— House of Cards (@HouseofCards) May 8, 2015
The impending Age Of Abundance was prophecied in the scriptures thousands of years ago.
Showing posts with label Netflix. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Netflix. Show all posts
Saturday, May 09, 2015
Friday, October 17, 2014
Net Neutrality: A Counter Viewpoint
Net neutrality to me is obvious. I don't want the Internet to go the way of cable television. Expanding capacity is how you respond to an increase in traffic load.
But it is okay to listen to a counter viewpoint.
The Right Way to Fix the Internet
Letting go of an obsession with net neutrality could free technologists to make online services even better. ..... the Internet never has been entirely neutral. Wireless networks, for example, have been built for many years with features that help identify users whose weak connections are impairing the network with slow traffic and incessant requests for dropped packets to be resent. Carriers’ technology assures that such users’ access is rapidly constrained, so that one person’s bad connection doesn’t create a traffic jam for everyone. ..... It costs more to get online in the United States than just about anywhere else in the developed world ..... U.S. service is sometimes twice as expensive as what’s available in Europe—and slower, too. ...... the Internet arose in an ad hoc fashion; there is no Internet constitution to cite. ..... their equivalent of the Federalist Papers: a 1981 article by computer scientists Jerome Saltzer, David Reed, and David Clark. The authors’ ambitions for that paper (“End-to-End Arguments in System Design”) had been modest: to lay out technical reasons why tasks such as error correction should be performed at the edges, or end points, of the network—where the users are—rather than at the core. In other words, ISPs should operate “dumb pipes” that merely pass traffic along. This paper took on a remarkable second life as the Internet grew. In his 2000 book Code, a discussion of how to regulate the Internet, Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig said the lack of centralized control embodied in the 1981 end-to-end principle was “one of the most important reasons that the Internet produced the innovation and growth that it has enjoyed.” ...... “unavoidable vagueness” about the dividing line between allowable network-management decisions and impermissible bias. .. The line remains as blurry as ever, which is one reason the debate over net neutrality is so intense. ......... if profit-hungry companies are left unfettered to choose how to handle various types of traffic, they “will continue to change the internal structure of the Internet in ways that are good for them, but not necessarily for the rest of us.” ........ codifying too many overarching principles for the Internet makes many engineers uncomfortable. In their view, the network is a constant work in progress, requiring endless pragmatism. Its backbone is constantly being torn apart and rebuilt. The best means of connecting various networks with one another are always in flux. ......... “You can’t change congestion by passing net neutrality or doing that kind of thing,” says Tom Leighton, cofounder and chief executive of Akamai Technologies. .. To keep traffic humming online, Leighton says, “you’re going to need technology.” ........ A central tenet of net neutrality is that “best efforts” should be applied equally when transmitting every packet moving through the Internet, regardless of who the sender, recipient, or carriers might be. But that principle merely freezes the setup of the Internet as it existed nearly a quarter-century ago, says Michael Katz, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, who has worked for the FCC and consulted for Verizon. “You can say that every bit is a bit,” Katz adds, “but every bitstream isn’t the same bitstream.” Video and voice transmissions are highly vulnerable to errors, delays, and packet loss. Data transmissions can survive rougher handling. If some consumers want their Internet connections to deliver ultrahigh-resolution movies with perfect fidelity, those people would be better served, Katz argues, by more flexible arrangements that might indeed prioritize video. Efficiency might be more desirable than a strict adherence to equity for all bits. ......... For many years, high-volume sites run by Facebook, YouTube, Apple, and the like have been negotiating arrangements with many companies that ferry data to your Internet service provider—backbone operators, transit providers, and content delivery networks—to ensure that the most popular content is distributed as smoothly as possible. Often, this means paying a company such as Akamai to stash copies of highly in-demand content on multiple servers all over the world, so that a stampede for World Cup highlights creates as little strain as possible on the overall Internet..................... Netflix last year was accounting for as much as