Some of his former guests include the likes of Google's SA boss, Stafford Masie, Absa's Executive Manager of Digital Channels, Christo Vrey, MTN's MD Tim Lowry, and numerous other industry experts.

In his last show, Reuben discussed with Jeff Fletcher of IS Labs, an Internet ideas incubator, and Matthew Buckland, the GM of Mail & Guardian Online and a prominent blogger, the perceptions and processes needed to be changed or put in place to deliver an Internet service capable of making a massive difference in South Africa's economy.

There seems to be much pessimism here - Mario Olckers describes how the Internet does not mean big business in SA because it is a reserved luxury for the "elite" (basically, zero presence of PayPal in SA and the lack of credit card use amongst non-high net worth individuals will not substantiate web based business models). Fletcher makes a point that while SA's web market is primarily made up of those sorts, it won't be long before Internet providers extend themselves to capture the potentially enormous market share sitting in the lower LSMs - and I'm guessing it'll probably be in some less than conventional way!

They also looked at how social networking will go niche, which I am definitely inclined to agree with. Whilst the already established sites - FB/MySpace/etc - may have the numbers now, I am convinced that because of our basic human nature, local needs will have to be satisfied. And this is how SA can turn the Internet into the it's own cash cow.

Anyway, I love that Reuben has made a focus of the Internet, specifically for its positioning in South Africa. Its time we highlighted these issues to those beyond the tech circles. Oh, and if you can't tune in on a Friday evening, the podcasts of each show are uploaded shortly after.

Analysis: There'll be plenty of analysts looking at this, and I expect the acquisition will get a lot of buzz just as Powerset did originally when launched.  After all, Microsoft is buying a company which was called a "Google-Killer" by everyone from the New York Times to various esoteric search-technology blogs.  [Update: it's already started on TechCrunch.]

If you haven't used Powerset's first announced product, semantic searching of Wikipedia, check it out on their site and you'll begin to see why there's been so much interest in their technical approach. I've know founder Barney Pell for a while now, and we've mused about the possibilities of adding Powerset's strengths to Microsoft's global scale.  The more I played with PowerLabs, before its full launch, the more I was convinced of its power.

When I was working at DIA, one of our dreams was a semantically enabled intelligence enterprise. IC analysts and advanced users within any other enterprise vertical are going to find some very interesting capabilities finally possible when Powerset technology is wedded to the FAST search software already being deployed at web scale.

But that's only the beginning. 

I knew of Microsoft's long history in semantic research, dating back to the MindNet days and before. Microsoft Research has been ramping up our investment in semantic approaches for a while now, because we see enormous benefit in embedding semantic capability within the billions of web services and software services we're planning, in the "software plus services" plan. 

Keep in mind:

1. We've already been delving deeply into graph and subgraph relationships among information and documents at web scale (see "Web Projections: Learning from Contextual Subgraph Projections of the Web," 2007).
2. We've added to that some ambitious partnerships with the brightest minds in academic and commercial semantic research, with our program "Beyond Search: Semantic Computing and Internet Economics," launched late last year "to improve the ways in which the information seeker finds, shares, discovers information." (Check out the impressive list of projects at the link.)
3. Semantic understanding will only enhance the big vision - and Craig Mundie describes that this way: "We tend to believe that there will continue to accrue a large amount of computational capability in the literally billions of intelligent gadgets and devices."  Software on those billions of devices will coordinate and interact with a web-scale "services layer" of cloud-supplied intelligence.  One avenue of that activity is imagined in last year's Microsoft Research-sponsored paper on "Semantic Reality: Connecting the Real and Virtual World."  That paper describes SR as integrating "a large body of work in sensor networks, embedded systems, ambient intelligence, networking, distributed systems, distributed information systems, artificial intelligence, software engineering, social networking and collaboration, and Semantic Web."

Simple but surprisingly powerful examples are already appearing, as in the Microsoft Research "Blogosphere Early Warning System" or BLEWS, which was unveiled in prototype at the 2008 TechFest and may go live during this presidential election. Here's a screenshot of BLEWS; intelligence analysts can think of it as an advanced OSINT tool, consuming web-scale social media and blog content. 

BLEWS semantically identifies political blogposts, ascribing a left-leaning or right-leaning interpretation.  it then extracts and mines all links to news articles, applies an "emotional charge" classifier and a de-duplication algorithm to related articles, and finally produces a visualization of the volume and semantic relationship of the articles in near-real-time.  Nifty!

A personal disclosure: my happiness at the Powerset acquisition isn't just because of the technology it brings to Microsoft. In fact, when I was preparing to leave government service last year, I was approached by the startup about their position of VP of Engineering.  I had some fascinating discussions and love the company, the technology, and Barney Pell - but I felt I was a better fit as a generalist at Microsoft. 

Well, what do you know - happy endings!  E pluribus unum :-)

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Stephen spoke about the great attraction and value from using social networking tools to connect to, and collaborate with "...a vastly greater number of people who think like me, do work like me, like the same things I like, than I ever could before."

Even though some or many of these ties to people - spread over the world - may be weak ties, they are still accessible. These people help to you solve problems, innovate, inform or share knowledge about events and activities you either would not have heard about, or received via an institutional filter some time hence.

Social networking is the means to create or add value in the knowledge economy and to seek new opportunities.The culture is participatory, a culture where everything is 'interwingled'. I feel this is something that Asian's get immediately by the way...a sense of interconnectedness...which is why social networking is so popular in countries such as China and India.

