SF Chronicle's blog supremo Al Saracevic, senior bus. editor over at SFGate.com's new tech blog The Tech Chronicles has a very nice scoop hot off the server!
It is Adios to Avadis "Ave" Tevanian, Apple Computer's Chief Technology Officer and operating system expert. He is heading out of the Infinite Loop for unknown pastures and his last day is March 31st. Bang on the April 1st 30 year anniversary for Apple.
Wikia, formerly called Wikicities, announced a $4 million Series A round today. The financing was led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Omidyar Network, and had participation from angel investors Dan Gillmor, Reid Hoffman, Joichi Ito, and Mitch Kapor. David Cowan of Bessemer also wrote about this on his personal blog.
Wikia is a for profit venture by Jimmy Wales, one of the founders of Wikipedia. It hosts topic based wikis on a number of subjects, and anyone can add new ones.
Current traffic for Wikia is fairly non-existent, although Jimmy Wale’s wikipedia is one of the most highly trafficked sites on the web and I’m sure that the investors are assuming that he’ll be able to drive a similar level of user loyalty. Fighting against that will be the less-compelling subject matter and the fact that this is a for-profit company.
I’d love to see an overhaul of the wikipedia and wikia writing interface, however. They have plenty of great examples to borrow from.
Max Skibinsky knows javascript. He knows it so well, that he was working on applications in what he “double-channel javascript.” Thank god, that didn’t catch on and instead we ended up with a more friendly Ajax acronym. Anyway the end result is pretty much the same - a more nimble, faster, easier and better web.
It worked out for Skibinsky as well, who failed to raise money for his proposed online multiplayer game. Instead, he ended up starting Hive7, with angel funding from Naval Ravikant (CEO of Vast.com) and Gaurav Dhillon, who has started Informatica. Hive7 has developed an AJAX-based virtual online community that has many of the elements you normally find in an immersive environment like Linden Labs’ Second Life.
Robert Scoble made the argument that Second Life is an OS, while others nodded their head in agreement. That might be the case, but increasingly, I believe that this will give way to a more web-based virtual world. It happened with AOL, and now its going to happen in multi-user environments.
Web is the ultimate platform, and I think in the end it wins. Hive 7 is just the first example of the next generation web possibilities. It was nearly two years ago when I met the Linden Labs founder Philip Rosedale and understood his vision of the virtual spaces. For nearly half its life, Linden was kept going by angels, and before it got the money from professional investors.
I think, Hive7 is in the same place. It will be sometime before the world catches on to its true potential. Skibinsky says that his big breakthrough was in 2004, when he realized that “instead of building a closed online game it’s possible to do the reverse.” In other words, he had an epiphany that web is the ultimate API. He put together a virtual universe which has rooms where folks can meet, meet, chat, exchange resources and items. What got me excited about Hive7 was that it allows anyone to customize the whole experience. You can take the code, and tweak it.
Looking at what Hive7 has built, I have just realized that the web has now gone 3D. Virtual worlds have a new meaning, and collaboration just got easier. I would let you figure it out for yourself, but I think this is the first step in realizing Ajax’s full potential. (I have some screen shots in the extended entry. Check out the one where Max and I are doing collaborative browsing. A browser inside a browser - now that’s cool!)
The group that controls Bluetooth's evolution decided to favor the WiMedia Alliance's flavor of ultrawideband (UWB): UWB offers speeds of 110 Mbps to 480 Mbps over distances of 10 down to 1 meters in its current incarnation. Two incompatible versions are backed by separate alliances. The WiMedia Alliance includes Intel and a number of other semiconductor makers, computer technology manufacturers, and consumer electronics firms. The other alliance--UWB Forum--is Freescale with just a few significant companies in the mix, including former parent Motorola.
The Bluetooth SIG had earlier signaled that it would support development of Bluetooth profiles and technology--such as object exchange (file transfer) and other widely supported and implemented higher-level modules for action--on top of the classic UWB that Freescale will release shortly to its manufacturing partners and the MB-OFDM flavor developed by WiMedia. (Freescale has talked about production silicon for years, but still lacks a single product on the market; July is the target for two partners for a USB 2.0 hub that uses UWB.)
Now, WiMedia is the only dance partner for the Bluetooth SIG. In an article in ExtremeTech, the SIG's head, Mike Foley says that the trade group's members heavily favored the WiMedia version of UWB. Freescale's head Martin Rofheart said in the same article that the company's short-term focus reamins USB 2.0 replacement given that Bluetooth-based high-speed applications won't be ready until some time in 2007 in the revised scheduled announced today.
A year ago, Rofheart said:
Fast Bluetooth may beat Wireless USB to the market, said Rofheart, since the high-level protocols are in place, and Freescale’s silicon is further ahead: “The pieces are more mature, and can be wed together more quickly, rolling into the market faster.”
This has proven not to be true. A demonstration last October showed Bluetooth operating over the Freescale flavor of UWB. Freescale and a few other firms that back its flavor are members of the Bluetooth SIG. Motorola was an original promoter and founder of the SIG. Freescale and Motorola have enormous product portfolios, however, and this Bluetooth SIG decision might not cause either company to leave the trade group.
The Bluetooth SIG is pursuing several different paths to make its applications continue to be relevant given the slow speed of its current paired radio technology--just 3 Mbps with Bluetooth 2.0+SDR. The applications allow for wide interoperability and leverage legions of developers who have written Bluetooth support. Changing the radio out from underneath Bluetooth is relatively straightforward compared with the adoption of an entirely new specification from top to bottom, which is why Bluetooth appears to have legs as it follows UWB, Near Field Communications (a form of very close proximity communication), and even Wi-Fi.
ABI Research put out a statement that this choice by the Bluetooth SIG puts WiMedia UWB makers in an superb position for unit volumes. "From a UWB perspective, this potentially opens up a vast market for products; we forecast over one billion Bluetooth radio shipments per annum by the end of the decade, and in the worst case -- should the UWB PHY be included in only a small percentage -- the market will still represent massive volumes of shipments that are unlikely to be encountered in other UWB implementations in the same time period," the statement said.
Alereon, a UWB chipmaker, issued its support for the decision in a statement, and trumpeted the fact that its technology was used for a demonstration at the Bluetooth SIG's meeting at which the choice of WiMedia technology was announced.
An interesting note at the end of the ExtremeTech article says that SIG head Foley didn't "rule out a merger" between the Bluetooth SIG and the WiMedia Alliance, which is the result of a merger itself of the original WiMedia Alliance (focused on higher-level protocols) and the Multiband OFDM Alliance (MBOA), which dealt with radio/physical-layer issues.
2hotspot goes public with its community-organizing Wi-Fi software: The company's software joins a growing array of tools that provide Internet connect sharing and community features, such as discussion boards and chats. The trend I've spotted is that the network is slowly assuming as much importance as the Internet: that is WLAN power is just as great as LAN power in the right place. (Cf., Pulse Point, PlaceSite.)
2hotspot offers a Windows (2000/XP/2003) software package that handles the community features. The setup works with several configurations, although the easiest is either to use a built-in wireless card to create the hotspot or to use a two-port Ethernet card to pass through a broadband modem connection and allow the software to facilitate its insertion into the process.
The software is free, but they've raised funding. Their model? Advertising on community content pages.
Verizon, which powers MSN's Yellow Pages and had listings in Google local, announced they are to sell Google AdWords.
Google and Verizon SuperPages.com have signed a deal under which the classified ad provider will help its tens of thousands of marketers get ads onto Google search result pages, the companies said Monday.
Google, the company that everyone thought was going to be different, has decided to play, or pay, big in DC:
Update: I am going to be on CNBC’s On The Money show to discuss Google Finance @ 7pm EST/ 4pm PST along with Paul Kedrosky and David Vise.
The much awaited launch of Google Finance service finally happened - in beta of course. And in one word, it is simply disappointing. Its like watching Al Pacino in a stinker like Two for the money. Tony Montana was so long ago!
But back to Google Finance. After playing around with it for about 15 minutes, it is obvious that it will be a long time, and I mean long time in Internet years that is, before Google Finance really catches up to Yahoo Finance, which in fact is the gold standard. (Just by the virtue of lack of competitors, as it might be.)
My inner cynic says that the reason Google launched this service this quickly is because it wants to capture those high CPM/CPC dollars from stock and mortgage brokerages. Yahoo Finance is like an ATM for guys in Sunnyvale, and Google till recently had nothing to capture the “exuberant enthusiasm in the stock and real estate markets.”
I did a quick stock quote look-up on Apple, and found that most of the information of Google Finance Company Tearsheet was pretty much the same as Yahoo - except there was a section dedicated to blog entries related to Apple. That indeed is welcome news! And while, I applaud them for including the blog posts in the company tear sheets, I bemoan the lack of more timely and recent blog posts. After all when it comes to market data, two-hour-old information, might as well be dead bytes.
The other feature which I liked about the company tear-sheets is how stock charts, and certain news stories are tied together using AJAX Flash. Full marks to Google for making it easier to find and correlate news events with stock performance.
