Business

Changes to business digitisation brings

Google To Trial Print-Based AdWords Service
Google is set to announce a new advertising partnership with over 50 American newspapers, in an initiative designed to create an online marketplace to help Ye Olde Printe Media sell advertising electronically.
Big newspapers like The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune and The Washington Post are already onboard for the trial, with Google planning to expand the service internationally.
Under the scheme, Google will offer some of its AdWords customers the opportunity to advertise in print newspapers in much the same way as they buy advertising on the web.
Newspapers signed up to the scheme enter demographic details about their titles and give example advertising rates, while advertisers list how much they’re prepared to pay for classified space in specified titles.
Publishers then decide whether to accept the offers.
Launching as an early “alpha” trial, Google has said that it won’t initially charge for hosting the service, but expects to levy a ‘relatively modest commission’ if it takes off.
Runaway success
Google online AdWords campaign has been so successful that they’ve been able to keep up with the demand from advertisers, with Tom Phillips, Google’s director of print advertising, commenting about the print service: “This is money that our advertisers would spend with us if we had the online inventory for them to spend it on.”
Philips added that Google wanted to help the newspaper business, but was still chasing the dollar, “We are not just doing this to be friends with print media. We are doing this because there is a big business opportunity here providing value to media properties,” he added.
Google’s turbo-charged revenue increases (up 70 per cent in the third quarter) continue to give traditional media outlets the heebie-jeebies, as advertising revenues continue to crash in tabloid and regional titles across the UK.
Last week, research revealed that Google is now coining in more cash from advertising than Channel 4 in Britain, with the Internet Advertising Bureau saying that online ad spending in the UK had soared 40% in the first half of 2006 compared with the same time period last year.
Google AdWords
6 November, 2006
Printer Ink: More Costly Than Human Blood
If ever you were in any doubt of the painfully high price of printer ink, a feature on tech website Gizmodo shows a graph representing the relative values of various liquids compared to blood.
According to the statistics, a $30 HP No45 black ink cartridge comes with just 42ml of ink, giving punters a price of $0.71 per millilitre for the ink.
Penicillin comes in at around $0.6/ml, followed by vodka at $0.2/ml, bottled water at $0.1/ml and finally crude oil at something like $0.05/ml (it’s hard to be precise because the graph doesn’t come with a text breakdown).
We’re not taking these figures entirely seriously (it’s a Monday after all, and we’re still waiting for the coffee to kick in) but, as a comparison, human blood knocks out for $200 for 500ml, according to uncited Red Cross figures.
This works out at to $0.40/ml, getting on half the price of printer ink.
Punters have long complained about the outrageously high cost of printer ink – a 2003 study by the Consumer Association’s Which? Magazine found out that the humble smudgy stuff was priced ‘My Printer Hell’.
Meanwhile, those with a keen interest in the pricing of bodily fluids can examine the price of bull semen here, or perhaps peruse a comprehensive comparison of liquid costs from penicillin to ‘punky colour hair dye’ here.
Gartner: Printer ink costs more than perfume
[From Gizmodo]
6 November, 2006
Britain: Third Worst Country For Privacy
Britain’s Information Commissioner has published a study concluding that, within 10 years, surveillance of people living in the UK will be all-pervasive.
Alongside the report is a league-table of privacy around the world. Shockingly, Britain currently is the third most surveilled country in the world, behind Russia and China.
CCTV coverage alone is at an all-time high, with an estimated 4.2m CCTV cameras, one for every 14 members of public in the UK.
It’s important to note that this study isn’t published by what some would view as a “pressure group” like Privacy International, but by a civil servant – The Information Commissioner.
This isn’t the first time that The Information Commissioner has raised concern over the way privacy is going in the UK. Two years ago he was on record as saying “we are sleepwalking into a surveillance society.”
His view now? “They (surveillance activities) may be necessary or desirable — for example to fight terrorism and serious crime, to improve entitlement and access to public and private services, and to improve health care. But unseen, uncontrolled or excessive surveillance can foster a climate of suspicion and undermine trust.”
He added: “As ever-more information is collected, shared and used, it intrudes into our private space and leads to decisions which directly influence people’s lives.
“Mistakes can also easily be made with serious consequences — false matches and other cases of mistaken identity, inaccurate facts or inferences, suspicions taken as reality, and breaches of security. I am keen to start a debate about where the lines should be drawn. What is acceptable and what is not?”
Comment
For a long time we at Digital-Lifestyles have been aware of the creeping nature of the loss of privacy in the UK, with our concern extending well before the so called “war on terror.” Since this “war,” the erosion increased exponentially in the name of “protecting” us.
