Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Monday, August 06, 2007

Thomas Hawk's excellent side-by-side comparison of photo collections

Source: ThomasHawk.com - Getty Images vs Flickr

Thursday, March 01, 2007

Thomas Hawk: "Below are three searches that I selected at random. Las Vegas, candle and clouds. Now click through to the search pages for these terms at Flickr and at Getty Images. Which one is better? Is it clearly better? If you were a marketer would it make a difference to you which one you pulled your images from?

Las Vegas Getty
Las Vegas Flickr

Candle Getty
Candle Flickr

Clouds Getty
Clouds Flickr

Now let's take this a step further and enter into the long tail of stock photography let's do a search for Tujunga (a small town in the San Fernando Valley where I grew up) and Mount Tam (a local mountain in Marin here in the Bay Area).

Tujunga Getty
Tujunga Flickr

Mount Tam Getty
Mount Tam Flickr

Interesting what you get here isn't it? You see with 400 million images in their library Flickr is the better stock agency for long tail stuff for sure. The problem just is that Flickr hasn't figured out how to turn this on yet."

GYI: The Internet transforming yet another industry

Minus a third (nearly $1 billion) of its market cap in 5 days, Getty Images (GYI) is seeing the tangible effects of ...

1) supply replacement -- vast collections of photos online serve as alternative supply for people searching for photos to use/license.

2) demand displacement -- new use cases such as use of photos on blogs require new licenses such as royalty free or Creative Commons -- the terms of traditional rights managed licenses simply don't work for such use-cases, regardless of the price.

While more and more photos will be licensed and used (e.g. to decorate blog entries etc.) this additional demand will likely be satisfied by photos which are $1 or less, photos which are taken by eye-witnesses and immediately available (e.g. directly uploaded from cameraphones), and photos which are more readily found (e.g. users do image searches online from their favorite search engine).

Gulf Ethanol Advances Production Plans Based on Texas A&M Sorghum Plant

HOUSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Gulf Ethanol Corporation, (OTC:GFET), has advanced its plans for an enhanced ethanol production facility along the Texas Gulf coast that could use the new sorghum plant developed by Texas A&M as its primary feed stock, Texas A&M University and Chevron Corp (NYSE CVX) recently announced the major new alternative fuels initiative.

The development of "freakishly tall sorghum plants" was designed as an ideal feedstock for Ethanol production by Texas A&M. "Standing nearly 20 feet tall, these plants are more than twice the height of regular sorghum and yield double the crop per acre. They can survive on little water. They have been bred not to flower, thus trapping more energy within." (Source: Brett Clanton, Houston Chronicle)

"This is a new paradigm for bioenergy production," said Bill McCutchen, deputy associate director at Texas A&M's Texas Agricultural Experiment Station.

The Department of Energy has announced nearly $400 million in funding for the establishment of three bio-energy research centers, "while oil companies including BP (NYSE BP), Exxon Mobil (NYSE XOM), and Chevron (NYSE CVX) have given money to universities for biofuels research."

"Because we see sorghum as the ideal non-food feed stock for ethanol production in Texas, we embrace the Texas A&M initiative as a key step forward in providing economical feed stocks for our Texas ethanol plants," JT Cloud, Gulf Ethanol's President explained, "The long term success of ethanol as an alternative fuel must be based on the development of efficient non-food sources for ethanol production."

Last month, Texas Gov. Rick Perry outlined a new bioenergy strategy that will encourage more research at state universities on noncorn ethanol and other renewables, with an eye toward getting them to market faster. As part of the effort, he pledged $5 million to Texas A&M for research.

About Gulf Ethanol Corporation

Gulf Ethanol is focused on developing ethanol production along the Gulf Coast. Gulf Ethanol is committed to using non-food feed stocks for the production of ethanol rather than corn or sugar cane, which have now been shown to be expensive fuel sources that negatively impact food prices. For more information please visit our homepage at: http://www.gulfethanolcorp.com/gulf_ethanol_investors.htm

Panasonic's Oxyride vehicle breaks 65mph on AA batteries

from Engadget by Darren Murph

Filed under: Transportation

Sure, watching a wee remote controlled, all electric vehicle hit nearly 200 miles-per-hour is quite impressive, but moving a vehicle large enough to stuff a moderately sized human into with just AA cells is, well, world record worthy. Reportedly, the newly revamped Oxyride managed to maintain an average speed of just over 65mph and hit a top speed of 75.8mph, all while being powered by 192 AA batteries. Unsurprisingly, the promotional stunt rocketed Panasonic into the Guinness Book of World Records for speed attained with a vehicle solely driven by dry-cell AA batteries, but we still wouldn't look at purchasing 192 batteries (each way) as an efficient method of powering your commuter car.

