Sorry, Nobody's Saving You From Those Embarrassing Party Pics Online

Ramblings

from the nice-thought-though dept

These days, it’s pretty common for people to be worried about what kind of information will turn up about them on a Google search, particularly when they’re applying for a job. Of course, where there’s a problem, there’s a business opportunity. One company is launching a service that promises to search out, and scrub out any embarrasing information that you might have online. Like a company that will monitor your credit score for you, for a monthly fee, the company will actively monitor the web for your personal information. And if it finds it, it will confront the site where it’s hosted and seek to have it taken down. Of course, there’s no guarantee that a site’s proprietor will be willing to take down the offending material particularly when they have no obligation to do so. In fact, more often than not, the company will probably be told to take a hike. Sure, they can throw an intimidating cease and desist letter out there, but for the nominal amount they charge, don’t expect them to try much harder than that.

Xbox Jumps Into Video Fray

Ramblings

from the what-took-ya-so-long? dept

Considering the relative success of Microsoft’s Xbox 360, people have been expecting for some time that the company would use to it sell not just videogames, but to distribute other entertainment, like TV shows. But so far, the company hasn’t done anything on this front, instead opting to invest its energies into a battle against the iPod that seems doomed. Finally, the company has made the long-awaited announcement that it will in fact sell videos over the Xbox 360. Their service will be roughly similar to Apple’s recent video announcement, except it will offer shows in HD. The entrance of Microsoft into this space guarantees that this will be very competitive, with many companies trying to come up with solutions. And while it should add some value to the Xbox, it still doesn’t solve a major hangup with these video services: that they don’t allow the user to take their content with them and use ii on any device. So if you want to watch videos on your laptop as well, looks like you’ll probably have to pay twice.

Google Print Take Two

Ramblings

from the second-time-around dept

Apparently, Google still hasn’t given up on extending its advertising network to offline media. Last year, the company launched, to much hype, a plan to auction and distribute ads across magazines. But, it didn’t take too long before the company and participating advertisers realized that it wasn’t working out and wasn’t worth it. It’s trying again, this time with newspapers. Partnering with several major newspapers, it’s launching a three-month trial to auction off unsold ad space over the internet. The thinking is that there’s still billions in ad spending across newspapers, and that if the company can make that process more efficient, then it can get a slice of it. But what strength does Google have in this area? It sounds like the only thing the company brings to the table is a website for automating these sales, but that should be pretty easy to set up. Perhaps the company is just looking at the plan as a way to ally itself with newspapers, with whom its relationship has been testy. And of course the company, to its credit, tries out a lot of things just to see what sticks. So if it fails, it shouldn’t be much of a blow.

Blaming Technology For Exposing Problems That Were Already There

Ramblings

from the it's-helping-to-expose-the-issue dept

It’s always tempting for people to blame technology for certain problems, but sometimes it helps to look a little more thoroughly at the issue. An AFP report quotes the head of the FBI’s cyber division talking about the rising caseload concerning pedophile predators targeting children. It’s unclear if it’s the reporter or the FBI who implies this, but the article focuses on how much easier technology has made life for pedophiles, by noting that the FBI’s caseload has increased 2,000% for these types of cases since 1996. Of course, that makes one big assumption: that much of this activity wasn’t happening at all before. Another way of looking at it is that the technology has made it much easier to bring this problem out into the open where authorities can catch the scum who do such things. While the internet clearly has made it easier for pedophiles to target victims, there is the flip side that it has also helped catch many more as well. So, an increase of caseloads doesn’t necessarily mean that the problem is worse — but that people are more aware of it and are doing a better job of bringing cases to the attention of authorities. That’s a good thing. It’s also brought a lot more public exposure to the issue, which has helped with education campaigns as well. It’s easy to just blame the technology, but shouldn’t we be looking at the larger picture? It seems like this is a case where the technology helped expose a problem that was already there. While it may have made it easier for some, hopefully the technology continues to progress at a rate that also makes it that much easier to prevent this kind of activity.

Shocker: Radio Station That Gives Listeners What They Want Grows Its Audience

Ramblings

from the are-you-listening dept

The WSJ has an interesting story looking at the success a Los Angeles-based public radio station, KCRW, has had by embracing the internet and new media. It reads like the antithesis of super-sized commercial radio companies who, like their record-industry cousins, have been dragged kicking and screaming into the digital age. KCRW offers a large number of its shows as podcasts, the most popular of which attracts more than 1 million downloads per month. This has helped drive listeners to its online streams and — would you look at that — the number of listeners has shot up. So much, in fact, that it gets more online visitors than it does terrestrial listeners. Some are quick to say that public stations like KCRW can do things like this more easily than commercial stations, because they’re under less pressure to turn a profit. “They have less to lose,” as one analyst puts it, sounding a lot more like a big-radio exec, since it’s really a matter of radio stations — commercial or public — having a lot to gain from the internet. While it’s true that the likes of KCRW don’t have the profitability demands of commercial stations, they still have costs to cover and a business model to support. KCRW relies on listener donations for about half its budget, and estimates that just about 6 percent of those come from online listeners. But it understands that a far better way to generate revenues from online listeners is from underwriting, or advertising, as it’s called in the commercial world. And as its online audience grows not only in size, but in geographic scope, as well, it’s turning its attention to securing national underwriters, rather than just local ones. The station’s not resisting the internet, it’s embracing it and realizing that growing its audience, even if listeners are outside its local market, is a good thing. And that seems like a lesson that could very easily translate to the realm of commercial radio.

