Sips from the Firehose
A blog that seeks to filter the internet into a refreshing, easily-gulped beverage
Sep 27
Posted: under Uncategorized.
Tags: Mobile commerce
Another quick hit, as I prepare content for the soon-to-be launched blog on Artesian Media. This one has to do with a “killer app” that already is a big hit in the rest of the world, but that has yet to take off here in the U.S. Last week, one of the more interesting announced [...] [...more]
Another quick hit, as I prepare content for the soon-to-be launched blog on Artesian Media. This one has to do with a “killer app” that already is a big hit in the rest of the world, but that has yet to take off here in the U.S.
Last week, one of the more interesting announced capabilities of Android/Gphone was the ability to form Secure Socket Layer (SSL) data connections. They billed it as a way that the Home Office can send secure data to its salesforce, or that users can securely share data with each other’s handsets, but … the first thing I thought of was that it would allow us all to access our bank accounts/credit cards/401(k)s from on our cellphones. Personally, I think it’s a useful app, but one that gives me the creeps, because for some reason I worry more about typing in the password to my bank account on my cellphone than I do on a desktop computer connected via broadband.
Why would that be, I wonder…? Hmmm… I’ll think of it in a moment. 
Well, Cnet is kinda dousing this idea with a bucket of cold Reality Water.
But despite the fact that there are many options and opportunities for cell phone subscribers to access their banking information and pay their bills on their mobile phones, the uptake for these applications and services has been pretty weak. According to Forrester Research, only about 3 percent of mobile subscribers in North America check financial accounts on their mobile phone at least once a month. This rate of adoption is lower than that of services like music downloading, which 5 percent of mobile users say they do at least once monthly.
“Mobile banking and bill payment has been available for a while now,” said Charles Golvin, a senior analyst at Forrester Research. “But it has yet to set the world on fire.”
In Third World countries, where a trip to the bank is kinda like tying pork chops to your torso and swimming through a crocodile pit, the prospect of being able to handle banking & money transactions without having to brave the cordons of thieves, muggers, kidnappers & encyclopedia salesmen that ring banks, looking for people with fat wallets, is a good one. I have to say, back when I was the managing editor of the Caracas Daily Journal, the locals in the print shop used to warn me not to carry my paycheck openly to the bank to cash it, because “ladrones y asesinos” were lurking in the streets, looking for the telltale business envelopes in people’s hands. Especially big, dumb gringoes like me … although, I have to say, if anyone were looking for a likely mark to shake down, I don’t think an envelope in my hand or not would really make that much of a difference.
Anyway – we have long used the difference in online banking in Brazil, as contrasted with the U.S., as a teaching tool in our New Media training sessions. The point of the exercise is not to dwell on how much banks in other countries are f’d up, as compared to the U.S., but to think about how a digital, online solution to a problem can be specific to a single market, or market condition. Viz:
Besides the convenience factor, another reason mobile banking hasn’t take off is that there are few compelling reasons to access bank or bill-paying information on a mobile phone when most people in the U.S. have easy access to a computer. With overdraft protection, automatic bill paying, and convenient and easy access to ATM cash machines, most people don’t need up-to-the minute check balance information, nor do they need to be able to pay bills while walking around town.
Technorati Tags: mobile banking, Google Android, SSL connections
Sep 27
Posted: under Digital Migration, Mobile commerce, monetizing mobile content, new media.
Tags: Mobile commerce
Another quick hit, as I prepare content for the soon-to-be launched blog on Artesian Media. This one has to do with a “killer app” that already is a big hit in the rest of the world, but that has yet to take off here in the U.S. Last week, one of the more interesting announced [...] [...more]
Another quick hit, as I prepare content for the soon-to-be launched blog on Artesian Media. This one has to do with a “killer app” that already is a big hit in the rest of the world, but that has yet to take off here in the U.S.
Last week, one of the more interesting announced capabilities of Android/Gphone was the ability to form Secure Socket Layer (SSL) data connections. They billed it as a way that the Home Office can send secure data to its salesforce, or that users can securely share data with each other’s handsets, but … the first thing I thought of was that it would allow us all to access our bank accounts/credit cards/401(k)s from on our cellphones. Personally, I think it’s a useful app, but one that gives me the creeps, because for some reason I worry more about typing in the password to my bank account on my cellphone than I do on a desktop computer connected via broadband.
Why would that be, I wonder…? Hmmm… I’ll think of it in a moment.
