thinks - retired

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2006-01-27T00:56:00.000-05:00

We've moved

2006-01-24T00:34:00.000-05:00

Don't forget, thinks is now at timpeter.com/blog. See you there!

Time... they are a-changing...

2005-12-14T21:40:00.000-05:00

Cnet has a story about Time laying off a number of senior executives, mostly from its business side, as part of a major restructuring. The notable part of the article comes towards the end, where it discusses Carl Icahn and Steve Case's gripes about the value of print in the age of digital media. You remember Steve Case, right? He's the one that merged his company, digital darling (at the time) AOL, with TimeWarner, specifically to get access to the content that TimeWarner controlled. Now he thinks that its content lacks relevance? Either Stevie has some other tricks up his sleeve, or once again is demonstrating a bad sense of, um, Time-ing. Back when AOL and TimeWarner joined forces, pundits praised the move as a brilliant marriage of new media and old, content distribution network and content provider, audience and message. Somehow AOL managed to screw it up (though plummeting online media budgets didn't help). In its aftermath, folks like Google and Overture have emerged to re-invent online media (primarily through targeted search ads), not to mention folks like Claria. So what gives? Clearly there's a lot to be gained in shareholder value by splitting the company into more easily understood businesses. But when you look at how the long-promised convergence finally may come to pass (more on this in the coming days), it seems that companies that excel at content, its delivery, or some combination, stand to benefit quite a bit. And you can print that.

Brother, can you spare a dime...

2005-11-08T07:53:00.000-05:00

Wow. I mean, wow!!! Pardon the "Tom Peters'-style" overuse of exclamation points, (not to mention the word "wow" itself), but Amazon may have come up with a way to solve a really thorny problem. If ever you've been in the market for an infinite number of monkeys to type out all the great books, or other such task, Amazon has provided one possible solution. Their new Mechanical Turk service, or "artificial artificial intelligence" uses the power of idle minds connected to the Internet (much like SETI or the Human Genome Project tries to use idle computer processing power) to solve problems that aren't well suited to computers. Amazon calls these efforts Human Intelligence Tasks, or HITs. For example, Amazon has photos of locations in various cities and asks its Mechanical Turks (the folks who accept the HITs; the name is related to ancient computing machine history), to select the photo that best represents those locations. Amazon, or the company/person that requested the HIT, pays a small fee to the person completing it. Judging by the HITs on the site currently, those fees average a few cents each. Wild, huh?

While the service is still beta testing, the long-term implications are pretty interesting, particularly in the context of where Amazon pictures its business. For instance, Amazon's original tagline, some 10 years ago, was "The Earth's Largest Bookstore." More recently, Jeff Bezos noted in a letter to Amazon's customers posted on Amazon, "Our company-wide obsession for creating the best possible shopping experience will not change..." (http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/irol/17/176060/images/letters/letter_10anniv.gif). Within their media kit, Amazon gives further insight into where the company sees itself going. The page notes, "Amazon.com strives to be Earth's most customer-centric company where people can find and discover virtually anything they want to buy online." (empasis mine; retrieved from http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-mediaKit). Clearly, Amazon has bigger things in mind these days instead of just being a bookstore; however, anyone who says, "duh, Amazon's been growing beyond that space for a long time" isn't necessarily considering what Amazon has become. They're becoming less a retailer, and more like eBay. Their intent isn't so much to be a store that consumers buy from, so much as it is to become a platform, or more appropriately, the platform, through which sellers sell and buyers buy. Mecahnical Turk shows this as well as anything because it now moves Amazon into fulfillment in the labor market. Admittedly, it's not the labor market most of us recognize (and conceivably not even one most of us need); however, it may also illustrate another example of the Internet creating an industry space where none existed before.

So, great, right? Maybe. Maybe not. I see at least a couple of flaws with regard to Amazon's move. Probably the most minor flaw is related to the compensation offered. Given the scale of the HITs, and the price offered by companies seeking assistance, I'm not sure how many people will find the effort worth their time. Micropayments, long touted by Jakob Nielsen and others, as something that the 'Net needs badly, require an Amazon account, and again, may not represent enough money to entice users to participate.

