The perpetually declining cost of data storage has made our lives, especially the online versions of them, more savable and searchable than ever before. Server farms are growing faster than strawberries on FarmVille, with demand for data storage doubling every 18 to 24 months. But exactly what are we saving? Along with Google's mission to archive and organize every bit of information in the world and Wikipedia's quest to wrangle humanity's knowledge into a single searchable database, startup Silentale aims to store every digital conversation that you have. Ever.
Founded by a Paris-based French Canadian, Silentale is an aggregator for your life, or at least the increasingly large part of it that streams across the inter-tubes. But rather than archiving your blog comments or flickr posts, Silentale archives only "digital conversations," meaning basically anything that can be construed as a dialogue with others: Twitter, Facebook, email, and even SMS messages sent via your phone. Any attachments riding along with your messages are archived too, and eventually that content will even be searchable as well.
The idea is to organize the disjointed dialogue that takes place across various Internet and phone networks. A Firefox extension watches you while you watch others; go to a friend's Facebook or LinkedIn profile and Silentale will pull up that person's contact info and shared correspondence from your archive, not just from the network you're viewing, but SMS messages, emails and tweets as well. The address book function pulls in all your contacts across all networks and eliminates duplicates automatically, creating a single channel for each of your contacts' many profiles. Click on one name, and get every bit of correspondence you've shared across several platforms organized into a chronological timeline to create a seamless dialogue.
Sound cool? It is, for a variety of reasons. For one, being able to search through all your social nets, email, and SMS for a particular phone number, link, or business contact is a tantalizing prospect given that many Web 2.0-ers have spread their online personas across several platforms. The ability to mesh mobile communications like SMS with our Web correspondence also allows for a higher degree of organization for our many digital missives; as smartphones proliferate, it makes sense that we begin blending our phones' functions with our computers' in a meaningful way.
But aggregators like Silentale also raise serious privacy concerns. So much information concentrated in a single place could create a data thief's bazaar. Further, once users give access to all their online correspondence to a single source for archival purposes, there's no going back. A collective gasp went up recently from privacy advocates when it was discovered that two popular child monitoring software packages, Sentry and FamilySafe, are selling information gleaned from children's private chats via Yahoo, MSN Messenger, or AOL Instant Messenger to market researchers. When all your correspondence is archived, the temptation to tap that information by means legal or not will be great.
Silentale's private beta is underway now. The beta is free, but once the site goes public it will likely employ a freemium model that keeps up to two months of correspondence for free, with a paid option (rumored to be about $50 USD per year) to archive dialogue going back further.
Happy Birthday, Carly Fiorina! We’d ask you what your birthday wish is, but you’ve already made it abundantly clear; you’ve got your eye on Barbara Boxer’s Senate seat in 2010, and why not? You’ve certainly got the credentials. While your dismissal from HP was, er, less than smooth, you were Fortune’s “most powerful woman in business” for seven years running, until discord on your own board allowed E-bay’s Meg Whitman to dethrone you. And you managed to push through that Compaq merger, proving you’ve got the chops to make things happen even if they might be ill-advised. Heck, with a record like that, you could probably be governor of Califor . . . oh, looks like Meg Whitman is entering that contest. Better stay clear of that one, eh?
After suffering multiple black eyes in the blogosphere and plenty of ire from Kindle users, Amazon has finally decided to make good on its ill-advised decision to delete illegally distributed copies of George Orwell's 1984 from users' Kindle e-reader devices.
Those who purchased the book only to find it remotely deleted from their devices without warning will receive a digital copy of the book–with all their annotations still intact--or a $30 credit for Amazon products. Or they can just opt for a $30 check. Considering they paid just 99 cents for the book, it's not such a bad deal for customers. It has, however, been quite the ordeal for Amazon.
Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos offered the following apology to customers in an email sent to those affected by the mass deletion:
"This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our "solution" to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we've received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission."
For customers, this gesture will likely be the end of the scandal, but for Amazon, it's a case study for how not to handle a copyright crisis. The books were wiped from users' devices after Amazon discovered the seller, an independent publisher called MobileReference, was selling George Orwell classics in the Kindle store for 99 cents but had no authorization to distribute those works in the U.S. despite their copyrights having long ago lapsed in other countries. Amazon's action was legal, and in fact an attempt to right a legal wrong. But it wasn't necessarily smart, and the company has vowed to never remotely destroy texts again.
Of course, what Amazon couldn't escape was the irony; Orwell's 1984 is one of the 20th century's most celebrated and well-known works on authoritarian censorship, and that fact set off snarky headlines across the Web, likening Amazon to the books ever-watchful "Big Brother" and igniting a PR fiasco (perhaps Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 could have been worse from a PR standpoint, but we doubt it).
