API Copyright of JVM

At this stage of the copyright litigation in Oracle v Google, Oracle needs to demonstrate to Judge William Alsup that there is a “genuine issue of fact” whether Android infringes the Java Virtual Machine APIs. That’s enough to get Oracle’s copyright case in front of a jury. To get the copyright issue thrown out before trial, Google must rebut the arguments that Oracle has presented. Addressing each specific fact, Google’s Reply last week offers an exceptionally detailed and clear tutorial on API copyright law. A legal monograph published by Professor Efthimios Parasidis in 2005 provides a similar analysis.

There are two possible outcomes to the copyright claims of Oracle: Android infringes the Java APIs or it doesn’t. It may appeal the partial summary judgement on the copyright issue once there is a final judgment on the rest of the case. If Judge Alsup rules in favor of Oracle, then the copyright infringement issue will be decided by a jury later this year.

Windows API Example

Google’s Reply makes a strong case against copyright protection of APIs. But there are additional examples where APIs were considered unprotectable. In the antitrust case against Microsoft, a U.S. District Court stated “Theoretically, the developer of a non-Microsoft, Intel-compatible PC operating system could circumvent the applications barrier to entry by cloning the APIs exposed by the 32-bit versions of Windows (Windows 9x and Windows NT).” The court went on to say “Applications written for Windows would then also run on the rival system, and consumers could use the rival system confident in that knowledge.” This is the same circumstance in which U.S District Court Judge Alsup finds Android.

API Copyright and the GPL

Oracle has made Android a target in spite of the fact that Oracle has little or no stake in mobile devices, now or on the horizon. The chief beneficiary of taking down Android would be Apple, chaired by Ellison’s friend Steve Jobs. It seems questionable whether the Oracle Board of Directors is providing oversight of this case, since it doesn’t appear to benefit Oracle shareholders. One wonders if Ellison has other goals in mind. Oracle might like to see the API copyright issue head to the U.S. Supreme Court. If so, losing may ultimately benefit Oracle, eliminating concerns about linking to Linux header files or the GNU Classpath, and taking the air out of vague GPL license terms that create extraordinary copyright hazards for software companies.

John Koenig is the founder of Compute Media and designer of The Patent Studio. You can follow him on Twitter @johnkoenig.

What DSL Technicians Know

Although the telephone company has many tools to troubleshoot problems with their lines and equipment, they cannot help you much with the phone wiring in your home. A weak DSL signal inside your home can be caused by long wire lengths, poor connections, multiple wires, multiple connectors, improper grounding and other variables. Your DSL speed will be better if you eliminate these issues. DSL modems are good at working around noise on the line, but do so at the expense of top download speed and latency (delay). DSL technicians tell us that many line problems originate from bad inside wiring, so splitting the DSL signal from the telephone line as early as possible would certainly eliminate this problem.

DSL Pots Splitters are the Key

To do that, you can install an inexpensive pots-splitter where the telephone line enters your home or garage at the box called the Network Interface Device (NID). By installing a pots-splitter at the NID, the DSL signal from the telephone company to your modem is as short and uncluttered as possible. No longer does the DSL signal wind through your home over internal phone wiring — even though most telephone company installation instructions tell you to do that. Why do they recommend that? Because installing pots-splitters yourself inside the home saves the telephone company the expense of making a trip to do the installation right. Those “pigtail” pots-splitters you self-install don’t offer the optimum DSL signal path. The excess in-house line length, the phone jacks and the additional phone equipment in your home all contribute to noise and attenuation of the DSL signal — and therefore slower speeds.

Make DSL Troubleshooting Easier

Instead, to achieve the shortest, cleanest connection, you should buy a pots-splitter and put your DSL modem next to the pots-splitter at the NID. By installing the pots-splitter at your NID, you keep your home telephone wiring out of the DSL signal path, and consequently your line condition is now the responsibility of the telephone company. The telephone company can then easily use their central equipment to monitor and troubleshoot the condition of the DSL line to your home. They otherwise cannot do the best job troubleshooting the line if the DSL signal also runs through your house. With the DSL signal terminating at the NID, they have no excuse to deliver speeds less than the one offered under your service plan. If the speed is much less than promised, ask your telephone company to fix their line until it comes close to the DSL rate offered under your service plan.

