The answer to today’s scalability problems is the personal data locker. Watch this 8-minute video and see what you think:

Thank you. (Please follow me on Twitter.)

The Programmable Web
Programmable web – an API directory
Mashery- API management
Apigee – Mobile API management
Pachube – program the Internet of Things
SimpleGeo – add location data to any mash-up
Twilio – programmable telecommunications
kynetx – a programming framework
IfThisThenThat – a simple scripting platform
Wolfram Alpha Pro – a huge programmable data resource
Xignite – financial data platform
Android@home – home management
NG Data – application framework
Singly.com – personal data programming platform
FacetApp – semantic programming platform

Data Repositories
Factual
Freebase
Drawn to Scale
World Bank Open Data
Data.gov
Data.gov.uk
Opscode
TheDataHub
Web Data Commons
LinkedData.org
OpenDataRegistry.com
Neurocommons.org

Personal Data Stores
Personal Data Ecosystem – the place to start
Sign up for the Personal Data Ecosystem monthly journal.
Attend the Internet Identity Workshops – that’s where the magic happens.
Cloud Consortium
Personal.com
Paoga.com
Diaspora.com
Everyme.com
Gravity Labs
Mydex (UK)

Media
The Live Web – Phil Windley’s extremely readable book
Stephen Wolfram on making data computable
IBM’s Internet of Things video
Microsoft Productivity Vision 2009
Microsoft Productivity Vision 2010 – must see
A Day Made of Glass – inspiring video by Corning
Neurocommons video – How to link and share science data
W3C Working Group paper on personal data and open web
ReadWriteWeb – all the news about the semantic/programmable web
Cloud Computing Journal
SemanticWeb.com
David Siegel’s Personal Data Locker Vision Video
Six Provocations for Big Data
Cloud of Data – Paul Miller’s blog
A list of people to follow on Twitter
Follow David Siegel on Twitter: @Pullnews

Projects
Tetherless Web
Google Cloud Print

• Steven Jobs
• William Campbell
• Arthur Levinson
• Andrea Jung
• Ronald Sugar
• Al Gore

Dear Apple Board,

First, I want to wish Steve the best of health and that he soon returns to running the company he started with his friend Woz back in 1976. Steve has so much passion for Apple products, employees, and customers that he has lead the company long after he could have gone off and done other things. He clearly loves what he does and would like to continue for many years. I sincerely hope he does.

The board, of course, has a duty to consider the scenario in which he either wants to retire or is forced to. As Steve is the chairman, I’m sure he would be the first to say that succession, eventually, is important and that the company should continue to thrive long after he leaves day-to-day operations. The question is – how to best achieve that?

Apple needs leadership. Although there are many highly qualified managers in the company, no one inside has the forward-looking vision, gut feel, nerves of steel, and showmanship style that Steve has. What has worked well is the partnership between visionary Steve and legendary manager Tim Cook – the yin/yang that makes Apple one of the most valuable companies in the world. I think it’s important that Apple have a visionary leader, someone who can take the company forward into the uncertain future with confidence. I hope Tim Cook won’t threaten to leave if he doesn’t become the next CEO – I think that would be the beginning of a long slide downhill for Apple. Tim is a necessary but not sufficient part of the leadership team. To move forward, Apple needs to continue delivering the magic.

No matter whom you consider, you must understand one important thing: Apple’s current business model, as profitable as it is today, will not last. Apple’s customers are in the tens of millions, but Apple’s customers are also fairly affluent and can afford the best hardware. In the next ten years, that group of people will get smaller, not larger. The future of media, entertainment, productivity, and business tools is in the cloud, with more value at a much lower price point. We are truly at the very beginning of learning what cloud computing can do for all of us. Even Google, whose culture is rooted in the cloud, has a long way to go to take advantage of it. The future of information – and everything Apple does is in the information space – is in connected ecosystems that work together and raise the level of productivity hundreds of times from where we are today. As brilliant as people at Apple are, they are still stuck in the “push” model of distributing apps, content, and data. And that model won’t survive to the middle of this century.

Apple needs to build the personal data locker in the cloud and give people the freedom they have always asked for. I won’t go into the details here, because I’ve described it elsewhere, but the personal data locker is the one thing that can and will crush Apple ten years from now if the company doesn’t see it coming. Some people think there isn’t that much more Apple can do to innovate and expand, but they are wrong. By embracing the “pull” model and building ecosystems, Apple will have a chance to serve humanity and expand its markets to billions of customers around the world. By separating data from apps, Apple can give people power like they can only dream of today. Apple can give teams the collaborative software they need to solve big problems. Apple can turn software from a “lobster trap” model into an open ecosystem of services that make everyone both a producer and a consumer, with much less waste.

