From the Pipeline - 5.8.08

This had to be one of those days that no matter what you do you just can’t seem to get the gumption together to get anything done. Here’s hoping tomorrow is a better day but in the meantime here’s a few things that caught my eye today in the FriendFeed pipeline.

It’s Now Completely Impossible To Sell A Laptop On Ebay :: The Consumerist - some truths about just how useless eBay has become for the average consumer to use - either as a buyer or a seller.

Public file sharing and increased file sizes! :: The Pownce Blog - I guess they finally found a business model that might get them put out of their misery bought - file sharing. Next stop the lawyers office to ask about those silly RIAA lawsuits.

Are You in Personal Branding Prison? :: Copyblogger - an excellent post on how using your name as your brand may not be such a good idea - especially if you ever want some kind of possible profitable exit strategy.

The 10 worst workspaces in tech :: Valleywag - have you had a cubicle that was the perfect cure for insomnia?

The new rules for buying a Mac :: MacWorld - not that I’ll probably ever be in a position to use these rules but I am sure someone out there will find them handy.

Wordpress Automatic Upgrade plugin :: Techie Buzz - if you run Wordpress blogs and you aren’t using this plugin then you are definitely doing yourself a disservice.

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If you can’t stand the noise get off the Internet

One way to kill the noise How can you tell when bloggers are bored?

They start rehashing a bunch of crap that has already been hashed to death and today saw the discussion about how noisy things like FriendFeed and Twitter are. The whole thing started with a well written post by David Risley called The FriendFeed Orgasm And Why It Is Off The Mark. While the reaction on his blog to the post was limited to (currently) 23 comments the majority of the action happened on FriendFeed with over double the number of comments.

As the bantering went on back and forth in the various comments Corvida apparently got fed up with some of the better than thou attitudes being exhibited and posted on SheGeeks a little bit of a rant titled Self Inflicted Un-Friendly(feed). Of course no sooner than I had read it I spotted a new post from Robert Scoble who suggested that we all need to develop our own noise reduction systems.

The fact is that; as Louis Gray pointed out in the comments on FriendFeed, this is an old argument that seems to resurface every so often - usually after some big name blogger discovers a new toy and the flood begins. It doesn’t matter what any social network or aggregator does it will never be perfect. There will always be noise.

This is the Internet folks - one humongous free flowing exchange of information and as such it is going to be noisy. It’s not like picking up a phone and just talking to a single person on the other end of the line. Things like Twitter and FriendFeed are like global party lines and whether you like it or not they are going to be noisy.

Not everyone is willing to throw on a set of trunks and swim in the noise as Robert is and there is nothing wrong with that. Just as there is nothing wrong with folks who don’t find things like Twitter or FriendFeed useful. It all boils down to learning how to cope with the inevitable noise so that you can still either enjoy the services or make them productive for you.

It’s not going to get any quieter out there and bitching about it over and over isn’t going to make the noise go away - it only makes it worse.

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Talk about a stretch of the imagination

What do you mean a public nuisance? We all know how the movie industry and the music industry love nothing better than to make people who for whatever reason pirate music and movies out to be the worst thing since Atilla the Hun. Sure there might be a small section who do pirate digital goods for immense profit but the reality is that in most cases it is just kids or people who might not be able to afford those end products in the first place.

Through their wannabe police proxies otherwise known as the RIAA and MPAA the entertainment industry has; and continues to strong arm influence governments around the world. However not happy with this the industry is now looking to local governments on a state by state level. As reported by David Kravets on the Threat Level blog the MPAA and RIAA has been heavily involved with the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors in crafting new local laws that will declare music and video piracy as a public nuisance.

As innocent as that might sound that classification; which also includes drugs, gangs, prostitution and gambling, in fact allows them a very large leeway in how these so-called evil perpetrators are dealt with. From the Treat Level blog:

In an ordinance just adopted, the five-member board is declaring that piracy "substantially interferes with the interest of the public in the quality of life and community peace, lawful commerce in the county, property values, and is detrimental to the public health, safety, and welfare of the county’s citizens, its businesses and its visitors."

