Climate change is a mess.

Not just because of the environmental impact, but because of its politicization. We can’t even get the name right.

Environmentalists want to call it Global Warming. Industrialists want to call it bogus. The facts are that the climate is changing and we are likely responsible.

I’ve attended the last two California Climate Change Research Conferences as well as last year’s U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) Workshop on Climate Science in Support of Decision Making. All three were chock full of hard, scientific evidence from dozens and dozens of research institutions around the world. The climate is changing, but it isn’t necessarily warming. In some places, it is cooling, like in the orange belt on the eastern coast of the US where the frost line has steadily moved southward, shrinking the climate for growing oranges in that area. For Savannah, Georgia, climate change means a global cooling and no more orange groves.

The NYT today brings us a story that highlights both the political tomfoolery around this topic as well as a ray of hope that we might see some honest traction on the issue this year. The Supreme Court will be hearing a case brought by twelve states against the Environmental Protection Agency for failing to do its job regulating greenhouse gases. The case seems pretty straightforward. The Bush Administration’s stance is anything but:

A group of 12 states, including New York and Massachusetts, is suing the Environmental Protection Agency for failing to properly do its job. These states, backed by environmental groups and scientists, say that the Clean Air Act requires the E.P.A. to impose limits on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases emitted by new cars. These gases are a major contributor to the “greenhouse effect” that is dangerously heating up the planet.

The Bush administration insists that the E.P.A. does not have the power to limit these gases. It argues that they are not “air pollutants” under the Clean Air Act. Alternatively, it contends that the court should dismiss the case because the states do not have “standing,” since they cannot show that they will be specifically harmed by the agency’s failure to regulate greenhouse gases.

A plain reading of the Clean Air Act shows that the states are right. The act says that the E.P.A. “shall” set standards for “any air pollutant” that in its judgment causes or contributes to air pollution that “may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.” The word “welfare,” the law says, includes “climate” and “weather.” The E.P.A. makes an array of specious arguments about why the act does not mean what it expressly says. But it has no right to refuse to do what Congress said it “shall” do.

What’s ridiculous is that the EPA is the agency that should be addressing this problem. How they address it, what solutions they use, and any regulations they enact are policy decisions. Those decisions will need to be worked out in the time honored way. But to date, the EPA has simply denied that it has the authority to do so, rather than accept its authority and craft a series of regulations.

Indeed, they could craft a series of regulations that suck, that do little or nothing to help the real problem while letting entrenched interests get away with continued, unsustainably harmful emissions. But they haven’t even done that. Instead, they have embraced the Bush culture of denial and simply refused to do their job.

I, for one, hope the states prevail in the case. I’d like to see some arm of the federal government take up the issue of finding a solution to climate change that fits with our national interests, rather than blindly denying the need to do anything.

Defining a working solution will be a challenging problem, quite possibly the defining problem of the 21st century. It’s time to start figuring it out.

Previously, I said I was going to try out a new bread recipe for Thanksgiving. Well, it turned out that I was stuck starting the mix in a corporate apartment with limited choices for measuring cups, and I had less than complete control over the amount of time spent rising. On top of that I think I overcooked it.

But it was still ok. The crust was wicked hard, but that’s how it is served sometimes… I had expected something lighter however. Probably cooking it less would do the trick.

I will try it again, since it was soooo easy. But this time I’ll be a bit more of a perfectionist and see how things turn out.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. It’s a US holiday, I know, but the sentiments are definitely international.

It’s good to have a time of the year we take a moment to remind ourselves of the things we are thankful for. I, for one, am thankful for a lot this year.  I hope you are too.

Enjoy the holiday, folks.

What do you get when you turn proprietary data silos inside out?

Users in control.

Doc Searls has been advocating VRM for a while (here too). What’s nice about his thinking — in addition to the open source/open standards approach we’d expect from a senior editor at the Linux Journal — is that he’s working the problem through the entire technological spectrum:

I don’t think VRM should be confined to a browser, either. I think this is something that should work through a cell phone, a card, or any other device or representation that works for the individual.

Not only are the vendor’s silos being turned inside out, so are the technology and network providers’.