In my six years of continuously scanning the horizon and thinking about the future, I've had some experience of 'strategic conversations' with like-minded people (particularly in Vision 20/20: Future Scenarios for the Communications Industry). That experience triggered my interest in knowledge sharing and knowledge creation. I know that other futures thinkers that have a similar passion about the value in networking with people (Ross Dawson, Richard Hames and Stephen Collins, to mention just three...there are many more). The rise of social networking - particularly in the last two years - has really lowered the barriers to experiencing strategic conversations.

An insight that we developed from Vision 20/20 was 'networked regulation'. Interestingly, there are now signs of this perception taking hold...and again, it's to do with the Internet. In his closing remarks at the OECD Ministerial in Seoul last week, Secretary-General Angel Gurria said, "We need to enhance support for informal networks that link authorities and stakeholders in a flexible manner that is responsive to the dynamism of the issues...A more decentralised, networked approach to policy formation for the Internet Economy that includes active participation of stakeholders needs to be the norm" (my italics). Indeed, the OECD Future of the Internet Economy project had a useful forum on...The Participative Web. Promising signs ahead.

Stephen's presentation was a reminder to me is that I must participate...more actively! Let's hope the message continues to sink in.

The full text of the declaration is accessible here, and also set out below as full text paragraphs.

Do you have any comments?

June 2008 - The Civil Society-TUAC Seoul Declaration

CIVIL SOCIETY - TUAC
THE SEOUL DECLARATION TO THE OECD MINISTERIAL CONFERENCE
ON THE FUTURE OF THE INTERNET ECONOMY

Seoul, Korea
16 June 2008

This gathering of civil society organizations and organized labor at the OECD Ministerial Conference on the Future of the Internet Economy provides a unique opportunity to bring to the attention of the OECD Ministers assembled and the OECD member countries the concerns and aspirations of people around the globe, those who are on the Internet and those who are not.

We thank the OECD and the Government of Korea for the opportunity to organize a civil society and labor event and to participate in the OECD Ministerial Conference. Civil society and labor together prepared a paper for the OECD and organized a conference "Making the future of the Internet work for citizens, consumers and workers." A wide range of organizations participated in this effort, and this Declaration builds on its results.

A BROAD FRAMEWORK FOR THE FUTURE OF THE INTERNET ECONOMY
The policy goals for the Future Internet Economy should be considered within the broader framework of protection of human rights, the promotion of democratic institutions, access to information, and the provision of affordable and non-discriminatory access to advanced communication networks and services. Compliance with international human rights standards and respect for the rule of law, as well as effective human rights protection, must be the baseline for assessing global information society policies. Economic growth should be for the many and not the few. The Internet should be available to all. We therefore call attention of the OECD to Ministers to the following issues and we make the following recommendations:

• Freedom of expression. Freedom of expression is being violated around the globe by state censorship and by more subtle measures such as content filtering, privatized censorship and restrictions on so-called 'harmful content'. We urge the OECD to defend freedom of expression and to oppose mandated filtering, censorship of Internet content, and criminalization of content that is protected under international freedom of expression standards.
• Protection of Privacy and Transparency. We reaffirm our support for the OECD Privacy Guidelines as a fundamental policy instrument setting out minimal requirements for the transborder flow of personal data. We recommend adoption of the recent policy guidance on RFID and Online Identity Theft as Council Recommendations. We call on OECD countries to adopt and enforce data protection laws covering all sectors, both online and offline, and to establish international data protection standards that are legally enforceable. We further urge member states to ensure fairness, transparency, and accountability for all data processing for border security, identification, and decision-making concerning individuals.
• Consumer Protection. Trust and confidence are critical to the success of the Internet economy. The OECD should ensure that consumer protection laws are properly enforced and cover digital products to the same extent that other consumer goods and services are covered. We recommend that the OECD adopt the policy proposals on Empowering Consumers in Communications Services and in Mobile Commerce as Council Recommendations, and that the OECD member countries implement these recommendations. We support the OECD's efforts to facilitate cross- border enforcement of anti-spam laws and to develop effective online dispute resolution mechanisms.
• Employment, Decent Work and Skills. We recommend that OECD Member countries promote learning and training opportunities for workers and address the technological and organizational change in the workplace. We further urge the OECD to lower the carbon footprint of the ICT industry and to promote compliance with core labor standards and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises.
• Promotion of Access to Knowledge. We support open access to government-funded scientific and scholarly works and endorse the OECD Principles and Guidelines for Access to Research Data. We support the OECD Recommendation for Enhanced Access and More Effective Use of Public Information. OECD countries should oppose extensions of copyright terms and private ownership of essential knowledge and cultural information that can be made available on the Internet. We recommend that the OECD undertake a study on the importance of copyright exceptions for education, libraries and archives, the disability community, and new innovative services.
• Internet Governance. Internet governance structures should reflect democratic values and be transparent and publicly accountable to users. Global Internet policymaking should involve equal participation of all people, countries, and stakeholders. We call upon the OECD member states to support the Internet Governance Forum and to promote the multi- stakeholder process of the World Summit on the Information Society.
• Promotion of Open Standards and Net Neutrality. Standards-making processes should be open and should encourage competition. This promotes innovation and development. We support the procurement policies that promote open standards, open data formats, and free and open software. We further recommend that the OECD Member Countries oppose discrimination by network providers against particular applications, devices, or content and preserve the Internet's role in fostering innovation, economic growth, and democratic communication.
• Balanced Intellectual Property Policies. We urge the OECD member countries to maintain a balanced framework for intellectual property protection that is least intrusive to personal privacy, least restrictive for the development of new technologies, and that promotes creativity, innovation, and learning. We support the OECD Policy Guidance for Digital Content. OECD countries should oppose proposals that would deny individuals access to all Internet services and opportunities based on alleged copyright infringement. We are also concerned about the secrecy of the "Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement" (ACTA) treaty process and the possibility of policies that may limit legitimate business activity, the participative web, and e-government service delivery.
• Support for Pluralistic Media. The Internet is a universal platform for innovation, growth, and the ability of people to express and share their views. New forms of media and new applications are emerging that challenge old paradigms and enable broader public participation. At the same time, dominant Internet firms are moving to consolidate their control over the Internet. It is vitally important for the OECD to develop a better understanding of the challenge industry consolidations pose to the open Internet. The OECD Policy Guidance on Convergence and Next Generation Networks provides a basis this work.
• Inclusive Digital Society. The Internet should be accessible to all. OECD member countries should ensure that all residents have the means to access the Internet and should provide public Internet access, training and support. Particular attention should be paid to rural, remote and aboriginal populations, as well as the disability community.
• Cultural Diversity. We support the efforts of the OECD to promote access to the full range of the world's cultures and to ensure that the Internet economy reflects the true diversity of language, art, science, and literature in our world. The deployment of International Domain Names should be a priority.