Even Google Has To Pay For It

Ramblings

from the for-online-video dept

The move to pay people for their online videos is getting a big boost as Google has announced a deal with the creators of the “Diet Coke & Mentos” viral video to host the video, run ads around it, and share the revenue. There’s clearly quite a bit of interest right now in finding models for online video that retain the social aspect while introducing a financial element. Obviously, Google won’t always negotiate with video creators on an individual basis; eventually, the company will automate the process of sharing in the revenue from uploaded videos. But by making this high profile deal it sends a message to all the other companies promising money for video creators that Google is not going to let them walk in and buy up all the good content. Still, the vast majority of user-generated content (of all kinds) is not done with a financial motive, so to garner this mass it’ll take more than just the lure of money.

Lack Of Trusted Traffic Data Could Hold Back Online Ad Market

Ramblings

from the numbers dept

One of the supposed benefits of online advertising is that it’s much easier for companies to track the effectiveness of their spending than from ads placed in old media outlets like newspapers, billboards or TV — by virtue of the clickthrough. Advertisers know how many impressions they buy, and can track how many clickthroughs those impressions generated, giving them a pretty good idea of how much they’re spending for each action. Of course, this calculation depends on a few things, like accurate data on a site’s traffic and ad inventory, and a way to detect and account for click fraud. Neither of these are too readily available for advertisers at the moment, and that could be holding back some companies from shifting more of their ad budget to online media. To that end, a number of large consumer goods companies say that by the middle of next year, they’ll demand that online publishers hire outside auditors to vet their traffic statistics and certify they’re accurate. There’s a lot of skepticism about the traffic numbers claimed by some sites, and advertisers don’t want to see an online repeat of the newspaper circulation scandal of a few years ago, where papers were inflating their readership figures with “ghost” subscribers. Part of the problem here is that there’s no universally accepted way of counting web site traffic; the use of auditors could represent something of a solution. And then there’s the matter of click fraud, which search and advertising giants say they’re working on, but a solution remains out of sight. While online ad spending is growing quickly, it still represents just a small percentage of overall ad spending. Unless these issues can be worked out to advertisers’ satisfaction, it won’t maintain its torrid growth.

The Internet May Suck, But So Does This Article

Ramblings

from the professional-trolls dept

Almost a year to the day after Forbes came out with their hilarious blog bashing piece that made a lot more sense if you read it as satire (even if that wasn’t intended), we have a similar case up in Canada, with a well-known (if neglected) news magazine declaring that the Internet sucks. It’s kicked off quite a debate among some bloggers (and the journalist himself) — but like the Forbes piece, this new one makes a lot more sense if you read it as satire. Think of it as an attempt to show just why the internet sucks as a medium for publishing news, by coming out with a piece that is so weak in its arguments, no one could possibly take it seriously. Of course, then you realize the piece isn’t actually for the internet, but was originally published as the cover story in the magazine and you’re left scratching your head again.

Basically, it’s a professional trolling effort by a magazine that apparently has been losing its audience and has been unable to turn around its decline. You can go through the article, paragraph by paragraph, and point out the typical trolling techniques, from taking stories completely out of context to taking the words of a few and pretending that the entire world ascribed to that view to stretching the truth to misunderstanding economics and legal issues. What you end up with is a bunch of basically smoke and mirrors that can be summarized thusly: the internet sucks because (a) a couple people said it would do amazing things but (b) there’s a lot of really crappy stuff and stuff I, personally, don’t agree with (c) therefore what those people said is wrong. It’s the equivalent of me saying: Henry Ford claimed automobiles would change the world, but with the growth of roads, we now have traffic pollution, accidents, and it’s harder for me to ride my horse around. Therefore, Henry Ford is wrong and automobiles haven’t done anything good at all. Man, automobiles suck. The logical fallacy is pretty astounding, and since even the support of that logical fallacy is built on such weak legs. With a good troll, usually the supporting material has a basis in reality, and then there’s one small thing that’s wrong. In this case, almost every paragraph has a glaring problem. In his defense, the author of the piece claims he wasn’t trying to be “balanced” but thought-provoking. About the only thought he provoked was whether or not he actually believed anyone would buy his weak argument. In the end, he didn’t do much of a job convincing me that the internet sucked, but that his article does, indeed, suck.

Oracle Finally Unveils Its Linux Plans

Ramblings

from the finally dept

This last April, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison dropped hints that his company might be interested in offering its own version of Linux. Since then, there’s been lots of speculation about what he meant. Because the company’s been so acquisitive, many figured that the company would buy a Linux distributor, like Red Hat. Today, at its OpenWorld conference, Ellison finally announced the company’s strategy. Starting immediately, the company’s going to offer full support for Red Hat Linux, including maintenance and bug fixing, and it promises to do it at a cheaper price than Red Hat itself. Investors in Red Hat have fretted about this possibility for awhile, though it’s not all bad news, since it amounts to a big endorsement of the company’s offering. The bigger theme to note is that in the software industry, the business models of closed and open source companies are converging. The software itself, which has no marginal cost, is getting cheaper and cheaper, while the money is made on the service and support deals that come along with it.