Finish with Wireless Router

Once you’ve installed your pots-splitter and modem next to the NID, you also need to install your Ethernet router there too. You might wonder how to use your computer when the Ethernet router is in the garage. There are a couple of solutions. You can use a wireless router, many of which offer exceptional range, or use HomePlug devices. Although these add a little cost, your improved DSL access speed should be worth it. If your wireless Ethernet connection is blocked by the walls, wireless extenders and HomePlug devices offered by many vendors provide a fast, reliable Ethernet connection to any room in your home.

John Koenig is the founder of Compute Media and designer of The Patent Studio. You can follow him on Twitter @johnkoenig.

Spawned the PC Era

The consequences of these IBM decisions not only spawned the PC era, but also led to the creation of a new and highly profitable PC software segment. To help complementary hardware designers and software publishers create expansion hardware and software applications, IBM published the essential BIOS code for the PC. The BIOS remained copyrighted by IBM since they intended to use it to prevent unlicensed cloning of the IBM PC. Unfortunately for IBM the BIOS was soon reverse engineered by Compaq and others using a “clean room” process that avoided legal liability for copyright infringement. This gave low-cost makers of PC clones the last technology piece they needed to deliver inexpensive PCs. The resulting explosive growth of PC clone sales and adoption ultimately changed all aspects of computing, creating a wealth of new companies like Microsoft, Intel, Compaq, Dell, and subsequently drove acceptance of the PC architecture into more demanding server applications at the enterprise level.

Over a Billion PCs Sold

Within 25 years over a billion PCs were sold. Still the leading computing architecture, the second billionth PC was shipped sometime in 2008. How could such enormous consequences arise from a few relatively modest engineering decisions? The answer seems simple. Open architectures are vastly more efficient to extend, allowing many more individuals and companies to contribute and participate in accelerating the design, application, low-cost manufacturing and distribution of a product. IBM didn’t intend to create an open platform with the IBM PC. It just didn’t foresee that the BIOS code would be reverse engineered. In an attempt to regain control, IBM created a new proprietary system bus called the MCA and licensed it for hundreds of dollars. While this approach would prevent others from cloning new IBM PCs without a license, the MCA bus was adopted by virtually no one outside of IBM. Instead, the clone makers created their own standard ISA bus which was soon followed by an even faster EISA bus.

Peripheral Component Interface

A similarly important milestone in the history of the PC was the introduction by Intel of the Peripheral Component Interface or “PCI” standard. Intel realized they should create a standard bus and support it with low-cost Intel chips. Intel designed the PCI bus to be fast, inexpensive to build, and royalty-free.  With Intel behind it, the jockeying between IBM and the clone makers about board compatibility ended. The enormously successful PCI specification and its successors since 1992 are still the dominant local bus system within PCs and servers. Today PCI versions continue to receive wide support from all PC manufacturers globally. The PCI bus from Intel was wildly successful in simplifying integration, further driving down the PC system costs, and vastly improving PC reliability for all consumers and businesses.

John Koenig is the founder of Compute Media and designer of The Patent Studio. You can follow him on Twitter @johnkoenig.

Photo Credit: A. Disc

At the time it was indeed an infernal battle with computers; monotonous tinkering, prone to error and failure. Out of this problem arose a solution from Berners-Lee, and a standard which revolutionized computing and communications.

The Documentation System in the Sky

Berners-Lee decided to write a paper about it. To Berners-Lee it was a difficult idea to explain at the time. He imagined it as “some big, virtual documentation system in the sky” he said. He sent the proposal to his boss, who called it “vague, but exciting” and gave Berners-Lee the green light to work on the project. Indeed his implementation worked so well that he is considered the inventor of the world wide web. Extensions of the HTML standard today, make it possible for anyone with a computer to share information in writing, on a moments notice, with everyone, virtually anywhere in the world. It wouldn’t have happened this way without the work at CERN.