Most notably, though, is its separation from users' passion, which Amazon has successfully leveraged in the past to provide better services to its customers. Amazon.com does a phenomonal job of creating user communities through its Reviewer system, Associates program (affiliate marketing/Web-commerce platform), Purchase Circles, and Lists (both its Wish Lists and its consumer-created lists, which really use the same mechanism, but change the spin). Amazon gets all the labor it wants to create significant amounts of content, and gets it all for (mostly) free. Obviously, Amazon has costs for creating these tools, and they pay commissions for its Associates program. Still, the majority of labor is provided by users who do it because of their passion for the topic. MySpace.com has built an entirely successful business model tapping almost exclusively into its users' passion to leverage free labor. I'm not sure that users are looking for another job when they come home at the end of the day (and I shudder to think if its used by individuals at work), and I'm less sure that they'll be willing to do it for minimum wage (assuming $0.03 per task, two tasks per minute). These might only represent minor issues, or might spell doom for the Mechanical Turk service. Amazon may well have found that the only way to get people to accept these tasks is by offering some coin of the realm; I assume a better model would offer more compelling renumeration. Time will tell.

On an unrelated topic, you might want to check out Digg.com, where I first read about Amazon's latest venture. Similar to Slashdot, though a bit less nerd-y. Until next time...

Say what?

2005-11-01T23:31:00.000-05:00

Napster has new commercials using a tagline, "Own nothing. Have everything." Lenin (not the one from the Beatles), would be pleased. What exactly is the appeal of paying money every month for something you used to be able to listen to anywhere, anytime and not getting to keep it?!? If Napster manages to make money on this, I have seriously overestimated the intelligence of today's youth.

Taking a page from Steven Levitt's "Freakonomics", the music industry needs to find ways to decrease the cost of downloadable music that protects copyrights, while increasing the cost for downloading unlicensed music. Clearly, suing alleged "pirates" is an attempt to raise the cost of downloading. Still, the RIAA seems to focus too much on the stick and not enough on the carrot. Why not provide CD's that act as "dongles" or as a key to online content that can only be accessed if the CD is in the drive? I'm sure there are myriad privacy issues with it; still, someone ought to be able to figure this one out to drive down the "costs" of legal downloads. That way, artists win, consumers actually get to exercise their right to "fair use," and record companies get to stay in business. I know it sounds crazy, but I'm an idealist that way sometimes.

And now for something completely different...

2005-10-25T22:55:00.000-04:00

OK, this has absolutely nothing to do with my regular stuff, but I saw "Avenue Q" a few weeks ago, and thought it was great. Tonight, while watching the World Series (Chicago just took a 5-4 lead... that's the White Sox, silly. The Cubs don't get in the World Series), I saw Ann Harada from the show in a commercial for Sprint. Weird. That, and the word "schadenfreude" seems to be turning up everywhere these days. See the show. Trust me.

Of course, you still can't afford gas for it...

2005-10-24T00:27:00.000-04:00

So, here's a fun one for all the kids out there. It seems a group of scientists have created the smallest car ever made. You really can't make this stuff up. It seems that the idea is to eventually build trucks (like nano-moving vans, for instance), to move atoms and molecules around in an atom factory. Truth appears to be getting stranger than fiction every day now, doesn't it?

Quick hit...

2005-10-17T22:33:00.000-04:00

We used to talk about living in Internet years. Does anyone talk about mobile phone years now? Maybe they do in Japan or somewhere where networks are more robust. Just a thought.

Does this mean I should've gotten a Treo?

