October 2007 Archives

A couple of months ago the future of municipal wi-fi looked cloudy indeed. ISP EarthLink announced in late August that, due to financial problems, it was putting muni buildouts on hold.

Since EarthLink has been an aggressive champion of municipal wireless networks, news that the company was laying off 900 workers and curtailing plans was seen as a sign that ubiquitous muni wi-fi was a long way off.

Maybe not. According to this article on internetnews.com, the Senate Commerce, Science & Transportation Committee has greenlighted legislation that would ban efforts by states to bar local governments from providing community broadband access.

The Community Broadband Act of 2007 would pave the way for cities to install free Wi-Fi networks without being forced to contract through existing commercial providers. A similar measure is moving forward in the House, and both bills have broad bipartisan support.

The bill would reverse laws on the books in Pennsylvania and 13 other states that prevent local governments from providing free or low-cost broadband access to citizens in competition with commercial broadband services.

As I've said before, there's no downside to municipal wireless. It would increase productivity and traffic to ESPN.com, all at the same time. It would help spur economic activity and might even cut down on the amount of time Mac users hog a table at the local coffee shop while milking an espresso for 90 minutes.

Allowing communities to develop municipal wireless without going through commercial providers can only hasten its widespread adoption. Of course, the bill is still in the political legislative system, so it's anyone's guess if and when it will become law.

Here's hoping it's not long. I'm tired of waiting for a table.

So you're a giant Internet company -- Amazon.com, say -- and you've just reported stellar third-quarter earnings.

How stellar? How about a quadrupling of Q3 profits, from $19 million (5 cents a share) in Q3 '06 to $80 million (19 cents a share). And a 41 percent increase in revenue to $3.26 billion. Both topped Wall Street estimates of 18 cents a share profit and $3.13 billion in revenue.

Further, operating income more than tripled, to $123 million from $40 million in the year-ago quarter, easily topping Amazon.com's forecasted range of $75 million to $110 million.

But that wasn't good enough for the crybabies on Wall Street, who are fretting because the online retail giant might not be able to sustain those profit margins. The company has forecast its Q4 operating income will be between $221 million and $291 million.

Some analysts, however, have predicted Q4 net income in the area of $278 million, and since the midpoint of Amazon.com's forecast is below that guess, shares plummeted 11 percent in after-hours trading Tuesday.

Here's how one analyst explains it:

"When the results came in and turned out to be very good, and the guidance was positive, it still wasn't as positive as some investors' excessive expectations would suggest," said Jeffrey Lindsay, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. in New York.

How come the problem isn't the "excessive expectations"?

I've had friends over the years who have expressed concern about their Internet activities being recorded or monitored by governments, or corporations acting on behalf of governments.

They weren't looking for blueprints to make dirty bombs or anything; they just didn't want the whole world to know their, um, interests, legal though they may be.

I always dismissed these concerns as needless paranoia. After all, there are millions of Internet users out there looking for all kinds of things, so who really cares what you're doing?

Sadly, I guess it's time to rethink that theory...

There's always a certain entertainment value when zealots clash, even if (or perhaps especially if) it's over a serious issue.

For example, during this year's endless series of Republican presidential debates, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney have been tripping all over themselves to persuade GOP voters that each would be more willing than the other to employ torture. (Rudy: I'd have my interrogators "use every method they could think of." Mitt: I'd "double Guantanamo!")

This holds true not only across the political spectrum, but in other realms. The latest case can be found at the nexus of environmental activism and technology. Greenpeace, the organization dedicated to making environmental activism as grim and joyless as possible, has accused Apple of using hazardous chemicals in its new iPhone. As internetnews.com reports:

Among the offending chemicals the organization discovered are polyvinyl chloride (PVC), a plastic banned from children's toys, in the iPhone's headphones, and Bromine, which is typically used as a flame retardant. Greenpeace also found high uses of "phthalates," chemicals used to increase the flexibility of plastic, in the iPhone's headset.

[B]ased on the Greenpeace report, the Center for Environmental Health (CEH), an Oakland, Calif. environmental group, said it would sue Apple if it does not do something about the chemicals used in the iPhone.

"We expect Apple to reformulate their products to make them safer from cradle to grave, so they don't pose a threat to consumers, workers or the environment," Michael Green, executive director of CEH, haughtily declared in a statement.

