This Saturday I’m impelled by an urge to write about something less gloomy than the world financial meltdown. So I’ve chosen:

The death of the database.

Bear with me, it’s not as dark as it sounds, and is much more interesting than it seems. In fact, if you’ve ever struggled with a database, like Microsoft’s Access, you may be forgiven for throwing your hat in the air.

First principles first. When we begin playing around with computers, we become aware there are two types of memory — the stuff that disappears when the computer is turned off, or during a power cut, this is Random Access Memory (RAM); and secondly, the hard drive onto which we save our work to preserve it when the computer is shut down.

We learn to be wary of RAM because most of us will have lost chunks of work when something goes wrong. We place much more faith in the hard drive, even though they can go pop too.

Hard drives are run by databases — a form of software that organizes data so that it can be retrieved from a number of different angles. Databases are the worker bees of almost every software application. They purr away in the background while we type — paging, fetching and carrying all manner of information at our bidding.

Syntagma is powered by Wordpress software which operates dynamically, making constant calls to a serverside database to construct pages on the fly. It can be a slow process sometimes and is prone to error for the slightest of reasons.

So how is it that a Google search produces millions of results in a fraction of a second? We know they have all of the internet on millions of computers in various datacentres around the world. Could it possibly be done with a massive distributed database threaded over countless Dell boxes?

The answer, obviously, is no. But the surprising fact is that they hold the entire internet in RAM memory. That’s what makes the process so lightning fast.

I must admit I was slightly dumbstruck when I heard that piece of information.

And that’s the shape of the future. Cloud computing, as it’s called, rather poetically, makes a local hard drive redundant. In future, if Google gets its way, we will work almost exclusively through our browsers, with applications in the “cloud”, that’s to say online in a form of super-RAM memory. Hence, the death of the database as we’ve known it.

The British Government is addicted to creating endless databases containing every fact about us. Most of them don’t work, and they leak information faster than the Colorado River leaks water. Ministers might like to consider cloud computing as a cheaper alternative.

Of course, it may seem a bit risky to entrust all your information to a single company holding it in the most fleeting form of remembrance possible, but that’s what the future looks like.

Imagine not having to keep offsite backup copies of everything on a second drive or memory stick. Think how cheap computers will become if they don’t need hard drives or massive operating systems, like Windows. Conjure up a world where everything can be done on a small box — any small box, anywhere in the world — and with the minimum of equipment and maintence. In fact, think smartphone, enlarged for more comfort and ease of use.

Clive Sinclair used to claim that you could run a nuclear power station on his little ZX80 computer back in the early 1980s. I always refused to believe that, but he may have been right. In the next decade we’ll be able to run the world from a BlackBerry.

Clouds and blackberries. William Wordsworth would feel very much at home in the 21st century.

John Evans

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How gold-plated is Google Chrome?

I’ve been playing with Google’s shiny new browser, named Chrome, for a week or more. Initial impressions are excellent, despite the obvious fact that we’ve only got a small part of its capability at this stage.

Chrome has the same elegant, simple design that Google is famous for, and it’s much faster than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and even Firefox. Indeed, it renders Syntagma sites better than Firefox does — one of the reasons I stopped using it a year ago. By contrast, Chrome delivers a seamlessly fluid performance over a range of functions.

Syntagma in Google’s Chrome browser

Like most Google products its browser comes with a broader philosophy, or masterplan, than the functionality suggests. While any browser will render internet objects for viewing and manipulation, Chrome is much more ambitious.

Ultimately it’s intended to replace many features of the operating systems on computers with what has become known as “cloud” computing — using applications and services already web-side, not embedded on a local hard drive.

Google says, “We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that’s what we set out to build.”

Significantly, Microsoft has huge vested interests in boxed software and desktop products in general, from which the bulk of its income derives. It’s finding it all but impossible to substitute browser versions of them and still make money. A clash with the new Google worldview — which aims to strip the Microsofties of their dominance — is about to break out in earnest.

Google believes Microsoft may fire its first broadband broadside by switching off adverts in IE8 sometime soon. Internet Explorer Version 8 is still in Alpha mode and is, reportedly, hopelessly mired in problems — shades of Windows Vista — but when it comes it could contain a bombshell for Google.

Since Google is still a monoculture based on search and its accompanying advertising, that would hit them where it hurts most. The share value of the company would drop overnight and the sense of invincibility that Google has enjoyed on Wall Street and everywhere else would be shattered, maybe for good.