Apple has a chance to lead the way into the cloud-based model of the future. But the company must start soon. Ten years from now, the fancy hardware and the beautiful stores won’t be nearly as profitable as they are today. If you’re worried a tiny bit about Android, you haven’t seen anything yet. No matter how cool Apple products are, no matter how many new patents they file, the hardware that drives our lives is going to become ubiquitous and cheap. Smart phones will eventually be replaced by dumb phones that are millions of times more powerful than what Apple offers today. Apple should be ahead of this curve, not behind it.

Board members, I have written a road map to this future. I ask that you read it. I’ll be happy to send a copy to every board member. If one person on the board will contact me and offer to help, I’ll send the books immediately. Or I’ll see that they get the book as an e-book to read on their iPads.

Readers – please tell your friends: if they know an Apple board member, send them the link to this page. I think each Apple board member should read my book before thinking about who might have the vision, the drive, and the passion to lead Apple forward.

Steve – get well soon.

Dear Sergey, Larry, and Eric,

I’m concerned, as I’m sure you are, about the impact Facebook is having on the web in general and on Google in particular. Facebook is sucking in not just people, but companies at an alarming rate. More and more companies are making their primary presence at Facebook.com, so they can tailor the visitors’ experience to their profiles and know more about them as prospects. Soon, you’ll be able to buy anything right inside of Facebook. It’s like we are at day 29 of a 30 day algae doubling rate – one more day and the pond will be covered.

Facebook’s plan is clear. Facebook will soon go from nice-to-have to need-to-have. This plan – to be more relevant and useful – is helping them hire a lot of sharp people who believe in that mission. All the Android apps and all the free wifi at 30,000 feet won’t stop the black hole from sucking in more of your best talent. It’s like this: Facebook is trying to get everyone to land and live on planet Facebook, and you’re trying to get people to enjoy the entire universe by making space travel easier. That puts us on the same side. That, presumably, is why you have an “Open Web Advocate” on your staff. You want the web to win. You don’t want everyone to disappear into an alternate reality approved by Facebook’s marketing department.

You can’t continue to raise salaries across the board and throw money at key employees to prevent them from leaving. What you need to do, if I may say so, is give Google employees a mission to believe in. Google needs to become more relevant, and quickly. In the screenshot below, I’m watching nursery rhymes with my 2-year-old son on Youtube, and Google is monetizing this experience by showing me ads for technical jobs, HP & Windows 7, and Optimum phone service.

Let’s not laugh at Facebook until we can correct this, okay?

Fortunately, Google has already laid the foundation necessary to compete with the Facebook juggernaut. The first phase of Google innovation was in search. From web search to video search to enterprise search, Google has become the leader. The second phase was applications. For the last ten years, Google has been providing cloud-based versions of familiar desktop apps, from word processing to spreadsheets to telephone apps. I can’t blame you for using new technology to recreate the old tools – that’s what always happens first. But Chrome OS is really an important new development, the beginning of the third phase. In the third phase, we stop recreating our old ways of working and start building connected productivity ecosystems. This is the subject of my book and this blog, so I won’t go on about it here. But to sum up – everything Google has done to date has emphasized the push model, rather than pull. In this third phase, Google has a chance to give people the tools to pull information, products, and services to them. I have a vision video that presents these concepts visually and will be happy to show it to you.

Seen from the pull perspective, Android and Chrome OS should merge. As more and more people think of their devices as just different ways to see and use their world of online information, the distinction will dissolve.

Google can beat Facebook by jumpstarting the Open Web. Google can lead this development in two critical areas: 1) personal data management and 2) separating data from apps. These are the two defining aspects of 21st century productivity. If Google doesn’t do it, someone else will. Remember, Google was a little struggling company once, but Sergey and Larry managed to find something people really wanted. It worked well back then, but now people want more. The power shift of the 21st century is not to use the cloud to re-create our desktop tools but to build data-driven ecosystems that take us far beyond what we could have done without the power of the cloud.

The good news is that Google is perhaps the biggest and most important cloud-based company. Google’s experimental, mash-up, fail-fast culture will help you pivot from phase 2 to phase 3, which is where Google regains momentum. Google now has a chance to become really useful by giving people data lockers and data ecosystems that bring us all into the 21st century. Google can team up with all the other closed social networks against Facebook, or Google can embrace and promote the open web. I know certain people inside Google are already familiar with the term “personal data locker” and have read my book. In fact, I tried to get Eric a copy of my personal data locker white paper five years ago, but even our mutual friends said he wouldn’t make time to read it. That’s okay. I’ve been busy fleshing it out – writing books, blogging,  tweeting, giving speeches, making connections, and helping influence the Open Web movement. The personal data locker is the cloud-based computer of the 21st century. Microsoft has a significant effort underway in this area. Other big companies are building their own versions, and several start-ups have either launched or will launch soon. I have a list of them, in case you’re interested. And I think you’ll want to see that video.

