Yahoo shares down to a familiar place

At the end of January 2008, Microsoft offered to acquire Yahoo for $44.6 billion. Jerry Yang and the Yahoo board sniffed at the price.
Today, Valleywag made fun of Yang for his insouciance.

"The markets closed yesterday with Yahoo shares worth $19.11. It was the second day in a row Yahoo shares closed below the $19.18 they were worth on January 31, the day before Microsoft made its $31 per share offer public," said Nicholas Carlson.

Yang said the offer undervalued Yahoo. Months of back and forth sniping and negotiating ended in May when Microsoft's Steve Ballmer decided he had better things to do than spar with Yang and Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock.

A proxy fight for control of Yahoo, spurred by corporate raider Carl Icahn, ended with Yahoo agreeing to expand their board and give Icahn and a couple of his choices seats at the table.

It's fun to pick on Jerry Yang, but Yahoo's trading at $19.50 at 12:30 EDT today. Icahn isn't busy updating his blog, so maybe he should be helping Yang find a way to pump up that stock price. Read more!

Google chugs to nearly 62 percent of US market

Search, thy name is Google in the United States. Month to month changes noted by comScore saw Google take what Yahoo gave away.


Google picked up 61.9 percent of US searches in July 2008, up a bit from 61.5 percent in June as measured by comScore.

So how did the four-tenths of a percent get to Google? It may have been from their new search advertising partner, Yahoo, which saw its month over month search market share drop from 20.9 to 20.5 percent.

Microsoft's sites may have handed share to the engines at Ask and AOL, both of which followed Microsoft's third place share of 8.9 percent; that's down from 9.2 percent in June.

Ask rose to 4.5 from 4.3 percent, while AOL ticked a teeny-tiny bit to 4.2 from 4.1 percent.

The big percentages mask the numbers. For US-based queries, Google handled over 7.2 billion in July. Yahoo processed 2.4 billion. That's out of the 11.8 billion searches at the five biggest engines.

As Rich Skrenta noted some time ago, Google is the environment. There's no such thing as search engine competition, only search startups that hope to attract a buyer, much in the way heavily-hyped Powerset seemed to do when it parlayed lots of positive press into being acquired by Microsoft. Read more!

Verizon ready to mobilize search with Google

The mobile search market could trigger the next big wave of growth for the search industry. One big partnership between Google and Verizon stands ready to begin, and reach for a share of that market.


Somewhere the lawyers fence over codicils and subparagraphs, but once all of the 'wherefores' have been carefully tapped into place, a whole world of Google search on Verizon devices should clear up a morass of services Verizon customers see.

"I’m a Verizon Wireless customer and I get bounced all over the place depending on whatever deal the carrier cut. To say the Verizon Wireless default search experience is messy is an understatement," Larry Dignan said at ZDNet.

Going with Google looks like a no-brainer proposition. Ars Technica tossed out Nielsen Mobile search figures for the first quarter of 2008, and Google held 61 percent of the mobile search market.

Verizon isn't the only company this year to recognize Google's power. Norway's Opera Software, maker of the Opera Mini and Mobile browsers, promptly switched its mobile search choice back to Google after a year-long with Yahoo for its mobile search ended.

Google Mobile also pushed out a new Gears Geolocation API for wireless app developers. The API allows an application to locate a user based on either the cell towers they are near, or their IP address.

Using such technology makes mobile search much more valuable. Google showed off what popular travel site lastminute.com in the UK does with geolocation now:

Read more!

Spamming the Georgia-Russia conflict

Current events serve as fodder for spammers on a continual basis, with the recent troubles between Russia and Georgia serving as a recent inspiration for junk mailers.


Social engineering met shameless profiteering once spammers figured out that a subject line with a current headline worked at getting people to open the message.

When it was just plaintext pitches for penny stocks stuffed inside that email, spam was just an annoyance. As security vendor Symantec found in a recent spate of spam, the senders dropped in some malware for the trip:

One subject line that has been seen reads: “Subject: Journalists Shot in Georgia.” A short description of a “news event” related to the Russia-Georgia conflict is contained within the body of the message.