It’s hugely refreshing that someone employed by the government – The information commissioner – has released this information. It must be a pretty serious state of affairs. What’s needed now is some real debate to take place (something increasingly rare in the UK in our view), with all points of view given equal prominence. Let’s get away from this ridiculous view that if you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to worry about.
Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO)
Privacy International
2 November, 2006
No Protection For Online Gambling Bosses: Caborn
UK sports minister, Richard Caborn, has said that Britain would not protect online gaming executives from extradition requests if they took Internet bets from countries in which they were illegal. These won’t be welcome words to the people running the gambling companies, who have already taken a hit with the arrest of two execs in the US earlier this year.
Caborn was speaking at a summit, ironically held at the Ascot horse racing course in Berkshire, discussing and agreeing a draft framework of regulation to protect consumers and prevent underage gambling and gambling addiction.
“We now have in place a road map that will lead to better regulated remote gambling across the world,” he said.
It’s been reported that Caborn has plans to make Britain a “world leader” in Internet gambling, when internal Whitehall documents were leaked around the start of October.
(via Reuters)
1 November, 2006
Google Buys JotSpot Wiki Company: The Why
Google has bought Palo Alto, CA-based Wiki/collaborative working company, JotSpot for an undisclosed amount.
With this move Google continues its habit of buying companies that produce high-quality, hosted Web-based application, before the rest of the market realises that they should be getting involved with it. JotSpot was founded in 2004 by Excite.com co-founders Joe Kraus and Graham Spencer.
JotSpot is a king amoung Wikis with a very easy to use AJAX-driven interface, providing incredibly smooth editing. A large leap from where most Wikis are, which are clumsy text command driven beasts that require the mastering of strange syntax’s to get working.
JotSpot was built by some of the best known names in the AJAX business, including Digital-Lifestyles chum Alex Russell, one of the people behind the increasingly popular Dojo toolkit.
With the release of JotSpot 2.6 back in May this year, making “editing is as fluid and natural as reading,” by using AJAX components wrapped into a Dojo widget.
Wikis provide the ability for many people to edit information on Web pages, and generally for the editing to be carried out by anyone. The philosophy behind the Wiki is the sharing of a collective knowledge. The best known example is Wikipedia, where anyone can start a page on Wikipedia about any subject with the knowledge that they have on that subject, this can then later be added to and amended by those who also have supplementary information on it.
Not Just Wikis – JotSpot Tracker
JotSpot isn’t just about Wikis, it’s about sharing information live on the Internet. Released at the end of last year (Dec 2005), JotSpot Tracker give users real-time editing of spreadsheets on the Internet, without the need for Excel.
Watching the video they made available when they integrated it into Salesforce, will give you some idea of the power the idea, and how components like this will make Google the online working company that Microsoft is trying to be with its Windows Live product.
JotSpot
1 November, 2006
Zend To Help PHP Run Faster On Windows
Microsoft have finally woken up to the fact that people aren’t using their Web server product, Internet Information Server.
Un*x-based Web servers rule the roost with the majority of commercial hosting companies, for a couple of reasons.
First is cost – Apache is free, as is Linux that it runs on, where as the Microsoft option requires a copy of Windows Server which retails for around $1,000.
Another is that many of the applications that are run on the Internet, and are freely available, use the programming language, PHP – twenty-two million Web sites currently. PHP is widely know as running slowly on IIS.
Microsoft have now signed a deal with Zend Technology to get PHP running faster, more reliably and increasing its stability. The deal covers Windows Server 2003 and the upcoming version Windows ‘Longhorn.’
To get the PHP working efficiently on their Server products, Microsoft will develop a version of FastCGI them. They will give away.
Microsoft will be excited with the comments of Andi Gutmans, co-founder and chief technology officer at Zend, “Since our preliminary work with Microsoft, we have already seen a better than 100 percent performance gain with some PHP applications on Windows Server 2003.” Good start.
Clearly this is great for Zend, a major mover in the PHP-world, as we suspect that they’ll be getting bundles of money for their troubles. Actual details of the financial arrangements were not disclosed.
As to whether anyone will actually choose to run PHP on Windows Server, when they can get it running for free on Linux – What do you think?
Zend
1 November, 2006
ippr: Give Music Copying Rights To Consumers
The influential UK thinktank, Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr), announced on Sunday that they thought that UK copyright law should be updated to include a “private right to copy,” clause to legalising the personal copying of CDs to portable music players. They also recommend that there should be no extension to the current 50-years copyright term.
At present, people copying music or films from CDs or DVDs that they have bought, to their computers or portable devices for their own use is against the law. According to research carried out in May this year by the National Consumer Council, the majority of British citizens (59%) had no idea that by copying content they were breaking current copyright laws.
