CobWEBs Daily Edition podcast: Hey Microsoft, We’re not Scoble but our opinions count too

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Posted 1277 days ago

cbn1-podpost Tonight’s show with Sean; who has his priorities all straight, and myself starts out with both of us shaking our head in bewilderment of Robert Scoble’s latest post about how he was wrong concerning the importance of full text RSS feeds. His reason is that full text is so 2006 and now Twitter has become the RSS feed reader of choice.

Ya. Okay. His choice but that doesn’t make it so for everyone else not does it invalidate the importance of full text feeds.

As for our second subject … well you just had to know that neither of us could pass up on the whole Microsoft bribing News Corp to de-list from Google. It’s a far ranging discussion that looks at the idea from all sides and has some suggestions for Microsoft concerning the ridiculousness of the idea.

Posts referred in the show.

I Hate You, Electricity – Sean P. Aune
I was wrong about full-text feeds – Robert Scoble
Microsoft once more proves you can indeed buy stupidity – The Inquisitr

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One person’s Brightkite message is another person’s ad

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Posted 1278 days ago

There is a big storm brewing on the Web right now and it all has to do as usual with advertising. You know, that thing that helps keep all the great warm and fuzzy Web 2.0ish social media electronic hippie-dom flowing like a never ending bottle of Sonoma wine as recommended by Garry V free for all to use?

Ya. Advertising. The ugly underappreciated and often hated advertising. Well at least when it isn’t VC dollars propping these web wunderkind up until the advertising dollars start to flow.

I use to get really irritated at people who would say how much they hate advertising for whatever reason, and believe me I’ve heard them all, and yet they still want to keep on using all these free web apps. Uhm. Excuse me. Are you the only one allowed to earn a living for your work?

The usual suspects are threatening to dismantle our Internet

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Posted 1278 days ago

As I have said before I don’t normally cross-post stuff that I write at The Inquisitr but there are the rare occasions and I think this is one of them.

We are coming up to a watershed moment in the existence of the Internet and very few people seem to care. Right now there are two separate events happening that will have a direct impact on both the Internet we have right now and the one we will have in the future.

While they might seem like two disparate events they are in fact being lead by one industry. Under the guise of copyright infringement and piracy the entertainment as a whole is spearheading the adoption of the Digital Economy Bill in England and the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) which would be global in impact.

It is easy to shrug our collective shoulders over the Digital Economy Bill suggesting that it’s strictly a British problem and doesn’t affect the rest of at all. Well one only has to look at the persuasive use of CCTV in Britain and how it became the template for other countries like the U.S. to follow suite to see how foolish that argument is.

When I first wrote about the Digital Economy Bill here back in August of 2009 it was in light of how the original bill was changed after a weekend meeting get-together on the Greek island of Corfu. This little confab consisted of Lord Mandelson, the British business secretary, members of the Rothschild banking dynasty; who paid for the retreat, and David Geffen, an American billionaire record producer.

Prior to this retreat in sunny Corfu the Digital Economy Bill was actually a forward looking document that the British government hoped would take the country into the next millennium. After the trip though it suddenly became a totally different beast all together that saw everyone using the Internet as a criminal.

Now just this past week thanks to Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing we find out that this new Digital Economy Bill that is now before the British Parliament not only will treat web users as criminals but it is also being used to create a process that will see unelected officials able to do just about anything without Parliamentary oversight or control as long as it is done in the name of protecting copyright.

Read the complete post at The Inquisitr

“Self-publishing rips off the author” – Not so says one publisher

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Posted 1280 days ago

addict I remember a time, and it wasn’t that long ago either, when people would snicker under their breath if you said your had self-published a book and then had the nerve to call yourself an author.

That was before things like blogs, PDF, e-books, Lulu, and FastPencil turned that whole world upside down. No longer is calling oneself an author a title that you only get to use if you have been lucky enough to win a publisher lottery and they deigned to publish your latest tome.

Now you can create your great American novel and within very little time and the with the help of a growing number of publishers who are offering a self-publishing service you can be on Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Not to mention any number of services that specialize in selling e-books.

What if: Microsoft becomes Mozilla’s banker

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Posted 1280 days ago

firefox-tee Zee over at The Next Web has a short post where he takes a look at were Mozilla (Firefox) gets the majority of its money. As he points out that while the Mozilla Foundation does get donations the amount wouldn’t be anywhere near what is needed to keep the Foundation, and browser, moving forward.

