À la carte cable

This is interesting, civil rights groups are against à la carte cable because it feels that the cable providers would drop niche minority channels from the bundles they sell.

I am not sure this argument is totally valid. If people want a niche minority channel on their television surely they could just order it from their provider. And wouldn’t their cable bill be lower because they would not have to get all the channels provided in the current bundles whether they want them or not.

I dropped my cable subscription a few years ago for a few very simple reasons: the basic bundle got me 70 odd channels of which I would watch three on a semi-regular basis; most the channels I really wanted to watch were in addition to the basic bundle, so the cost of watching HBO, for example, was not $10 but $55; and at some point I just stopped watching TV altogether.

Personally I want à la carte, because I want to be able to pick and choose which channels I want to watch. I would not pay $45/month for a bundle of 70 channels, but I would pay $45/month for 5-10 channels of my own choosing.

Privacy policy link

The NY Times recently published an article about Google taking a stand on not putting a direct link to its privacy policy on its home page, the arguments are summarized as follows in the article:

One of the core principles of the group has been that its members should provide “clear and conspicuous notice” of how they collect and uses data. This has been interpreted to mean that a link to a site’s privacy policy should be on its home page.

Google, however, told the group that it would not comply with that rule.

Larry Page, the company’s co-founder, didn’t want a privacy link “on that beautiful clean home page,” said one executive at a Google competitor who is involved in reviewing Google’s N.A.I. application. (The executive didn’t want his name used because the applications are meant to be considered privately.)

“His argument is when you come to Google and you are looking for information, it is that big fat box” for search and little else, the executive said.

Indeed, Steve Langdon, a Google spokesman, reiterated this view to me in an e-mail after I asked about the matter:

We believe it is important for consumers to be able to easily find privacy policies and other privacy information. By simply typing ‘Google privacy policy’ into the Google search engine, consumers can easily find not only our privacy policy, but additional information about privacy.

When I asked why not simply put the link to the privacy policy on Google’s home page, Mr. Langdon said in another e-mail:

We do believe that having very limited text on our home page is important and that is something we have shared with the N.A.I.

So I took a look at the Google home page (I rarely go there preferring to use the search box in browser, hardwired to Google I might add. Yo! Steve J. remind me how I can change that? I can’t!! Well that sux).

Anyway on the Google home page there are three links at the bottom of the page as follows:

Advertising Programs - Business Solutions - About Google

How hard would it be to do this:

Advertising Programs - Business Solutions - About Google - Privacy Policy

I am not sure that this would add clutter, after all there are three ‘clutter’ links on the home page already (to the right of the search box, I bet you have not used them in a blue moon):

Advanced Search
Preferences
Language Tools

I think it would be good (googley?) for Google to take the moral high road here and take this opportunity to pre-empt yet more controversy over its privacy policies by making it really easy to get to them.

UPDATED May 30, 2008 - It turns out that there is a legal requirement in the state of California for commercial web sites that collects personal information to “conspicuously post its privacy policy on its Web site.”

Ubiquitous becomes invisible

I came across this great quote in the latest column by Bob Cringely:

Al Mandel, who helped market the original LaserWriter at Apple and later had several high-level positions at AOL, used to say that the step after ubiquity was invisibility, and that’s where we are headed today with IT, which has become so pervasive that everyone uses it to the point where NOT using it is no longer even an option.

I learned about Ubiquitous Computing in the early 90’s when I read about the work done by Mark Weiser, and to him ubiquity meant invisibility.

Generally this concept has been applied to hardware, the way chips have gotten into everything these days, like cars, toasters and razors, not to mention RFID chips (which, in some twisted way, add methods to objects since you can now interrogate item and get information from them.)

But I would suggest that it is happening to all our data too as we move to cloud computing. Data, documents, spreadsheet, music, video, etc.. are all migrating from our personal computers to some remote storage in the cloud where we can access them from whatever device we choose provided that it is connected to the network. Of course there are lots of issues to deal with here such as bandwidth, security, DRM, etc… but the signs are pretty clear, but already good bandwidth is making remote storage not so remote anymore.

“Victorian internet”

I found this great quote in an article on literacy in the Economist:

Literacy may be under attack from electronic media, but that’s actually nothing new. In fact, the assault on the written word began not with the Macintosh computer in 1984, but with Samuel Morse’s demonstration of the telegraph in 1844—an innovation a colleague on The Economist insists, quite correctly, on calling the “Victorian internet”.

The article itself is very interesting.

Complexity, there and back again

I found this interesting quote about complexity on the Bits weblog at the NY Times. The article looks into how the attempt by Microsoft to offer shopping rebates for using its search engine is unlikely to work:

Ultimately, he said, most customers didn’t find it worth the complexity and time needed to earn a few percent off their shopping.

“People don’t want to deal with something that says ‘Buy from this place and you will get money back from that place,’” he said. “Search is about how fast can I get someplace: Google’s ‘I’m feeling lucky’ button is a great experience.”