one-third of all U.S. Internet traffic on Friday evenings. .... In the short term, Netflix resolved the problem by paying for more of the peering points that carriers such as Comcast and Verizon required. More strategically, Netflix is arranging to put its servers in Internet service providers’ facilities, providing them with easier access to its content. ....... the Netflix fight shouldn’t distract regulators who are trying to figure out the best way to keep the Internet open. They should be focusing, he says, on making sure that everyday customers are getting high-speed Internet as cheaply and reliably as possible, and that small-time publishers of Internet content can distribute their work. .... A tiny video startup doesn’t generate enough volume to force Comcast to install extra peering points. ........ “zero rating,” in which consumers are allowed to try certain applications without incurring any bandwidth-usage charges. The app providers usually pay the wireless carriers to offer that access as a way of building up their market share in a hurry... In much of Africa, people with limited usage plans can enjoy free access to Facebook or Wikipedia this way. ......... In the United States, T-Mobile lets customers tap into a half-dozen music sites, such as Pandora and Spotify, without incurring usage charges. ...... When Tim Wu talked about net neutrality a decade ago, he framed it as a way of ensuring maximum competition on the Internet. But in the current debate, that rationale is in danger of being coöpted into a protectionist defense of the status quo. If there’s anything the Internet’s evolution has taught us, it’s that innovation comes rapidly, and in unexpected ways. We need a net neutrality strategy that prevents the big Internet service providers from abusing their power—but still allows them to optimize the Internet for the next wave of innovation and efficiency.
Saturday, February 15, 2014
House Of Cards: Binge Watching
I never thought I'd do that. I never thought I'd binge watch, but that is exactly what I have been doing for the past few days. For as political as I am, my interest in House Of Cards comes from the tech, Netflix angle. Netflix is supposed to challenge the movie and TV industries at a most fundamental level, and it has with these episodes. I want more.
Washington, DC Is Officially OBSESSED With 'House Of Cards'
Rep. Donna Edwards, D-Md., who also appears in the video, won’t attend the premiere, but she said she does plan to binge-watch the series over the weekend...... With much of Washington snowed-in on Thursday, Cards fans inside the Beltway called for the early release of season two — but to no avail. “HBO made a brutal mistake by not timing the release of House of Cards with the snowstorm,” quipped Amanda Carpenter, an adviser to Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.I finished the first 13 episodes of Season 1 Thursday just in time for the release of Season 2, pure coincidence. I only started two days before. No, I did not have a subscription. I have had Netflix subscription before, but I let it pass. They don't have enough movies in the purely digital section.
A few days back I got a free month trial with my Hotmail account. I knew my Hotmail account would amount to something. Just kidding. Today both Yahoo Mail and Hotmail are competitive to Gmail, Yahoo Mail for offering a terabyte of free space, and Hotmail for having a much cleaner experience than both. But when Gmail is your default email, and it is still very good, you don't switch. You use Yahoo Mail for Dropbox like storage. And, well, on Hotmail I have turned on and off the switches such that unless I have saved your email address in my address book, you can't even reach me.
Kevin Spacey Goes All House-of-Cards on Hollywood (Video)
Kevin Spacey gave what is perhaps the most cogent call to arms for the entertainment industry to please get with this Internet thing. ...... Francis Underwood — the political nightmare Spacey plays with glee — said in the first lines of “House of Cards,” as he mercy-strangles a dog, hurt badly by a car: “There are two kinds of pain. The sort of pain that makes you strong, or useless pain. The sort of pain that’s only suffering. I have no patience for useless things. Moments like this require someone who will act, do the unpleasant thing, the necessary thing.”I lost some respect for House Of Cards and for Hollywood for the sex and murder. I mean, come on, don't insult my intelligence. In this day and age you can not be so close to being Secretary of State or Vice President and be flinging a young reporter - granted she is pretty - and not have anyone find out. You certainly can't kill - twice - and be Vice President. You can't kill when you are maybe only a day away from being sworn in. I mean, like Michael Corleone says in Godfather, "Who is being naive, Kay?" Presidents and Vice Presidents do get people killed, lots of them, but they don't get involved in petty murder.