At this point Mozilla makes its real money from one company – Google, and to the tune of $50 to $100 million a year. The problem going forward is that Google is becoming increasing involved in developing its own browser, and now an operating system. So one has to wonder at what point will the checks from Google stop coming into the coffers of Mozilla; and when it does what will the Foundation do to make up for that revenue?

My thought when I first started reading Zee’s post was exactly the same that he concluded with (emphasis mine)

With Google now promoting their own browser (and OS), Mozilla needs to get thinking fast and exploring other revenue earning options. Of course, if Microsoft were to step in and offer Mozilla a hefty sum to replace Google as default search engine, then things might just get very interesting indeed.

No kidding things would get interesting.

CobWEBs Daily Edition podcast: ChromeOS a road to free computers, and Techmeme still sucks

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Posted 1281 days ago

cbn1-podbase Both Mark and myself promised that we were not going to talk about ChromeOS but as you can tell from the title we kind of fell off that plan but at the same time we did try and talk about something a little more interesting, that being Techmeme. The news there being that they have added some more human curators to make sure we get the *cough* best *cough* out there.

Of course we both noticed that even with all the linked blogs to the news about ChromeOS neither one of us show up in the list. It’s understandable as to why my story at The Inquisitr doesn’t get listed but I didn’t think that SiliconAngle; which is where Mark’s post is, had been blacklisted would be ignored. Mark assured me that as far as he knows he hasn’t done anything to cause Gabe to blacklist him.

The interesting conversation really has to be near the end when we both turn to talking about some new web based operating system that Google is going to launch in a year. Both of us also think we may have figured out the long term play behind ChromeOS and really if we’re right it could be a really interesting time.

Posts referred to in the show.

Gee maybe Jerry Yang had it right in the beginning – Shooting at Bubbles
Google Chrome OS – so is it worth all the fuss? (Round-up) – The Inquisitr
Chrome OS Isn’t an Anti-Microsoft, Anti-Apple Play [Gratuitous Backpatting] – SiliconAngle
Google ChromeOS on Techmeme
What ChromeOS Means For Netbooks And Why Microsoft Needs To Be Scared – TechCrunch

Enjoy the show.

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Gee maybe Jerry Yang had it right in the beginning

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Posted 1281 days ago

I find it interesting that at a point where everything seems to have to do with algorithms being the solution two things are knocking the stuffing out of that idea. First is the larger idea of real-time search through the use of Twitter data being accumulated every second of the day and being parsed by the search engine giants.

Then we have news yesterday that Techmeme has expanded its lineup of human editors with the addition of three more people to bring the total up to six (seven if you count @atul). As Alan Patrick at Broadstuff pointed out

Signals two things:
(i) Pure algorithm aggregation is not efficient enough, it needs an edi…. sorry, “curator” is the New Word.
(ii) This impacts the economic scalability of the electronic aggregation newspaper story (we assume this is to give them 24x7x365 curation coverage rather than just increased story covearge per se).

To which Tom Foremski added:

This is significant because Techmeme shows that human aided algorithms are more effective than just software and server. Techmeme is a microcosm of the rest of the search-enabled world of services, from news aggregators to basic search.

If Techmeme can’t be Techmeme just by using its algorithms, and now needs lots of editors, then that means much larger news aggregators and search companies will likely have to add human editors too.

It would seem that Jerry had it right all those years ago when he was hand creating Yahoo’s famous links.

Me, Corvida Raven, and 10 Questions

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Posted 1282 days ago

Following up on the recent email interview I did with Nick Bradbury this is the first of what I hope I will be an on-going series of email interviews with people in social media space that I find interesting. Hopefully I will ask the types of questions, some easy and maybe some not so easy, that readers will have wanted to know the answers to. If not then I hope the interviews are at least informative.

Corvida Raven

I have known Corvida since almost the beginning of my time following the social media world. She is an incredibly bright young woman who has grown over the time I’ve known her. When it comes to enthusiasm about the subjects she talks about it is hard to keep up with her.

Blog: SheGeeks – http://shegeeks.net/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/corvida

Interview

1. Who is Corvida Raven

I’m a successful Technology blogger that grew up in one of the toughest areas of Miami, FL. I’m on a mission to become one of the greatest bloggers of all time and I’m actively working to build that dream. I grew up surrounded by hip-hop music and discover an instant attraction to technology around 11 or 12. Since then, I’ve been using both to try to make sense of my life.