CNET News.com’s Declan McCullagh says a case that pits EarthLink against an independent film producer may decide what Internet providers can legally do to fight spammers. [CNET News.com]
Branded pigeons invade Wimbledon
Game maker Acclaim hopes the answer is an emphatic, “yes”. It plans to invade this week’s Wimbledon championship with twenty Virtua Tennis 2 branded birds, the BBC reports. The homing pigeons will fly down during pre-match warmups, sporting spray-painted logos, and then return to a secret location in south west London.
Acclaim officials assured the BBC that no harm would come to the birds. The flying rats will merely be coated in a water-based paint.
Certainly original thinking here…and perhaps(?) a bit more classy than the naked streakers used by Golden Palace Casino, but not as fun…
Widespread US Broadband Adoption
A recently-released white paper from In-Stat/MDR finds that 63.7% of US dial-up Internet subscribers would subscribe to broadband at a lower cost even if it was a slower speed (traditional broadband is transmitted at 1.544 megabits per second or higher).
Apple and Microsoft: Can this divorce be saved?
I remain concerned that there needs to be more great Apple software to help the platform along. But I don’t think that Microsoft’s withdrawal from that market will prove fatal for Apple. Steve and company are quite capable of filling any gaps Microsoft’s departure would leave.
I’d like to be concerned that someday I’ll have an Apple Macintosh for which the only interesting software comes from Apple. But when I think about it, I also have to wonder whether this is terribly different than Microsoft and a Windows machine.
The third-party software business isn’t nearly what it used to be.
some updates…
I took advantage of the rain (yes again) this weekend and made some tweaks to the home page. I added a nice Google search reference which highlights incoming search requests as you land. I also added a Category listing on the sidebar for those interested with what the main topics are around here. Lastly I wrote a quick error page which will hopefully help re-direct people coming in on old links from the search engines. While my content is here, it is quite frustrating that my old links have changed even though my installation of MT is basically the same.
The Corporate Blog Is Catching On
Corporate executives like Alan M. Meckler, the chief executive of Jupitermedia, are starting to publish their own Weblogs. [New York Times: Technology]
Google cut in on me…
As I previously noted the Google Dance is on (might be over now) and page rankings get updated and adjusted. Doing the usual vanity search to check myself out I now see that I am no longer #1 with this site but actually #2 — knocked out by my own previous and long outdated blog. Radio got the last laugh on me… for now.
Happy Birthday, Dear DNS
Twenty years ago, a group of USC computer scientists automated the domain name system, a key innovation essential to making the modern Internet work. The next step is helping the technology continue to mature. By Kari L. Dean. [Wired News]
3G is really just for cost reduction?
at least according to Cambridge Consultants:
“The theoretical cost per minute is eight times lower on UMTS, so what 3G is all about is increasing capacity at low cost,” CCL’s Jim Schoenenberger, “It’s not about multimedia services, it’s about reducing cost.”
“Voice is still the killer application,” explained Schoenenberger, “and the operators’ problem is that they’ve seen a 20% decline in ARPU in the last two years. MMS will not increase ARPU in my view, and GPRS will be sufficient for 90% of new MMS services, while demand for video is very uncertain.” [3G Newsroom,]
The Next Step in the Spam Control War: Greylisting.
Evan Harris: The Next Step in the Spam Control War: Greylisting. The obvious extension is to make the blocking time adaptive. I also wonder if this can be implemented with the database as soft state. [Hack the Planet]
The Google Dance…
So the Google Dance is on again which means PageRanks and backlinks will continue to be weird, so don’t be worried if they’re not what you expect.
Hopefully I will get fully re-indexed and the old links listed will update with the newly installed pages
it just gets worser and worser
Dan Gillmor nicely captures the truth around the emerging spam consensus in DC: A spam bill that will make it (1) harder to decline UCE from companies with famous logos, and (2) impossible to block UCE from spammers.
Bill Takes Aim at ICANN
Lawmakers question ICANN decision to give secondary market for .com and .net names exclusively to VeriSign. [internetnews.com]
Rival domain registrars across the country have expressed concern over the ICANN effort to implement an exclusive Wait List Service (WLS) to be maintained by VeriSign for customers interested in registering domain names that are in use by others. Currently, customers may purchase expired domain names through a number of registrar firms.
If the WLS becomes reality, VeriSign’s competitors will be eliminated from the secondary market for .com and .net domain names.
EarthLink Offers Extra for SMB Customers
The ISP will provide Trellix Web site building software to dial-up, broadband and hosting subscribers at no charge. [internetnews.com:]
Pushing for retention and differentiation…
BlogAds Shows Top-Performing Ads
BlogAds: Best Click-through Last Hour
BlogAds, a service that allows advertisers to build their own classified-like ads on participating small web sites (mostly weblogs), has introduced a new feature that shows which ads are performing best on a click-through basis, updated hourly. CEO Henry Copeland said he was not aware of any other ad network exposing their best-performing ads like this (and neither am I) and it served the purpose of educating advertisers using the system as to what kinds of ads are likely to stimulate clicks (as well as to generate himself some PR, he shrewdly notes, as an ex-journalist).
Sneak peak of the Treo 600…
Brian Cooley of Cnet interviews Greg Shirai, Director of Product Marketing, Handspring and gives a very nice overview of the new Treo. You can get some solid close-ups on how it looks (amazing!) and see it in action as well.
What it means to means to be from Maine?
A class-action lawsuit filed yesterday against Nestlé contends that Poland Spring bottled water, described on the label as natural spring water found deep in the woods of Maine, is little more than tap water that comes from ground water sources surrounded by “asphalt parking lots.”. [New York Times: Business]
Limits to Be Set on Telemarketing
The Federal Trade Commission will soon take requests from consumers who want their phone numbers made off-limits to telemarketers. [New York Times: Technology]
Good news for us all…
Archive issue…
In checking my logs, I realize that quite a few people are following links that no longer exist based on search refers from google and yahoo. I think my problem is that I imported then nuked and re-imported posts from my previous host and MT remembered the numbering scheme from the first install. I apologize for the inconvenience and hope that once this site is fully indexed that the links will once again be correct.
iTunes hurts Creativity in Music?
Instead of tunes that were able to dodge the traditional commercially oriented gatekeepers by being attached to other tunes that did follow the rules of the game, each individual iTunes will be subject to the pressures of mass appeal. Consumers will likely purchase songs they know from radio, and thus become subject to the whims of programmers who are governed by commercial, not artistic, interests. iTunes allows a 30-second preview of songs, but we know that some of the best tunes don’t even get going in that time. The 30-second preview just reinforces the need for each tune to be catchy and pleasing right up front.[Salon.com Technology | iTunes — the “i” doesn’t stand for innovation]
Maybe, maybe not. I can’t say I agree with this perspective at all. There are benefits to both sides of the coin here. It is now easy for listeners to find and buy and listen to tracks and albums without even leaving home – legally. It’s all about choice – whether you want the whole album or just a song or two.
Personally I am an album buyer, though I have (disclosure) yet to buy anything from the iTunes Music Store. I find the experience is very similar to what you find in physical retail… You can sample some (either full or pieces) and buy either singles (from their section) or full albums.