The recording industry, or at least the disjointed array of labels, trade groups, and intellectual property authorities that represent it, has had little success in curbing music piracy on the Web. In what is perhaps an admission that not even the cooperation of ISPs can put a dent in piracy numbers, the International Federation for the Phonographic Industry is stepping up its own efforts, promoting its anti-piracy chief to a directorial role as anti-piracy czar.
As an international umbrella group for the recording industry, the IFPI has battled piracy for years, but the elevation of its anti-piracy division to the director level signals not only an increased focus on the issue, but also a new strategy for combating not only on illegal downloading, but also the distribution of physical pirate materials like bootleg CDs (sidewalk entrepreneurs, take note). Jeremy Banks, the new IFPI piracy czar, has nine years experience fighting through copyright infringement suits, and his promotion suggests the IFPI will put more pressure on the sources of pirated materials – that is, those that leak copyrighted music, usually during post production but before the material is on store shelves.
While it’s clear the IFPI is taking a more serious tack about pirates, it’s unclear exactly how it plans to effectively curb copyright infringement on the Web. Neither governments wielding the authority of the state, nor private ventures like Virgin Media wielding financial incentives for ISPs and consumers have been able to discourage the majority of music downloaders to turn their backs on the low, low price of free.
Though the numbers are hard to track on any black market, the IFPI estimated in its 2008 report on the industry that only 5% of music acquired online streamed through legal channels. As such, it looks like the IFPI – and especially its new anti-piracy czar – are fighting an uphill battle. But hey, just look at all that room for improvement.
Which brand do you think Americans most associate with America? Coca Cola? Google? A Vanity Fair/60 Minutes poll found that almost half of all Americans say Wal-Mart best symbolizes America today, with the mega-retailer notching 48% of the responses in a survey of more 1,000 people. Google and Microsoft came in second and third with 15% and 13%, respectively. The National Football League picked up 6%, while beleaguered and demonized Wall Street bank Goldman Sachs notched 3%, perhaps a nod to Americans’ self-loathing in the midst of the economic crisis.
It doesn't come as a surprise that Wal-Mart, with its voracious appetite for growth and ubiquity in American communities, tops the list of most American brands--especially because its “everyday low prices” are a consolation for our recession-era collective limited spending power. More surprising are the brands that are not represented at all. Coca Cola, a symbol of American-style capitalism throughout the Cold War and an aggressive pusher of its brand in the popular consciousness (Interbrand just named it the No. 1 brand in the world for the ninth straight year and the company’s VP of design graces Fast Company’s October cover) doesn’t even make the top five.
Also conspicuously absent: General Motors, once the proud face of America’s strong manufacturing sector and one of the world’s largest companies. Somewhere Don McLean must be heaving a disappointed sigh.
Just when it looked as though there might never be a solution to the problem of walking, Honda today unveiled the U3-X personal mobility device, a sci-fi-looking, unicycle-ish mobile stool that moves forward, backward, side-to-side, or diagonally in response to a simple adjustment in the user's body weight.
The U3-X remains upright by utilizing balance control technology that Honda developed while researching ASIMO, Honda’s famous bipedal humanoid robot. Its omni-directional driving system appears to be a single wheel, though the "larger-diameter" wheel (which rolls forward and backward) is actually made up of a several smaller wheels that enable it to move side to side. A combination of forward or backward thrust and lateral thrust produces diagonal motion.
Looking at the U3-X, we’re reminded of the Segway (and all the commercial success that came with it). To be fair, the U3-X was designed to aid the elderly, but it seems like the balance needed to operate the machine might pose a bit of a hazard for those who already have mobility problems. Still, the unit is designed to keep the user's feet close to the ground while keeping the user's carriage upright enough to be nearly eye-level with other people who are standing up.
The prototype model of the U3-X (in action below) weighs just shy of 22 pounds and can roll for about an hour on a single charge to its lithium-ion power source. When a commercial version might become available is anyone’s guess. Personally, we’re not holding our breath.
Sitting in the coffee shop with forty Firefox tabs open on your laptop, wishing you had one more monitor? Or three? Today at IDF, Intel introduced a multi-tasking concept PC that allows users to work on their main screen while providing three small auxiliary screens above the keyboard for organizing and accessing smaller, snackable chunks of info from their PCs.
