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Apr 28 2003
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Music industry still in denial with Apple’s pay per song initiative.

Posted by | predictions | No Comments

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.

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Apr 25 2003
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Remember Rosalind Franklin day

Posted by | science | No Comments

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

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Apr 25 2003
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The Google conspiracy

Posted by | search engines | No Comments

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…

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Apr 25 2003
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How to measure the geek factor at a conference

Posted by | technology | No Comments

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…

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Apr 24 2003
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Google buys Applied Semantics

Posted by | search engines | No Comments

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

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Apr 22 2003
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Did Russians use a weblog to aid Iraqis?

Posted by | globalization | No Comments

Here’s one for Dan Gillmor’s book: Knight Ridder Newspapers military correspondent Joseph L. Galloway claims that two senior US officials claimed that Iraqwar.ru weblog featured genuine Russian Intelligence reports posted by the GRU (the KGB replacement). “It’s quite a notion: Russian spooks blogging concrete advice to Iraq. It’s a notion that Strafor’s Matthew Baker termed ‘nonsense.’ He said, ‘A website is not the way to get information to the Iraqis; a phone or radio is better.’” “Baker sees it, rather, as an expression of an internecine struggle among various Russian military and espionage interests wrestling over whether to align more closely with the U.S. or seek a counterweight axis with Germany and France. He said, ‘They’re not putting it up for amusement or profit, but for reasons to do with Russian politics.’” DID RUSSIANS USE BLOG TO AID IRAQIS? by Daniel Forbes in Progressive Review

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Apr 21 2003
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Richard Perle would back an Islamic fundamentalist government in Iraq

Posted by | politics | No Comments

Did he really mean this: “Richard Perle, said he believes Iraqis will opt for freedom and pluralism after living through “a quarter of a century of brutal oppression.” But if they choose to create an Islamic theocracy, the United States will have to live with that choice.” If Iraq went the way of Iran, i.e. a religious govenment in reaction to a corrupt secular administration, would this be a victory? More likely is that Perle is laying the groundwork so that he cannot be accused of supporting a non democratic puppet while at the same time warning of the dangers of a theocracy. Washington Post

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