Video calling, long anticipated by science fiction, is filtering into everyday use. And two demographic groups not particularly known for being high-tech are among the earliest adopters.

In a way that even e-mailed photos never could, the Web cam promises to transcend both distance and the inability of toddlers to hold up their end of a phone conversation.

Even two years ago, I was challenged chatting across platforms. But I’ve used Skype and SightSpeed to good effect since, and iSight and iChat have only become more widespread.

Technology has its limits, but I’m thankful for this incarnation.

But this morning I saw an ad on Facebook that was relevant and interesting to me, and I clicked on it. It was a text ad, “Core Perform C2 Seat: The first stability-adjustable seat for the Concept2 erg. Strengthened core muscles, improved rowing efficiency, and faster boats!” View the screenshot:

I don’t actually own a Concept2 erg, but I’ve spent plenty of time on earlier models. I won’t be purchasing the Core Perform, but glad to know it exists. I assume my mention of rowing in my Facebook profile was enough to connect the dots. Not remarkable targeting, but interesting all the same.

Only caveat to the “success” of this ad? I was only visiting Facebook to accept a friend request. The site isn’t part of my daily fabric.

Technical note: Facebook uses Javascript to obscure the (incredibly long) tracking URL and display the actual destination URL (http://www.coreperform.com/product.php). That’s a nice touch. It gives me confidence to know the actual destination URL. Of course, I checked the source, and saw the actual click URL, but few would bother. I assume Google has tested this display URL replacement technique, and decided it’s not worth the extra page load time…yet.

Too many people in technology want to be “Switzerland.”

Nothing against the Swiss or their beautiful country, but this terrible shorthand needs to expire. No one should aim for that position, even if you can build a business there in the short term. When technology companies tout their position as Switzerland, what they intend to signal is their independence and the powerful position their neutrality confers upon them. How being a crossroads for transactions (network or financial or otherwise) is a sustainable position even when few of the endpoints appreciate having a third-party in the stream of business.

What being “Swiss” in this context really means:

• I’m late, so I have to work with everyone else who got there first.
• I was early, but my attempt at dominating the marketplace didn’t pan out, so I’ll play nice with others now.
• My business is small and at the mercy of those on my “borders,” whether technical or economic.

Switzerland is fundamentally a defensive position. You react to others and stay small enough so none of the big players in your market care to challenge your tenuous position. Your only offensive moves are to keep smaller players from replacing you, because Switzerland in the technical marketplace isn’t an exclusive position. Rather, supporting the market leader’s customers’ needs is often a requirement for all entrants, whether they explicitly aim to replace the market leader or build a complementary business. So, everyone (even the market leaders) includes as much “neutrality” as the market forces them to support.

If you must use a geographical analogy, consider this.

When you think of Microsoft or Google or Oracle, what country do you imagine as representative of their market positions?

It’s not Switzerland.

Future musing: in the new world geography and economy, will Dubai replace Switzerland as the code word for the nexus of money and cultures and platforms?

Personal note: perhaps I should have been more concerned about CNET’s prospects when I read this BusinessWeek interview back in 2004.

Scott McCloud has made a name for himself over the last decade. Less for his actual art, though, and more for his examination and popularization of comics as an art form in English. Word has spread to the usability community, perhaps because he’s been a digital artist for some time. I came across McCloud’s work a few years ago, but Making Comics is his first book I’ve bought and read.

It’s done as a comic book, and the visual pointers are critical. Lead by example, and all that. It’s a quick read, at least for me, since I didn’t pore over the images and try any of the exercises suggested at the end of each chapter. I simply wanted to think differently about how stories are told, and perhaps find ways to apply the ideas to my work.

I’m personally stuck with words as my outlet. But the more I do online, the greater appreciation I have for images which tell a story well. A picture is worth far more than 1000 words, since few people want to read that much!

Amusing part: yesterday’s edition included an eight-page guide to the new paper. It’s still a newspaper. It doesn’t require a manual. I do understand, of course, that this guide was the largest part of a very extensive marketing campaign the WSJ has been doing for months to convince its readers and advertisers that this shift is in their best interests, not simply a response to the financial requirements of the new size.

One day of handling the paper, and I’m convinced. Not because of the marketing, but because it’s easier to hold and read. Simple as that.

I rarely open Money & Investing, so the continued move of stock tables to the Internet, which helped them trim the size, was of little value to me. Note: the paper started this transition 18 months ago. I do wonder if their new Markets Data Center (note: wsjmarket.com is a typo landing page already) will gain much traction against Yahoo Finance and even the Dow Jones sister site MarketWatch.com. But it hardly matters in the short term, as long as they keep their print subscribers happy and gain a few online subscribers (paid) along the way.

I’m curious to know whether advertisers are paying the same rates for the reduced real estate or not.

The chapters I enjoyed?

The one on sparklines, which wasn’t a new concept for me, given the lengthy web discussion of same, but since I haven’t read that entire forum, the edited version was most welcome.

The evisceration of PowerPoint was a guilty pleasure. I’ve long felt frustrated by the format, and this was simply backing for my previously held biases (1, 2). Two full pages are simply a paper version of Peter Norvig’s brilliant Gettysburg address. Note: Anil Dash has often written interesting material about business software

I haven’t created a “deck” since joining OpenDNS. I’m pleased with that fact.

So today’s news that the Guardian (UK) is going to offer a constantly updated printable edition, G24 caught my eye. Aimed at the commuter crowd, which I’m told in London (at least) commands a majority of the working world, I’ll be curious to see how many people print. I know I’d like it, even though I use my Treo to check out a few websites now and again. Paper is still easier on the eyes.

