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Social Media vs. SEO: My Approach
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Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Social Media vs. SEO: My Approach
The SEO vs. social media debate is one that has been going on for a number of years now, and it hasn’t abated. A recent guest post here on ProBlogger titled Why Social Media is a Better Investment than SEO sparked some interesting commentary on Twitter after going live. Social media fans spread it like [...]
Usenet Community FTD Not Guilty For Linking To Content... But For Promoting Uploads
We found it a bit troubling earlier this year when a Dutch court found that Usenet community FTD was guilty of copyright infringement because its users merely linked to Usenet locations where unauthorized copies of movies resided. An appeals court has now apparently reversed much of that decision -- noting that just linking to infringing works is not infringement, and that downloading for personal use is also not infringement. However, it oddly still kept the injunction on FTD because it claimed that FTD promoted unauthorized uploads, saying that most "spotters" (who point out where the files are) also are uploaders. Of course, as we had noted recently, the movie studio's "evidence" on this was that one of its own investigators uploaded and spotted a film.
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13 Tips for Beginning Bloggers (Which I Learned the Hard Way)
This article is by Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project. I started The Happiness Project blog as a way to test the argument that novelty and challenge bring happiness (turns out they do!), but I knew nothing about blogging when I began. Here are some strategies that I learned the hard way, through experience. As [...]
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13 Tips for Beginning Bloggers (Which I Learned the Hard Way)
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Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Hollywood's Strategy For The Future: Pretending The Government Can Save Them
We were reasonably troubled, earlier this year, when the ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] division of Homeland Security started acting as Hollywood's private police force -- not just seizing the domains of a bunch of sites it accused of being "pirate sites," but announcing this at Disney's headquarters. It's difficult to understand why the US government -- and Homeland Security specifically -- is helping protect a single industry's obsolete business model. It's even more troubling when it's doing so in such close association with that industry, and proudly noting that it's now a priority of Homeland Security to protect Hollywood's obsolete business model. Imagine if the FTC announced antitrust actions against Google from, say, AT&T's headquarters. People would call that into question, as there's a clear conflict of interest. Yet, somehow, Homeland Security and ICE get a free pass on this.
A few weeks back, I went to Hollywood to appear on a panel for the Filmmaker Forum event, all about "piracy." You can see a short clip of the panel here. One of the panelists was Kevin Suh, who has the title "VP of Content Protection" at the MPAA. Of course, just the fact that the MPAA has a position that involves "content protection" suggests that there's a pretty big problem with how the MPAA views where the market is heading (hint: protectionism is not going to get you very far). Kevin was extremely nice -- and we had quite a pleasant conversation prior to the panel. But, at one point, he made some assertions (not in the video) that seemed odd to me. First, he went on and on about how much money these new "digital locker" sites make, and then in the very next sentence said that Hollywood couldn't offer a competing service because it would make no money.
At one point, I challenged him on the idea that taking down these sites was effective, and he insisted that the sites that were taken down had stayed down, and no others had stepped up to take their place. While I don't follow these sites all that closely, I'd already seen that this wasn't true, as lots of our users like to send in tips about new sites popping up (or where those "downed" sites reappeared). And, in fact, the press is noting that at least one of the sites taken down went right back up days later.
But what's really troubling about the article that has that info, is that it focuses in on how the US government has pledged to continue to be Hollywood's copyright cops, based on questionable legal authority (this, by the way, is one reason why the government is so keen to pass COICA, which would give the feds some authority that they're lacking here). But the simple fact is that this is a huge waste of taxpayer money, trying to stop the unstoppable and protect the unprotectable. There are all sorts of great opportunities for better, smarter business models for the industry, and yet rather than explore those, we have VPs of protectionism, running to the government and getting them to run crazy, legally dubious domain name seizures that do little, if anything to help.
About the only good thing that I can think of is that more and more filmmakers are realizing this. Following the panel, I was (quite pleasantly) surprised by just how many filmmakers spoke to me about how ridiculous the MPAA's position on all of this is, and saying that it's time for the industry to actually compete. Unfortunately, the industry hasn't had to compete in so long, thanks in part to lobbying efforts by the MPAA, that the legacy players don't seem to know how to do so. That's why it's going to be the up and coming filmmakers that figure it out.