But that’s all. There is nothing else which even remotely impressed me. I totally disagree with Charlene Li of Forrester Research, who offers the most politically correct quote to San Jose Mercury News. “It is definitely an improvement…It’s not a mind-blowing improvement … which is actually an advantage. You already know how to use it.” John Battelle offers an equally benign reportage on what clearly is a me-too move. Paul Kedrosky is being kind when he clearly states, “All Whiz, No Bang.”
Given how entrenched Yahoo Finance is in people’s lives, Google cannot be incrementally better. A couple of ajax widgets will not make me switch from Yahoo Finance to Google Finance. Despite the beta-tag, I find Google Finance downright tiresome and plain ugly. Just like Al Pacino in … Two for the Money.
A german study suggests that "enforced jolliness on the job" isn't good for you.
They cite flight attendants, sales personnel, call centre operators, waiters and others in contact with the public for extended periods of time as being at risk of seriously harming their health.
Psychologists at Frankfurt University said the fake friendliness led to depression, stress and a lowering of the immune system itself, which in turn can trigger more serious ailments.
Sorry about the duplicate post...
So soon Sun is going to launch its utility computing grid, open to all for rent. In Jonathan's post covering the launch here, I wonder, really, truly - isn't Google the clear competitor here? Oh, wait, no, it's already Amazon. I'm pinging Jonathan to ask about this. Google is Sun's partner, but will they also be fundamental competitors? (Thanks, James)
I've had several folks ask me what I think of Google Finance. There's already a fair amount of good commentary out there on the topic (Bambi, TBAiT, Charlene, Matt, Publishing 2.0, Blodget, and others), so I'm going to answer this in a different way.
Warning: This is long and not terribly flattering stuff that's been under mild pressure for a few years now.
You see, I started at Yahoo! back in 1999 as an engineer working on Yahoo! Finance. It was one of the sites I used most often back then, so it was a privilege to get my hands on it and really contribute in a meaningful way. I spent roughly the next three years working with the good folks in our group, including Katie Stanton, who announced Google Finance a few days ago.
Katie was one of the best people we had in Yahoo! Finance. I was disappointed when she left Yahoo a few years back. I remember chatting with her a few times when she decided to go back to work. Trying to choose between Yahoo and Google, she asked for opinions.
How time flies...
Last year I teased her a few times about Google Finance. Of course, she denied that any such thing was in the works. Since I knew it was in the works, I wasn't surprised when it finally came out. Nor was I surprised to see her affiliated with the product.
It clearly has a Yahoo! Finance feel in several areas but with a distinctly Google flavor to it. I have minor complaints about it, but I think it's a good start aside from the fixed width home page.
So why does this make Jeremy sad?
It makes me sad because I end up thinking about how Yahoo! Finance has stagnated for a long time. It never really recovered from the pain of the dotcom crash. So many of my old Finance coworkers have either left the company or moved on to other groups (several moved into Search last year). Heck, I encouraged many of them to get out!
There was a lack of leadership and, even more importantly, a serious LACK OF VISION. It really disappointed me.
It makes me sad because virtually all of the new/innovative/cool features in Google Finance are things we talked about YEARS ago. Many of them I'd lobbied for repeatedly. Some were even prototyped.
Who's gonna get "credit" for all that now?
I'm not gonna name names (virtually none of them are around anymore anyway), but there was a real lack of leadership in Finance for long time and it really sucked the life out of the group. Users noticed. Finance employees noticed. Other Yahoos noticed. We all knew it. And, frankly, I was glad to be out when I moved on (and the next time and the time after that).
Over the years since leaving, I've made pleas to numerous people in the Finance organization: engineers, product managers, engineering managers, editorial, and so on--veteran employees and newbies alike.
Push into community more. Get more into personal finance, not just the high-end Wall Street stuff. Adopt blogging and syndication. Get around to those chart improvements we'd talked about. Fix up the message boards. (Remind me to tell the story of how they freaked out when I snuck RSS feeds out back in 2002. It took another TWO YEARS before someone re-did that work and finally shipped it. But the RSS train had already left the station by that time.)
Radio silence.
Last year I started talking about Google Finance and they got a little excited. They talked more about all the stuff they could maybe do. Asked for some input (again). My hope was renewed for a while.
During all that time, I purposely didn't write anything here about my frustration and disappointment. I've been accused of using my writing in public as a instrument to instigate internal change at Yahoo. I've been accused of complaining in public before talking to folks internally. So I tried to be a good Yahoo and give my suggestions to anyone who'd listen.
On the other hand, people tell me they like reading my stuff because it's not sanitized corporate PR speak and I'm not always painting a rosy picture of what goes on. Instead, I tell it like it is--from my point of view, of course.
Well, here we are.
As a company, we need to get better about facing this stuff, dealing with it, and get back to kicking ass. But I have no idea how to make that happen. Maybe this will result in some useful discussion somewhere.
There's a light at the end of the tunnel. All hope is not lost. Unlike a small number of Google product launches, this one didn't blow the doors off. It's no Gmail or Google Maps. Yahoo! Finance isn't out of the game. But I sure as hell hope this is a wake-up call!
On the flip side, Katie's a kick-ass product manager and knows the Finance world very well. I can only imagine what else they're cooking up. The clock is ticking.
(Remember: I'm not speaking for my employer... yada, yada, yada. See the disclaimer at the bottom of the page.)
(comments)
extremely detailed map of the North American Internet backbone including 134,855 routers. the colors represent who each router is registered to: red is Verizon, blue AT&T, yellow Qwest, green is major backbone players like Level 3 & Sprint Nextel, black is the entire cable industry put togethe, & gray is everyone else, from small telecommunications companies to large international players who only have a small presence in the U.S.
this map demonstrates that although AT&T & Verizon own a lot of Internet pipes, they currently do not dominate the Internet infrastructure (yet).
see also opte project & ddos attack visualization.
[cio.com (PDF/1.1MB) & cio.com]
Originally posted by infosthetics from information aesthetics, ReBlogged by Yury Gitman on Mar 23, 2006 at 09:19 AM
It appears that a small electrical component company near Boston has figured out how to get electricity out of trees. MagCap Engineering is pretty sure they’ve come up on the next renewable energy revolution. By pounding a nail into the trunk and a conductor into the ground, a faint but consistent charge is detected in a wire running from the tree to the earth. They are now charging NiCad batteries and illuminating LEDs off the current. MagCap is applying for a patent while MIT tests the phenomenon in the blistering Cambridge cold. A company spokesperson told The Boston Globe they hope to be able to charge hybrid batteries this way, but they also propose lighting roads. Makes sense, I suppose. Everything living is running on electric current. Just ask your friendly neighborhood Taoist. :: MagCap via The Boston Globe (Image credit: David Inshaw Note: It's a painting)
Originally from Treehugger, ReBlogged by Yury Gitman on Mar 22, 2006 at 09:45 AM
Tom Foremski writes: "Wyse Technology, the leading thin-client manufacturer, told SVW that it is in talks with both Google and Yahoo, for the design and production of powerful low-priced computers integrating data, voice, and broadband connectivity."
The growth of Internet users in developing countries could be dramatically accelerated if GOOG and YHOO were to subsidize the hardware and communications platform.
nd Amazon, could provide their trading platforms to massive new markets in the developing world.
Prices could be further reduced if the computers used Linux instead of Microsoft Windows to run a web browser-the only user interface required to access online services. And the use of Intel-compatible chips from AMD and others, could further reduce prices.
The internet rivals would be competing for hundreds of millions of new users within a hot demographic: the young middle classes forming in the developing world, primarily in India and China.
By making the PC and internet technology significantly more affordable, such moves would help bridge a massive digital divide: 84 percent of the world's population has no Internet access.
When organizations all around the political spectrum can agree a law is broken, you'd think that would lead to quick passage of the bill to fix it. Unless that law is the DMCA's anticircumvention.
The Libertarian Cato Institute has released a terrific report (PDF link) documenting ways the Digital Millennium Copyright Act hinders innovation.
Why won't iTunes play on Rio MP3 players? Why are viewers forced to sit through previews on some DVDs when they could have fast-forwarded through them on video? Why is it impossible to cut and paste text on Adobe eBook? In a just released study for the Cato Institute, Tim Lee, a policy analyst at the Show-Me Institute, answers these questions and more.
The new legislation’s most profound effects will be on the evolution of digital media technologies. We have grown accustomed to, and benefit from, a high-tech world that is freewheeling, open-ended, and fiercely competitive. Silicon Valley is a place where upstarts like Apple, Netscape, and Google have gone from two-man operations to billion-dollar trendsetters seemingly overnight. The DMCA threatens to undermine that competitive spirit by giving industry incumbents a powerful legal weapon against new entrants.
Sound copyright policy has obvious attractions for advocates of small-government and deregulation. Copyright has become more regulatory, and more market-crippling, as it expands, and the DMCA is a case in point. As Lee describes, the DMCA has been (ab)used to prevent competitive development of audio and video players, cable boxes, and even, for a time, printer cartridges. Instead of a free-market rush toward the best technology to meet public demand, we get a trickle of major-label "approved" devices that must be bug-compatible: region-coded DVD players and can't-record cable boxes.
I don't agree with Cato on everything, but this report is spot-on. Let's hope it inspires more in Congress to join Reps. Boucher, Doolittle, and Barton in support of the DMCRA.