I have personally been party to political events - and I am talking small events - that the following day made it into news, and the distortions have blown my mind. I have been like, I was there, I know all the details. And this news report is so off. So media has its prisms, and Hollywood has to have sex and murder. But then perhaps Hollywood knows how to keep people interested. You throw in the sex and the murder and people will watch. It is not Hollywood to be blamed. People get what they want. It is the masses, collectively speaking.
But then what respect House Of Cards lost with the sex and murder it gained by covering the political process well. The give and take on the Education Bill? I mean, wow. Very well done. Also, lifting the age of retirement by a few years. Kevin Spacey did it before America will. That makes this sci-fi. I guess there is such a thing as political sci-fi. We do say Political Science, don't we? At one point I was a Political Science major.
I grew up knowing Hindi movies were almost three hours, English movies were shorter - two hours. Well, this thing goes on and on, but it does because it needs to. When the treatment of the material is fair, the length does not matter. This is not a movie, yes, I know that. But then this is not television either. It is just video content. I, for one, would like numerous 30 minute movies. Of course online, preferably for free on YouTube, supported by ads, or 10 cents to watch for pay. If you did not turn a profit, it was because you could not get enough people to watch you, and that is fair.
And you thought Ashton Kutcher was the movie star who is also a tech entrepreneur. No, it's Kevin Spacey.
Kevin Spacey takes 26 hours to become President Of The United States, talk about a plot spoiler. Barack Obama has or will watch all 26 episodes. I will bet you a hundred dollars he will.
Tomorrow: @HouseOfCards. No spoilers, please.
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) February 13, 2014I believe The Mahabharata is over 100 episodes and way more complex a plot, way more gripping.
Monday, July 23, 2012
Marissa Mayer: Towards Products
Yahoo Has Seen Its Future; In One Word, It's Products
the board was unconvinced that Mr. Levinsohn's deal-making and media savvy would be enough to save Yahoo. The economics of content aren't good enough, and Yahoo doesn't have the firepower to pony up, say, the $100 million YouTube is spending on original channels or the hundreds of millions more Netflix is spending to acquire rights to TV and movies..... By all accounts, Ms. Mayer wowed the board in interviews. While Mr. Levinsohn made a case for maximizing what Yahoo is today, Ms. Mayer represented what Yahoo could become, a company that builds products... Yahoo spent 18% of revenue on product development in the first quarter..... "Yahoo's entire value is built around starting points -- the home page and email" ..... "The only reason [Yahoo] can afford all the good content is the scale of the homepage and email." .... Yahoo will have to create new, powerful products in areas such as mobileWhen David Filo Gets Excited, I Get Excited
Yahoo! Co-Founder David Filo said, “Marissa is a well-known, visionary leader in user experience and product design and one of Silicon Valley’s most exciting strategists in technology development. I look forward to working with her to enhance Yahoo’s product offerings for our over 700 million unique monthly visitors.” .... for the longest time after Yahoo! IPO’ed and David was a billionaire he continued to drive a beat-up Datsun to work every day ..... He still works every day at the company in a slightly messy cubicle. ..... One former engineer told me a story of how David jumped in and stayed up all night helping pitch in to solve some platform problem the company had several years ago and how he was always available to help with problems on IM. ...... “Why isn’t David on the board?” I asked a Yahoo! executive a few years ago........ “He doesn’t want to. They’ve asked him many times. He goes to most board meetings anyway. Besides, he’s happy to let Jerry be the public face for the two of them.”Marissa Mayer enters the Yahoo pressure cooker
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Netflix Bouncing Back
Image via CrunchBaseI rooted for Netflix when it decided to bet on streaming. (Netflix Cut Off The Gangrene Limb) And then its stock price collapsed. And that surprised me. But now looks like Netflix is bouncing back. That stock price drop was a sneeze it just had to wade through. But cutting off DVDs before the market cut off Netflix was a smart move. It was a life saving move, to put it more bluntly.
A drop in the stock price was the price Netflix paid to stay alive long term.
