From today’s NYTimes.
A new partnership between Citysearch and Twitter offers some clues about what Twitter’s long-awaited paid accounts for businesses might look like.
Citysearch announced Monday that it will provide the businesses on its site a few tools to help them make use of Twitter — and said that more tools would be coming soon, including some that sound a lot like what Twitter has repeatedly said it will offer businesses for a fee…
It’s funny how people become infected with myths of Microsoft omnipotence. After the first rush of Linux-only netbooks and Microsoft responded by extending the life of XP, commentators shook their heads and opined that hope of liberation from Windows were naive. Now comes some interesting news of what market research is showing.
ABI Research published some new data last month and the results may surprise you. They place the 2009 market share for Linux on netbooks at 32% with 11 million units preloaded with Linux shipping this year. In an interview with DesktopLinux.com, Jeffrey Orr of ABI makes clear that dial boot machines (i.e.: the Acer Aspire One AOD250-1613) and machines that are purchased with Windows but later have Linux loaded do not count in the 32% number. That number is pure Linux sales. This data confirms comments made first by Jay Pinkert and later by Todd Finch of Dell that one third of their netbooks sales are Linux machines and that there is no higher return rate for Linux systems than there is for ones sold with Windows preloaded…
And that’s before the Chrome OS machines arrive.
Thanks to Glyn Moody for spotting it.
This morning’s Observer column.
It was announced last week that the population of Facebook now exceeds that of America. Since mid-September the social networking service has added 50 million users, which means it now finds itself with 350 million of them. I am sure that Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, takes the same view of his subscribers as PG Wodehouse attributed to the male codfish – “which, suddenly finding itself the parent of three million five hundred thousand little codfish, cheerfully resolves to love them all”. But even Zuckerberg must be wondering how he can monetise the little darlings.
There they are, cavorting in the corner of cyberspace so thoughtfully and expensively provided by him, where they post photographs of themselves in embarrassing situations, write affectionate or silly messages on one another's "walls", become "fans" of obscure comedians, join witty "groups" to support the Tiger Woods driving school and do other cool things too numerous to list. And all without paying a cent…
LATER: It’s interesting to see how this piece has been picked up across the Twitterverse — and slightly misinterpreted as a claim by me that Facebook won’t make money. I have no idea whether it will or not. All I was trying to say is that advertising isn’t necessarily the key to Facebook profitabiity. This is because the service is not primarily about content but activity. Maybe that can be monetised, but at the moment it’s not clear how.
What I was trying to say is that the hopes of content providers that they will make money from advertising may turn out to be fantasies. The only online business that really makes money from advertising is search. Which is why Google is as big as it is.
From today’s NYTimes.
Now, however, Cisco seems to have found its way with the Flip. A couple of weeks ago, the company began putting out 10-second television commercials and Web clips that show snippets from the lives of both celebrities and “regular people.” The spots for Flip include a nod at the end to Cisco, when the company logo appears.
“We get unsolicited e-mails from people all over the country telling us how excited they were to capture some moment,” said Jodi Lipe, the Cisco executive who spearheaded the campaign. “We wanted to capture that authenticity in our television campaign.”
Some of the ads appear to document the banal. For example, there is one of a man picking at his bacon and eggs with a fork, and another of someone brushing his teeth. The obligatory parental video of baby with food dangling from her mouth? It’s there.
But, look more closely, and you’ll find that the authenticity of Cisco’s campaign comes with some caveats. The man brushing his teeth is the singer Lenny Kravitz. One of the most popular clips — four guys singing an ode to hamburgers in their car — turns out to be the creation of budding marketers from Hollywood.
Hmmm… My Japanese Chinese isn’t what it was, but you will get the drift.
Thanks to all the people who emailed about my linguistic ignorance!
Here’s an interesting angle on Google’s plan for its cloud-based operating system.
Google’s Chrome OS is a great idea. Put as much as possible into the cloud, and keep the physical device as a “thin client” to access this functionality. However, this great dependence on Internet connectivity has left the OS virtually useless for the vast majority of the world population, especially those who would have benefited the most from a low-cost, lightweight computer.
