One of my blog readers recently wrote and asked me “What do you think is Google’s view about the defining characteristics of the next generation of software? What software companies does it admire?” Those are very interesting questions, especially when you consider that Google is in a position to dramatically influence the next generation of software and to acquire many different companies that it admires.

Software Generations

The first software generation (the advent of the personal computer and Web 1.0) was focused on allowing people to create content. Basic word processors, graphics programs, and fundamental web foundations were put in place. Now that creating content is pretty universal (as far as technology in developed nations gets), the second software generation is beginning to be born (including Web 2.0). Now that we know how to create data, let’s figure out how to access, share, combine, and utilize this data. The second software generation is focused on making our content and information more accessible and more useful.

Google and the Next Generation of Software

Google understands the second software generation. It is positioning itself to capitalize on the shift. Google understands that you are going to want and need more information with you at all times. It sees the convergence of many personal digital devices, like cell phones, cameras, PDAs, music players, etc. It sees the proliferation of digital devices (smart cars, automated homes, RFID chips, microwaves, toasters, etc.) Google knows that data needs to be everywhere. The PC may remain important for many years to come, but it is going to be relegated from master to servant in the digital world—it will no longer be the focal point of people’s attention when it comes to data. It may act as a data warehouse to send and receive data to and from the devices that surround it. It might be stripped of its data and used simply as a portal to the data and services stored on the web. The important thing is going to be the data and the access, not the device or operating system.

Microsoft, on the other hand, doesn’t get it. There online services seem siloed from one another. There’s no way that I’m upgrading to Vista for any other reason than the fact that Windows XP is not going to be supported forever. And I’m never upgrading my version of Office again—I’ll switch to another word processor first. My OS and installed software are fine. I don’t need them to be upgraded. I need them to be leveraged.

Device Independence and Data Rights

Google sees software going in a device-, operating system-, and browser-independent direction. Data will be stored on central servers, accessed by millions of web and wireless capable devices, and utilized and modified by all sorts of programs. Storage, connections, and access (along with privacy protection) become the foundations of the second generation of software. They will be used by software to give users new control over their data, their personal lives, and their social connections.

Life During the Second Software Generation

Here’s an example: You’re at work and your spouse calls you to tell you about a holiday party that you’ve been invited to in three weeks. The party starts right after your work day ends, so you will need to leave directly from work. You’ve been assigned to bring a dessert, so you will need to remember to bake up something the night before.

Once the second software generation takes hold, things might go something like this: after you hang up with your spouse, you use your PC to access your online master calendar and enter in “party at the Johnsons at 7pm on the 22nd” and “make dessert on the 21st.” As you are leaving work on the 21st, you get a text message on your mobile (cell phone + other functionality) that reminds you to pick up ingredients for dessert on the way home. You go to the store and head to the baking aisle. You use the touch screen at the end of the aisle to query your online recipe repository, select a dessert, and send the ingredients list to your mobile and the instructions to your kitchen. When you walk out of the store, your credit card is auto billed (using RFID chips, your cell phone, and your credit card account). When you get home, the screen on the pantry is displaying the instructions to the dessert recipe. You bake it up and go to bed.

The next morning you wake up and your closet highlights your dressy occasion outfits for you to choose from. As you are leaving from work, your mobile reminds you of the party. It lists all the Johnsons in your address book and then displays directions to the address of the Johnsons you choose. You drive to the party and have a wondeful time, and your dessert is a hit.

Building the Second Software Generation

As you can see from the example above, we have a ways to go. The data for all the decisions and assistance must be stored somewhere—somewhere reliable, accessible, and secure. All the devices must be connected to it. A complex maze of access rights must be navigated, especially when it comes to sharing your data and rights with others. And there needs to be software to manage the whole system.

Google has one of the largest server networks anywhere. They have lots and lots of storage space, and prices for data storage are in free fall. Reliable and accessible data storage is nearly ready. Google also has rights to lots and lots of dark fiber optic networking. Broadband penetration is increasing, and plans for WIMAX networks are being laid, and so connectivity shouldn’t be a problem. Rights management and privacy are a disaster right now—there aren’t many standards in place, especially for managing so many and such diverse events.

Google is building many applications and services that are attempting to leverage different parts of the second software generation. As time goes on, I see many Google services beginning to coordinate with each other, all under the umbrella of your Google account and all accessible over any web-capable device. Google’s contextual advertising programs may begin to look more like intelligent agents making suggestions at important decision points.

