Today’s op-ed in the New York Times slamming Microsoft for its lack of innovation got me on this train of thought. (I do think MSFT has the opportunity to innovate, but that’s another post.)

There is a clear difference in DNA between companies that innovate and companies that don’t. A big piece of that is what I call “DRM thinking”.

“DRM thinking” is when you knowingly pit yourself against what your consumer wants, throw barriers in the face of usability, ignore market realities, and continue to convince yourself it’s okay.
DRM as it was applied to digital music is an unbelievable example of refusal to look at the whole picture. While labels and technology providers developed multiple forms of DRM, created differing levels of licensing and access for the consumer, and in general spent a whole lot of time trying to “get DRM right”, it was completely useless tech and a huge waste of time.
Anyone who wanted a perfect digital copy of a record without any copy protection whatsoever could just walk into a big-box retailer and spend $9.99 for the CD. (CD copy protection was tried, but there was never any indication that it was ever going to work, and it didn’t.) This went on for years.
Barring your front door doesn’t work very well if there is no back wall on the house.

DRM thinking is what holds back companies from innovation.

I kid, really, because I was excited to see a viable tablet, and if anyone can make it happen, it would be Cupertino. I was lucky enough to watch the unveiling from Robert Scoble HQ, along with my friend Don Dodge, and to watch Robert synthesize multiple live streams of video, audio, tweets, and photos into an overview of the event.
What did we think? The take was pretty much unanimous. We’ll all buy one because it’s a fun toy and that’s what we do. We love that the 16 GB base model is $499 but we want the 64GB 3G model at $829. We aren’t blown away. Scoble says “I was expecting a 10.0 and an 8.7 showed up.” What’s the use case?

I think there’s a potential new market for AAPL here. The theory seems to be that there is a consumer base that doesn’t need a workhorse computer, does not need enterprise, but wants to surf the Web, consume media, play games, and use the applications to which iPhone users have become addicted. The larger multi-touch screen is a great use of that technology. The iPad is really fun. It’s probably not really useful (more…)

The devastation caused by the earthquake in Haiti on January 12 mobilized people and people’s humanity in a way that we may not have seen before. The growth of Web immediacy (i.e. Twitter) and sharing enabled organizations like the Red Cross to gather real funds very quickly. We do not want momentum to slip, so, here are six easy ways to give. You probably already know this first one – it has raised over $21 million:

1.Text “HAITI” to “90999″ to donate $10 to the Red Cross
2. Text “Yele” to 501501 to donate $5 to Wyclef Jean’s Yele Haiti
3. Donate to Doctors Without Borders here (Please note, you may not be able to earmark your donation for Haiti specifically)
4. Donate to Partners in Health here
5. Donate to charity: water here
6. Donate to Unicef here

The New York Times yesterday announced its paid online model. The model’s very much like that used by The Financial Times: a visitor may read a certain number of articles for free, and after that is asked to subscribe for a flat fee.
The Times has been racking its collective brain for a couple years on which model to use and how to implement it. The thing is: the online newspaper is far more valuable than the print version. The core audience should be willing to pay, if they can also be made to recognize that fact.

What makes the online paper so much more compelling? It’s alive and evolving. In a time of instantaneous news, what will make an institution like the NYT relevant and valuable is layers of content and perspective.

No paper can compete on news, but today, the initial coverage of, say, the crisis in Haiti (it’s hard to think of much else right now) can be overlaid with new information (as facts come in), new perspectives (from different reporters and civilians on and off the scene, photos and video from those who are on the ground, and human stories from those affected. The story never ends; it is constantly augmented and remains relevant.

News is a universal commodity and it can’t be sold as-is. But if the New York Times can find a way to be the best at creating this kind of deep, evolving, honest, relevant story, then readers will pay.

(I wrote a post on this last April and have reposted it below. It’s about NYT entertainment content being made more valuable by the participatory nature of the Web. Also, Fred Wilson just wrote a great piece about the NYT and the “Freemium” model.)

