Google, Facebook, and our privacy: We're all in denial
What does it mean to have a "right to privacy?" We have a right to vote, and too few of us use it. I heard it explained to me once, a human right is like a vegetable garden. You have to nurture it, take care of it, and harvest it. Otherwise you have a plot of dirt.
The Internet is not like a vegetable garden. Perhaps that test is appropriate, then, for lawmakers worldwide considering whether the "right to Internet access" follows from the right to free speech -- there are places in the world where is this actively being considered. If a person is denied access to the Internet, the argument goes, her free speech rights are being violated, or at least abridged.
Microsoft isn't losing its consumer edge, it was game over long ago
I disagree with Mark Anderson, writer of the Strategic News Service, about Microsoft's future. Last night, at his 10th annual "Predictions Dinner," Anderson asserted that in 2010 Microsoft would lose "its consumer play. Specifically, "except for gaming, it is game over for [Microsoft] in consumer. This will make consumer the place to be, where the most robust and exciting change artists will work." His prediction isn't the future. It's the past.
Microsoft has been retreating from the consumer market for some time, following a deliberate strategy that is creating a circa-1980s IBM. Two days ago, I blogged about how Apple applies what I call "David Thinking" to challenge the status quo. Apple plays off its strengths to change the rules. By comparison, Microsoft is using its strengths to preserve the status quo, isolating the company to the enterprise. I've written about this IBM-transformation many times. In context of Anderson's prediction, it's good time to again explain Microsoft's consumer-losing strategy.
iTunes gets cloudy: Will a web-ified future save iTunes or kill it?
I'm not at all surprised that Apple's recent purchase of Lala Media, a previously-ignored music streaming outfit that likely would have flatlined otherwise, is already generating rumblings of impending major change to one of the most pivotal brands in its arsenal. While it was the iPod and iPhone devices that first established Apple's consumer product cred and later sealed its long-term position on the techno-cultural podium, it was iTunes that turned the process of buying, managing and consuming content from a chaotic mess into something that ultimately killed the local record store and permanently changed the entertainment landscape.
If only the world never changed
Betanews Podcast: Transportation security, Facebook sensitivity, and you
On our second edition of the Betanews podcast, we take a look at the ongoing effort to keep stuff that we share on the Internet from not being shared so much. The Transportation Safety Administration and the American citizen are very much in the same bucket today, as both are being faced with a new and intriguing privacy and sensitivity debacle...essentially the same one, just in two different respects.
The strange parallels between Microsoft's century start and decade's end
End of year is typically time for company retrospectives, but 2009 is also end of decade. For Microsoft, the slow economy and push into Web services bookends the decade 2000-2009. Microsoft parallels between the new century's first year and the decade's last year are surprising. I've put together a list of 10 things, presented here in no particular order of importance.
1. Microsoft struggled through recession. In December 2000, Microsoft issued an unexpected profit warning for its fiscal 2001 second quarter. In January 2009, Microsoft released disappointing 2010 second quarter results, announcing intent to lay off 5,000 employees. Recessions marked the beginning and end of the decade, hitting Microsoft sales hard.
Third-party mobile browsers Skyfire and Bolt give Opera a run for its money
Mobile browsers have come a long way in a relatively short time. In a way, webOS, iPhone OS, and Android users have been kind of spoiled by the fast and easy-to-use browsers installed on their devices by default. For these sorts of users -- the ones who pull out their mobile phones to run a search every time someone has an unanswered question -- it's easy to forget that much of the mobile world would rather avoid opening its default mobile browser at all.
Opera may be the most prominent third-party solution to poor mobile browsing experience, but free browsers such as Bolt and Skyfire are quickly making a name as well. They too seek to improve the mobile Web experience for everyone, even those on resource-constrained devices with less-than-lovable browsers built in.
The PDF redaction problem: TSA may have been using old software
The problem with the release of a Transportation Security Administration security screening manual was not, as many news outlets reported yesterday, the fact that it appeared "out there on the Internet." As US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told reporters this morning, according to the Washington Post, the TSA manual was supposed to have been posted on the Internet -- it was part of a cache of documents intentionally posted to a government procurement Web site.
The real problem is that the portions of the PDF document that were supposed to have been redacted -- or removed from the file and replaced with blackouts -- were not actually removed. Sec. Napolitano said this morning that disciplinary action may be taken against the TSA employees responsible, and at one point implied that only one person may inevitably be to blame.
Deep discounts drive Black Friday tech revenue down, unit sales up
The sour economy soured consumer technology retail revenue on Black Friday, according to new research from NPD Group. Related, U.S. retail pricing declined year over year in all major categories -- camcorders, GPS systems, LCD TVs, notebook computers, point-and-shoot digital cameras and stereo headphones. NPD did not publicly report pricing on cell phones or desktop PCs. The company tracks online and brick-and-mortar sales.
