Exploring the impact of broadband and technology on our lives, our businesses, and our communities.
The music companies continue the fight to own everything
MySpace is the latest battleground for Universal, one of the world's biggest music publishers. The company is upset that MySpace users can post copies of music videos on their MySpace pages. Universal wants a piece of the action. The firm has already arm-twisted YouTube into sharing ad revenue because of grainy music videos posted on the popular video site.
The content publishers have some grounds for trying to control distribution, but the music and entertainment industry has been so obstinately one-sided and spiteful in their approach (suing grandmothers without computers and young children, among other examples) that it is hard to take them seriously. The companies are now on a war footing to force equipment manufacturers to not only pay them for every digital recording device, but the firms also want draconian content controls on the machines that essentially take ownership away from the users of the music or the video.
There is a middle ground here, but the music industry and Federal lawmakers, who seem to care more about campaign contributions from the music industry than good and fair laws, are making things much worse. In the end, only the industry, with its attitude that all customers are crooks, will lose. We can get our content from other sources, and in fact, we already are.
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Knowledge Democracy:
U.S. may be sliding downhill economically
Although I meet more economic developers these days who are beginning to understand the world is changing (a good thing), I usually find after a brief conversation with them that many of them are determined to keep doing the same old thing--they just expect different results now (one definition of insanity). Part of the problem is a belief that nothing much has really changed, but articles like this one in the Wall Street Journal suggest otherwise. The Journal reports that of the twenty-five largest IPOs (Initial Public Offerings of stock) in the world last year, only one took place in the United States. Lethargic U.S. companies and over-zealous regulation in the wake of things like the Enron scandal are leaving the U.S. behind in the global Knowledge Economy.
Local communities are competing with Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore, and even London for business, but too many economic developers and community leaders are stubbornly determined to ignore the data. I see unlimited opportunities for communities that are willing to make some changes, but some communities, especially in rural areas, are going to slowly wither away.
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YouTube on cellphones
Would you pay $15 a month to be able to watch cheesy YouTube videos on your cellphone? Verizon is betting that you will. The company has licensed the rights to a selection of YouTube videos that Verizon subscribers will be able to download and watch on their cellphone. This represents, perhaps, the 457th attempt by a cellular company to get people to pay for content no one cares much about. ESPN recently gave up trying to get people to watch sports on cellphones, after burning through a few hundred million of someone's money.
YouTube is not exactly "must see" TV. It is generally the kind of fluff you might pull up at ten PM after you realize there is nothing on the old-fashioned television. You watch a couple of YouTube clips and go to bed. YouTube is popular, in part, because it is free. Making it cost money will be interesting because we will be able to establish its real value, and Verizon shareholders will get to foot the bill for this market research.
The flaw in all these fairly silly cellphone content ventures is the wrongheaded assumption that there is an unlimited supply of subscribers willing to pay for unnecessary stuff on top of their basic cellphone bill. At the core, it is a supply and demand issue. There may be an unlimited supply of content these days, but demand is not as elastic. Watch this venture quietly fold in about a year.
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Manure + methane = Energy Economy profits
USA Today has an article on dairy farms that are becoming energy providers. Cows generate about 100 pounds of manure a day; in the old days, this manure sat and released methane directly into the air for a while, and then was typically spread onto nearby fields, which created a bit of an odor for a few days.
Dairy farmers are now installing anaeroboic digesters that accelerate the decomposition of the manure. Methane from the digesters is used to power a generator that produces electricity for the farm, and excess power is sold to the local electric utility. Some farms are actually net energy producers, meaning the methane generated is enough to handle all of the farm's electrical needs and then some. Excess heat from the generator can also be used to keep barns warm, improving efficiency even more. But wait--there is more! After you extract the methane and liquid from the manure, you are left with a peat-like, odorless mulch that is better than straw for bedding in the cow barns, reducing or elminating the farmer's cost of straw.