Well, Cnet is kinda dousing this idea with a bucket of cold Reality Water.
But despite the fact that there are many options and opportunities for cell phone subscribers to access their banking information and pay their bills on their mobile phones, the uptake for these applications and services has been pretty weak. According to Forrester Research, only about 3 percent of mobile subscribers in North America check financial accounts on their mobile phone at least once a month. This rate of adoption is lower than that of services like music downloading, which 5 percent of mobile users say they do at least once monthly.
“Mobile banking and bill payment has been available for a while now,” said Charles Golvin, a senior analyst at Forrester Research. “But it has yet to set the world on fire.”
In Third World countries, where a trip to the bank is kinda like tying pork chops to your torso and swimming through a crocodile pit, the prospect of being able to handle banking & money transactions without having to brave the cordons of thieves, muggers, kidnappers & encyclopedia salesmen that ring banks, looking for people with fat wallets, is a good one. I have to say, back when I was the managing editor of the Caracas Daily Journal, the locals in the print shop used to warn me not to carry my paycheck openly to the bank to cash it, because “ladrones y asesinos” were lurking in the streets, looking for the telltale business envelopes in people’s hands. Especially big, dumb gringoes like me … although, I have to say, if anyone were looking for a likely mark to shake down, I don’t think an envelope in my hand or not would really make that much of a difference.
Anyway – we have long used the difference in online banking in Brazil, as contrasted with the U.S., as a teaching tool in our New Media training sessions. The point of the exercise is not to dwell on how much banks in other countries are f’d up, as compared to the U.S., but to think about how a digital, online solution to a problem can be specific to a single market, or market condition. Viz:
Besides the convenience factor, another reason mobile banking hasn’t take off is that there are few compelling reasons to access bank or bill-paying information on a mobile phone when most people in the U.S. have easy access to a computer. With overdraft protection, automatic bill paying, and convenient and easy access to ATM cash machines, most people don’t need up-to-the minute check balance information, nor do they need to be able to pay bills while walking around town.
Technorati Tags: mobile banking, Google Android, SSL connections
Sep 17
Posted: under Uncategorized.
I’d like to dismiss this as a hoax, but there don’t seem to be any of the telltale signs of a hoax, such as sarcastic recipes for “mooseburgers & cheese” or reminders to force-feed wayward daughters Depo-Provera. Anonymous is the hacker group allegedly involved – they surfaced a coupla few months ago, issuing some quasi-juvenile, [...] [...more]
I’d like to dismiss this as a hoax, but there don’t seem to be any of the telltale signs of a hoax, such as sarcastic recipes for “mooseburgers & cheese” or reminders to force-feed wayward daughters Depo-Provera. 
Anonymous is the hacker group allegedly involved – they surfaced a coupla few months ago, issuing some quasi-juvenile, supposed-to-be ominous threat against Scientology. Apparently, they’ve taken time off from harshing the Operational Thetan Level III’s volcano buzz to turn their attentions to the Republican VP nominee/snowbilly queen, Sarah Palin.
Here’s what Gawker had to say:
Did the internet just cause Sarah Palin
to destroy evidence? The potential Veep is in a bit of trouble for
conducting state business using her personal, unarchived email address
(gov.sarah@yahoo.com) instead of her official account (which is, of course, subject to laws requiring the retention of government records). Emails from that Yahoo account are already being sought in connection with the Troopergate investigation. Now comes word that Anonymous, the fun-loving Internet trouble-makers based loosely around the message board 4Chan,
gained access to another Palin email account: gov.palin@yahoo.com. It
looks legit! The offending posts, screenshots, heretofore unseen family
photos, and emails have all been deleted from Imageshack and 4Chan. But
we have them. You want to read Sarah Palin’s email?
Sep 17
Posted: under Uncategorized.
I’d like to dismiss this as a hoax, but there don’t seem to be any of the telltale signs of a hoax, such as sarcastic recipes for “mooseburgers & cheese” or reminders to force-feed wayward daughters Depo-Provera. Anonymous is the hacker group allegedly involved – they surfaced a coupla few months ago, issuing some quasi-juvenile, [...] [...more]
I’d like to dismiss this as a hoax, but there don’t seem to be any of the telltale signs of a hoax, such as sarcastic recipes for “mooseburgers & cheese” or reminders to force-feed wayward daughters Depo-Provera.
