Vietnamese fishermen mistakenly swipe miles of fiber-optic wire
a collection of things i like and want to remember. by "scrapbooking" it on my blog i can go back and google it later
Posted by Augustine at 12:15 AM
This was intended as trenchant commentary on Google's book-scanning project, a generally laudable effort to scan and index all the books ever published, including huge dark-matter of books that are out-of-print with no clear rightsholders.
Pat Schroeder and the American Association of Publishers have sued Google over this, saying that Google shouldn't be allowed to index these out-of-print books (the majority of books published) unless they take on the Sisyphean task of figuring out who controls the copyright to all of them and then get permission to make an index.
Google makes indexes of every page on the Internet without ascertaining who their copyright belongs to, without asking permission. If your page is on the public Internet, Google will index it. The publishers argue that books shouldn't be indexable without explicit permission.
Larry Lessig has posted a great rebuttal to the idea that stealing laptops is the moral equivalent of indexing books -- a must-read if you want to understand exactly why Charkin's stunt was so mind-numbingly wrong-headed.
(3) If the computer was not sitting at a market booth, but instead was in a trash dump (like, for example, the publishers out of print book list), or on a field, lost to everyone, then that fits the category of property that Google is dealing with. But again, Google doesn’t take possession of the property in any way that interferes with anyone else taking possession of the property. The publisher, for example, is perfectly free to decide to publish the book again. Instead, in this case, what Google does is more like posting an advertisement — “lost computer, here it is, is it yours?”Link(4) Or again, imagine the computer was left after the conference. No easy way to identify who the owner was. No number to call. In that case, what would the “head honcho’s,” or anyone’s rights be? Well depending upon local law, the basic rule is finders keepers, loser weepers. There might be an obligation to advertise. There might be an obligation to turn the property over to some entity that holds it for some period of time. But after that time, the property would go to the “head honcho” — totally free of any obligation to Google. Compare copyright law: where the property can be lost for almost a century, and no one (according to the publishers at least) has any right to do anything with it. Once an orphan, the law of copyright says, you must be an orphan. No one is permitted to even help advertise your status through a technique like search engine.
(5) Or again, imagine the computer was a bank account in New York. And imagine, the bank lost track of the owner of the account. After 5 years, the money is forfeited to the state. Compare copyright: in New York state, a sound recording could be 100 years old, but no one has any freedom with respect to that sound recording unless the copyright owner can be discovered.
Posted by Augustine at 12:09 AM
Wednesday 6th June 2007
The notebook measures roughly 120 x 100 x 30mm (WDH) and weighs only 900g. We saw the notebook boot in 15 seconds from its solid-state hard disk. The huge auditorium then burst into applause as Shih revealed the astounding price tag. Dubbed the 3ePC, Shih claimed the notebook is the 'lowest cost and easiest PC to use'. As the crowds rushed the stage, we sneaked off to the Asus stand to take a closer look.
The notebook uses a custom-written Linux operating system, much like the OLPC, though unlike the OLPC, Asus has chosen a more conventional interface. The desktop looked fairly similar to Windows and we saw Firefox running on one 3ePC. A spokesperson from Asus told us that the notebook would come with "an office suite that's compatible with MS Office", though he refused to confirm or deny whether that meant OpenOffice.
He claimed the 3ePC would be available in all areas of the world, not only developing nations.
The low price comes from some interesting design choices, primarily the flash-based hard disk. A disk of today's standard capacity would cost more than notebook itself as we saw with the 32GB Samsung disk, but Asus uses a 2GB disk. We were not allowed to touch the 3ePC so couldn't tell how much of this is left after the bespoke OS is installed.
The CPU also remains a mystery, though Shih said the version on show did have 512MB of RAM. Another version will be available for $299, but nobody could tell us what the difference between the two models is.