The History of the Browser

The world wide web Berners-Lee invented in 1990 didn’t catch on immediately. In January 1992 there were only 50 web servers in the world. In July of 1992, Perry Wei at UC Berkeley demonstrated the Viola browser for Unix X Windows. In November of 1992, Tony Johnson at SLAC delivered the Midas browser for X Windows. Jim Calliau at CERN started development of the Samba browser for the Macintosh. In December 1992, Perry Wei, embedded programs in HTML pages, which he demonstrated to Sun Microsystems engineers, including the Viola source code. More accomplishments have followed. Today, Internet Explorer is the chief browser and Google is the main search engine for sorting through the billions of documents on the web.

A Call for Raw Data Now

But despite the current success and sophistication of web-based sharing, Berners-Lee directs our attention to a new priority he calls “Raw Data Now.” Speaking at the TED Conference, he made his point with a simple premise, paraphrasing here that: you cannot naturally use data by itself. In other words, for it to be really useful, we should combine and share our data with other data. Berners-Lee calculates that without sharing, data serves a very limited purpose. Not only should we share our data, but we should demand that governments and businesses share the data they prepare as well, he says. Accessible raw data is his new objective for the world wide web. As he points out, “data drives a huge amount of what happens in our lives… because somebody takes the data and does something with it.” To Berners-Lee, it is essentially from this sharing of data, that advances in science will emerge.

Three Rules from Tim Berners-Lee

If the past was document sharing, the future is data sharing. Berners-Lee says now, “I want you to put your data on the Web.” But how should we go about that? To answer that question, he provides three points of instruction. One, a URL should point to the data. Two, anyone accessing the URL should get data back. Three, relationships in the data should point to additional URLs with data.

These three rules are a much simpler departure from the past 10 years of discussion, chiefly focused on the “semantic” web and a “resource description framework”. Those concepts have so far received little mainstream acceptance because of their high level of abstraction. Other technology is faring better, in particular the hardware devices. For example, wider data collection through common 3G devices can now monitor traffic, temperature, emergencies and other events with transparent data connectivity. If the past is any indication, hardware advances will continue to arrive much earlier than software advances. So while the raw data is coming, we still have a long way to go before the software to access a world wide web of data is mature.

John Koenig is the founder of Compute Media and designer of The Patent Studio. You can follow him on Twitter @johnkoenig.

Berners-Lee Photo Silvio Tanaka

These are still the early days of the smartphone. The innovation in smartphone products and services is similar to the rise of the personal computer and the web browser. In the early PC business, uncertainty was everywhere. Buyers were concerned about software applications, usability and maintenance. Price and performance were points of constant contention between manufacturers. Developers eagerly chased the most popular platforms.

The browser growth period was a compressed and magnified version of the PC period. The browser spawned an investment bubble and an antitrust battle of the century. Like the PC period, entepreuners and investors watched closely for waves they could ride to profitability. Publishers covered the whole heated debate. Yahoo rose and Netscape disappeared. Google rose and Inktomi disappeared. These and many more, succeeded or failed due largely to differences in management and strategy, but the opportunity was there for everyone.

In both the case of PC and the the browser, it took a number of years for patterns to appear. Today, in the smartphone business, we are seeing some trends and patterns, like Apple’s success in the consumer market and the continuing success of Rim in the enterprise space.

iTunes for Windows in the Enterprise

For consumers and publishers, the iPhone and its popular iTunes store make a lot of sense. Because Apple knows every publisher, there are no issues for consumers about software security, malware and viruses that plague software downloaded from the wild wild web. As Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster explains, “Apple’s dominance in the [consumer electronics] and online music markets is going seemingly unchecked.” Publishers benefit too. For one, consumers cannot resell downloaded software from the iTunes store under the first-sale doctrine. There is no piracy. There is no gray market. iTunes controls exactly who gets what from the software publisher. Apple even provides mechanisms to allow ongoing subscriptions, and this is going to pull in the content publishers. Rupert Murdoch, Chairman of News Corp announced last month a plan to charge iPhone and BlackBerry users a weekly rate of $1 for subscribers and $2 for non-subscribers to access its mobile site. Other publishers have already started. For them, the iTunes and Blackberry stores offer certain advantages, but will have to compete with free content on the Internet.