Anonymous is the hacker group allegedly involved – they surfaced a coupla few months ago, issuing some quasi-juvenile, supposed-to-be ominous threat against Scientology. Apparently, they’ve taken time off from harshing the Operational Thetan Level III’s volcano buzz to turn their attentions to the Republican VP nominee/snowbilly queen, Sarah Palin.
Here’s what Gawker had to say:
Did the internet just cause Sarah Palin
to destroy evidence? The potential Veep is in a bit of trouble for
conducting state business using her personal, unarchived email address
(gov.sarah@yahoo.com) instead of her official account (which is, of course, subject to laws requiring the retention of government records). Emails from that Yahoo account are already being sought in connection with the Troopergate investigation. Now comes word that Anonymous, the fun-loving Internet trouble-makers based loosely around the message board 4Chan,
gained access to another Palin email account: gov.palin@yahoo.com. It
looks legit! The offending posts, screenshots, heretofore unseen family
photos, and emails have all been deleted from Imageshack and 4Chan. But
we have them. You want to read Sarah Palin’s email?
Sep 17
Posted: under Uncategorized.
Wow. This is some pretty strong stuff from Jim Cramer, the “Mad Money” guy, who is looking more & more like one of the few guys who saw early on which way this was all going. I have to go back to Sept. ’07, when I looked in the faces of some international bankers and [...] [...more]
Wow. This is some pretty strong stuff from Jim Cramer, the “Mad Money” guy, who is looking more & more like one of the few guys who saw early on which way this was all going. I have to go back to Sept. ’07, when I looked in the faces of some international bankers and saw stark terror.
Anyway, he bites off Nixon’s quote to say that in the wake of the $2.5 trillion bailouts we’ve had to do for the reckless, irresponsible bankers, we are all communists now. Which in a twisted sense, is absolutely true. Only the twist is a particularly cruel one. In the past, the State taxed the workers, and the proceeds of that taxation were given back to the workers in the form of grand socialist projects – dams, highways, canals, high-density housing blocs, tractor factories, guaranteed pensions.
These days, the proceeds of the taxes on the workers are being given to the elite. To the bankers who ran their businesses into the ground, with investment strategies that were looser and more deranged than wandering drunkenly into Benny Binion’s and putting your net worth down on the Hard Eight.
I’d like to think that the American public will have the memory, the intelligence and the resolve to hold some of these thieves accountable for their actions, but based on the last decade’s worth of foolishness, that seems to be a wan hope indeed.
The one bright spot is that Cramer identifies the same general date that the other bankers I’ve talked to – June 30, 2009 – as the date when the financial implosion will hit bottom. That does not mean, however, that that is when things will start to turn around. It just means it will stop getting galacticålly worse.
Between now and then, however, there are going to be a lot of people losing their homes, jobs, families, livelihoods and minds. Watch the video (hope it actually manages to embed), and stick around past the first shouty bit for the reasoned discussion that follows. It’s instructive to see the sick look on the panel’s faces when he lays out just how bad things have gotten, and what the ultimate price the American workers are going to have to pay for the de-regulation idiocy of the last 8 – hell, 30 – years.
Technorati Tags: mortgage implosion, cramer all communists, mad money, msnbc, aig bailout, june 30, 2009
Sep 15
Posted: under Found Genius Artifacts, Google Android, Home Office Technology, iPhone - Hype and Reality, Mac v. PC, Mobile marketing, New Media Strategery, Online (Multi)Media, Web/Tech.
It's going to be interesting to see if the upcoming mobile phone platform/application war & shakeout will be a repeat of the Apple vs. IBM, or Mac OS vs. Windows wars of the early 80s and early 90s … ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny and all that, you know… Apple has done a tremendous job breaking ground [...] [...more]
It's going to be interesting to see if the upcoming mobile phone platform/application war & shakeout will be a repeat of the Apple vs. IBM, or Mac OS vs. Windows wars of the early 80s and early 90s … ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny and all that, you know…
Apple has done a tremendous job breaking ground in this area, popularizing the technology with great hardware that works … well mostly works … they have put tons of effort into conceptualizing and designing the interface, and 
creating the paradigm that people actually want to use.
…and now that they've done the heavy lifting, along comes the more open-source competitor, flinging open the doors of innovation and competition to take the tidy Apple walled garden and turn it into, well, pretty much what the landscape of PC-based applications has looked like for the past 28 years or so. A loud, rude, complicated, chaotic landscape where everything is much cheaper, does kewl new things that businesses/people need to have in their lives, and that you have to be half-systems engineer yourself to keep all your various hardware & software all playing nicely together.
