Mark Birbeck is four years ahead of Adobe AIR
Written on May 27, 2008 – 9:47 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Today is Kings of Code day. Hundreds of coders have traveled to Amsterdam to see speakers like Peter-Paul Koch (Quirksmode.org), Mark Birbeck (W3C), Nate Abele (CakePHP), John Resig (Mozilla) and Nate Koechley (Yahoo). Yesterday night, co-editor Boris organized one of his infamous pre-conference Speakers Dinners. While I was enjoying the excellent food, I got to chance to talk with Mark Birbeck about the focus of web companies.
I complained about the focus on minor details, and start-ups who just try fix a really small problem. To me, it seems like these people overestimate their own business and have developed a tunnel vision. Therefore, they don’t see the big picture anymore. Mark agreed, but also warned me it can work the other way around.
“When developing a service, don’t go too far ahead”, Birbeck said, “People still have to understand what you’re working on”. As the Managing Director of webBackPlane he has been developing a framework to allow desktop applications to be created with web technologies - such as XForms - for four years now, and promoted it too early. “People just didn’t understand what it was about yet”. About two years ago, Birbeck - with the help of Michael Arrington - almost sold the company to Adobe. Yes.., Adobe, the same company that now has AIR as their claim to fame. “It’s basically the same thing as our product and now people are speaking about the end of the browser. We had it four years ago.”
Not that Birbeck minds though: “Software like AIR helps people understand the general idea”. He and his team are already improving the framework for the next big thing: a desktop framework that uses data from the semantic web. For example, when you save a location in a personal library, Birbeck’s tool will pinpoints this location on every Google map you’ll open. Birbeck: “So next time when I book a hotel in Amsterdam, I can tell when it’s close to a previous location I’ve visited, like this house”.
I hope you like that post!
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The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show of, the future of the Web. (
By Steven Carrol on May 28, 2008
“About two years ago, Birbeck - with the help of Michael Arrington - almost sold the company to Adobe. Yes.., Adobe, the same company that now has AIR as their claim to fame. “It’s basically the same thing as our product and now”
This is one of the most telling statements about business in general.
Most often an inventor ‘naive to the murky world of biz’ will sign a NDA thinking they have some protection about their idea and can talk about it openly. I would imagine in this case they were hoping to either sell or work with Adobe.
The moral of the story is this. You can never trust anyone, the law offers no ‘real’ protection for those not versed.
Inventors beware!
[Reply]
By Berco on May 28, 2008
“I complained about the focus on minor details, and start-ups who just try fix a really small problem.”
On the other hand, I run into way too many people with grand visions of where the industry is heading while they have no idea what the current real-world issues are and how to fix them. If a startup fixes a really small problems doesn’t mean it has a tunnelvision. The most valuable persons in this business are the ones that can fix real world problems and understand the bigger picture it is part of.
2B
[Reply]
By Ernst-Jan Pfauth on May 28, 2008
@Berco, exactly. The big picture is also fixing problems. Not creating problems and then fixing them, like may start-ups tend to do.
[Reply]
By Mark Birbeck on May 31, 2008
Hi Steven,
Actually the moral isn’t at all ‘don’t trust anyone’, and like many other entrepreneurs with a small business, I have no illusions about the protection (or lack of) afforded by an NDA.
The point that myself and Ernst-Jan were discussing (over a very nice dinner :)) was that, although he is disappointed in the lack of vision in start-ups, I thought it worth bearing in mind that you also can’t be too far ahead. I explained that our Sidewinder Viewer has been taking shape for a number of years now, and very explicitly sets out to use web languages to build desktop applications–yet when we first started trying to talk to people about it, they just didn’t ‘get it’. And to emphasise the point, I recounted how even Mike Arrington didn’t get it. :)
Yet today we see everywhere blogs that begin “As I predicted a month ago, the desktop and the web are merging”. In other words, at some point your idea goes from being far ahead to being mainstream.
But I wasn’t moaning about this, and Ernst-Jan captured my view very well; I was saying that the good thing about products like Adobe Air entering the fray is that it helps people understand what we’re doing, and hopefully we can use that to further our software. (It’s rare for one piece of software to completely win out over all others; even if Air does well, there is space for others.)
For people who are familiar with the ideas of Crossing the Chasm, none of this will be new. It’s a fact of life that the best way to promote what you are doing is by reference to something that people are already familiar with, and it’s exciting for us that we can now more easily explain Sidewinder, by saying that it is ‘like Adobe Air, but open source, and using standard languages’. (They use Flash, we use XForms and XHTML.)
And as Ernst-Jan described, our next phase is probably to move on to saying that Sidewinder is ‘like Adobe Air, but open source, using standard languages…and with semantics’. :)
I think the standards angle is a good one for us. For a few years now we’ve also been doing browser extensions that can be both Ajax libraries and C++ components, and in the last day or so Yahoo! launched pretty much the same thing, with BrowserPlus. I’d claim that again we were ahead of the game, but once again I’m not crying about it, because it will again help people to understand the ideas behind what we are doing; now we can say that our software is ‘like BrowserPlus, but open source, and using standards’.
So if there is any moral, it’s probably that if you’re going to pursue the ‘vision thing’, be prepared for the long haul, and constantly look for ways to help people understand what it is that you are doing.
Oh yes…and read Crossing the Chasm.
Best regards,
Mark
http://webBackplane.com/mark-birbeck
[Reply]
By Steven Carrol on May 31, 2008
Hi Mark
I’m glade we agree on the lack of legal protection offered by current recommended best practices, such as NDA’s copyrights and patents.
With regards communicating the message and merits of an innovation, I fully appreciate the challenge. Thomas kuhn - Structure of scientific revolutions is probably one of the most cited books in this field.
But as regards making a product / innovation commercial successful, my preferred playing field is the on the market floor. So that would allow for all the competition in the world. The only crevice I would add, is that innovators should understand the traps of bogus legal protection in advance.
If you want to make something that is useful and free, I personally believe that you should be also compensated for your efforts. The methods of providing awards would at its most simplest would be a fund that gives grants and awards to innovators / creators / artists etc. to further aid their development, rather than the situation we have currently where all too often they are left without merit nor reward.
I wish you the very best of luck with your adventure. It sure sounds like you have bitten off a nice size chunk.
Best regards
Steve
[Reply]
By Nate Koechley on Jun 12, 2008
I wanted to let you and your readers know that I posted the slides from my talk: http://nate.koechley.com/blog/.....web-sites/
Thanks,
Nate
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