The real Web 2.0

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Nick Carr has an interesting post about what’s going on under the hood, as it were. It’s started me brooding…

Web 2.0 isn’t about applications. It’s about bricks and mortar. It’s about capital assets. It’s about infrastructure.

Yesterday, Google formally announced that, in addition to building a big utility computing plant in Lenoir, it will also build one a little to the south, at a 520-acre site in Mt. Holly, South Carolina, near Charleston. The company will be reimbursed by the state for some of its building expenses, and, the governor reports, legislators have “updated the state tax code to exempt the electricity and the capital investment in equipment necessary for this kind of a facility … from sales tax,” an exemption similar to one granted manufacturers. Google expects to invest $600 million in the facility and hire a modest 200 workers to man the largely automated plant. Google may also build yet another data center in Columbia, South Carolina.

At a pork barbecue celebrating the announcement of the data center deal, Google held a question and answer session with local dignitaries, but it was characteristically closed-mouthed about the details of its operation. Asked how it uses water and electricity at its sites, Google executive Rhett Weiss said, “We’re in a highly competitive industry and, frankly, one or two little pieces of information like that in the hands of our competitors can do us considerable damage. So we can’t discuss it.”

He goes on to discuss what Microsoft is doing in the infrastructure line too.

The local paper’s account of the Google deal is hilarious. Sample:

The company hopes to open its first building by December and the second building 18 months later.

It plans to begin advertising for the leadership positions on its Web site by next week at the latest.

Chris Kerrigan, president of the Trident United Way, said Google and Alcoa donated the money from the timber sale to Links to Success, a program that tries to keep children in schools in Dorchester and Berkeley counties.

Berkeley County Supervisor Dan Davis also praised the company for writing the county a check for $4.34 million for the right to tap into the water system.

Davis said the company could have spread the payment out over 30 years if it had wanted to.

John Scarborough, the county’s director of economic development, said the company’s annual payroll in Berkeley County will be about $12 million to $15 million, much of which will be spent in the area.

He said luring Google will be a major status symbol for Berkeley County.

“It shows companies that in Berkeley County we can handle the big projects, we can handle them professionally and confidentially, and we can solve problems that need to be solved,” he said.

Blog spam

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According to this,

A recent study by WebmasterWorld found that an estimated 77% of all blogs on Google’s Blogspot service were spam. Similarly, AOL Hometown, had well over 80% of its results turn out to be spam. Even MSN Spaces, which as not mentioned in the report, is claimed to host an estimated ten percent of spammer Web site.

It seems as if nearly every major free blog hosting service has been either overrun or nearly overrun with spam. However, one services stands alone, a relative oasis of spam cleanliness, Automattic’s WordPress.com. Despite being just as free as its competitors and placing few restrictions on registration, WordPress.com has not endured the spam avalanche that other services have.

Though there have been spam attacks in the past, the spammers have been easily shut down and, overall, the service remains relatively free of the splogs that seem to choke up its competitors. Though paid services such as Typepad also enjoy a relatively spam-free existance, what WordPress.com does is very rare for a free service…

Those numbers are very interesting. Wonder how they affect the Technorati figures about 71 million blogs (as of now) and two new ones being created every second. Also: what is Google doing about the Blogspot problem?

Footnote: Memex runs on WordPress.

Yo Blair!

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Hmmm… New Labour has decided that it must “use” the “YouTube channel”. Somehow, I don’t think it’ll catch on. Especially when it’s up against stuff like this.

iPod sales top 100 million

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Wow! Interesting post by Blackfriars Marketing, a marketing consultancy run by Joe Butt and Carl Howe.

Today’s New York times ran [an] Apple ad … celebrating 100 million iPods sold. With that milestone achieved, I thought it might be interesting to analyze the last five years of iPod and iTunes growth.