Had this been a controversy over hard copies, Amazon would have had to simply stop selling the book and chalk up the copies already sold to poor oversight. The advent of e-books allows vendors like Amazon the ability to see into, and even reach into, users' libraries. But as many great modern works on the nature of government have argued, just because you have the power to do something doesn't mean that you should.
Tomorrow happens to be the first day of college football season, and that can only mean one thing: today is College Colors Day. Created to celebrate the traditions (read: sports) that make academia great, the “holiday” calls for graduates to dust off that old letterman jacket or break out that Ryan Leaf jersey they just didn’t have the heart to throw away and get into the spirit of the season. Since it’s Friday, you could even express your school spirit through your choice of college-inspired adult beverage (though we’d recommend waiting until after you leave the office). Because football season starts tomorrow, and after that it might be too late to wear your team colors with pride.
In an effort to make inroads in the digital entertainment arena, Warner Premiere--a small division of Warner Brothers charged with extracting profit from the digital space--has experimented with a handful of ways to integrate studio Hollywood with online media. Last year's Watchmen "Motion Comic," an animated slideshow cast from the original comic's panels, attempted somewhat successfully to reconcile the graphic novel-turned-film with online platforms. Its latest project, titled The Adventures of One eskimO (capitalization theirs) is a similar attempt to mesh a previously existing medium with the online world, this time in the form of a "visual album.
The series of 10 animated video shorts tells a larger story about One Eskimo, who must rely on his band of animal friends to rescue his true love from the evil Mr. Top Hat, a toothy villain with a signature fashion accessory. But the animation on its own doesn't tell the whole story; rather, each video accompanies a song on the debut CD from British band One eskimO. Played together, one gets soundtrack and visuals, creating a full narrative multimedia experience.
It's easy to take pause here. Multimedia? Most films produced after the late 1920s, animated or otherwise, have included sound as part of the package. Is Warner now selling the sound and video separately and calling it a multimedia package? Well, yes. But it's not so simple. Rather than a film stripped of sound, it's an album with video added, layering a visual narrative over the audio. It's a way for users to enjoy the album in a 21st-century way and to mesh digital sound with a potentially profitable Web presence beyond the MySpace page, and Warner sees a lot of upside in the equation. Who knows? After years of declining popularity, the music video might even become cool again, something outside the teen-pop purview of TRL.
The album will arrive in stores on Sept. 22, and Warner hopes the idea will smolder into something hot online even if it doesn't necessarily catch fire immediately. "It's definitely got characters and story potential that we would hope to see grow beyond digital," Warner Premiere President Diane Nelson told The New York Times. We'll see if that happens, and we'll hear it too.
Facebook, in its ever-resourceful quest to balance advertising with its users fickle sense of home page ownership, is testing a new engagement ad that doesn't drive users to a sponsor's Facebook page but rather asks them to complete a direct response form that opens right on the home page. Currently offering a free Chick-fil-A chicken biscuit to users who provide their addresses, the ad provides a link that initiates a pop-up window over the news feed. The response form asks for users' information and allows them to use the ad to update their addresses within their profiles or to gloat about their free breakfast sandwiches on their walls.
The new ad format is the most integrated home page ad option Facebook has yet offered, allowing advertiser and customer to communicate valuable marketing data without ever leaving the user's home page. The free sample format being tested with Chick-fil-A is ideal for national food chains, but could easily be tweaked to serve other consumer packaged goods brands. The data gathered will help drive future marketing initiatives for consumer brands, the response to ads is easily measurable, and users get a free chicken biscuit. Talk about a win-win-win.
Facebook, ever wary of backlash from users, wisely designed this pop-up to be user-activated. That is, until the user clicks on the link within the standard ad in the usual advertising space to the right of the news feed, the pop-up will not activate. It's a good thing; the furor that would erupt if Facebook implemented pop-ups at login or those annoying rollover pop-up land mines that litter some sites borders on unimaginable. As is, the model remains unintrusive, but for customers that wish to engage (i.e., anyone who has ever consumed a chicken biscuit) the experience is swift and convenient, keeping the user right there on his or her home page. The ability to quickly share the free-biscuit experience is icing on the cake for advertisers.
Facebook has talked a lot lately about upping its performance advertising capabilities and has announced a new Ads Manager is on the way, so expect to see more experimentation and innovation on this front in coming months.
Who can contain the likes of Iron Man and the Incredible Hulk? Disney is up to the task. The company announced this morning that it is acquiring comic book publisher turned multimedia giant Marvel Entertainment for around $4 billion. The deal, which is still pending regulatory and shareholder approval, adds Marvel's 5,000-character to Disney's extensive library of franchise figures.