The fists haven’t stopped flying over the Huffington Post’s bad move in reprinting George Clooney’s statements in other venues as blog postings, and Arianna Huffington’s mea culpa is not placating the critics. The more I learn about what happened, the more I agree that this was an egregiously bad move on her part.
It all raises a question about a practice that is utterly routine in traditional journalism: the ghost-written op-ed piece. I recognize that although there are some similarities (Clooney’s representatives were at least partly complicit in the words’ republication), the situations are not the same — but I don’t consider it especially ethical of publications and the “writers” of these op-ed pieces to be passing off their words as authentic, either.
Such essays, usually under the bylines of politicians or celebrities, amount to deception. They are written by staffers or others, not by the big names themselves.
I hope that the newspapers now carving Huffington up for her transgression will take a long look at their own shops. Because the ghost-written op-ed piece is somewhat fraudulent, too.
"To me, it is now a question of sovereignty," [Cecilia Fire Thunder] said to [Lakhota Times editor Tim Giago] last week. "I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction."Link to Native Times article (subscription required), or read excerpt on indybay website here. (Thanks, drogheda, Ryan and others!)
Reader comment: For those wishing to donate cash for the project, or extend messages of support, BoingBoing reader Lampbane says, " Contact info for president Fire Thunder can be found here."
Reader comment: A.V. says,
Careful with the Sioux abortion clinic donations. Although it's a great idea for the clinic, be careful about donations which may not actually go towards the desired destination.... definitely read that post before blindly sending money: Link.
A new Firefox plugin rewrites all the US prices in the pages you load into the equivalent cost in barrels of crude oil.
Link
(via CNet Blog Esoterica)
Apple condemned the proposal as "state-sponsored piracy" and warned that it would result in its customers filling their iPods with "pirate" videos and music. This is intensely hypocritical. Apple ships millions of iPods holding up to 10,000 songs. Most customers for 60GB iPods have fewer than 10,000 songs' worth of CDs and no one is buying $10,000 worth of iTunes. While there's a certain amount of public domain and Creative Commons music likely to end up on iPods, and some video these days, there's no question that Apple's iPod business is built on the average customer's need for a way to take her/his unauthorized music downloads on the road.
What's more, as Steve Jobs explained to Rolling Stone in 2003, iTunes DRM doesn't stop people from making and sharing unauthorized copies of their music:
None of this technology that you're talking about's gonna work. We have Ph.D.'s here, that know the stuff cold, and we don't believe it's possible to protect digital content. . . . . [There is] this amazingly efficient distribution system for stolen property called the Internet --- and no one's gonna shut down the Internet. And it only takes one stolen copy to be on the Internet. And the way we expressed it to them is: Pick one lock -- open every door. It only takes one person to pick a lock. Worst case: Somebody just takes the analog outputs of their CD player and rerecords it -- puts it on the Internet. You'll never stop that. So what you have to do is compete with it.If Apple doesn't think iTunes stops "piracy," then why include it? Because it lets them send legal threats to competitors like Real when they make players for their own DRMed music that run on Apple devices. Real's effort to put a Real player on the iPod wouldn't have helped anyone commit "piracy" -- nor would the French law. All it would do is give iPod owners the option to buy their crummy DRM-crippled music from someone other than Apple, maybe getting a better price or better features or both.
In a response issued after the law won initial approval, Apple said: "If this happens, legal music sales will plummet just when legitimate alternatives to piracy are winning over customers.", Herve, Dave and Peanutbutter13!)But, it added, the law could prove a boon for Apple and its popular iPod music players.
Said Apple: "iPod sales will likely increase as users freely load their iPods with "interoperable" music which cannot be adequately protected. Free movies for iPods should not be far behind in what will rapidly become a state-sponsored culture of piracy."
My grandfather came from Belarus -- I'm just glad he got out when he did, otherwise this might be the themesong of my homeland. nks, Brendan!)Well-set and slim
He won't teach you evil
Father can bridle anyone
Father is stronger than the restHe will settle conflicts
He is reliable and calm
He just throws a glance - and you see
Who is the master in the house
ef="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/boingboing/iBag?a=4DdCLp">In her book, Cheney travels from coast to coast, tracking the fates of the tens of thousands of dead bodies that end up in the "cadaver trade" each year. The corpses -- including those donated for medical research and those left unclaimed at morgues -- "are cut up into parts, not unlike chickens, and distributed through a complex network of suppliers, brokers and buyers," Cheney writes.
In Miami, she watches urological surgeons learn how to remove kidneys by poking into torsos in the Ocean Room of the Trump International Sonesta Beach Resort. In Gainesville, Florida, she takes a tour of a factory where crushed human bone is turned into precision-tooled orthopedic tools. And throughout, she finds plenty of people in the body-part business who really wish she'd go away.
Gamasutra reports that a group of U.S. senators including Democrats Joseph Lieberman, Hillary Clinton ad Dick Durbin and Republicans Rick Santorum ad Sam Brownback have managed to convince a Senate committee to initially approve a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that would examine video game ad other electronic media use. Lieberman first introduced the bill in 2003, saying "For one thing, we should know whether games like Grand Theft Auto that celebrate violence against women, beyond being sick and offensive, are actually leading to more violence against women." That first bill allocated some $90US for the study, but no figure has been confirmed for this new study.Santiago Sierra is known for his provocative performances, which have included paying refugees from Chechenia to remain inside cardboardboxes, giving money to young Cubans for the priviledge of tattooing their backs, dying the hair of Africans blonde to make them look European, and spraying 10 Iraqis immigrant workers with insulating foam. But the Spanish artist provoked outrage among Jewish groups in Germany yesterday with his latest installation - a homemade gas chamber set up in a former synagogue.
The artist has parked six cars outside the synagogue and attached their exhaust pipes to the building using plastic tubes. It is then filled with deadly gas. Visitors are invited to go inside one by one wearing a gas mask, escorted by a firefighter. Before being allowed in, they have to sign a disclaimer stating they realise the room is full of carbon monoxide.
The project opened to the public on Sunday, creating huge queues, and runs until the end of April.
Sierra says the installation - entitled 245 cubic metres - is a protest against the "banalisation of the Holocaust".
However, Jewish leaders in Germany are furious. They described the installation in the Pulheim as "an abuse of artistic freedom".
Via trendbeheer < The Guardian. Images Netzeitung and The Guardian. Photo gallery in Der Spiegel.
Originally from we make money not art, ReBlogged by angus on Mar 14, 2006 at 06:43 PM
A very good resource for watching what is going on in newspapers and their struggle to come to terms with blogging is BluePlateSpecial.net, put together by Jay Rosen and his students at NYU.
I was at NYU last September at the Impact '05 conference. I was on a panel alongside Joe Trippi, Howard Dean's political strategist . Since then, the work being done at NYU by its journalism school has been popping up regularly on my radar screen. For example, the excellent IWantMedia is put together by Patrick Philips, an adjunct professor at NYU.
Facts About the State of Blogging at America's 100 Biggest Newspapersp>Also, notable on the site is Renee Alfuso's article on journalists who blog, and how obsessive it can become. She interviewed the Philadelphia Inquirer's full-time journalist blogger Daniel Rubin, a 25 year newsroom veteran and George K. Polk award winner.Blue Plate Special combed through the 100 largest sites. The results show who's blogging, who's not, and which newsrooms are doing what. Look up your newspaper, and compare. (And please: help us fact check this chart!)
By Trisha Chang, Kat Ocampo, Kaitlin Jessing-Butz
Alexis Krase, Toli Galanis and Sara Williams
But talk to him today: Rubin doesn’t believe in objectivity, hears the Net calling to him at all hours of the day, and craves the freedom to talk about whatever the hell he wants to talk about—unfettered, unedited. Yup, he’s a blogger.
And I can really identify with Rubin when he is quoted saying the following:
“It’s a great confidence builder knowing you can do it,” he explains. “It causes you to be really at the top of your game, as fast as you’re working to be aware of not getting it wrong and still pushing it as hard as you can. Not being too conservative, too cautious, and that takes a lot of concentrating.”
and. . .
“It’s all-consuming. To do it right takes everything I have.
Here is the full article... http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/blueplate/issue1/rubin_reporter/
. . .
Also worth reading is a post from the future : the article by Ed Cone, set in 2012 ...here is an extract:
It’s hard to believe, looking back, but there was once considerable resistance to blogging within newspapers. In fact, it persisted well into the last decade.here...As late as 2007, many papers were only dabbling with blogs – if they were using them at all. Even as the Internet was blowing up the ancient newspaper business model by unbundling advertising from editorial, a lot of editors and writers disdained blogs and bloggers as faddish and frightening and somehow unclean.
Some of this resistance stemmed from a misunderstanding of what blogs actually are: a drop-dead simple publishing platform that allows any user to post text, images, audio, and video onto the web without much technical know-how or support.
One possible reason for the confusion over blogs was the hype about “citizens media” and the avalanche of adversarial rhetoric aimed at the professional press by noisy amateurs, which perhaps caused journalists to confuse the tools with some of the tools using them. And there was also an aversion by underpaid staffers to doing what they perceived as more work – writing online in addition to print — for the same meager wage.
