On The Margins

Wednesday October 03, 2007

[ Media ] New Media: From Blog to Online Newspaper

The newspaper format responds to real demands, and as popular blogs grow, they gravitate to that format. See the Financial Times piece by Joshua Chaffin, "Blogs get the old-media habit," which reports changes at the Arianna Huffington's Post. (Should we guess the exit strategy to be an acquisition of the type that gripped the WSJ?)

2007-10-03 09:43:25.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
blog media technology web web2.0

Wednesday September 19, 2007

[ Telecommunications ] Wirless Broadband Planning

"Wireless Broadband Planning" is actually the name of a joint venture focused on obtaining WiMax licenses in Japan.

Essentially, WiMax extends WiFi technology over longer distances and larger throughputs. For a summary introduction to the technology, see here. WiMax Forum, the relevant standardization body, has grown in the number of participants as the base technology emerges and participants start thinking about actual applications. (For example, this August, Vodafone joined the forum.)

2007-09-19 15:58:06.0 -- Comments [1] ; Permalink ; Trackback.
mobile network technology telecommunications web wifi wimax wireless

Friday July 13, 2007

[ Technology ] Internet Radio Gets a Bruise

Recording industry's SoundExchange duked it out against SaveNetRadio Coalition in courts, and now, fees will start to hamper radio on the Internet, the greatest copy and distribution machine ever made.

2007-07-13 11:45:01.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
audio content internet radio technology web

Monday June 18, 2007

[ Technology ] Cookies and Privacy

By now, it should be commonly known that Google has bent its privacy policy to address concerns expressed by EU's Article 29 Data Protection Working Group.  Google will make data anonymous in its server logs after 18 months. According to Financial Times, and prior to the agreement, "Google cookies are set to expire after 30 years" (June 12, 2007). Google FAQs on privacy should probably give the current cookie lifetime. (In fact, it should ideally be possible for any user to examine the properties of Google cookie(s) on a known Google web page linked through its privacy FAQs.)

2007-06-18 20:23:42.0 -- Comments [1] ; Permalink ; Trackback.
data eu internet privacy protection search web

Monday May 14, 2007

[ Society ] For the Anonymous Among You

Every once in a while I do get an anonymous commentator who leaves me a comment I cannot track or parse or understand because I cannot determine anything about its authorship or authority.

In one recent comment, one such "anonymous" graces the comments section of one of my entries with the following pleasantries:

Why is this kind of twisted-logic America-bashing on Sun's blog site? Does Sun Microsystems employ lots of people like you?

Totally confused about the authorship, its authority and its intent, I wrote the following response:

Mr. or Ms. Anonymous -

Thanks for catching my typo. It should have read "extension" not "extention" ... Yes, thanks for catching it, and it shows you had the patience to read the whole thing, and thanks for that, too!

Please note what I've said loud and clear on the top left corner of my weblog, in boldface: The opinions expressed here are purely my own, and neither Sun nor any other party necessarily agrees with them.

So, postulating otherwise would not only be quite silly but unreasonable.

Let me address one other point in your comment, as immediately as I can.

If I did not love the community I live in, I wouldn't even bother writing this particular entry. There are far better things to do in life. So, I have no idea what you mean by "America-bashing." Perhaps, you should explain.

As far as the rest of your comment, you don't seem to have the simple courage to say what you're saying with your own real identity, whatever that might be. Hiding behind "anonymous" only makes what you say hollow and impossible to deal with because I have no idea what kind of authority you are and what moves you to say what you're saying.

So, I'm lost [as to] what to say.

Perhaps you're trying to perfect the art of anonymous intimidation.

At least I have the courage not to hide behind "anonymous" when I say what I think.

To say that the U.S. has exercised imperial power in the world should be quite a non-controversial matter.

To say that empires tend to over-extend themselves beyond their means also carries a great deal of scholarship and authority behind it.

If you believe it [to be] otherwise, please present your facts!

And again, in closing, I refer you to the top left corner of this blog:

The opinions expressed here are purely my own, and neither Sun nor any other party necessarily agrees with them.