Additional irony, for me, is that BT will be the first sponsor of this new edition. I wonder which telecom product or service they will push to those sitting on the train? Mobile data or web surfing? Naahhhhh.

I’m also curious about two areas related to pagination. First, what will the advertising creative be? I would expect the Guardian and BT will avoid full-page ads… otherwise, that is the first page to be recycled, not read on the train or bus. Second, how will the copy flow for material written for the web? G24 will be produced every 15 minutes, according to the article, so I strongly doubt human intervention can be part of the process. I wonder what technical solution they’ve found to handle the differing lengths of material, or are they simply going to allow some white space? We shall see.

The tools to from online to print are sure to continue improving, even as the need fades.

But over the past few days, I’ve read different and varied posts on these very topics… and I don’t think they are different topics, so it is worth the time to put all the ideas (with links) in one post for contemplation. I’m going to pluck sentences here and there, but most of these are worth reading in context and in full. The better posts are the length they are because they convey ideas with varying subtlety, not in pullquotes.

Data

I saw the Flickr API conversation via Michael Arrington, which was also the path to the “how-does-he-find-the-time?” comments of Thomas Hawk in the Flickr forums. This thread of the data and formats tapestry starts on whether an API must be open to competitors or not, but gets into fun territory with the conversation about whether tags (and other metadata) are owned by the tagger or the service…and whether’s there anything that can be done about it, practically. Folks even muse on extending the JPEG format (!) for a place to store this data.

Kudos to Stewart Butterfield for answering with respect, but not being pushed around, either, both in the Flickr thread (his home turf) and in the TechCrunch comments.

Today, Dave Winer adds “It’s the Users, Dummy,” banging a drum he’s hit before

The only criteria for winning that should be tolerated, by anyone, are features, performance and price. Lock-in is not an honorable or sustainable way to win.

Also on this sunny Saturday (in SF, don’t know about DC), Scott Karp pitched in with Data Storage Is the Key to the Web App Revolution, where he quotes a correspondence with Nick Carr about how enterprises already depend on external storage and applications (Salesforce.com is only the most prominent example, mentioned by Carr). Karp adds

On the consumer side, granted that most people would do better outsourcing the securing of their data, but perceived control, even at the expense of actual security, is also a powerful force.

I’d argue that perception is certainly shifting. Webmail is the thin end of the wedge on this issue: most people are content to believe their data is safe with one of the big webmail services out there. The “cloud” hasn’t let many down in the first decade of this type of service. I have to believe it’s getting better, not worse.

Formats

After switching away from Apple for the first time in 22 years, Mark Pilgrim explains why in “When the bough breaks“

I’m creating things now that I want to be able to read, hear, watch, search, and filter 50 years from now.

He doesn’t trust the Mac to enable that future.

I’m thrilled to see Mark Pilgrim blogging again. No one combines incredible depth of knowledge with such crystallized attitude in every well-written sentence. I have no idea if he’s quite as formidable verbally as he is in writing, but damn!

John Gruber responded first with a quick note, and then with a lengthy essay to clarify: “And Oranges”

The hard part is deciding how much importance to give to each factor you care about. How much openness are you willing to give up for a system with a better interface?

(On a related note: John Gruber’s contribution to the fray is what prompted me to become a member, after reading him since the beginning. I don’t need full-text posts via RSS, but the Linked List feels worth $20.)

Pilgrim responds with “Juggling Oranges,” where he appreciates the thought put into Gruber’s essay, but notes that the larger point of data preservation is the point. ASCII text comes off looking brilliant, for reasons like this:

So if you care about long-term data preservation, your #1 goal should be to reduce the number of times you convert your data from one format to another.

I wonder what Mark Hurst thinks, and whether Creative Good still follows The Good Easy, which is not about formats, per se, but might reduce conversions. Of course, Hurst’s bit literacy would say… let those bits go. So maybe Mark Hurst and Mark Pilgrim aren’t quite on the same page here. But I digress.

Anyway…Tim Bray follows Pilgrim and Gruber’s exchange with “Time to Switch?,” where he answers his own question in the affirmative.

This feels like a crazy name-drop post, but it’s indicative of my reading habits, and given the relative prominence of all these folks in the tech blogging world, I’m sure I’m not alone in subscribing to all/most of these blogs, so I’m surprised no one has (ahem) mashed-up these two themes.

My effort here may be little better than the lines the boy draws when he connects the dots, but I absolutely feel this is all part of a larger conversation about control. Does controlling your data make you feel like you’re in control of your life? While I love that idea, it’s bound to be a false sense of security. It’s still stuff, even when it’s bits, not atoms.

Still, I admire those looking ahead, and I’ll continue to support the bleeding edge customers who help challenge companies to improve. I’d be curious to read my blog and look at my photos in 50 years, even if few others will.

Maybe someone else can put together a well-written essay on what it all means? I nominate Jarod Lanier, who enjoys wading in on hyped topics and knows how to write (e.g. Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism, which is on a separate topic altogether). But anyone else is welcome to jump in.

N.B. Of course, all this from someone still struggling to back up their current computer, which has at least a decade of files transferred across as many as four Macs. Said files may or may not be in workable formats if I should ever try to open them once more. But I console myself with two facts: I still have them (until my hard drive befores my backup) and I haven’t touched most of them yet, so would my life (or anyone else’s) really be different if they did disappear?