To stretch the "walled garden" metaphor a little, the IBM-PC space, rather than a tidy garden, more resembles a giant sandbox full of toddlers on meth. Only they're NFL lineman-size. With power tools.
If the past is to be our guide, the Android and Blueprint somewhat open-source projects are going to start off behind Apple, biting off what Apple does. And the developers will be relentless. And the hardware manufacturers will churn out warehouses full of cheap, buggy handsets to run all this on.
And they will gradually erode Apple's lead in the smartphone/app space.
Anyway, here's some interesting quotes from MSNBC:
While Android is an operating system, it is
also an open-source system similar to Linux, upon which it is based.
That’s creating a lot of excitement and interest in the kind of
programs that will be available for users, including one that can track
family members’ whereabouts in an emergency to another that offers a
short cooking video, followed by information on nearby grocery stores
that carry the ingredients needed for the recipe.
Since
its inception, Android has been tweaked and built upon freely by
developers, device designers and wireless carriers who have had
complete access to Android’s Software Developer Kit. Basically, Android
is whatever users and developers want it to be.
That’s
in contrast to Apple’s approach with the iPhone. Nine months ago, Apple
created a Software Developer Kit offering application makers the same
interface and tools Apple uses to develop iPhone software.
But Apple has closely regulated and monitored every program that is being offered through the company’s online App Store.
Android
will “create a new, attractive environment to foster innovation and
make it easier to bring new ideas to market, ultimately ensuring
consumers a richer, more personalized mobile experience,”
Sep 11
Posted: under Uncategorized.
Packing up for the trip back down to LA, but couldn’t let these little tidbits from the CTIA pass without at least acknowledging them. 1. Yahoo is trying to drum up some support for its Blueprint mobile platform. They claim that it’s going to allow users to achieve the Holy Grail of mobile/web content – [...] [...more]
Packing up for the trip back down to LA, but couldn’t let these little tidbits from the CTIA pass without at least acknowledging them.
1. Yahoo is trying to drum up some support for its Blueprint mobile platform. They claim that it’s going to allow users to achieve the Holy Grail of mobile/web content – tying together 
all our virtual identities with its oneConnect application. It’s been said, over and over (AND OVER) again that the first company to figure out how to provide the one-stop platform for social media interactivity over cellphones, is going to be the next Google (if Google itself doesn’t snarf up that space as well). The dream is that oneConnect (or whatever) becomes the way to keep up with what your friends on Facebook, Flickr, Bebo, MySpace, YouTube, etc. etc. are doing, and a way to post constant updates on where/what/why/with whom/teh awesum!1!/go away now/overload to all the places where you share your life’s experiences with the world.
Leaving aside for the moment the sneaking suspicion that aggregating all our identities through one company’s pipe may not turn out to be such a bright idea, the software is apparently generating the skepticism already.
Yahoo has been trying to hype this app since, oh, Barcelone in February, and to my knowledge, they really haven’t gotten that much traction with it, despite the best efforts of their developers.
I’d like to see Yahoo manage to pull this off; like many others, I’m starting to get more & more uneasy about Google’s unchallenged dominance, and I’d just as soon they not have complete control over what I do, see, say & hear, as well as knowing who I’m doing said communicating with/near/for/against.
Moving on.
2. Pointroll is wowing the attendees at the CTIA, offering easy(ier?) ways of taking rich media ads and porting them over to the mobile platform. Their demo of interactive ads on the iPhone, done through and with USA Today, has publishers and advertisers pondering if the time has actually come to start migrating the TV ad spending over to the phones that the 14-24s are actually using, paying attention to, and carrying with them everywhere.
The bad news for Yahoo is that PointRoll is hyping that using their platform will allow ads to run across the entire Google content network. Viz:
The Google content network encompasses hundreds of thousands of
websites, including premium publishers and long-tail niche sites.
Google and PointRoll worked together to ensure that the ads served to
the Google content network meet Google’s policies and specifications.
After completing Google’s certification process, PointRoll’s
sophisticated targeting technologies can now optimize the breadth of
Google’s sites and categories, matching advertisers’ messages to the
users who find them most relevant.