If you think that anyone who has a job with some company should not say anything [related] to current topics and politics, I refer you to Lawrence Lessig's book Free Culture. For a relevant extract, I refer you to: "A Taboo Against Political Discourse."

As an aside, I think you might also want to consult any of the books by Zbigniew Brzezinski, where he examines the challenges to the empire from a strategic perspective. Searching for recent Zbignew Brzezinski interviews on YouTube might also produce interesting results. [I've also written about one of Brzezinski's recent comments here.]

Yours truly,
M.M.

P.S. I hope next time you write, you'll drop the "anonymous" so I may better be introduced to you and your ideas!

I do wish anonymous commentators find the courage and feel the need to say who they are, and to commit themselves to what it is they write. The least they can do is to use a consistent pen name or a consistent set of pen names and write enough tractable material (with each pen name) so that we know and can construct their position on topics of interest.

That sort of commitment is certainly missing in much of the web. See one of my earlier comments on a related topic at "Existential Phenomenology of The Internet."

There, I leave it, for now.

2007-05-14 01:48:04.0 -- Comments [8] ; Permalink ; Trackback.
anonymous authority authorship discourse phenomenology privacy web

Sunday February 04, 2007

[ Web ] Another Web 2.0 Application

Check out Netvibes. It is a highly-interactive, personalized content and messaging portal brought to us by French Internet entrepreneurs (with one, a Sun Microsystems' alumni).

2007-02-04 12:29:37.0 -- Comments [2] ; Permalink ; Trackback.
web

Tuesday January 30, 2007

[ Personal ] Falling for Flickr

First, I hit the limit on the number of albums and then the limit on the number of photographs that can be posted on Flickr's free service. So, now, I'm afraid I've fallen for the paid Flickr PRO service, and got myself a jUploader. Now, I'm busy uploading photographs starting from 2003, a year or so after I bought my first decent digital camera. For months, I resisted the upgrade from free to paid Flickr service. I planned to roll out a content server of my own but never found the time to do it or the right ISP for it where I could simply manage a piece of hardware housed someplace. (Fulup Ar Foll tells me such a service is readily available in France.) If I could host my own service, I would no longer have to depend on or pay Flickr anything for the service it offers. My main goal is to have the photos on some file system accessible by some HTTP server that can dish it out. This is not much to set up but just as I said, I've not found an ISP that provides a nice service where I can "own" the use of a piece of dedicated hardware, with unlimited download albeit on a fixed network bandwidth and some file backup service already provided. This way I can install and configure software as I wish and I don't have to store the hardware in my own home. So, yes, I finally signed up for a 1-year subscription to Flickr PRO and have started posting all these photographs that have been sitting in iPhoto library of an iMac at home. About 3 more years of photos are waiting to be posted. Some of these photos are from years ago.  Here, I have linked-in two photos from the batch I just uploaded from 2003. The details for the first photo, taken in the Astan-e Qods-e Razavi in Mashhad, Iran, can be found here.  I remember, when I took this photograph in the open courtyard, a mildly-spoken sermon was being delivered in a very simple Persian on how parents should care for their children. My wife, for whom Persian was a 3rd (or 4th?) language, still remembers easily following the Persian. The second photo captures the main wall of Gonbad-e Haruniyeh, a 14th century mausoleum, about whose origins there are many theories. The mausoleum is on the Tus-Mashhad road. I rememer finding it amazing how much cooler the inside of this 700-year-old building was when compared to the climate just outdoors. (Yes, the high ceilings and the design for air circulation has something to do with it. There might also be some underground water or spring.)

2007-01-30 22:58:33.0 -- Comments [1] ; Permalink ; Trackback.
pictures service web

Monday January 29, 2007

[ Web ] Growth Path

Financial Times on video and film downloads: (a) Growth from now until 2012: 10 folds. (b) Worth in 2012: $6.3 billion. Chad Hurley at Davos: YouTube will share advertising revenue with video uploaders.

2007-01-29 22:46:30.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
business film video web

Friday January 12, 2007

[ Web ] Web Software

The best web software blog around I know is right here on blogs.sun.com: Aquarium.

