I was reading this story of how states want to charge sales tax for digital products. I think it is the wrong way to act to just extend old tax standards to cover this situation. I live in San Jose, I am using my computer in Santa Clara right now, and Apple is in Cupertino. If I bought a song right now, whose sales tax would be charged. Is it different if I was using my computer in Pennsylvania at my parent's house?
I understand that states and local government need sales taxes. I understand that revenue is needed. Personally I want another five years of hands off the internet. Lets see which business models are really going to work. What are we going to do for Smart Phone Apps? How about services that need subscriptions? I think that need tax structures are needed for this to work well. I do not want to look at this tax in five years and see that we did it all wrong.
Julius Carry passed away on August 18. I think he was a good actor, even if he was in mostly be movies. I found that he passed away because the photo above got a big spike in views. I got more that 500 views in a day. It is the number one result for google image search for Julius Carry. This is just another case of the internet being strange.
My condolences go to Julius Carry's family and friends. You were the master.
In the comments of my Philadelphia WiFi post I was asked a couple of questions.
What do you think really went wrong?
1. Cities were expecting to get free infrastructure from the private partners. They were hoping for minimal outlay they would get the companies to do all the work.
2. The technology was not really up to the purpose they asked for it. Wi-fi 802.11 often has problem with coverage in offices, going through walls. It does not always go through external wall well at all. People who had problems often had to buy an extender that cost more that $300. It would blow the price structure way out of the water.
3. The business models were not in place when the companies started offering the service to customers. Companies had some vague idea that they would make their money back in some local ad serving service. They did not know what they had to offer to their ad customers. They where going on a wing and a prayer
4. It was not the real solution to the problem.
Why did you feel that competition would be hindered with this wireless technology?
1. Companies where signing exclusive deals with cities. They were not setting up infrastructures that any provider could use.
2. Once the system is in place, there is no instentive to upgrade the system.
What do you think would work for the city?
Run high bandwidth cables through the main parts of the city. Run this cable to important parts of the city, including undeserved parts of the cities. Encourage businesses to use this cable to offer services they would not offer other wise
I love the idea of people using flickr at a recipe site. This Tuna Noodle Casserole was made by a friend of ours Louise. She is a good cook so I think this is likely a good recipe. The photo makes me think it is a great meal.
It has been announced that Philadelphia is shutting down it's City Wide wi-fi service. It looks like the idea of public-private municpal wi-fi partnerships did not work. This was the hot idea a few years ago. In 2005 CNet asked "Philadelphia is venturing into the Wi-Fi frontier and liking what it sees. The big question is, will it feel the same way two years from now?" The answer seems to be no.
I talked to someone who used to worked for Earthnet about this. He said that many of these projects were doomed from the start. Many times the cities did not have the rights to let Wi-Fi providers to put antennas where they wanted to. The companies would need multiple approvals to put antennas on the tops of street lights, traffic lights, and phone poles. They could not compete with the money cell phone companies pay private building owners.
I am not sad to see public Wi-Fi go away. I really saw it as a bad idea for the competitive nature of internet service. When I worked for TiVo I worried that people would not be able to get their box hooked up to the internet with these services.
I bet this idea comes back with a future set of wireless technology.
It's an Internet Party, Don't let it clog your tube
Laughing Squid linked to this video of an internet party. When I say internet party, I mean the party when you personify the most popular sites on the net. It is pretty funny. I really like Ebay and paypal. I also like that the sites are all college age. It says something about who is important on the web.
This is one of my 200 most viewed photos. I have some 6500 photos on flickr. I cannot figure out why so many people have viewed this photo. I guess it is one of the mysteries of the internet.
“The barrier to get into the industry is so low: you need a video camera and a couple of people who will have sex,” Mr. Fishbein said.
My guess is the culture of web exhibitionism does not help either. People are willing to show a lot of themselves on the web. It is not a big leap to showing them shelves doing adult acts. It is like Girls Gone Wild without the middle man.
I have yet to see the social networking site around pornography. The kind of place where you can let all your friends know what kind of pornography you like and meet people with similar tastes. I know this site is coming some day.
For years the story was that pornographers were the only people making money on the internet. Now the pornographers making money on the internet are eating into the profits of pornographers making adult films. I wonder if the internet had reduced the value of pornographic films. Is the new distribution system changed how the whole industry works?
Blogs are just like the rest of the world. In the same way they give us the chance to communicate with the rest of the world, they also give people the power to be jerks.
Outsiders often make the mistake of viewing blogs as the online equivalent of newspapers or magazines with newsrooms of reporters and managing editors reviewing copy, said Jeff Jarvis, a blogger and associate professor at the City University of New York's graduate school of journalism. They are not. "No one edits the Internet," Jarvis said. Traditional "media are things you sanitize, control and put a bow on." The Web is not.
The internet is like a huge cocktail party. Every once is communicating, telling stories, having fun. Of course there are loud jerks that want to shout everyone else down. If those jerks are not careful, other people will leave and they will just be communicating with each other. That is what bloggers have to be careful about.
I have been thinking about the Nokia N800internet tablet. It is basically the iPhone with out the apple name or the phone features. I read a lot of people blog how they would like a non-phone version of the iPhone for less money. It looks like that is what the Nokia N800 is. I wonder why it is not getting any attention. I have not heard people get geeked about this device. I wonder if Nokia is doing a poor job promoting it. I would like to read some more reviews, but I am not finding very many.