Again, nice hype. But in light of the struggles that Google has had with Android, I remain skeptical that they have managed to so quickly solve all the problems with serving mobile ads in anything like a timely manner. I just think that there’s still too much market fragmentation to be able to claim that this One Size Fits All app will reach a mass audience.
To backup my point, allow me to quote a piece in the paper today: one of the problems many sites are running into is that about 25% of web users are still limping along with Internet Explorer 6.0.
(Pause to allow veteran web developers to spit, vomit, scream, make the two-fingered “sign of the devil’s horns” to ward off evil.)
IE 6.0 is widely recognized as the shittiest web browser ever inflicted on the public. It was launched in 2001. Since then, Microsoft has bugged users to upgrade, remove, kill, quash, forget, shred, this browser. The fact that a quarte
r of users in the U.S. still view the web through its Funhouse Mirror interface shows that 1) A large proportion of the public continues to employ legacy technology no matter how Christawful it is, 2) these folks ignore new technology, no matter how much better it is, for fear that upgrading will somehow cause them a problem, and 3) any tech solution based on the assumption that people will be running the latest&greatest hardware and software is doomed to die like like a possum wandering onto the Indy 500 speedway.
3. Millennial Media is competing with PointRoll to serve multimedia ads to the mobile market. And we’re going to have to stop here, because it’s time to load up the Conestoga wagon and head back to LA.
Technorati Tags: monetizing mobile, google, yahoo oneconnect, PointRoll
Sep 11
Posted: under Uncategorized.
Packing up for the trip back down to LA, but couldn’t let these little tidbits from the CTIA pass without at least acknowledging them. 1. Yahoo is trying to drum up some support for its Blueprint mobile platform. They claim that it’s going to allow users to achieve the Holy Grail of mobile/web content – [...] [...more]
Packing up for the trip back down to LA, but couldn’t let these little tidbits from the CTIA pass without at least acknowledging them.
1. Yahoo is trying to drum up some support for its Blueprint mobile platform. They claim that it’s going to allow users to achieve the Holy Grail of mobile/web content – tying together all our virtual identities with its oneConnect application. It’s been said, over and over (AND OVER) again that the first company to figure out how to provide the one-stop platform for social media interactivity over cellphones, is going to be the next Google (if Google itself doesn’t snarf up that space as well). The dream is that oneConnect (or whatever) becomes the way to keep up with what your friends on Facebook, Flickr, Bebo, MySpace, YouTube, etc. etc. are doing, and a way to post constant updates on where/what/why/with whom/teh awesum!1!/go away now/overload to all the places where you share your life’s experiences with the world.
Leaving aside for the moment the sneaking suspicion that aggregating all our identities through one company’s pipe may not turn out to be such a bright idea, the software is apparently generating the skepticism already.
Yahoo has been trying to hype this app since, oh, Barcelone in February, and to my knowledge, they really haven’t gotten that much traction with it, despite the best efforts of their developers.
I’d like to see Yahoo manage to pull this off; like many others, I’m starting to get more & more uneasy about Google’s unchallenged dominance, and I’d just as soon they not have complete control over what I do, see, say & hear, as well as knowing who I’m doing said communicating with/near/for/against.
Moving on.
2. Pointroll is wowing the attendees at the CTIA, offering easy(ier?) ways of taking rich media ads and porting them over to the mobile platform. Their demo of interactive ads on the iPhone, done through and with USA Today, has publishers and advertisers pondering if the time has actually come to start migrating the TV ad spending over to the phones that the 14-24s are actually using, paying attention to, and carrying with them everywhere.
The bad news for Yahoo is that PointRoll is hyping that using their platform will allow ads to run across the entire Google content network. Viz:
The Google content network encompasses hundreds of thousands of
websites, including premium publishers and long-tail niche sites.
Google and PointRoll worked together to ensure that the ads served to
the Google content network meet Google’s policies and specifications.
After completing Google’s certification process, PointRoll’s
sophisticated targeting technologies can now optimize the breadth of
Google’s sites and categories, matching advertisers’ messages to the
users who find them most relevant.
Again, nice hype. But in light of the struggles that Google has had with Android, I remain skeptical that they have managed to so quickly solve all the problems with serving mobile ads in anything like a timely manner. I just think that there’s still too much market fragmentation to be able to claim that this One Size Fits All app will reach a mass audience.
To backup my point, allow me to quote a piece in the paper today: one of the problems many sites are running into is that about 25% of web users are still limping along with Internet Explorer 6.0.