PARTICIPATION OF CIVIL SOCIETY AND LABOUR
This participation of civil society and organized labor reaffirms the role of all stakeholders in the Future of the Internet Economy. Now it is time to formalize this process.

In 1998 civil society and labor urged the OECD Ministerial Conference in Ottawa to establish an Advisory Council, similar to the Business Industry Advisory Committee (BIAC) for business and the Trade Union Advisory Committee (TUAC) for labor. We said that this new Advisory Council should include civil society groups in such fields as human rights and democracy, privacy and data protection, consumer protection, and access to information and knowledge.

We urge the OECD to establish now the Civil Society Advisory Committee. The creation of an OECD Civil Society Advisory Committee is necessary to help realize the democratic goals of inclusion, participation, transparency and accountability at the OECD.

The OECD offers an important forum for the discussion of policies concerning the future of the Internet. We welcome this dialogue and urge the Ministers and members countries of the OECD to fully engage civil society and labor organizations within their own countries.

In all decisions related to the Internet economy, we advise the OECD Ministers and the members countries to give particular attention to those indicators concerning literacy, education, and health. The success of the Internet Economy should be measured by the well-being of citizens, and not simply the extent of technology diffusion.

***

The real human ingenuity of Mechanical Turk shines in the novel ways that companies and workers use it to get tasks done efficiently. CastingWords is a transcription service built entirely on the work of Mechanical Turk transcribers and editors. With a little code, plus the turkers, it has succeeded in basically automating the process. The company charges its customers from 42 cents a minute for podcast transcription to 75 cents a minute for other audio. CastingWords pays Mechanical Turk workers as little as 19 cents a minute for transcription. If a transcription job is posted on Mechanical Turk for a couple of hours at the rate of 19 cents a minute, and no worker has taken on the project, the software simply assumes the price is too low and starts raising it.

After a transcription assignment is accepted by a worker, and completed, it goes back out on Mturk.com for quality assurance, where another worker is paid a few cents to verify that it's a faithful transcript of the audio. Then, the transcript goes back on Mturk.com a third time for editing, and even a fourth time for a quality assurance check. "It's been terribly useful for us," says Nathan McFarland of Seattle, one of the co-founders of CastingWords. Transcription is the type of relatively steady task that keeps turkers with good ears who are fast typists coming back. "There are people who have been with us for months, and they're not leaving," says McFarland.

One of those workers is Kristy Milland, 27, a mother of one who runs an at-home day care in Toronto, as well as a Web site called RealityBBQ about the reality TV show "Big Brother." "I have a lot of free time basically sitting at the computer while the kids play," she says. Among the work she does is editing and quality assurance for CastingWords, but not transcription, because she has tendinitis. When Mturk.com first began, Milland would churn through 3-cent HITs. (That's "human intelligence tasks," Turker lingo for jobs.) Amazon was paying turkers to make sure that photos of businesses used on its A9 site, a local search engine, matched the actual businesses listed, a task a computer can't do. In an eight-hour day, when she didn't have the kids to watch, Milland could go through 1,000 photos, making a cool $30.

Lately, she's found a way to goose her earnings by competing for bonuses. A number of service companies use Mechanical Turk to do a "human augmented search." Say you're in a sports bar and having an argument about whether Roger Clemens has ever thrown a no-hitter. You can end the debate once and for all with a call to one of the services, which instantly posts the question on Mechanical Turk. Turkers then surf the Web and generally earn 2 cents for each answer.

Back in the sports bar, when you get the answer -- "Clemens has never pitched a no-hitter" -- you can rate the answer as great, good, lame or junk. Answers deemed "lame" or "junk" are rejected and the worker is not paid. If you don't rate the answer at all, the worker is automatically paid his or her 2 cents after seven days. Turkers who get the most "great" votes in a week get bonuses of as much as $75. In a good week, Milland can answer 100 research questions, making all of $2, but scoring one of those lucrative performance bonuses, she says, makes the search worthwhile.

The trivia pursuits are so competitive that they're snatched up by turkers within a minute of being posted. So Milland has set up software to notify her whenever a new question shows up on Mechanical Turk, so she can be the first to grab it. Plus, she's armed her Web browser with links to her top 100 reference sites so she can answer the questions as efficiently and accurately as possible. Turkers can choose to be paid in Amazon credit, making it easy to shop at the company store. Just the other day, Milland ordered $600 worth of DVDs and books for her family, as well as prizes for contests on her RealityBBQ. "It still doesn't add up to a lot of money per hour, but if I'm sitting there watching TV anyway, it's more than I'd make just sitting there," she says.

