How A Drone Might Save Your Life

Glyn Moody — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 00:08:00 PDT

There is a natural tendency to accentuate the negative when it comes to drones -- concentrating on how these "spies the sky" represent a threat to privacy and civil liberties. But as Techdirt has reported before, there are other applications that many might find not just acceptable but welcome. And that's not surprising: like the Internet, drones are just a neutral tool, and as such can be deployed for both good and bad purposes.

Here, for example, is a fascinating idea: using drones to get medical equipment to people faster than ambulances (found via Chris Anderson):

You create an app that anyone trained in first aid signs up to, creating a mobile community. You then station defibrillator-equipped drones on top of tall buildings across the city, linked by sensors. When someone needs help, they, or someone nearby, sends a request. The nearest first-aider accepts the task, and rushes to the site, and the unmanned vehicle sweeps from the sky, delivering the kit where it's needed.

This could have a big impact on the numbers of deaths from heart attacks. According to the same article in Co.Exist quoted above, 76,000 of the 250,000 deaths caused by cardiac arrest outside US hospitals could have been prevented, had the right equipment arrived soon enough. Now, it may not always be enough to use a drone to deliver a defibrillator to heart attack victims, but it seems likely that many tens of thousands of lives could, in theory, be saved in this way.

And of course the idea extends to many other life-threatening situations -- delivering blood or medicines to places that are otherwise hard to reach in time to save the patient. It's a useful reminder that drones aren't necessarily evil, it's how we use them that counts.

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Free To Play Video Game Makes Over $2 Million Selling Just One Item [Update: Or Not]

Mike Masnick — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 15:00:06 PST

For whatever reason, some people falsely seem to think that part of what I argue is that no one should ever try charging money for digital goods. Nothing is further from the truth. I have said over and over and over again, the important thing is figuring out what it makes sense to charge for, and what it doesn't make sense to charge for. The problem we have is when people just assume that because they put a price on it, that's the right price. On top of that, those who charge without recognizing the potential pitfalls of charging for things in certain situations shouldn't complain when that effort fails. But if you do it right, you can absolutely charge for certain digital things -- and, in fact, many of the examples we point to of success stories involve charging for digital things.

Aaron DeOliveira points us to another fascinating example, involving the free-to-play online video game, DarkOrbit. Within the game, there's a special item, known as the 10th drone -- or the Zeus Drone -- that is highly desirable. As you might imagine, to get the 10th drone, you first have to get all 9 previous drones... and some blueprints to make the 10th drone. Apparently, this is quite involved. BigPoint, the company behind DarkOrbit, also tried another tactic: the company has run an occasional promotion, where you can buy the 10th drone for 1,000 euros (~$1,330). Here's the amazing part: apparently two thousand people paid, bringing in about 2 million euros, or $2.7 million. For a single digital item. Update: Or.... not quite. A clarification makes it clear that it did not bring in that much. People did buy, but they had to buy with in-game currency. You can sometimes buy such currency... and sometimes it's discounted. If it wasn't discounted and you had none in the game... then the cost of the drone would have been 1000 euros. As that's not likely to be the case, while the game did still sell 2000 such drones, it was clearly for less money. However, it is still an example of where people can be willing to pay if done right... just not as amazing.

But the real key here is in what they did to make this possible. First, used "free" to get lots of people in the door, connect with them, and make them totally bought into the game, such that they'd be willing to spend. Then, build up the overall "value" of such an item, and then offer it in a way that people really wanted to buy even at what many of us might consider to be an insane price. However, it's a perfect example of how if you really connect with fans, and carefully figure out what it makes sense to charge for... you can do quite well.

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Techdirt. Stories filed under "drone"

How A Drone Might Save Your Life

Free To Play Video Game Makes Over $2 Million Selling Just One Item [Update: Or Not]