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A few weeks back, I went to Hollywood to appear on a panel for the Filmmaker Forum event, all about "piracy." You can see a short clip of the panel here. One of the panelists was Kevin Suh, who has the title "VP of Content Protection" at the MPAA. Of course, just the fact that the MPAA has a position that involves "content protection" suggests that there's a pretty big problem with how the MPAA views where the market is heading (hint: protectionism is not going to get you very far). Kevin was extremely nice -- and we had quite a pleasant conversation prior to the panel. But, at one point, he made some assertions (not in the video) that seemed odd to me. First, he went on and on about how much money these new "digital locker" sites make, and then in the very next sentence said that Hollywood couldn't offer a competing service because it would make no money.
At one point, I challenged him on the idea that taking down these sites was effective, and he insisted that the sites that were taken down had stayed down, and no others had stepped up to take their place. While I don't follow these sites all that closely, I'd already seen that this wasn't true, as lots of our users like to send in tips about new sites popping up (or where those "downed" sites reappeared). And, in fact, the press is noting that at least one of the sites taken down went right back up days later.
But what's really troubling about the article that has that info, is that it focuses in on how the US government has pledged to continue to be Hollywood's copyright cops, based on questionable legal authority (this, by the way, is one reason why the government is so keen to pass COICA, which would give the feds some authority that they're lacking here). But the simple fact is that this is a huge waste of taxpayer money, trying to stop the unstoppable and protect the unprotectable. There are all sorts of great opportunities for better, smarter business models for the industry, and yet rather than explore those, we have VPs of protectionism, running to the government and getting them to run crazy, legally dubious domain name seizures that do little, if anything to help.
About the only good thing that I can think of is that more and more filmmakers are realizing this. Following the panel, I was (quite pleasantly) surprised by just how many filmmakers spoke to me about how ridiculous the MPAA's position on all of this is, and saying that it's time for the industry to actually compete. Unfortunately, the industry hasn't had to compete in so long, thanks in part to lobbying efforts by the MPAA, that the legacy players don't seem to know how to do so. That's why it's going to be the up and coming filmmakers that figure it out.
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Brilliant 10: Santosh Kumar, the Sensor Guru
His sensors could help automate everything from therapy to police work
Ten years ago, even though he was on the fast track at Siemens in India, Santosh Kumar abruptly quit. Coming up with code for telecom switches was not how he wanted to spend his life. Instead he moved to the U.S. to pursue a Ph.D. in computer science. He had an idea for inexpensive, low-power wireless sensor technology and how it might solve serious real-world problems. His leap paid off. Now a professor at the University of Memphis, he develops tracking systems that can foil robbers and might even help cure drug addiction.
His AutoWitness system, made up of a playing-card-size sensor and a remote
server, tracks stolen property using cellular signals and inexpensive components. Most tracking systems stay connected over a satellite network, which makes them battery- intensive, conspicuous and prone to signal loss. Kumar's device consists of a small circuit board, a $1 wireless sensor, an accelerometer, a gyroscope, a GSM radio and some very clever software.
Affixed to a TV or a priceless painting, it first detects motion (the software can recognize the difference between theft and just rearranging the living room). If the stolen item winds up in a car, the sensors periodically report data about the car's motion over a cellular network to a remote server, along with the signal's geographic coordinates. The server then text-messages the car's last known location to the police. Impressed with the system's ease of use and cost-effectiveness, the police departments in Memphis and nearby Jackson, Tennessee, have asked Kumar for AutoWitness units to test this fall.
His latest invention is AutoSense, a system, worn under clothing, for remotely monitoring stress levels. AutoSense uses a chest band and an armband to track respiration, heart rate and blood pressure, and features an activity monitor. Software loaded onto a smartphone analyzes the data to reveal when an addict in treatment, for instance, is indoors, outdoors, speaking or smoking. Equipped with that information, the software can identify stress and self-destructive behavior and anticipate when the addict is about to relapse, alerting him-or his therapist-to his increased susceptibility.
AutoWitness and AutoSense could one day supply information to law-enforcement officials and health-care providers that today requires a tremendous amount of labor to obtain. Meanwhile, Kumar is already starting to think about his next project: reducing the stress drivers experience in traffic.
See the rest of PopSci's Brilliant 10 for 2010.
Source: http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-10/brilliant-10-santosh-kumar-sensor-guru
The Blog Is Dead: Long Live the Blog
How do you define what a “blog” is? Back in the day, a blog was a weblog?an online journal. This definition had connotations of timeliness, of narrative, and of a personal focus. But these days, blogging has expanded. Bloggers may be hobbyists or corporate CEOs. Blogs may be personal or professional. Even the tools that [...]
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The Blog Is Dead: Long Live the Blog
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