Geolocation and privacy

As our gadgets come to know where we are, we need to think about who should be able to find this out.
A metaphor that came to mind is that we need be building the Weasley's clock, not the Marauder's map.
Update: Jorge points out that Microsoft Researchers in Cambridge have built a prototype.

Technorati Tags: digital rights, ethics, geo

Foxtrot gets Web 2.0 spot on

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Any comment is superfluous.

Technorati Tags: web 2.0

Warhol codename flashback

Microsoft's new video sharing site, Soapbox, was codenamed 'Warhol'. As 'Warhol' was the original codename for QuickTime, back in 1990, I found this rather amusing.
Does the iTunes store's support for video podcasts count as Apple's video sharing competitor?

Technorati Tags: microsoft, QuickTime, video

iTunes store hobbled by DRM

The Beeb misses the point a bit:

On average, the study reports, only 5% of the music on an iPod will be bought from online music stores. The rest will be from CDs the owner of an MP3 player already has or tracks they have downloaded from file-sharing sites.

The report warned against simple characterisations of the music-buying public that divide people into those that pay and those that pirate.

The glaring omission in that report is of course podcasts, which have shown huge growth, and have been part of the iPod and iTunes experience for over a year now.

Even though I got $250 of credit on the iTunes Music store from ValleyWag, we have been reluctant to spend it, compared to buying CDs from Amazon. The need to burn your own CDs after purchase (to be sure that the tracks don't vaporize next time you have disk trouble) is a significant extra burden, driven by the DRM. Apple's sync-back from iPods to computers in the new iTunes is a step in the right direction, but a more sensible policy towards failed or deleted downloads is long overdue - failed TV show downloads, and purchases lost through disk failure meet with shrugs from Apple.

From Apple's point of view, the iTunes store is a small part of their business - the bulk of the money passing through it goes straight to the rights-holders or in payment processing or bandwidth costs, while they make far more revenue and profit on the iPods themselves. Overall this is a good thing - if Apple were really beholden to the labels and studios for significant revenue, then online culture would be in worse trouble. As it is, Apple's neutrality means that they are happy to encourage podcasters to show up in their listings, as more media means more iPod sales.

Technorati Tags: audio, iPod, iTunes, podcasting, video

In Memoriam Rob (lilo) Levin

Rob Levin, the leading spirit behind the freenode IRC network, died yesterday from injuries sustained by being hit by a car while cycling.
I never met Rob in person, but his indefatigable work in keeping freenode running supported hundreds of conversations I have had with people around the world, many becoming friends, colleagues or collaborators, and I counted him as a friend. I was hired at Technorati through a conversation on freenode, and the #microformats, #technorati, #wordpress, #wikinews and of course #joiito channels are a key part of my online life.
When setting up transient channels for conference backchannels, Rob was always helpful and courteous. I am sad to hear of his death, and the best memorial would be to keep freenode and the PDPC going as he did so well.
Lilo's accounts are still logged in at freenode, and every so often jibot reminds us:

lilo is the executive director of Peer-Directed Projects Center in Houston, Texas & he's another boring cooperativist propertarian Peircean pragmatist anarchist & he runs freenode (http://freenode.net/) & certainly hasn't been getting more sleep lately & is working on freenode-registry in Ruby & blogs on http://spinhome.org/ & http://bloggage.org/ & also uses the nick 'somegeek' & passed away Sep 16th, 2006 (RIP)

Update: Rob spent his days in a constant battle to keep freenode as a place for civil discourse, fighting off trolls, spammers and other net parasites. He did this with grace and good humour, imposing as few rules as possible, and generally inspiring people to behave well by trusting them to. Sadly, the self-described deletionists who infest Wikipedia (summed up well as people who remove what they find unsuitable, while giving little "awards" to each other for removing things) have decided to delete Lilo again. Please help explain to them why this is mistaken, pettifogging, and in appalling taste.

Technorati Tags: freenode, lilo, RIP, Rob Levin, Wikipedia

Douglas Adams' Hyperland

I got a surprise birthday present today. 17 years ago, when I was at the BBC, my colleagues Max Whitby, Nikki Barton and Chris Prior put together this amazing drama-documentary with Douglas Adams on the future of media. Using 8-bit animated icons keyed over video, they predicted the future of digital media in ways that are only now coming true.
There is a version up on Google Video, but I also cached it on the server I use in case the BBC's 'no-one outside the UK' policy whisks it away from us again. Download Hyperland here, and join me in remembering Douglas Adams.