The regulation was crafted at the urging of the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America.

The county retains the right to shutter a property for up to a year for violating ordinance 13.90.010 and also gives local authorities the right to bring a civil action to "temporarily restrain, preliminarily enjoin, and/or permanently enjoin the person or persons intentionally conducting, or knowingly maintaining or permitting the public nuisance from further conducting, maintaining, or permitting such a public nuisance."

Property owners who knowingly permit such activity can also be dinged $1,000 for each counterfeited work produced on the property.

Now tell me that this sits right with the average citizen. To bad we’re all so wrapped up in nonsense like Web 2.0 and don’t seem to care one bit as more and more of our liberties and rights are being corrupted by industries that are more interested in their bottom line than anything else.

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From the Pipeline - 5.7.08

Another day in the neighborhood and a wet one at that but at least the temperatures are starting to stabilize on the warm side. Pretty soon it will be time to start taking an afternoon break out of doors doing some reading. In the meantime here’s a few things that caught my eye in today’s FriendFeed pipeline.

The Microsoft buying Facebook rumors commence, again :: VentureBeat - see what happens when Microsoft doesn’t buy Yahoo - the rumors start breeding all by themselves.

What Ever Happened to Not Putting All Your Eggs in One Basket? :: Profy.com - Cyndy has some good points as to why start-up companies shouldn’t be placing their bets of success on one single company or application.

Tracy Ingle: Another Drug War Outrage :: Reason - a real life example of just how bad things can get when the law thinks you don’t have any rights.

The Aggregation Dilemma :: How To Split An Atom - Steve has an excellent piece on why we might be looking at what aggregation really is in the wrong light.

Microsoft’s Brand Confusion Runs Deep :: ReadWriteWeb - I don’t think it’s a matter of confusion but more one of they have no idea anymore what their brand is.

Robotraff is a Name to Which Trust. :: Mashable - Mark brings us news of what could be the next level in both click fraud and unreliable site stats.

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DiabetesMine Design Challenge

DiabetesMine 2nd Design Challenge While this news is a little out of my normal realm of stuff that I talk about but having both friends and family that have had diabetes I wanted to pass along the announcement that Amy Tenderich sent me by email about DiabetesMine’s 2nd Design Challenge. The challenge is meant to foster innovation and create new tools for those that live with diabetes.

The contest is being co-hosted by the folks over at MedGadget along with the support of the design firm iDEO. The prizes being offered to the winners are a mix of

  • Sponsors Cory and Justin Oringer generously offer $1,000 each in two entry categories: under age 18 and over age 18 (total prize money $2,000).
  • Health and wellness consultants from world-renown design firm IDEO will host a two-hour workshop to help each winner refine their concept.
  • Organizers of the “innovation incubator” Health 2.0 Conference have generously offered one free access ticket to their Fall conference in San Francisco, October 21-23rd, 2008, for the winner of the adult competition.
  • MedGadget and DiabetesMine™ will promote the winners through articles and blogs, and possibly also feature some of the coolest finalists.

For more information head over to DiabetesMine.com for all the details if you are interest.

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Microsoft & Facebook

This has to be a classic message on Twitter courtesy of Mathew Ingram regarding the rumors that are circulating about Microsoft and Facebook

Mathew on Twitter

I’m still chuckling - Thanks Mathew :)

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I told you so’s have to suck

Imposing speed limits In this past weekend’s Elite Tech News podcast the subject of data caps came up while we were discussing the move to more web based applications as a part of our daily lives especially with the idea of a web OS. During our back and forth on the subject I pointed out that there was talk of U.S. internet providers looking at instituting data caps on their users which had the rest of the panel members basically say that this would suck if such a thing were to happen.

While the U.S. has pretty well enjoyed a free ride as far as data caps and bandwidth speed are concerned the rest of the world hasn’t been so lucky. Regardless of the fact that ISPs regularly trot out the unlimited access advertising bullshit the fact remains that many ISP around the world do in fact have some pretty stringent data caps as well as ridiculous speed limitations. I know of friends in both New Zealand and Australia who constantly have to monitor their downloads - which by the way in all cases include things like email.