GigaOm: Netflix streaming users now outnumber DVD subscribers 2:1
even with its steep decline in DVD rentals, the overall number of customers is growing again. Netflix lost 810,000 U.S. subscribers in Q3 as a result of its unsuccessful attempts to spin off the DVD business into a separate company, as well as a price hike earlier in 2011. In Q4, that combined subscriber number once again grew by 610,000...... Netflix won’t enter any other territories in 2012, and might have to work on making more money with streaming if it wants to keep expanding in the future. Because DVDs may not be around for much longer.
Monday, September 19, 2011
Netflix Cut Off The Gangrene Limb
Image via CrunchBaseDVDs are so yesterday. Streaming is the way to go. Streaming is Android, streaming is the iPhone. DVDs are RIM. DVDs will die faster than you realize. If Netflix had not completely distanced itself from the DVD that would have created room for another streaming only startup. Now Netflix will have better luck. This breakup is a smart move on the part of Netflix.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
My Dream: A Netflix For Books
Image via WikipediaThe Next Web: Amazon reportedly in talks to launch a Netflix for books: charging a fixed monthly fee for access to a library of books. Amazon will reportedly offer book publishers a substantial fee for their involvement in the program. ..... With Amazon’s Kindle platform and intimate relationships with every premium publisher on the planet, this is a unique new space only the likes of Amazon and Apple are likely to be able to cater to. ..... my bet is on Amazon to dominate thanks to its first mover advantage and a name synonymous with books. Let’s face it, iBooks hasn’t had quite the impact we would have expected to see from a digital giant like Apple. I’d argue this is because of its lacking selection of booksYour Local Library On Kindle
A Netflix For Books Needed (October 2009)
AllThingsD: Amazon in Talks to Launch Digital-Book Library: Several publishing executives said they aren’t enthusiastic about the idea because they believe it could lower the value of books and because it could strain their relationships with other retailers that sell their books
CNet: Amazon eyes Netflix-style service for e-books: publishers are wary and the latest titles may be excluded--just like with Netflix's streaming service.
Business Insider: Amazon Is Trying To Launch A Netflix Style eBook Subscription Service: the subscription service could take some time to launch since Amazon is busy trying to woo publishers and get them on board.
Wednesday, May 04, 2011
Exuberance, Not Froth
Image via WikipediaI said it was not a bubble, but there was some froth. I am revising that. I am now saying it is not froth, it is exuberance. It is mostly a positive scenario. Fred Wilson: Megatrend Crosscurrents: The history of tech investing is a series of waves or megatrends that come one after another. Mainframes to minicomputers to PCs to client server to Internet, for example. But right now we are in the midst of a number of these megatrends all happening at the same time. There are at least four big ones going on at the same time:Wait, Did They Say Froth?
- Mobile - yesterday I wrote that at least 16% of the visits to this blog are coming from mobile devices and that number is up from essentially zero six quarters ago
- Social - Facebook will have 1bn users in the next year or so
- Cloud - A third of Netflix' new subscribers are opting for the streaming only plan
- Global - companies like Skype, Facebook, Twitter, Google see upwards of 80% of their users from outside the US and these numbers are growing faster than ever ...... Each one of these megatrends would be an investable wave on its own. But we are in an environment when all four are crashing on the shore ata the same time. Twitter, for example, is mobile and social and global.
Bubble, Boom Or Froth?
Is It A Bubble?