Google and the Companies It Admires

Google admires the companies that will help the second software generation to mature. Google is developing lots of software and technology in-house, but it can’t do it all on its own. Acquisitions or partnerships will help to bring the second software generation to fruition. The companies I think that Google admires are the quick, nimble, aware companies that sometimes beat Google to a solution. Google admired and acquired YouTube because they have established a successful infrastructure for collecting and sharing online video that was more popular than Google Video. Companies that Google admires are those that intelligently collect, organize, and publish information that could be “mashed up” and utlized in second generation applications—Flickr, Digg, Del.icio.us, MySpace (think social connection data), BackPack (from 37Signals, one of the most nimble and aware companies on earth), and so on.

I think that it will take a powerful, well-funded company to direct and coordinate all the efforts that will bring the second software generation about—many of the necessary services have already been created, they just need to be coordinated. Google, Yahoo, Amazon, and Microsoft all seem to be heading in that direction. Google and Microsoft seem to be the strongest and/or the closest. Google has mindshare and online infrastructure, and Microsoft has incredible resources and its operating system stranglehold.

The next generation of software is on its way, and it may have Google’s name on it.

Professional networking using blogs is a relatively new idea and surrounded with much hype—when people get a new technology, they’ve got a shiny new hammer and everything starts to look like a nail. You have to be careful to assess what a tool’s real strengths and productive uses are.

In this case, I have found that professional networking using blogs works.

What Makes a Good Professional Networking Tool?

To establish whether or not (or why) a blog would work for professional networking, I’m going to outline the elements of a good professional networking tool as I see them. Good networking tools would be:

• Searchable

  If I am trying to find someone I know but have lost track of, I would like to simply “Google” their name.

• Persistent

  If I have found a resource associated with a contact and want to bookmark it, write it down, or keep the business card it was listed on, I had better be able to come back in several months or even years and find that resource again.

• Up to Date

  It’s always good to find information about my connections that reflects their current professional and life situation—I like to be able to start an intelligent conversation with my contacts about their current projects and goals. This also helps me to evaluate whether current projects or opportunities are right for them.

• Personal

  Many of my contacts have been made solely online—I have never met some of my contacts in real life. A networking tool that helps me to see what my contacts are like, how they think and feel, is very valuable.

• Connected

  Finally, a networking tool would be even more useful if I could see who my contacts trust and which contacts we have in common.

How to Use a Blog for Professional Networking

Blogs can be used for virtually all of the above criteria of a good networking tool. Blogs are searchable—they are publicly available and crawlable. A good blog is persistent and up to date, letting your readers know what you are working on and staying on the World Wide Web for more than a few months. By reading your posts, your contacts will gradually get a feeling for your personality. Blog rolls and cross linking connect your blog to the contacts, resources, and projects that are important to you.

There are other tools for networking that everyone should use and that produce benefits that blogs cannot, but blogs are so good at meeting important networking needs that they should be part of most professionals’ networking strategy.

Blogs Are Effective Professional Networking Tools

I know because my blog has recently increased my opportunities. Three times in one week. I’ve landed a new service contract through my blog, with another potential contract in the works. I also strengthened a relationship with a very good contact. The first contact found me by typing my name into Google. He found my blog, read my current profile, and sent me an email. We talked on the phone, and we are now helping each other with some of our individual and mutual goals.

The potential contract I have came through someone who found my name while looking for someone else—he found me because I was connected with the person he was looking for through my blog. Finally, one of my best contacts told me to keep posting on my blog because he reads it regularly—it was a good pat-on-the-back that can be hard to come by when blogging.

So there’s some more motivation for maintaining a blog. It can be really hard to be diligent about blogging, but the benefits really are worth it. Blog relentlessly—it will be good for your professional development.

An important part of evaluating a site is when (or if) a site was crawled (visited) by a search engine spider.

For example, if you are thinking of buying a site or taking a company on as a client, it’s important to know if the site has any chance of getting free, natural traffic from search engines. If the site has never been indexed or is so rarely visited that new content would take months to be indexed, then you may want to reconsider

Determine Last Spider Visit

To determine the most recent spider visit for a site, simply type “site:yoursitename.com” into the search box of the search engine you are testing. Most search engines, including Google, Yahoo, and MSN, support this command. The search engine will display a list of all of the pages that it is aware of on that site. Each listed page will usually have a link that says “Cached” next to it. Click on “Cached”. There will be an information bar at the top of your browser that will say when the page was cached (unfortunately, Yahoo doesn’t display these dates).

Sometimes you will see the date each page was cached listed on the search engine results page, making your job much easier. The pages with dates displayed are usually the most recently crawled pages and were visited in the last 1-3 days.