Newspaper Blogging 2012: A Look Back at the Early Days
My only comment is that blogging won't save newspapers but it will improve them. The newspaper business model is being disrupted by online marketing, largely by search engine marketing and not the blogosphere. To disrupt an industry you have to disrupt its business model and that is being done by Google, Yahoo, Craigslist etc.
Please see SVW: The disruption of PR by blogging.
I want to bring part of the comments from a previous post out on the front page because I think the discussion is important. Jay Allen the Movable type Product Manager has several comments in the original post that I want to address. I do want to thank Jay for taking time to posting his comments here it is a discussion that is long overdue. I want to say up front I like Jay and what he has accomplished at SixApart and that he should not take some of my comments personal.
Todd wrote:
"Well I hate to say that the WordPress community is much more active than the MovableType community, heck it's almost impossible to find the MT forum section link anymore via SixApart."
Jay Replied:
It doesn't seem a surprise to me that a community centered around an open-source tool will always be more visible and seem more vibrant, but the Movable Type "community" is doing very well -- and by that, I mean the Professional Network.
Todd's Rebuttal:
I and thousands of others are not on the Professional Network and you do a lot of valuable talk behind a login and password that most of us do not get to see. I am sure the conversation in those forums alone would be valuable. Why they can't be in the existing forum is beyond me. But I very rarely have been able to get a question answered in the Forums area. Submitting a ticket is not always productive. Granted I have submitted very few tickets. I may be wrong but I don't think very many from the pro network hang out in the public forums.
-|-
Todd Wrote:
If you are building then tell us you are building, and if you cant talk about product details then you need to tell us what we need to do to prepare for version 3.3
Jay Responded:
Well, there are only two things we do as a software company: build and release. That's it. Since Movable Type 3.2 was released, we've been building and we've been doing it at an amazing pace considering our resource constraints.
Todd's Rebuttal:
This will result in Six Apart becoming more isolated from the community of users. A blogging company has to stay connected with their core, failure to do so will see more people migrate to other blogging platforms.
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Todd Wrote:
The main thing is talk and i am sure there are lots of cool things going on with plugins but you rarely highlight any.
Jay Responded:
You're absolutely right and everyone on our team is to blame for that. I myself have had a three-quarters written blog post highlighting 30 new plugins for a month until I lost my hard drive (R.I.P). Why didn't I post it? Because I wanted to clean it up and turn it from a list of links to a narrative. In retrospect, obviously, that is a mistake.
I will tell you: a LOT of posts die on the vine at Six Apart because it's more difficult to post under your company's name than it is on your own site. (Ask Niall Kennedy about that one.) So we post a lot of things to our personal sites, just to rattle them off, and before we ever clean them up for the 6A site, we get sucked back down in the actual work we're doing. If there's any barrier at all in a startup to blogging, you just won't do it because you're hopelessly buried with real deliverables.
So I guess the big question is, would you rather that we release slower so that we have time to blog more often? We operate under the assumption that that's not the case. Yes, we do need to get better about blogging, but I know that if you worked for us under the same conditions, you'd find yourself in our shoes. I say that because I have said exactly what you are saying when I was an outside developer living in Hungary. I thought I would come to Six Apart and get us blogging more. I was, at least to this day, wrong.
Todd's Rebuttal:
You are doing those that take the time to create plugins a dis-service, I need a place I can go and read about all the plugins in a central place. Attempts before to put together a directories of Plugins is barely navigable. There are plenty of CMS platforms out there that would allow you to develop the type of plugin resource that is full of user and developer conversation. That conversation does not exist. Look at the Joomla website and see how they treat their plugin developers, its the soul of the platform.
Again my premise is you better start blogging and getting the community engaged, because going weeks on end with not a peep coming out of you is bad. It has to become a priority and if Ben and Mena have lost site that their is a core that feels like we have been left out in the cold.
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Todd Wrote:
You need a evangelist that shows all of us how to use all of these great plugins and talk about why they are important and what gap do they fill that is currently not being filled by the baseline application.
Jay Said:
We completely agree... :-)
Todd's Rebuttal: You have a core group in your Pro Network that understand the product and where you are headed you need to designate a couple of them to become your evangelist. Give them a spot on a company blog and don't be scared to let them talk openly. I am involved in building a company as well and I understand the value of being a evangelist of my own cause, I have to do it, I have to lay down the framework of where we are headed. I have to be the leader. Thus those within your company have to be the leader of your product.
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Todd Wrote:
Podcasting is fast approaching two years and although you say you are focused on the next revision your promise of faster releases after the last engine revamp have not materialized.
Jay Responded:
I'd say that Yahoo Small Business (which wasn't just slapping on a logo) and the upcoming MT Enterprise count as two pretty big rocks. Would you?
Todd's Rebuttal:
First: SixApart Promised a faster release schedule after the long development on the last release where the core was rebuilt from scratch. This promise still remains a pipe dream.
Second: I obviously have no idea what your sales numbers are, but it seems to me that unless you are a Enterprise size company or a Small Business that uses Yahoo products (I don't) then I am shit out of luck. Jay I really like the work you have done, so don't get me wrong when I write this, you missed the point I was trying to make. "SixApart is not keeping up with technology advances, and a simple 1-2 hour podcast integration would have made your product compatible out of the box to the hottest medium next to blogging". To not implement that proves without a shadow of a doubt in my mind that SixApart does not care about bloggers like me. How many thousands of Customers have you lost because it was easier for me to say setup WordPress it is compatible out of the box for podcasting.
How many hours of frustration would you have saved users that have your current product to create rss templates that were compatible and up to spec with the iTunes integration. It's the little things that Six Apart had failed to show leadership on that makes me wonder if I should think about switching to a platform that cares enough about it's core base of users to get a release out that keeps the product current.
Finally, you have a pro network yet no one know who they are or what services they offer, you need to put a list together of who they are and what this core group offers so when I need a MT developer I don't have to go overseas and find a developer to learn MT from the ground up.
Researchers at the Amsterdam's Free University created an RFID chip infected with a virus to prove that RFID systems are vulnerable despite the extremely low memory capacity on the cheap chips (see their PDF, Digital vermin causes a real threat to RFID tag.)
An infected RFID tag, which is read wirelessly when it passes through a scanning gate, can upset the database that processes the information on the chip, says the study by Melanie Rieback, Patrick Simpson, Bruno Crispo and Andrew Tanenbaum.
The team found that malicious code could be written to RFID tags. By replacing a tag's normal identification code with a written message, the researchers found they could exploit bugs in a computer connected to an RFID reader. This made it possible to spread a self-replicating computer worm capable of infecting other compatible, and rewritable, RFID tags.
"This is intended as a wake-up call. We ask the RFID industry to design systems that are secure," Tanenbaum explained.
Via CNN, New Scientist.
Image is not related to virus at all, it's an early prototype for the Zapped! Keychain RFID Detector. The Zapped! project, initiated by Preemptive Media, is not encouraging paranoia with Zapped!, but rather participation and preparation!
DARPA is calling for for bids on a project to create an army of cyber-insects that can be remotely controlled to check out explosives and send transmissions.
Micro-systems would be inserted at the pupa stage, when the insects -such as dragonflies and moths- can integrate them into their body, so they can be remotely controlled later or sense certain chemicals, including those in explosives.
The invasive surgery could "enable assembly-line like fabrication of hybrid insect-Mems interfaces", Darpa says.
A winning bidder would have to deliver "an insect within five metres of a specific target located 100 metres away".
The "insect-cyborg" must also "be able to transmit data from relevant sensors, yielding information about the local environment. These sensors can include gas sensors, microphones, video, etc."
Entomology expert Dr George McGavin of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History said the idea appeared "ludicrous". "What adult insects want to do is basically reproduce and lay eggs. You would have to rewire the entire brain patterns."
Darpa's previous experiments to get bees and wasps to detect the smell of explosives foundered when their "instinctive behaviours for feeding and mating... prevented them from performing reliably", it said.
Via everyone: Multipolarity Meme, robot.net, the Raw Feed, BBC News, The Washigton Times, etc.
Related: Trained wasps to sniff out chemicals and ulcers.
BBC news has also a selection of projects using animals in warfare:
A monkey test subject being experimented on for safety equipment that was being tailored for fighter pilots.
WWII: Attach a bomb to a cat and drop it from a dive-bomber on to Nazi ships. The cat, hating water, will "wrangle" itself on to enemy ship's deck. In tests cats became unconscious in mid-air.
WWII: Attach incendiaries to bats. Induce hibernation and drop them from planes. They wake up, fly into factories etc and blow up. Failed to wake from hibernation and fell to death
Navy personnel training a dolphin for sabotage duties.
Vietnam War: Dolphins trained to tear off diving gear of Vietcong divers and drag them to interrogation, sources linked to the programme say. Syringes later placed on dolphin flippers to inject carbon dioxide into divers, who explode. US Navy has always denied using mammals to harm humans.
Nick has just announced the availability of Performancing Mertrics, which he describes as "a professional grade blog statistics service aimed at professional bloggers."