Glass Half Full Phase
At first Fred Wilson said maybe a bubble. John Doerr said it's a boom. That word does not quite capture it. I said froth. Fred said froth. Then Fred said glass half full. Now he is saying exuberance. And I agree. It is not bubble, boom, or froth, it is exuberance. Done right this can give America China like growth rates. This is about lifting billions out of poverty, and making the already rich feel like it is not happening at their expense or at the expense of the planet.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Subscription Business Models For Mindfood
Image via CrunchBaseMindfood described as books, movies and music. Better than subscription is ad supported, but subscription is also pretty good. You pay a monthly fee and you get to access all books, movies and music ever created, being created. The movie people don't get this. They are like, oh no, we have to punish you by a few weeks if you are not going to show up at the theater. The music people get it a little. They are like, if you are going to get the music for free anyways, we are going to make you pay for live concerts. And the movie people are like, we can't get Brad Pitt show up at every movie theater. That's the whole point, that he can't be everywhere. Al Pacino does some Broadway stuff. But that is one location.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Netflix And Original Programming
Image via WikipediaGigaOm: For Netflix, a Risky Bet on Original Programming: Netflix is reportedly in talks to score its first original programming, bidding against cable networks like HBO for the rights to a new project called House of Cards that would star Kevin Spacey and be directed by David Fincher. ..... ected, that still put the price tag for a single series at about half the amount that Netflix has been paying for entire libraries of long-tail content ...... Instead of relying on premium cable networks like Starz and Epix to stream their on-demand content, or waiting years for popular titles to fall out of the pay TV window, Netflix bet big on a deal with indie studio Relativity Media that would give it exclusive access to the indie studio’s movies. It looks like that bet will pay off, as The Fighter, with Academy Award winners Christian Bale and Melissa Leo, will soon appear exclusively on Netflix, rather than going to one of the cable networks....... The overwhelming sentiment in Hollywood seems to be that Netflix will get the scraps that no one else wants. “What used to be called ‘reruns’ on television is now called Netflix,” Comcast CEO Brian Roberts told the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago. Time Warner chief Jeff Bewkes has been equally dismissive in the past, saying that he believes Netflix will be a place for low-value content that networks and studios can’t syndicate anywhere else...... One of the arguments that cable networks and distributors like to make about the effect that Netflix — and online video in general — has on the broader TV ecosystem is that by disrupting current business models, Netflix is essentially destroying the engine through which high-quality content is created. ..... could be good news for the future of what we think of as “TV programming.”Netflix always needed to be about original programming. Netflix needed to be about indie movies. Netflix needed to release movies. As in, you make a movie, and you release it on Netflix. Like Apple has the iPhone app store, Netflix needs to become that place where you place your movies once you make them. If people watch your movies, you make money.
The idea of having to beg old movie houses to run their old movies has been weird. First of all, they don't seem to get the technology. Should be the case that business models chase technologies, but instead we have technologies on a lookout for business models.
Image via CrunchBaseBetter late than ever. I am so glad Netflix is getting into original programming. This is the way it always needed to be.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
The Stink From The New York Times
Image via CrunchBaseNetflix has a market value of $10 billion. The New York Times has a market value of barely one billion dollars. Articles like this one are the reason why. This feels like a hachet job done by a Vinod Khosla enemy. The title of the article itself is so out of the whack. The microfinance industry in India is nowhere close to collapsing. Not even close. The article itself talks about how 1% of those who borrowed the money might no longer be able to pay. That is not a collapse. That is an excellent default rate. The default rates at big New York City banks that rich people and companies borrow from are much higher. And I am talking pre Great Recession numbers.
Image via CrunchBaseJust like the default rate remains low, yes, there are borrowers who have committed suicide because they could not pay back. But the article makes it sound like the microfinance industry in India has given rise to a country wide epidemic of suicides. People are committing suicide left and right by the roadside. That would be like taking the news of one Congresswoman in Arizona getting shot and making it sound like now there was a raging civil war in America.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Netflix Streaming Only
Image via WikipediaFinally. Finally Netflix cut the chord.
New York Times: Netflix Introduces Streaming-Only Pricing: unlimited streaming on-demand video through the Internet without having to rent any DVDs ...... will cost $7.99, and give customers access to unlimited movies and TV shows in Netflix’s library. ..... Earlier in the year Netflix signed a $1 billion deal with Paramount Pictures, Lions Gate and MGM to add their content to its services. .... beyond physical DVDs and onto dozens of new platforms and services.... the streaming version of the platform available on an abundance of devices, including mobile phones, video game systems, laptop computers, third-party set-top boxes and a number of other Internet-capable gadgets.This was a long time coming. Who needs a DVD? Before long DVD players will be banned.