The article notes that power from manure is not likely to be a significant contributor to the nation's electric needs, but from the dairy farmer's perspective, it is revolutionary, since it adds a complementary business (electric power) to traditional farming that makes the overall business much more profitable. Economic developers in rural dairy farming regions: How about finding a local entrepreneur who could start a business installing and servicing these systems? How much electric power could your region generate if you got a significant percentage of your dairy farmers to install these systems? What could it mean to your local economy? The Energy Economy won't be just about big power--"little" power is going to create lots of new business opportunities as we move away from dependence on traditional fossil fuels. Is your region ready?
Technology News:
Is Muni WiFi "stalling"
This article from mid-summer just came to my attention. It discusses some of the current municipal WiFi projects and the problems they are having. WiFi vendors tout the low cost of wireless and the "easy" installation--stick up a few towers and you are done. What they tend to leave out of the sales pitch is that current WiFi systems often have trouble penetrating trees with leaves on them, don't penetrate walls well, and the signal does not go around corners. Here is a portion of the article:
A successful economic model for running municipal Wi-Fi networks has yet to emerge," notes from the city's director of IT, Chris Mead, acknowledge.
The city also noted that while subscription models for Wi-Fi have been a flop, advertising-based revenue "cannot be taken for granted", either.
"It may be that municipal Wi-Fi is a passing fad that will be left behind by economic reality and new technology," advised Mead.
Vendors also often provide an unfair cost analysis. The claim that wireless is cheaper than fiber is bogus because wireless vendors compare the one time installation cost of wireless systems with the 30 year amortized cost of fiber systems--an apples and oranges comparison. If you look at the 30 year cost of providing wireless and compare that to the 30 year cost of fiber, guess which one is less expensive? It is fiber!
Our communities need good, reliable wireless broadband coverage for mobile devices. We want our phones and PDAs to work wherever we are in town. But particularly from an economic development perspective, wireless is an incomplete solution. If you are having trouble sorting out vendor claims, call us--Design Nine can provide a complete set of broadband planning and implementation services, and we will help you sort out conflicting and confusing vendor claims and put together a broadband strategy for your community or region.
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The iPod tax
Universal Music, the world's largest music publisher, successfully arm-twisted Microsoft into paying UMG a dollar for every Zune Microsoft manufactures. UMG did so using the dubious theory that MP3 players are just "repositories for stolen music" (an actual quote from a UMG exec). Microsoft apparently gave in to the extortion because the company was desperate to get enough music to sell on its Zune music Web site. Excited over the successful effort to blackmail Microsoft, UMG is now ready to go after Apple to impose an iPod tax.
Hopefully, Apple will have a little more spine than Microsoft. If not, expect to see this kind of tax on any product that is capable of recording or storing music, because the music industry has declared war on its customers--we're all just a bunch of crooks and thieves to them.
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Knowledge Democracy:
Zune takes a drubbing from critics
Microsoft's Zune music player is taking a drubbing from reviewers. The list of things that don't work or are awkward is so long that it is hard to imagine how it could have happened.
Most of the problems have to do with the desktop computer that one might use to load music onto a Zune. Microsoft requires a certain OS configuration (minimum of XP with SP2) and a fairly hefty hardware set up (e.g. 1.5 gig of memory). There are a lot of home users that may not have the right box before they get started. Microsoft also forces you to use IE 7 to download the music--you can't use Firefox, which according to one reviewer, eliminates 40% of users in Germany and 20% in Australia, and about 10% in the U.S. Why on earth would a company deliberately alienate tens of millions of customers that way?
But wait, it gets worse. Zune does not work with Microsoft's own Windows Media Player (WMP). For some mysterious reason, the company chose not to do a simple upgrade of the WMP, but instead created an entirely new piece of hard to install software with FEWER features than WMP. Huh? But wait, it gets worse. You cannot buy music from the Zunes Marketplace (the equivalent of the iTunes Music Store) with a credit card. Instead, you have to buy "Zune Points," which is great for Microsoft (kind of like a gift card, where you have to spend the money up front), but just another road block for customers.
The much touted WiFi only works with other Zunes, and anything you beam to a friend disappears after three days, which kind of makes sense with licensed music, but the Zune will take a free recording--even something you made yourself--and if you beam it to someone else, it also disappears in three days. So Microsoft basically hijacks your own stuff without your permission.