I was invited into the closed beta test but unfortunately didn't find the time to set it up on my site. I ran Google Analytics for a month or so but quietly removed it a while back. While there was some interesting data porn, I didn't actually need it or the performance penalty that came with running it.
If their Firefox extension is any indication, I suspect that Performancing Metrics will rock too.
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Google Video's testing out RSS feeds for video search results. Here's the video feed for the search term "mashup":
http://video.google.com/videofeed?type=search&q=mashup&num=20&output=rss
Change the "q=mashup" to your desired term and change "num=20" to however many items you want to see. Warning: these feeds are alpha, and I have seen a few of them break with "invalid XML" problems.
Earthlink is adding eight more cities where it will now sell line-powered voice and 8 megabits per second DSL connections. Good news for Covad, as well. EarthLink has agreed to provide Covad with $50 million in debt and equity financing to fund additional network build-outs. Big question… why not just by Covad? At $467 million in market cap, an all stock deal is still going to be cheaper… in the long run. They did about $440 million in sales last year, and lost about $15 million. And while they are at it, why not just scoop up some of the smaller DSL players. Like Speakeasy. Time to be aggressive Earthlink? -
The global wind energy industry is expected to enjoy continued strong growth in coming years with total installed capacity seen more than tripling from current levels by 2014, an industry survey showed on Tuesday. Over the next eight years, international installed capacity is expected to increase to about 210,000 megawatts from today's installed total of about 59,000 megawatts, a study by the German Wind Energy Institute (DEWI) showed. [ more ]
Amazon Web Service is launching a new web service tonight called S3 - which stands for “Simple Storage Service”. It is a storage service backend for developers that offers “a highly scalable, reliable, and low-latency data storage infrastructure at very low costs”.
I was able to speak with Adam Selipsky (Amazon Web Services VP of Product Management and Developer Relations), Dave Barth (Product Manager for Amazon S3) and Andrew Herdener (Senior Public Relations Manager for Amazon) today about the service.
They’ve built the back end for the number one requested company that I wrote about late last year - reliable and cheap online storage. I’ve been watching this space very closely, even profiling a number of new entrants, and I have to say that S3 changes the game entirely. Move over Google Drive, Amazon just stole your thunder (for now).
Until now, a sophisticated and scalable data storage infrastructure like Amazon’s has been beyond the reach of small developers. Amazon S3 enables any developer to leverage Amazon’s own benefits of massive scale with no up-front investment or performance compromises. Developers are now free to innovate knowing that no matter how successful their businesses become, it will be inexpensive and simple to ensure their data is quickly accessible, always available, and secure.
Here are the facts: This is a web service, and so Amazon is not releasing a customer facing service. They are offering standards-based REST and SOAP web services interfaces for developers. Entire classes of companies can be built on S3 that would not have been possible before due to infrastructure costs for the developer.
Virtually any file type is allowed, up to 5 GB. Files may be set as public, shared or private and will have a unique URL.
Pricing is cheaper than anything else I’ve seen: $0.15 per GB of storage per month, and $0.20 for each GB of data transferred up or downstream. This translates to $15 per month for 100 GB of storage, net of any transfer fees (to move that much data on to S3 would be a one time cost of $20). These prices are going to be significantly below the development and ongoing costs for small or medium sized storage projects - meaning a lot of the front end services I’ve previously profiled will be much better off moving their entire back end to S3.
This is game changing.
See Rob Hof at Business Week for his thoughts on S3 as well. He says “it should put to rest the notion, still popular among a few analysts, that Amazon is just a retailer.”
As previously widely speculated, Six Apart, the makers of the TypePad blogging platform and MovableType blogging tool today announced that they have closed a Series C round of financing of $12 Million. The round was raised from Focus Ventures, Intel Capital and August Capital and brings total amount Six Apart has raised to $23 Million.
Six Apart seem to be doing well with a large subscriber base at TypePad and their recent announcement of TypePad business class and a new plan to bring more businesses into blogging easier. SixApart have a lot more growing to do and this latest round of funding should see them through the next phases of growth.
Also SixApart today announced that they have acquired SplashBlog for an undisclosed sum. SplashBlog is a blogging solution for mobile phones and PDA’s and we should shortly see this service integrated with Six Apart’s existing services.
As previously widely speculated, Six Apart, the makers of the TypePad blogging platform and MovableType blogging tool today announced that they have closed a Series C round of financing of $12 Million. The round was raised from Focus Ventures, Intel Capital and August Capital and brings total amount Six Apart has raised to $23 Million.
Six Apart seem to be doing well with a large subscriber base at TypePad and their recent announcement of TypePad business class and a new plan to bring more businesses into blogging easier. SixApart have a lot more growing to do and this latest round of funding should see them through the next phases of growth.
Also SixApart today announced that they have acquired SplashBlog for an undisclosed sum. SplashBlog is a blogging solution for mobile phones and PDA’s and we should shortly see this service integrated with Six Apart’s existing services.
With 31 quarto pages (a few pages are photocopies) extensively hand-corrected by Leary and his editor throughout, who have both made substantial revisions. The typescripts are mainly for the biographical sketches that Leary wrote about his various heroes, including Hermann Hesse, Albert Hofmann, James Joyce, John Lily, Thomas Pynchon, and Gurdjieff, among others. These profiles appeared at the beginning of each chapter throughout the book. Included are other fragments featuring various observations and recollections by Leary. Also present is the text for the dust jacket flaps, a page of "Notes for T. L. to Do," a page of "Character Tracking," several photocopied pages of the photos used in the book, and a couple of photograph release forms including one signed by Lawrence Schiller. Photocopies and additional paper material inside a manila folder; everything housed inside a three-ring binder.Link
Together with the typescript of a 4-page letter by Leary to his publisher titled: "Notes on Michael Kennedy Affair." A scathing letter in which Leary talks at great length about his grievances with Michael Kennedy, his former lawyer, who, according to Leary, was guilty of much wrongdoing. Leary goes into great, and previously undisclosed, detail about his escape from prison with the aid of the Weather Underground, with references to Allen Ginsberg, Jerry Rubin, Richard Alpert, Nicky Sands, and others. Leary eventually recognized the explosive nature of this letter and never allowed it to be published
Liked the Voodoo Knife Holder but thought having actual knives doing the piercing was a bit too gory for your kitchen? Perhaps you'll be happy with OUCH! the Voodoo Doll Toothpick Holder. Available in grey or white, each one holds 35 toothpicks and will easily break the ice at the next dinner party you throw. At just $6.99 you can afford to get one for yourself and a few more for your weirdest friends.
OUCH! The Voodoo Doll Toothpick Holder [perpetual kid]
D.C. prepares to ask for bids for "most" of the city: A Wi-Fi network contract will be awarded to the firm that does the most for the least-advantaged residents, including offering free access, computers, and training. There apparently won't be a requirement for full coverage, although the mayor expects the incentives will be there. The franchise will last eight years, and cover lightposts and building access, as well as some fiber-optic access. No tax dollars are involved, officials stated in this Washington Post article. An interesting twist: the winning bidder could serve low-income residents by wire instead of wireless. And the speed requirement is very slow: 500 Kbps downstream, 150 Kbps upstream. [Link via Esme Vos]
NeoReach extends to Gilbert, Ariz.: NeoReach (operated by MobilePro) has a network in Tempe and one under construction in Chandler. The adjacent city of Gilbert will add 76 square miles for a contiguous total network area of 187 square miles. I've been quoted in print media recently noting that Tempe at 40 square miles took the title as largest citywide network--that network is "substantially" complete as of March 1. With the addition of Chandler, they would dwarf the next largest network. Add in Gilbert, and they'll hold the title for largest area in a city network for at least a year and maybe two. Assuming other nearby suburbs in the sprawl around Phoenix don't ask to be admitted, too. And then there's Phoenix, suspiciously quiet at the moment. The Gilbert network will start rolling out June 1 and be finished in 2006.
Miami Beach awards IBM contract for free Wi-Fi service: The $5 million network will be paid out of city funds, remarkably, and cover seven square miles, with a commitment of access only up to the third floor--which is a problem in a town of high-rise apartments. I'm a little stunned by this one because I know of no city that would willingly put out this kind of money. IBM will give public schools 30 computers and sell computers "at a discount" to residents, but since IBM doesn't make computers any more, I'm not sure which company's products they'll offer. A local wireless service provider seems hopping mad, and notes that 50 to 80 percent of residents won't have access to this network.
Buffalo, Batavia receive state funds for Wi-Fi expansion: Two projects received matching dollars totaling about $350,000 for expanding Wi-Fi access. Buffalo will add more areas of free service. $1.4 million in matching funds will be distributed to 29 communities via High-Tech Initiative for New York.
The company has posted on the topic here. My original posting is here. This is clearly not just about the Lane's suit, it's about Google rejiggering its policies with regard to click fraud.
From Google's post:
We’re very near a resolution in that case, so we thought we’d offer an update.
;ve been discussing the case with the plaintiffs for some time and have recently come to an agreement with them which we believe is a good outcome for everyone involved. As a result, Google and the plaintiffs are going to ask the judge to approve the settlement, which would resolve the case.