Black Friday revenue declined for a second year in a row -- both days since the late-September 2008 stock market crash that sent an already recessionary economy tumbling downward. Overall Black Friday revenue was $2.7 billion at U.S. retail, down 1.2 percent from the same day a year earlier. On Black Friday 2008, year-over-year revenue fell 3.4 percent.
iPhone brings back the DOS dilemma
Apple's iPhone is supposed to be about the cool, new mobile Internet future. But using the smartphone reminds me too much of the past. The beautiful, ergonomically-designed iPhone has two related flaws: Fixed battery and prohibited background applications. Apple wrongly chose to put form before function in designing iPhone hardware and software.
The device's related flaws remind me of MS-DOS PCs' 640k memory limit. Microsoft used digital steroids -- extended and expanded memory -- to bulk up MS-DOS. But it was never enough to make up for what memory limitations took away from DOS' performance or stability.
Mobile Internet is 450 million users strong and doubling in four years
Do you browse the Web on your phone, iPod touch or other portable wireless device? Congratulations, you're one of the 450 million mobile Internet users, according to IDC. The analyst firm today predicted that number would reach 1 billion by 2013.
I'll do some quick math. Apple has shipped more than 30 million iPhones, so there's a possible 6 percent or so of mobile Internet users -- and that's not counting more than 20 million iPod touch users. Another nearly 30 million Crackberry -- ah, BlackBerry -- addicts accounts for another 6 percent of users.
In a peace offering to newspapers, Google offers a new news format
Exactly what online news should be or become is a subject that consumed the "blue sky" discussions among publishers since the late 1990s. Despite every concept they've ever created, tried or untried, what publishers typically end up with is either something that looks segmented and departmentalized like CNN.com or NYTimes.com, or is basically a blog whose scroll reveals a history of news, like it was printed on a roll of paper towels.
So the concept that Google Labs began attempting yesterday with its "Living Stories" concept (whose name for some reason brings to mind a certain peacock) is absolutely not new. It's been discussed before, in some fashion or another, and even approved -- for what it's worth. But on a large scale, it's never been done until yesterday: assembling all the stories relating to a pertinent, current topic on a page devoted to the topic, not the publisher and not some permanent department of the publication like "Sports" or "Tech."
Google Maps doesn't prevent car accidents, only search accidents
Those of you who follow my Tweets (@TimConneally) know that I got into a car accident yesterday. Nothing too serious, mind you, just a little unexpected voyage into converging traffic. I was hurriedly trying to obey my Google Maps turn-by-turn directions without noticing that the light I was approaching was actually red.
I'm not speaking against Google Maps navigation at all, but the incident successfully brought one of the application's new features to mind: Report Problems in Maps.
DOJ: Microsoft interop docs are now 'substantially complete'
Three years and seven months after Microsoft promised to produce full documentation for its communications protocols, so that licensees can figure out what they mean and how to use them, the US Justice Dept.'s Antitrust Division has declared that the documentation project is pretty much done. It's not completely done, but there's enough of it complete that Microsoft will now be allowed to collect royalties again.
In the Dept.'s latest Joint Status Report, now semi-annual and released today, the ATR Division writes, "As explained in prior Joint Status Reports, by 'substantially complete,' Plaintiffs mean that the documentation, when considered as a whole, appears on an initial reading to cover the information required by the templates in a reasonably thorough and comprehensible manner. The 'substantially complete' determination means that Microsoft may now end the MCPP [Microsoft Communications Protocol Program] licensee interim royalty credit and will be able to resume collecting royalties. This determination, while a significant milestone in the overall documentation rewrite project, does not mean that the documents are finished or that no additional work remains to be done. There is, in fact, much work left to do."
The $1 DVD rental debate: LA group says Redbox will lose movie makers $1B
We know many Hollywood studios view Redbox $1 DVD rental kiosks as a problem that must be kept in check. A recent report from the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation (LAEDC) says those rental kiosks could represent a billion dollar drain on Hollywood's revenues.
The report, entitled "The Economic Implications of Low-Cost DVD Rentals" (PDF available here) characterizes those red boxes as pockmarks on the face of a sickened home video industry.
First impressions of Droid: Easy, breezy, friendly, if a little fat
Up to now, if you wanted a smartphone with power and without complexity, the only orchard you could go to was Apple's. With the arrival of the Motorola Droid, though, that's changed.
The Droid uses Google's Android operating system. It's not as slick as the OS in Apple's iPhone, but it's still a breeze to use, and it has some tricks of its own, like voice search. Yes, you can talk to this phone, and it will fill in your search terms. It's accurate, too. As a goof, I asked it to find "chronosynclastic infundibulum," and performed the search without a sneeze.
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