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November 20, 2009
∞
I just had the realization that even if this were to destroy the planet in creating a blackhole, it’s still the most amazing looking machine ever made.
Large Hadron Collider ready to restart - The Big Picture - Boston.com
NYC City Council Debates Net Neutrality
If you’re at a startup in NYC, then you should come down to City Hall today at 10 AM. The City Council will consider a resolution (712-A) to endorse and encourage the FCC’s Six Principles of Net Neutrality. Fred and I are attending, and if you have some free time this morning you should too.
Here is the details and a media release from one of the advocates working on this resolution:
#######
Who: Council Committee on Technology in Government, Technology
Community, Entrepreneurs, Developers, Telecoms, Academia, Non-Profits,
Advocacy Groups
When: Friday, November 20, 2009, 10 AM
What: Public Hearing on Net Neutrality Rules
Where: City Hall, Council Chambers, New York, NY 10007
(The Hearing will be webcasted through www.livestream.com/nycctechcomm
and tweeted on www.twitter.com/nycctechcomm. More details below.)
Directions: R, W to City Hall; 4, 5, 6 to Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall;
2, 3 to Park Place; J, M, Z to Chambers Street. You can enter at
either the Broadway/Murray St. or Park Row entrances.
CITY HALL, NY - On Friday, November 20, 2009 at 10 AM in the Council
Chambers of City Hall, the New York City Council Committee on
Technology in Government will hold a public hearing regarding the
Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) six principles of Net
Neutrality. This hearing seeks to gain insight into these principles,
which the FCC seeks to codify. Friday’s hearing will assess whether
the Net Neutrality principles as articulated would effectively obtain
the goal of maintaining a free and open Internet. Also, the hearing
serves as an opportunity to examine pending Resolution 712A-2007,
which asks the FCC and Congress to set firm Net Neutrality
regulations. You can view the resolution at http://bit.ly/netneutralityreso.
The FCC announced the six principles – made up of four previous rules
from 2005 and two new ones articulating regulation around network
transparency and nondiscrimination – in late October 2009. The FCC
made a request for public comment on this matter and the Committee on
Technology in Government will draw from the hearing’s testimonies to
draft a letter that includes citywide input.
The Committee on Technology in Government will be live twittering and
webcasting this entire public hearing.
* You can follow us on twitter at www.twitter.com/nycctechcomm and
use the tag #reso712A and #netneutrality if you have any comments,
suggestions, and questions during the hearing. Wireless Internet is
available to attendees to tweet this hearing.
* If you are unable to attend the hearing, you can view the live
webcast at www.livestream.com/nycctechcomm. You may also use the chat
function available on the site for comments, questions and
suggestions.
If you want to attend and/or testify at this hearing, please contact
Kunal Malhotra, Legislative and Budget Director, at
kmalho…@council.nyc.gov or Samuel Wong, Legislative Aide on
Technology, at samwong.n…@gmail.com. Both are reachable at our City
Hall Office at (212) 788-6975.
Many individuals have been invited to attend. Some of those we are
expecting are:
Arts+Labs
Harmony Institute
One Blue Brick
Brooklyn Law School
McDonough School of Business Center for Business and Public Policy,
Georgetown University
Open Government Foundation
blip.tv
Media and Democracy Coalition
Open Internet Coalition
Common Cause
National Cable and Telecommunications Association
Open Video Alliance
drop.io
NYU Stern School of Business
People’s Production House
Entertainment Consumers Association
New America Foundation
Public Knowledge
Eyebeam
NY Community Media Alliance
Songwriters Guild of America
Fordham University, Graduate School of Business
New York Law School, Advanced Communications Law & Policy Institute
Union Square Ventures
Free Press
NYS Telecommunications
Writers Guild of America - Northeast
Future of Music Coalition
November 19, 2009
∞The twitter traffic is probably undercounted because so many of the twitter click thrus are coming from twitter clients that register as direct traffic. The bit.ly stats on my post yesterday say that there were close to 1,200 clicks on that link from the twitter ecosystem. So that means google analytics is undercounting my twitter traffic by about 75%.