The use of the attention-grabbing subject line seems to be intended as a social engineering tactic to entice recipients to click the link and view videos. The attachment contains no videos; rather, the attachment redirects to a link that delivers a payload identified as Trojan.Popwin.

CNN and MSNBC have been spoofed by spammers recently, as the criminals behind fake messages from those news media companies sought to deliver malware via a fake Flash Player file.

If a news story merits broad attention, it's better to head to your favorite news site and check it out. A real breaking news item will be on a CNN or an MSNBC, and those sites won't try turning your computer into a spambot either. Read more!

Yahoo Site Explorer gets a makeover

The latest update to Yahoo Site Explorer gives webmasters a new interface and expanded capacity for Dynamic URL Rewriting.


Yahoo's Search team plans to make the new Site Explorer the default soon, after more people give it a look and play with the latest features.

Priyank Garg had more about the most notable feature, Dynamic URL Rewriting, at the Yahoo Search Blog:

Our most successful function among all has been Dynamic URL Rewriting. We've had thousands of site owners enter rules for their websites and webmasters auto-rewrite an average of 25,000 URLs per rule, with some sites rewriting millions of URLs in 1 shot.

The new interface also includes a new Site Summary page to provide statistics for authenticated sites. On top of this, we're also increasing the number of rules for Dynamic URL Rewriting that you can enter from 3 to 10.

Get used to it now, webmasters, because it's going live soon. Read more!

Spam persists: 30 percent of people buy from it

Look no farther than the next ten Internet users to find the reason for all that junk in your inbox. Three of them probably bought male enhancement pills or fake Rolexes from a spammed solicitation.


Those of you who have spent any time as a security professional overseeing desktop users undoubtedly encounter spam, and have to deal with it as part of the job. Spam could bring more to the desktop than purported Disney World giveaways; it may deliver a Trojan, or a link to other malware.

The spam keeps coming because it's profitable. It requires a low response rate from recipients because sending millions of spams costs little.

Techdirt and others picked up on security vendor Marshal and its assessment of the spam problem. This latest estimate of people who buy goods from sites via dodgy emails pegged the number at 30 percent.

Marshal actually put the number at 29.1 percent, but 30 sounds more impressive. For all we know it could really be 31.

Whatever the number, I know security pros would like to see it decline. So should anyone else with a concern about their loved ones and where their financial information might land by exposing it to what may be a less than reputable seller.

Having your credit card land on some Russian bulletin board isn't the best way to safeguard information, no matter how good the deal is that you received in a spam. Read more!

$199 iPod touch rumored for store shelves

Out with the old and in with the new, as retailers find current iPod models leaving their inventory systems. Apple fan sites buzz with possibilities, including a cheaper iPod touch model.


Visit Apple's page for the iPod touch and you'll find the slick web device starting at $299 for the 8gb version.

Wouldn't it be nice to see that come down in price? AppleInsider says that may happen soon:

On Tuesday, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster issued his own note to clients where he voiced a similar view to that of Reitzes, adding that he expects iPod refreshes across the board with a sub-$200 iPod touch to boot.

"Specifically, we believe Apple will increase the capacity of the iPod shuffles as well as the iPod nanos (but maintain current price points); redesigned form factors for the shuffles and nanos are unlikely," the analyst wrote. "We believe the iPod touch may be redesigned and may enter the $199 price point, in line with the iPhone."

Let's see Apple permit Google's Android phone software on board the iPod touch, couple with Google's desire for broadband over unused TV spectrum. Imagine a $199 iPod touch with VoIP for free calls, or as close to free as possible.

Apple's iPhone partners at AT&T would raise the roof over that, so I'm not too optimistic. But I've believed for some years now that Google really could remake the world of communication if they wanted to do so.

It would be neat if the iPod touch were the vehicle for that. Perhaps another day. Read more!

eBay bids farewell to checks, money orders as payment

If you want to buy it on eBay in the coming months, you'll have to buy it with some type of electronically processed payment option. Like a credit or debit card. Or eBay's PayPal service.