(Pause to allow veteran web developers to spit, vomit, scream, make the two-fingered “sign of the devil’s horns” to ward off evil.)
IE 6.0 is widely recognized as the shittiest web browser ever inflicted on the public. It was launched in 2001. Since then, Microsoft has bugged users to upgrade, remove, kill, quash, forget, shred, this browser. The fact that a quarter of users in the U.S. still view the web through its Funhouse Mirror interface shows that 1) A large proportion of the public continues to employ legacy technology no matter how Christawful it is, 2) these folks ignore new technology, no matter how much better it is, for fear that upgrading will somehow cause them a problem, and 3) any tech solution based on the assumption that people will be running the latest&greatest hardware and software is doomed to die like like a possum wandering onto the Indy 500 speedway.
3. Millennial Media is competing with PointRoll to serve multimedia ads to the mobile market. And we’re going to have to stop here, because it’s time to load up the Conestoga wagon and head back to LA.
Technorati Tags: monetizing mobile, google, yahoo oneconnect, PointRoll
Sep 11
Posted: under advertising, Community, Design, Digital Migration, google, Mobile advertising technology, monetizing mobile content, new media, Newspaper Deathwatch, Newspapers, Online Video, visual storytelling, Web Tech, Yahoo oneConnect.
Packing up for the trip back down to LA, but couldn’t let these little tidbits from the CTIA pass without at least acknowledging them. 1. Yahoo is trying to drum up some support for its Blueprint mobile platform. They claim that it’s going to allow users to achieve the Holy Grail of mobile/web content – [...] [...more]
Packing up for the trip back down to LA, but couldn’t let these little tidbits from the CTIA pass without at least acknowledging them.
1. Yahoo is trying to drum up some support for its Blueprint mobile platform. They claim that it’s going to allow users to achieve the Holy Grail of mobile/web content – tying together all our virtual identities with its oneConnect application. It’s been said, over and over (AND OVER) again that the first company to figure out how to provide the one-stop platform for social media interactivity over cellphones, is going to be the next Google (if Google itself doesn’t snarf up that space as well). The dream is that oneConnect (or whatever) becomes the way to keep up with what your friends on Facebook, Flickr, Bebo, MySpace, YouTube, etc. etc. are doing, and a way to post constant updates on where/what/why/with whom/teh awesum!1!/go away now/overload to all the places where you share your life’s experiences with the world.
Leaving aside for the moment the sneaking suspicion that aggregating all our identities through one company’s pipe may not turn out to be such a bright idea, the software is apparently generating the skepticism already.
Yahoo has been trying to hype this app since, oh, Barcelone in February, and to my knowledge, they really haven’t gotten that much traction with it, despite the best efforts of their developers.
I’d like to see Yahoo manage to pull this off; like many others, I’m starting to get more & more uneasy about Google’s unchallenged dominance, and I’d just as soon they not have complete control over what I do, see, say & hear, as well as knowing who I’m doing said communicating with/near/for/against.
Moving on.
2. Pointroll is wowing the attendees at the CTIA, offering easy(ier?) ways of taking rich media ads and porting them over to the mobile platform. Their demo of interactive ads on the iPhone, done through and with USA Today, has publishers and advertisers pondering if the time has actually come to start migrating the TV ad spending over to the phones that the 14-24s are actually using, paying attention to, and carrying with them everywhere.
The bad news for Yahoo is that PointRoll is hyping that using their platform will allow ads to run across the entire Google content network. Viz:
The Google content network encompasses hundreds of thousands of
websites, including premium publishers and long-tail niche sites.
Google and PointRoll worked together to ensure that the ads served to
the Google content network meet Google’s policies and specifications.
After completing Google’s certification process, PointRoll’s
sophisticated targeting technologies can now optimize the breadth of
Google’s sites and categories, matching advertisers’ messages to the
users who find them most relevant.
Again, nice hype. But in light of the struggles that Google has had with Android, I remain skeptical that they have managed to so quickly solve all the problems with serving mobile ads in anything like a timely manner. I just think that there’s still too much market fragmentation to be able to claim that this One Size Fits All app will reach a mass audience.
To backup my point, allow me to quote a piece in the paper today: one of the problems many sites are running into is that about 25% of web users are still limping along with Internet Explorer 6.0.