Until the settlement is approved by the judge, it is not final. And the details are confidential, but will become public when it is formally filed for the judge’s consideration. However, we can share the major pieces of our proposed agreement.
Google currently allows advertisers to apply for reimbursement for clicks they believe are invalid. They can do this for clicks that happen during the 60 days prior to notifying Google. Under the agreement with the plaintiffs, we are going to open up that window for all advertisers, regardless of when the questionable clicks occurred. For all eligible invalid clicks, we will offer credits which can be used to purchase new advertising with Google. We do not know how many will apply and receive credits, but under the agreement, the total amount of credits, plus attorneys fees, will not exceed $90 million.
What I am not sure I grok is - is this $90 million set aside only for the plaintiffs in the Lanes' case, or is that the total Google is setting aside for all advertisers, period? I've asked Google for clarification. Seems to me, if they are changing their policy, the claims, and the costs, could go well above $90 million.
UPDATE: I have confirmation that indeed, this $90 million covers all US claims. In other words, this is a very small drop in the potential bucket. All US advertisers that have *ever* spent money with Google have the right to make a claim, but the total amount of those claims is capped at $90 million, a pittance compared to the billions that Google has made from AdWords/sense in the last five or so years.
On the one hand, this validates Google's claim that clickfraud is not that big a deal. On the other, Google settled, and relatively quickly, and probably with the knowledge that a quick settlement was far better than a drawn out, public trial that might make the company look, well, defensive at the best. At the worst, it could have meant a terrible PR nightmare, and a hell of a lot more damages than $90 million. My first take: This settlement is a major victory for Google. Was it good for advertisers? Not sure. But I think the folks at Google are pleased as punch with the deal.
Imagine going over to your Flickr account, grabbing a picture you have their and dragging it with all of it's metadata attached into your blog and have your blog automatically update and allow your comments plus update the flickr page to tell it where the picture is being displayed.
Or how about grabbing a RSS icon and dragging it onto your bloglines account and having the RSS automatically added to your subscription list while at the same time giving attention back and letting the persons know that you are now a subscriber.
Sound pretty cool, well the days of being able to drag and drop data may be very close at hand, tie this to voice recognition technology and the fantasy of orchestrating data with a simple drag and drop may soon be upon us. [Ray Ozzie] [Dave Winer]
Note: Take the time to login and check out the demo's, it is obvious that Ray Ozzie and Bill Gates are on the same page as these ideas cross over from the CES Keynote by Bill Gates
It seems the MovableType Plugin that takes care of the enclosure portion of the RSS feed is causing the folks over at Libsyn some headaches. What has been happening apparently is that every time the RSS feed gets re-built the plugin reaches out and does a head request on the file. In my case my Podcast feed has the last 15 entries which will cause the plugin to do 15 head request of the file.
I am sure the folks at Libsyn are going to be talking to Brandon, but don't you think it is about time that Six Apart implement enclosures as a core portion of the blog application. There has to be a better way to parse that info instead of doing it every single time.
This is causing a lot of unnecessary traffic as well, not to mention the undue loading on the servers at Libsyn.
I like this idea:
I had to sign a tedious business contract the other day. They wanted my corporation number -- fair enough -- plus my Social Security number -- well, if you insist -- and also my driver's license number -- hang on, what's the deal with that?Well, we e-mailed over a query and they e-mailed back that it was a requirement of the Patriot Act. So we asked where exactly in the Patriot Act could this particular requirement be found and, after a bit of a delay, we got an answer.
And on discovering that there was no mention of driver's licenses in that particular subsection, I wrote back that we have a policy of reporting all erroneous invocations of the Patriot Act to the Department of Homeland Security on the grounds that such invocations weaken the rationale for the act, and thereby undermine public support for genuine anti-terrorism measures and thus constitute a threat to America's national security.
And about 10 minutes after that the guy sent back an e-mail saying he didn't need the driver's license number after all.
A South Korean horror film topped the Movies File Share Top Ten for the week ending 2006 February 23. [p2pnet.net] [REDEU-AI | REDEYE by Dong-bin Kim]
News.com has a piece on a security feature planned for FF later this year. A statement by Mozilla's Mike Shaver says that they are working with Google on a tool to protect surfers. The two working together is as interesting as the product.
So far only SEW is posting this , but it appears to be well founded, that Google have put $90 million into a fund for aggrieved AdWords clients.
So only a few days after having to fork over hundreds of millions to NTP, RIM now finds that the carrier cartel is about to work against them too with some help from Microsoft.
The browser business isn't a half bad place to be, it seems.
What an amazing business: make a kick-ass browser for $10-15M a year in expense and make $72M (and growing) in revenue. It's such a good business that the folks at Flock.com are trying to do a similar thing by building a wrapper with value-added services (like bookmarking tools) on top of Firefox.
Makes you wonder how much Microsoft income is derived from Search in Internet Explorer, doesn't it?
Someone should make a "cash cow" skin for Firefox. :-)
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Given the stunning growth of iPod phenomenon and general good fiscal health of Apple, it is easy to overlook some of the progress the company is making in the enterprise markets, especially when it comes to storage. According to some reports, Apple’s storage products have been selling like hot croissants on a cold Parisian morning and at the end of “second quarter of 2005, the company had shipped 76 petabytes of storage.” The sad part is that Apple itself doesn’t keep people upto date on its progress in these markets.
Robert Cox, vice president of research, who tracks the storage business for Gartner says that in 2004, Apple did about $78 million in storage sales and were #12 ranked storage vendor in the world, but by end of 2005, Apple’s storage sales were around $185 million. The company had moved into the 10th spot overall. “They have done a good job of selling into the small and medium business market,” says Cox. (South Park uses Apple storage by the way.)
According to his estimates, nearly 40% o XServe RAIDs are connected to non-Mac OS servers. “They are in a good and a growing market, and have done a good job of building a reliable and easy to use device from commodity components,” says Cox. The network attached storage business is a $14.5 billion a year business, and the $185 million doesn’t exactly seem that very much. Their high quality products, are better priced compared to other name brand players such as EMC, Dell, HP, Sun and even Net App.
Do the math: the gigabyte-per-dollar ratio of Xserve RAID is the best in the world for Fibre Channel storage, and trumps most SCSI storage solutions as well. Xserve RAID offers up to 7TB of high-performance redundant storage at under $2 per gigabyte — a fraction of the cost of storage from Dell, HP, Sun or IBM.
Cox thinks that company will continue to do well in 2006 and should move up a notch or two in the world wide rankings. Apple, will have a tougher time, thereafter. It needs to transition from current generation technologies such as SATA and embrace SAScsi, a new architecture that can give Apple a big leg-up against fiber channel based storage devices. I wonder why Apple shies away from prompting well in the storage and server markets.
Update: My report on Microsoft Origami just went up. Here is just a tiny sample.“This is yet another failed attempt to jam everything into one device,” says Pip Coburn, technology strategist with Coburn Ventures, a New York-based investment advisory firm. “The way I see it, they don’t really know what they want it to be.” Full Story is here.
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So finally Microsoft Origami (or what it would be) has been brought to light… and my first reaction, for crying out loud, yet another digital device?
It is supposed to be the Swiss army knife of digital life, if you believe what you see in Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble’s video. If you read Michael Gartenberg hands on review, you will soon be running off to the nearest store wildly waving your credit card yelling take my money, and give me Origami.
What none of the folks who are writing about the device today address is the bigger issue: since it is an ultra portable PC based on Windows XP, how secure is it? What is the “re-boot” time? How much resources it would need and how long is the battery life. Of course the price point is even more worrisome: at $599 to $999, it is still too expensive for an occasional use device. So here is a question: will equipment makers sacrifice the margins on their thin-and-light notebooks, for Origami? After all, from the video you learn, that Origami does it all, and well, a $600 desktop at home should do the trick in tandem with Origami.
Origami, from what ever I have read, seems will be made by partners, so pretty sure, design innovation and services integration will be sub-par, much like most Microsoft Windows Media-based music players. Engadget has some photos, and from the looks of it, the device is not as sleek as it seems. It looks thick and unwieldy. I am feeling a tad underwhelmed by the ones I see (pics, I admit) online.
My view on any new digital and mobile device is that - both Microsoft and Intel - should stop thinking Windows and try developing a new platform. In other words, think different. Look even Steve “OS-X or nothing” Jobs had to go get another OS platform to get the iPod done. Imagine, the mess a OS-X Inside iPod would be. Microsoft has a product precedent - XBox 360, which does things very well, because it is not hampered by the Windows legacy. New thinking … but then that’s too much to ask from old companies.
PS: Does anyone else feel that Sony, the great consumer electronics company of the past, muffed an opportunity with PSP by not including a hard drive? I love the device, hate the lack of capacity!
This would be an important discovery, if it turns out to be right:
NASA's Cassini Discovers Potential Liquid Water on Enceladus
NASA's Cassini spacecraft may have found evidence of liquid water reservoirs that erupt in Yellowstone-like geysers on Saturn's moon Enceladus....
High-resolution Cassini images show icy jets and towering plumes ejecting large quantities of particles at high speed. Scientists examined several models to explain the process. They ruled out the idea that the particles are produced by or blown off the moon's surface by vapor created when warm water ice converts to a gas. Instead, scientists have found evidence for a much more exciting possibility -- the jets might be erupting from near-surface pockets of liquid water above 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit), like cold versions of the Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone.