My mindset has been stuck in the browser, perhaps with an accompanying helper application that does nice things for users, but still basically software on a personal computer. At the core, SwitchBook’s innovation is useful in larger contexts, but it won’t start out that way. Our strategy in simple:

1. Make it work with current search habits.
2. Augment IE and Firefox.
3. Expand to other OSes and browsers as quickly as possible.
4. Push the underlying API and data format as an open standard.
5. Open the tool for customization as widely as possible.
6. Open source the code for “built-in” customization

But are we going to take the time now to make sure it works in cell phones or datacards or iPods or anything other than a computer? There just isn’t enough bandwidth for that in a bootstrapping startup.

Fortunately, Doc’s VRM work as a Fellow at the Berkman Center gives him the freedom to invest in a solution of that breadth. A VRM solution that is bigger than any one company, technology, platform, or medium. Say goodbye to the silos.

It has also given me a fresh way to think about Complex Search. Much of VRM — as I understand it — is designed to be automagic. Specify your needs, receive bids from selected/qualified vendors using a tool that makes it easy to manage those relationships. But before one can specify needs, most people need to spend time discovering their needs. For all but the simplest purchases, that’s a Complex Search.

For example, take Doc’s latest VRM “Gesture”

I want a phone that is GSM-based (so it works overseas as well as in the U.S.), works across as much of the U.S. and Canada as possible (Verizon has been a disappointment in this respect), has a GPS, and has an easy-to-use UI. I don’t care about PDA functions, ringtones (I like the old Western Electric bell ring, though), or camera functions. I like keys that are easy to read and use, and an address book that’s easy to synchronize with a computer. It would be nice, for personal reasons (I work for Linux Journal), if it ran on Linux. I’d rather it not (for the same reason) run on Windows. Mostly I just want it to be a good GSM phone with a GPS. And I’m willing to let the GPS function slide, just to get a good phone.

That’s a mouthful. Doc is famous enough in the blogoverse to get feedback without the VRM infrastructure. He may not have a vendor make an offer directly (although a smart vendor would seriously consider sponsoring Doc), but he’ll probably get enough direction from peers to narrow down his vendor choices. With a fully operating VRM, the fulfilment side of that gesture will be streamlined and automated so that any vendor who wants to can cost-effectively make Doc a competitive offer, perhaps even a bundled package that leverages their unique value-add. That will take a lot of work, but the potential value to everyone in the transaction is clear.

Compare that to the broad, politicized, unfocused brush strokes of the AttentionTrust and you can see why I think the AttentionTrust goals are still too blurry and ambiguous to generate much success. VRM is working with Intention. It is highly focused. Its output is clear. The benefit to users and vendors is evident. AttentionTrust is stuck thinking about everything, all the time, and only online, then mashing that into some anonymized goulash from which magic is supposed to emerge. Bah humbug. I’ll believe it when I see it.

I think Doc is on to something, though. The Internet so radically drops the costs of so many different modes of communication, it will continue to restructure our society for another couple of decades, at least. Most of the success to date has been based on one-to-many marketplaces, such as Amazon or many-<aggregated-as-one>-to-many marketplaces such as eBay. VRM lets us create inverted “many-to-one” markets. Markets of one. Make your gesture, create a market. That’s powerful.

And yet, Doc’s gesture — as every request for bids must — also contains a treasure trove in the form of Doc’s requirements, a wealth of needs Doc learned the hard way. He’s a power user with heavy demands and he pushes technology to its limits. He is fed up with his current options and, having experimented enough, he knows just what wants. But he’s lucky to have that experience. Most people have no idea what the deciding factors could or should be for the products they want to buy. (Can you say megapixel?) Doc is anything but a typical consumer.

Consider what it was like when the web started taking off in 1994/5/6. At that time, I was out selling Internet marketing services and helping companies figure out what to do online. Overwhelmingly, time and again, smart, capable, professional people asked “How much does a website cost?” Well, what kind of website do you want? Their question was inherently non-sensical, but people didn’t understand that yet.

First, you have to figure out what you want, then, and only then, can you send out an RFP to get bids on it. Sure, you scale your RFP based on what your budget is — and unless you have deep pockets, it pays to be prudent in what you include in your request — but at the end of the day, only a detailed specification provides enough direction for vendors to submit a bid. The result of these conversations was often a small strategy and/or requirements engineering contract to distill their needs into just such an RFP.

So how does that work with VRM? How do people develop enough expertise and understanding of their needs so they can present a request like Docs? How does VRM work for regular folk?

In short, they search. They explore. They learn.

