Titanic Days for GM and EMI
June 1, 2009
Sometimes things just connect up. Consider, for example, these three stories from today’s Guardian.
The Snail in the Cloud
May 21, 2009
I’ve used this photo before, because I find the Post Office boxes rather lovely, in a vintage sort of way. Little did I suspect at the time that the photo might become relevant to cloud computing.
But (as I read at GigaOM), Amazon Web Services is now going postal, since snail mail is sometimes faster than the internet. “Werner Vogels, Amazon’s CTO, explains… that it would take up to 13 days to sling a terabyte of data across a 10 Mbps network… So Amazon is offering customers the chance to store their data on an external device, ship it via post, and Amazon will load it.”
Hard Times at Boston Globe
April 22, 2009
The photo may look as though it’s left over from coverage of Salem at Halloween, but it’s actually scarier than that. It’s New York Times Co. chief executive Janet L. Robinson. Here’s a quote from the Globe article featuring the photo.
Company officials… singled out “significant losses at the New England Media Group” as a major factor in the Times Co.’s weak performance in three months ending March 31… While every segment of the company’s business was battered by the steep advertising decline in the first quarter, the New England group, dominated by the Globe, turned in the weakest performance. Advertising revenue tumbled 31.6 percent for the New England group.
That makes it sound as though the Globe is dragging down a media firm that would otherwise be buoyant. But the graphic that accompanies the corresponding article in the Herald gives more detail. The 31.6% decline is $55.7M. For NYTCo as a whole, the decline is $334.7M, or 27%.
Other numbers also point to the Globe being about a sixth of NYTCo, and doing slightly, but not massively, worse than the rest of the company. No wonder Universal Adam put it thusly: New Yorkers blame Boston for their problems.
Lookybook Closes
March 20, 2009
I described Lookybook as a rather wonderful idea back in 2007. It was a means of test-driving picture books via the web. I still consider it a wonderful idea.
But Lookybook CEO Craig Frazier just sent out email with the sad news that “we have come to the last page in our adventure together.” That’s all I currently know. I’ll try to find out more…
Water Rights
March 19, 2009
Water rights, water rights, everywhere: stories about water rights are springing up all over the place (including Reddit, where I found the two stories to which I link here), even more so now that the World Water Forum is in progress.
The forum is in Istanbul which, come to think of it, is a city in which two continents are divided by water (the Bosphorus River, to be precise). If there is a best metaphor prize at the conference, I suspect it will be awarded for the characterization of water rights as an issue that is snowballing. And the Turkish police deserve some sort of recognition for their treatment of protesters: the cops sprayed them with water cannons.
Thanks to RetloP for the image of a more peaceful aspect of water.
SF Bookstore Within a Mile?
February 20, 2009
Sci-fi bookstore to invade Centre Street (West Roxbury), proclaims our local bulletin. I saw the headline on the free paper while shopping at Roche Bros this morning, and got caught up via Universal Hub. I’d previously had drive-by glimpses of interesting-looking signs at the retail location.
My thoughts are that:
- It’ll be tough going for Seek Books. It’ll need to be a destination for folks from as far away as… Dedham, maybe even Jamaica Plain.
- My hopes for the new store somehow rose when I learned that the owner is a retiring addiction therapist.
Kindle the Second
February 11, 2009
Amazon’s Kindle 2 will be released on Feb 24. I’d like a Kindle, but not at $350+. That’s similar to my reaction to the first Kindle, but it’s moved up from “It’s clunky, but I’d kind of like one” to “I’d really like one.”
The Boston Globe emphasized the Stephen King connection: he’s written a novella for, and featuring, the Kindle. It also covered the reservations expressed by Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild. The Wall Street Journal reported other objections from the same source.
Meanwhile, on the west coast, Niniane posted a valentine to the Kindle 2. And at GigaOm, Kevin surmised that Amazon’s ebook business will be dating hardware other than the Kindle, based on the announcement that the new “Whispersync” technology will sync with “a range of mobile devices in the future.”
Back here, I’m wondering how what sort of price a gently used Kindle 1 will go for as Kindle fans upgrade. I’m also wondering when the Kindle 3 will arrive, what features it will have, and what the price of gently used Kindle 2s will be at that time.