Aquarium is not only a great example of a collaboatively produced blog but also full of new information about software for web applications.

Frequent and attentive enough visits to the Aquarium will turn you into fast fish in the sea of Web applications.

2007-01-12 16:26:34.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
applications platforms web

Sunday January 07, 2007

[ Web ] Classifying Content

Lawrence Lessig classifies content on the web according to their participation and sharing characteristics.

2007-01-07 00:34:03.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
access content web

Wednesday December 20, 2006

[ Technology ] Torrents to Distribute Video Content

Legal writers on the Internet have viewed it as a giant copying and distribution machine. They are not far off the mark, and from this position, they have argued that the Internet should be let loose as such a machine with only minimal limitations, and that the legislature need to reconsider and rewrite copyright laws to bring them back to their original intent. Let the machine do what it does best and figure out how to use it to benefit society at large, they have argued.

Roberto Chinnici and Michael Calore write about a major use of BitTorrent protocol for (copying and) distribution of video content from a major news media outlet, the BBC. 

This is a grand idea and a great use of the machine.

The only potential downside I could see is that BitTorrent works best when a piece is popular. For it to work for programming that does not always suit the popular taste of the masses, a major news outlet must also use enough torrent seeds to ensure these programs remain available for distribution. This way the less popular programming can still have the minimal torrent seeding necessary for efficient distribution while the more popular programming gets the benefit of additional distribution through the collaborative distribution BitTorrent makes possible as a piece becomes increasingly popular. In other words, popularity should (and can, thanks to BitTorrent) pay for itself.

One day, the designer of BitTorrent will be considered a great visionary who changed the face of the Internet. He made a great leap to make the copying and distribution machine more efficient and more fair.

2006-12-20 17:36:50.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
bittorrent content copyrights distribution internet news technology torrents video web

Thursday December 14, 2006

[ Media ] Disruptive with TV

Roberto Chinnici puts some probing questions to non-mainstream English language TV channels. His solution to their problems to break into the U.S. market: Use the web to your advantage to be disruptive with conventional TV programming.

To address the complaint regarding economic cost of bandwidth, finding a way to include decent advertising may prove sufficient. Furthermore, there can be a web-based subscription model that collects small subscription fees (or micropayments) for access to programming. This will work because bandwidth will still be able to serve all users particularly if programming does not emphasize real, real-time news and breaks content into pieces available separately.

2006-12-14 13:51:01.0 -- Comments [2] ; Permalink ; Trackback.
alternative bandwidth content english media networks news tv us video web

Thursday December 07, 2006

[ Code ] Power Javascripting

jMaki means business with power Javascripting and more, including Phobos.

If you know your stuff, you'll check them out! 

2006-12-07 16:50:53.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
application java javascript phobos server web

[ Web ] Net Neutrality

Josh Silver who regularly posts on Net Neutrality debate, reviews Bill Moyer's PBS program on the same.

2006-12-07 10:08:36.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
net neurality web

Saturday December 02, 2006

[ Web ] Fake vs. True Sharing

Lawrence Lessig writes about fake vs. true sharing.

The fact that Lessig has to use an adjective to qualify sharing may be another proof of how little words have come to mean in common usage. You cannot be said to be sharing your bread unless the party you're sharing it with can also eat from the part that has been shared. Otherwise, you're only sharing the right to watch the bread, not any rights to eat from it. 

Much of the videos posted on YouTube are posted with an intention to share them completely. Users should be able to copy and mix such video quite freely. As Lessig has noted, disputes regarding this model continue.

A sharing that doesn't grant any independent use rights can hardly be called sharing.
 

2006-12-02 07:54:16.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
file law music sharing stanford video web youtube

Sunday November 26, 2006

[ Economics ] Unintended Transaction Costs on the Web

Other transaction costs on the web which have recently received much attention have to do with unintended operations such as click fraud and e-mail spams. To what extent do the costs of handling such unintended or undesired behavior affect any overal savings in marketing, search or communications costs afforded on the web? What potential new schemes can inoculate transactions against costs related to spam and click fraud on the Internet? Or will we have to look for another transformation of far broader impact on transactions than what Internet has brought so far?