In case anyone believes that selling 100 million iPods in five years is no big deal, here’s a bit of history. In 1945, there were 7,000 televisions in the US. By 1949, that number had grown to 1 million, and it hit 10 million just two years later in 1952. But it took more than 30 years for the number of televisions sold to exceed 100 million. Apple achieved that same 100 million mark with iPods in just five years.

Now those 100 million iPods are a big deal for Apple’s bottom line, but iTunes music has actually outstripped iPod growth. Blackfriars got involved in a little disagreement last year with an old Forrester colleague about iTunes sales. Based upon some of the data he had, he claimed that it appeared iTunes sales were slowing. I used the data I had to prove that he’d picked a particularly unfortunate sample to examine, namely the period between January and September, when fewer songs are purchased than in the big holiday season. But still, there was a lot of Web ink spilled discussing the point.

I think we can now lay that argument to rest once and for all. The folks over at Macsimum News picked up a little-noted quote from Steve Jobs saying that iTunes just passed the 2.5 billion song mark. Now for those of you keeping score at home, that means that iTunes is now selling a billion songs about every six months. But wait, there’s more! According to our figures, iPod sales passed the 100 million iPod mark in March, and TV shows passed the 50 million shows sold mark as well. Add onto that the 1.3 million feature length movies that have been sold to date, and well, I’d say you have quite a fast-growing business…

The author has made a logarithmic graph of various aspects of Apple media-related sales. (Remember that exponential growth shows up as a straight line on a log graph.)

The Blackfriars commentary continues:

Now if you ask me, the really interesting part about this graph is the fact that iPod sales appear to be continuing their exponential climb into the stratosphere. That’s important because it drives Apple’s earnings report, which we’ll hear more about later this month. But don’t ignore those TV shows or movies at the bottom. They’re on a very steep growth curve themselves — and there are a lot of new Apple TVs that are going to need feeding with content this year.

So what does the future hold for iPods and iTunes? While music is what made the iPod and will continue to be the major driving force behind Apple’s iPod thrust, Apple is trailblazing growth in digital movies and TV shows in a way similar to what it did in music in 2002. Remember Apple’s announcement that in the first week or so of movie sales, it sold 125,000 movies? Well, today’s Boston Globe reported the first month’s sales from Wal-mart’s online movie store were a whopping 3,000 movies. If we were to graph that on the log scale graph above, we’d need to add another decade of graph below where Apple numbers are just to see the Wal-mart sales. By all public measures available so far, iTunes is well on the way to repeating its domination of digital music in digital TV and movies. After all, once you’ve bested the largest American retailer, the sky is the limit.

Lighting by numbers

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Any parent who ferries teenagers* around at night knows the problem: most suburban house numbers are unreadable in the dark — it’s why I carry a LED torch in the car. Which is what makes this solar-powered solution so neat. Thanks to Michael and Laura for the idea (and for a lovely supper). $19.99 per number. From ThinkGeek, naturally. Can’t find a UK supplier, yet.

* “Dad’s Taxi Service”, as James Miller calls it.

It isn’t working

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From today’s New York Times

BAGHDAD, April 8 — Nearly two months into the new security push in Baghdad, there has been some success in reducing the number of death squad victims found crumpled in the streets each day.

And while the overall death rates for all of Iraq have not dropped significantly, largely because of devastating suicide bombings, a few parts of the capital have become calmer as some death squads have decided to lie low.

But there is little sign that the Baghdad push is accomplishing its main purpose: to create an island of stability in which Sunni Arabs, Shiite Arabs and Kurds can try to figure out how to run the country together. There has been no visible move toward compromise on the main dividing issues, like regional autonomy and more power sharing between Shiites and Sunnis.

For American troops, Baghdad has become a deadlier battleground as they have poured into the capital to confront Sunni and Shiite militias on their home streets. The rate of American deaths in the city over the first seven weeks of the security plan has nearly doubled from the previous period, though it has stayed roughly the same over all, decreasing in other parts of the country as troops have focused on the capital.