Right now I am not in the market for an internet tablet. If I had an extra $399 to throw around, it would be toward more lenses for my camera. It would not be for a miniature wi-fi device. I am not really sure who is in the market for that device. I am usually willing to tote around my laptop when I want to get on the internet.
I wonder if they are laying low right now. They have up until the iPhone is released to make noise. They also could be putting themself in a place to catch some of the iPhone runoff when it is released. I wonder if we will be seeing more devices like this.
At Autumn's party we were talking about the back on the day on the web. Some how the conversation came back to my first web site, The Bill Gates Fountain of Dreams. I have not had it up for a while. Autumn suggested checking the Wayback Machine on the Internet archive
I was tooling around YouTube and found a copy of Epic 2015. It is an updated version of Epic 2014. It is interesting to see what they updated. No there is no mention of television at all.
I first saw Epic 2014 back in 2005. They funny thing is that if felt really true back in 2005. That was before I started using Flickr all the time. That was before YouTube or MySpace got really big.
Now I watch this video and I feel like it has to be redone again. I am more confident then ever before that big companies will have a hand in the media of the future. Even if that media is nothing like what it is like today. I think that much of the current media will be able to make the jump.
There is no mention of TiVo or Television in this version at all. There is no mention of Flickr, MySpace, or Google Video. I think that they do not pay enough attention to social networking.
I wonder if we will see a new version of this. If I was writing the next version it would not end with death of the New York Times. I do not think that is the worst thing that can happen. I think it would be much worse if every other news paper in America shut down and all you could choose from was the New York Times and USA Today. I think we are in closer danger of losing all the local media. I think that would be a much bigger problem.
In the New York Times there is a commentary titled The Television Has Disintegrated. All That’s Left Is the Viewer. It is an interesting commentary. He points out that television is changing right now. He is not sure that people's mental maps about television is really keeping up with that change. I am not sure what TV will look like in 10 years. I am not even sure it will only look like one thing. For a long time people have been watching all the same content. Between HDTV, Standard Def, Internet Video, and everything else people want to sell to us, who knows what will win out. I know there will be more than one standard for television
I saw this in the news today and one thing caught my eye.
"The deal, known as one of the worst corporate mergers in history, destroyed some $200 billion in shareholder value."
I am not sure this thinking makes sense. These two companies merged at the hight of the dot.com bubble. Internet companies and media companies had inflated stock prices. I know this merger ended up not improving either company, but how much of that $200 billion would have been lost anyway when the bubble burst.
The resulting company made a lot of mistakes. I am still not sure why the iTunes music store beat AOL/Time Warner to the punch. They have a huge music library they could have started with. I am not sure why they did not make a full court press to provide media on-line. I think that is how the merger failed.
I guess I am still not sure these companies where worth all the money they lost anyway.
It does not mean it is not trust passing. Man Arrested for theft of service because he was using a cafe's wifi from outside the cafe. He was not buying anything from the cafe and still using their service. Alexander Eric Smith was a moron because the cops told him to knock it off and he kept on doing it.
Alexander Eric Smith, I thought the media only referred to serial killers by three names. I guess the news is not what it used to be.
I am not sure how net eminent domain would work, but it is an interesting idea. I know I am paying too much for broadband that is not bringing enough to me. I am still not sure who is going to win this fight. Here is an interesting quote from the story.
IN THE LONG RUN, technology doesn't sleep. You can't keep competitive King Kong in chains. But why wait a decade while lobbyists run interference? If Congress does nothing, we will probably end up paying more for a fast network optimized for Internet phone calls and video and shopping. But this may not be the only possible outcome. Maybe the incumbent network providers--the Verizons, Comcasts, AT&Ts--can be made to compete; threatening to seize their stagnating networks via eminent domain is just one creative idea to get them to do this. A truly competitive, non-neutral network could work, but only if we know its real economic value. If telcos or cable charge too much, someone should be in a position to steal the customer. Maybe then we'd see useful services and a better Internet. Sounds like capitalism.
What new things? It's not just more bandwidth and better Internet video--how about no more phone numbers, just a name and the service finds you? How about subscribing to a channel and being able to watch it when and where you want, on your TV, iPod, or laptop? How about a baby monitor you can view through your cell phone? Something worth paying for. And that's just the easy stuff.
Ego Surfing - Looking up your own name in a Search Engine to see how sites mention you.
Reverse Ego Surfing - putting up a list of people, so that if one of them goes egosurfing, theoretically they may come across the bait page with your contact information.
Waxing an Ego Surf - Posting things on the Internet so your name comes up more often or higher up when Ego Surfing. (Comes from waxing a surfboard)
Googlewhack - Typing two words into Google's search bar, with the goal of obtaining a single result. seeing the words "Results 1-1 of 1" appear in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.
I would like to add things to this list.
Inverse Ego Surf - Using the Referral logs of your web site to see how people are using Search Engines to find them.
Egowhack - Searching for things other then your name to see if you can get your web site or weblog to come up on the first page.
Someone recently searched for "Ain't Nothing Going To Break My Stride" and Sad Salvation came up on the first page of the search. I am obsessed at the ways people can find my web page on search engines. I always check it out when I see it in my referral logs.
Tuna Noodle Casserole by loumcf
