The Meth Lab

Cal Henderson, the lead developer of Flickr, recently revealed that they deploy new builds up to every half hour.

Support lightweight programming models that allow for loosely coupled systems. The complexity of the corporate-sponsored web services stack is designed to enable tight coupling. While this is necessary in many cases, many of the most interesting applications can indeed remain loosely coupled, and even fragile. The Web 2.0 mindset is very different from the traditional IT mindset! Think syndication, not coordination. Simple web services, like RSS and REST-based web services, are about syndicating data outwards, not controlling what happens when it gets to the other end of the connection. This idea is fundamental to the internet itself, a reflection of what is known as the end-to-end principle. Design for "hackability" and remixability. Systems like the original web, RSS, and AJAX all have this in common: the barriers to re-use are extremely low. Much of the useful software is actually open source, but even when it isn't, there is little in the way of intellectual property protection. The web browser's "View Source" option made it possible for any user to copy any other user's web page; RSS was designed to empower the user to view the content he or she wants, when it's wanted, not at the behest of the information provider; the most successful web services are those that have been easiest to take in new directions unimagined by their creators. The phrase "some rights reserved," which was popularized by the Creative Commons to contrast with the more typical "all rights reserved," is a useful guidepost.

Public universities will find it difficult to change, so state systems are more likely to take steps like Indiana's has in turning to Western Governors University to fill the online learning gap in its offerings, the authors write. And if private nonprofit institutions "are able to navigate this disruptive transition," they say, "they will have to do so by creating autonomous business units."

It continues: "Both the not-for-profit and for-profit incumbents have been successful so far at warding off policies that seek to regulate quality.... [T]he goal of policy should be to unleash innovation by setting the conditions for good actors that improve access, quality, and value -- be they for-profit, nonprofit, or public -- to succeed. And if those institutions deliver, the landscape will shift over time, as it has in every other highly regulated market that was disrupted."

Apple’s new favorite child is not without its flaws. The virtual keyboard is a pain for composing anything beyond short notes. The nonexistent file system makes finding important documents difficult and sharing across applications nearly impossible. Finally, managing a large number of readings in PDF format becomes a major time-suck. Syncing PDFs via iTunes was found to be "needlessly complicated," emailing marked-up versions back to oneself was "prohibitively time-consuming," and even the cloud-based storage, Dropbox, "failed to work seamlessly with PDF reading/annotating applications."

Perhaps the most impactful discovery was that none of the iPad's strengths are unique to Apple. According to the report, “the new wave of Android-based tablets seems likely to provide an appealing alternative that will result in the coexistence of at least two competing tablet operating systems.”