Milland's main beef with Mturk.com is that there's no way to complain if a company rips her off by refusing to pay for good, accurate work. "Amazon basically says, tough, they can reject what they want," she says. "There's no recourse." (Word of bad-apple companies, however, spreads fast on turker forums.) Milland would also like to see more work and more companies on Mturk.com. When the site first launched there was more to do, she says. These days it feels as if there are fewer opportunities and too many workers competing for them.

Of course, for all its rhetoric about artificial intelligence, Amazon did not launch Mechanical Turk for the good of science. For every task a worker completes for another company, the retailer collects a 10 percent fee from that company. For cheap HITs that pay just a penny, Amazon charges the company half a cent per HIT. Companies need not know the real name, much less the address or Social Security number, of turkers. Unless a worker earns more than $600 from a given company, the business has no obligation to issue the worker a tax form, or report the earnings to the Internal Revenue Service. Few workers cross that $600 threshold with any one company. Yet workers are required to report the money they earn on Mturk.com to the IRS as income -- yes, even the $1.45 I made -- to be taxed at the high rates of the self-employed. There's no chance that a worker might land a full-time job with a company through Mechanical Turk, since it's expressly forbidden in the site's "participation agreement," which requires workers to submit all work through the site, and not directly to the requester.

To a labor activist like Marcus Courtney of WashTech, a tech workers union, the whole arrangement represents a dystopian vision of a virtual sweatshop. "What Amazon is trying to do is create the virtual day laborer hiring hall on the global scale to bid down wage rates to the advantage of the employer," he says. "Here you have a major global corporation, based in the United States, that's showing the dark side of globalization. If this is Jeff Bezos' vision of the future of work, I think that's a pretty scary vision, and we should be paying attention to that."

Rebecca Smith, a lawyer for the National Employment Law Project, seconds that. "The creativity of business in avoiding its responsibility to workers never ceases to astound," she says dryly. "It's day labor in the virtual world." Smith sees Mechanical Turk as just another scheme by companies to classify workers as independent contractors to avoid paying them minimum wage and overtime, complying with non-discrimination laws, and being forced to carry unemployment insurance and workers compensation. "It's an example of cyberspace overtaking a country's labor laws," she says. Needless to say, the turkers don't see it that way.

Read more: Mechanical Turk and 12,000 drawings of sheep facing left

***

If you want a glimpse of the future of work in the broadband age, you can find it, of all places, on MTV's website. Their recent gaming news segment, "Is Mining Virtual Gold Exploitative?" features the first video footage shot inside Chinese gold farms, those gray market companies which collect and sell virtual gold (primarily from World of Warcraft) to wealthier gamers in the developed world.

Drawing from an fascinating upcoming documentary by UC San Diego grad student Ge Jin, the MTV segment features interviews with workers and managers of several gold farms, which resemble a cross between a 24 hour LAN party and a very shabby college dorm. By the segment’s estimate, an astounding half million Chinese now make a living - about $100 a month - from the acquisition and sale of WoW gold to US and EU gamers. Why is this is the future of work online? Consider the numbers, youth, and low wages of the gold farmers, and the growing interest in outsourcing tasks online. It's easy to see how the Chinese farmers of Warcraft might evolve into the blue collar workers of the Internet economy.

MTV producer Matt Sunbulli put us in touch with Ge Jin, and we asked him about this phenomenon, and sought his own thoughts on its relation to the future of work online.

Q: How did you locate these gold farms?

A: I have a friend who had been operating a gold farms in Shanghai since 2003. So his gold farm is the first one I visited. My friend’s gold farm closed in 2005, so did most gold farms in Shanghai. Many of them migrated to smaller cities with lower housing and human resource costs.

So I contacted other gold farms through my friend’s old network… I was lucky enough to find several gold farms that were open to me in Jinhua, Nanjin, Lishui and Hangzhou. Again I was lucky to win their trust. It’s probably because I’m from the same background as many gaming workers (many gold farm owners were former gaming workers.)

Q: Were gold farmers afraid the Chinese government would shut them down?

A: The ones that allowed me to film there were not afraid because they are located in cities where local goverments are tolerant of this industry. There is no national policy regulating this new industry yet, so it’s up to the local governments to judge.

Most local governments have no motive to shut down these gold farms, as they reduce unemployment and even reduce the crime rate by reducing unemployed male youth on the street. Some gold farms refused my visit because they don’t want to pay tax and choose to operate underground, or they are worried that their labor practice is problematic…

Q: What does WoW gold farming suggest about the future of work?

A: I think these gold farms indicate that the game platform has the potential to engage more people in Internet-driven economy. The gaming workers in China don’t have skills like English, software or graphic design to participate in other forms of Internet-driven work, but they can communicate and navigate in a 3D game world whose tools and routines they are familiar with… So if more social and economic activities happen in an accessible 3D game world, people who don’t have access to other culture capital but gaming knowledge will be more likely to be included in global interaction.

Read more: Mechanical Turk: "I make $1.45 a week and I love it"

Γιατί τόσος πόλεμος άραγε ανάμεσα στην Microsoft, την Google και την Yahoo για την αγορά γνωστών ιστοσελίδων; Από πού απορρέουν τα κίνητρα τους και γιατί ξοδεύονται τόσα λεφτά; Αξίζουν τα λεφτά που δίνονται η μήπως πρόκειται για μια νέα φούσκα των .com; Πρόκειται για σοβαρές μακροχρόνιες επενδύσεις ή αποφάσεις στηριζόμενες απλά στην τάση της αγοράς;  Τρείς νεαροί γύρω στα 20 αποφάσισαν ένα βράδυ μετά από ένα πάρτι να δημιουργήσουνε μια ιστοσελίδα, με το όνομα youtube, ώστε να μπορούν οι χρήστες του διαδικτύου να φορτώνουνε τα βίντεο τους. Με την εξάπλωση των βίντεο και τις ταχύτητες μεταφοράς δεδομένων να αυξάνονται η ιστοσελίδα έφθασε τα 100 εκατομμύρια παρουσίασης βίντεο κλιπ την μέρα και 73 εκατομμύρια επισκέπτες τον μήνα.