Bell - king of Canadian companies screwing its users Even here in Canada this is something that we have always had if you were a Bell customer even though they tried to couch it in cutesy terms like Network Fairness. Now however Rogers Communications has jumped on the bandwagon with caps for home and office based DSL accounts.

It now appears that the rumors I heard being floated around in the past little while could very well turn out to be being instituted by the major internet providers like Time Warner and Comcast to start with. Not that this is anything new when it comes to the mobile market which JR Raphael of The Inquisitr blog (Duncan Riley’s new project) points out today where Verizon is trying out new plans that are charging by the meg.

Even though people like Dave Winer; a Comcast customer, might be happy knowing now at least what limitations they are facing as customers and acknowledging the company for its so-Comcast - internet users least favorite company called new effort at transparency the fact is this move is coming at a pivotal time. In my opinion this move by Internet providers to start instituting data caps and charging outrageous overage fees is nothing more than a move to capitalize on our increasing reliance on the web as a part of our daily lives.

As we begin to use the web more and more for our acquisition of movies, old style television shows and as a part of a concerted effort to webify our business activities our bandwidth usage is climbing radically to keep up. Where once we might have only used the web to handle our email and visit our favorite web sites we are now using it for our entertainment and social interaction. This means we are active on the web for an increasing portion of our day whether it be listing to streaming radio or downloading music right through to handling out financial transactions and all this stuff is taking an increasing amount of bandwidth to do.

As Mike Masnick of Techdirt pointed out in a post on the Comcast news that while it might be nice that the company is finally acknowledging the secret fuzzy caps the fact is that at the very time when we need true web innovations these moves by ISP could literally kill off any initiatives to bring new things to market. This won’t necessarily be because companies won’t try but because the consumer can’t afford it.

The Internet has become such an integrated part of our lives that in some aspects it could be argued that it is no longer a luxury relegated to only those that can afford it but in fact it has become a necessity of life in our modern world. This move by companies like Comcast, Verizon and Time Warner to name a few will do nothing more than line their pockets with billions more and further widen the technological divide. Along with that it will also validate the practice so that ISPs in other countries will continue to shackle their users with prohibitive costs.

It is my feeling that with the ever increasing weaving of the Internet in our daily lives and the push for new services; some of which are still on the horizon, the time is quickly approaching where companies that also provide internet access should not have the hammerlock on access that they do. When you have a companies whose primary business is that of A growing divide television, communication or even movies should not be the ones to dictate the rules of the road. The very nature of their primary business is in direct conflict with anything web based and as such they will do whatever needs to be done to protect their primary business.

When this happens along with a concerted effort to nullify any idea of network neutrality the only losers are you and I. This will be especially prevalent among the section of society who already are finding it difficult to be a part of this new world. A technological divide already exists and moves like this by the real gatekeepers of access will only deepen that growing divide.

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From the Pipeline - 5.6.08

Even though today started out on the wrong side of the bed - so to speak - it’s turned out to be a pretty good day all round. To finish of this day here’s a few things I found interesting in my FriendFeed pipeline.

The Coolest Business Plan Ever :: The Post Money Value - I think the post title is more tongue in cheek considering the example Rick gave in the post. Definitely made me chuckle a bit when I read it.

Scoble advertising in Twitter? :: broadstuff - Robert Scoble is known for taking flack for a lot of stuff which is what Alan has done in his post about advertising showing up on Robert’s blog and more interestingly in his Twitter stream.

Mozilla warns of Flash and Silverlight ‘agenda’ :: ZDNet - a bit of an attack against Flash and Silverlight by Tristan Nitot of Mozilla - like Mozilla wouldn’t have an agenda of it’s own either .. ya … right.

Opera Releases Firebug Alternative: Dragonfly :: TechCrunch - not to be left behind Opera readies its answer to the Firebug plugin for Firefox. Of course this will only really matter if you are a web developer.

Sneaker Freaker Magazine - Global sneaker news, info & exclusive updates - everything sneakers - this is just plain fun especially if you are into hot news about running shoes and the companies that make them.

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