Technorati Tags: environment, space
The January/February issue of Foreign Policy has a short report that
Beijing recently sent engineers trained in phone tapping to Zimbabwe. It also arranged to send computer equipment designed for filtering-- or spying-- on the Internet. In 2004, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's state-owned telecom, TelOne, made Internet service providers sign contracts allowing it to monitor and censor illegal material. The Chinese hardware could make this job much easier.
The one faint silver lining in this story is that the number of Internet users in Zimbabwe hasn't exactly exploded in the last few years, given the state of the economy. But according to Reporters Without Borders, the 2004 measure was aimed squarely at political dissidents: as an RWB spokesman told Foreign Affairs, the government "has realized that the opposition has turned to the Internet.... That's why [these shipments of Chinese hardware] are worrying."
I've wondered if censorship tools developed by the Chinese could be attractive to other authoritarian regimes that want to tap into the Internet-- but want to avoid all those pesky political side effects. If you're a dictator or president for life, why choose the completely open, dangerously destabilizing Western version of the Internet, when you could go with an Internet that lets you control the content your citizens see and observe what they do? With China's announcement of its creation of new top-level domains, we may be seeing the foundations of an alternative Internet, one that doesn't treat censorship as a flaw, but a feature.
Technorati Tags: Africa, China
Document Icons by Amber Frid-Jimenez generates iconic shapes based on a document and its histogram of words to create a intuitive visual search engine for documents. The relationships between 100 documents can be viewed in an instant.
30,000 Email Users Sign Open Letter
San Francisco - Despite AOL's attempt to divide its critics, the DearAOL.com Coalition announced Monday it has grown tenfold from 50 organizations to more than 500 as it fights AOL's controversial plan to create a two-tiered Internet that leaves the little guy behind.
Last week, AOL's proposed "email tax" came under fire from a coalition of political groups on the left and right, businesses and non-profits, charities, and Internet advocacy organizations. More than 400 publications around the world published articles about AOL's plan to allow large mass-emailers to pay to bypass AOL's spam filters and get guaranteed delivery directly into the inboxes of AOL customersleaving the little guy behind with increasingly unreliable second-tier Internet service.
In just several days, the DearAOL.com Coalition grew to include everything from babysitting co-ops to pony clubs, from farmers markets to biker dailies, from Hawaiian skateboard makers to church groupsdemonstrating that small, large, ordinary and extraordinary groups depend on free email delivery. All coalition members are located at www.dearaol.com.
Clearly worried by the coalition's growing momentum, AOL on Friday tried to repackage its already existing "Enhanced Whitelist" as if it were a new program for nonprofits. It also tried to divide the coalition with an offer to give special email privileges to some "qualified" nonprofits while leaving other non-profits, charities, small businesses, and even neighbors with community mailing lists behind. Neither of these addresses the core of the problem: AOL's increased financial incentive to downgrade ordinary email delivery.
"I don't take bribes," said Gilles Frydman, Executive Director of the Association of Cancer Online Resources, a free nonprofit online service for cancer patients. "The solution is not AOL offering a few of us service for free in exchange for our silencethe solution is preserving equal access to the free and open Internet for everyone."
If anything, the net result of AOL's Friday announcement was that they conceded the central point of the DearAOL.com Coalition.
"By offering to move a few of the little guys from the losers circle to the winners circle, AOL conceded the broader point of our coalitionthat AOL's would create a two-tiered Internet that leaves many behind with inferior service," said Adam Green, a spokesperson for MoveOn.org Civic Action.
This weekend, the San Jose Mercury News exposed this reality in an editorial entitled, "Paid e-mail will lead to separate, unequal systems; free systems will become neglected." It identified AOL's threat to the "free and open" Internet this way: "the temptation would be to neglect the free e-mail system, whose reliability would decline. Eventually, everyone would migrate to the fee-based system. There would be no way around the AOL tollbooth."
"Perversely, AOL's pay-to-send system would actually reward AOL financially for degrading free email for regular customers as they attempt to push people into paid-mail," said Danny O'Brien, Activism Coordinator for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "AOL should be working to ensure its spam filters don't block legitimate mail, not charging protection money to bypass those filters and offering band-aids to allow some select nonprofits to bypass them as well."
"AOL's pay-to-send scheme threatens the free and open Internet as we know it," said Timothy Karr, campaign director of Free Press, a national, nonpartisan media reform organization. "The Internet needs to be a level playing field. The flow of online information, innovation and ideas is not a luxury to be sold off to the highest bidder."
The DearAOL.com Coalition:
http://www.dearaol.com
San Jose Mercury News editorial:
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/opinion/14023726.htm
Contact:
Danny O'Brien
Activism Coordinator
Electronic Frontier Foundation
danny@eff.org
AP: Reports: AT&T, BellSouth near$65B deal. AT&T is nearing a deal to acquire BellSouth Corp. for $65 billion, according to reports published Sunday. The companies were expected to announce the terms of the deal as soon as Monday, according to reports in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times. Both papers cited unidentified sources, due to the sensitivity of the negotiations.
If this deal goes through — and given the Bush administration’s (and Congress’) willful blindness to the implications of a telecom world dominated by only a few, and soon only a couple, of predatory giants — Verizon will surely buy Qwest. Why wouldn’t they?
We’re moving into troublesome times, where rapacious mega-companies, steeped in monopolistic traditions, assert utter control over our communications. If you think they won’t use their market power to stifle innovation they don’t control (or from which they get a cut of any action) you don’t study history.
What can average folks do? Complain to Congress, of course. Sadly, this has less and less effect in a political system that is increasingly of, by and for the wealthy and powerful.
It can’t hurt, however, to raise your voice.
After a reported long-term power struggle with co-founder Bob Wyman, PubSub CEO Salim Ismail has been replaced by Constantine “Gus” Spathis today. More details in the PubSub blog. There are also serious acquisition rumors floating around about the company, so expect more news soon. My previous posts on PubSub are at this link.
The New York Public Library purchased the William S. Burroughs archive, including 11,000 pages of writings (published and unpublished), correspondence, collages, diaries, notebooks, photographs, and 50 hours of unreleased tape recordings. The WBS archive will join the Jack Kerouac archive as part of the Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature. I hope that someday, the entire archive will be scanned and made freely available online for study and mash-up in the Burroughs tradition. (Photo by the amazing Charles Gatewood.) From the New York Times:
Though scholars have never seen most of the material, they were made tantalizingly aware of its existence by Burroughs himself, who published a descriptive catalog of the archive in 1973. Oliver C. G. Harris, a professor of American literature at Keele University in Staffordshire, England, who edited a collection of Burroughs's letters published by Viking in 1993, said the material was the Holy Grail of scholars of the Beat generation.Link
"My sense is that it will really change the picture of Burroughs that scholars have known," Mr. Harris said, because that picture has been based almost exclusively on Burroughs's work in the 1950's. Much of his more avant-garde experiments, including most of his cut-ups — works created by slicing typewritten text into fragments and rearranging it to create a new narrative — came later, in the 1960's and 1970's...
Much of the archive sheds light on the relationship between Burroughs and the others of the Beat generation, including Timothy Leary, Paul Bowles, Gregory Corso, Terry Southern, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and, of course, Kerouac and Ginsberg.
"The archive is particularly interesting because Burroughs clearly intended it to be read and absorbed as a work of art," Mr. Gewirtz said. Handwritten notes by Burroughs adorn many of the folios of written material, explaining the contents, and the author often added collages of photographs, newspaper clippings or other media to the folders.
Alright, it seems that Sony is ‘ready to rumble’ with their not-so-famed Blu-ray format. Coupled with some movies, the biggest debut in my opinion will happen when the PS3 actually bothers to show up on the store shelves. Short of that, I am not too sure that they are going to sell many of the $999 DVD players needed to play these discs….
Blu ray Universal Media Disc Sony PSP
Direct and Related Links for 'Blu-ray bowing on May 23'
This summer a Gristedes store on Roosevelt Island in New York will get half of its power from six tide-powered turbines in the East River. Unlike dam-based hydroelectric generators, which depend on rain or snowpack to keep current flowing and which shut down during droughts, newer "hydro- kinetic" systems exploit less capricious natural forces. "Lunar power" is the term offered by experts such as George Hagerman, a senior research associate at Virginia Tech and co-author of a recent EPRI marine-energy study. "You can't know if the wind will be up in an hour," he says, "but you can predict the tide 1,000 years from now." "It's local, reliable, renewable, and clean. Plus, it's out of sight," says Trey Taylor, president of Verdant Power LLC, the Arlington (Va.) startup developing the East River site. Read more in ::Business Week
Also read Treehugger posts like ::TidEl Harnesses Lunar Energy? Where our own Jacob Gordon predicted last August: "since the motion of the ocean is largely a result of the gravitational force of the moon as it literally bulges the sea from one side of the earth to the other, couldn’t we say this is lunar energy ? Solar is so clearly over."