Andrew’s $0.02: This is why Bit.ly is an interesting company. They are the analytics for every service that refuses to give it to me themselves (craigslist, Twitter, Facebook, Digg… etc…).
I still think URL shorteners are harmful, but they are a necessary evil, so long as we’re all chatting in 140 characters without meta-data to package URLs.
November 18, 2009
...Come to the Boxee Beta Unveiling
One of the most interesting tech events I attended in the past year was the Boxee Meetup at Webster Hall. Avner and his team drew an interesting crowd of people (and packed the room) for an Apple-like unveiling of their latest alpha product. This year’s unveiling promises to be even better, so I highly recommend signing up to go.
This event is great for a couple reasons:
1) Show-n-Tell: As a tech geek, the best presentations are demos of live working product. The Boxee unveiling is exactly that, a first pull back of the curtains on one of the most exciting products in NYC, and it will be almost entirely demo eye candy.
2) The Crowd: The people at the last Boxee Meetup were not the “usual suspects” at NYC tech events. The people I met at the event were from a combination of midtown big media, professional sports business, ad agencies, and other sectors that don’t normally attend the latest Web X.0 meetup. It’s a great way to network with a diverse group of geeks that don’t normally come out.
3) Avner = Jobs: Avner’s got great stage presence that’s engaging to watch. You can tell he’s genuinely obsessed with the end-user experience and will push engineering hard in order to get the product just right. The passion for the product comes through in the demo, and watching him work on stage is a great example of an artist working his craft.
So, come to the latest Boxee Meetup: the unveiling of the Beta, which is a major milestone in the design of the product. The Beta has Zach Klein’s fingerprints all over it, who is one of the most talented product guru’s I’ve met (he produced Vimeo, the best place to upload video you truly care about… a home for creatives). I got a sneak peak of the Beta today and the look and feel has been totally revamped… it’s hot and has to be seen in person.
Here’s the key details:
Location: Music Hall of Williamsburg
Date: Monday, December 7th
Time: 7:00 PM
RSVP Link: Sign Up Here
john:
Tumblr just broke into the Top 100!
Andrew’s $0.02: Tumblr’s growth is impressive, and completely open to observation because they include the quantcast tracker on all their domain and network pages.
Tumblr’s growth is even more impressive when you consider how lean the team runs. You can count the people checking in code on a single hand. I love these guys.
</lovefest>
Books and Price
I’m reading a great piece by Clay Shirky on the local bookstore business model and the American Booksellers Association’s effort to stop Amazon, Walmart and Target from selling new bestsellers for under cost. And, it’s making me wonder about what technology has done to book prices throughout time.
Lets take content out of the equation for a second. How can we analyze book costs without discussing content? How about the Bible… its content has remained relatively consistent for a long period of time and has always been in the public domain.
What is the cost of the Bible over time? Starting with say the 5th century through the 21st century? My guess is it would be very high from 5th through 15th century, with, at best, a lightly linear decline in cost. But, then in the 15th century, Gutenberg invents movable type, and all of the sudden, the price drops off a cliff. A new baseline is set (deep in the basement of the old baseline) and then there is a continual decline (likely more logarithmic than linear in shape) until the price hits zero in the 20th century once the Bible can be distributed digitally.
Based on this Bible example, I posit that a “book” without content (Can a book really exist without content? Especially a digital one?) is worth zero today and has been zero for over 20 years now. But, bestsellers today do not cost zero (nor should they). When I buy a digitally distributed bestseller on Amazon today, what is the value of content?
Sam Lessin makes a convincing argument that information’s value is inversely proportional to the number of people that know the information. This argument does apply to books: books start out at a high price when they are first released and become nearly worthless once many people have read them. For example, I purchased a copy of Barbarians at the Gate for $0.01 on eBay a few years ago and in the same year purchased a brand new copy of The Ghost Map for $20.
I wish I had a more optimistic conclusion here. The American Booksellers Association will not accept the idea that their archive of popular book inventory is nearly worthless, and the only thing valuable is the new books they release that people have not read yet. Today, people will pay a reasonable price for archive books, but those customers are typically paying for either A) the convenience of paper over digital distribution or B) the book is still under copyright and the reader doesn’t want to deal with the secondary market.
