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UK "Digital Economy Bill" May Allow for Website Shutdowns

cgseo — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 02:24:15 +0000

The House of Commons passed a controversial piece of legislation called the " Digital Economy Bill ." The loudly-criticized law nontheless passed 187-47, according to the Guardian newspaper. The bill purports to provide comprehensive regulation of digital services, in order to clear the way to promoting Britian as a digital econmic power. Criticism focused first on a clause that would have given broad government discretion to the closing of sites. That clause was removed, but the amendment to another was still significantly worrying to some. Sponsor From the bill itself, the amendment to clause 8 : "The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision about the granting by a court of a blocking injunction in respect of a location on the internet which the court is satisfied has been, is being or is likely to be used for or in connection with an activity that infringes copyright." A little thought on which site might be accused of being "a location on the internet" where copyright violation might have occurred, or might occur in the future, and you're likely to come up with YouTube, BitTorrent, DailyMotion, WordPress, Facebook, Twitter and Google. To start with. A second criticism focused on the way the troublesome bill was passed, during the period of time just prior to dissolution of parliament, called the "wash-up," when, to put it mildly, legislator attention is not at its peak. Discuss

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UK "Digital Economy Bill" May Allow for Website Shutdowns

Life’s Too Short: I’m Getting an iPad Right Away

cgseo — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 18:17:34 +0000

I waited for a year to get an iPhone, and I lost out on a year's worth of opportunities to use one as a result. I have one now and I still marvel at it almost every time I touch it. I expect to have a similar experience with the iPad - so I'm not going to wait. I want a full touchscreen, app-rich experience now. The iPad may be better for content consumption than creation, but I'm not ashamed to say I like to consume content with a good portion of my time. (Thanks for reading this blog I write on for a living, by the way, content consumers!) The experience may be better in a year, but I'm willing to pay for 70% of the ideal functionality today instead of getting nothing for a year. Here's what I'm excited to use it for. Sponsor This post is part of a pro/con series written with ReadWriteWeb's Mike Melanson. Click here to read his counter-point article iPad Schmipad: Who Needs Another Device . I just flew across the country twice in two days. I had a great time reading content I saved on Instapaper on my phone and paying a couple of games of a great little baseball app. Both of those are going to be way cooler on a full iPad screen. Gaming is going to be incredible - and there's going to be a whole lot of games. I look forward to using Tweetdeck on the iPad, the big touch screen is going to be great for the multi-column display of groups of Tweets. Mind mapping on the iPad is going to be great: dragging around nodes of related thoughts, visualizing interconnected concepts. Outlining ideas, dragging items from section to section and then emailing the outlines to computer in OPML format. Give me multitasking soon so I can listen to Pandora while doing that and I'll be even more excited. Do I look forward to seeing newspapers and magazines compete for my attention with their iPad apps? Oh yes, I sure do. My new favorite hyper-local news website Everyblock Portland is going to feel like such a futuristic news rag on a tablet that I might ask my dog to bring it to me in his mouth some mornings while I drink coffee. Is it perfect? No, the iPad obviously has serious shortcomings. The fact that it can't be tweaked and hacked is a serious (if expected) disappointment. If it was my only computer, I'd probably turn into a slovenly, uncreative shell of a human being (except for the web access). But it's not going to be my only computer. It's just going to be another awesome computer in my house. And I'm not going to wait to have the kinds of experiences I'll be able to have with an iPad. Life's too short, I'm getting an iPad sooner than later. Discuss

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Life's Too Short: I'm Getting an iPad Right Away