(Pause to allow veteran web developers to spit, vomit, scream, make the two-fingered “sign of the devil’s horns” to ward off evil.)
IE 6.0 is widely recognized as the shittiest web browser ever inflicted on the public. It was launched in 2001. Since then, Microsoft has bugged users to upgrade, remove, kill, quash, forget, shred, this browser. The fact that a quarter of users in the U.S. still view the web through its Funhouse Mirror interface shows that 1) A large proportion of the public continues to employ legacy technology no matter how Christawful it is, 2) these folks ignore new technology, no matter how much better it is, for fear that upgrading will somehow cause them a problem, and 3) any tech solution based on the assumption that people will be running the latest&greatest hardware and software is doomed to die like like a possum wandering onto the Indy 500 speedway.
3. Millennial Media is competing with PointRoll to serve multimedia ads to the mobile market. And we’re going to have to stop here, because it’s time to load up the Conestoga wagon and head back to LA.
Technorati Tags: monetizing mobile, google, yahoo oneconnect, PointRoll
Sep 10
Posted: under journalism, New Media Strategery, newspaper crisis, Online (Multi)Media, Web/Tech.
Still up in lovely Point Reyes, decompressing and re-imagining our web presence, so the output here has been seriously cramped. However, these three little items just beg for notice. 1. We've all seen the "MSM sucks, don't believe what it says" meme gain strength the last few years, flourishing in the fertile soil of talk [...] [...more]
Still up in lovely Point Reyes, decompressing and re-imagining our
web presence, so the output here has been seriously cramped. However,
these three little items just beg for notice.
1. We've all
seen the "MSM sucks, don't believe what it says" meme gain strength the
last few years, flourishing in the fertile soil of talk hate
radio hosts, and migrating over to the Kos/Firedoglake end of the
spectrum. Meanwhile, in the developing world countries that I've
worked in the last few years, the people react with puzzled frowns to
the thought that anyone ever would have any sort of uncritical trust in
Big Media. Well, according to the Highway Africa media conference,
the 3rd world on the way up countries are starting to really dig the
idea of citizen journalists. Which makes sense, because they have the
sad history of governments/revolutionaries, as their first act, seizing
the TV/radio stations and firebombing the presses.
…the power of citizen journalism, in its objective and independent approach, is not to be underestimated.
“We need occasions where the actor in society gives us a very good insight
on what is going in communities, where journalists cannot be found.
2.
Responding to "catastrophic" circulation and ad revenue projections,
the OC Register, long known as the dysfunctional family of California
journalism (i.e. everyone knows Weird Old Uncle Floyd is not to be
trusted around children, but nobody talks about it), is reportedly
studying the idea, with intentions of perhaps forming a blue-ribbon
committee that will issue non-binding recommendations, of maybe perhaps justalittle changing their format from broadsheet to tabloid.
Will wonders never cease?
Other cost-cutting measure being
considered from the team reviews are Monday and Tuesday papers with
fewer pages and self-service advertising options. Horne also says the
paper may cut back on the number of distribution centers it operates,
noting that it recently reduced the outlets from seven to six.
"Studying it and doing it may be two different
things," Horne stressed about the tabloid change and other moves.
"Every newspaper needs to study driving down costs
3.
And last, for everyone out there who is concerned over those searches
that were done … late at night … after a few beers … y'know, just
for a hoot … that could be traced back to their IP address …
…well,
you only have to worry for nine months rather than 18. As part of
their "Pay no attention to the all-seeing man behind the curtain"
campaign, Google is reducing the latency of their caches of your searches. They
are also supposedly working to "anonymize" the userinfo, although how
that's supposed to help when all Google search&response data goes
thru the big computers at the NSA anyway is beyond me.
(Note
to all NSA, FBI, ATF & IRS functionaries now tracking me: Just
joking. Heh. Really. I have nothing to hide. I'm happy that the
government is vigilant against evildoers of all stripes, foreign and
domestic. Go Team America!)
Nicole Wong, Google's deputy general counsel, told a meeting of
computer industry privacy experts at Microsoft Corp's Silicon Valley
offices that her company planned to "anonymize" the computer addresses
of its users more quickly.
"We're significantly shortening our previous 18-month retention
policy to address regulatory concerns and to take another step to
improve privacy for our users," Google officials said in a blog post
released Monday night.
(snip)
….until a year-and-a-half ago, Google had kept personally identifiable
information about its Web users on company computers for an indefinite
amount of time.