From friends. By reading reviews. Going to various manufacturer’s and vendor’s websites. By learning from people like Doc, either through blogs, reviews at CNET or ThisNext, pricing at PriceGrabber, Google, or through direct conversations. By trying out products. Even from advertising and retail stores. I happened to learn about Verizon’s data services in the Verizon store. Imagine that.

This is Complex Search. People aren’t going to rely on any one vendor or reference point, unless they have an absolutely trusted guide like a brother or daughter or college roommate to point them in the right direction. They are going to check out different sources, browse multiple websites, collate and corollate a lot of information from a lot of different places. Then, after they have searched and narrowed their needs down to the details, they can put it in the form of a digital RFP and see the power of VRM kick in. Zing! A Market of One.

VRM is still evolving. Questions and answers of many varieties must work their way through the community, from people’s and companies’ needs to draft technological frameworks, APIs, protocols, and working code. Good stuff.

Somewhere in there, I’m confident Complex Search will meet VRM and lots of real value will be created for people, vendors, and innovators alike.

Doc will be at the Identity Workshop in early December to discuss VRM and Identity with all comers. It should be a great opportunity to figure out where VRM is headed and how we can contribute. I hope you can make it.

In a conversation about the potential market lock-in of Google at Abe Burmeister’s blog, Dave Chiu introduced me to a great presentation Seth Godin made to Google early in 2006, explaining that it was marketing, and not technology, that made Google the market leader. I couldn’t agree more, even though most of my technology friends will swear it was all about the quality of PageRank.

Tests show that when Yahoo! & Google results are formatted identically, users can’t tell the difference. And yet, Google matters to people. They matter in a deeply personal way. They have created a powerhouse brand because better technology gave them an opportunity to market to the masses and that marketing worked.

Seth puts this in his framework of remarkable stories. His bestselling books The Purple Cow and All Marketers are Liars discuss this in much greater detail, with lots of anecdotes, examples, and advice on how to improve marketing through remarkable stories. Good stuff.

What he doesn’t talk about is how you create the right stories to tell. He misses that point in his books as well. But that’s ok. Stories are powerful marketing tools. That’s an important enough message by itself. In the presentation he also does a great job pointing out the anticipatory and experiential value of a brand–that value people get just because they buy the brand, independent of the actual value of the product. The driver for this type of value is story, especially when the brand connects with people’s identity in profound ways.

He then goes on to outline his view of Fashion/Permission marketing that is uniquely enabled by the Internet as a one-to-one disintermediated medium. He exhorts Google to create a permission tool that gets users to invite Google into a deeper relationship, one that gives Google more context and more details about what users are really looking for. In other words, leveraging the brand to enhance the technology by meeting users needs in a more meaningful way, which of course will only enhance the brand further. Great stuff. Note to Google: possible areas for development: VRM and Complex Search.

It is worth watching, if only to see the advice one of the hottest minds in marketing gives to the most influention Internet company on the planet.

Curiously, Seth missed the opportunity to explain to Google that their haphazard development strategy is steering them, inexorably, away from the branding that made them the market leader: the promise of making the Internet simple.

Fellow Caltech alum Castor Fu turned me on to a great recipe for homemade bread that I hope to try out for Thanksgiving. Here’s the article that turned him on to it (unfortunately now behind NYT’s walled garden) … happy cooking!

I’ve been traveling quite a bit lately, but I guess I need to try to get to Helsinki.

Neil Gaiman shares an absolutely lovely video of the Helsinki Complaints Choir. Check it out. It’s worth the effort.

Last week, Seth Godin wrote about the critical role trust plays in our market relationships.

And the upside? The upside is that individuals (and organizations) that don’t stoop, that manage to figure out how to have influence without trying to profit from it, those brands are the ones that will last, that will thrive and that will bring the rarest commodity–trust–to the table.

Trust is an absolutely essential ingredient when we buy. We don’t part with hard earned dollars unless we convince ourselves the result will be worth it. We count on the salesman or the manufacturer to deliver real value. We trust their promises and fork over the cash.

Sure, Caveat Emptor, buyer beware. But companies that violate our trust once lose our business forever. In today’s markets there is so much choice, so many options, that once trust is gone, people are free to move on to another offer, and they do.

This is nothing new. Trust has always been critical. The information age changes the pace and volume of information, but not the criticality of trust. It seems to me that hundreds of years ago a single piece of information–”The King is dead.”–could change the course of a battle and turn the tide of a war. Today, a single piece of information is rarely so valuable. Instead, we assimilate, analyze, and respond to vast torrents of information. Diving into the Internet is like swimming in an ocean; daily RSS feeds from the Blogoverse are like drinking from a fire hose. It isn’t about any particular drop of water, it is about whether or not you can consume and respond quickly and intelligently enough to keep yourself from drowning.