So far Apple has responded to neither the charges nor demands. Not so the Apple dead-enders, who are plastering the Internet with broadsides against Greenpeace. Here's a sampling:

"Greenpeace...what a joke. All they care about is cash for their organization. Which is why they attack former founding members who have gone on to help corporations to clean up their environmental acts. Greenpeace = Nazi."

"Greenpeace is IMHO a global donation industry that's all. They care for the best only, which is your money. Why isn't anybody trying to sue them back to hell?"

"Greenprice is a vengeful organization that serves no purpose other than their own agenda." (Note clever "Greenprice" twist.)

"Apple is the best of breed when it comes to building electronics that is environmentally sensible and sensitive. Left to Greenpeace, we would be heating caves with burning wood and counting on our toes and fingers, communicating with grunts - and living to about 37."

I see only one way out of this mess for Apple, and that's to follow the tried-and-true formula corporations have used for eons when faced with a public relations fiasco: Acknowledge the mistake and do the right thing Launch a PR counteroffensive! Here are some suggestions for Steve and the Cupertino gang (invoice to come):

1) New corporate slogan. "Apple: It's Insanely Green!"

2) Leak news of pending Microsoft "Asbesto-phone".

3) Commission scientific study touting auditory benefits of third ear.

4) Another slogan. "The iPhone: It Will Outlive You."

5) Put things in perspective: "Well, at least we don't torture!"

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer acknowledged earlier this week at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in Orlando that the software giant is far behind Google in online search and advertising.

As CNET News.com reports:

"In world search and advertising, Google is the leader; we're an aspirant," Ballmer said. "We have a lot of work to do in search and advertising."

"A lot of work to do" is an understatement. According to the latest research by tracking firm comScore, as reported here by our colleagues at internetnews.com, for Microsoft to catch up with Google, it will first have to pass Yahoo and -- unkind cut coming up -- Chinese search engine Baidu.

Google and related properties such as YouTube still came out on top as the origination point of 37 billion searches (in August), followed by Yahoo in second place with 8.5 billion searches.

[U]nlike early surveys, Microsoft did not come in third. That ranking went to Chinese search engine Baidu, which was responsible for 3.3 billion searches compared to fourth-place Microsoft at 2.2 billion.

I can't tell if Baidu's total includes searches blocked by China's Great Wall of Internet Censorship, but either way Microsoft isn't even in the game.

Redmond says it has a strategy to become more competitive, and that is:

...to concentrate not on taking market share away from Google or Yahoo, but to grow its share by convincing existing Live Search users to spend more time with the engine.

Hmm. Let's say Microsoft doubles the number of searches done by current users. That still leaves it with about half of Yahoo's search activity, and not even within sight of Google. To me that's almost a white flag. What happened to the combative old Microsoft?

I think I'll jump on Google and try to find out.

Last week a colleague sent me this link to a blog by an Intel engineer regarding some interesting workplace experiments being conducted by the chipmaker's IT group.

One of the experiments, writes 25-year Intel veteran Nathan Zeldes, is "Quiet Time," in which Intel engineers "push back on the problem of incessant distractions by assigning Tuesday mornings to uninterrupted work in full 'offline' mode."

Great idea. As we all know from personal experience, constant interruptions via IM, email, phone and cubicle intrusions wreak havoc on focus and productivity.

The other Intel experiment, "Open Bar Wednesday," speaks for itself.

Just kidding. They do it on Thursdays.

Just kidding again. The real second experiment is "Zero Email Friday," in which Intel is "testing a direct attack on the preference to use email rather than walk across the aisle and talk to one’s coworker." As Zeldes explains:

In our new pilot, we encourage the members of an organic group to focus each Friday on direct conversation – face to face or by telephone – for interpersonal communication within the group. Processing email from other groups is OK; sending email within the group is also OK – when it is necessary. But as much as possible, they will try to walk across the aisle or pick up the phone. While this may seem a small thing, experiments done in other companies showed a great impact once people started exploring communication with the human voice.

For good reason, as this New York Times column about "social neuroscience" makes clear:

New findings have uncovered a design flaw at the interface where the brain encounters a computer screen: there are no online channels for the multiple signals the brain uses to calibrate emotions.

...[E]-mail can be emotionally impoverished when it comes to nonverbal messages that add nuance and valence to our words. The typed words are denuded of the rich emotional context we convey in person or over the phone.

What? Surely emoticons must count for something! :)

There's more:

Face-to-face interaction, by contrast, is information-rich. We interpret what people say to us not only from their tone and facial expressions, but also from their body language and pacing, as well as their synchronization with what we do and say.