The concept PC was developed with an eye toward future-gen laptops--on which you can organize more information while still reducing the size of your notebook. Without affecting the information or activity on the main screen, you can access information--say, a phone number in your address book or a reminder you’ve placed in your sticky notes--while keeping the desktop as clutter-free as possible.
Will the concept catch on? Right now, it’s just an idea bouncing around Intel’s labs. But it seems like a hardware solutions to a software problem; for instance, Apple’s Spaces does essentially the same thing by organizing your windows into groups, like separate desktops, so you can keep your mental workflow aligned with your desktop feng shui. Still, some users, especially those who do a lot of data entry or coding, might find value having the screens up simultaneously rather than having to move between them. Besides, we all need somewhere to stash Facebook chat when the boss makes the afternoon cubicle rounds.
The netbook sector is one of the hottest spaces in tech, so it’s no surprise that IBM has thrown its hat into the ring with its new Smart Work package. What is surprising is that the computer giant is angling for market share in Africa and the developing world, introducing a cloud- and premise-based software package running on open-source Linux programs instead of Microsoft Windows (the most popular operating system for PCs and netbooks alike).
The Smart Work package aims to bridge the digital divide in places like Africa by coupling the low-cost of netbooks with non-proprietary systems software, bringing relatively high-powered computing to African businesses at a reduced cost. By leapfrogging PCs altogether and sidestepping Windows, IBM hopes to provide email, word processing, spreadsheets, social networking and the like to populations that otherwise wouldn't be able to afford it.
IBM sees the software package as helping nations with limited resources reduce the funds they spend on technology and shift them to other "mission-critical" initiatives like health care and education. Using IBM’s Open Document Format, IBM estimates governments and businesses can save up to 50 percent per individual against the licensing and administrative costs of Windows-based desktops.
IBM isn’t the first to bring increased computing power to the developing world with the hope of catalyzing education and economic growth. One Laptop Per Child, a non-profit devoted to bringing inexpensive laptops to schoolchildren in economically depressed nations, has had measured success in deploying technology to children in poor areas of Africa; Rwanda alone has ordered 100,000 of OLPCs machines. But internal debates about what operating systems should run on the initiatve’s XO laptops, coupled with unstable political situations and varying commitments to education in different nations, have tempered many analysts’ expectations for the program’s success.
But netbooks, some of which retail for less than $100, have beaten the OLPC program to the bottom. Creating an open-source software package that can be deployed to private and government-controlled initiatives give IBM’s Smart Work an edge--and, of course, more opportunities to take hold in commerce and education. The loser, of course, is Microsoft, who would like to see Windows become standard on netbooks the world over. For IBM, Smart Work is an opportunity to do a little good--though it doesn't hurt that the network industry has proven explosive in a good way, with sales hitting $139 million by 2013.
Before getting into how we feel about Yahoo’s new marketing campaign, let’s get the news out of the way. The company's new slogan is “It Starts With Y!ou.” That’s their spelling (or misspelling), not ours. Yahoo is spending more than $100 million on the campaign. Advertising campaigns will deploy in 10 countries, starting with the U.S. on September 28th and expanding to the U.K and India on October 5th.
Why the branding shake-up? Yahoo has made some major changes to its site, enhancing Yahoo Messenger with video chat, jumping in bed with Bing to enhance its search, and revamping video and image search results pages. But the “Y!ou” campaign tries to drive home the point that Yahoo helps users connect with the world around them, making the Web “more personally relevant for you.” The concept kind of reminds you of Goodby's "The Computer is Personal Again" campaign for HP from 2006...
“Our vision is to be at the center of people’s online lives—to be at the place where their world meets the larger world,” said Elisa Steele, Yahoo! executive vice president and chief marketing officer, speaking at the IAB MIXX Conference and Expo in New York City. “Our new branding will focus on people—the power and promise of ‘you.’”
So is the best way to connect with Internet users is with a wayward exclamation point and an ad campaign in which everyone looks ripped, sexy, and bursting with joy? We’re dubious. We get the pun with the "Y" in "Yahoo" and how Yahoo's all about getting personal, but will a neon ad blitz with weird punctuation make up for the fact that Yahoo still lags behind competitors like Google and Microsoft in business acumen and search effectiveness? It makes you wonder whether the $100 mill would be better spent elsewhere.
