The Box takes off on global journey (via Futurismic)We have painted and branded a BBC container and bolted on a GPS transmitter so you can follow its progress all year round as it criss-crosses the globe. The Box will hopefully reach the US, Asia, the Middle East , Europe and Africa and when it does BBC correspondents will be there to report on who's producing goods and who's consuming them...
Surprisingly, this project will not be costing the BBC much over and above the coverage costs for the editorial content.
Whilst we have paid a little for the branding of the box and some technical costs the fact this is a working container means it will be earning its own keep.
We are keeping our fingers crossed the Box does not fall overboard (it happens) and that it gives us a better understanding of what ties countries and continents together.
BBC to track a shipping container around the world: The Box
09
Sep
The BBC is sticking a GPS in a shipping container and sending it around the world in order to reveal the secret lives of these giant steel packets:
New iPod In-Ear Headphones Feature Individual Woofer and Tweeter for $79 [Appleletsrock]
09
Sep
Apple has announced a replacement for the old, crappy in-ear headphones that will feature and individual woofer and tweeter x2. That should improve the sound and at only $79, it is far cheaper than many similar products on the market. They have also announced a set of headphones with a microsized remote built in the band that allows you to control volume, forward and back, pause and play. That version will be available for only $29 starting next month.
Adjix Pays You For Your Shortlinking Performance (The Startup Review)
09
Sep
STARTUP DETAILS:
Company Name: Adjix
20-word Description: Adjix is an online ad network that pays people to shorten links.
CEO’s Pitch: Adjix is a cross between TinyURL and Google AdWords. We let people shorten URLs (called “Linkersâ€). When a person clicks on the shortened URL, we display the original content with an optional ad at the top of the page. Both the Linkers and advertisers can see detailed link data such as who clicked on their link or ad (by IP address), when, and how many times. Very shortly, we’ll also report the webpage that the link appeared on when it was clicked (referrer) and also the OS and Web browser version.
Mashable’s Take: If you take Adjix at face value, it seems an interesting concept. It is a very simple yet potentially quite lucrative model built on a premise of revenue sharing well-refined by Google. It charges advertisers fees for impressions and click-throughs, and shares the bounty with people creating links.
Yet it is not only for the potential monetary push that Adjix is so intriguing. There is a utilitarian side to the coin. Because Adjix allows users to glimpse the click rate of the links they create, they can quickly determine whether such linking is grabbing interest. For folks trying to drum up traffic, this is a tool definitely worth adding to the chest. What’s more, if you need to expand the power of the engine, Adjix lists on its homepage a section devoted to the “Adjix Open API.†Altogether, it looks like something the frequent linker would very much enjoy getting on deck.
Now, there are some points raised about the relatively unique way Adjix functions which may not suit the end users. The most pressing one being spam. The service could be conducive to abuse. Indeed, last month, Performancing’s Jeff Chandler highlighted this concern with reference to the startup’s framework. In his response, Adjix founder and president Joe Moreno explained very simply that “we’ll shut down any spammer’s links. Everyone hates spam and we intend to freeze any spammer’s accounts.â€
It’s definitely the case that Adjix has its ups and its downs. And the downs can seem a bit disconcerting, given the financial incentives involved. But so it is with various other ad engines on the Web, and Adjix appears to be one built in a fashion that could keep things aboveboard.
One thing is sure. The numbers Adjix provides are very easy to grasp. Advertisers pay $0.35 CPM for impressions, and $0.75 per valid click-through. Linkers subsequently receive $0.10 CPM, and $0.20 per valid click-through.
Editor’s Note: This post is part of an ongoing series at Mashable - The Startup Review, Sponsored by Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.
Sponsored By: Sun Startup Essentials
iPod touch updated — same screen, new case, Nike+ integration
09
Sep
Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video
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09
Sep
It's Time for the News Aggregators to Come Clean
09
Sep
Steve Rubel via Micro Persuasion
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A news story from 2002 about United Airlines filing for bankruptcy tripped up investors yesterday when it re-appeared on Google News, Barry Schwartz reports. The Google News team follows with their own explanation. However, the entire issue raises the lack of transparency that permeates the major news aggregation sites. It's time for them all to come clean.