Technorati Tags: BBC, culture, Douglas Adams, Hyperland, hyperlinks, Live TV is Dead, movie, video

Apple's announcements - unanswered questions

Reading Paul Boutin's coverage of Apple's video announcements today, There are several questions that come to mind (and I know Jobs prefers not to answer questions).

• Songs bought from iTunes can be burned to CD and play anywhere. Why can't movies and TV shows bought from iTunes be burned to DVD?
• Could this explain why they have sold over a billion songs but only 45 million TV shows?
• Jobs talked about 640x480 movies. The Apple screenshot shows Pirates of the Caribbean filling the screen. Does this mean they are selling pan-and-scan versions, not widescreen? (checking with the iTunes Store, Pirates is widescreen, which makes sense)
• Apple's pre-announced iTV box has an HDMI output, but looks like it is running Mac OS - does it implement HDCP-style downrezzing?
• In other words, will it play HD content made by independents cleanly, or will it require broadcast flag handshakes?

What this does illustrate is that the telco's coveting of the Cableco's TV revenues may be irrelevant. As I have pointed out, their model of delivering TV by real-time streaming, requiring massive upgrades to their aging networks, can be completely short-circuited by downloading movies and TV over current broadband, scaling from slower than real time to faster than realtime depending on connection speed and congestion.
Bittorrent users have been doing this for a while. Apple is making it more convenient and much easier to use than most cable set-top boxes, let alone whatever the telcos are likely to come up with. It all adds to the alternatives.
The real revolution is hinted at by Jobs showing Rocketboom in his set-top box demo. Chatting to Andrew and Joanne this weekend in Boston, it is clear that they and others are growing their audiences and ready to short-circuit the existing broadcast or Hollywood commissioning treadmill.

Technorati Tags: Apple, DRM, HD, PodCamp, podcasting, Rocketboom, Showtime, video

Apple Switzerland jumps the gun

The Swiss QuickTime page is already showing links to 'Vidéos iTunes', though clicking through gets you to the It's Showtime - The iTunes Store is being updated page.
I still think Apple has an opportunity to do an end-run around all the HD complexity by selling an integrated system that avoids the nonsense of HDMI, but I think they may burden us further with their DRM instead, and miss a lot of it. Lets wait until the rumours are dispelled.

Technorati Tags: Apple, HD, iTunes, showtime, video

PodCamping today

I'm giving a couple of talks at Podcamp today - one on looking back 3 years to Bloggercon when Podcasting started to take off, and one on live webcasting to make instant videoblogs.
If you're at Podcamp, and want to talk about Technorati or Microfromats or anything, come and find me, I'm in a bright orange shirt.

Technorati Tags: Barcamp, BloggerCon, microformats, PodCamp, podcasting, technorati, video

Streaming is dead

Vint Cerf agrees:

IPTV is interesting not because of streaming, but because of on-demand possibilities a la iPod

IPTV is interesting because of interpretations of packets v. dumb raster display

Technorati Tags: podcasting, streaming, video

Talking about Technorati

Ryanne Hodson and Jay Dedman dropped by Technorati last week and had a chat with some of us about blogs and indexing and things.
Here's the video.

Technorati Tags: blogs, podcasting, tags, technorati, video

Apple's HD Future

With another Steve Jobs keynote about to kick off, I'm going to indulge in a little speculation. Apple will greatly embrace HD. This shouldn't be a big surprise -after all back when I was there, the high-end uncompressed HD editing in Final Cut took off, but at the time uncompressed was needed as a way to keep the slow CPU out of the way of the fast disk and screen. Since then, Moore's Law has meant that computers are now almost fast enough to decode HD across the range, so HD Movie Trailers and iMovie HD are both widespread.
With Apple about to refresh their high end range, I expect a big emphasis on HD, and Blue-Ray storage. The more interesting aspect is that Apple is well-placed to do and end-run around HDCP/HDMI and all that nonsense, as they sell the screens as well as the computers. The iTunes store has been selling low-res TV shows for $2 each, so they have the makings of an entire distribution chain for content.

Technorati Tags: Apple, video, WWDC

Blogher - a peer group and a stiff drink

I didn't attend Blogher, but many of my friends and colleagues did, and mostly got lots out of it. I did pick up an undercurrent of discomfort from my female geek friends at what they saw as the low tech content of the conference, and even 'all these women in high heels giggling together'. Melinda Casino, Shelley Powers and Tara Hunt express various concerns with tone and with intrusive sponsorship.