Netflix ended speculation as to who would take home the Netflix Prize today, officially awarding the $1 million purse to team BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos after several months in which no official winner had been announced (another team, The Ensemble, met the criteria to win, though BellKor’s was the front-runner). But Netflix found the contest to be so successful that it launched a second contest today, challenging programmers to model “taste profiles” from demographic and behavioral data.
The data will come from Netflix and will include more than 100 million data points including ZIP code, gender, age, previous rental information and genre ratings from Netflix’s five-star movie rating system. From that information, teams will try to model individuals’ tastes, helping the company to predict what movies a particular customer would want to see.
The original Netflix prize challenged teams to create a movie recommendation algorithm at least ten percent better than the one Netflix already had. Two different teams crossed the threshold, but it took three years to do so. The new contest will not have a particular threshold teams will have to cross, but rather will award $500,000 to the leading team after six months, and another $500,000 to the leading team after 18 months. Netflix has not yet posted the official rules to the Netflix prize page, but we expect an official update shortly.
Although it’s usually doling out the headlines, hyperlocal news aggregator Fwix made some of its own this morning, announcing the launch of a new API allowing online publishers to add local news feeds to their sites and widgets. The company also secured $2.75 million in Series A funding, which should accelerate Fwix toward its goal of cracking the hyperlocal media model.
San Francisco-based Fwix gathers local blog content, local news stories, and even “citizen journalism” in 80 cities across the U.S. to create highly localized news feeds for those particular regions. The new Wire API makes it easier for Web sites to create hyperlocal feeds to augment their own content, creating a richer, location-specific experience for readers. The fact that it should spread Fwix’s streams far beyond its current 9 million monthly unique visitors also helped convince venture firm BlueRun Ventures that Fwix has the kind of upside worth backing.
"We see Fwix as a key company in helping everyone from big online media outlets to smaller local news bloggers reach larger audiences with the most relevant quality content," said BlueRun Ventures’ Jonathan Ebinger in a press release. "This enables sites to better monetize a larger audience, while readers simply receive the best local content available.”
Other media giants like AOL and the New York Times have experimented in the hyperlocal space, but so far success has been limited because advertisers haven't shown a great interest in the content. There's no telling if Fwix can reverse that trend, but the Wire API should at the very least make it easier for good hyperlocal content to find its way to the proper sites, and in turn for the proper news to find its way onto news feeds. Site owners can take a look at the new Wire API on Fwix’s Web site.
Did anyone really expect the United Nations to have a serious, implementable plan for climate change by mid-December's convention in Copenhagen? We were skeptical after negotiations in Bali and Bonn, and apparently we're not alone. A global alliance of organizations known as TckTckTck is trying to catalyze action through public awareness today, hosting The Global Climate Wake Up Call, a series of events held worldwide bringing attention to the fact that we need a plan to combat climate change. Like, yesterday. From a drum-beating ceremony in Ethiopia to film screening in China to flash mobs assembling in cities across the globe, the wake up call aims to make a tremendous noise about climate change today. To help sound the alarm in your city, click here.
There's a lot of disagreement about how best to move toward a sustainable future, but most everyone agrees on one particular point: our electricity grid, as it stands, is outdated and horribly, horribly inefficient. D.C.'s GridWeek brings together industry execs, policy makers, environmental groups, tech companies and pretty much anyone else interested in creating an energy Internet that not only carries power from source to consumer, but carries information that helps us get the most out of the power grid. The recovery act has already set aside $4.5 billion to improve electricity delivery, guaranteeing this year's conference will be less about concepts and more about getting to work on projects we should have started yesterday.
The recording industry, or at least the disjointed array of labels, trade groups, and intellectual property authorities that represent it, has had little success in curbing music piracy on the Web. In what is perhaps an admission that not even the cooperation of ISPs can put a dent in piracy numbers, the International Federation for the Phonographic Industry is stepping up its own efforts, promoting its anti-piracy chief to a directorial role as anti-piracy czar.
