July 30, 2010
July 20, 2010
Paywall experiment not going to plan
A drop in use was probably expected when the Times put up a paywall on their website, but I doubt they expected the drop to be on the order of 90%:
The Times has lost almost 90% of its online readership compared to February since making registration mandatory in June, calculations by the Guardian show.
Unregistered users of thetimes.co.uk are now “bounced” to a Times+ membership page where they have to register if they want to view Times content. Data from the web metrics company Experian Hitwise shows that only 25.6% of such users sign up and proceed to a Times web page; based on custom categories (created at the Guardian) that have been used to track the performance of major UK press titles online, visits to the Times site have fallen to 4.16% of UK quality press online traffic, compared with 15% before it made registration compulsory on 15 June.
These figures can then be used to model how this may impact on the number of users hitting the new Times site. Based on the last available ABCe data for Times Online readership (from February 2010), which showed that it had 1.2 million daily unique users, and Hitwise’s figures showing it had 15% of UK online newspaper traffic, that means a total of 332,800 daily users trying to visit the Times site.
If none of the people visiting the site have already registered, the one-on-four dropout rate means that traffic actually going from the registration site to the Times site is just 84,800, or 1.06% of total UK newspaper traffic – a 93% fall compared with May.
I have to admit that the paywall meant I just didn’t bother going to the Times at all, and no longer link to anything there (because most of my readers wouldn’t be able to open the link anyway). The Times might as well have gone out of business, from the online perspective.
July 15, 2010
Pleated-Jeans identifies the modern Maslow’s hierarchy
Pleated-Jeans has done the heavy lifting to pull the old, outdated Maslow diagram into the 21st century:
H/T to Michael O’Connor Clarke who advises “Caution: may cause psych majors to eject hot coffee through nasal passages.”
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July 12, 2010
June 25, 2010
Internet access forces retirement of military TV network
Strategy Page notes the imminent demise of two media staples: Armed Forces Network (AFN) broadcast television and the traditional base newspaper:
U.S. military television stations in Europe are halting the broadcasting of their signals. Not because so many American troops have left Europe since the end of the Cold War, but because everyone has cable. A few broadcasting towers will keep operating, for the few areas where barracks are not yet wired for cable. The big losers are American retirees and military families living off the base. In addition, a lot of locals enjoyed the availability of the “American Channel” and the military oriented content. It was something they could not find on the largest local cable plans. AFN often broadcast American TV shows before they were bought by local networks for broadcast in dubbed format. The dubbing is often poor, and many Europeans speak English, and like to get American TV shows as soon as they come out. But now that’s all history.
[. . .] the technology tidal wave is also destroying the oldest form of American military media; the base newspaper. Four years ago, U.S. Air Force bases began to scrap a century old tradition; the base newspaper. Some bases later brought the papers back, because they found there were a significant minority of base residents who did not use the Internet (which was supposed to replace the newspaper.) But that is not going to last long.
These weeklies were almost standard on military bases, mainly as a vehicle for getting out information of use to all those who lived or worked there. There were administrative announcements, as well as social ones. The base newspapers served a morale function, as well as a practical one. But the news papers cost money, some $3,000-$5,000 a week. The papers were distributed for free, and now there’s a trend towards eliminating the papers, and just putting out all the information on the base web site. All bases now have web sites, and troops, especially younger ones, find these more useful than newspapers. Surveys indicate that most junior troops don’t even read newspapers (nor do their civilian peers). But all these young troops rely on the web for news, and other information. The troops also note that, when they are deployed overseas, or just away from the base for a few days, they only way to stay in touch with what’s happening on the base is via the web site. But many older NCOs and officers, along with their spouses, do still read newspapers. It’s a generational thing, so the base newspaper is still doomed.
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June 24, 2010
Australia changes PM
I hadn’t realized just how unpopular Kevin Rudd had become:
Although he scored a landslide election victory against an 11-year-old Liberal government led by John Howard in November 2007, he had said he was confident he would win the challenge. But commentators were already writing him off. “He’s a goner. You can stick a fork in him,” Nick Economou of Monash University told Reuters.
For Rudd, the transformation in his political fortunes has been startling. Only six months ago, with the opposition going through its third leadership change since he beat Howard, Rudd and his government seemed untouchable.
A year ago he rivalled Bob Hawke as Australia’s most popular prime minister. Now he will join Hawke as the only other Labor prime minister to be dumped by his party, making him the first one-term prime minister since 1932.
The new prime minister is Julia Gillard, who appears to be facing the kind of challenge that the first female prime minister of Canada faced: being held responsible for the sins of the last leader (Kim Campbell led the Progressive Conservatives into their worst election defeat ever, dropping from holding a decisive majority to only 2 seats).
Update: The Register thinks that one of the first changes Gillard will make is to fire the current Communications Minister:
Speculation was rife this morning (or evening, over in Australia) that controversial Communications Minister and architect of Australia’s great firewall project, Stephen Conroy may shortly be for the chop.
