• Ross Fadner, Feb 15, 2006, 10:30 AM
  • U.S. Internet Companies To Stand Before Congress Today Associated Press Today, the four major American Internet technology companies--Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and Cisco Systems--face some tough questions about their business dealings in China from U.S. lawmakers, who are worried the Communist government is using American technology to violate basic human rights. "Cooperation with tyranny should not be embraced for the sake of profits," said New Jersey Representative Charles Smith, chairman of the House International Relations subcommittee on global human rights. Smith and other lawmakers today will use a congressional hearing to convey their concerns over the companies' respective business relations with China. China obviously offers these companies tremendous revenue potential; the country's Internet user base is estimated at 100 million users, but this number is certain to grow significantly in years to come, alongside rampant economic growth. The price for doing business with China is censorship, something that has not sat well with consumers and outspoken political and human rights groups. The U.S. companies claim they oppose censorship, but take the stance that as private organizations they can do nothing to set international policy and must obey local laws. They also claim that access to filtered online information is better than no access at all. Other regimes around the world will be watching to see the debate's outcome, which will likely service as a model elsewhere. Read the whole story...
  • Google Video Mired In DRM Mess Boing Boing Google Video is a curiously anti-consumer approach to broadband video that diverges from the company's corporate ethos, writes the tech blog Boing Boing. "For the first time in the company's history, it has released a product designed to fill the needs of someone other than Google's users," the blog says. Google Video provides video search and video sales, but the company leaves the sales price and method completely up to the content provider. Moreover, the company slaps down its own Digital Rights Management system that restricts how users play and use the videos they buy. Without modeling any one type of copyright system, Google imposes its own version of how copyright should work on its users, just like Apple does with iTunes, says Boing Boing. For example, when you download a restricted video from Google, it locks that information into your account and software player. There will be no shifting of that file to another place on your computer (or to anyone else's computer), because the video player must communicate with Google before determining that you are permitted to play it. By encrypting its video files, the company has also rendered it illegal for competitors to create their own players for Google's video files, even if they can decrypt them. What tech freedom fighters (and ultimately consumers) want to know is, why? Why would Google take steps backwards like this, leading us into a legal broadband video world that locks us down in proprietary software chains? It just means consumers will continue ripping BitTorrent files--unless video providers can adapt and open things up. Read the whole story...
  • U.S. Internet Companies To Stand Before Congress Today Associated Press Today, the four major American Internet technology companies--Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and Cisco Systems--face some tough questions about their business dealings in China from U.S. lawmakers, who are worried the Communist government is using American technology to violate basic human rights. "Cooperation with tyranny should not be embraced for the sake of profits," said New Jersey Representative Charles Smith, chairman of the House International Relations subcommittee on global human rights. Smith and other lawmakers today will use a congressional hearing to convey their concerns over the companies' respective business relations with China. China obviously offers these companies tremendous revenue potential; the country's Internet user base is estimated at 100 million users, but this number is certain to grow significantly in years to come, alongside rampant economic growth. The price for doing business with China is censorship, something that has not sat well with consumers and outspoken political and human rights groups. The U.S. companies claim they oppose censorship, but take the stance that as private organizations they can do nothing to set international policy and must obey local laws. They also claim that access to filtered online information is better than no access at all. Other regimes around the world will be watching to see the debate's outcome, which will likely service as a model elsewhere. Read the whole story...
  • Study: 80 Percent Of Marketers Buy Online Media Life Eight out of ten advertisers buy online media, according to new research from California-based Outsell. The research firm polled 1,200 advertisers with a collective budget of $2.4 billion and said that number should rise to 90 percent by 2008. Outsell also predicted that online spending will increase 19 percent this year--eight times the pace of TV and radio. Other firms have forecasted online spending increases this year between 20-25 percent. Advertisers simply can no longer deny the broad reach and incredible tracking capabilities of the Internet, Outsell's CEO told Media Life. Not only that, but for smaller advertisers--those with budgets under $1 million--a pay for performance program like Google's AdWords is an ideal way to reach consumers specifically looking for the products and services sold by small businesses. Despite having said that, Outsell's sample actually rated e-mail as the best online channel, followed by search. The research company also forecasts that blog advertising will grow 43 percent this year, partly because there are so many blogs with sizable, steady traffic and lots of unclaimed inventory. Read the whole story...
  • The Exclusive World Of A-List Bloggers New York Magazine New York magazine has a very long and thorough article about the Web's most popular blogs, how they got there, how they stay there, and how you, too, could possibly start your own A-list blog. Blogging, like Google's Page Rank system, is all about links--the more sites that link to you, the more popular the blog, inevitably. For example, Boing Boing, a curio site for tech community folks, is the Web's most popular blog, according to blog measuring firm Technorati, with nearly 20,000 links. Once you hit that kind of popularity, the traffic will keep coming--and keep coming back, too, as long as you post as often as you possibly can. A-list blogs also tend to link to each other, ensuring that blog users keep going round and round the same community of sites. This, in a way, mirrors the insular offline world of the very wealthy, who also tend to hang around together, and keep getting wealthier--or at least so goes the theory of one sociologist quoted in the article. For advertisers, of course, the whole lure of blogs is that they're cheaper than regular newspapers, TV and media Web sites, and often, they serve up tightly focused niche audiences, which advertisers love. Blogs are also social connectors, because if one starts a conversation about, say, an ad, others will scoop it up quickly. And soon, the message is out to a vast network of tightly focused niche groups. Read the whole story...