Many big changes go into effect soon at the online marketplace. A significant one cited by AuctionBytes finds eBay making a core change to how buyers pay sellers for their purchases:

eBay is moving to an electronic Checkout system, banning checks, money orders and postal orders. Accepted payment methods will include merchant credit card accounts, ProPay, and PayPal, effective late October.

There are exceptions to the new Accepted Payments policy. See details here, including this tidbit: "Please note that the new payments policy will not apply to the vehicles categories in Motors, capital equipment categories in Business & Industrial, Mature Audiences and Real Estate."

AuctionBytes editor Ina Steiner also observed how eBay's moderators handling seller questions about the change may be just as confused by the forthcoming update, in citing one moderator's response on the topic:

Right. But let's be crystal clear here: Seller are free to accept any payment type request a buyer might send them but post October, they will not be able to offer the option of checks or money orders in their listings or their email to buyers.

The so-called paperless society may never truly come into being, and I doubt we'll ever see it as long as there's such a thing as a government agency on any level. eBay's motivation here looks more like an unsubtle push of its sellers into PayPal, eBay's lucrative payment processing service.

Isn't it strange to think that the time of the online auction has reached an end? I won't miss auction sniping, a practice eBay does nothing to combat. But people seem to want an easier, classifieds-style way of transacting business, with set prices the rule. Read more!

Fair use earns rare court triumph

A federal judge in the case of Lenz v Universal et al decided against dismissing her suit against the music publisher, saying the issue of fair use needs to be considered before dishing out DMCA takedown complaints.


Two points of interest came out of the decision handed down in US District Court in San Jose (via Electronic Frontier Foundation). First, fair use does have a place in the modern world, not necessarily just when it suits a massive media conglomerate.

And second, Prince may be a bit of a control freak. He's an artist and a remarkably talented one, so one has to excuse some things. But he's alleged to be the motivating force behind Universal pursuing takedowns of any video containing his music.

The Stephanie Lenz home video contained about 20 seconds of Prince's "Let's Go Crazy" and earned a takedown notice from Universal. Lenz uploaded the video to YouTube, which complied with the DMCA request.

Lenz fought back after researching fair use and sued Universal. The two sides debated on whether or not fair use constituted an authorized use of the song under copyright law.

From Judge Jeremy Fogel's decision not to dismiss the case:

Even if Universal is correct that fair use only excuses infringement, the fact remains that fair use is a lawful use of a copyright.

Accordingly, in order for a copyright owner to proceed under the DMCA with “a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law,” the owner must evaluate whether the material makes fair use of the copyright.

Much of the problems today stemming from what people can and can't do with multimedia content stem from fair use being a somewhat nebulous concept. The idea has been that rigidly defining fair use would be a hindrance in the future as new ways of presenting content evolve.

The problem here stems from too much leeway in fair use, to the point where deep pockets and large teams of lawyers get to define it. That's a mistake, and fair use advocates need to come together and find a solution that satisfies public need and private copyrights.

Nonstop lawsuits aren't the answer. Read more!

Firefox ain't misbehavin' with SSL errors

When Firefox 3.0.1 tosses back what looks like an error page from a site with an expired or self-signed SSL certificate, it's acting the way Firefox is meant to do.


So after noting Royal Pingdom's observation about Firefox's seemingly odd SSL behavior, I heard back from Mozilla's outstanding team via Twitter.

"The Firefox expired, or self-signed certificate UI requiring several steps to add an exception behaves as it was designed to," Mozilla said in a tweet from Firefox Answers. "It returns a cert-specific error page."

Other than a small link to change Firefox's behavior, where the user embarks on those several steps to modify how Firefox handles a site's balky certificates, Mozilla's approach to communicating this needs improvement.

If there's a way to do so, I'm confident Mozilla will do it. The process should be much more intuitive than it is today. Read more!

Comcast switches to slowing down P2P

The heaviest users among Comcast's broadband customers should expect to see their massive file sharing creep to a crawl for periods of time. I'll solve the bandwidth problem at the end.