Now that a $100 computer is actually starting to look plausible, it’s ironic that those in true need of one won’t be able to use it. It will remain a luxury item, a secondary computer to those better off.
An even bleaker outlook: broadband
The numbers so far have been about Internet access, any kind, but to properly use a Web OS like the Chrome OS, you really need a broadband connection. This disqualifies an even larger percentage of the population. The mere thought of downloading and uploading documents and other data over an old dial-up connection makes us shiver.
So how common is broadband? Not as common as you might expect. For example, in the United States, 74.1% of the population has Internet access, but as of 2008, only 57% were accessing the Internet over a broadband connection. You could say that this makes Chrome OS unusable to 43% of the US population…
Thanks to Charles Arthur for passing on the link. Actually, there are time when I think that Chrome OS might not be too hot over my BT rural “broadband” DSL either.
A reader writes:
I recently bought an iPod touch, having waited for the price to come down (a bit!), for the capacity to go up, and (most importantly) for a convenient (third-party) pdf reader to become available (Goodreader). With this program, and GoodReaderUSB, you can conveniently transfer all manner of files to the Ipod without using Itunes. Now, guess what, the Goodreader app has been updated, with this function removed to comply with Apple’s requirements – and this retrograde step is also being imposed on other (best-selling!) apps:
http://www.mypodapps.com/update_notes.php
Fascinating post in The Scientist.
An email inviting recipients to a conference on human welfare and the global economy, said to be taking place in January and February of next year and featuring talks by some of the top scientists in the field, is making the rounds.
Last week, I received an email from someone going by the name of Alyssa Logan, who claimed to be “Youth Leader” at a group called the Action World International Organization (AWIO) and a member of the International Committee of the Red Cross. In the message, Logan invited me to the “Seventh Annual International Global combine Conference on Global Economy and Human Welfare” that AWIO was hosting. The conference would take place over the course of ten days at two separate sites, the first in New York City and the second in Dakar, Senegal in Africa.
All I had to do was get in contact with the conference secretariat, one Grace Nathan, and I could be on my way to the meetings. And — get this — I would even get my airfare and accommodation paid for!
There’s only one problem. When I contacted the AXA Equitable Auditorium, the 400-seat venue where the New York City portion of the conference was to be held from January 25th to the 29th of next year, they had never heard of AWIO, or the conference they were supposedly planning. “No such event is scheduled for that location,” said Chris Winans, senior vice president of external affairs for the AXA/Equitable Production Group.
Further confirmation that the conference was a sham came from the International Committee for the Red Cross, which told me that they had no record of an Alyssa Logan belonging to their organization…
Thanks to Laura James for the link.
Terrific Guardian piece by Lilian Edwards, who teaches Internet law at Sheffield.
A lot of people have talked to me over the last week about Wi-Fi (open and closed, i.e. password-protected) and the Digital Economy bill. The more I try to find answers, the more ludicrous it becomes. For instance, last week it turned out that a pub owner was allegedly fined £8,000 because someone downloaded copyright material over their open Wi-Fi system. Would that get worse or better if the Digital Economy bill passes in its present form?
To illustrate, I’m going to pick my favourite example of a potentially worried wireless network provider: my mum.
She doesn’t understand or like the internet, refuses to even think about securing her Wi-Fi network. What is her legal status? What will she say if/when she receives warnings under the Digital Economy bill because someone has used her open Wi-Fi to download infringing files?
It’s a terrific, thought-provoking, scary piece worth reading in full. The scary bit is the realisation that Mandelson & Co are the epitome of clueless legislators. Viewing Mandy’s approach to the Net is like watching a monkey fiddling with a delicate chronometer. I’m writing a book at the moment about the significance of the Net and one of the draft chapter headings is “We could blow it, if we’re not careful”. I’m beginning to think that’s much too conditional.