In his place, it is suggested, Australia’s new PM Julia Gillard might prefer the more conciliatory — and also better-informed — approach of Senator Kate Lundy.
If so, this is likely to prove a victory for those opposed to Conroy’s hard line on internet censorship, as Ms Lundy has made it clear over the last few months that she prefers to win support from Australia’s voters for an opt-in filter — instead of imposing a mandatory filter from the centre, which is the hardline stance favoured by the present Communications Minister.
If true, that will be a bit of good news for internet users in Australia.
June 18, 2010
EFF introduces “Encrypt the Web” Firefox plugin
A very interesting new project from Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Today EFF and the Tor Project are launching a public beta of a new Firefox extension called HTTPS Everywhere.
This Firefox extension was inspired by the launch of Google’s encrypted search option. We wanted a way to ensure that every search our browsers sent was encrypted.
H/T to BoingBoing for the link.
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June 16, 2010
The irritating part of “mobile computing”
Cory Doctorow just got back from a book tour, but unlike all the other ones, he found this tour was both pleasant and productive, thanks to mobile computing:
I “rooted” my Nexus One, breaking into the OS so that I could easily “tether” it to my laptop, using it as a 3G modem between tour stops (we didn’t have to root my wife’s matching phone, as Google supplied us with an unlocked developer handset). My typical tour day started at 5am with breakfast and work on the novel, then a 6am interview with someone in Europe, then pickup, two to four school visits with a short lunch break, three or four interviews, then a bookstore signing or a plane (or both). As busy as that sounds, there’s actually a fair bit of dead time in it while sitting in the escort’s car, trying to find the next stop.
This time round, I plugged the laptop into the cigarette lighter and the phone into the laptop — this gave the phone a battery charge and the laptop internet access. And best of all, it meant that I could harvest those dead minutes to answer emails, keep on blogging, and generally stay abreast of things.
Which meant that I got lots more of the touring author’s most precious commodity: sleep. On previous tours, returning to the hotel meant sitting down for three to four hours’ worth of emails before bed, which cut my sleep time to less than four hours some nights.
So all is sweetness and light with modern mobile computing, yes? Not quite:
. . . the fundamental paradox of mobile — so long as the mobile carriers remain a part of mobile computing, it will only work for so long as you don’t go anywhere.
One of the more frustrating parts of travelling with my iPhone has been that I have to basically lobotomize it before crossing the border, reducing it from really powerful smart phone to a PDA with a phone line: the data and “roaming” charges are so high that it’s not economical to use them for anything other than an emergency. Just when being able to get driving directions or hotel or restaurant recommendations would be most useful — on the road or in an unfamiliar city — the cost is usually too high to justify turning on the damned feature.
Yes, you can hunt down wifi connections (and I did, on my last few trips to the US), but it hardly counts as convenient. The phone companies still assume anyone travelling with a smart phone is going to be spending their employers’ money and therefore won’t notice or care about the up-front costs.
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June 14, 2010
I can haz bizness empire?
The New York Times discovers LOLcats:
Three years ago Ben Huh visited a blog devoted to silly cat pictures — and saw vast potential.
Mr. Huh, a 32-year-old entrepreneur, first became aware of I Can Has Cheezburger, which pairs photos of cats with quirky captions, after it linked to his own pet blog. His site immediately crumbled under the resulting wave of visitors.
Sensing an Internet phenomenon, Mr. Huh solicited financing from investors and forked over $10,000 of his own savings to buy the Web site from the two Hawaiian bloggers who started it.
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June 11, 2010
It’s not really about market share: that’s just keeping score
Eric Raymond thinks a lot of people are missing the point on the ongoing iPhone-Android battle:
It’s not about whether or not Apple will be crushed. It’s not about who makes the “best” products, where “best” is measured by some interaction between the product and the speaker’s evaluation of the relative importance of various features and costs. It’s about what the next generation of personal computing platforms will be. Down one fork they’ll be open, hackable, and user-controlled. Down the other they’ll be closed, locked down, and vendor-controlled. Though there are others on each side of this struggle, in 2010 it comes down to whether Apple or Android wins the race to over 50% smartphone market share; after that point, network effects will become self-reinforcing until the next technology disruption.
If he’s right — and he very well might be — then Apple’s moderately disappointing upgrades in the newly announced iPhone 4 may have handed the long-term advantage to Google. This may be bad news for Apple shareholders, but it’ll be a long-term positive for mobile computing.
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What could possibly go wrong?
The US Senate is considering a bill that would give the President an internet “kill switch”. Funny how the one area most open to the widest possible spectrum of opinion and belief might be shut down at will, leaving only the regular propaganda outlets uncontrolled:
Under PCNAA, the federal government’s power to force private companies to comply with emergency decrees would become unusually broad. Any company on a list created by Homeland Security that also “relies on” the Internet, the telephone system, or any other component of the U.S. “information infrastructure” would be subject to command by a new National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications (NCCC) that would be created inside Homeland Security.