In other words, all the capital letters and exclamation points in the world never could convey your boss's rage as adequately as his reddened face and bellowing voice.

Given the latest research cited in the Times, not to mention common sense, we don't need to wait for an update from Intel's engineers to know that actually meeting and/or speaking with other humans at work is critical to team-building and morale.

And the open bars work pretty good, too.

Thursday's verdict by a federal jury ordering a Minneapolis woman to pay $220,000 for illegally downloading and sharing copyrighted music online has the blogosphere buzzing today.

No wonder. The issue of sharing copyrighted songs for free via peer-to-peer networking has always aroused strong opinions and emotions. Penalizing a single mom nearly a quarter-million dollars only adds fuel to the fire.

Like most, I believe the dollar award is ridiculous. I also highly doubt that Jammie Thomas, the defendant, will have to pay anywhere near that amount. There likely will be an appeal, the six music companies that won the verdict may be willing to negotiate a smaller settlement, Thomas could declare bankruptcy, etc.

Here's a sampling of comments from the bloggers and readers:

"It is one of the most irrational things I have ever seen in my life in the law." -- New York attorney Ray Beckerman

"Sure, the music companies have the right to defend their interests, but fining a single, working mother more than she probably makes in five years is just vicious." -- Slashdot poster flyingsquid

"[T]the RIAA will take this as a validation of its "sue our fans" strategy, rather than realizing it's finally time to try a different model." -- Mike Masnick, Techdirt

"When you steal by file sharing, you're stealing from the song writers. Excuses, rationalizing, and hating the labels doesn't change this." -- CNET.com reader gearpig

Of course, there are many more strongly worded reactions out there, but you get the picture.

I have conflicting feelings about the entire issue because:

The music industry essentially is a bunch of thieves who constantly rip off artists and fans.

The notion that music should be free is, at bottom, selfish rationalizing. Musicians are workers and should be paid for what they produce. Really, it's not like being a blogger.

A lot of what recording artists produce is overpriced crap. But that's in part because they're forced to meet contractual requirements set by the rapacious music companies.

It seems as if they had the goods on Jammie Thomas, who maintained her innocence but whose Kazaa username matched one of her known email addresses.

The RIAA insists it only sues downloaders as a last resort. They've done it a scant 26,000 times.

Fortunately, there's a silver lining: The music companies will eagerly share the $220,000 (or whatever they end up collecting) with their artists.

Oh, wait a minute:

When the RIAA does sue individuals, any money it receives from settlements and judgments are generally reinvested into the group's antipiracy program, said Jonathan Lamy, an RIAA spokesman.

To quote the Talking Heads: Same as it ever was.

I know this is from the Department of the Painfully Obvious, but the Internet truly has brought dramatic changes to culture and commerce worldwide. Most of these changes are inarguably positive. The 'Net has enabled global commerce. It has created new industries. It has made more porn information available to more people than at any time in history.

But for my money the most significant change wrought by the Internet is that it gives regular people a powerful electronic soapbox from which to communicate ideas, insights and opinions to a mass audience.

Yet, as anyone who has ventured into an online forum knows, handing out virtual megaphones to everyone on the cyber-street can be a double-edged sword. There are crazies, cranks and malcontents out there!

Which all leads to an interesting article in the New York Times about how businesses are coping with online critics who often hurt their bottom line through negative comments, vicious rants and stories of betrayal on the part of a company.

Of course, many times the company deserves to be slammed. (Shout out to Home Depot.) But, as the Times article explains, it's not always unhappy customers with a bad experience trashing a business on the web:

As the power of the Internet grows, businesses small and large find themselves confounded by disenchanted employees, suppliers and competitors who seek fertile ground to air grievances online.

Armed with little more than a Web connection and a keyboard, these detractors can do everything from irritate, via a scathing review, to causing serious business problems by using message boards to reveal company secrets or spread rumors of unethical behavior. They may also start a gripe site or register a Web address in their target’s name.

Fortunately, the Times offers some foolproof methods for dealing with such nettlesome situations.

Actually, on a second reading, it doesn't. Instead it offers a menu of responses that may or may not work in a particular situation:

Ignore the online complaint/attack

Blog or respond anonymously

Respond in the company's name

Ask whomever is running a discussion group or message board to remove the offending post

Bury the posting in question with slick SEO tricks

And that all-time corporate favorite:

Threaten to sue

Conspicuously absent from the list of suggestions is:

Find out if the complaint is valid and, if so, fix the problem

Talk about crazy.