[Via AkihabaraNews]

Google Maps add YouTube Videos

from CenterNetworks - by Allen Stern

Google Maps Alright so you read the title and said, "WTF" out loud. Why would anyone want to tie YouTube videos with a Google map? Unlike the absolutely stupid and useless street viewer option, this one makes sense.

Imagine you are planning a trip to Los Angeles and want to see what the clubs are like that Paris Hilton goes to. Now you can. Or if you are heading to Paris, check out which bistro has the best steak before you get there! In all seriousness, I could see this as a huge plus for travelers. But see below for the negative, videos must be geotagged and not everyone will do this.

Check out some additional release information on Mike Abundo's Blog. For the mashup to work effectively, videos must be geotagged when uploaded and then you need to install the mashup. Took four seconds to install.

Firefox Tip: Override disabled username and password autocomplete

from Lifehacker by Gina Trapani

Does your online banking or company intranet never remember your username and password? If you save your passwords in Firefox but still have to type 'em in by hand on certain sites, they probably disable login credential autocomplete. The How-To Geek says that the right Greasemonkey user script can re-enable that handy functionality on some sites. (Sadly it didn't on my bank's login page, but on others it will.) If a site disables password-saving, it's probably doing that for good reason, so use this tip at your own risk. And remember: if you are saving passwords in Firefox, lock 'em down with a single master password .

Why Doesn't AutoComplete Always Work in Firefox? [The How-To Geek]

Lanner rolls out four-bay NS04-3100 NAS server

from Engadget by Donald Melanson

Filed under: Storage, Networking

While there's not a great deal to distinguish it from the multitude of other NAS servers out there, Lanner's new NS04-3100 looks like it should easily satisfy those with hefty storage appetites, offering four bays for some SATA drives of your choosing. Otherwise, you'll get just about all the features you'd expect from a high-end NAS, including built-in WiFi, UPnP AV media server capabilities, iTunes server and DLNA support, and support for RAID 0, 1, 5 and JBOD configurations. Lanner is also promising "ultra-quiet operation" and minimal power draw from the server's Marvel 88F5281 processor. No word on price, but it's apparently available immediately for "sampling." [Via Akihabara News]

Tesla announces its first dealership

from Engadget by Ryan Block

Filed under: Transportation

We knew Tesla had plans to open up dealerships in some of the, how should we say, more affluent markets in the US, and according to the company its first dealership and service center will be opened in one of the richest neighborhoods in the States, Menlo Park (just an electric hop, skip, and jump away from its San Carlos-based HQ).

[Via AutoblogGreen]

Amazon vs. Paypal vs. Google Checkout

from GigaOM by Om Malik

Amazon, in its bid to become the underlying utility of the new web world, today confirmed what had been rumored earlier: a payment service that will compete with PayPal and to some extent, the nascent Google Checkout services.

Just to be clear, Google Checkout and Amazon FPS are not building their own payment service, where PayPal has a clear lead. Instead they are using the credit card infrastructure to enable payments and online transactions.

As a discrete offering, Amazon Flexible Payment Services (still in beta) may seem like a me-too service. However, when juxtaposed against the whole gamut of web services being offered by the company, it is a Trojan horse like strategy, one that can start to eat away at PayPal’s business.

It is not a surprise, that both Google and Amazon want a slice of PayPal’s cake. In the most recent quarter, PayPal had net revenues of $454 million, up 34% over the $339 million reported in Q2-06. More importantly, PayPal Merchant Services transactions jumped 57% to $4.92 billion globally from the $3.13 billion reported in Q2-06.

PayPal has become a defacto standard in the online transactions and payment services, and for anyone to have a chance to beat them there are two options: use money (and price) to lure the eCommerce players, as Google is doing with its Checkout Service. The second option is to offer a developer friendly service, that can allow developers to embed a payment solution into their offerings. Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon explains it best:

Using a capability called “Payment Instructions” developers can easily create the charging model that works best for them. For example, they can charge customers in small increments until their accumulated balance reaches a limit, pay a percentage of a digital transaction as a royalty, earn a commission on a marketplace transaction, or allow one customer to pay for another customer and limit their usage to a specific amount.