2006-11-26 03:52:13.0 -- Comments [4] ; Permalink ; Trackback.
economics internet transactions web

Friday November 10, 2006

[ Media ] A Persian Blogger Comes of Age

If you know Persian, occasional viewing of Hossein Derakhshan's Persian weblog might benefit you. He also has an English weblog and a photoblog worth a visit for a cultural study if nothing else. The Washington Post carries another regular blog of his. Derakhshan's recent piece analyzing current politics of Iran might be a good lesson for those Persian speakers who have a tendency to provide knee-jerk analysis of the Iranian history of the last 30 years. The title is a bit odd but clear "چرا با براندازی حتی نرم هم مخالفم" ("Why I'm opposed to regime change of even the soft variety"). I've not included the link to this particular entry of his but you can search for it on his Persian blog if you're interested. If you don't know Persian, you can turn to his Washinton Post blog, mentioned above, for a taste of his writings. Athough Derakhshan takes the job of the journalist somewhat seriously and does quite a bit to expose double-standards everywhere he can see it, his failing (if any) seems to be related to an exaggerated view of the role of the journalist in modern society up to a purist theoretical limit beyond any dreamed up by common Western journalists in Europe or North America. One may also detect an exaggeration with respect to the actual (as opposed to either the theoretical or the subservient) capability of a journalist to transform society, which in practice tends to remain limited because of subtle realities of human life that stand beyond and above opinions of one sort or another. To his advantage and credit, Derakhshan insists on remaining at least self-consistent unlike some of his peers who go as far as advocating false concepts such as judicious double-standards.

In his "History of American Journalism classes," professor Thomas C. Leonard of UC Berkeley used to ask whether journalists, under the Fourth Estate, had perhaps evolved into a new type of priesthood (The Power of the Press: The Birth of American Political Reporting), and Kierkegaard would have hated that very aspect of modern times, The Present Age, and Ayn Rand tried to capture it all in her Fountainhead. This perspective, focusing on the leveling effect of the journalistic approach to understanding our moral place in the world, while full of modern rings, goes back all the way to Socrates and his dislike of the rhetoricians of the courts who could make anything sound right or good. Hence, his repose into dialogs. 

Who is right? The confusion continues, and perhaps, the disintegration of authentic communities of moral practice tend to give rise to priestly elites who busy themselves with "useful" justifications (of torture under "rules," e.g., by Alan Dershowitz: here, here, here; here and here) instead of advocating well-established and crystal-clear moral concepts having to do with human beings and their due integrity and honor, and also, to journalists who play the missing priests--to use professor Leonard's reluctantly-drawn  but apt analogy.

2006-11-10 20:27:56.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
america ayn-rand berkeley blogs fountainhead journalism kierkegaard persian philosophy press priesthood socrates torture web

Wednesday November 08, 2006

[ Web ] The Archeology Of The First Internet Bubble

In his Wall Street Journal "Portals" column ("The Dot-Com Bubble Is Reconsidered," Nov. 8, 2006), Lee Gomes points us to an archeological study of the Internet bubble, some of whose findings contrast with conventional wisdom regarding the boom which is "normally dated from the Netscape IPO in August 1995 to March 2000, when Nasdaq peaked at above 5100": 

A recent paper suggests that rather than having too many entrants, the period of the Web bubble may have had too few; at least, too few of the right kind. And while most people recall the colossal flops of the period (Webvan, pets.com, etoys and the rest) the survival rates of the era's companies turns out to be on a par, if not slightly higher, than those in several other major industries in their formative years.

The paper is being published in a coming issue of the Journal of Financial Economics. As noteworthy as the findings are, even more interesting is the process that led to them. The work is an outgrowth of the Business Plan Archive at the University of Maryland. Its goal is to become a kind of Smithsonian Institution of the Internet bubble, saving for posterity every business plan, PowerPoint presentation and venture-capital term sheet -- the more frothy and half-baked, the better -- that it can get its hands on.

2006-11-08 17:56:09.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
economics finance ipo web