There is a upcoming review in the UK, Gowers Review of Intellectual Property, set up by Chancellor Gordon Brown and chaired by Andrew Gowers, which ippr says is an ideal opportunity to carry out the update to the 300 year old copyright law. The ippr believes the update would legalise the actions of millions of Britons without any significant harm to the copyright holders.
The report, Public Innovation: Intellectual property in a digital age, also recommends that:
The Government should reject calls from the UK music industry to extend copyright term for sound recordings beyond the current 50 years. The report argues that there is no evidence to suggest that current protections provided in law are insufficient.
The Government should act to ensure that Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology does not continue to affect the preservation of electronic content by libraries. The British Library should be given a DRM-free copy of any new digital work and libraries should be able to take more than one copy of digital work. It also recommends that circumvention of DRM technology should stop being illegal once copyright has expired.
ippr news release
30 October, 2006
Woz Spills The Beans On Apple
Steve Wozniak, Apple co-founder and genius hardware builder, is currently on a book tour around the UK promoting …. not surprisingly, his book, iWoz. As you probably know, he’s commonly referred to as Woz.
The most revealing one-on-one interview was carried out by Digital-Lifestyles pal Bobbie Johnson of the Guardian.
Woz revealed that what got him started creating computers was the desire to build a videogame, then wanting to get on to Arpanet
it got me into wanting to do it so badly that the only way to do it for free was to build my own device. So I built my own device that could now put words on the TV set from a computer and type of a keyboard.
Woz confirmed that Jobs did rip him off in the early days when Jobs got him to redesign the circuit board for the classic arcade game, Breakout. After Wos had spent 72 hours straight getting the system boards chip count down by around half. Jobs told him he’d give Woz half of what he got, $700, but Jobs had actually received $7,000.
On the iPod and its expected longevity, Woz pins it, “Will the iPod always remain that large? Walkmans seemed to come and then go away. I think Apple’s making the most out of the lifespan.”
Other controversial comments that have come out during the book tour include him thinking that Apple wasted their money when they bought NeXT, as it wasn’t needed at that time. There had been a lot of complaints around that time about the stability of Apple’s OS 7. After some investigation Woz discovered that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has been the cause of the problems.
Woz
27 October, 2006
VideoJug And The Sun Does Video Content Deal
Video howto site VideoJug has signed a deal with UK tabloid, The Sun, to provide ten video clips to them weekly.
This will be a big traffic boost for VideoJug who has been publicly available for the last two and a half months.
The owners of The Sun, Rupert Murdoch, has been embracing video and bring it together with his other publications like MySpace is now well known.
Background on VideoJug VideoJug’s strap line is Life Explained on Film and have been labelled “YouTube for HowTos,” and was launched in August.
Much of the production of the video is carried out in Spain where they aim to produce up to 500 clips per month. They are also soliciting members of the public to upload their videos to add to the pile.
The clips cover from the useful (How to Make a Hangover Juice) to the frivolous (How To Pull A Tablecloth From Beneath A Dinner Service). They can be viewed either from the VideoJug site or downloaded to portable video players like iPod or PSP.
One neat addition to other services is the option to print out instructions.
VideoJug
The Sun
27 October, 2006
Odeo Bought By Founder: Obvious Corp Opens
Odeo, the audio blogging company formed by Evan Williams of Blogger fame, has been bought by one of its founders, Evan Williams.
He’s formed a new company, Obvious Corp, with a number of people he worked with at Odeo, and used his own money to purchase all of the assets Odeo and Twitter, placing them in Obvious Corp.
Evan plans that the organisation will be compact and fast acting. Building a number of Web-based businesses that mutually support each other, passing traffic and users amoung themselves.
Background on Odeo
Starting a couple of years after Google bought Blogger, Odeo provided tools to help those wanting to create podcasts – the intention was to replicate the success of Blogger in the (then) forthcoming world of podcasting.
Evan formed Odeo with what was originally his next door neighbour, Noah Glass, in the days before Blogger was bought. Noah had started a Web service called AudBlog which let people post audio recordings to their blogs using a telephone.
By Evan’s own admission, Odeo lost its way and he’d taken a long, hard look at what he was up to.
Odeo had plenty of money in the bank. We could have held out for a couple years. But we had to look at the risk and the opportunity cost. Just because we could spend the money doesn’t mean we should. Did it seem like continuing on the path we were on would be the best use of both the money and the time of everyone involved? It did not.
Odeo was started with a $5m VC investment from Charles River Ventures and a number of angel investors. It’s understood that they have regained their original investments.
26 October, 2006