2005-10-17T22:19:00.000-04:00

Damn. I've been using technology long enough to know that every time you make a commitment to one product, something cool happens on another front that makes you reconsider. Clearly, this is another of those cases. I just recently got rid of my ancient (in cell phone years) Motorola V60i and replaced it with a BlackBerry 7100g. I dig the phone, it's really cool. Then this happens. I looked hard at the Treo, like it, and opted not to get it because our corporate mail server doesn't support it. Now, Palm and RIM are making nice-nice, and it looks like you'll be able to get a Treo running BlackBerry's email system. There just isn't any justice in this world.

Anyway, how much do you think that the new Windows Mobile-powered Treo got the folks over at Research in Motion, um, in motion? It looks like the handset is shaping up to be the next desktop and the kids in Redmond want to play in that space, too. Do you think Ma Bell ever saw this one coming?

The Devil gives you the first hit for free...

2005-10-14T23:00:00.000-04:00

At least that's what they say about heroin. The RIAA, however, makes heroin dealers look like nursery school teachers. An anonymous donor now is providing students with access to music subscriptions for at least a year. Of course, if the kids want to listen to the music anywhere other than their duly authorized accounts, I assume the RIAA supports that, in exchange for Junior's immortal soul. At least, that's how the other pushers do it.

OK, so I fell off the planet again...

2005-08-11T22:41:00.000-04:00

Still, there's interesting news in the world of intellectual property and what I'm allowed to watch on what player in the privacy of my own home. Bastards. Check out this column on Engadget regarding format wars and what drives them these days. How's this for an idea? How about we get the opportunity to watch what we want, when we want, and where we want, for a single, reasonable fee? Once I've paid for it, I want to be able to watch it on the television in my family room, bedroom, or on my laptop without having to pay multiple times for it. Hell, most of it's not worth paying for once (see recent box office receipts for evidence of that). How about this for an idea? How about we stop buying the nonsense that Hollywood produces? Look what happens to companies like Dreamworks Animation when their media doesn't produce like it's supposed to. And that's with a hit like "Shrek 2" not selling enough DVD's Imagine if they were producing crap like "The Island" or something. To paraphrase Obi-wan, "Who's the bigger fool? The fool, or the fool who pays repeatedly to watch the fool's really bad movies?"

Meet George Jetson...

2005-07-12T21:09:00.000-04:00

Wow! I mean frickin' wow!. When I was in eighth grade, my school got their first ever computer: a Tandy "Trash-80" (that's TRS-80 for those too young to remember). Now kids in Arizona are getting laptops instead of books! I'm absolutely blown away. Seriously. Sure, online degree programs have become more common over the last few years, but this takes it to a whole new level. I wonder if this is partly a play by Apple to get back into the education market in a big way, which they absolutely owned years ago. Pretty interesting. Stay tuned...

Maybe it will be a World Wide Web?

2005-07-11T20:52:00.000-04:00

So, how's this for an interesting turn of events? Apparently, the United Nations is looking to take control of the Internet. Obviously, the really key part of this debate is the so-called "fragmented root" or "nuclear option" (am I the only one getting sick of that expression?) discussion. The theory goes that the rest of the world could set up their own root servers that were different from those in the U.S. So when someone in Chile, for instance, typed www.foo.com, it could point to a different site than what someone in the U.S. typing the same thing would get. Ick. I'd suggest you write your congressman, but I expect that they'd make the wrong decision, and invoke an entirely different nuclear option. Warring standards, indeed.

If the Supreme Court agees, here comes an Avalanche of file-sharing...

2005-06-18T20:20:00.000-04:00

So, what do you think the odds are that Microsoft will bring this to market if the Supreme Court rules that file-sharing is legal? I'm thinking they're pretty good. And what do you think the Men of Redmond are likely to charge for this? Probably the same they charge for most of their "utility" products that get incorporated (bundled, whatever), into Windows. Zero. Zip. Nada. Nil. What can they charge? BitTorrent, eXeem, and their ilk are free, too. Microsoft generally does a good job of pricing themselves below their competitors. With Open Source software, Microsoft has to effectively lower the price of Windows by including the same features consumers receive from the third-party software, built-in to Windows at no extra cost. Of course, if the Supreme Court goes the other way, Avalanche probably never sees the light of day. Should be an interesting week, no?

