Category Archives: Business

Byebye MSN t-shirt

MSN t-shirtToday one of my longest-lasting geek t-shirt goes to meet its maker. It was an MSN beta tester shirt, sent to me in 1995 just after the Windows 95 release. It now has too many holes in it to be of use anymore.

Back then, of course, MSN was not a web site. It was the anti-Internet, a closed proprietary network using a bunch of jumbled technologies (some, like MediaView, were really really ugly) that I somehow got involved in testing… In retrospect, it was always doomed to failure given the rise of the Web, though I admit, I didn’t really appreciate that at the time. I blogged about it here, some time back.

So, hasta la vista, MSN t-shirt.

The problem with syndicated news

SMH (NSW) story: A man has been shot dead on Valentine’s Day, in what locals are saying was a jealous argument over an ex-wife. A large search is now underway for the killer around the small town of Gulgong, near Mudgee in the state’s central west.

Age (Vic) story: A man has been shot dead on Valentine’s Day, in what locals are saying was a jealous argument over an ex-wife. A large search is now underway for the killer around the small town of Gulgong, near Mudgee in the state’s central west.

At the time I initially looked, neither story had any indication which state this happened in, except the SMH one linked to a Google map of Gulgong, NSW. I had guessed that, since I recalled Mudgee was in NSW.

When you’re feeding your local stories into the global (or at least national) media machine, a little more info on where it’s happening would help a lot.

Stupidity

Google Inc today lost a copyright fight launched by Belgian French-language newspapers which demanded the web search service remove their stories, claiming it infringed copyright laws. … They complained that the search engine’s “cached” links offered free access to archived articles that the papers usually sell on a subscription basis. It was unclear if Google would have to pay a fine.

— Wire story: Google loses case against Belgian papers

That’s just stupid. You don’t need to go around suing search engines to stop your stuff getting into their databases. Every web developer who knows anything about this knows you just need to drop a robots.txt file onto your web site and it stops all search engines and archivers stone dead.

To ignore that, and send the lawyers in instead just looks like you’re not looking for a solution, you’re looking for money.

Perils of outsourcing

With outsourcing, many big corporations are becoming much more fragmented than they were before. It’s often a gradual process, with a bunch of internal staff first being moved only in name, but over time it takes hold in more concrete ways: being kicked off the email system, moved to new facilities off the internal computer networks, deleted from the corporate directories, that kind of thing. (As well as untold “new” people joining the fray.)

Which can mean a lot of inconvenience. Suddenly the outsourced people have all their phone numbers and email addresses change. They can’t easily find contacts within the company. And vice versa. Emails which contain sensitive information and formerly only got sent internally are going out on the live, insecure and slow internet.

VPNs and other hoop-jumping has to be set up just so people can work, and that’s before you start moving whole servers and applications outside the cosy confines of the corporate network.

And God help you if you want to set up an appointment with some busy people who are no longer viewable in your calendaring software.

Is it all worth it? Who am I to judge? Pah, what would us geeks know about it, anyway?

When you run a tech company…

When you run a tech company, say a PC manufacturer, don’t you think you’d be watching out for well-known journos and bloggers and making sure they got exemplary service? Ed Bott rips into Shuttle, whose support for the PC he got was a complete shambles. I reckon if I were running such a company, even if I was evil enough to give everyday plebs crap service, I’d make sure names like his were on the priority list, to avoid my name becoming mud.

But I guess that just underscores how disorganised they are.

AU copyright laws

The AU guvmint’s new copyright laws have received royal assent. Attorney-General Philip Ruddock feels compelled to an FAQ about them.

Hmmm. You’re not allowed to circumvent CD copy-protection. I wonder if that includes holding down Shift to stop the Autorun as you put it in the computer?

Even Kim Weatherall (who I assumed until the other day was a bloke; but she’s clearly not) notes that some of the significant dodgy provisions have been removed from the bill, particularly with regard to parody. Maybe that means I can produce Mcdonalds on Uluru t-shirts?

The UK is also reviewing its laws, and looks set to legalise parody.

And everybody’s seen this by now, but hey, it’s copyright-related: Google copies Yahoo. I mean really copies.

Web tipping

Over on the Freakonomics blog, they’re asking: Are you a web tipper?

I hadn’t thought about it before, but apparently some people randomly click on online ads (even if they’re not interested and won’t read the resultant page) just to get a little money going to the content provider, to help keep the content free.

Interesting idea, though I wonder if advertisers would eventually shy away from paying for ads that get seen and clicked-on, but don’t have a return through sales.

Shorter copyright duration

What if the copyright period, instead of concluding at creator’s death plus 70 years, concluded after a period of 20 years since initial performance? Surely, there’s an imperative to create more content if it has only a “short” copyright period? And harmonizing patent and copyright law has got to have benefits.

Who writes software, or produces a movie, or writes a book anticipating income from their work more than 20 years hence? No one, that’s who. So, I’m going to go ahead and change the copyright duration.

Any objections?

Celebrity branding

Quick! What’s Scoble’s new company called? Something to do with podcasts. Podcast.net? Podnet.com? Oh, PodTech, that’s right.

Now, what’s interesting is his new ScobleShow which is a bit like the Channel 9 Scoble started up at Microsoft: video blogging things of interest. (Did he start it? He certainly seems to have been in at the start).

ScobleShow is a bit broader, of course.

What’s got me interested is the branding. ScobleShow. Obviously PodTech want to make the most of their investment in Scoble’s geek celebrity status, and they’re doing so with this name.

But what happens when Scoble eventually leaves? Will the brand go with him? Or will it die? Or will someone else try to take it over? Will PodTech have built up their branding and audience enough in the mean time that it doesn’t matter?