When we start getting the data out of the apps, we’ll be building ecosystems. Today’s apps trap data inside them, and that doesn’t scale well. It’s time to realize that data is more important than apps, and that by putting data in the center (in people’s data lockers), we build an ecosystem of services that come and perform tasks or manipulate data. I’ll be talking more about this next year, but this separation is the foundation for building the 21st century web.

One thing: the future that wins won’t be business as usual. The only thing that can beat Facebook is if all the people building web sites have an incentive to stay on the web and use its power, not collapse into Facebook. It won’t be about gathering behavior and keyword data on people and using it to help advertisers target them better. It won’t be about keeping the customer out of the loop. Shifting from push to pull is hard. If you want to beat Facebook, you’ll have to empower people to collect and use their own data for themselves, even if that means not sharing it with Google’s advertisers. But it’s okay, you’ll still be able to make lots of money from them by helping them do just that.

And so will everyone else. If Google embraces the open web and personal data, thousands of startups will get funded and the data-driven ecosystems will really emerge. This is one way to catalyze the movement. I would welcome the opportunity to get it going, and Google can be part of the solution, rather than part of the problem. At the same time, it would give Google employees a mission they can believe in.

Guys, I honestly think I have what you need. It’s in my book, and it’s in all these blog posts. The open web is the solution, data is the secret weapon, and the data locker is the Facebook killer. Let’s talk soon.

Happy new year. I hope 2011 is the year of personal data and the open web, not Facebook assimilation and capitulation.

I’m starting to get upset. I want to yell “FREEDOM!” at the top of my lungs, hoping someone in the mainstream press will hear.

Do you remember the movie Braveheart? It’s the story of William Wallace, who gave his life as a symbol for freedom against opressive rulers. It was a moving story, because Wallace served as a catalyst for doing the right thing against the few in power who would try to “own” the public. Today, we are in a similar situation.

I recently learned that vitaminwater.com resolves to Facebook.com/vitaminwater. This is categorically bad for the Web, a virtual canary in the coal mine. Forget the fact that Vitamin Water is a useless product that destroys the environment with throw-away bottles. It’s a sign of serious slippage that they have just thrown in the towel and gone to Facebook, because on Facebook they can better identify their visitors, and it’s easier for people to sign up and participate. Don’t take this lightly. If things go much more in this direction, all the innovation and productivity increases will be brought to us by Facebook’s marketing department. Or not.

Those of us in the Open Web movement have no one to blame but ourselves. It’s not the fault of the consumer, and you certainly can’t blame Facebook, nor can you expect journalists to ask hard questions – it’s simply our fault for not giving people a better choice. There are a few voices shouting from a few rooftops, but we’re too fragmented to get critical mass. Like any successful movement, this one needs a rough framework, a reason to work together, a catalyst, and a lot of luck. At the moment, we’re making progress on all of these, but not enough. We’re losing ground every day.

The shift I’m talking about qualifies for exactly what John Hagel and John Seely Brown talk about in their book, “The Power of Pull,” and what I talk about in my book, “Pull.” Put them together and you have a roadmap to ideas and business models that will scale forward into the 21st century. I’d love to apply Hagel and Seely Brown’s principles to what I’m doing, but it’s not going to be easy. The industry I’m trying to switch from push to pull isn’t a vertical one – it’s the platform we use every day to do everything we need and want to do. My goal is no less than to replace all our computers and tablets with radically cheaper screens that use the Web natively. This is not only much better for rich people who today have half a dozen Apple products, it’s the platform for the 5 billion people on the planet who can’t afford Apple products. No one wants the next version of a huge operating system running on a hard disk. People want to use their information, interact with others, conduct business, create markets, learn, communicate, find their way around, and watch live sporting events on cheap devices that are everywhere in their lives, and I want to help them do it. I want to help catalyze the platform for the 21st century. It’s a huge, disruptive shift, and the established players aren’t going to go lightly. I’m certain it will come. It’s just a matter of when. My goal is to start the company that leads an entire wave of consumers and startups onto the open web.