American commanders say it will be months before they can draw conclusions about the campaign to secure Baghdad, and just more than half of the so-called surge of nearly 30,000 additional troops into the country have arrived. But at the same time, political pressure in the United States for quick results and a firm troop pullout date has become more intense than ever.

Homeland security

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Here’s a sobering account of what happened recently to a distinguished US academic lawyer, Professor Walter Murphy of Princeton.

“On 1 March 07, I was scheduled to fly on American Airlines to Newark, NJ, to attend an academic conference at Princeton University, designed to focus on my latest scholarly book, Constitutional Democracy, published by Johns Hopkins University Press this past Thanksgiving.”

“When I tried to use the curb-side check in at the Sunport, I was denied a boarding pass because I was on the Terrorist Watch list. I was instructed to go inside and talk to a clerk. At this point, I should note that I am not only the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence (emeritus) but also a retired Marine colonel. I fought in the Korean War as a young lieutenant, was wounded, and decorated for heroism. I remained a professional soldier for more than five years and then accepted a commission as a reserve office, serving for an additional 19 years.”

“I presented my credentials from the Marine Corps to a very polite clerk for American Airlines. One of the two people to whom I talked asked a question and offered a frightening comment: “Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that.” I explained that I had not so marched but had, in September, 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the Web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the Constitution. “That’ll do it,” the man said. ”

“After carefully examining my credentials, the clerk asked if he could take them to TSA officials. I agreed. He returned about ten minutes later and said I could have a boarding pass, but added: “I must warn you, they’re going to ransack your luggage.” On my return flight, I had no problem with obtaining a boarding pass, but my luggage was “lost.” Airlines do lose a lot of luggage and this “loss” could have been a mere coincidence. In light of previous events, however, I’m a tad skeptical.”

“I confess to having been furious that any American citizen would be singled out for governmental harassment because he or she criticized any elected official, Democrat or Republican. That harassment is, in and of itself, a flagrant violation not only of the First Amendment but also of our entire scheme of constitutional government. This effort to punish a critic states my lecture’s argument far more eloquently and forcefully than I ever could. Further, that an administration headed by two men who had “had other priorities” than to risk their own lives when their turn to fight for their country came up, should brand as a threat to the United States a person who did not run away but stood up and fought for his country and was wounded in battle, goes beyond the outrageous. Although less lethal, it is of the same evil ilk as punishing Ambassador Joseph Wilson for criticizing Bush’s false claims by “outing” his wife, Valerie Plaime, thereby putting at risk her life as well as the lives of many people with whom she had had contact as an agent of the CIA. …”

Bin Laden has won, hands down. My boycott of the US stands.

A bad Hare day

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David Hare is IMHO one of the great men of our time. Also, in my experience, one of the nicest (I knew him when I was a television critic in the 1980s and 1990s). Yet according to this Telegraph profile, he is racked by anger, guilt and low self-esteem.

Hmmm… Maybe what makes him such a valuable person is the fact that he is perpetually dissatisfied with himself. The real menaces are self-made men who worship their creator — like the late Noel Annan. An academic friend of mine was once seated next to him at a dinner. “How many honorary degrees do you have?” was Annan’s opening question. “Perhaps he was being ironic”, I said afterwards, when told about the exchange. “I don’t think so”, replied my friend.

Digital Restrictions Management

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This morning’s Observer column…

DRM was in the news because of EMI’s unexpected announcement that, starting next month, it will sell its stuff on iTunes in two flavours: one is the standard, DRM-crippled variety; the other a premium version with higher audio quality and without DRM.

The announcement came as a bolt from the blue, though I suppose that if anyone had spotted Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs, going through Heathrow they might have suspected that something big was afoot. Mr Jobs does not normally descend to earth for anything as mundane as another company’s press conferences. But there he was on the platform, alongside EMI’s chief executive, Eric Nicoli. Selling digital music DRM-free is the right step forward for the music industry, intoned Steve. EMI has been a great partner for iTunes and is once again leading the industry as the first major music company to offer its entire digital catalogue DRM-free…