In the end, I return to Clay’s piece, in which he recommends that local bookstores that support the community and create a home-away-from-home for people consider a non-profit or co-op model. Clays admits this a really crazy idea, but then ends with “However, if the sober-minded alternative is waiting for the Justice Department to anoint the American Booksellers Association as a kind of OPEC for ink, even crazy ideas may be worth a try.”
Here are some of the most common misconceptions.
* Everyone can choose the public option (No: only about 30 million will be allowed to).
* Everyone can use the new exchanges (No: only the self-employed and the poor can).
* The new choices take effect immediately (No: they start in 2013).
* There is a big fine if you don’t have insurance (No: zero until 2014; $750 in 2017).For the vast majority of people, who get insurance via their employer, nothing at all changes.
Healthcare Bill Misconceptions
Really? I have not been following the healthcare bill debate closely, and definitely have not read any primary sources, only commentary. But, this is nuts… I fell into all of these misconceptions.
I’ll add a misconception of my own:
* You’re not paying for the healthcare of the uninsured and illegal immigrants today (No: you are).
No hospital will turn away a patient that needs immediate medical attention today, regardless of ability to pay. Some uninsured and illegal immigrants give real names and pay out of pocket, but most either give fake names and addresses so their medical bills never reach them, or give real contact info and default on payment.
The cost of caring for this patient population does not magically evaporate after the bills are dodged. That cost is taken as a loss by the hospital and then the price of healthcare for paying participants is increased accordingly to maintain a financially functional (and IMHO unsustainable) system.
So, we are living with a crappy ostrich-head-in-the-sand version of universal health coverage today. The remedy to our delusion is we should admit that we believe healthcare should be based on clinical need, not ability to pay (which we already practice, but won’t declare), and we should find a sustainable and equitable solution to implement this principle going forward, with immediate impact.
November 17, 2009
∞
David and Rachel in the spot of my avatar pic.
Just enough time for some tapas and Gaudi before hopping on our flight to Seville
November 16, 2009
∞One prediction: Microsoft will emerge as a champion of the open web platform, supporting interoperable web services from many independent players, much as IBM emerged as the leading enterprise backer of Linux.
The War For the Web - O’Reilly Radar
A VERY bold prediction from Tim O’Reilly IMHO. He should put this up as a 5 year bet on the Long Now website. I would take the other end of this bet. The strategy behind Tim’s side of the bet is smart and would be a savvy move, but I just don’t think that kind of strategy is in Microsoft’s DNA. It’s always build vs buy for them, and either way, they have to own it. I see no early indications of embracing openness.
November 9, 2009
...Direct Giving
The drama over Kiva’s slightly misleading social stance has boiled over onto the NYTimes. To summarize, Kiva has been marketing itself as a model to loan money directly to third world entrepreneurs. But, the truth is that most entrepreneurs on the site already have an outstanding loan with a local micro-finance institution (MFI), and Kiva appearance of direct giving is really just a layer of marketing to enable people to give small loans to web-enabled MFIs around the world.
This layer of abstraction is fine by me… Kiva rocks. But for most of Kiva’s lenders, the idea that a lender’s choice of project is irrelevant on Kiva is surprising and disillusioning to most lenders.
The NYTimes piece gives the impression that the web is too nascent to enable direct Peer-to-Peer giving. That’s why I’m so impressed by DonorsChoose, who actually does enable direct giving to a specific classroom. 100% of the funds from a DonorsChoose donation goes to purchase the materials for the project you choose, and they implemented an e-procurement solution in order significantly reduce the opportunity for fraud.
Similarly, in the for-profit space, I’m excited by the prospects of Kickstarter, which is the new form of patronage online. There’s no layer of abstraction in Kickstarter, the project you select to sponsor is the project that receives your funds, the giving is direct.
In areas where there is already an infrastructure in place and widespread internet connectivity penetration, direct giving online is possible and is already happening today. It takes a ton of legwork to pull off and is not the easiest path to sponsorship. But, it’s worth clearing the hurdles to enable direct giving because the resulting transparency and lender empowerment is worth the effort.
