- Business
- User Guide Introduction
- Online Networks: There’s Strength in Numbers
- The Benefits of Having a Website
- Learning & Education
- Enjoy online shopping instead of worrying about it!
- The Benefits of Having a Website
- The Benefits and Different Types of Websites
- Other
- Enjoy online shopping instead of worrying about it!
- Welcome to Verde Valley Online, “The Future.”
Welcome to Verde Valley Online, “The Future.”
06/07/2009 - By David Hoschouer
"The future is here. It's just not evenly distributed yet." It’s a quote from science-fiction writer William Gibson, and I've been pondering it ever since.
So often, signs of the future are all around us, but it isn't until much later that most of the world realizes their significance. Meanwhile, the innovators who are busy inventing that future live in a world of their own. They see and act on premises not yet apparent to others.
In the internet industry, my industry, I see potential in an existing technology, and push the envelope to get a little (or a lot) more out of it than its original creators intended. I am comfortable with new tools, and good at combining them to get unexpected results.
Take for instance this website. The name should say it all. The Verde Valley has been in dire need of an online “one stop place” to find everything in the valley. Of course it takes time and resources to create such a place or what I like to term “inventing the future.”
The most interesting part of the story is still untold, in the work of many independent projects like Verde Valley Jobs Plazza, or Verde Valley Website Directory, Verde Valley Business Directory, and Verde Valley Chamber of Commerce that, like a progressively rendered image, will suddenly snap into focus. That's why I like to use the word "emergent." There's a story here that is emerging with increasing clarity, “the future.”
The internet is the new land of promise in many ways. It has yet to be completely defined, but all of these things will come together into what I'm calling "the emergent Verde Valley Internet operating system," or the “Verde Valley Wide Web.” The facilities being pioneered will, without question, be integrated into a standardized platform that enables a next generation of applications and users.
What's more, I don't believe that the story will emerge whole-cloth from any large vendor in the Verde Valley. The large vendors are struggling with how to make money from this next generation of computing, and so they are moving forward slowly. But network computing is a classic case of what Clayton Christensen, author of The Innovator's Dilemma, calls a disruptive technology. It doesn't fit easily into existing business models or containers. It will belong to the upstarts, who don't have anything to lose, and the risk-takers among the big companies, who are willing to bet more heavily on the future than they do on the past.
Let's take Web services as an example. Microsoft recently announced they hadn't figured out a business model for Web services, and were slowing down their ambitious plans for building for-pay services. Meanwhile, Website Developers, who don't worry too much about business models, but just try to find the shortest path to where they are going, are building web services by the thousands.
The future of the internet is here. We can see it coming because it’s right in front of us. Here are some related and interesting facts to consider from U.S. Department of Commerce.
More than 85% of people today use major search engines to find a specific product or service.
More than 97% of people rarely go any further than the first 10 to 15 results on top of pages.
Businesses that used the Internet for Advertisement grew 46% faster than those that didn't.
So let's “Cut to the Chase.” If you don't ride the horse in the direction it's going, it will run away from you. The companies that "grasp the nettle firmly" (as my English mother in law likes to say) will reap the benefits of greater control over their future than those who simply wait for events to overtake them.
Even though I believe that revenue is possible from turning Websites into Web services, I also believe that it's essential that we don't make this purely a business transaction. One of the beauties of the Internet is that it has an architecture that promotes unintended consequences. You don't have to get someone else's permission to build a new service in the digital land. There should be no business negotiation. Just do it. And if people like what you've done, they can find it and build on it.
As a result, I believe strongly that Web sites need to have, at minimum, a low-volume option that remains free of charge. It could be done in the same way that a company like Amazon now builds its affiliates network. A developer signs up online using a self-service Web interface for a unique ID that it must present for XML-based data access. At low volumes (say 1,000 requests a day), the service is free. This promotes experimentation and innovation. But at higher volumes, which would suggest a service with commercial possibility, pricing needs to be negotiated.
Bit by bit, we'll watch the transformation of the Web services wilderness. The first stage, the pioneer stage, is marked by screen scraping and "unauthorized" special purpose interfaces to database-backed Web sites. In the second stage, the Web sites themselves will offer more efficient, XML-based APIs. (This is starting to happen now.) In the third stage, the hodgepodge of individual services will be integrated into a true operating system layer, in which a single vendor (or a few competing vendors) will provide a comprehensive set of Web sites that turns the Internet into a huge collection of program-callable components, and integrates those components into applications that are used every day by non-technical people.
Welcome to Verde Valley Online, “The Future.”
(Verde Valley Online has been developed by the Verde Valley Chamber of Commerce. The Verde Valley Chamber of Commerce is a voluntary organization of citizens and business owners who are investing time, talent and money in business and community development programs, working together to improve the economic, civic and cultural fortitude of the region.
We believe in the dignity and goodness of all people. Prejudice has no place in our community. As one of America's finest regions we can tolerate no less. The citizens of the Verde Valley have the courage and the conviction to affect a positive difference. To be successful everyone must have a chance to succeed. This is our pledge. This is our hope. This is our future.
Our Members are the Chamber of Commerce. They are the people who provide the ideas, create the drive, and set the goals to keep the Chamber of Commerce doing what it does. Without our Members, there wouldn’t be a chamber, or great websites like Verde Valley Online. Therefore support our members. They after all support our community.)
