… the Netherlands according to this:

“The CGD/FP Commitment to Development Index ranks 21 of the world’s richest countries according to how much their policies help or hinder the economic and social development of poor nations.”

Foreign Policy

Apple Music Store is out. Three years after Napster there is finally a pay-per-song, jukebox-style application and, like everything Apple do, it looks beautifully executed. But is this a good deal?

Each song costs 99c.

An average CD has 10 tracks.

CD list price: $19

CD wholesale price: c $12

Ave. cost of pressing and shipping: $2

Looking at these numbers, the music industry has only been prepared to discount the music by the actual cost of manufacturing and shipping the CD.

In other words the arrogance and stupidity of the music labels is unabated, they still refuse to admit that online music changes the economics and mechanics of the marketing and distribution of music beyond removing the costs of a physical storage medium.

Perhaps this isn’t so much the death of the CD, but another step towards their own suicide.

Follow the money: who’s really making the dough.

Today is the 50th anniversary of the publication of the discovery of the structure of DNA by Francis Crick and James Watson. They received international recognition and Nobel prizes. The discovery relied upon research by Rosalind Franklin who did not receive any such recognition and died at the age of 37. Use the power of the web and make this Remember Rosalind Franklin Day by posting about her.

HoustonChronicle.com - ‘Photo 51′ examines the unsung heroine of DNA

Condoms are usually used to prevent life:

Examiner: Condom was key to DNA discovery

Esther Dyson (who is nobody’s fool) asks why Google have bought Applied Semantics. Craig Silverstein replies that it has to do with advertising, so Esther asks if it has anything to do with the ‘Application of Semantics’. Craig has nothing to add - and a murmur sweeps the room as if to say, ah they are up to something with the Semantic Web… crap.

1. Applied Semantics and fancy fuzzy search or categorization has nothing to do with the Semantic Web. If anything the polar opposite type of search technology is required - something that takes advantage of semi-structured documents such as an XML or RDF database.

2. Google is an advertising company. Search is a fairly finite field in computing - and Google’s research team is now bigger than any University’s - they have this area sewn up. What they don’t have sewn up is the technology and services required for advertising, and this is how Google makes its money.

The problem with this meme not propagating is twofold:

1. An advertising company doesn’t sound cool - so people prefer to think of Google as a cutting edge technology company (which it obviously is as well even if that role is coincidentally more useful from a PR perspective).

2. People love conspiracies or hidden agendas - ooh what was the agenda behind the Blogger acquisition - probably none other than access to a big user base that puts metadata around links and therefore can help keep pagerank on the rails.

The really interesting thing about the Applied Semantics acquisition is the lack of a cool, secret, Semantic Web skunk works being built by a team of crack engineers at Google - the really interesting thing is its banality, they are buying bits and pieces to help with targeted advertising, and it may be that all they needed was some ‘intellectual property’ or patents, so that they could develop a refined ad delivery system without infringement. Nobody likes a boring story, however.

Good analysis of Applied Semantics by Azeem

Craig Silverstein from Google is talking at ETech, he asks ‘how many of you would normally be asleep at this time (note this is 10:30 not 7:30). About one third of the people in the room put up their hands. Craig admitted that he normally got to work around noon.

Imagine if this had been a sales convention, if the talk had been at 5:30 in the morning and the same question were asked, there probably wouldn’t have been a single hand shown. So on the one hand the number of hands shown is a good measure of the geek factor of the crowd, but even more so, I suspect it is a measure of the ‘hacker factor’ i.e. the percentage of creative engineers.

It seems that there is a direct correlation between extraversion and morning people and introversion and night owls. There is also a connection between introversion and technologists.

Perhaps there is also a correlation between creativity and late risers. If classic introversion is not so much a measure of social inadequacy but being wrapped up in your own mind - this type of person is not likely to spring out of bed in the morning energized, but would rather hide under the covers wrapped up in his or her thoughts.

Saw a demo of Chandler 0.1 today.

The most impressive aspect so far was that everything in Chandler has a URI and that any URI can be opened up and shared in real-time with other users. This seems to be extremely powerful and elegant

The article below claims that Google has invested in the ‘Semantic Web’ with the acquisition of Applied Semantics. The only connection I can see is the word Semantic in the name of the company.

What this does seem to show is that Google is building up its armory of weapons to deal with analyzing content to produce better targeted advertising and that its core relevance ranking software isn’t enough.

Google Invests in the Semantic Web - search engine news blog

Sometimes spam isn’t so bad, e.g the pitch I just received to buy this talking toilet roll holder

So nice to see that the right people are getting funded.

Six Apart: Six Apart Ltd. Announces New Weblogging Service, Investment, Executives and Board