Changing Way

This blog, like most hosted by WordPress.com, carries ads, albeit not all the time. Automattic controls the ads and gets the money from them. It’s one of the ways in which Automattic makes money from the free WordPress.com service. So this blog, like many hosted by WordPress.com, includes posts about ads and the wish that they were banished from the blog.

The same wish is sometimes expressed on the support forums, although not as often as the wish to be able to control and profit from the ads on one’s blog. People seeking such control and profit seem incapable of using the forum’s search box. The many forum threads include frequent reference to Automattic’s statement that: In the future you’ll be able to purchase an upgrade to either turn the ads off or show your own ads and make money from your blog.

This is course raises the question of how much such an upgrade might cost. I just saw an estimate from the redoubtable raincoaster.

But my guess (and it’s a total guess) is that if there were an upgrade to take Adsense off your blog, it would have to cost at least ten bucks a month. So $120 a year, just to replace the income WP.com makes from the average blog here.

Raincoaster doesn’t work for Automattic or for Google, and she did stress that she’s guessing. But I’d take her “total guess” over a confident prediction by many other people. In particular, I’m inclined to think that she’d got the decimal point in the right place.

I’m also inclined to think that most of us who were planning an upgrade to ad-free had in mind an annual cost of $15 or thereabouts, in line with other upgrades. If it would cost Automattic around 10 times that, we might be waiting a long time for an upgrade we’d care to pay for.

Today, both Newton and Leibniz are given credit for developing calculus independently. Chances are that most of my readers are nerd enough to know that, and most of the others are close enough to the nerd neighbourhood to find it interesting.

Less well known is that the phenomenon of simultaneous discovery—what science historians call “multiples”—turns out to be extremely common. So it’s just as well that Malcolm Gladwell tells us in his current New Yorker article. The article is to a large extent an admiring account of Nathan Myhrvold and his Intellectual Ventures.

So it’s just as well that Mike Masnick tells us that Gladwell, while “a truly fantastic writer… misses the real point.”

As Gladwell points out — rarely is it about “genius,” but about the fact that all of the previous work in the field naturally leads to this end result — and if it wasn’t one person discovering it, someone else would. The article lists out big name invention after invention that all have “multiples”…

[But] if these ideas are the natural progression, almost guaranteed to be discovered by someone sooner or later, why do we give a monopoly on these ideas to a single discoverer? Myhrvold’s whole business model is about monopolizing all of these ideas and charging others (who may have discovered them totally independently) to actually do something with them. Yet, if Gladwell’s premise is correct (and there’s plenty of evidence included in the article), then Myhrvold’s efforts shouldn’t be seen as a big deal. After all, if it wasn’t Myhrvold and his friends doing it, others would very likely come up with the same thing sooner or later.

The best term I can think of for what Myhrvold is up to is idea squatting, since it is rather similar to domain squatting. I wondered if I’d coined a new term, but a quick Google showed me that Machiavelli had beaten me to it, albeit by only four years, rather than by five centuries as I originally suspected.

By the way, a quick Domize showed that ideasquatting.com is still available. But I didn’t grab it, since I’m no domain squatter. Thanks to Mashable Adam for posting about Domize. And thanks to Open Glyn for dishing the (tech)dirt on Masnick on Gladwell.

I was going back through some photos from last year, and found one that I’d taken of this modified sign while stopped by the signal. I’ve been meaning to crop and post it, so here it is.

The sign is on Centre Street in Jamaica Plain, as you’re going from Faulkner Hospital, just before you get to the rotary. Perhaps I shouldn’t say “as you’re going,” since you’re probably stopped at/by the sign/signal.

Scrabble is a couples’ game. By this, I don’t just mean that it’s best as a 2-player game. I mean the sort of thing that 7-how-7 / steve was getting at when he made these scrabble magnets for Valentines day.

It was silly of me to be surprised when I read about how Scrabble games can go on Facebook. I got the tile-trembling truth from an article by Will Doig. It was shared with me by Matthew Gray, who I know from other, more innocent, board-gaming experiences.

Scrabulous, the Facebook application that allows users to play Scrabble against each other online, has turned Hasbro’s slow, stodgy board game for vocabulary enthusiasts into one of the internet’s sleazier pickup joints

It reminded me to nudge my wife to tell her that it’s her turn on the Scrabulous game we started recently. It is so far my only Scrabulous game. But if you would like some good clean scrabbly fun, let me know.