iTunes for Windows is about as far as Apple can get with enterprise IT departments, and even that’s probably not welcome. No business would choose to funnel its business applications through an application store like iTunes. For the enterprise, the iTunes store is mostly friction and overhead. Apple slowly responds to enterprise requirements, such as remote wipe, and the Apple documentation for enterprise features are superficial and under-supported. The Apple business of smartphone products and services for consumers can succeed without the rigor and options that businesses demand. Consumers may be perpetually happy to download applications through an iTunes store. For businesses, the logistics and complexity of the iTunes store are a nuisance. As a result, we see the repeated pattern of Apple succeeding in the consumer market but not the business market.

ATT vs Verizon

The largest two carriers, ATT and Verizon are both important factors in the consumer market. ATT has not announced an application store. The iPhone exclusively uses the iTunes store. But Verizon wants some of that action. Verizon has 87 million subscribers it needs to keep happy or lose to vendors offering better smartphones. To control content iTunes style, Verizon appears to be ready to require smartphone vendors to sell their application exclusively through an online Verizon application store. Lowell McAdam, president and CEO of Verizon Wireless, made a deal recently with Google to offer smartphones pre-loaded with innovative applications on Android-based devices from several manufacturers. The advantages to developers are parallel to the iTunes store, since Verizon simplifies billing through its existing customer relationship.

To maintain control like Apple, Verizon may preclude customers from getting their applications from Blackberry App World or the Android Marketplace. According to reports from GigaOM, Verizon is reportedly demanding Verizon handsets include default access to only Verizon’s app store. This includes the popular Blackberry Storm smartphones.

But the bigger issue for carriers is bandwidth. AT&T’s chief technology officer, John Donovan, recently stated that smartphones and associated applications have produced a 5,000 percent increase in data usage over three years. That’s not going to let up. AT&T now requires that every smartphone subscriber have a data plan.

Handsets or Operating System

Motorola has received recent Federal lab approval of a smartphone planned for sale by Verizon for the holiday season. ATT may start working with Dell on offering an Android-based phone for the eventual day when ATT’s exclusive iPhone deal runs out. Apple’s introduction of the $99 iPhone 3G is generating significant market share gains in the last six months, for a “leading position in music and mobile markets,” according to Munster. Yet hardware is rapidly becoming a commodity, eventually to be dominated by Asian manufacturers, just like the VCR. The future of the smartphone will be dictated by software and content, not hardware. The obvious conclusion? Instead of competing on hardware, profitability in the smartphone business will be driven by software capabilities. Right now the strategic key to the smartphone software opportunity is the operating system, and with respect to the operating system, the enterprise market for smartphones is wide open for competition.

The question is therefore, who will prevail as the smartphone vendor of choice to businesses. Rim has a history of being the leader. But if we examine the state of mobile operating systems, we see another pattern. The early generations of mobile operating systems, like Symbian and Windows Mobile are quickly losing ground to Android. This trend will accelerate. The Blackberry operating system may be the next victim of Android. Dell and Motorola have set a clear path on the Android platform. Dell spokesman Andrew Bowins recently told Reuters: “We are deeply engaged with our operator partners around the world to deliver mobile broadband enabled computing devices.” But manufacturers like Dell and Motorola, and even Rim will lose ground to the superior strategies of Google and Apple, companies focusing on operating system software and application developers, where most of the value is added. Apple produces great hardware, but at the core of its strategy is a plan that leverages software and content from the developer community. Many companies can deliver the hardware. Few can deliver the software and developer enthusiasm. Google is one of the companies that understands this well. Those who don’t, risk becoming another Netscape or Inktomi.