The critics are predicting the Zune will die a quick death. I am not so sure. Microsoft has a long history of releasing poorly designed Version 1.0 stuff and then slowly (and painfully) making changes that improve the product. Time will tell, but so far, the Zune is not getting anyone excited. If the Zune is any indication, it shows that Microsoft is failing to adjust to an expanding marketplace with more competition (e.g. Google) and less reliance on the desktop (e.g. Web apps). Most of the problems with the Zune have to do with what appears to be an intentional plan on the part of Microsoft to force their customers to do things the Microsoft way, in a world where the company no longer has the kind of monopoly power to do that.
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Demand for bandwidth is not made up
In a recent set of broadband workshops, I talked at length about the increasing demand for bandwidth, and that it is necessary to set not the upper limit on our bandwidth needs, but only a lower limit--which I think is 100 megabits/second to homes and businesses.
What was interesting is that the skeptics were not business people, who were actually nodding their heads in agreement; they understand that they do not want their ability to grow their businesses and to create jobs limited by bandwidth.
Instead, the skeptics were most often Internet access providers, who often reacted angrily and with derision. I think the issue with most of them is that their current infrastructure and business models just can't make the transition to an economy where we take unlimited bandwidth for granted.
But the proof is in the emerging systems and applications. Take a look at HP's Halo Collaboration Studio, which requires 50 megabits/second to operate. Large corporations are investing heavily in this product, which costs nearly half a million dollars. As the price comes down, this will become a common business tool.
And if 50 megabit video streams seem like a lot, look at what is happening in the lab. Data visualization scientists are streaming complex simulations of cellular processes at an astounding 7.5 gigabits/second. Fortunately, this specialized content can be handled nicely by off the shelf 10 Gig/second network gear--expensive, but Ethernet cards used to cost $1000 in 1992, and now run about $25 if you buy one, and that $25 card is probably 100 times faster than the $1000 card. That change took place in less than ten years, so there is nothing kooky about looking at these high end applications today and expecting them to be commonplace in business in ten years.
How about your community or region? Are you willing to let short-sighted Internet providers choke off business growth because they are not willing to look ahead? If they are not helping you prepare for future business needs, who is?
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Web 3.0: I did not know we were done with Web 2.0
It must be the rise in the stock market, and/or the trusty old adage that there is a sucker born every minute. This article on Web 3.0 is dense and wordy, so you may not want to spend much time actually reading it, but consider yourself warned that the "next big thing" (tongue firmly in cheek here) is Web 3.0.
Web 2.0 is generally regarded as, well, nobody really knows....it is a bunch of technologies like AJAX (a set of programming tools) and half-baked ideas like "social networking" that are all slopped together into a stew of Web applications that hardly anyone wants. A few companies are actually doing interesting and useful stuff (e.g. Google, Amazon), but 98% of Web 2.0 is hype.
That, apparently, is not enough, so someone has already decided we need Web 3.0. According the article, it will be a delicious concoction of the Web, artificial intelligence, intelligent agents, and semantic webs. Oh, frabjous day! I actually read the entire article, and it does not make a bit of sense to me. Artificial intelligence as a trend seems to pop up every nine or ten years, with the AI folks each time promising that it will be "this time for sure." Except AI has rarely delivered, ever. The Japanese spent billions in the eighties and promised they were going to solve all the world's problems with their Fifth Generation hardware and software. Don't hear much about that, do you?
The chronic disease of IT types is a naive belief that with enough code, they can do anything, including replacing our brains with artificially intelligent code, since "the brain is just a big computer." Uh huh. So as you begin to hear more about Web 3.0, my advice is to grip your wallet just a bit tighter; I see another dot-com bubble starting to form.
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Ruled by idiots
In one of the most disheartening and discouraging articles I have read in a long time, Robert Cresanti, the Undersecretary of Commerce for Technology, says, essentially, that Americans are stupid and that we need to import more foreign engineers and scientists.
He apparently visited China recently, and came away so impressed that he has unilaterally surrendered the U.S. economy to China. This man ought to be fired on the spot. Instead of drafting a plan to increase U.S. investments in science and engineering, his approach is to give up and hire more Chinese.
I have a little more faith in America and American workers than that, and it is a tragedy that this guy gets paid with our tax dollars.
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