I think there might be a trend going on here...

2005-06-18T20:12:00.000-04:00

So the Supreme Court is finally set to rule on whether file-sharing software violates copyright. While I have no idea which way the court is going to rule, I think the story above this one might give a clue, no?

Do Patents Shine Up? They might...

2005-06-09T00:15:00.000-04:00

Congress is moving towards changes to patent law that may clean up intellectual property for the first time in a long time. I still need to get up to speed on this one, but given that current patent law couldn't be much worse, particularly when it comes to disputes of "prior art," this can't be a bad thing. Curious to hear what others think on this one. Dig in, eh?

So what had me so busy?

2005-05-09T22:08:00.000-04:00

School, work, family, and my hosting company changing me to a new server. It's taken me a couple of weeks to sort out all the details with the other stuff going on. Anyway, I'm back and plan to be as verbose as ever. Cheers!

Remember me?

2005-05-09T21:49:00.000-04:00

OK, so I've been busy. Anyway, here's an interesting bit about the U.S Appeals Court ruling against the broadcast flag. Finally, it looks like some fair use is beginning to work its way back into the discussion regarding copyright. I doubt this is over, but it should be interesting to see where it goes.

Long time...

2005-04-12T00:26:00.000-04:00

No post. I'd ask you to forgive my relative silence, but that seems a bit arrogant. After all, how many of you knew I was gone? Basically, I have either had nothing to say, or no time to say it. Still, this one's kind of funny. The IRS, never known for its creativity, has at last found its muse. Apparently, it believes that a tax created to pay for the Spanish-American War might apply to the Internet. You know, the Spanish-American War. The one in the 19th century. No. Really. This is going to hurt Al Gore's claims about inventing the Internet if people find out it was predicted almost one hundred years before. Especially if it was predicted in tax legislation. Crazy, man, crazy.

Tag! You're it!

2005-03-24T01:05:00.000-05:00

Yahoo's acquisition of Flickr gives them access to its meta-tagging community. Very, very clever. I wasn't really that aware of Flickr before this, but they've got a novel approach to solving one of the more complex problems in computing: resolving searches of non-textual data. How cool would it be to say, "find me the picture from my wife's birthday where she's wearing the funny looking hat" and have the computer bring back the right thing? Or "bring back the cool live version of that song I like that happens to be named almost exactly the same as the studio cut (which is much less cool)?" Cool, indeed.

Sad story...

2005-03-22T07:57:00.000-05:00

A federal judge today denied a request by Terry Schiavo's family to order that her feeding tube be reinserted. I don't usually write about these kinds of stories, because I think most people prefer to be entertained, not lectured. Still, this one strikes home for me on all kinds of levels, and since I call this thing 'thinks,' thinking once in a while seems like a good idea.

I don't know whether Terry Schiavo told her husband that she didn't want to be kept alive artificially. What I do know is that, as tragic as this is for her parents, brother, and her husand, this woman deserves to be at rest. When Congress acted this past weekend, they acted on behalf of her parents. Many people have acted on behalf of her husband. More than a couple (particularly big lobbying groups) acted on their own behalf to establish precedents. None of those matter. What matters is acting on behalf of Ms. Schiavo. There are only two possible states that can describe Terry Schiavo's condition right now. Either she is brain damaged beyond the point of consciousness, or she isn't. If she is, with all due respect to her family, she is dead and all this wrangling over her legal status is moot. If she isn't, then this story is all the sadder. I cannot believe any reasonable person would want to "live," trapped inside a non-functioning shell of a body, without the ability to communicate, for fifteen years. I personally find it terrifying. I certainly wouldn't want it for myself, nor for anyone that I love.