This Movement Needs a Framework
We have a legal framework evolving at places like Creative Commons, Data Portability, the Open Rights Group, and the Open Web Foundation. That’s great. We have standards evolving at W3C, OASIS, ISO, and OpenGroup. But we still don’t have an architecture for the personal data locker, and we need one. What I mean is that all startups working on some aspect of personal data should be working on a part of the overall end solution – similar to different countries working to build the International Space Station, bit by bit. The W3C Incubator Group just published their report on standards for the Open Social Web – it’s great they are putting more effort into this area. But we need a commercial framework as well. The best thing we have so far is PersonalDataEcosystem.org, a dedicated group of people from the identity and VRM worlds. They are on the right track, but they need help. For starters, we need a framework for how all the pieces are going to fit together. This may be unprecedented, but I think it’s necessary. It’s as though The Emperor and Darth Vader are building their own space station, and the people of the world are behind in building theirs. Put simply: we aren’t working together enough. We don’t have the traction we need to build what Hagel and Seely Brown call a “shaping strategy,” much less a “shaping platform.” The framework for the personal data locker must show how we will:

• manage our identities
• manage our belongings
• manage vendors
• establish a universal timeline
• manage location and life log data
• manage personal data (finance, health care, career, etc)
• manage  security and permissions
• connect to friends and colleagues
• form groups
• send messages
• link data
• protect privacy
• build interoperability into everything
• add services on an ad-hoc basis

If we were to choose a name for this effort, today we’d have to call it the Setback Foundation. But 2011 is going to be different. In 2011, there will be an uprising. I will lead the charge if I have to, but I’m sure many more will join, because this movement doesn’t need a leader. It needs an explainer. At the moment, The Personal Data Ecosystem is the best vehicle we have. Let’s give them our attention, our time, our energy. And, most important, let’s get the word out that they exist. Please tweet and blog to anyone you can reach. Tell them it’s important. Tell them if they want to live free, they need to help us build that future.

As I already mentioned, quite a few people are working on the framework for a personal data ecosystem, so we can have a common blueprint to build to. This is important, because in the 21st century you don’t go it alone, and you don’t trap people’s data inside your application. We need a way to store our data in our data lockers and then let the services assemble and work for us on demand. Already, thousands of people are working on building aspects of this, even as we’re still dreaming up the specs. If all the investors are waiting for a core company to emerge and then follow later, it might be too little too late.

When I talk with venture capitalists, they say they are already investing in the semantic web. Then they tell me about their projects, and I don’t spend time correcting them, I simply urge them to read my book. Most venture capitalists are investing in metadata aggregation and sense-making, not in the semantic web. As Dan Connolly of the W3C says, “The operative term in ‘semantic web’ is ‘web.’” Almost all VC-backed projects don’t pass my semantic-web acid test. In fact, I haven’t heard of a single one. If VCs want to get into the semantic web, they should be talking with Martin Hepp at GoodRelations or any of the companies working with the Science Commons project, or with companies working on leveraging XBRL. If investors want to understand the world of personal data and the early investment opportunities, they should come to my investor/entrepreneur day at IIW this spring.

My goal is to help connect venture capitalists and angel investors with investment opportunities in the coming wave of personal data management. Perhaps by getting everyone in the same room at the same time, I can help everyone working toward these common goals and slingshot the movement before Faceborg takes over the planet.

The event will be a loosely structured day for investors and entrepreneurs. This will be an extra day at the end of the next IIW workshop, which will be held in Mountain View, California, probably on May 4th or 5th. There will be sessions on things like:

• the standards framework and the roadmap to the personal data ecosystem
• principles and progress of the open web
• What the W3C has in store for personal data
• the economics of linked data
• marketing issues for consumer adoption
• the phone as a window to the personal data locker
• progress in various verticals
• near-term investment opportunities
• entrepreneur-driven pitches and sessions

I’ll have more details early in the year. But for now, if you are reading these words, I want you to help get the attention of people in the press and key investors/catalysts. If you know any of the people below, or if you can suggest more people for me to reach out to, please connect us. If you are on this list or can help, I’m asking you to step forward and help me make this a kick-off event for the personal open web. This isn’t a complete list, but I’d like most of the following people to attend …

• Mark Andreesen
• Ron Conway
• John Doerr
• Tim Draper
• Esther Dyson
• Roger Ehrenright
• Brad Feld
• Andy Fillat
• Chris Fralic
• Paul Graham
• Bill Gurley
• Rob Hayes
• Danny Hillis
• Ben Horowitz
• Joi Ito
• Bill Joy
• Rohit Khare
• Josh Kopelman
• Mark Kvamme
• Om Malik
• Mike Maples
• David Marquardt
• Dave McClure
• Mary Meeker
• Chris Messina
• Alan Meckler
• Mike Moritz
• Tim O’Reilly
• Adeo Ressi
• Roy Sardina
• Mark Suster
• Ann Winblad
• Stephen Wolfram
• Yossi Vardi

In addition, if you’re an entrepreneur looking for money or partners to help build the personal data ecosystem, please contact me as well. I want it to be an important event for everyone who attends. My email is david@thepowerofpull.com