Photo Credit: M. Yoshihito

With little foresight and with the desktop application mentality deeply entrenched at Microsoft, the company poured resources into its operating system, not into web-based applications or the browser platform. Microsoft seems to under-appreciate the browser, but imbraces what Tim Bray calls the sharecropper model, preferring to mimic Adobe with Silverlight. But will Microsoft prevail this time with developer lock-in? Where will companies find developers for these closed platforms, and at what price. Developers today have an abundance of open source choices and are favoring open source convenience versus whatever closed source may yet claim as an advantage. Any advantage that once existed has greatly blurred, because open source is not only convenient — but has nearly no strings attached as far as online service delivery goes. Thus will follow a continued explosion of online applications. 

Documentation System in the Sky

At their inception, the browser and HTML introduced global static publishing to the world. People saw it and acknowledged it as providing a simple, clean, unbiased platform. Tim Berners-Lee called his invention the “documentation system in the sky”. In spite of its humble beginnings, the browser is now everywhere, with Firefox three years later, enjoying eighteen percent market share. Safari is also gaining popularity at nearly five percent market share and could become the de facto browser for mobile applications. Because browser-based applications pose a threat Microsoft desktop licensing, Microsoft continues to demonstrate no roadmap, no leadership, no innovation and meager support for timely browser maintenance, much less improvements.

A few years ago no online application vendors cared to admit that Microsoft-dictated changes to Internet Explorer could ruin their business. There was a conspiracy of silence, for fear of partner repercussions from Microsoft. At that time only Google possibly perceived the potential magnitude of the problem if the browser became encumbered with Microsoft-only features. Today awareness of such general vulnerability has changed, and the industry enjoys more choices and less reliance on Microsoft. For instance, Apple has worked to support Webkit, Mozilla is working on a faster Javascript engine, and Google Gears has made substantial progress in its first year. The browser and online applications market are not only healthy, but are at the cusp of an innovation explosion. As Ben Galbraith said at the Google I/O Developer Conference in San Francisco, Wednesday, “The browser jail is being broken.”

An Embedded SQLite Database

So what’s great about Gears? As Aaron Boodman explains, having a SQLite database allows application data to persist on the client for many useful purposes including full text search. With Gears’ LocalServer, applications can run offline. WorkerPool allows processes to run in a background thread, which helps prevent user interaction from being momentarily blocked, something we have all experienced in a browser. Boodman pointed out several Gears introductions made at the conference, including desktop shortcuts, “toast” style desktop notifications, geolocation, a filepicker and blobs. 

Possibly one of the most beautiful things about Gears is the separate namespace, which means a developer never needs to use anything in Gears unless he or she chooses to.  As Boodman demonstrated, all functionality of the Gears plugin is optional. If the same features are natively implemented in a browser, they can be used by default. The idea of Gears is to extend and encourage innovation in browsers, not dictate standards. Since it’s open source, Gears’ features can be readily adopted by the browser developers too, if they wish.

Google Gears could drive the next wave of online application innovation. With both online and offline data, rapidly developed and deployed applications using Gears will shake out more innovations for both consumers and enterprises. Application vendors placing bets on Silverlight or Flex should take a hard look at Gears. Not only is Gears open and free, there is an even better reason for them to consider Gears. Their futures may depend on it.

Photo Credit: Ralph Bijker

Moreover, during the past 10 years, nearly every business has saved extensively on travel and marketing costs by using video-conferencing. Yet live video traffic further stresses network hardware and bandwidth.

Web applications like email and SaaS-based ERP, CRM and other business applications don’t require a lot of bandwidth. But running voice and video traffic on a single, IP-based network with multiple real time applications is now commonplace. Unfortunately, businesses too often expand their networks piecemeal, in reaction to new application and performance issues identified by employees and customers.

More Network Challenges are Coming

In addition to the current challenges of data, voice and video, other challenging network scenarios are here or on the horizon:

• Traffic over unmanaged networks, such as a telecommuter connecting over a virtual private network (VPN) and mobile 3G networks.
• The logical next step towards cloud computing, with virtualization either on a third party cloud or an enterprise data center.
• Storage, servers, switches and routers combined into a unified, multi-purpose footprint in the data center.

