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June 13, 2004

It's just like New York before Guliani

: Here's a villa for sale in Baghdad:

Big basement designed also as anti-aircraft bunker with water facilities.

A mere $665k. [via Loic]

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A place for my stuff, cont.

: Some reaction to the Place for My Stuff post, below:

: Evil Genius wants it and wants more: sync for contacts and calendars (a la .Mac), RSS information (including what has been read and what hasn't been... Shrook and FeedGator give you pieces of that), and TV and radio preferences to make better recommendations.

: VC Ed Sim doesn't want it all stored on the Internet but on a server in his home, like Mirra, solving privacy and security issues.

I still don't agree because: (1) Consumers won't understand why they should make a capital investment and it will be a hard sell -- witness the trouble TiVo has had getting going. (2) Consumers hate installing anything. (3) A service is more efficient -- it can offer you a terrabyte of storage but no one will use it all. (4) A service can constantly update itself with new software. (5) If the storage sits in the cloud, you can play your stuff on any device in the home -- or anywhere else -- without having to network anything; if you store your stuff on a home-based server in the den, it's not going to be easy to get to yourself from the bedroom TV. (6) It's possible -- possible -- that an in-the-cloud service can deal better with copyright issues. That is, you can store a legal copy of (or link to) a show or song among your stuff in the cloud and play it anytime anywhere and copy it onto limited devices (a la iPod) but not endlessly duplicate and distribute it.

For those last two reasons, cable companies stand well-positioned to provide place-for-my-stuff service. [Full disclosure: I sometimes work with a cable company.] A cable company can serve stuff to your home at high speed from the head-end and elsewhere via the Internet. A cable company will have relationships with entertainment companies and be trusted to hold "copies" of the shows you've bought or rented. But, as I said below, this service could be offered by many other service companies -- AOL, Yahoo, telco -- or software companiesy -- Microsoft -- or a new player.

In any case, I still think this will be a service business, not a hardware business. It will be an essential and big business.

: Fred Wilson didn't respond to the post but he is complaining that BitTorrent is filling up his hard drive rapidly. I left a taunting comment saying that what he needs is a place for his stuff.

: UPDATE: Ed Sim has a response to the response to the response. Go read it.

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Social censorship

: Well, here's a dark side to social software: The Chinese government set up a web site to get the citizens to report and rat out Internet sites so the regime can turn around and censor them.

Here's a South China Morning Post report. Here are some screenshots of censored sites. Says blogger Adam Morris:

With the record the PRC has on internet dissidents, it’s like asking Chinese people to invite the government to lock up and detain, or otherwise mess with other innocent Chinese people.
It’s like they’re looking for moles.
It’s like during the Cultural Revolution when neighbors ratted on each other and ended up having to face self-criticisms.

Adds Berkeley's Xiao Qiang at Many to Many:

My view is actually this form of censorship can be quite powerful. This strategy is complimentary to, yet much more effective than simply controlling internet use through law and regulations, and blocking access to foreign sites. It goes together with the governments other efforts such as forcing ISPs and ICPs to show what it calls self discipline and using internet police units to monitor online activity, including people surfing in the many thousands of internet cafes.

The Chinese authorities are once again using a strategy which mixes intimidation, uncertainty, and divide and conquer techniques to create fear and distrust among people, therefore forcing internet users to censor themselves online.

The Daily Stern: If it quacks like a censor...

: When I started writing the post above, I just wanted to tell you about this news from China. But as I followed more links and read more descriptions, I found that, hmmmmm, this sure does sound a lot like what the American FCC, the Federal Censorship Commission, is doing:

It set up a web site encouraging citizens to submit complaints about broadcast content. It listens to the zealots it wants to listen to and fines Howard Stern but not Oprah Winfrey. It won't issue specific rules of what is allowed and isn't and instead -- to paraphrase the words above -- uses a strategy that mixes intimidation, uncertainty, and divide-and-conquer techniques to create fear and distrust among broadcasters, therefore forcing them to censor themselves.

Government censorship is government censorship, no matter whether the governmnent is Chinese or American.

I guess that's why they call him Chairman Powell.

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All the world's a network and all the men and women merely shows

: From Rafat Ali's intelligence service -- a listing of jobs that lets you know what companies are working on -- there's this radio job from Gallup:

We are expanding the world’s knowledge of important issues through a new polling-based Internet broadcast, Gallup World News. We are looking for a visionary Producer to manage and oversee production of this daily show. This individual must be creative and fascinated with ideas, new audiences to reach, and different markets to expand.

Of course, before the Internet, a company like Gallup never could have considered creating a radio show; the effort to get distribution would have been huge. Now that everyone has distribution, everyone can have a radio show (or TV show or magazine or newspaper). Of course, individuals are doing this with weblogs but companies can, too. They can create -- or better, underwrite -- programming that reaches the audience they want to reach and is compatible with their brands and message.

Of course, we assume Gallup will do more than just read poll results; that would be the dullest radio show or worst commercial ever created. But Gallup can create a show that's about opinion and what the people really think and why we do what we do, filled with experts and real opinionated people -- just as Nike got people to create films about speed -- and Motorola is underwriting a gallery of phonecam images. Gallup would be wise to draw people to its new show and brand by underwriting -- that is, sponsoring or advertising on -- lots of opinioned citizens media. The possibilities in this new world are endless.

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