Finally, here’s a scrabbly quote from Kelly Link’s wonderful story, The Faery Handbag.

Zofia and I played Scrabble all the time. Zofia always won, even though her English wasn’t all that great, because we’d decided that she was allowed to use Baldeziwurleki vocabulary. Baldeziwurlekistan is where Zofia was born, over two hundred years ago… Baldeziwurlekistan is also an incredibly valuable word in Scrabble points, even though it doesn’t exactly fit on the board. Zofia put it down the first time we played…

Zofia kept rearranging her letters on her tray. Then she looked over at me, as if daring me to stop her, and put down “eziwurlekistan”, after “bald.” She used “delicious,” “zippery,” “wishes,” “kismet”, and “needle,” and made “to” into “toe”. “Baldeziwurlekistan” went all the way across the board and then trailed off down the righthand side…

“I used up all my letters,” Zofia said. She licked her pencil and started adding up points.

“That’s not a word,” I said. “Baldeziwurlekistan is not a word. Besides, you can’t do that. You can’t put an eighteen letter word on a board that’s fifteen squares across.”

“Why not? It’s a country,” Zofia said. “It’s where I was born, little darling.”

“Challenge,” I said. I went and got the dictionary and looked it up. “There’s no such place”…

“They call it something else now,” Zofia said. “But I think it’s important to remember where we come from. I think it’s only fair that I get to use Baldeziwurleki words. Your English is so much better than me. Promise me something, mouthful of dumpling, a small, small thing. You’ll remember its real name. Baldeziwurlekistan. Now when I add it up, I get three hundred and sixty-eight points. Could that be right?”

Yes, it’s Momofuku day for those Elvis Costello fans who don’t own a turntable. By the way, I suspect that many of us in that category wish we still did own a turntable.

I’m on my second listen to the album right now. The first was via Rhapsody at work, through PC speakers. The current listen is at home, streaming from Lost Highway Records and coming out through semi-real speakers. On the basis of those listens, and some earlier listens to other versions of Momofuku tracks, I’m pleased.

I’m not sure how long the album will stream from the record label’s site. I thank Stereogum for telling me about the stream. By the way, it was at another post at the same site that I saw the wonderful quote from the wonderfully quotable Lou Reed: I can’t wear the sunglasses now because I’d fall over a cable.

Here’s an interesting juxtaposition of stories from Techmeme. The WSJ story is one of many today about Zune 2.5. The link to WSJ takes you only to a couple of paragraphs and an invitation to subscribe, so you’re probably better off with a link to a real article (e.g., at Engadget).

However, none of the stories about Zune 2.5 I’ve scanned say much about DRM. I believe that the Zuniverse is ridden with the stuff.

That brings us to the second story in the above screenshot. The title is yet another exaggerated rumour of music’s death. But the post itself is an excellent account of what Microsoft will do, on August 31, to people who bought from MSN Music.

On that day, Microsoft will turn off the servers that they maintain for the sole purpose of validating that the songs that people have already “purchased” through MSN Music are still theirs to play. Those people (hereafter “the victims”) will not notice the change right away. The victims will only notice it when they purchase a new computer, or when they upgrade the operating system on their current computer, or when the hard drive in their computer dies and needs to be rebuilt/reinstalled. At that point — transferring the music files they have “purchased” to another drive or a new computer — the Microsoft music player running on the victim’s PC (like iTunes, but all Microsoft-y instead of Apple-y) will make a call to Microsoft’s validation servers to verify that the music files were legitimately purchased. This call will fail, since the servers are not responding, since Microsoft has intentionally turned them off. The Microsoft music player will then conclude, incorrectly but steadfastly, that the music files were downloaded illegally and that the victim is a filthy pirate, and it will refuse to play them.

What can we learn from the juxtaposition of the two Techmeme stories? If we are music buyers, we should avoid DRM like the plague, especially when it comes from Microsoft. If we are writing about Zune, or about pretty much anything to do with digital music, we should tell our readers about the DRM implications.

Or we should at least ask our readers to comment on the DRM implications. So, can someone enlighten us about Zune and DRM?

Duncan Riley is one of the most prominent tech bloggers. He’s just left TechCrunch to start Inquisitr, a blog that will focus, not only on tech, but also on pop culture and oddness.