Applying to Incubators Takes More Than a Great Idea

cgseo — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 00:30:00 +0000

As the month of March trudges on, we are getting closer each day to spring and eventually summer when numerous startup incubators hold their camps for early-stage companies. Many incubators are still taking submissions , including TechStars Boulder , but in case of Y Combinator , the deadline has since come and gone. Theoryville is a startup that has already been asked to interview for a spot with Y Combinator, so if you are still looking to apply for one of this summer's incubators, you may want to heed its founder's advice. Sponsor Trevor Burnham, co-founder of Theoryville, a startup looking to ease the process of sharing data and documents between professors and scientists, recently blogged about how his company managed to snag a highly-coveted in-person interview for Y Combinator. Burnham reveals that through the process of applying to several incubators, he and his partners realized some early mistakes they had made. One important lesson they learned through their first set of interviews is that they hadn't talked to anyone but themselves about the idea. After all, if you're trying to create a service that will change the way scientists and college professors share information, shouldn't you talk to them about what their needs are? Investors and organizations want to see more than a great idea; they want to know you've thought it out and have identified a specific audience that has needs. For Burnham and his team, after being shown the door a few times, they turned around and spoke with their "users," even though they didn't have a product to show. "We started asking for input from every potential user we knew and sending cold e-mails by the dozen to [University of Michigan professors] to ask them to talk with us about their software needs," writes Burnham on his blog. "Based on the feedback we were getting, our understanding of the market completely changed." If there is one thing startups can learn from the perilous launch of Google Buzz , its that getting feedback from users is a good thing to before launching; or in the case of Theoryville, before looking for funding or acceptance to an incubator. Burnham and his partners assumed that they needed a working demo before they could get any useful customer feedback, but in reality, there is much to be learned about your audience before you start building. In fact, it makes a whole lot more sense to speak with the people you want to see using your product before you waste time, resources, and perhaps money on building an early prototype that they will snub their noses at. It's a lot like making sure the plot of land you have chosen to build your house on is a solid and stable foundation. That is not to say, however, that building a demo does not lend itself to learning valuable lessons about your product. "[Building a demo] led us to grapple with some design decisions that weren't apparent when we were just using white boards and static mockups," says Burnham. "That, in turn, gave us a more specific notion of what our product's advantages are." So they checked the foundation before building, but when their house was done they realized that too many windows were facing west and catching the hot late-afternoon sun - a regrettable error and a lesson learned (especially for home builders where I'm from ). Despite some changes that needed to be made, Burnahm says "it gave us some momentum, which we're using to build a much-improved demo now." So the best way to make early progress, it seems, would be to get that first rough draft out the door and begin iterating over and over on it; move some windows around until the latest version is a better, more mature version of your product. It also seems like it helped that they had applied to earlier incubators before applying to Y Combinator. They also participated in TechStars For A Day in Boulder, where they not only learned a lot from the mentors but were able to network with potential users of their service in the area. Attending these events and applying to other incubators worked like spring training before a preliminary interview with Y Combinator via Skype , and it couldn't have looked bad on their application either. Discuss

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Applying to Incubators Takes More Than a Great Idea

6 Ways to Better Living: Inside an Internet of Things Home

cgseo — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:15:00 +0000

What if we took the leading sensor-based products currently being developed or already on the market, put them all under one roof, and added a typical American family? Would they just be the techiest family on the block, or would it have a significant impact on their lives? Here are six ways this Internet of Things family can see their lives change. They exercise more, save energy and water, budget better, know where their kids are at any moment, and they'll always have the right lighting for activities in the house. Sponsor Bank Account-based Motivation We

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6 Ways to Better Living: Inside an Internet of Things Home

SuperGlued: The Can’t-Miss Live Music iPhone App for SXSW 2010

cgseo — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:37:00 +0000

If you've ever done SXSW before, then you know about the music here in Austin. If you haven't, let us tell you now - there's a lot. But how do you find it all? And how do you find out which show is best? And how do you share blogs, photos, videos and tweet about it all at once? SuperGlued , which has integrated with both Foursquare and Twitter , will be your your one-stop shop for the more than 1,200 bands that are set to invade Austin over the next week and a half. Sponsor SuperGlued is a can't-miss app for navigating SXSW without having the schizophrenically switch between iPhone apps just to keep up. With the release of a new version of its iPhone app, users can find shows, buy tickets, tweet and read what others are tweeting, post photos and check-in to Foursquare. And if you find yourself at a lame show, the new "Where My Friends At" feature will let you know what shows your friends are seeing so you can ask them if it's any better. A new partnership with BandsInTown not only helps the service find all the shows going on, but lets you buy tickets from your iPhone. And for special events, like SXSW, Superglued brings all the shows together into a separate event listing. Aside from the iPhone app, the website lets you continue to interact around the shows you've seen long after they've ended. Rush Doshi, who co-founded SuperGlued with Gawker CTO Tom Plunkett, told us on the phone the other day that SuperGlued is the water cooler for everyone to gather around and talk about that crazy show they saw last week. "The idea came about from going to a lot of shows and wondering about who else was there - it just seemed that there was no one place to go to see what everyone else thought," said Doshi. "We built SuperGlued to be that place." SuperGlued connects with Flickr, YouTube, Blogger, WordPress and Tumblr, so when the shows all over, you can both add and check out block posts, videos, set lists and more from the website. Doshi told us that they have made extra efforts to make sure that all of the SXSW shows are list, but if a show isn't there, users can add shows via the website. With the number of shows springing up in parking lots and backyards, this is a must-have feature. In the near future, the company is looking to include show-specific merchandise in its iPhone app, letting you browse and even order show merchandise from your phone and having it shipped to your house. Beyond SXSW, SuperGlued is available around the world with nearly 200,000 show listings, many of which it pulls from BandInTown and Last.fm, in 140 countries. So, wherever you are, get off your duff, download the iPhone app and go see some live music. Discuss

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SuperGlued: The Can't-Miss Live Music iPhone App for SXSW 2010

