Exploring the impact of broadband and technology on our lives, our businesses, and our communities.
Just what do we own these days?
A woman trying to sell shampoo on eBay has been told she cannot do so. She is apparently buying hair care products from a store or wholesaler and then selling the products on eBay, but the hair care firm Aquage says, "No." The firm is using the flimiest of pretexts, claiming copyright infringement because the woman took a picture of the shampoo and posted it as part of the eBay listing. They also claim she has violated distributor agreements, even though she has never signed any such agreements.
This is first cousin to the often absurd requirements that the entertainment industry has been trying to impose on digital media like music and videos. Except in this case, we are talking about a real, physical product (a bottle of shampoo). The company seems to be trying to assert that the woman, even though she bought and paid for the product, has to get permission from the company before she can resell it to someone else.
Companies that try to assert continuing "rights" over products that they sell are not, in my opinion, going to prosper over the long term. Pursuing such legal strategies suggests that the company's products are overpriced, that the firm has antiquated distribution strategies, and/or that the firm thinks it is a good idea to alienate customers by suing them.
It is no accident that the iPod and the iTunes Store has captured the majority of the market for online music. Most competitors have tried "rent the music" schemes that don't let music lovers own the music that they pay for. Apple, on the other hand, developed a system that provides some digital rights management but in a way that assures that when you buy a song, you really do own it, instead of just being allowed to listen to it for a while. It's a simple concept, really, but one that seems to escape many companies.
Knowledge Democracy:
Are Google book scans selling books?
As an author, I was highly skeptical when Google announced a year ago that it would start scanning books and making them available for search. Along with many other groups and organizations, it seemed like an obvious violation of copyright. The main problem is that Google, of course, places ads on every scanned page that someone sees, and authors get no share of that ad income.
But a new report suggests that the Google "service" might be increasing book sales. That is good news for authors, if it applies across most scanned books.
What we will never know is how much money Google makes from the ads. Selling a few more books (and the relatively small royalties authors receive) might be much, much less than the ad income Google makes. And unless Google is willing to openly share ad data and/or share income with authors, it is still stealing.
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Knowledge Democracy:
Technology leaves tracks
The recent uproars--one at Hewlett-Packard over obtaining phone records illegally and the other with the instant messaging Congressman--are a sober reminder that almost everything we do leaves tracks these days. In both of these cases, someone other than the intended recipient of the electronic records ended up with the information, legally or illegally.
There are several implications. One is that we had all better understand the technology we are using before we use it. As obvious as this sounds, the Congressman probably thought his IM text was disappearing as soon as the conversation was over. But it wasn't.
Even the telephone is changing. While the old-fashioned phone system records what time calls were made and to whom, it does not record the call itself. While anyone can do that, it requires a lot of fussing with wires and recorders. But the new software-based VoIP systems will happily record phone conversations on your hard drive with the click of your mouse.
What does this mean? It means face to face meetings are not likely to go out of style entirely, for all sorts of good and bad reasons. And I think that is a good thing.
Knowledge Democracy:
Don't touch those touchscreens to vote
Just when you thought the problems with Diebold electronic voting machines could not get any worse, this Engadget story indicates that some Diebold machines have touchscreen problems--if you touch the touchscreen, the system panics and has to be restarted. Diebold is giving the State of Maryland more than 5000 mice to use with the voting machines so that no one touches the touchscreens. Except if you do accidentally touch the touchscreen, the machine could crash and your vote could be lost. Unless your vote gets counted twice because the machine had to reboot, which can cause it to lose count.
Knowledge Democracy:
Network backups as a business
Network backup services are going to become big business, as everyone--businesses and consumers alike, figure out it is cheaper and easier to pay someone to store all your stuff. And the stuff is growing like crazy, as we buy songs online, download videos, and put thousands of digital pictures on our hard drives.
For purchased content like music and videos, you really should not have to back that stuff up; instead, the sellers should provide dead simple ways to re-download content you have already paid for, and as we buy more and more stuff online, it will become a business necessity to offer that service.
I recently bought some digital images for a new brochure, and accidentally deleted them. The firm I bought them from sent me replacements, but it took several days and I got a scolding email from them about how I should be more careful. Why on earth would a company scold a paying customer? It's just bad business, and that kind of attitude will slowly go away.