The problems of sponsorship and product pitches always intrude into conferences - with the BarCamp model they get minimised by the low budget ethos and emphasis on emergent scheduling, but having watched several friends put together big conferences that involve taking over hotels for a few days, the need to raise significant sponsorship money does lead to editorial pressure on the schedule, and it difficult to walk the line between Jane Jacobs' Commercial and Guardian modes.

However, reading some of the posts by non-techie Blogher attendees, like IzzyMom and tastetheworld, what I see is the sheer pleasure at meeting people you have only known through their online writing, and making the personal connection with them. I recognise the experience I had when I crashed O'Reilly's eTech in 2003, and was able to pick up conversations with people based on what we'd been writing about, and overcome my previous inability to make smalltalk in big groups. The continual growth of blogging means that there are now many more interest groups out there beyond my techie clan. Lisa, Jory, Elise and the other Blogher organisers enabled lots of women with different interests to get together and have these personal epiphanies, and resolve Ford Prefect's quest for 'a peer group and a stiff drink' - well done.

Technorati Tags: Barcamp, Blogher, blogs, conference, emergence, etech

Congress bans MySpace and blogs in Schools and Libraries

This law is like outlawing restaurants and bars in DC because Congressmen get bribed in them. DOPA is an example of the 'poison gas' view of the internet cloud - it contains odd legislative language like:

The Congress finds that--
(3)with the explosive growth of trendy chat rooms and social networking websites, it is becoming more and more difficult to monitor and protect minors from those with devious intentions

It then defers definition of 'social network websites', but implies that it could include all blogging platforms, webmail and Wikipedia:

In determining the definition of a social networking website, the Commission shall take into consideration the extent to which a website--
(i) is offered by a commercial entity;
(ii) permits registered users to create an on-line profile that includes detailed personal information;
(iii) permits registered users to create an on-line journal and share such a journal with other users;
(iv) elicits highly-personalized information from users; and
(v) enables communication among users.'

Note that this is using the corrupt Universal Service Fund as a way to circumvent the First Amendment.

More from danah, TechCrunch, ZDNET and Technorati.

Technorati Tags: blogs, digital rights, DOPA, law, net neutrality, politics, rhetoric, USF

Heads or Tails? No, Heads and Tails

I'm seeing a lot of debate over power law distributions in the wake of Chris Anderson's Long Tail book, most recently debated by Lee Gomes in the WSJ. Chris's rebuttal is on point, but there are more subtleties here; Chris is primarily addressing retailers in his book, so even the longer tails of books and music he discusses are choked off by the original publishers. If you include the lovingly created media from amateur creators, such as we see in the weblog world, the tails extend still further. (The chart dates back to February 2004.)

At dinner after AlwaysOn tonight, I was chatting to Nik Cubrilovic of Omnidrive and Peter Pham of PhotoBucket. They both have businesses hosting data online, for individuals. These are pure Long Tail businesses - as I said in my Symmetry argument, we are moving to a world where we upload as much as we download. As JP discussed, and Peter confirmed, having lots of photos and videos viewed once or zero times makes caching near the client useless.

However, that doesn't mean there aren't still some big hits, and if you have a power law relationship that extends over a few orders of magnitude you do need to cope with both ends of it, often with very different mechanisms. Desiging for an average case fials in a long tail world. Satellite broadcast is the ultimate big head method, blanketing whole continents with identical signals, with broadcast TV a close second. Building out networks with only emulating this model in mind will fail.

As I said before:

The net extends the range of the power law distribution.

If you look at relative popularity on the web, using something like Technorati, you get a power law curve that goes all the way down smoothly, to the bottom where you see pages that got just a single link.

If you look at popularity in the publishing world - movies, chart music or books - the curve starts out with a power law, but soon drops like a stone. That's because in order to get a movie made, a recording contract or a book published, you have to convince somebody that you're going to sell a million tickets, a hundred thousand CDs or tens of thousands of books.

You end up in a zero-sum game, where people pour enormous resources into being number one, because number two is only half as good. The promise of the net is that the power of all those little links can outweigh the power of the top ten.

So what are the long tail businesses? You can be a commodity business catering to the tail (commodities are good - they mean people will pay you a known price). You can be fashion business, joining the zero-sum game for top place. Or you can create with love, and see if you can get paid for it over time.

Technorati Tags: long tail