify to?)
Mena: Moving away from the web browser, moving toward the device.
(HTML has been dying every year since it started.)
Merrill Brown at Real; mass consumer media, small professional media, large professional media. “Premium content” = major league baseball. Very undecentralized. (for example, I want to comment on a baseball game with my friends, but the licensing scheme doesn’t allow it; the images are copyrighted)
A lawyer in the audience disagrees with the appliance theory; likes MT because it is modular. Mena says that they’re building TypePad which is easier but less flexible.
Cory on DRM: of course there’s demand for something that lets you do less with your music.
“They don’t want lock-in, so we gave them lock-in. That kept them on our toes for the last two years. It hasn’t hurt us.”
kept “them” should be kept “us.” We didn’t lock them (the users) into the tool to keep us on our tools But maybe it kept them on their toes as well. 🙂
i agree