To accommodate these new bandwidth intensive architectures and services, many businesses have upgraded their network hardware ad hoc, spending extensive time and labor on network administration. It’s easy to overlook the cost of labor when measuring IT productivity. According to McKinsey, labor is now the largest cost component of IT operations, eclipsing the sum of software, hardware and maintenance costs.

Many businesses alternatively choose to outsource much of their information technology. But on-premise networking equipment is still required, even with application outsourcing. System administrators can handle many network issues, but with voice and video traffic, some network engineering expertise is helpful. For instance, there are great variations in network demand throughout the business day, as call volume or conferencing traffic rise and fall.

Network Quality of Service is Key

The major problems with most networks are well established. The big difficulties with voice and video quality are latency, jitter and packet loss. Poor audio quality is more annoying to users than poor video quality, since the human ear is more sensitive to noise and delays than the human eye.

To avoid the imperfections caused by latency, jitter and packet loss, a network must be properly designed and managed. There are three basic areas of focus. Capacity management refers to the amount of bandwidth available. Most local area networks have very high capacity, so bandwidth problems are usually only associated with the wide area network (WAN) or the interfaces to the WAN.

The key to making most efficient use of the WAN is to prioritize traffic in the routers and switches. In other words, voice and video quality can be maintained by giving them a higher priority than data traffic. Such prioritization has almost no noticeable effect on the data traffic.

Network monitoring helps identify potential issues related to peak usage and server capacity, so degraded performance can often be avoided, and less investment is made on bandwidth or equipment.

Enter the Multi-Service Business Gateway

Socrates once asked, “How many things are there which I do not want?” An excellent question, not just for philosophers, but for IT Managers, CIOs and CEOs as well. In the past there may have been three, four, even five or more pieces of equipment and associated software required to operate a business network. Today, there are single-source solutions containing both the hardware and the software needed to run a converged data, voice and video network. Known as a Unified Communications Gateway (UCG) or more commonly as a Multi-Service Business Gateway (MSBG), these solutions simplify and lower the equipment and administration needed to operate a high-capacity business network.

Businesses previously interested in IP-PBX solutions, are now combining a diverse range of voice and data functionality on a single appliance. Many businesses require LAN compatibility with multiple wireless IP handsets and access to multiple types of SaaS applications. “Application performance is a big concern,” says Jeff Dixon, Chief Strategy Officer of U4EA Technologies. “The impact of a non-optimal network includes loss of productivity among employees and potential loss of business.” MSBG solutions can identify network issues before they become a problem, eliminate software incompatibility and simplify network configuration.

The most likely people to use an e-pass are travelers who carry a PDA like the Blackberry. On the road, they want to get assigned seats and flight confirmation using online check-in. Since hotel rooms don’t have printers, a traveler can elect to have the boarding pass emailed their PDA. Being able to check-in electronically and get an e-pass is also convenient from bus, car or taxi, or in an emergency. But most travelers who use e-pass should still prefer to print a paper boarding pass as backup, if they can, just in case the electronic boarding pass doesn’t scan at the airport.

Agents Get Busy With New Procedures

A traveler with an e-pass arrives with the electronic boarding pass and reservation on their mobile device and can go straight to the security checkpoints. Secondary ID like a driver’s license or passport is still required. Instead of handing a paper pass to TSA security agents at airport security, a passenger shows the e-pass image on the screen of the mobile device.

When it’s time to go through the TSA checkpoint, the screener scans the mobile device with a handheld scanner. The scanner beeps when it recognizes the e-pass. At that point, the TSA screener can see the passenger name and flight information on the scanner. They next look at the passenger’s physical ID and compare it with the electronic boarding pass information on the scanner.

When it’s time to board, passengers queue up to the boarding checkpoint and point the mobile device image into another scanner. The scanner again beeps an all-clear signal, and the agent allows the passenger to board.

Passenger Feedback Is Mixed

The success rate of using the e-pass on mobile phones is mixed, because most mobile phones have a low screen resolution versus PDAs. As a result, there can be problems on mobile phones, with the scanners not scanning correctly at security and boarding.