Friday, November 05, 2010
The Video Format And Web Intelligence
Image via CrunchBaseIt is not that people are saying, oh no, the internet got us addicted to the text, we have no more love for the video format, or that we are cutting down on both French fries and video content. The demand for TV shows and movies is bigger than ever and growing. So what gives? Why are people in the TV/video/movies business worried? Why are the cable people scared? They are scared because the times, they are a changing. And they are refusing to change with the times.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
$400 Million, $140 Billion And 2020
Image via CrunchBaseWall Street Journal: A New Digital Battlefield: The entire business of selling episodes of TV shows through services like Apple's and Amazon's is expected to generate only $407 million in 2010 ..... U.S. consumers and advertisers will spend about $143 billion on traditional TV advertising and subscriptions in 2010I expect these two numbers to have changed places by 2020. Everything is going online. TV is not going to be a separate medium for too long. The internet will eat up and digest the TV. But we are going to have to move to universal 100 MB plus broadband for that to happen.
Wall Street Journal: Web Start-Up Values Soar:In an echo of the 1990s dot-com boom, some investors also are giving lofty valuations to Web firms that have no revenue and that barely have a product out..... Quora ...... Blippy ...... Foursquare .... last year, when Twitter Inc. was valued at $1 billion during a round of funding, up from $95 million in mid-2008 when it raised a previous round of funding .... Many investors won't recoup their investments ...... SecondMarket, which operates an exchange where investors can trade the stocks of closely held start-ups ...... "There's a big disconnect between the public market and the private market" ..... Deal-of-the-day site Groupon Inc., for instance, was founded in 2008 and quickly brought in consumers eager to tap its discounts. By April when it received a $135 million investment from Russian investment firm Digital Sky Technologies Ltd. and venture firm Battery Ventures, Groupon was valued at about $1.35 billion.
Blockbuster Nears Bankruptcy:a milestone in consumers' shift away from brick-and-mortar video stores to films delivered by mail and the Internet
Netflix, Studio Reach Streaming Deal
A New Digital Battlefield:TV shows are emerging as a new front in the war over digital media between Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc., amid their ongoing battles over electronic books and online music..... Several executives said those rentals could be a step toward a world where people see less advertising or stop paying for cable subscriptions—two principal sources of revenue...... Apple accounts for 57% of transactions in Internet video-on-demand movies, on a number-of-sales basis, and 53% of the TV shows market ...... The entire business of selling episodes of TV shows through services like Apple's and Amazon's is expected to generate only $407 million in 2010 ..... U.S. consumers and advertisers will spend about $143 billion on traditional TV advertising and subscriptions in 2010
Tuesday, September 07, 2010
Got Wings?
Image by twm1340 via FlickrTechnology Review: Web Service Goes Date A-Mining: Unlike sites that rely on questionnaires, Wings tries to understand who you are by picking up the social media bread crumbs you leave online. ..... Wings doesn't ask you about yourself. It tells you. The service requires a Facebook account ..... All that data is fed into the service's recommendation engine. ..... Sunil Nagaraj, chief executive and cofounder of Triangulate, the company behind Wings. ..... The company raised $750,000 in July .... the density of one's social network turns out to be an important factor ..... couples tend to be well suited if they have similar percentages of friends from their own country versus other countries. It matters as well whether your Netflix rental or music playlist history tends toward the mainstream or underground. And couples that have lots of overlap in the types of people they follow on Twitter tend to match well ...... collecting and analyzing social data the way Wings does could be a new branch in the evolution of Web services that make smarter recommendations without having to be told something twice --or even once.
This comes across to me as the next wavelet for the social web's evolution rather than finally that it service that will find us all our soulmates that other dating sites or we ourselves can't. Relationships are mysterious things. Statistical analysis might show most white people go for white people, black for black, brown for brown, but recommending the same might reenforce a pattern that perhaps has been steadily breaking.
But it's good to see yet another startup taking a crack at online dating. Online dating sure is a growing phenomenon. A lot of people also in crowded cities like New York seem to find online dating preferable to meeting someone random at some bar.
It is not one or the other. What works for you works for you. It could be online. It could be offline. It could be a friend of a friend. It could be a perfect stranger.