As developers who are already using Amazon’s EC2 and S3 web services start to embed FPS, what they are doing is slowly shifting the momentum away from using PayPal and other rivals. Allowing the buyers to use their Amazon credentials to buy the goods (or services) from these developers, they are also increasing their economic opportunity.

A small web-app developer can now build, host, process and get paid for his efforts right over the Amazon infrastructure, without having to spend money upfront. As Amazon Web Servies team notes on its blog:

Seriously, the 69 million active Amazon.com customers can now use FPS to pay for the applications that you’ll undoubtedly want to build. On the other end, the first wave of FPS applications will be available very soon.

While I can’t put it as eloquently as uncov does, but I do agree with their thesis that this is going to cause major headaches for PayPal.

Remember Webvan? So Does Amazon

from TechCrunch by Michael Arrington

Check out Amazon Fresh - a new invite only service from Amazon that looks eerily similar to the quintessential 90’s Internet flameout, Webvan.

The new service promises speedy at-home delivery of groceries, including fresh produce, at “competitive everyday prices.” It’s available only in Seattle currently, and has not been officially announced. But at least one person caught a glimpse of an Amazon Fresh truck driving around downtown Seattle.

Users select and pay for groceries on the site. They can then choose to pick up the items themselves locally, or, with a minimum order size, have them delivered next day within a one hour time slot. Groceries will also be delivered to doorsteps pre-dawn in a temperature-controlled container.

A year ago Amazon began experimenting with sales of non-perishable food and household items, but did not deliver them directly and perishable goods were not available.

If you are a Seattle reader, keep your cameras handy. We want a picture of the delivery truck.

Webvan, which had a spectacular IPO and quickly expanded to 26 cities, went bankrupt in 2001. Before closing down, Webvan had acquired competior HomeGrocer. Coincidentally, Amazon was an investor in HomeGrocer.

Listen To Your iTunes Library On The Web With Anywhere.FM

from TechCrunch by Nick Gonzalez

Anywhere.fm has launched a new online music player that looks and feels a lot like a web based version of the iTunes player, sans the music marketplace. Like iTunes, you can load maintain a music library, reorganize your songs into play lists, and veg out to visualizations. Anywhere.fm's iTunes bulk uploader makes it easy to get up and running with your existing library.

The company leverages the web to add portability and a social layer to their music player. There is currently no cap on the number of songs you can upload to the player, so you can create a potentially unlimited music library you can listen to anywhere. Streampad is a nearly identical product with less polish.

Like a host of other social music startups, Anywhere.fm has also added music discovery features. While not as robust a discovery engine as a Last.fm and company, users can find new songs by listening to their friends' play lists and will soon be able to find new friends based on a music compatibility score. However, due to copyright concerns, playlists from other users can only be streamed as radio stations. Playlists must be a couple songs long and played in a random order. Although, Anywhere.fm isn't following official online radio play guidelines like Lala, which require station play lists to be at least three hours long before publishing.

The company competes in the increasingly crowded online music locker services like Mp3tunes, Maestro, imeem, Streampad, Songbird, and MediaMasters. The service does benefit from being simple, free, and social, but incumbents have a steady head start. Hype Machine, RadioBlogClub, and Blogmusik are also other low hassle ways to listen to music at work.

Anywhere.fm is looking to make money outside of charging users for their service. They are considering the obvious step of affiliate music sales for songs you don't own, inserting audio ads in radio streams, and selling music directly. Currently the player lists indie music from Garage Band.com, which could turn into a direct point of sale.

Anywhere.fm is a Y Combinator startup.

Update: Good video review is here.

Amazon Flexible Payments Service Launches

from TechCrunch by Michael Arrington

As predicted, Amazon launched a new payments web service today called Amazon Flexible Payments Service, or FPS. It will compete with Paypal and Google Checkout.

FPS, Amazon says, "is the first payments service designed from the ground up specifically for developers" and "unmatched flexibility in how they can structure payment instructions." Payments can be made by credit cards, bank account debits, and Amazon Payments balance transfers.