There can also be hitches in procedures. With paper boarding passes, the passenger shows the TSA agent the pass before entering the metal detector. But since the e-pass is on a mobile device, it goes through the x-ray machine. So what happens when a screener asks to see a boarding pass? Some agents just let the passenger through. Other screeners require that the passenger get a token from the TSA agents who are examining the carry-on luggage.

Not all airlines offer the e-pass and not all e-passes display passenger seat assignments. Rules about advance check-in vary considerably, although most airlines allow online check-in 24 hours prior to departure. Continental has set up a webpage where a passenger can login and get the boarding pass image. iPhone users report that this works well. Other airlines email the image, so a passenger needs to know where email attachments are stored the mobile device, and then open up the boarding pass image on the screen.

Technology Meets International Standards

The Transportation Security Administration has been testing the e-pass system since 2007 at number of airports throughout the country. Nationwide expansion is now underway. Once e-pass scanners are deployed nationwide, the TSA plans to track wait times using e-pass data collected at checkpoints. As a safety advantage for all passengers, the new technology reduces boarding pass fraud, provides enhanced security, and improves customer service to passengers, says the TSA and the airlines.

The International Air Transport Association anticipates that its 240 members will be saving about $500 million annually with electronic boarding. Currently the e-pass works only for U.S. domestic flights. Passengers flying from an airport that doesn’t handle the e-pass will still need a printed pass. International adoption is eventually expected. The TSA paperless boarding passes are consistent with the global standard in the International Air Transport Association for bar coding of passenger boarding passes.

Starting with his own company, Levchin explained Slide’s business as “adding the meat to the bare bones of social graph.“ Levchin, one might remember, is part of the team that built and sold Paypal to eBay, which many investors felt eBay had no choice but to buy. Levchin seems to be going for a repeat, leveraging Facebook to build Slide the same way. With the humblest expression he can muster, Levchin deadpans, “I thank my generous hosts”.

The social platforms have begun to open up their APIs, giving application developers like Slide more leverage and potentially putting them in competition with the platforms. “Social software builders compete for advertising dollars ultimately” Levchin explains. He believes it’s simply a matter of who delivers the best applications for advertisers to engage with users. 

To illustrate Slide’s benefits to advertisers, “Every single campaign that we’ve run in the world of Super Poke has been nothing but a smashing success for the advertisers,” Levchin contends. This raises the question of whether the application developers will eclipse the platforms, just as Yahoo made Netscape less relevant. “Since Netscape was based on standards, it is really Internet Explorer that made Netscape irrelevant,” says Peter Yared, CEO of iWidgets. “A better analogy is Windows and Mac OS.” Yared suggests. “The more applications, the more relevant the platform — until all the apps move to another platform like the browser, which is what happened to Windows.”

When asked, Levchin dismisses any question that social applications might be fad, saying that part of Slide’s job is to make sure that doesn’t happen. He simply believes the best applications will prevail, whether they come from the social platform owner or not. “The engagement that the user has when they’re using one of our apps is close to that of television except it is fully interactive,” he explains. Levchin thus contends that Slide is in good position to serve advertisers in the new ways they are now demanding. First Levchin says he has packaged the Slide user community into various “affinity groups”. This allows Slide to deliver better campaign results but without hitting a wall of privacy issues. He says that Slide “complies with their covenant with the users” while at the same time correlating “patterns of usage” into affinity groups they can offer to the advertisers.

Levchin also says that Slide has the right stuff as “Madison Avenue becomes more concerned with engagement metrics.” Engagement must not be intrusive, since spam is the biggest complaints users have about Facebook and MySpace. As people reach attention deficit, applications like SuperPoke can become a nuisance even between friends. Levchin has some ideas about how to address the problem. “Our plan is simple and obvious and I suspect it’s a human one, to create tools or levers for the users that make it easy to control the spam.” Many aggregators like Friendfeed are also trying to solve this problem but no company yet offers an outstanding solution.

Virtual goods are also getting Levchin’s attention. “I’ve seen with my own eyes the first time in Asia for me where people make billions of dollars selling virtual goods,” he says. Whether this translates to similar opportunities in the United States is a still a matter of speculation. But it may at least be an alternative business model to the presently large focus on advertising revenue.