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Thursday, March 14, 2002 |
 Reuters (thanks Dane) rightly poo poos Google bombing (by Andrea Orr, a reporter I have talked to often). Google bombing alarmists, your 15 minutes are over.
>>>"I'm not sure people are doing it with malicious intent," said Matt Cutts, a software engineer for Google, which is widely recognized as producing the most relevant Internet search results. "Just about all the cases we've seen have been humorous."
"I think the amount of effort it would take to affect a search on a popular term would stand out like a red flag," said Google's Cutts."<<<
9:00:47 PM 
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Man, I just took a short nap and my daughters, wrote on me with markers. Can you imagine? Girls 10, 4, and 2 writing on your face, arms, and hands while you were asleep. Suck. I have my name in highlights and little figures tattooed to me right now. Luckily, nothing that wont wash off. I don't like tattoos. I like the concept of being able to change my life at any moment and walk into the world without memory of the past.
8:07:56 PM
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News.com Music City goes goes after independent artists with its new promotion plan. This sounds like a bastardization of the b-plan I wrote for MP3.com in 1998. At the time MP3.com was just a place for garage bands to post and promote their music. Bands that posted their MP3's wanted to gain the attention of the recording industry, have a place for fans to find out about their live gigs, and perhaps make a little spare cash from the sale of a CD they cut. By the end of 1998, MP3.com was signing up 7-15 bands a day (remember, 5% of all garage music is worth listening to, only .01% gets professionally produced). They were just gaining traction.
Then VC funding hit. They immediately moved into finding ways to allow users to post copyrighted works from the big artists. It boosted their traffic. They took even more actions to find ways to allow users to use this copyrighted content to combat Napster. They went IPO, raised a ton of cash, and quickly got hit by the music industry for damages. This cost them $100's of millions. They eventually sold out.
What did they do wrong? They failed to follow the slow but sure route to building a business. These garage bands wouldn't make them a fortune overnight, but each of them had a following (10's, 100's, or 1,000's) they brought with them to the site. These people loved these bands. The thing to do would be to pick the best music based on the data they collected on use, unique visitors, and demographics. Have agents work with them to sign them onto a promotional contract to promote their wares (MP3's, live gigs, and extras). Cut them contracts that would make the traditional industry blush (higher margins for artists, etc). Make them stars. With a year or two, some big stars would have bolted for their system in order to make higher margins and promote freedom for artists. Within five to ten years, they could have taken on the traditional music industry at its source and won hands down every time: new talent.
So much for that story. Nobody has done it yet. It's still wide open.
5:11:14 PM
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Reuters. Microsoft reveals they are working with the DoJ to fight cybercrime (terrorism). Bing! Dave and I took a tough stand on this a couple of months ago when we couldn't figure out why the DoJ threw away 6 years of work on the Microsoft case and sided with Microsoft. Here is the reason. Ashcroft turned the DoJ into a war-time agency. Microsoft could provide him with a way to get into networks through a backdoor (keylogging software etc.). Microsoft is trying to craft the same deal with the Euros.
>>>``As we think about private and public partnerships, we have to say that this (partnership) is key,'' said Ballmer, as he outlined the dangers of cyber-crime to the European Policy Centre, a private think-tank.
``We've worked very closely, for example, with the Department of Justice in the United States to get additional funding for FBI efforts to target cyber-crime,'' he said.
``They simply didn't have enough people who were technically expert,'' he added. ``We've loaned our experts but we also think it's very important that government have its own experts as part of the policy process in these issues.''
Microsoft still faces a continuing investigation by the European Commission for allegedly violating European antitrust laws, but Ballmer declined to say whether he would be holding discussions about those problems during his stay in Brussels.
``Those (talks) are always confidential, of course, between us and the appropriate governmental authorities,'' he said.<<< This is scary stuff (thanks Michael for the heads-up on this).
12:08:14 PM
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BBC. Mira, Microsoft's new portable digital screen/tablet technology that connects to a hub PC, will be "out by Christmas" for around $500. This is how Microsoft plans to soak up excess compute cycles on today's fast PCs: use XP profiles to allow everyone in the home to have a digital screen/tablet that connects to a hub PC. The key is multiple simultaneous users on the same hub for mail, multimedia, and browsing.
I suspect the vision is that there will eventually be a hub PC (HomeStation) you can put into a closet. Base stations to recharge the tablets for each user. Connections to roaming wireless networks for remote access to the home hub. Convergence with personal storage device technology to add dozens of Gb of portable storage for local playback of multimedia. Convergence with wireless phone technology so that you could use your hub's contact manager for easy communications management. Nice.
9:20:33 AM
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Boston Globe. The DoD plans to fund a $50 m effort at MIT to create systems for the soldier of the future -- particularly in nanotechnology. It's funny to see how the scientist's desire for funding (greed) overcame their objection (fear) of designing systems that will contribute to killing people and the rationalizations they used to support it. Grow up -- either you participate or you don't.
MIT's hype for the project: "Imagine the psychological impact upon a foe when encountering squads of seemingly invincible warriors protected by armor and endowed with superhuman capabilities,' MIT's publicity materials said."
9:03:45 AM
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Good morning digital rights activists! A new group digitalconsumer.org went public today. Lots of SV names in the group. They hope to influence public policy in regard to copyrights, digital technologies, and more. What they really need: a small research organization that creates reports that analyze the intersection of public policy and computer technology. These reports would be sent to all lawmakers, the public, and the press. I figure it would cost $400 k a year to run an organization like this, not much given the impact. In the long run, it would provide a source high quality fuel to power the current debate and get us out of this current name calling.
8:47:26 AM
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© Copyright 2004 John Robb.
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