The only obvious limitation on the NCCC’s emergency power is one paragraph in the Lieberman bill that appears to have grown out of the Bush-era flap over warrantless wiretapping. That limitation says that the NCCC cannot order broadband providers or other companies to “conduct surveillance” of Americans unless it’s otherwise legally authorized.
Lieberman said Thursday that enactment of his bill needed to be a top congressional priority. “For all of its ‘user-friendly’ allure, the Internet can also be a dangerous place with electronic pipelines that run directly into everything from our personal bank accounts to key infrastructure to government and industrial secrets,” he said. “Our economic security, national security and public safety are now all at risk from new kinds of enemies — cyber-warriors, cyber-spies, cyber-terrorists and cyber-criminals.”
For those of you who think this is a super-cool neat idea (because Obama wouldn’t ever abuse this new rule), just try the mental image of George Bush or Sarah Palin with this kind of power. Still seem like a good notion?
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June 2, 2010
New copyright bill introduced
It’s not yet online, so I haven’t read it myself (and, not being a lawyer, it might not be a good use of my time). Michael Geist has, however, and provides a useful summary of the good and the bad:
The bill contains some important extensions of fair dealing, including new exceptions for parody, satire, and (most notably) education. It also contains more sensible time shifting and format shifting provisions that still feature restrictions (they do not apply where there is a digital lock) but are more technology neutral than the C-61 model. There is also a “YouTube exception” that grants Canadians the right to create remixed user generated content for non-commercial purposes under certain circumstances. While still not as good as a flexible fair dealing provision, the compromise is a pretty good one. Throw in notice-and-notice for Internet providers, backup copying, and some important changes to the statutory damages regime for non-commercial infringement and there are some provisions worth fighting to keep.
Yet all the attempts at balance come with a giant caveat that has huge implications for millions of Canadians. The foundational principle of the new bill remains that anytime a digital lock is used — whether on books, movies, music, or electronic devices — the lock trumps virtually all other rights. In other words, in the battle between two sets of property rights — those of the intellectual property rights holder and those of the consumer who has purchased the tangible or intangible property — the IP rights holder always wins. This represents market intervention for a particular business model by a government supposedly committed to the free market and it means that the existing fair dealing rights (including research, private study, news reporting, criticism, and review) and the proposed new rights (parody, satire, education, time shifting, format shifting, backup copies) all cease to function effectively so long as the rights holder places a digital lock on their content or device.
It’s not quite the total surrender to the entertainment rights holders that many feared, but it’s certainly not the best deal for consumers. Bottom line:
For the glass half-full, the compromise positions on fair dealing, the new exceptions, and statutory damages are not bad — not perfect — but better than C-61. For the glass half-empty, the digital lock provisions are almost identical to C-61 and stand as among the most anti-consumer copyright provisions in Canadian history. Not only are they worse than the U.S. DMCA, but they undermine much of the positive change found in the rest of the bill. In the days and weeks ahead, Canadians must speak out to ensure that the compromise positions found in C-32 remain intact and that the digital lock provisions move from the no-compromise category to the compromise one.
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May 26, 2010
QotD: Facebook privacy follies
All 1,472 employees of Facebook, Inc. reportedly burst out in uncontrollable laughter Wednesday following Albuquerque resident Jason Herrick’s attempts to protect his personal information from exploitation on the social-networking site. “Look, he’s clicking ‘Friends Only’ for his e-mail address. Like that’s going to make a difference!” howled infrastructure manager Evan Hollingsworth, tears streaming down his face, to several of his doubled-over coworkers. “Oh, sure, by all means, Jason, ‘delete’ that photo. Man, this is so rich.”
“Entire Facebook Staff Laughs As Man Tightens Privacy Settings”, The Onion, 2010-05-26
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May 22, 2010
Copyright suits . . . and profanity
Cory Doctorow finds fulfilling both interests easy in this case:
You know what I’m interested in? Copyright lawsuits.
And profanity.
Lucky for me, Google and Viacom have provided both today, in the form of a series of emails released through the discovery process in Viacom’s billion-dollar lawsuit against YouTube. In these emails, the two companies take turns cussin’ and spittin’ and swearin’ about each other. Hilarity ensues. Ars Technica rounds up some of the highlights.
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May 18, 2010
QotD: Time to kill the “information wants to be free” meme
“Information wants to be free” (IWTBF hereafter) is half of Stewart Brand’s famous aphorism, first uttered at the Hackers Conference in Marin County, California (where else?), in 1984: “On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.”
This is a chunky, chewy little koan, and as these go, it’s an elegant statement of the main contradiction of life in the “information age”. It means, fundamentally, that the increase in information’s role as an accelerant and source of value is accompanied by a paradoxical increase in the cost of preventing the spread of information. That is, the more IT you have, the more IT generates value, and the more information becomes the centre of your world. But the more IT (and IT expertise) you have, the easier it is for information to spread and escape any proprietary barrier. As an oracular utterance predicting the next 40 years’ worth of policy, business and political fights, you can hardly do better.
But it’s time for it to die.
Cory Doctorow, “Saying information wants to be free does more harm than good”, The Guardian, 2010-05-18
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