Technology shapes our lives in many ways. In this case, it extended one. Maybe more than it should. Without technology, Terry Schiavo most likely would have died long ago. As our society ages, more and more work is done to find the technological solution that will keep us alive just a little bit longer. That's OK with me, as I'm not really looking forward to dying anytime soon. However, as these technologies improve, our values and our ethics are struggling to keep up. The definition of "alive" gets a little cloudier, a little grayer, every day. Some people in this debate cast this as a question of human rights, whether Ms. Schiavo is entitled to the same rights as everyone else. Of course she is. There's no question. I think it misses the point. Ms. Schiavo is entitled to the same rights as everyone else, as long as she is alive. The real question here is, "what does it mean to be alive?" Until we get that one right, this case is far from over.

I must be getting old...

2005-03-20T19:32:00.000-05:00

But this is one of the more horrible ideas I've run across in a while. Some video game manufacturers plan products that feature drug use as one of the aspects of the game. I'll admit, I don't watch too many movies that focus on the drug culture, but I understand their place in society. Not too many portray drug use in a favorable light. Still, watching a film where you empathisize with a character's drug problem (or can't wait for his downfall like Frank Booth in 'Blue Velvet'), is a far cry from shooting up, simulated or not. Sure, you can argue that violence has been part of games for a long time, so why shouldn't drug use be? And for me, it's a question of benefit. Wars are violent. Police work can often be violent. Portraying someone in a game who has to take someone's life, presumably a bad guy, to achieve a more positive result is a big difference from taking a hit on a joint or sticking a needle in your arm just for its game play benefits.

Today's dispatch from the dot-bomb bust...

2005-03-15T22:02:00.000-05:00

This just in: the dot-com thing may have been overrated. According to researchers, Metcalfe's law appears to be wrong. Um, do you think? Metcalfe's law basically says that the utility and value of a network increases exponentially the more things are connected to the network. Basically. As it happens, Metcalfe was full of crapola on this one. In a related story, most of the people who worked for Metcalfe's company have been unemployed for the last three years.

One more shuffle note...

2005-03-09T22:35:00.000-05:00

No pun intended. OK, one quick question: is it just me, or did Scissor Sisters run across a whole stack of Elton John albums, say, Honky Chateau and Captain Fantastic? I've been listening to that on my iPod shuffle, and I swear, if I didn't knkow better, I'd swear some of these tunes are covers. Forgetting, of course, Comfortably Numb, which actually is a cover, albeit one of the stranger ones I've run across in a long time. It vaguely reminded me of the Flying Lizards' cover of Money (That's What I Want), which is still the oddest cover I've ever heard. Not that odd is bad. Too many songs these days aren't odd enough, I say. So grab a shuffle and boogie down.

Shuffle off to buffle...

2005-03-08T19:56:00.000-05:00

OK, that's a stupid title for a post, but hang with me for a minute. I just got an iPod shuffle. I don't care what anyone says. It is awfully cool. It's fun. It sounds great. It works tremendously well with iTunes (which is still the best Windows MP3 player). It's uncannily musical in how it moves from song to song. Downright spooky, actually. For instance, did you know that The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts (Reprise) segues really, really well into Same Direction by Hoobastank? Me, either. Cool, though. Some people don't like the fact that it doesn't have a screen, but I think they're missing the point. When I'm on the treadmill, riding my bike, or even sitting on a flight or subway, I'm not paying too much attention to reading the song. The shuffle pulls all the songs from my library, so it's not like I've got hundreds lying around that I don't know to listen to. Most reviews I've seen for it say that it's really only recommended as a second MP3 player, but I'm not convinced. I guess that iTunes, Winamp (the second best Windows MP3 player), and Musicmatch count as my first (um, and second, and third), given that I run those on my computer. However, for someone like me, who listens in the car, or while working out, I can't imagine what more I'd need. The only bad thing I can say about it is it's Autofill feature, which somehow found a really cheesy Escape Club MP3 on my hard drive. Not only did I not know it was there, I can't imagine how it got there. Ah, well, I guess I can't blame the shuffle. I just wish I could pin it on something, because I really don't want to take the blame for that one. Really.