By looking at the cache dates of each page, you will be able to see when the most recent spider visit was and the extent of the indexing it did. I usually check my home page, blog, and other high-page-rank pages first—they get indexed far more frequently than the rest of my site.

Check Crawling Reach and Frequency

One of your site evaluation criteria should be an evaluation of when a site was last visited by a search engine spider. Using the site command and cached dates, you can get an idea of how well and how frequently a site is crawled by the search engine spiders.

One of the first things I do to evaluate a client’s needs is to assess his or her existing site for strengths and weaknesses. We then work on a new site plan that compensates for the weaknesses without compromising the strengths. I’ve recently been working with a new client on a site redesign and noticed something that would be helpful for all site owners to keep in mind.

The weakness that stands out the most for this particular new client is the complete lack of a sense of place—you don’t know where you are when you arrive at the site. There is no information regarding what the company does, why it is unique, or why you should choose this site over any other. There are no separate areas to the site—all of the functionality of the site is linked to from the home page, without any explanation of what each of the items is. There is not enough content to convey the site’s personality to its visitors. There is nothing about the site that would help you to understand what it is for or to make it memorable.

This site needs some index pages—pages that categorize, highlight, and explain the parts and features of the site like a tour guide pointing out historic sites on a bus ride—”On your left you’ll see the products section of the site where our fine products have been sold since 1996…”

Index Pages Make It Memorable

By grouping the site’s functions and content into a handful of areas or categories, you can help your visitors to quickly find what they are looking for and avoid “analysis paralysis.” Visitors are more likely to remember how to navigate the site and find what they are looking for if the number of (initial) options they have is reduced to a more managable number. People remember lists of between 3 and 7 items the best. Check out iKaput.com for memorable, easy navigation.

Index Pages Tell You What It Is

Once the areas or parts of your site are defined, an index page provides you with a perfect place to explain the purpose and features of a particular section of your site. By describing each of the features, you reinforce your visitors’ sense of place—they know where there are, what they are doing, and what your site is about. A good example of this principle is the education section of WhiteCanyon.com

By organizing, highlighting, and explaining the features of your site, your visitors will understand and remember your site better—just like tourists who have had a tour guide show them the sites of a city that make it unique and memorable.

DRM is certainly a hot button right now for content producers, distributors, and customers. Content producers ask, “How will our content be protected from piracy?” Customers wonder, “How can I use my songs on my MP3 player, computer, and CD player?” Distributors question, “How can we bridge the gap and still make money?”

As a customer, I’m feeling stiffed.

The Right to Consume Media

A lot of the argument over DRM hinges on what exactly it means when you pay for a song or movie. Many DRM systems are set up so that payment gives the consumer the right to play a certain song or video on a certain device or in a certain format. This is great for producers—it protects their content very tightly—and distributors—they can keep producers happy and make money again when they change formats—but very annoying for consumers.

If I have to buy the White Album by the Beatles one more time, I think I’ll scream.

I want to buy a song once, just once, and be able to play it now and forever on any device in any format I want. I will even pay a premium over other methods to do so. That’s why I still buy music on CD—I have the ability to rip it and convert it into other formats. The only trouble is, I don’t want every single song on a CD most times—I want to pick and choose. It would be nice to be able to pay once for just the song or video I want and to be guaranteed to have access to it, in any format, forever.

User-Associated Rights

Content producers and distributors need to figure out a way to associate content rights to individuals and their dependents (as long as they remain dependents), not to formats or specific kinds of devices.

If rights to use media were associated with me, then I could go anywhere, use any device, at any time, and have access to the media for which I purchased the right to consume. I could transfer my rights to these songs or videos to other people when I chose to, or as part of my estate in my will. Piracy would stop dead in its tracks.

Someone Always Finds a Way

As in the case of Jon Lech Johansen, if content producers don’t get a clue, people are going to keep finding methods for converting their music from one format to another, and the content producers are going to miss out on an opportunity to make customers happier and willing to spend more money. Think about it—how many songs would you be willing to buy if you knew that you could easily use them forever?

“Every song on iTunes Music Store has been available on the Peer to Peer networks within four hours. All the DRM does is frustrate legitimate consumers; it doesn’t stop file sharing.”

—Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney Fred Von Lohmann

Because there is a huge gap between the current positions of producers/distributors and consumers, consumers keep finding ways to bridge the gap on their own terms. When a distributor finds a way to bridge this gap for consumers legitimately and easily, they will be the heroes of the media industry—both producers and consumers.