Στις 9 Οκτωβρίου του 2006 η ιστοσελίδα πωλήθηκε στην Google για 1.65 δις δολάρια. Προηγήθηκε το 2005 η αγορά του Myspace από το News Corporation του Ρούπερτ Μέρντοχ με 585 εκατομμύρια δολάρια. Είχαμε ακόμα την αγορά του Skype από την Ebay για 2.6 δις δολάρια ενώ ήρθε πρόσφατα και η αγορά 1.6% του facebook.com από την Microsoft για 240 εκατομμύρια δολάρια. Το ποσό αυτό θα βοηθήσει τα αναπτυξιακά πλάνα του facebook του οποίου ο δημιουργός Μάρκ Ζούκερμπεργκ είχε απορρίψει πρόταση για εξαγορά από την Yahoo για 1 δις δολάρια. Ο Ζούκερμπεργκ είχε δημιουργήσει το facebook καταρχάς για το πανεπιστήμιο του Harvard όπου φοιτούσε με σκοπό την επικοινωνία μεταξύ των φοιτητών. Σήμερα το facebook.com έχει 50 εκατομμύρια ενεργούς χρήστες.  

Οι βασικοί λόγοι για τις εξαγορές αυτές
Μερίδιο αγοράς

Ο πρώτος λόγος βέβαια για τις κινήσεις αυτές είναι το μερίδιο αγοράς και η δυνατότητας προσέγγισης τεράστιου αριθμού χρηστών. Όταν μιλάμε για 70 εκατομμύρια ενεργούς χρήστες του myspace.com, 50 εκατομμύρια του facebook.com, 73 εκατομμύρια του youtube.com τότε αντιλαμβανόμαστε πως το διαδίκτυο είναι πλέον το καλύτερο εργαλείο για να έχει πρόσβαση μια εταιρεία σε μεγέθη αγοράς που σε άλλες εποχές θα ήταν εφικτό μόνο σε σενάριο επιστημονικής φαντασίας.  

Διαφήμιση
Δεύτερος λόγος είναι η διαφήμιση. Όλες οι παραπάνω εταιρείες έχουν τα δικά του διαφημιστικά δίκτυα. Έχοντας την δυνατότητα να προσεγγίσεις τέτοιους αριθμούς ανθρώπων και έτοιμη την υποδομή προώθησης και διαφήμισης τότε εδραιώνεις την θέση σου στους διαφημιστικούς προϋπολογισμούς κυρίως των μεγάλων εταιρειών, αυξάνοντας το κόστος των διαφημίσεων ενώ παράλληλα δημιουργούνται νέες μέθοδοι διαφήμισης. Μην ξεχνάτε πως το facebook, το myspace, το youtube είναι ουσιαστικά ιστοσελίδες με κοινωνικό χαρακτήρα, φέρνοντας ανθρώπους με κοινά ενδιαφέροντα κοντά. Αυτά τα ενδιαφέροντα είναι καταχωρημένα σε κεντρικό σύστημα όπου εδώ αρχίζει να λειτουργεί στην ουσία το θέμα διαφήμιση, προωθώντας στον κάθε χρήστη διαφήμιση ανάλογα με τα ενδιαφέροντα του.  

Cross selling

Ένας τρίτος λόγος είναι το λεγόμενο cross-selling. Για παράδειγμα ο Ρούπερτ Μέρντοχ ανέφερε μετά την εξαγορά του myspace πως σκοπό είχε να προωθήσει κανάλια και ειδήσεις από το Fox News προς τους χρήστες του myspace. H Microsoft από την άλλη με το facebook, μπορεί εύκολα με ένα μήνυμα σε 50 εκατομμύρια χρήστες να πωλήσει το νέο της πρόγραμμα ασφαλείας ή να ωθήσει τους χρήστες να κατεβάσουν το νέο messenger. H Google μέσω του youtube εύκολα μπορεί να προωθήσει το διαφημιστικό της δίκτυο σε πάνω από 70 εκατομμύρια χρήστες. 

Συνέργειες και «απορρόφηση» τεχνογνωσίας

Άλλος λόγος είναι οι στρατηγικές συνέργειες και η «απορρόφηση» τεχνογνωσίας. Ο χρόνος που θα χρειαζόταν η Microsoft για παράδειγμα να αρχίσει το δικό της facebook ή η Google το δικό της Youtube θα ήταν μεγάλος αν υπολογίσουμε την εφαρμογή και τις δοκιμές για μια νέα τεχνολογία καθώς και την εμπειρία που θα έπρεπε να υπάρχει αλλά και το ρίσκο επιτυχίας. Με το να εξαγοράσουν έτοιμα τα συστήματα έχουν μεν επενδύσει μεγάλα ποσά αλλά έχουν έτοιμα πετυχημένα μοντέλα αποφεύγοντας το ρίσκο, έτοιμο μεγάλο αριθμό χρηστών, τεχνογνωσία και εμπειρία των δημιουργών και των ομάδων προγραμματιστών κερδίζοντας με αυτό τον τρόπο και νέα γνώση για μελλοντικές αναπτύξεις.  