What remains the same today and yesterday is the critical nature of how much trust you place in your sources of information. If news about the departed monarch of yesteryear arrived from the mouth of the town drunk, it wasn’t believed. If today’s assertions of male enhancement and unimagined wealth are delivered in attention assaulting SPAM, they too deserve little notice. In both worlds, trust moderates the flow of information. Without a source or a guide we can trust, no information can be depended on.

Sometimes that trusted guide is someone you know. Sometimes it is a brand that you’ve come to rely upon. Or perhaps it is someone referred to you by someone else.

Yet, when it matters, we rarely trust just one source, no matter how trustworthy. Our doctors tell us to get a second opinion. Buyers seek multiple bids. Journalists are trained to double check their facts. It is a matter of due course to seek out alternative perspectives to transform a one dimensional recommendation into a three dimensional panorama with scope and breadth of multiple experiences and views. Even at Amazon, we rarely read just one review; we want a wealth of perspectives so we can paint a richer picture of the product in question.

With the Internet, we regularly review and incorporate multiple sources in our decision making. We double check the prices at Expedia and Travelocity at Orbitz or United.com. We check online reviews and competitive offers from multiple sources for just about any item we can buy, from cars to computers to movies. We aren’t limited to any particular silo of information. We mix and match until we have convinced ourselves that we understand well enough to make a decision. This is the oceanic torrent of diverse information we sift through to discover truth.

This is complex search. We browse the web, using multiple search providers and track results across many many destination websites. It isn’t about the quality of any single search result, it is about managing the aggregate results from multiple services across the web.

When we search for a house, we don’t take the MLS listing at face value, we also check Zillow.com and want to learn about schools, crime, traffic, smog, and public transportation in the neighborhood. When looking for a job, we don’t just trust Monster.com or CareerBuilder.com, we also visit the company’s web page, scan Google and Technorati for buzz, and may even check out eTrade or Hoover’s for more in-depth financial data. We use the Internet to compile an aggregate view of our search target, a view that combines the perspectives of many different sources of varying levels of trust. The end result is a composite that we can trust because it represents a coherent representation of a broad range of diverse data, selected using our own judgment. We trust it more because it isn’t sole source, because we did the legwork, because we own it emotionally.

And yet, of the search solutions available today, none make it easy to manage this type of inherently complex process of double-checking, comparing, and seeking second, third and fourth opinions. What you type in at Expedia has to be re-typed at CheapTickets and United and Travelocity, and the results are often hard to retain for later comparison. What you find on eBay is isolated from the results at Amazon and shipping, handling, & taxes may be hidden until you proceed to checkout; even shopping sites like NexTag, TheFind, and ThisNext don’t make it easy to mix & match and compare multiple products fully priced from multiple merchants. Even Google and Yahoo! and MSN leave vast swaths of the Internet outside of their search database, commonly known as “The Dark Web.” Today’s search is a vast array of isolated islands, each offering a glimpse into their private database, their own private silo. But users don’t live in silos, they skip across the net from island to island, saving to bookmarks, printing to PDFs, opening links in new tabs and windows, even cutting & pasting into Word, trying to keep track of their journey. It’s a mess.

What we need is a tool or a system that lets us coordinate complex searches across the ‘net, using any search provider we want–indeed using any query-driven web service–all seamlessly integrated into a single interface and repository stored in the user context. We need the user to be in charge of their search, no matter where it might lead, how it might evolve, and what information is uncovered. We don’t need to be bound to any particular vendor, or isolated in any particular silo. We do need to be able to expand the search to include new search providers and to capture unforeseen data. And its needs to be both easy and powerful. And it all needs to work without interrupting, distracting, or confusing users.

That’s what we are working on at SwitchBook. Over the course of the next few months, I’ll be exploring what Complex Search means, highlighting how current and emerging tools succeed and fail to meet this need. Hopefully you’ll find it as compelling a problem as I do and will take a moment to share your thoughts on how we can shift the search world from the simple query-response of the Google era to an interconnected system of search technologies that empower users to resolve truly complex searches simply, quickly, and effectively. When we can do that, we can create a system that is accessible enough, flexible enough, and transparent enough for every user to trust.