Hulu Sort of Scores in the Superbowl
February 2, 2009
Hulu is a web site where you can watch TV shows, and some other content. It is free and ad-supported. It was one of the web success stories of 2008. Like many legal sources of content on the web, it violates the spirit of the “world wide web” by being unavailable to much of the world.
So Hulu, the web site where you can watch TV shows, ran a TV ad during the Superbowl. It was one of the more highly-rated Superbowl ads this year (sources for this include Fred Wilson), and so many people will want to see it.
Now, it would make sense for Hulu to make it easy for people to watch its ad. In fact, Hulu has a gallery of all the Superbowl ads. Perhaps it is to Hulu’s credit that its own ad doesn’t seem to be particularly prominent in the gallery. But that’s another way of saying that Hulu puts up barriers to its own ad.
So if you go to Hulu.com in order to watch the ad the web site paid to run on TV, you have to first watch… a regular ad. That’s if you are allowed to watch the Hulu ad. If you’re outside the Hulu zone, you won’t be able to watch the ad.
I know that there are contractual restrictions on making content available across borders. But it would make sense for Hulu to not impose such restrictions when the content is its own ad. You can see more at Erick’s TechCrunch post. The “more” includes the Hulu ad itself… but of course, people in the USA will see an ad before the ad, and most people outside the USA won’t see much of anything.
By the way, I think that the Hulu ad is pretty good. “They say TV will rot your brain. That’s absurd. TV only softens the brain, like a ripe banana” is one of Alec Baldwin’s better lines. The Superbowl itself wasn’t bad either.
Italy Boots Kebabs
January 31, 2009
The kebab “is being kicked out of Italian cities as it becomes the target of a campaign against ethnic food, backed by the centre-right Government of Silvio Berlusconi,” according to The Times (via Reddit). The ban started in the town of Lucca, and:
Yesterday it spread to Lombardy and its regional capital, Milan, which is also run by the centre Right. The antiimmigrant Northern League party brought in the restrictions “to protect local specialities from the growing popularity of ethnic cuisines”.
Luca Zaia, the Minister of Agriculture and a member of the Northern League from the Veneto region, applauded the authorities in Lucca and Milan for cracking down on nonItalian food. “We stand for tradition and the safeguarding of our culture,” he said…
Asked if he had ever eaten a kebab, Mr Zaia said: “No – and I defy anyone to prove the contrary. I prefer the dishes of my native Veneto. I even refuse to eat pineapple”…
The story goes on to make the silliness yet clearer.
The San Marzano tomato, a staple ingredient of Italian pasta sauces, was a gift from Peru to the Kingdom of Naples in the 18th century. Even spaghetti, it is thought, was brought back from China by Marco Polo, and oranges and lemons came from the Arab world…
Massimo Di Grazia, the [Lucca] city spokesman, said that the ban was intended to improve the image of the city…
There is confusion… over what is meant by ethnic. Mr Di Grazia said that French restaurants would be allowed. He was unsure, though, about Sicilian cuisine. It is influenced by Arab cooking.
The article really does seem to be from the The Times, rather than from The Onion. It does not mention whether onions are seen as undesirable foreign invaders.
Spotify Gets Spottier
January 31, 2009
“Why is Spotify not available in my country?” That’s what greets me when I visit the free, ad-supported, streaming music site. The answer is that “licensing restrictions” get in the way.
One of the selling point of the service, if free services can be said to have selling points, is the extensive catalogue. But that catalogue is changing, and not in a good way. It’s shrinking, at the insistence of record labels.
The changes are being made so that we implement all the proper restrictions that are required by our label deals… our agreements contain strict rules as to what tracks can and can’t be played in various countries… These restrictions are a legacy from when most music was sold on tapes and CDs and they have continued over into streaming music, our hope is that one day restrictions like this will disappear for good.
I got the news from TechCrunch, one of the sites that got me interested in Spotify in the first place. I’m now a little less interested.
By the way, I’m pretty happy with Lala. It has a pretty extensive catalog (making an appropriate switch to the US spelling now), free try-before-you-buy, and reasonable pricing once you decide you like.