But content we create ourselves--years of email, family pictures, home videos, and other kinds of nonreplaceable data--needs more secure storage, and it really needs to be off site. What a lot of people are doing now is buying a cheap external hard drive and making a copy of everything there. That is good only to a point--that won't protect you against floods, fire, or burglary. And businesses have similar problems, as nearly all business data--customer information, product data, brochures, presentations, etc.--are in digital format.
Some people are using "free" services like Google Gmail to back some stuff up, but these free services have low quality of service compared to paid services, and they are not that expensive any more. FileBanc is a company that offers both consumer and business backup services, and Data Ensure is another firm that markets to businesses.
Technology News:
Open Service Provider Networks are a win-win-win
As Design Nine does more and more financial analysis of the benefits of Open Service Provider Networks (OSPN) for our clients, the news continues to be very good. In an OSPN network, the local government does not sell any services. Instead, local government builds a digital road system that any service provider can use. In return for access to the road system, service providers pay a portion of their revenue back to the network owner. This revenue pays for both the initial build out and ongoing maintenance, support, and operations.
Here are some of the things we are finding:
- OSPN networks are financially viable, and many of our analyses show that they can be cash positive in as little as two or three years.
- Because they become cash positive so quickly and because the revenue sharing approach does not cap income like the old-fashioned way of selling bandwidth (what everyone does now), it is easier to borrow money to fund an initial buildout. Lenders are more interested because they can see that they will get paid back, and how.
- Prices for telecom tend to go down in an OSPN system because service providers have to compete on a completely level playing field (everyone uses the same digital road system) and because they don't have to buy and operate their own infrastructure.
So who wins? Buyers of telecom services win (government saves tax dollars, businesses have more cash for new jobs and business expansion) because prices are lower. Service providers win because they can reach more customers at less cost. And the community wins because it now has a state of the art digital infrastructure to help fuel new jobs and attract new businesses. And the community wins because the revenue sharing can provide money for other community and economic development projects--even help pay for water and sewer repairs and extensions.
Technology News:
Elect your candidate in four minutes flat
Black Box Voting has a step by step explanation, with detailed pictures, of how to alter a Diebold electronic voting machine in four minutes flat, including defeating two "security" features. The process is undetectable, and you can easily alter vote counts in the machine, and it would be impossible to trace because the machine does not provide auditable paper records.
Your tax dollars at work. Hanging chads are starting to look pretty good, since you can at least see them.
Knowledge Democracy:
Your watch is ringing
I have become pretty jaded about new gadgets. Most of them represent technology in search of a problem, and I just don't need anything else that requires batteries, a charger, a dock, and that weighs me down in airports. But a new Bluetooth watch is actually pretty interesting. The watch will talk wirelessly to some models of cellphones. If you get a phone call, instead of having to fish your phone out of your pocket or bag, this watch will vibrate, and it will show the Caller ID information on the watch display. A button on the side of the watch will let you silence the call and send the caller to your voicemail. This would be particularly nice during meetings, where you may not want to appear rude by fumbling with the phone.
Technology News:
SpaceShipTwo is booking passengers
As I wrote recently, a lot of my readers just think that the whole Space Economy thing is a litte goofy. But Virgin Galactic has rolled out images of its new sub-orbital space ship, and is already booking seats. Two hundred thousand dollars gets you a two and one half hour trip to the edge of space--about 68 miles above the earth. Pasengers will be weightless long enough to get queasy and/or enjoy the view; the ship will have plenty of windows. Test flights of the system will begin in 2008, and passengers will be lifting off in 2009. And New Mexico's Space Economy is roaring along, and the whole state's economy is being lifted--no pun intended.
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Community news and projects:
Cellphone sports is a dead ball
Just as the cellphone companies are about to start marketing Web sites with the .mobi domain name, ESPN announces that they are dumping their mobile phone service, which came bundled with lots of sports content. It turns out that few people are interested in watching sports on a two inch screen. That's the problem with cellphones; they are phones, not televisions, and just taking content that works with other devices and shrinking the picture does not always work. And it begs the question: What on earth are the cellphone companies thinking with the .mobi domain? Don't they read the news?
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