The most important feature: people can pay using the same login credentials and payment information they already have on file with Amazon. That means people don't need to have their credit card and other personal information stored at yet more ecommerce sites. For payments over $10, Amazon will charge 2.9% + $0.30. This matches PayPal but is higher than Google, which is eating fees to gain market share (Google charges 2% + $0.20).

This may quickly become Amazon's most popular, and most profitable, web service. Anyone can now leverage their tens of millions of customers and provide a very simple payment option.

Use GMail or Yahoo! Mail? Change Bookmarks for Better Security

from Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal

This is Robert Graham posing with the GMail website open on his laptop.

Rob demonstrated to a live audience how he can successfully hack into web based email programs like GMail, Yahoo Mail! or Hotmail using the IP Address and user name (login) without requiring any password.

Let's not go in the very technical details but he used some sniffing tools called Ferret (to copy the GMail cookies to his computers) and Hamster (to use the cookies in his browser). [Details at ZDNet, TG Daily]

What can you do to prevent someone else from reading your GMail or Yahoo Mail ?

Rob's method works when you are using the HTTP mode to access your email (http://www.gmail.com/). Therefore the trick is to always use Secure Login.

Here's what you can do to safeguard your email in public wi-fi hotspots - use https:// instead of http:// - the entire session will be encrypted and the cloning cookies method will fail:

For GMail: https://mail.google.com/mail/

For iGoogle: https://www.google.com/ig

For basic HTML version of GMail - https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html

yahoo mail secure website Alternatively, you can install the CustomizeGoogle extension of Firefox that will always force the SSL mode in GMail incase you forget to manually type the https:// GMail URLs.

Highly recommended also because Customize Google will also encrypt your Google Docs, Google Reader, Google Web History and Google Calendar session incase these Google services share the same cookie with GMail.

For Yahoo! Mail - Check the Secure Mode link that's available just beneath the "Sign In" button.

Related: Recover Yahoo! or GMail Passwords

Friday, August 03, 2007

Second Life (finally) gets a direct competitor: Multiverse

from GigaOM by Wagner James Au

The brainchild of several ex-Netscape execs, the Mountain View start-up Multiverse, as the name suggests, isn't a single online world, but a platform for creating games and other 3D experiences with the company's development tools, which are then run on its servers. (Like Dark Horizons, a sci-fi MMORPG pictured here.) Version 1.0 was just rolled out yesterday, and though it's too early to know how it'll fare, one thing is official: after 4 years of being the only user-created 3D online world on the commercial market, Second Life now has competition.

The system and revenue model is markedly different from SL, however: instead of fostering user-created content in a single world, Multiverse is a network of worlds accessible by the client software. It comes with e-commerce tools built into the system, so developer's can earn an income, while Multiverse makes money by taking a 10% cut of that revenue.

I haven't yet had a chance to check it out first hand (the client is cantankerous with my Vista machine), but I'll be keeping a close eye on its progress. Multiverse's advisory board includes Avatar director James Cameron and some other Hollywood heavyweights, so you have to think movie-to-MMO tie-ins are planned. (Indeed, a Multiverse version of the cult TV show Firefly was announced last year.) What's more, famed MMO academic Ed Castronova is already using Multiverse to develop the education-oriented MMO Arden.

My writing career has been tied up in Second Life on one level or another since 2003, so you might think I'd consider Multiverse a threat to my livelihood. Actually, I'm relieved. There are some truly impressive and popular mini-MMOs built within SL, like City of Lost Angels and Midgar, but they've largely succeeded in spite of Second Life, which is still far from ideal as a platform for game development. It's never healthy for any one company to dominate a space for so long, and an active competition to attract and retain new users and developers can only benefit us all.

Intel accelerates 45nm plans, hitting the market Q4 '07

from Engadget by Paul Miller Echoes of "take that, haters!" could be heard on Intel corporate Facebook accounts this morning as the company steals some thunder from AMD's recently announced roadmap and fancy fresh antitrust lawsuit. Intel will be launching new four core 45nm Intel Core Extreme "Penryn" processors in Q4 2007, a few months ahead of schedule. The top of the line proc is likely to hit 3.33GHz, run a 1333MHz system bus and hold 12MB of L2 cache. Only about 2-3% of Intel's chips will go 45nm in 2007, but that number should double by around Q2 2008, and it seems Intel needed to accelerate things to head off competition from AMD's upcoming Phenom processors. Prices and other precise launch dates are still a mystery at this point. [Via Silicon Investor]

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