It doesn't seem too long ago that a 16GB solid state disc was a sight to behold, but now that SSDs are creeping up to 256GB and beyond, it's about time the flashy guys caught up. While we knew Kingmax was aiming to unveil its 16GB SDHC (only to match the early moving MICRODIA) card at Computex, pictured proof is always preferred, and it looks like all you digicam owners with SDHC-capable slots can rejoice as the sizes beneath this one quietly tumble in price. Notably, it was suggested that the cards were practically "ready for mass production," and should be available worldwide fairly soon. [Via Inquirer]
Written by Liz Gannes Posted Friday, June 8, 2007 at 12:00 AM PT
Audio and visual fingerprinting of copyrighted video is seen as the best way to combat infringement, but in NewTeeVee's testing this week across multiple sites, it did not work. We were surprised to be able to upload multiple times the exact same copyrighted file, even after we explicitly told the hosting site and the fingerprinting provider about it and they took it down.
What follows is a description of our procedure, accompanied by the vehement disclaimer that we were doing this only for educational purposes.
Microsoft recently took its Soapbox user-contributed video site out of the public eye until it could implement filtering technology from Audible Magic. Last Friday, it relaunched, supposedly armed and ready to fend off copyrighted content. So we asked our intrepid reporter Craig Rubens to test how the system worked by uploading a Daily Show clip.
Surprise, surprise, the clip went up like a charm (screenshot). We called Microsoft to ask what was going on. You should talk to Audible Magic, they said; our system is only as good as their index. We called Audible Magic, who essentially blamed Microsoft, for only implementing the audio version of its software. The reps then set off to nail down statements from their companies, a process that took most of the week.
Only sometime last night did the clip finally get taken off Soapbox, replaced with a copyright violation notice. To see if the system had been corrected we uploaded it again today, and again it appeared about 40 minutes later. At this point, if all went as it was supposed to, the video should have been automatically added to the index of banned clips, and then rejected when we uploaded a duplicate. But again, we had no problem.
Concerns about whether digital fingerprinting is ready for action have persisted, and market leader YouTube has hesitated to deploy its "Claim Your Content" system while it is being perfected. However, confidence in fingerprinting has moved past the optimism stage. "This technology works," says MPAA Vice-President Dean Garfield, as reported by BusinessWeek.
Audible Magic has bagged most every high profile deal in video filtering: MySpace, Dailymotion, Break.com, and GoFish/Bolt.
The Audible Magic representative insinuated the company's technology was deployed in fuller form on MySpace — which recently launched its "Take Down Stay Down " and filtering system using AM's system — so we also tried uploading the clip there. Interestingly, that also posed no problem. See it in action here.
Below is Craig's description of the procedure he used to upload his clip to Soapbox. He says after about 50 minutes of "processing" the video went live and was playable. The MySpace experiment was even quicker, taking about five minutes.
- Search for "Daily Show" on YouTube
- Select first clip of actual Daily Show with Jon Stewart content and download it via KeepVid.com (selected video )
- Convert the video to a Soapbox approved format (shockingly, Microsoft doesn't like .flv)
- Upload Daily Show clip to Soapbox
- Allow time for Soapbox to process, convert, and (supposedly) scan for copyrighted material.
Here are the official statements Microsoft and Audible Magic sent yesterday after days of deliberation and phone calls about the issue.
"We are continuing to work with Audible Magic to fine tune our implementation of their proactive automatic filtering services to best meet the needs of our content partners. The fact that a clip of any unauthorized copyright material slipped through is unfortunate, but that's why we also provide rich notice and takedown tools to content owners to automate and expedite the process of identifying and removing unauthorized content. We are committed to working in partnership with the industry to continue to evolve our technologies and solutions for customers and partners." — Rob Bennett, general manager for Entertainment and Video Services at MSN
"Audible Magic's technology has the ability to identify content such as 'The Daily Show' clip in question. We are working closely with Microsoft to customize our solution in order to meet the business needs of their Soapbox service." — Vance Ikezoye, founder and CEO of Audible Magic
Though all these systems, as advertised, depend largely on identifying content once in order to block it future times, we made no bones about identifying our uploads as Daily Show clips. We also had no problem uploading the exact same file after we had informed the proper people about it and they had taken it down.
Of all the videos on the web, Comedy Central clips are a huge bone of contention, figuring into Viacom's pending $1 billion-plus lawsuit against YouTube and its parent Google. Funnily enough, the original Daily Show video is still live on YouTube.