Oracle’s Private ‘Cloud’ Not a Cloud says Vogels

cgseo — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 01:00:00 +0000

At London's Royal Opera House yesterday Oracle presented their perspective and strategy on cloud computing along with two industry experts, Amazon's CTO, Werner Vogels and Gartner's VP of research, Phil Dawson . The consensus was that the industry is heading towards a mix of public and private clouds. Although by Werner Vogels' definition, private clouds are not true clouds. True clouds, he argues, allow you to think about resources in an unconstrained manner. Elasticity and pay-as-you-go pricing are central to Vogels' definition. When resources are switched off, you stop paying. If privately owned, a cloud would have fixed capacity (no elasticity) and would always have fixed operation costs - regardless of utilization. Sponsor Gartner's definition of cloud computing has evolved between 2008 and late 2009 to include elasticity as a characteristic, and now includes this differentiation between public and private cloud computing: Public cloud computing [is] a style of computing in which scalable and elastic IT-enabled capabilities are delivered as a service to external customers using Internet technologies. Private cloud computing is defined as a style of computing in which scalable and elastic IT-enabled capabilities are delivered as a service to internal customers using Internet technologies. Private-Cloud-In-a-Box Oracle used concept videos showing Cloud Administrator consoles integrated into Enterprise Manager as a way to demonstrate their vision and strategy in the private cloud. But the company did not disclose any detailed plans for the future to avoid setting timescale and feature expectations. With that said, they did hint that they expected it would take them 3 quarters to get the integration work done. Discuss

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Oracle's Private 'Cloud' Not a Cloud says Vogels

Why The iPad May Save The Internet Fridge

cgseo — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 13:00:00 +0000

In part 1 of our interview with Adam Greenfield , author of Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing , we discussed the impact of the iPhone and other smartphones on the Internet of Things . In Part 2, we explore how the Apple iPad may also become a key device. Adam Greenfield thinks it may become the missing link between Internet-connected items in your home, for example the Internet fridge, and the Web. Sponsor In yesterday's post, we talked about how Asian cities are ahead of the curve in deployment of Internet of Things technologies. One reason is that quality of life can be more easily be delivered as a service in a country like Korea, because its citizens are more open to futuristic appliances like the Internet fridge . The counter-argument is that the Western market has never taken to the Internet fridge because of the poor utility of such appliances. The answer may be a device that acts as an effective intermediary between the fridge and the Internet. The iPad could be that device. Adam Greenfield explained to me that the iPad may become the kind of device that people carry around with them everywhere inside the house, from the lounge to the bedroom to the kitchen. That got me to thinking. Imagine this use case: you're feeling peckish, so you wander into the kitchen for a snack. Your trusty iPad is tucked under your arm, as usual, and you place it on the kitchen bench while you open the fridge. You guiltily pick up a chocolate bar and you're about to close the fridge door when your iPad beeps. You glance at the iPad, where a diet management iPad app has automagically opened and is flashing the message: "Hey buddy, you've already had too many calories today - put that back!" Blushing, you return the chocolate bar into the fridge and pick up a punnet of strawberries instead. You glance back at your iPad, which now displays a large green check mark on its screen! There are many other scenarios I could describe, but the point is the iPad may well become a linking device between Internet-connected appliances and objects in your house, and the Web. Adam Greenfield explained that the mistake we've made with Internet fridges in the past was to think of them like a dumb sensor. He remarked that it's not the instrumentation that is important in an Internet fridge - it's the network. The data will probably be collected by the fridge, in time via RFID-enabled food packaging. But the fridge itself is a clumsy interface to that data. Early examples of Internet fridges have tried to be an interface for the consumer. Although some have had tablet-like devices that could be disconnected from the fridge and used on the kitchen bench, users have not found even those very compelling. There are a variety of reasons, including limited utility of fridge-tablets, poor user experience, and the sheer awkwardness of attaching a tablet to and from a fridge. The iPad, however, will be used anywhere and everywhere by its users - inside and outside the house. So it's a natural device to use to connect (virtually, not physically) to your fridge - along with other appliances and objects. This isn't restricted to inside the house either. We've written before about cars as a service . This is where you, the consumer, can effectively subscribe to a car or a car provider. This is already happening with the American service Zipcars . Greenfield noted that cars will become a "network resource" - addressable, scriptable, queryable, and so on. And once again, the iPad may be the device which connects you to cars and all of the data that is pumped out by cars and connected web services. In the not too distant future, household appliances and other real-world objects such as cars will be connected to the Internet. The iPad may well become the connector to all of those things. Discuss

Facebook Shutters Political Fan Page, Users Cry Foul

cgseo — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 19:40:00 +0000

We don't know about you, but we're sort of a fan of being a fan of things on Facebook. It can be useful a way to keep up with what's going on at the White House , for example. Or you can let the world know that you enjoy " Not Being On Fire ", in case they were wondering. Or, you can express your support for political change. Or can you? We noticed over the weekend that

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Facebook Shutters Political Fan Page, Users Cry Foul