Life is grand

Ed Batista reported on Josh Porter’s Social Networks Are Killing Email to which I objected.

Obviously Josh was thinking further though as he came up with A Messaging Proxy and Domain as Identity. Interesting idea, I like it. Amazon’s SQS could potentially be a part of it and provide the reliability that is needed. I reckon it would need to be distributed too, having your messaging system go down due to a server fault or a company glitch would be a big problem. I also think we need to keep email in mind as we can learn a good deal from it as well as remember the vast amounts of archived messages many of us have and need to keep.

Ed makes a good point on my list of attention sucking silos:

Apple, iTunes and his Nano are all potentially-connected segments of the same silo

Semi-ideally*, Ed is right. Apple is the silo and Apple is all knowing of my Apple.com, Apple Store, iTunes and nano silos.

But who here has worked in a large company with large databases spread across a large range of concepts? Ten to one the arse of Apple doesn’t know what the head of Apple has stored on me. Ten to one there is not a central Apple identity and attention server that aggregates all my Apple activites. I’ll bet my iTunes attention data is separate to my Apple Store attention data. They are probably running different systems in there with no linkage.

I don’t even need to go into Apple HQ to know this. My nano and my iTunes’ silos are already broken. I use last.fm and think it is a wonderful service. Before I got my nano I played 90% of my daily music on my laptop. That 90% was reported through iTunes to last.fm. However I now have a nano and that “what music has Paul played today” link has been broken. When I jack my nano into my laptop every evening iTunes does not suck down the play data and send it onto last.fm**. I actually cannot see what iTunes does with my nano data.

Another example is iTunes and the music I have bought elsewhere. I’ve ripped all my “physical” CDs into iTunes yet when I go to the Apple Music Store and check out the “recommended” lists I will often find recommendations to albums I already own. iTunes and the Apple Music Store are not communicating. They have all this play and asset data on me yet fail to link it all up.

So while they may conceptually be segmented areas of one mega-silo they are effectively separate silos.

* I say semi because ideally my “Apple” silo wouldn’t be one. Currently there is a silo there though and if it has to remain then ideally it should not be segmented.

** Technically there are plug-ins for iTunes that link your iPod to your last.fm account. I have tried at least three and could not get them to work. Considering I am a developer you’d think I could figure it out.