Posted by Augustine at 7:43 AM
Labels: fingerprint, photos, videos
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Posted by Augustine at 7:33 AM
Labels: all-in-one
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Casual Flash games generate monthly pageviews in the hundreds of millions, but the game industry has been painfully slow to capitalize on this massive audience—the chief exception being Pogo.com, which Electronic Arts acquired for about $50 million in 2001. Today some 1.4 million “Club Pogo” subscribers pay $40/year - another nice $50 million in annual business.
Jim Greer, former Technical Director Pogo, like EV thinks that there is a big business to be made out of casual games, and raised a million dollars for his new start-up, Kongregate, which aims to be the YouTube of games, offering free, ad-supported Flash games and an online community to increase the site’s stickiness. After the break, Greer talks revenue model and numbers.
What’s so YouTube about Kongregate
‘YouTube for games’ is really just the attention-getter for people who don’t know that much about the space. What we really are is a community for web gamers and developers. Current web game sites don’t do community right, if at all. If I beat a game on Miniclip or AddictingGames, I don’t take anything with me and can’t even see the other people who are playing it as well.
Kongregate by the numbers
Page views for March were 2.4 million. That’s up from 400K in February. Registered users are in the low five figures - until recently the only incentive to register was to socialize. Now that we have persistent rewards for playing games, we’re seeing much better registration rates. Right now we have 483 games, and they’re coming in at a rate of 40-50 per week. Those are from 224 developers.
Leveraging Ad Revenue
The participation rate for YouTube is somewhere around 2%. That means 98% of the users came there to view videos, not upload them. If our participation rate is around .05%, it doesn’t really kill us. Good games are something you play for hours. A good viral video you watch for two minutes. So we can have a lot fewer games and have plenty of entertainment value…
(To encourage user-generated content), most other sites pay developers a small one-time license fee. They make a lot of money and they don’t share it. We think we can inspire love from our developers, both because they like our community, and because we treat them well… By default, all developers receive 25% of the ad revenue generated from their games… [But] it’s possible for a game to earn 25%, 35%, 40%, or 50% of ad revenue (depending on performance).
Unlike YouTube, users can’t share games on other sites and blogs (yet), but this is something Greer believes is “less of a blockbuster strategy than it was for video.”
All this sounds promising, but unlike other proven online communities, making a enjoyable Flash game takes a lot more time and talent than, say, uploading a funny video, and that barrier limits Kongregate’s content stream. So what’s it going to take for Kongregate to become the number one online game destination? “Much better virality than we have right now,” says Greer. “I’m very happy with where we’ve come in the six months since we founded the company. I think we can do a lot in the next six to twelve.”
You can follow Kongregate’s saga on Greer’s blog.
Posted by Augustine at 12:18 PM
Labels: virtual world
Company: Scribd Description: Online document storage and sharing Competitors: eClips Location: San Francisco Amount Raised: $3.5 million Round: First Date Announced: 6/5/07 VC Firms: Redpoint Ventures, Kinsey Hills Group VC Directors: N/A Quick Take: Founded last summer with $12,000 and launched in December with another $40,000, Scribd took a big step up with its recent $3.5 million first round funding at a reported post-money valuation of $17.5 million. Aside from that lofty valuation, Scribd is being called the 'YouTube of Documents.' They prefer to refer to themselves as the 'World's Largest Open Document Library'. Sounds similar to Google's mission. Whatever the tagline, Scribd has big expectations to live up to. It can meet them if it can extend its first mover advantage as the biggest document storing and sharing service online. Monetization is a dream. The trick will be to convince more people to participate.
Technology (1 out of 10): 5 Market: 8 Management: 3 Chances for IPO: 3 Overall VC Rating: 7
MyLifeBrand is a service that lets user’s aggregate social networking memberships and navigate between them from the one place.
MyLifeBrand supports Friendster, LinkedIn, Bebo, Facebook, H15, Orkut, MySpace, and TagWorld among others and is working on support for a number of niche social networks including Angling Masters, Navy Seals and Drunk Duck.
Users are also able to add their contacts from external networks to their MyLifeBrand friends list creating a master friends list.
The difficulty in managing multiple social networks is real and any heavy Web 2.0 site user will understand the problem. We covered Spokeo in November 06 and a number of similar services since.
MyLifeBrand gives social networking aggregation a decent shot, however presenting external sites in a frame doesn’t work for me (see screenshot).