Νέα φούσκα η σοβαρή επένδυση;

Πολλά ειπώθηκαν από αναλυτές για το μέγεθος αυτών των επενδύσεων και κατά πόσο είναι σοβαρές και δεν πρόκειται να φέρουν μια νέα φούσκα όπως το 2000. Για να το διαπιστώσουμε αυτό θα πρέπει να δούμε τι συνέβηκε από το 1998-2000 και να δούμε κατά πόσο βρίσκουμε τα ίδια δεδομένα και σήμερα.  Τότε με την εξάπλωση του διαδικτύου και τις νέες τεχνολογίες ανάπτυξης ιστοσελίδων υπήρξε ένας άκρατος ενθουσιασμός  που έφερε μια έκρηξη από ιδέες. Καθημερινά και μια νέα ιστοσελίδα έκανε την εμφάνιση της με σκοπό να κατακτήσει το διαδίκτυο. Οι δημιουργοί αυτών των ιστοσελίδων προσέγγιζαν επιχειρηματίες οι οποίοι παρασύρονταν από την ιδέα επένδυσης στην νέα αυτή τεχνολογία και τις δυνατότητες της, επενδύοντας μέσω κεφαλαίων αναπτυξιακού χαρακτήρα ή επιχειρηματικών συμμετοχών (venture capitals).  

Το οικονομικό περιβάλλον τότε και τα χαμηλά επιτόκια βοήθησαν στην αύξηση κεφαλαίου ενώ μέσω των δημόσιων προσφορών οι εταιρείες είχαν την ευκαιρία για ακόμη μεγαλύτερη εισροή κεφαλαίου. Οι επενδύτες από την άλλη στην ουσία επένδυαν σε προοπτική αφού οι περισσότερες εταιρείες δεν είχαν καταγράψει καν οποιαδήποτε εισοδήματα πόσο μάλλον κέρδη. Επιπλέον το αφελέστατο επιχειρηματικό μοντέλο που εφαρμοζόταν τότε από τις περισσότερες εταιρείες, η φιλοσοφία του "Get large or get lost", τα τεράστια αχρείαστα έξοδα εντυπωσιασμού σε γραφεία και κτίρια, ταξίδια αναψυχής υπαλλήλων, και τα μεγάλα ποσά σε διαφημίσεις, όλα αυτά στηριζόμενα μόνο και μόνο στην προοπτική έφεραν το σπάσιμο της φούσκας.

Θα αναφέρω το παράδειγμα των διαφημίσεων στο  μεγαλύτερο αθλητικό γεγονός των ΗΠΑ, το Super bowl. Στο Super Bowl XXXIV τον Ιανουάριο του 2000, 70 εταιρείες .com πλήρωσαν από 2 εκατομμύρια δολάρια η μία για σποτ των 30 δευτερολέπτων. Τον επόμενο χρόνο μόνο 3 τέτοιες εταιρείες διαφήμισαν. Μέσα σε όλα αυτά ήρθε και η Κεντρική Ομοσπονδιακή Τράπεζα (Federal Reserve) να αυξήσει τα επιτόκια έξι φορές μέσα σε ένα χρόνο.  Τα δεδομένα σήμερα είναι διαφορετικά αφού οι εταιρείες που επενδύουν διαθέτουν πρώτα από όλα τα κεφαλαιουχικά αποθεματικά για τέτοιες επενδύσεις, σωστό επιχειρηματικό μοντέλο με το οποίο άντεξαν και επέζησαν κατά την διάρκεια της φούσκας ενώ το πιο σημαντικό οι εταιρείες στις οποίες επενδύουν έχουν ήδη καταγράψει κέρδη και έχουν ψηλή αξία.

Πέραν τούτο επενδύουν στο τι υπάρχει σήμερα σαν δεδομένο στην τεχνολογία και όχι στο τι μπορεί να έρθει. Βέβαια υπάρχει ένας άλλος παράγοντας που έχει να κάνει με την νομική πλευρά και λειτουργία των ιστοσελίδων αυτών όπως για παράδειγμα δικαιώματα χρήσης βίντεο και εικόνας, προσωπικά στοιχεία χρηστών και πως χρησιμοποιούνται αυτά. Η νομική πτυχή του θέματος είναι η μόνη ίσως που αυτή την στιγμή θα μπορούσε να φέρει ανατροπές.  

Amazon.com is already reflecting Five-Star reviews on this brand-new book, published in January 2008.

Visit Amazon.com and read the reviews. Visit www.Website411Book.com to learn more about the book, and to register for Webinars by Tom Elliott.

Offering historical photograph collections through Flickr gives the Library of Congress a welcome opportunity to share some of our most popular images with a new visual community.

We invite you to tag and comment on the photos, and we also welcome identifying information—many of these old photos came to us with scanty descriptions!

To view the photos on Flickr, go to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/Library_of_Congress. You do not need a Flickr account to view the images; you would need to sign up for a free account to add comments or tags.

We are offering two sets of digitized photos: the 1,600 color images from the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information and about 1,500 images from the George Grantham Bain News Service.

Hattip: JoeDuck

A Tipping Point For MP3s

(waaaay down the article we find this little nugget of good news)

... mass merchant Wal-Mart [is] alerting WMG and Sony BMG that it will pull their music files in the Windows Media Audio format from walmart.com some time between mid-December and mid-January, if the labels haven't yet provided the music in MP3 format.

Good news!

Update: Wal-Mart ... Wall-Mart ... what can I say? I'm not fixing it, go ahead and laugh all you want.

Update: This post was picked up by SlashDot. Quite a discussion went on over there.

http://techdirt.com/articles/20071121/083858.shtml

and J. Lanier

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/20/opinion/20lanier.html?_r=2&ref=opinion&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

 from New York Times talk about internet strategy and how to create revenue in the web.

There is a trade off between generating revenues with free content and ads  on the one side, and on the other side micropayment which are on the radar since years but are still not established.