I’m often amused by the ‘Books of the Year’ lists that are a feature of literary pages at this time of year. They are delicious show-cases of judicious back-scratching by celebrity reviewers and authors. Yesterday’s literary supplements provided some interesting examples of how participants tailor their lists to different publications.
Here, for example, is Colm Tóibín writing in the Guardian.
Mary-Kay Wilmers’s The Eitingons (Faber) is a secret history of the 20th century in which members of her family played a crucial role – one in the fur trade after the Russian revolution; another as an early disciple of Freud’s; and a third, an agent of Stalin’s, who set up the assassination of Trotsky. The fact that this last one was the most fun, or at least the most fascinating, is an aspect of the book’s originality. I found the book a riveting piece of story-telling.
The best novel I read this year was Rawi Hage’s Cockroach (Hamish Hamilton), which tells the story of an ungrateful immigrant, filled with angst and attitude, in a Montreal which could be Kafka’s Prague. It is a dark book, narrated with verve and brilliance. It made me jump for joy.
Paul Durcan’s Life is a Dream (Harvill Secker) is a generous selection of his poetry over the past 40 years, and displays his skill, his importance and his bravery, his willingness to tackle difficult public matters but also to explore with eloquence and fierce honesty the most private areas of the self.
And here is the same Colm Tóibín giving his list in the Irish Times.
Diarmaid Ferriter’s Occasions of Sin: Sex and Society in Modern Ireland (Profile) is a brilliant re-examination of the gnarled intersection between public life and private life in Ireland since the foundation of the state. His use of the Irish Queer Archive in the National Library is particularly valuable.
Fintan O’Toole’s Ship of Fools: How Stupidity and Corruption Sank the Celtic Tiger (Faber) offers an account of what was done to the Irish economy over the past 20 years which is lucid and convincing. It is an essential book for anyone who wants the facts and the background to refute the idea that what happened to the Irish economy was a sad accident.
Paula Meehan’s Painting Rain (Carcanet) displays one of our best poets at her most eloquent. These are poems which both confront and celebrate the world we inhabit, but they also manage in their rhythms to transcend that world. Eibhear Walsh’s Cissie’s Abattoir (Collins Press) is a wonderful memoir of growing up gay in Waterford city, and growing up in a funny and loving and often hilarious family.
Note that there’s no overlap between the two lists. Note also the fulsome reference to Fintan ‘the Curate’ O’Toole. Interestingly, his ‘books of the year’ include this puff for — you guessed it — Colm Tóibín:
Colm Tóibín’s Brooklyn (Penguin) is a small masterpiece of resonant understatement. While maintaining complete fidelity to a simple, beautifully detailed story, it becomes a luminous exploration of the central human experience of exile. It tells us what it is like to live in two worlds at the same time.
Aw, shucks!
Anthony Beevor is another literary celeb who figures in both the Guardian and the Irish Times. Here he is writing in the Guardian:
My book of the year is Javier Marías’s conclusion to his Your Face Tomorrow trilogy. Although an unashamed novel of ideas, Poison, Shadow and Farewell (Chatto & Windus) possesses an astonishing tension which makes it hard to put down. Marías’s observation in exquisite detail has prompted many comparisons to Proust, but his themes, including human corruption through state secrecy and power, could hardly be more contemporary. It is probably the most powerful and important novel to appear in European literature for some time.
His dispatch in the Irish Times is fuller:
This year has seen the publication of two very important European novels; Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones (Chatto) is the defiant confession of an SS officer involved in the Holocaust. It is a masterpiece, however flawed and controversial because of a sexual-scatalogical element. American reviewers hated it, perhaps because the French had lauded it so much with the Prix Goncourt and Prix de l’Académie Française.
Javier Marias’s final volume in his trilogy Your Face Tomorrow 3: Poison, Shadow and Farewell (Chatto), is a novel of ideas focusing on secrecy, betrayal and the threat of violence, both state and private. Twisting like the double-helix of human DNA, shame and guilt, power and impotence, treachery and loyalty, domination and humiliation, love and hate, the past and the present, all are revolved in this extraordinary and unashamed novel of ideas.
Interesting, ne c’est pas?