The introduction of the Facebook’s F8 platform shows the real direction in this space. Facebook allows external sites and services to be integrated directly into Facebook and not through frames as with MyLifeBrand, delivering a far superior user experience. This is not to say that MyLifeBrand won’t be able to find a user base, it’s just that they are probably 12 months too late in releasing, and 6-12 months behind in delivery and integration to become a major player. The long tail is long and there is always room for new comers, so I do wish them luck; competing against Facebook will be a challenge.
Posted by Augustine at 9:39 AM
Labels: social networking aggregator
San Antonio, Texas based Incuby is aiming to build a community where inventors can display inventions to the general public, entrepreneurs and investors.
In developing the site, the team behind Incuby have toured the United States meeting with different inventor groups. They found that inventors are tired of the high costs associated with travelling and presenting at trade shows and are ready for “a place of their own on the web”.
The site is still in development and will move to a closed beta test in the coming weeks with a broad number of inventors already signed up to test the site.
The focus is creating an environment where inventors can coexist and communicate online with each other, while presenting their innovations. Through ecommerce enabled profiles, each inventor will be able to manage their product’s sales while adhering to a customer feedback system that is similar to eBay.
Shopping inventions does share similarities with the financing and development path of Web 2.0 startups. In truth the only real differences are tangible vs intangible IP and that tangible invention patents and trademarks prevent the same ideas being copied over and over again like they are in Web 2.0, for example with social bookmarking sites and Digg clones.
Sometimes it’s the simplest ideas that work best. Incuby is a simple yet solid idea that has the potential of going far. If I was an inventor myself, I’d be signing up as soon as it launched.
Posted by Augustine at 8:50 AM
Labels: incubator, inventions
http://labnol.blogspot.com/2007/06/create-photo-greeting-cards-with-flickr.html
Amit: The interface is intuitive - search the images from Flickr database (you can also limit search results based on Creative Commons license), add some text and the photo card turns into a webpage.
Here's a sample greeting card created from the the profile pictures of MyBlogLog visitors.
Thanks, Amit!Posted by Augustine at 6:00 PM
Labels: flickr, greeting cards, Phreetings
How to make a viral video and create viral profits
Consumers Have Changed, So Should Advertisers -- ClickZ -- June 4, 2009.
Social Media Benchmarks: Realities and Myths -- ClickZ -- May 7, 2009. The ROI for Social Media Is Zero -- ClickZ -- April 9, 2009. How to Use Search to Calculate the ROI of Awareness Advertising -- ClickZ -- March 12, 2009. Enthusiast Digital Cameras - Foveon, Fujifilm EXR, Exilim 1,000 fps A New Immutable Law of Marketing -- The Law of Usefulness -- Marketing Science -- February 17, 2009. Social Intensity: A New Measure for Campaign Success? -- ClickZ -- February 11, 2009. Connecting with Consumers: Next-Generation Advertising on the Web -- AssociatedContent -- January 30, 2009. Beyond Targeting in the Age of the Modern Consumer -- ClickZ -- January 14, 2009. Experiential Marketing: Experience is King -- ClickZ -- December 18, 2008. Search Improves All Marketing Aspects -- ClickZ -- November 20, 2008. Do something smart, not just something mobile -- iMediaConnection -- November 7, 2008. Social Commerce: In Friends We Trust -- ClickZ -- November 6, 2008. The New Role of the Digital Agency -- RelevantlySpeaking -- October 29, 2008. Make Digital Work for Your Customers -- ClickZ -- October 23, 2008. Social Networking: Make Your Product Worth Talking About -- HowToSplitAnAtom -- October 23, 2008. Social Media Ads are DOA -- MediaWeek -- October 13, 2008. Missing Link Marketing -- Marketing Science. -- September 22, 2008. The Need for Speed -- MediaPost -- September 22, 2008. SEO Can't Exist in a Vacuum -- HowToSplitanAtom -- October 8, 2008. A Different Perspective On Social Media Marketing -- Marketing Science. -- July 15, 2008. WOM: Just Don't Do It -- Adweek -- July 14, 2008. Tips for Success in a Web 2.0 World -- iMedia. -- April 23, 2008.