What is interesting here is the reintroduction of complexity in the online shopping experience, something which has succeeded it eschews complexity. You only need to look at Amazon to see just how much they complexity they have taken out of shopping online, a homogenous storefront, a simple (too simple?) payment method (one-click).

We as consumers want simplicity in our lived, not complexity. Another great example from Microsoft is the points system they use to sell music for the Zune. Why points? Why this extra step? Why a weird number of points for a song? Last time I looked dollars were a perfectly acceptable currency, and one dollar for a song work just fine.

Speaking as a Yahoo! shareholder

I have been mute on this story since it came out, but I wanted to pen some thoughts about the whole Microsoft/Yahoo! debacle.

First the disclosures, I am a Yahoo! shareholder (have been for a while), I am also a Google shareholder (have been for a while too) and was a Microsoft shareholder too (wasn’t performing, dumped it).

I am not sure what Yahoo! was thinking by walking away from the deal, by all accounts it was a good financial deal for the shareholders who were being offered a premium for their (languishing) Yahoo! stock. I can understand that Jerry Yang would be emotionally attached to his company and worried about what the future would look like under Microsoft. After all I did co-found a company and put 4 years of work into it. I am also fully aware that you need to look dispassionately at the options being laid out in front of you and do what is best for the shareholders, who ultimately are the true owners of the company.

But at the end of the day I think that Jerry Yang has let his emotions guide his thinking on this. The clearest indication is that he and the board have not offered any convincing alternative plans aside from the claim that the company is worth more than the offer on the table (never mind the stock price.)

The truth is that Yahoo! is a languishing property. Sure it has lots of traffic and some great properties (Yahoo! mail and Flickr are two great instances) but it has turned into a hodge-podge of offerings without a clear focus. We have known that for a while, so this should not be news to anyone (”peanut butter memo” anyone?)

Microsoft likewise has had a spotty record when it comes to internet offerings, and I suspect the hope was to merge the best of the two entities and produce an entity that could convincingly compete against you-know-who.

So I am glad that Carl Icahn has stepped up and is trying to force the issue.

Barcamp Boston

A Barcamp event is being held in Boston on May 17th-18th, it looks interesting, I may well attend on one of the days:

What: BarCamp is an unConference, organized on the fly by attendees,
for attendees.

There is no registration fee, but you don’t just attend a BarCamp –
you can participate in discussions, demo your projects, or join into
other cooperative events.

Topics may include, but are not limited to: open source software,
startups, UI design, entrepreneurship, AJAX, hardware hacking,
robotics,mobile computing, bioinformatics, RSS, Social Software,
programming languages, and the future of technology.

Who: You, if you’re a geek or somewhat geeky. Pre-registration is
highly recommended.

When: May 17/18, 2008 starting each day at 9 AM or whenever you
want to arrive.

Where: Matignon High School, 1 Matignon Rd., Cambridge, MA. The
school is a short 10 minute walk from either the Davis Sq. or Alewife
stations on the MBTA Red Line. Parking is available on site.

Details: For more information go to http://barcampboston.org.

More on the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT

Previously on this blog I described some issues I had with the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT video card upgrade from Apple.

In short I ordered two cards thinking that I could use both in my MacPro, but one of the cards died on me and Apple support told me that they do not support putting two of those cards on a MacPro.

The dead card is now on its way back to Apple for a refund, and I put the two NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT video cards I pulled from the machine back in the machine (now running with three cards, one for each display.)

I did a little more research on Apple’s web site and a dual NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT video card configuration should be supported. The NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT video card draws 110W and the MacPro supports up to 300W of power for video cards (presumably from the PCIe bus itself and via the motherboard jumper.)

IT Consulting

Bob Cringely has a good article on IT Consultants, specifically what makes good consultants and bad consultants.

I was an IT consultant for 10 years, from 1993-2003, my clients ran the gamut from small startup to large multi-national corporation, and the contracts ran from short two week stints to much longer multi-year contracts.

This paragraph in his post really resonated with me:

The best consultant I ever knew was Christine Comaford-Lynch, who is now an author and a VC and no longer does IT consulting at all. A key part of her success was her requirements gathering process. She turned it into a very effective collaboration effort involving the key people who would use the software. The requirements would be tight, the project would be highly focused, and there would be little or no scope creep. When it came time to implement the project her project managers didn’t have to be Attila’s — there was cooperation and enthusiasm. The training and start up of the application was quicker and easier. There were few surprises that needed to be fixed.

Over time I learned that the key to a successful consulting job was setting and managing expectations, explaining to the client exactly what they were going to get, and making it clear where one’s expertise ran out. Clients really appreciates that last point, I had developed a very specific set of skills and would focus on those. While it does mean that money is left on the table, but it means that you don’t set yourself up for failure.

WordPress spam

For some reason I am starting to get a lot of comment spam from my blog, it started a few days ago and I am not sure why because usually I get no comment spam.