Teflon Palin

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Lovely piece by Christopher Hitchens in Slate.

Writing about Sarah Palin in Newsweek last month, I pointed out the crude way in which she tried to Teflon-ize herself when allegations of weird political extremism were made against her. Thus, she had once gone to a Pat Buchanan rally wearing a pro-Buchanan button, but only because she thought it was the polite thing to do. She and her husband had both attended meetings of the Alaskan Independence Party—he as a member—but its name, she later tried to claim, only meant “independent.” (The AIP is a straightforward secessionist party.) She didn’t disbelieve all the evidence for evolution, only some of it. She hadn’t exactly said that God was on our side in Iraq, only that God and the United States were on the same side. She says that she left the University of Hawaii after only one year because the climate was too sunny for an Alaskan; her father (whom she considers practically infallible) tells her most recent biographers that she quit because of the preponderance of Asian and Pacific islanders: “They were a minority type thing and it wasn’t glamorous. So she came home.” And so on.

Then, bang on cue, Palin made a live appearance that nicely illustrates Hitchin’s point:

She appeared on the radio show of a certain Rusty Humphries, another steaming and hearty slice of good-old U.S. prime, and was asked whether she would make an issue of President Barack Obama’s birth certificate. Her response: “I think the public rightfully is still making it an issue. I think it’s a fair question.” That was on Thursday, Dec. 3. On Friday, she had published a second “thought” on her Facebook page, reassuring all and sundry that: “At no point have I asked the president to produce his birth certificate, or suggested that he was not born in the United States.”

Well, exactly. Of course she hasn’t. She just thinks it’s a good idea for others to do that, in their “rightful” way, since, after all, it is “a fair question.”

Yuck.

Rare sighting: a business model for Twitter?

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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…

Linux regaining netbook market share quickly

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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.

Facebook to join the UN? If it can find a way of financing the subscription

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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.

Cisco flips

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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.

Google’s exclusive new operating system

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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.

Control-freak news #4302

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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

The new Nigerian email scam — fake conferences!

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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.

How ‘Lord’ Mandelson seeks to kill open Wi-Fi networks

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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.