Comcast tried blocking peer to peer traffic with a series of connection resets, a practice the company initially denied. AP discovered the shenanigans, resulting in the FCC giving Comcast a slap on the wrist over their network management procedures.

Now, Comcast plans to try something completely different. They won't block their customers; as John Paczkowski said on Digital Daily, Comcast will settle for throttling their heaviest users:

As expected, the FCC gives Comcast 30 days to explain those practices in detail and how the company plans to change them by year’s end.

And just how does Comcast plan to do that? By slowing Internet service for heavy users for 10 to 20 minutes, regardless of the programs they use, with a new system called “Fair Share.”

So instead of throttling applications, Comcast will throttle subscribers.

Comcast called this "managing the consumer" in a Bloomberg piece. Instead of making the service unavailable for paying broadband customers, Comcast will slow it down to a point of virtual non-performance.

Some Comcast customers will favor this practice, as the trading of large files tends to revolve around copyrighted material. Depriving someone of the opportunity to swiftly grab a copy of The Dark Knight off a torrent in order to make service quicker for the majority of customers won't generate much sympathy for the person taking up that bandwidth.

Availability of bandwidth in sufficient capacity to drive the video future of the Internet seems like it would be the focal point for solving the problem of heavy usage. Communities broaden roads to handle more traffic, so why not do the same for Internet infrastructure?

It's a question more people should ask of the companies that could have made greater strides in this area, going all the way back to the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The Act came about to push competition for broadband services, where telcos would work to get the fastest possible connections to the home and sell consumers all kinds of services through it.

Still waiting for that? Me too, I'm paying $50 per month for the privilege of 3Mbit downstream DSL.

Over a decade passed by, very few homes ended up with true high-speed connections. We're stuck as a nation behind a lot of the world with relatively crappy broadband service, for which we pay dearly for the privilege.

Correcting this will require a Tennessee Valley Authority-style effort, a massive Depression-era federal work project that brought electricity to thousands of citizens who simply may never have received it.

Internet may not be as critical as electricity, but the continued shift to a digital society and making services available to anyone with a web browser does suggest citizens ought to be able to get on the Internet.

Kevin Martin thinks it's important. He just happens to be chairman of the FCC.

The shift of manufacturing jobs away from the United States to international destinations, no matter how free trade advocates want to spin it, left people out of work in America.

Priming the job pump by getting people working at ground level on delivering fiber to those 80+ million households that somehow got overlooked from 1996 on by the telecoms might deliver replacement careers for the jobs that hopped over our borders.

It's got to be a better investment in the country than a one-time economic stimulus check. Read more!

Yahoo, Intel revisit the WebTV era

Complementing the TV with content from the Internet sounds like a blast to the past, judging by what Yahoo and Intel announced today.


TV Widgets? Really?

Yodal Anecdotal says it's so:

Everyone loves their TVs. So much so that over 37 million units were sold in North America in 2007. But how much more would you love your TV if you could monitor your eBay auctions, keep tabs on the 5-day weather forecast, and check the score of the Giants game — all at the same time you are watching the new season of “ER”?

I don't know, I'm sitting at my computer, I can see the TV from here but it's not on right now. If I want to see how the Mets are doing while Greatest American Dog is on, I'm probably going to hit a bookmark in the browser while a commercial is on (sorry sponsors.)

The display Yahoo and Intel have in mind for the Widget Channel, a vision they call the Cinematic Internet, brings widget content to the bottom of the TV screen. After all, someone may have a critically important picture of their cat to share while you're waiting for the Weather Channel to tell you if a tornado is on the way out of town or not.

There's the perquisite amount of speculation on Techmeme about this latest foray into your living room. I can give you a simple breakdown of this, and it has to do with something at hand - your remote.

Television endures due to its simplicity. Turn it on, change the channel, lower the volume when the commercials begin. It's passive, and aside from having complex remotes or multiple remotes for different entertainment devices, there's no challenge to watching The Office.