Originally from Treehugger, ReBlogged by perry on Mar 2, 2006 at 01:43 PM
Bush's Indian entourage of security is jamming, monitoring radio frequencies: To prevent untoward events, Hindustani Times reports, Secret Service agents jam all manner of radio frequencies and surveille others. The Hotel Maurya Sheraton is the base for operations, apparently, causing disruption to the hotel's network access and police radios. The expectation is that television remote controls and mobile phones may not work in a three-kilometer radius, the paper reports.
A pair of bills introduced in Congress last week want to leverage unused television channels: The two bills want to move forward on allowing wireless broadband over television channels in areas in which stations aren't broadcasting. The New America Foundation, which promotes multiple uses of existing frequencies and open spectrum policies, says 40 to 80 percent of TV spectrum is empty in rural areas. The bills differ in how much of this spectrum they'd allow to be used. When the digital television transition is complete, now mandated for Feb. 2009, the remaining analog frequencies will be auctioned off, and thus if a pre-existing "white space" use were in place, that might reduce the spectrum's nationwide value.
This time, it's the company's European chief, saying MSFT will be better in the US. Huh? From the Reuters story:
Microsoft (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) will introduce a search engine better than Google (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) in six months in the United States and Britain followed by Europe, its European president said on Wednesday.
're saying is that in six months' time we'll be more relevant in the U.S. market place than Google," said Neil Holloway, Microsoft president for Europe, Middle East and Africa.
Call me thick, but what the hell is this guy talking about? A statement like this should be coming from Gates or Ballmer. It's a major gauntlet, and a significant timeline declaration (from a company not well known for meeting deadlines). No, wait, a statement like this simply shouldn't be made, period. DO, don't PROMISE. Sheesh.
Hey Sam
You have Atom thats your Baby, the question I have is why are you involved in the RSS 2.0 specification discussion?
You have been very outspoken on RSS for all this time. Keep your hands off the RSS specification, or have you been given your marching orders by your employer IBM? I am not at all pleased that people with commercial interest are messing with the RSS standard that I and others have invested significant dollars into deploying sites that depend on the specification being rock solid, with your hands meddling in something that should not be happening in the first place makes me realize there is a lot more going on here than meets the eye! [Scripting News]
Todd..
BioBouncer is a face recognition system intended for bars:
Its camera snaps customers entering clubs and bars, and facial recognition software compares them with stored images of previously identified troublemakers. The technology alerts club security to image matches, while innocent images are automatically flushed at the end of each night, Dussich said. Various clubs can share databases through a virtual private network, so belligerent drunks might find themselves unwelcome in all their neighborhood bars.
Anyone want to guess how long that "automatically flushed at the end of each night" will last? This data has enormous value. Insurance companies will want to know if someone was in a bar before a car accident. Employers will want to know if their employees were drinking before work -- think airplane pilots. Private investigators will want to know who walked into a bar with whom. The police will want to know all sorts of things. Lots of people will want this data -- and they'll all be willing to pay for it.
And the data will be owned by the bars thatcollect it. They can choose to erase it, or they can choose to sell it to data aggregators like Acxiom.
It's rarely the initial application that's the problem. It's the follow-on applications. It's the function creep. Before you know it, everyone will know that they are identified the moment they walk into a commercial building. We will all lose privacy, and liberty, and freedom as a result.
Variety previews the American Society of Cinematographers’ awards show this Sunday. Allen Daviau asserts that “it’s part of our job to be aware of the advances in technology, and to know when they’re working in our favor and when they are not.” Daviau, who won ASC awards for his work on BUGSY and EMPIRE OF THE SUN, tells his students they will learn more by shooting film and by “previsualizing the photo chemical process. Film is going to last longer than people think as an originating medium, because they continue to make better film all the time,” Daviau asserts. “Digital cameras are getting better, too, and we can make beautiful pictures with them. But digital doesn’t offer the range of film.” [Scott Kirsner: CinemaTech]
The news everyone's talking about is that the Pentagon is funding research into neural implants with the hope of turning sharks into 'stealth spies' capable of gliding undetected through the ocean.
The research builds on experimental work to control animals by implanting tiny electrodes in their brain, which are then stimulated to induce a behavioural response. It seems to be one of those sensationalist news that makes the headlines every other years.
"By remotely guiding the sharks' movements they hope to transform the animals into stealth spies, perhaps capable of following vessels without being spotted," says the report.
Via New Scientist, ABC, Scotsman, etc. Image.
New Scientist mentions also that scientists are investigating the use of neural implants to control the behaviour of farmed fish. The tags will eliminate the need to pen and feed fish. Instead, the fish would forage for themselves and fisheries employees would retrieve them when they are large enough.
One way to contain the fish would be an acoustic fence that triggers the implants to deliver a warning signal to the fish's brain, possibly by mimicking a bad smell. Barry Costa-Pierce and his team at the University of Rhode Island have developed implants that can make the fish surface on command.
However, there are legal barriers as setting tuna loose would raise the question of who owns a fish that swims in the commons of the ocean. Until governments can establish fishing regulations that take account of such implants, commercial fisheries are unlikely to take up the idea.
Has the blogosphere disappeared into itself, like some 18th century salon of elitists? Probably not, but sometimes I wonder. Clearly others do too. The second comment on a new website that purports to measure the Top50 bloggers is actually more entertaining than anything else on the site: The writer fires off both barrels at the technorati:
This illustrates the subjective nature of blogging and the real-world irrelevance of the self-appointed, self-promoted “A-list”. If you love to write, then write, but don’t publish a “blog” that’s got more ads than a mal-ware link-page and expect me to read it. When I see an ad-infested blog (as most “A-list” blogs are) I see a whore looking for the next trick (or next ‘click’, in this case), not a contributing member of the blogosphere.
It goes on in a similar vein. Strong stuff, and in some ways not fair, particularly the ads thing. The A List bloggers I read don't have any ads at all that I can remember, certainly less than the number I have. That, in most cases, is not their motivation. And their content is often very interesting stuff, and a great place to hear about new gizmos and Web 2.0 thingamijigs first. But that said, there is perhaps some fire inside the smoke. The A List of bloggers hasn't changed hugely in the past three years, and while it's fascinating to watch them evolve (or not, in some cases) you can't help but wonder why, when blogging has grown in popularity, both in readership and authorship, the A List remains such a small club.
And when that happens, how relevant are the musings of that club to outsiders who may recently have joined the blogosphere? How useful is a blogosphere so dominated by such a narrow group of people? At what point do the musings of the A List just become a cross-referencing, back-slapping (and occasionally bitchy) salon of folk who have lost their sense of perspective? What I'd like to see -- perhaps it already exists -- is a visual representation of all the cross-linking that takes place among the A-List. Perhaps then we'll get a clearer picture of what the A List actually is.
technorati tags: technorati, alist, bloggers
Leichtman Research Group just released their 2005 broadband data, and according to their research 9.6 million new broadband subscribers signed up for high speed connections in 2005, bringing the total to about 42.9 million. It was an exceptional year for DSL providers, mostly because of their low cost offerings.
The data shows that everyone - big and small - benefitted from the booming demand for broadband. Cable providers still have 57% of the total market, and are doing well to hang on to their market share. Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group says, “Cable operators have added virtually the same number of broadband subscribers in each of the past three years, while DSL providers have grown the market primarily by offering lower priced services.” Smaller companies are also finding equal growth opportunities.
The big surge in 2005, however, does make you wonder how long can this party last. I am pretty certain now selling broadband is going to be a much more of a marketing effort, and need more dollars. Verizon for instance is launching a new marketing campaign targeting specific ethnic groups in their own vernacular.
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This site, put together by the San Diego-based Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, is a must read...
A Chronology of Data Breaches Since the ChoicePoint Incident
" ... A survey of 1,000 U.S. homes showed that about 36 percent of U.S. households were not online, and only 2 percent intended to subscribe to an Internet service this year, according to Parks Associates. The percent of households without Web access extrapolated to 39 million homes ..."
The New York Times reports that Yahoo is shifting focus away from creating traditional, TV-like content on the Web to a major focus on bottom-up material. Key passage:
With advertisers moving large parts of their budgets online, the market for content, created by professionals, bloggers and individual users, is expanding rapidly — as is the competition. Major media companies are developing video-based programming for the Internet. Myspace.com, purchased last year by the News Corporation, has become a major site based on user-contributed content. Many start-ups, like youtube.com, seek to follow suit.
r. Braun said yesterday that the way to keep users on Yahoo’s site longer — and thus be able to show them more advertising — was to offer ways they can create their own content and look at content created by others. He pointed to the site Yahoo built for the 2006 Winter Olympics, which prominently featured photographs from Flickr, Yahoo’s photo-sharing site, along with articles both by news agencies and by a few columnists exclusive to Yahoo.
“I now get excited about user-generated content the way I used to get excited about thinking about what television shows would work,” he said.
The story says Lloyd Braun, who’d been widely expected to be leaving the company, planned to stay. If he’s really serious about “user-generated content” (an expression that I loathe) that’s a surprise to me, given his history. His turnaround is an admission that he didn’t grasp what the Web was about — and I give him points for admitting it.
Yahoo has been a leader in the bottom-up space for some time. The grassroots need even more help, and this could be a big boost.