….again…..which is obviously what Yahoo! would love to do…I wouldn’t be spending all my money on TV, outdoor, etc. trying to remind the consumer that Yahoo! is “Y!ou” and that it’s “personal”. I’d get in between my target customer and the Internet- in a GOOD way- by removing barriers to Internet access. I wouldn’t pick up baggage fees at two airports (last post) – I’m Yahoo! and I have enough baggage. I’d pick up the fee for Internet access anywhere I could get away with it, certainly ANYWHERE I could thus own the home page.

Internet access is one of those things that, like water, is perceived by users as a service that should just flow. No-one wants to think anymore about how they access the Internet. They just do. Yahoo! could take ownership of getting the user directly and easily to the Web wherever there are still barriers. What could be more “personal” than that?

This holiday season we were treated (literally) to a number of warm and fuzzy gestures by large Internet corporations, including Google footing the bill for wi-fi in fifty-plus airports around the country and on all Virgin America wi-fi flights, and Yahoo! picking up baggage fees at , um, two airports (see what Ad Age thinks of this on top of their justified disdain for the new Yahoo! campaign overall).

This whole “random acts of kindness” thing is a great idea and goes to the heart of what we still call emotional branding. I was a recipient of the Google largesse and it did give me a nice brand feeling (more because I didn’t have to fuss with logging in to GoGo than saving the $12.95, but still).
There is also a lot to be said for the tie-in of “free” Internet to the large Net providers/portals/whateveryouwanttocallthem. After all, everyone feels that Internet “should” be free. Why shouldn’t Google, Yahoo, AOL (hi guys, what’s up?), etc., provide that freedom?

The Yahoo! program is a truly bad example of this, unless it’s really not a consumer campaign at all. As a strange kind of B2B strategy, hitting San Jose and San Francisco airports might make some sense. These are hardly the geographical areas where Yahoo! really needs and should wish to build consumer awareness and goodwill. Yahoo! will never be cool again- Google is barely cool- so why not go be Santa all over the country?

Microsoft laid off about 800 people today. One of them was my friend and former Napster colleague Don Dodge. Don was a Director of Business Development in the Emerging Businesses unit, which is a fancy way of saying he evaluated startups mainly for possible acquisition by Microsoft.

I walked around TechCrunch 50 once with Don. He was inundated by the attending startup peeps. Don’t let anyone tell you that they’re too cool to want to be bought by Microsoft.

You can read what Don has to say about today in his blog here . What struck me most, besides the fact that Don now gets to write his own ticket in tech and do any one of a million things, is that he says he’s never had the time to think about what he might want to do. And it’s true for most of us. We’re rushing from city to city, country to country, and barely have time to tend our home lives properly (and some of us neglect that too). “The gift of time”, another ex-Napsterite, Milton Olin, used to call it. You get that gift when a lunch cancels last minute or you have that weekend at home after all. Being fired sucks. But if you’re smart and capable and know how to make the most of your skill set, it can also give you the gift of time and another, priceless gift – that of perspective. Being fired is the best thing ever to happen to many people I know.

It’s remarkable to me that the conversations around digital music remain pretty much identical to the conversations we had in 2000, when Napster was supposedly taking over the world.

I showed this Atlantic monthly article by the very smart Charles Mann, which I loved, to someone very close to me who wasn’t around in the Napster days. He said, “Wait…when was this written? It could have been written today.” And he was right.

Talked about this same subject last night (Halloween night) over dinner with ex-Napster colleague Don Dodge and he agreed…when is this conversation going to change?

Is it licensing? It’s not technology.

Maybe it’s simply imagination. MUCH more on that soon.

My mother said this to me once, just after I admonished her for signing up with whatever lame ISP was bundled into her desktop on her new Mac (at least Mom is a Mac). She said, “It was already in there”. I tried to explain, and she said:

Technology is like a sausage. I really don’t want to know what’s inside; I just want to eat it.

Those of us who live and breathe tech need to remember that not everyone wants to see, or know about, the guts.