Hence the company has got its retaliation in first by bringing out its own browser — which has been hinted at for years. It has also encouraged Mozilla, an open-source firm that produces Firefox (the geeks browser of choice), while promising a new cloud environment based on Chrome and its web-based apps: Google docs, spreadsheets and presentations, directly challenging Microsoft Office. And there are many other new experiences under development in Google’s locker.

A lot of us in web publishing still haven’t forgiven the Californian crew for their treatment of small-to-medium internet publishers last year, many of whom were driven out of business by crashes in PageRank. But Google’s sense of adventure and all-embracing strategic coherence means you can’t hate them for long.

Chrome should be on everyone’s computer, simply because much of what the Googlers are doing will only be viewable in their rapidly developing cloud browser.

Sooner than we think, businesses will be eliminating their expensive data centres and embracing cloud computing. Internet sage Bob Cringely of PBS believes that “relatively few organizations really ought to have their own data centers”.

Chrome is the future. It’s not fully with us yet, but will be in the next decade, which, astonishingly, is only a little more that a year away.

Syntagma never says “I told you so”. It’s an irritating phrase that adds nothing to a debate. It’s also a pyrrhic victory when the bad times roll.

We’re talking about the American economy, of course — now in recession, as we’ve been predicting for months — and the British and European financial positions, which are trailing some way behind the U.S., but about to implode too.

We’ve been on the case since last June when the ominous tag “credit crunch” started to be bandied about in response to falling American house prices.

As online publishers we are partially protected from the ravages faced by bricks and mortar operations. Even so, Google responded to the same data last year by dumping lots of small publishers using its AdWords/AdSense programs and its range of offshoot partnerships.

ZDNet Editor in Chief Larry Dignan believes that “the dip in Google’s paid clicks was intentional, part of a strategic plan designed to deliver better, more-precisely targeted ads” and tends “to reflect macroeconomic conditions” — an acknowledgment that suggests Google isn’t recession-proof.

The knock-on effects lowered the earning power of a whole raft of mid-sized publishers who operate below the glass ceiling of scalability needed to challenge the giant press barons of the print media.

Given the power of this pincer movement, how should internet marketers and publishers ride out the troubles ahead, which may even include another dotcom crash?

Here at Syntagma we are developing two new business models which don’t depend exclusively on Google rankings and big investment in assets. We have also moved to conserve cash, now the most sought after commodity in global financial markets. Forget equities, bonds and angel lending. Asset-backing is truly out of fashion. Only cash and gold will do during the next two to five years, or maybe even longer than that. Japan took more than a decade to haul itself out of its banking crisis and the profound deflation of the 1990s.

I really don’t see how mid-sized businesses, with heavy debt, and/or lots of equity in the hands of VCs, can get through this otherwise.

The Fed’s dramatic easing of monetary policy, which still has some way to go, is barely making an impact, although the usual lags apply. In the 1990s, Japan found that zero, even negative, interest rates could not persuade its reluctant public to splash out in the shops. Longer term rates in the U.S. are already close to zero.

Ben Bernanke is apparently studying the Japanese experience of zero rates right now. Surely a sign of what’s to come.

The game now appears to be out of the hands of the authorities whatever they decide to do. Bernanke deserves credit for at least trying. His next move will surely be to throw the kitchen sink at the problem and let the Devil take the hindmost. This is no time for musings on “moral hazard”, the hazard is not inflation but deflation and slump. Massive U.S. Government loans to individual defaulters can’t be ruled out and may be just around the corner.

Compare that to the lethargic approach of the Bank of England and the European Central Bank. Still holding rates at 5.25 percent and 4 percent respectively, although the BoE has little room to manoeuvre thanks to Gordon Brown’s obsession with public-sector spending.

The first casualties could be some major institutions in America and monetary union in Europe, where the euro currency is looking very vulnerable. At least Brown got that right.

Syntagma predicts we are going to be amazed by developments in the not too distant future. The world may look a very different place when we come out of this, and it won’t necessarily be all bad news. Bubbles have to burst. Nature demands it. And the end of the eurozone would be a big plus for European freedom.

Nearly a year ago I wrote a post called These are the good times. They were and still are, uncomfortable though the ride may be.

Banks are pulling back from the industrial securitization of risk that has blown up so spectacularly in their faces.

So called collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) are the supermarket sausages of the financial system — nobody knows what’s in them, and most prefer not to.

In the old days, banks took the risk of lending money on themselves and ensured that borrowers would be able to pay it back over time. Securitization means that they can lend to any Tom, Dick or Harriet, package up the debts into large parcels of small slices from many borrowers, and sell them onto other banks and finance houses.