People may be ready for this extra bit of interactivity with their television. But TV-based web initiatives never seem to gain a lot of ground. Like a lot of Yahoo investors after the failed Microsoft takeover bid, one has to wonder what Jerry Yang and company were thinking here.

I have to admit, 'Cinematic Internet' is kind of a catchy name. Read more!

Domain name fixed!

Mad props to Doug at Register4Less and to Nitecruzr.net for their help. You can reach this blog at www.davidautter.com now, woo hoo! Read more!

Internet Flies, But No Talking Allowed

Broadband comes to the skies for travelers willing to pay $12.95 to keep connected to the Internet, however, there's a couple of things they won't let you do.


When flying certain long domestic routes on American Airlines, a service called GoGo will give you access to the Net from iPhones, Blackberrys, and laptops running 802.11 a/b/g WiFi.

No one should have to be away from Olympic results or an important email because they happen to be a few miles above the ground. International fliers have access to Internet services, but regulatory red tape in the US kept it from being offered widely to domestic travelers.

Airlines wanted Internet service for passengers more than Michael Phelps wanted every medal he could get in the pools in China. Soaring jet fuel prices and other escalating costs have the airlines looking for every scrap of revenue they can get.

Reuters said American Airlines got the green light to offer GoGo's in-flight service. Passengers who may have hoped this would give them a cross-country flight full of VoIP calls will be disappointed; voice calls and cellphone service won't be available.

I don't see anything wrong with allowing voice calls in-flight. The typical domestic air route doesn't offer much in the way of entertainment. As for work, flying is more notable for keeping you away from a more productive place, outside of your MacBook perhaps.

At least the laptop becomes more useful on American, and likely Delta as well in the short term. Such airborne Internet availability will be a test for one particular category of technology: Software as a Service.

If there's ever a time where being one with something like Salesforce.com or Microsoft for their services gains importance, companies like that will shine if fliers find solid access to them from 35,000 feet.

I won't be real surprised to see some clever marketing person with an SaaS property look for a way to hook up with GoGo and offer some kind of partnership deal, perhaps a modest discount on that $12.95 session fee for customers of a given service. Read more!

Gmail secure login more than a feature

By providing a way to enable Gmail connections to regularly take place over a secure https session, Google did more than provide an always-on method of protecting the inbox.


Gmail contained a long-standing hole in its security, one that received attention at the most recent Black Hat Conference in Las Vegas. Staying signed in to Gmail for convenience meant retaining a cookie for up to two weeks on the computer.

That retention could be a bad thing.

Even though the first login to Gmail happens securely, the rest of the traffic, including passing along that cookie, takes place along a normal http connection unless the Gmail user has picked the new option to force all connections to happen over https.

A hacker named Mike Perry plans to drop a little something into security researchers' laps that enables exploitation of the transmittal of this cookie, as Hacking Thoughts noted:

Perry mentioned that he notified Google about this situation over a year ago and even though eventually it made this option available, he is not happy with the lack of information. “Google did not explain why using this new feature was so important” he said. He continued and explained the implications of not informing the users, “This gives people who routinely log in to Gmail beginning with an https:// session a false sense of security, because they think they’re secure but they’re really not.”

Fortunately, it's easy enough for Gmail users to protect themselves. Under Settings, scroll down to the bottom of the page, to the section marked Browser Connection. Tick the radio button next to 'Always use https' to safeguard the account against possible cookie theft. Read more!

Website Optimizer pleas heard, Google responds

Lots of new features dropped into the Google Website Optimizer to help webmasters with those all-important content tests.


The search industry's big shindig, the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose, sits in the backyard of the biggest search and advertising company. Google backed up its status by handing site publishers more features for the Website Optimizer service.

Inside AdWords posted the relevant 411:

• Experiment Pruning: This new feature allows you to disable one or more combinations from taking part in your Website Optimizer experiments. Pruning can help you achieve faster, more meaningful results by allowing you to remove poorly performing or illogical combinations. This is especially helpful in cases where your experiment may have too many combinations relative to the amount of traffic it receives.
  