Inquisitr, like TechCrunch, runs on WordPress. I can’t say I like the look of the site, but I’m not sure that Duncan does either yet. “The site itself is still a slight work in progress… and I’m still not 100% on the front page magazine layout.” I am 100% sure that the front page should not have its lead story on a black background.

On behalf of the association of WordPress blogs covering web tech and enough other stuff to lack focus, I welcome Duncan and Inquisitr. I’ll leave others to roll out the welcome map for other relevant assocations: bloggers who couldn’t afford the last vowel?

If you’re suffering from Radiohead overload, skip ahead. I’m obviously not, since I’m leading with a portrait of Thom Yorke which, by the way, is by Joshua Gorchov.

The first show of the tour, in Florida, has just finished. I won’t be able to catch the Boston show (or indeed any other).

I haven’t even had time to watch all of the session from Nigel Goodrich’s basement, which is up at VH1. I will, though, since I was blown away by the preview/teaser: a great version of Reckoner.

Tomorrow sees the CD release of Elvis Costello’s Momofuku. My earlier post on the album has been way more popular, at least by the humble standards of this blog, than I expected.

Enough of this Brit rock. It’s Cinco de Mayo, and the song of the day at the Rhapsody blog is a rather wonderful cover version of “Mexican Radio” by Kinky.

Enough, for the moment, of this Brit pretending to be a music blogger. If you want to read a real music blog post, check out Heather Browne’s tremendous account of day 3 at Coachella. She’ll take you there.

One of the most interesting aspects of free/open source software is its relationship with end users, which for the purpose of this post I’ll define as users who are not also developers. Paul Young of Product Beautiful presents an thought-provoking case.

Open source developers have created products so good, that they are nearly indistinguishable to an end user from commercial software. This has changed the mindset and expectations of users to think that they are the persona that the developer is writing code for, but are they? Some applications, such as Firefox, have made the leap and are clearly developing for an end user. For an example of a FOSS project that hasn’t, look no further than Pidgin… a free and open source instant messaging (IM) client… Obviously, there is a huge gap between the expectations of the users and the developers. Who normally bridges that gap? Product Management.

As a once (and future?) product manager, I found Paul’s post particularly interesting. The comments are also good, including the ones that pointed out that Vista has a product management and a gap separating it from its users.

Perhaps there could be some sort of certification of free/open source projects. Some could wear the badge: our users are our customers (e.g., Firefox). Others could wear: our users are us, the developers, and others with the same tastes (e.g., Pidgin?).

I saw Paul’s post via Matt Asay’s Open Road blog. I find it strange that a blog about openness has a partial feed, rather than a full feed, and requires registration for comments. In other words, it’s more like Pidgin than Firefox. And so, with some sadness, I’ll unsubscribe from it.

The biggest tech story of the year so far is the acquisition of Yahoo by Microsoft, and the biggest current tech story is that the deal didn’t happen.

Let’s review, from a few different perspectives, starting with Yahoo itself. CEO Jerry Yang poses the question Ok, so now what?.

With Microsoft’s withdrawal, we’ll be better able to focus our energy on growing our industry leadership and maximizing value for stockholders. We’ll continue to execute on our plan — making your Internet experience as personal, relevant, open and social as possible, serving advertisers so well they insist on working with us, and opening up Yahoo! in a way that developers dream of.

Meanwhile, one of the leads at Yahoo News is: Yahoo shares fall 17 pct after Microsoft withdraws bid. The story tells that Yahoo shares fell to $23.73 in early trading, while Microsoft’s rose 2.3 percent to $29.30. Yahoo is up slightly to $24 right now, which is $9 less than Microsoft’s last offer.

I found via Fred Wilson, a poll on where Yahoo will close today . Yesterday, his prediction was $26, and mine was $18. I’ll actually be happy if he is still closer than me at the end of the day. But I fear that a further slide is only a shareholder lawsuit or two away.

There’s another poll related to the non-deal over at TechCrunch: Does Ballmer Need to Go? Currently “too soon to tell” has a comfortable lead, with “yes” and “no” tied for second place. Those are the only three candidates: I couldn’t find “Ballmer should go, but not for Microhoo-related reasons.”

So the deal, even thought it didn’t happen, continues to create distractions for both Microsoft and Yahoo. Google is the winner.