When house prices are rising fast, and rates are low (thanks to the Iraq war — see yesterday’s post), there will be no problem. How quickly the weather can change.

Now there’s a rush back to caution and traditional virtues — and not before time.

The Private Equity industry is currently holding its global jamboree in Germany. What a difference a year makes. Just months ago (pre-August 9, to be precise) the Private Equity barons were borrowing billions to take over all manner of companies, many blue-chip, and some national strategic giants. Now the sources of funds are drying up and the world has become a much more anxious place.

Not so long ago, securitization of talent was the goal for what HG Wells called “originative intellectual workers” — the kind of people who work from a laptop and a cell phone, hot-desking from place to place. They were advised to raise money on future earnings by selling shares in themselves. Specialized markets were to spring up, something like the London Stock Exchange’s AIM market, to flog these things to admirers with more money than sense.

I suppose if you turned into a Bill Gates or the Google guys your investors would be happy — but how many of us do?

The whole notion of securitization is targeted on bypassing the present reality in favour of an unknown future, using other people’s money — often their pension funds or insurance pots. In essence it’s no different from betting on racehorses.

Now the bubble has burst and cold realism has dawned, even for the godlings of private equity and their blood brothers, venture capitalists.

The beneficiaries will be China, and the sovereign wealth funds of Asia, including the Middle East. Western financial centres have permitted power to pass from settled democracies under the rule of law, to the potentates of totalitarian regimes whose oil deposits or cheap, exploited labour will soon allow to rule over us in many covert ways yet to be revealed.

And why? The abandonment of risk management in the cause of easy pickings.

Who will hold the banks to account?

Nobody — it’s too risky.

You know you’ve made it when the competition walks in terror of your objectives.

Attila the Hun as depicted by the BBC

If you generate real fear in your space, you’ve achieved the status of Attila the Hun, who terrorized the Roman Empire 2000 years ago.

Who is the 21st century’s online version of the bloodthirsty Hun? Google, of course : the “Do no evil” search giant which can be surprisingly heavy-handed in defence of its own interests.

Microsoft has clearly given up on its solitary attempts to challenge the unchallengable, and has been seeking to swallow other stragglers to redress the position.

It should heed the old warning, though : “You are what you eat”.

Yahoo is refusing the toothsome embrace of the software king and is now in talks with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

Now correct me if I’m wrong, but escaping the clutches of one Great White Shark only to fall longingly into the jaws of another, doesn’t seem like a very good strategy to me. But what do I know?

The two sides are apparently in discussions about merging MySpace and News Corporation’s other online properties with Yahoo. News Corp would get a stake of more than 20pc in the internet company.

The deal would help the Murdoch corporation fight back against the growing dominance of Google’s internet search business. There’s that name again.

Last year, Rupert Murdoch said: “We’ve got to find new ways and new business models to get revenues. Or else the world is going to be owned by Google.”

He has made no secret of the fact that he views attacking Google’s dominance as the key to internet progress for his businesses.

The deal would also leave Microsoft without a growth strategy. The Redmond softies have been desperately trying to make their mark in the online world after seeing their software and operating systems business deliver little value to shareholders in recent years.

A News Corp-owned Yahoo would give Murdoch an established news platform online and, under the terms being discussed, would leave Yahoo essentially independent to take the fight to both Google and Microsoft.

Somehow, I see Google surviving that, but Microsoft may have nowhere to hide — online at least.

The Wall Street Journal — now Murdoch owned — is calling the value of MySpace at between $6bn and $10bn. A spokeswoman for Yahoo said last night, “Our board is continuing to carefully and thoroughly evaluate its strategic options and is committed to pursuing initiatives that maximize value for all stockholders.”

One can’t help thinking that somewhere in the background, watching like a hawk, is the wily Attila. This time though he’s running out of options. Anti-Trust laws are likely to limit Google’s room for manoeuvre.

Attila was finally caught up with and defeated by a superior Roman General leading a coalition of tribes pushed aside by the Hun. They included Saxons, Franks and Celts.

Are sufficient forces now gathering that will see off the internet’s own version of Attila?

Maybe not this time. But fall he will. History is implacable on that.

This morning I received a couple of comments on two old posts dating back to October 2005 and July 2006. Both posts have been popular for comments and email conversations. Neither is on topic — which are, Tech, Media, Publishing — and would fall into the very ample category of self-indulgence.

The first is, Hey, I’m a Viking, which tells how I discovered that I’m … erm … a Viking. It seems I have the genetic configuration called Baron Dupuytren’s disease, or Viking Finger. Here’s a snippet :

“This weekend I discovered I’m a Viking. … Yes, I’m one of those horn-headed, axe-wielding types who terrorized Europe for centuries. Before you run for cover, I’m not about to go on a spreadeagling spree or demand you pay me Danegeld — although that might not be a bad idea.