  
• A/B Offline Validation: If your test or goal pages aren't accessible to Website Optimizer then no worries. You'll now be able to just upload a copy of your tagged page and Website Optimizer will make sure that everything is tagged properly.
  
  
• More Intuitive Reporting: We've enhanced our reports to more clearly show how your combinations are performing, and to better indicate when we've found one or more high-confidence winning combinations. This will help prevent you from drawing false conclusions from results or from ending experiments prematurely.

Google has maintained a nice pace with updates for Website Optimizer. When I first interviewed Vanessa Fox, the patron saint of Google Webmaster Central, when it debuted, she mentioned they planned to drop in new updates every two or three months.

Though she's long left the big G, Google continues to maintain this pace, as it should. Optimized websites mean better content indexing, which makes it more effective to place relevant ads against a given piece of content. Read more!

Pew Research eyes young Net-Newsers longingly

News media sites have a lucrative reason to maximize the value of their online advertising programs and partnerships. But is Net-Newsers the best name for them?


I've mentioned many times how the most worshiped ad demographic resides in the 18-24 age bracket. Let's face it, plenty of Madison Ave ad executives wouldn't bother to wait for the end of Satan's pitch for Grandma's soul in exchange for another point of market share before signing in blood on the bottom line.

Would you believe there's room for an older audience when it comes to news, the Internet, and probably advertising too? Not real old, Pew Research said, but this category of 13 percent of the public, affluent and well-educated, averages an age of 35.

Pew called them Net-Newsers:

This web-oriented news segment, perhaps more than the others, underscores the challenges facing traditional news outlets. Fewer than half (47%) watch television news on a typical day. Twice as many read an online newspaper than a printed newspaper on a typical day (17% vs. 8%), while 10% read both.

However, Net-Newsers do rely on some well known traditional media outlets. They are at least as likely as Integrators and Traditionalists to read magazines such as The New Yorker and The Atlantic, and somewhat more likely to get news from the BBC.

58 percent of these Net-Newsers are men, and they're more likely to hit DailyKos or Power Line than turn in to Katie Couric for another library card story on CBS News.

Internet companies like Google and Yahoo want a piece of the newspaper online ad business, but bigger publishers like Hearst, long accustomed to playing with house money, prefer not to split ad revenue with those companies, at any percentage.

It's a simple proposition for the newspaper publishers (and their TV brethren) operating content sites: put forth an ad platform that captures the Net-Newser audience, and their disposable income, or keep slipping beneath the waves of the Internet. Read more!

How not to talk about money

In a small business, an employee may bring great value to the operation, more than other workers. You want to reward them, but there's something you should never do when discussing pay.


If you're fortunate, someone steps up in the business and performs well, consistently. You're paying the person more than other staffers who come and go, more than some other long-term workers too.

You're not the only one who knows their value. He knows it too. Success means a paycheck for him, but probably a more substantial reward for you: nicer car, better clothes, actual out-of-town vacations.

Both of you want to keep working together, but your worker has reached the limit of what you wish to pay for the position. Conflict happens sometimes.

If you find yourself telling that employee you're paying him well, you've pretty much ruined the relationship. That may sound silly from the management perspective, especially since you have access to the books and he doesn't, but what he hears is this:

You provide no more value to me than what I give you.

And he may have you dead to rights on that as well. But there is that value he brings to work every day; how can you compensate for this without paying more money?

A lot of people want a better quality of life along with their work. When it's time to talk money, don't talk from the negative, or high-handed position, that you're doing your performer a favor.

Keep the discussion positive. Point out what you do provide, in the way of benefits, perks, anything additional to the basic pay. If there are extras to offer that still allow the completion of work at a consistent level, that's the time to do it.

You and he may have reached a point where money means the most, and he can get more of it elsewhere. Since you wouldn't turn down profitable business, expecting an employee to do so for your benefit makes no sense.

Whether you keep your top performer or not, how you treat them affects your future business. Someone who leaves to be successful elsewhere may be the conduit who sends you your next star employee.