Relationship building though you get to do on your own. There is not yet a site for that.
Technology Review
What's Next for the Netflix Algorithms?: more than 100 million ratings covering almost 18,000 titles from nearly half a million subscribers ..... combining lots of algorithms with machine-learning techniques might be a good approach to handling large datasets in general .... such algorithms could be applied in market trading, fraud detection, spam-fighting, and computer security
Can You Trust Crowd Wisdom?those ratings can easily be swayed by a small group of highly active users. ..... studied voting patterns on Amazon, the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), and the book review site BookCrossings .... In each case, they found that a small number of users accounted for a large number of ratings.
Digging a Smarter Crowd Instead of using the characteristics of articles to run its recommendation engine's algorithms, Digg's system is based entirely on calculating connections between users
Getting Computers Into the Groove Computers have revolutionized the production, distribution and consumption of music, but when it comes to recommending a good tune, they're still sorely lacking..... more automated methods of music search and recommendation could become important as on-demand music becomes more popular, and sites feel increased pressure to help users find new music...... while analyzing music using computers is "a very interesting and promising area of research," it will be hard to create a music search engine that's both general and fully automatic. "Music similarity is such a personal and variable thing," Crawford says. "Two heavy-metal tracks may seem highly similar to a classical-music expert like me, but entirely different to a heavy-metal enthusiast, who may in turn regard the music of Brahms and Tchaikovsky as very similar, which would be laughable to me."
Recommendation Nation The truth is that I now get more good recommendations about more things, more often, from Bayesian algorithms than from my best friends..... Better technology doesn't mean worse friends.
Friday, September 03, 2010
The Web Is Dead? Not So Fast
Wired: The Web Is Dead. Long Live The Internet: the World Wide Web is in decline, as simpler, sleeker services — think apps — are less about the searching and more about the getting...... You’ve spent the day on the Internet — but not on the Web. And you are not alone. ..... the top 10 Web sites accounted for 31 percent of US pageviews in 2001, 40 percent in 2006, and about 75 percent in 2010. ..... semiclosed platforms that use the Internet for transport but not the browser for display. ...... a world Google can’t crawl, one where HTML doesn’t rule. ...... First Java, then Flash, then Ajax, then HTML5 — increasingly interactive online code — promised to put all apps in the cloud and replace the desktop with the webtop. Open, free, and out of control. ..... the machine-to-machine future that would be less about browsing and more about getting. ...... the Internet has meant the breakdown of incumbent businesses and traditional power structures ..... about 35 percent of all our media time is now spent on the Web — but ad dollars weren’t keeping pace. ..... TV — which also accounts for 35 percent of our media time, gets nearly 40 percent of ad dollars. ..... The Web is, after all, just one of many applications that exist on the Internet ..... The applications that account for more of the Internet’s traffic include peer-to-peer file transfers, email, company VPNs, the machine-to-machine communications of APIs, Skype calls, World of Warcraft and other online games, Xbox Live, iTunes, voice-over-IP phones, iChat, and Netflix movie streaming. ...... the general-purpose browser. They use the Net, but not the Web. Fast beats flexible. ....... “It is a mistake to think of the Web browser as the apex of the PC’s evolution.” ...... the rise of junk-shop content providers — like Demand Media — which have determined that the only way to make money online is to spend even less on content than advertisers are willing to pay to advertise against it. This further cheapens online content, makes visitors even less valuable, and continues to diminish the credibility of the medium. ....... Every time you pick an iPhone app instead of a Web site, you are voting with your finger: A better experience is worth paying for, either in cash or in implicit acceptance of a non-Web standard. ..... While Google may have controlled traffic and sales, Apple controls the content itself. ..... the business forces lining up behind closed platforms are big and getting bigger. This is seen by many as a battle for the soul of the digital frontier..... Ecommerce continues to thrive on the Web, and no company is going to shut its Web site as an information resource. .... The Internet is the real revolution, as important as electricity; what we do with it is still evolving.