“I realized I’ve got Viking blood — as many in the British Isles have — because of a minor medical condition which affects the small finger tendon in the palm of a hand. This progressive condition pulls the small finger gradually across the palm, giving a rather gnarled, even romantic, impression to the onlooker. The figure of Captain Hook springs to mind. ”

The second, is about an obscure Cornish author called Crosbie Garstin, now utterly forgotten, even in Cornwall. Yet, he wrote a major Hollywood film, China Seas (1935), which starred Clark Gable, plus a memorable trilogy about the Penhales family. Here’s a taster :

“Crosbie Garstin is best known for his trilogy of novels about the Penhales family, published before the last war by Heinemann. The Owls’ House, High Noon and The West Wind are all cracking adventures set in Cornwall and on the high seas in the days of sail. China Seas, his last book, continued the genre, and was made into a Hollywood film starring Clark Gable. Garstin was an interesting character, a true adventurer and traveller. He served during the first world war in King Edward’s Horse and was commissioned on the battlefield in 1915.”

It always intrigues me why some posts attract comments long after they were published. Clearly, these two contain specific keywords that are regularly searched for on Google and other engines. Syntagma is number 1 on Google for both “crosbie garstin” and “viking finger”.

So doctors searching for medical information on Baron Dupuytren’s disease will land on our silly post. Let’s hope they don’t kill anyone with an axe.

UK High Street giant Marks and Spencer has just dropped the price of men’s underwear by more than 40 percent to 60p ($1.18) a pair.

Some might call that “pants”, but I think it’s jolly good news — I need to replenish my under-wardrobe. Don’t say we don’t bring good tidings here at Syntagma.

To tell you the truth, I’ve been scouring the columns and bulletins for weeks for just a glimmer of brash, hopeful news for the new year, but that’s the best I can find. I’m having to fall back on small domestic matters.

Today I’m going to tell you about my new desk diary. I do enjoy opening a fresh, pristine volume for the first time in the new year. Such possibilities. A whole year spread out before us like a blank canvas. And a Year Planner we can write in anything we wish.

I usually buy my diaries on January 5 — the ones I use run out on January 6. In the retail trade, this is called Just-in-Time purchasing. It’s why when you want to buy a large item you’re told there’s a six-week delivery period.

My brand of diary comes in two colours, silver and black. I buy them alternately each year. 2008 is a black year. Naturally, 2007 was silver. Does that affect the quality of the year? You would be surprised.

Extensive in-house research indicates that it does, but with a qualification. Take last year. The first six months were a breeze; couldn’t put a foot wrong. However, from midsummer it all went awry. Various factors, including Google’s hamfisted twiddling with its PageRank algorithm, knocked the stuffing out of the market.

This year, we start on a low baritone note. Merrill Lynch believes the U.S. is already in recession, and the British Government is preparing to nationalize failed bank, Northern Rock — a little late in the day — in a desperate effort to save the vast billions of taxpayers’ money they’ve sunk into the rescue plan.

However, the good news is that an acquaintance of mine, who happens to be a professional astrologer (I know, I know!), says that 2008 is going to be brilliant, with upturns everywhere by June. Eerily, many economists are saying the same thing. Now we know where they get their inspiration from.

So it’s a game of two halves. The diary colour only predicts the first six months. If we can survive till summer we’re in clover — so to speak.

Anyone for hibernation.

Continuing the uncharacteristically gloomy series of posts in Syntagma over recent days, I’m impelled to mention Greg Linden’s plausible post on the “coming 2008 dotcom crash”.

He writes : “The crash will be driven by a recession and prolonged slow growth in the US. Global investment capital will flee to quality, ending the speculative dumping of cash on Web 2.0 startups.”

The VC’s will go into damage limitation mode : “Venture capital firms will seek to limit their losses by forcing many of their portfolio companies to liquidate or seek a buyout. … Startups that managed to get cash before the bubble collapses will have a cash horde [sic], but will find little opportunity to rest on it. Most startups will find their revenue models were unrealistic and will rapidly have to seek change.”

A contrarian view was taken by Irwin Stelzer on last night’s BBC Newsnight. He felt the Sovereign Wealth Funds (see this post) would ride in to the rescue like the US Cavalry — as they have done so far. His tone was a shade too optimistic for my taste, much as I admire his opinions. The image of King Canute rose unbidden to the mind’s eye.