In my opinion micropayments are not going to succeed in the end due to the several possibilities getting free content on the web. Also if all companies start introducing micropayments for the offering or in general for information it would be everytime an attraction for a vendor to deviate from this position and building a monopoly in a market niche with free ad based business model.

So if ad based models for virtual content is the future all real products should get more expensive. You can see this in music business. Since napster started 10 years ago the revenues from selling cds break down and so the price for attending a concert increases every year. Also DRM is no final solution. As you could see Amazon uses this to attack itunes etc. with lower prices and without DRM.

If this art of acting in the business is comparable to other solution we are going to see increasing prices for real products in the future. The revenue from these products are athwart subventions for the freee information in the net due to the thing, that the costs of marketing in the web and so the free web inforamtion have to be paid with this revenues. So there is a significant dependancen between survival of the internet companies which offer free content and traditional business. Also consulting companies, and in general, service companies could benefit because they are not directly involved in this business and could create higher margins with lower costs of prodcution and selling their products. Enough for the morning. Time for lunch...

What will you do?

LA Times has more

hattip: LGF

Microsoft Research is pleased to announce a new worldwide Request for Proposals (RFP):  Beyond Search – Semantic Computing and Internet Economics. For full details, guidelines, and instructions, please visit http://research.microsoft.com/ur/us/fundingopps/RFPs/BeyondSearch_RFP.aspx

This Request for Proposals is done in partnership with Microsoft adCenter in support of its collaboration with the academic research community. The RFP due date is November 1, 2007, 5pm PDT (-8 UTC/GMT)

Awards
The total amount available under this request for proposals (RFP) is $1,000,000. Microsoft anticipates making approximately 20 awards averaging $50,000, with a maximum of $100,000 for any single award.

RFP highlights
To advance academic research and publication in the area of Internet Research and, in particular in data mining, information finding, information supply, and internet economics, Microsoft intends to make available to the RFP awardees a Microsoft adCenter Search query log excerpt with 100 million search queries along with ad click logs sampled over a few months, and a Live Search query log excerpt with 15 million search queries with per-query search result click-throughs. In addition, Microsoft adCenter will provide advertiser accounts to all winners.

This RFP has two tracks:
Track 1 – Semantic Computing
Track 2 – Internet Economics
Microsoft encourages proposals for either track which describe innovative research using the adCenter, Live Search, and SDK assets in bold, novel, and unconventional approaches to further Internet Research and related technologies, including interdisciplinary research.

AUS, NZ or Singapore applicants, please CC:  in your application so that I can know who in these region respond to this RFP.

The "Zhelatin gang"—named after the trojan it installed—was responsible for what started out as the "storm worm." First spotted earlier this year, the spread of the "storm worm" started via e-mails purporting to provide information on some dangerous storms in Europe at the close of January.

But the Zhelatin is no longer your typical worm beastie ... The worm has now been modified to use an infected users own Blog to spread itself.

It's not just blogspam we're talking about here, the little sucker actually writes a blog post to the victim's blog all by it's own bad little self, in order to lure your unsuspecting readers to an infection site. More from ARS Technica:

...the worm has now switched its focus to blogs. Unlike the typical "comment spam" that many of us have grown used to on our personal blogs, the worm is actually getting into people's Blogspot accounts and creating new blog posts with links to the trojan.

This worm has been reported to find it's way through multiple hardware email filters and breeze passed almost every AV engine at one time or another in it's various iterations only to be finally stopped by the firewall (which you should have already set up on workstations and which theoretically should be the last resort). Decent firewall software packages are usually able to stop the actual infected file from performing it's processing.

The funny part about workstation firewalls catching the worm's rogue processing is when users inevitably click "Yes" to allow the process and also check the "Do Not Ask Again" check box.

ARS Technica estimates that there could be as many as 10 million Zhelatin gang bots out there:

Just how many computers are part of the botnet is anyone's guess, but estimates from some security firms are reaching as high as 10 million. Just last June the FBI warned that it had discovered more than a million PCs in a botnet. This looks to be just the tip of the iceberg.

IMHO This is one of the most serious threats to the IT community in a number of years. 10 million bots can do a lot of damage in a lot of ways ... in a hurry.

Check out this video showing 24 hours monitoring the initial infection:

* Graphic above from Computer Knowledge’s description of how a botnet works.

Video courtesy of F-Secure Security Labs YouTube account.

Finnish court rules CSS protection used in DVDs “ineffective”

In an unanimous decision released today, Helsinki District Court ruled that Content Scrambling System (CSS) used in DVD movies is “ineffective”. The decision is the first in Europe to interpret new copyright law amendments that ban the circumvention of “effective technological measures”.

Read the rest here...

It looks like the Helsinki District Court agrees with me regarding the question of whether CSS ever was any type of "Copy Protection" at all.

In a post on February 13th, 2007 I said the following:

arnezami claims to have found it [the “processing key” used to decrypt the DRM on all HD DVD and Blu-Ray Disc films] by simply watching his computer memory, where the secret code simply appeared. So if the code is sitting there in memory, does this even count as a “Hack”?

I think not.

What this means to me is that there never was any real “copy protection” on HD-DVD or Blu-Ray at all. Thus bringing into question whether ACCS is enforceable under the DMCA law.
There is no reverse engineering going on here, the user is simply reading his computers memory for freely available, unencrypted information.

AACS marketers should however be heartily congratulated for harvesting millions from their "marks" (the stupid media companies). AACS always was and still is a masterful example of the big con.

What is the AACS-LA's argument? In its takedown letters, the AACS-LA claims that hosting the key violates the DMCA's ban on trafficking in circumvention devices. The DMCA provides that:
No person shall ... offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof that that -

(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;

(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or

(C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.