Just don't be a jerk when money comes up. There's little respect for the small business owner who brags to employees about how much he's paying them, before driving his Mercedes home to drop off a couple of new high-definition TVs. Read more!

US Army fails at SSL, confuses Firefox

As many as 108,000 websites may cause Firefox 3 to throw up a Page Not Found error because of an expired SSL certificate. One site of note failed this test, the official site for the US Army.



I've seen the occasional quirk in Firefox 3 where a valid page simply doesn't load. A quick refresh does the trick, but it happens enough to be noticeable, and a web browser shouldn't be notable for such things.

My pals at monitoring firm Pingdom said Firefox 3 showed this odd behavior for a lot of sites, all with one thing in common: an expired or a self-signed SSL certificate.

Rather than showing a message about the problematic certificate, Firefox 3 gives back a standard error. Not a good thing, said Pingdom:

To get past this error page, users have to go through four different steps before they can access the website, which from a usability standpoint is far from ideal.

This way of handling websites with expired or self-signed SSL certificates is bound to scare away a lot of inexperienced users, no matter how legitimate the website is.

Mozilla's engineers regularly overcome little browser problems, and this one should be no different. It's an odd one to fall through the cracks of the QA process. Maybe Mozilla CEO John Lilly needs to ask why it did. Read more!

Freedom, the Net, and clean white spaces

The duopoly of cable and telco control of broadband delivers varying, meager connectivity to the masses. Google thinks there's another way to bring the speed and the solution to broadband woes.


Google wants to give you static.

Ok, not static, but swift, wireless broadband service, delivered along the conduits of unused television spectrum that are just fuzzy static today. There's a ton of white space out there, enough that Google believes a little help from the FCC will remake the Internet landscape.

Open it up, and everyone benefits, says the official Google blog:

When it comes to opening these airwaves, we believe the public interest is clear. But we also want to be transparent about our involvement: Google has a clear business interest in expanding access to the web. There's no doubt that if these airwaves are opened up to unlicensed use, more people will be using the Internet. That's certainly good for Google (not to mention many of our industry peers) but we also think that it's good for consumers.

More Internet users on faster connections means greater opportunities for Google to drop advertising in front of them. It's a simple business proposition - expand the size of the pie so your slice become bigger.

Google wants you to help Free The Airwaves, or at least visit a new website dedicated to getting that message out ahead of the FCC's decision on whether or not unused TV spectrum becomes available for broadband.

I'm interested in seeing this happen, but Google and its Wireless Innovation Alliance pals, Microsoft among them, need to make the technology work, without interfering either with TV or wireless microphones.

Part of the FCC's process of determining whether or not Google and company can push broadband over white spaces involves testing the necessary devices at places where wireless mics are in use, like concert venues.

On the sideline, rooting for it to fail, will be the National Association of Broadcasters. The Washington Post said a few months back the NAB claimed the technology failed to prove itself in FCC tests. Google and its partners disputed that, in what became a perquisite exchange of heated press releases and other public commentary.

If the technology ends up working to the approval of FCC taskmasters, people will have to make a different choice. Will they trust a consortium of big technology players, Google, Microsoft, and Intel among them, to be the gatekeepers of fast wireless Internet service?


Read more!

Lose yourself in the music, the moment

I've been a music fan for ages, something those of you who have followed my writing probably figured out already. There's a power behind a great song, like the bass line to U2's New Year's Day or the opening riff for Welcome To The Jungle, that catches you and keeps you moving through life.





Seeing my writing time at webpronews and the dozens of associated sites where I wrote, literally, thousands of posts, come to an end was like hearing a familiar song fade to its coda. Happily enough, there's always another song that comes along to wake you up and keep you going through miles of desert and dust.

You'll see me at this blog, dishing out the posts like I always have, not to mention whatever other opportunities to write fall into my inbox.

I'm also planning to share something personal, because I think you can help me. Tomorrow, yes, not today. I've got things to read and writing to perpetrate.

Peace and much love. Read more!