What does it mean? For one, it marries Marvel's licensing know-how with Disney's massive distribution. There are other possible outcomes: Spider Man 4 by Pixar? Miley Cyrus cameos in the next Iron Man spectacular? Let's hope not, but the possibilities for Marvel's vast collection of characters and storylines paired with Disney's financial resources and distribution network are limitless. For genre film lovers, not to mention Marvel shareholders, its something to be excited about.
Update: The conference call between top brass at Disney and Marvel was void of bombshell announcements, but heavy on talk of synergies and the advantages of bringing Marvel's character portfolio under the control of Disney's proven model for creating multimedia franchises.
First and foremost: Disney's international reach. A Marvel television channel targeting young boys and extending Disney's marketing reach could create brand value around the globe, and removing overseas licensing deals from Marvel's books could boost its bottom line. Disney also wants to leverage many of Marvel's more obscure characters by taking advantage of multi-platform approaches (read: lots of Web-oriented media and video games) to create more visibility for these characters. Disney execs noted that less than 50% of Marvel's revenue comes from overseas. Disney can change that.
For Disney's part, making family-oriented blockbuster films is nothing new. But Disney knows better than anyone that when it comes to owning a film--that is, purchasing a DVD for home viewing--children are the key. Adults like to own films their kids like, and Marvel makes those films. Disney's ability to produce and distribute DVDs, not just at home but globally, makes Marvel's portfolio of creative work a nice fit for Disney.
But the most important concession made by Disney brass during the call was the question of creative control. With Spidey 4 and Iron Man 2 in the works, the biggest concern is that Disney might clumsily come charging in with a list of desired changes for Marvel's franchises. But Disney is adamant that it is impressed with Marvel's creative work and business acumen. Control of Marvel franchises will remain with the Marvel teams already in place on existing projects. Or, as one exec quipped, "if it ain't broke . . ."
Oh, and as for a Pixar-Marvel mind-meld, it has been discussed internally, and both sides are very excited. None of the execs on the call could be coaxed into leaking any specifics, but as one exec at Disney put it "if you put a bunch of very creative, very enthusiastic people in a room, sparks will fly." We're not the only ones eager to see what those sparks will look like.
Though most famous for his Promethean invention of the light bulb, Thomas Edison patented the Kinetoscope 112 years ago today, igniting the medium that became the motion picture industry. While the Kinetoscope allowed only a single viewer to watch a film inside a large box, a century of technological improvements that brought sound, projectors, better picture and finally digital enhancement still retains the same fundamental film experience. But today the medium is evolving into something wholly new: digital 3-D. Though the recession has largely delayed the widespread rollout of 3-D projectors—they cost $70,000 per screen—many films are already being produced in full digital 3-D in preparation for the 3-D era. Be prepared; when the economy starts humming again, there’s going to be a whole new dimension out there.
The Oracle of Omaha turns 79 today, but he’s not slowing down. Though an economy like this one hurts everyone, Buffett’s done quite well following his own oft-repeated advice: “Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.” Case in point: In September, when the wheels were really coming off this economy, Buffett dodged the thousands jumping ship at Goldman Sachs to climb aboard the listing investment bank. To date, that deal has turned a $2 billion profit on paper. Two days after that Goldman investment, he took a stake in China’s BYD, a battery maker pushing into the electric vehicle business. Chalk up another $1 billion for Buffett; BYD has increased in value five-fold since last fall.
Most Americans remember tuning into the news this morning four years ago to find a beloved American city half immersed in water after Hurricane Katrina’s Category 3-fueled storm surge broke New Orleans fragile levees. Katrina wrought more than $80 billion in destruction, but the worst damage might have been inflicted on a beleaguered President George W. Bush, who saw many supporters turn sour as the death toll climbed (eventually settling at 1,836, with more than 700 unaccounted for). But while it has taken time, New Orleans is on the rebound. Several groups have stepped in to help rebuild, including Enterprise Community Partners, driving New Orleans’ population back up to more than three-quarters of its pre-Katrina level.
After suffering multiple black eyes in the blogosphere and plenty of ire from Kindle users, Amazon has finally decided to make good on its ill-advised decision to delete illegally distributed copies of George Orwell's 1984 from users' Kindle e-reader devices. 
Facebook, in its ever-resourceful quest to balance advertising with its users fickle sense of home page ownership, is testing a new engagement ad that doesn't drive users to a sponsor's Facebook page but rather asks them to complete a direct response form that opens right on the home page. Currently offering a free Chick-fil-A chicken biscuit to users who provide their addresses, the ad provides a link that initiates a pop-up window over the news feed. The response form asks for users' information and allows them to use the ad to update their addresses within their profiles or to gloat about their free breakfast sandwiches on their walls.
Who can contain the likes of Iron Man and the Incredible Hulk? 