Back to Linden, who compares the current situation with the 2000 dotcom crash : “[It] was a much smaller crash without the fuel from broader problems in the US economy, but we still had investment capital shut off for a few years, most startups shut down, and the remaining startups shift business models.”

I believe the crash is already underway. I’m sensing a number of ad networks reassessing their operations and even closing down some programs. We can’t be immune from the wider economy.

Businesses that can live on short rations may ride this out through belt-tightening measures. Anyone with debt that needs to be renewed periodically will find their position precarious.

I’ve spent a lot of time this week thinking about Energy Analysis, which is a central part of the Superdemocracy project I’m working on.

Energy Analysis is a different way of viewing how organizations work. Instead of seeing people in particular “jobs” — which are ragbags of roles inherited from earlier empire building and power grabs — we examine the energy flows through the whole unit. We also look at the type of energy involved. This method always points up people placement as the main source of rigidities in any large organized group.

It’s a simple enough procedure, but breaks away from our normal worldview in which people are the natural drivers and shakers of all corporate activity. At first sight, it can leave you a bit disorientated, but think of Google. From the outside, the Googleplex looks like a giant energy plasma instead of a normal corporation, like Microsoft or IBM. And yet even Google has still fully to evolve into a true superdemocratic organism.

Then, out of the blue, a perfect example of an energy-driven corpo landed with a thud in my lap : the European Commission.

Basic background
The EU Commission is a board of quasi civil servants, drawn from the political classes of EU member states, and based in Brussels. Unlike normal secretariats it exercises considerable executive powers by proposing new Europe-wide legislation which eventually becomes legal throughout the community.

It has steadily amassed a lot of influence and control, backed by a tame supreme court which almost always supports the central orthodoxy. Its methodology has been “salami-slicing”, taking power in small increments that they think will not be noticed by busy people, but will accumulate over time into a vast control console for the whole of Europe.

The Commission is widely regarded as a political graveyard for national politicians who see it as western Europe’s equivalent to the Siberian salt mines of the old Soviet Union, where out-of-favour opponents were conveniently deposited. Britain’s commissioner, Peter Mandleson, a friend of Tony Blair, was twice forced out of the British Cabinet for alleged dishonesty. He now controls trade negotiations for all 27 countries in the EU.
/Basic Background

Now just imagine what all that negative energy will do if concentrated in one supranational body given the power to use it.

Naturally, that resentment and loss of status back home will fixate on stripping power from national governments and lodging it in Brussels. This will compensate Commissioners psychologically for the assumed shabby treatment these people had received from national politicians.

In short, the Commission will inevitably become a kind of politburo, hoovering power to the centre and spewing out hundreds of thousands of prescriptive “directives” for the folks back home. It will be job justification and revenge politics writ large by a powerful bunch of losers.

And that’s just what has happened over the past 35 years, ever since the UK joined an inoffensive “Common Market” with “no political or sovereignty implications”. The energy map of the institution predicts perfectly how it has evolved over the decades. It’s also a fact that the Commission’s accounts have not been cleared for 13 years by their own court of auditors on the grounds of massive fraud.

This week a constitution was signed by national politicians which paves the way for yet more power grabs and the downgrading of democratic procedures and accountability.

You would rightly guess that most ordinary people are totally against all this. Indeed, two years ago both France and the Netherlands voted it down in referendums, and Britain would have done the same if allowed to have a say by the slippery Blair and Brown. The constitution has now been repackaged and renamed — an amending treaty. This time they’ve walked away with the whole salami.

So the transition from common market to legal jurisdiction is almost complete, with not a referendum of the people in sight. And it’s all been driven by the energies funnelled into the Commission by short-sighted, short-termist national politicians. Stitch-up is too mild a comment for what has taken place.

This week also sees the 350th anniversary of the Flushing Remonstrance which was issued by English settlers in New Holland, now New York, in protest against religious persecutions by the then Dutch rulers. In retrospect it was the model for all the other Declarations and freedom documents that followed.

So do we need our own Flushing Remonstrance here in western Europe? It would be a good start, but we should also look at the energy makeup of the Brussels Commission and so-called Court of Justice. Then we could get back to free trade and dispense with the futilities of failed politicians.

As Shakespeare put it, we must renounce “the equivocation of the fiend that lies like truth”.

Energy Analysis is a useful tool for that in any organization, especially when aimed at finding the points of maximum competence for the taking of critical decisions. One thing’s for sure, pushing up decisions to Brussels is the worst of all possible worlds — the point of maximum incompetence.

But then we hardly live in a sane universe.