The AACS-LA presumably would argue that the key is a "component" or "part" of a "technology" that circumvents AACS. Moreover, AACS-LA would likely argue that the key was "primarily ... produced" to circumvent AACS, that is has no other commercially significant purpose, and that it is being "marketed" for use in a circumvention technology. The takedown letters seem to take the position that both the poster and the hosting provider are engaged in "trafficking."

The AACS-LA will also doubtless point to the DMCA cases brought against 2600 magazine for posting the DeCSS code back in 2000 (EFF was counsel to the defendant). In that case, both the district court and court of appeals concluded that posting DeCSS to a website violated the DMCA.

Read it all.

"the key is a "component" or "part" of a "technology" that circumvents AACS."
Questionable, as the key is freely readable in plain text residing in your computer's RAM when you insert a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray Disk.

"the key was "primarily ... produced" to circumvent AACS, that is has no other commercially significant purpose, and that it is being "marketed" for use in a circumvention technology."

The key was "primarily ... produced" to playback legally obtained and owned HD content. It was later discovered sitting in RAM with no obfuscation whatsoever, from there it was copied and pasted to various documents around the tubes of the internet. It was "Produced" by the AACS.

So if you have no Ads and make no money posting the number ... the question becomes, "Is the number actually marketed?"

"both the poster and the hosting provider are engaged in "trafficking."

Again as the key was not properly implemented to begin with, this point would be moot.

But the precedent lies with the content providers from past decisions, and it's doubtful that a court would side against them in this case.

My question is, is yesterday’s impromptu “DRM Revolt” just the tip of the civil disobedience iceberg?

Because of the current situation that sees a handful of companies dominating most internet technology markets; many investors would see any new entrant as a high risk. Most of the quasi monopolies could easily replicate any new technology, and because of this would more than likely not want to acquire any new entrants.

The lack of a market for acquisition will and has led to a shrinking amount of companies that have the financial ability and needed market traction to enter the stock market, and thus return a financial gain to investors. Many times a pending IPO is the prime mover in the acquisition of a competitor by a larger corporation. The acquisition allows the purchaser to acquire the company at a much lower possible price, and it also prevent the company being acquired from attaining the needed capital to expand, grow market share and compete.

While noting the above argument It is interesting and important to realize that the current scenario is not one that is new. Indeed it has played out in history before. One need only look at the old world media industry to see how market consolidation by a handful of quasi media monopolies has led to a lack of investment that would lead to competition. The main difference in the scenario above and the current one that exist in the internet business sector is that the old scenario of market domination, and consolidation has been super imposed as a belief model in an space that it will not fit.

Investment in the previous era of the non internet technology economy was needed to hire people and to purchase the required machinery to do the job. You could not create a competing news paper without writers, presses, and distribution. One of the key barriers to entry was the cost of people, distribution, and equipment. Because of technologies and in particular the internets evolutionary and revolutionary nature the old world economic barriers to company creation no longer exist. The cost and time that it takes to create an application are so small that the creator does not need to worry about the bottom line or break even points. There need not be a profit motive to create a compelling internet application. Just as an artist paints out of an inner drive to paint, a application developer can create because of a very similar inner drive. I believe that this will create a situation where the current quasi monopolies will ultimately fall to the mass community of application developers that will and have become creators for their own needs as well as for others. Because they have very small over heads and tend to be self funding thorough full time employment, they will be very difficult to compete with. They have an open distribution channel; they have access to low cost creation tools, and they are self funded with their own capital. The large corporations that are currently in the market must support large staffs as well as the expectations of investors that expect profit. They cannot compete against the many no cost and open competitors that are now entering and will continue to enter the market.

It will be seen that taking the revenue possibility away from potential competitors in the evolutionarily and revolutionary platform that is the internet does not decrease entrants, but increase entrants that cannot be competed with on a market share and thus a profit basis.

This kind of paradigm shift was seen early with the struggle of traditional newspapers losing classified readership to online creators that provided the same service at a low to no cost. The new entrants did not need presses and had an open and relatively free distribution channel. The newspapers had to sustain profits to support their existing infrastructure of men and machines, and in most cases because they were public companies had to return profit for investors. The newspapers were slow to go into the online classifieds market because they were under the assumption that for any of their online competitors to continue they would need to make large profits. They also viewed the internet in an old world economic framework that postulates that business are only created and survive when revenue can be generated that makes the endeavor profitable. Once the newspapers did react they discovered that they could not compete or gain any market share from the many classified advertising applications that now existed. Most of the existing classified applications have very little overhead and are not motivated by going public or large profit gains. Most do not have to support large machinery infrastructure or large numbers of employees. Because large profit is not the motive, the newspapers cannot compete.

Newspapers and other media are now seeing this same pattern with blog content creators. The blog creators have low over head and low or no profit expectation and an open distribution channel. Because of this newspaper cannot compete and will eventually become extinct online and possibly the in the off line world.

We are also seeing this in other media. Radio, television and film will be the next to fall to the masses of application creators that can create applications at little to no cost and expect and need low or no profits to keep the application going. No equipment cost, an open distribution channel and users that create the content.

No area of internet technology will be immune from the mass of application and content creators that now have the means and ability to create for creations sake readily at hand. Somewhere below the radar there are many competitors to Google and Yahoo and Microsoft. Sooner rather than later we will see these giants reel.

I think this is a good attempt, because consumers value the discovery of new digital products. By making books fully available on the Internet, consumers can search through books and discover books of their interest previously unknown to them. Brynjofsson (2003) argues that discovering previously hard to find products increases consumer welfare. Maybe the next step they can make is combining books to new digital products.