This Wired article has created quite a ruckus. But most people who have talked about it have missed the second part of the headline. Long live the internet. Even so, I think the iPhone is going to be a blip in the long run. The small screen web is going to feel like the big screen web, only on a smaller screen. Walled gardens have limited utility. The browser itself will morph.
I think this web is dead thinking is reflective of the hard economic times we are in. This thinking will evaporate after a turn around.
What's problematic about the diagram above is it is not counting video to be part of the web experience. The truth is video is part of the web experience that is exploding. The primarily text based web might be on the wane, but then the web was always meant to be a multi-media experience.
The biggest problem with the graph above is that it deals with percentages. The internet has been exploding. A 10% share today is not the same as a 40% share 10 years ago or a 70% share 15 years ago. I have a hard time believing the browser's share in terms of total number of users has not grown every year.
The open web is worth fighting for. Free trade is worth fighting for.
But, yes, the real product is the internet. The browser is just one way to access that internet. It remains my favorite way. I can't wait for HTML 5 to go mainstream.
A Fragmenting Web?
Is The Mobile Web In A Category Of Its Own?
Information Overload And Twitter
YouTube And Online Movies
HTML 5 Browser Wars
Thursday, March 18, 2010
AnyClip.com: Second Thoughts
Image via CrunchBase
The AnyClip Launch PressLift
I am having second thoughts about AnyClip, but not in the traditional meaning of the phrase. I blogged about AnyClip not long back (AnyClip Is Live Now), and already I have enough new thoughts - a second train of thoughts - about the site that I feel like a new blog
post is warranted.You can't ask for traffic, and then get it, and then complain you have too much traffic. The "fail whale" might be part of doing business
also for AnyClip, but the longer the site is on the better. Take care of the server
issues best you can. That is basic. Expect traffic. Fulfill the basic promises made.Add more movies. 2,000 movies
are a good starting point. But God
knows more than 2,000 movies
have been made. Feed the monster, I mean the database.The embed
feature is a powerul one. Every blog and site that is embedding AnyClip video
clips is giving AnyClip much needed Google
juice. Those are one way inbound links. They matter. And so the embed feature has to "simply work," Google's phrase about their forthcoming Chrome OS.Social media
matters, but of course. There are studies showing Facebook
has overtaken Google
itself as the most visited site in America. If I find a clip on AnyClip that I like and want to share, I should be able to share easy. Over time there has to be a sense of community at the site itself. As to how you go about it, there are a few different ways. The Disqus integration is a very good idea. A lot of people link their Disqus profiles to their blogs and Twitter
accounts. That gives you the option to get to know them better. That builds community.New movies
get made. They put out trailers before they put out movies. AnyClip is like saying no movie ever made has to go stale. The best movies
have a timeless
quality to them. If you are going to watch four minutes of a movie that you end up liking, you might as well rent or buy the movie. AnyClip's SceneSearch tool is a major discovery
engine.The Netflix, and Amazon
integrations on AnyClip are a great first move. I wonder if it would be possible to have those integrations to also be part of the embedded clips. So someone watches a clip at my blog, and they get to go straight to Amazon to buy the movie without having to first go to the AnyClip page.The summary statement would be, the fundamentals are already in place, just go ahead and deliver on your basic promises. Scale with gusto.
My Comment At TechCrunch
The movie studios are going to have to come around, and come around fast. AnyClip's promise is no movie ever made has to go stale. Otherwise movies go stale. AnyClip for the movie studios is like being able to run trailers of all their movies all the time. And once you grab someone's attention, that is one step closer to them buying or renting that movie. It makes absolutely no sense for the movie studios to drag their feet on this one.
This reminds me of Nepal, the dual citizenship issue, and FDI, Foreign Direct Investment. Issuing dual citizenship to the Non Resident Nepalis is the single best thing Nepal could do to bring in FDI to the country, and FDI is the single best thing that could happen for Nepal's economic growth, but the morons will not do it. The politicians in Nepal have been dragging their feet on the dual citizenship issue for years now. Ignorance can hurt self interest. Defies logic, but happens all the time.
AnyClip is in the movie studios' self interest.
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