According to Reuters consumers are increasingly turning to news aggregation sites for their info fix because of the growth of the mobile web and an appetite for broad perspectives. These sites, which include Google News, Yahoo News, Topix and Daylife, differ from RSS readers. Feed readers also roll up news but they put the user in complete control of the sources they consume.
News aggregation sites operate without editors. So, they're prone to the occassional glitches like the one that occurred yesterday. The problems are deeper, however. Most of these sites also roll up blog content and they don't tell you that. Yahoo just recently quietly started to links to blogs.
The problem is that these sites don't delineate blogs from news sources. As we all know the quality can range here and that presents a challenge for the reader in determining who to trust.
Although this specific incident with United Airlines did not invovle blogs, it underscores the lack of transparency that permeates these sites. They are doing everyone a disservice by not providing detailed information on who they chose aggregate and why they roll up some sites and ignore others.
A friend told me about it.
09
Sep
True Enough: the science, history and economics of self-deception
09
Sep
Farhad Manjoo's True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society is a breezy-but-engrossing look at the increased polarization of news in the 21st Century. Manjoo convincingly argues that our own capacity for selective perception (show two groups of partisans footage of a political debate and both will swear it was biased for the other side; show the same footage to someone who doesn't care and they won't see bias for either side) combined with the Internet's capacity to network affinity groups and spread fragmented, selective media are a perfect storm, with the truth right in its path.
Manjoo makes a good case. He walks through a number of net-based conspiracy theories on both sides of the political spectrum, speaks with their adherents, the experts who claim it's all bogus, and then to cognitive scientists and other scientists who explain the gigantic gap between what is so obvious to non-partisans and what is blindingly, passionately important to the adherents.
Grounded in history and science, True Enough paints a dismal picture of a species with a limitless capacity for self-deception and selective reasoning. But Manjoo doesn't ascribe the rise of truthiness to fragmented media alone: he calls out PR firms, media outlets and others who have profited from the erosion of the truth.
I'm more-or-less convinced by Manjoo's idea that reality itself has fragmented, that many of us "know" different, mutually exclusive "facts" about the world, but I'm not so sure that this is an outcome of a networked society. For centuries, a large number of people "knew" that Jews used gentile baby-blood in Passover matzoh. They "knew" that phrenology worked. That gypsies stole babies. That the laboring classes lacked the capacity to learn and participate in society. That women had fewer teeth than men.
Our capacity to select the facts that justify our beliefs isn't new, but perhaps it is growing worse. Certainly, the money's better than its ever been. Forewarned is forearmed -- having read True Enough, I feel like I'm more ready to examine my selective perception and cherished illusions. And that's certainly worth the price of admission.
True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society
Briton Invented iPod, DRM and On-Line Music in 1979
09
Sep
Picture credit: Steve Nicholson
Today Apple is almost certain to announce, at the very least, a new, taller iPod Nano. But amidst the hype surrounding the "Let's Rock" event, it's easy to get so caught up in the iPod's future that we forget where it came from.
The iPod was not invented in 2001 in Cupertino, California. It was invented in England in 1979, by “serial inventor†Kane Kramer.
This is not a story of intellectual property theft, or of big companies putting the screws on the little man. Instead, it is just the retelling of another old story — the story of a lone, visionary inventor and his inability to market a product that appeared way before its time.
Kramer came up with the idea for a pocket-sized, portable solid state music player with a friend, James Campbell. Kramer was 23, Campbell 21. The IXI System had a display screen and buttons for four-way navigation. In a report presented to investors in 1979, the IXI was described as being the size of a cigarette packet. Is this sounding familiar yet?
Back in 1979, a memory chip would store a paltry three and a half minutes of music. Kramer fully expected this to improve, and confidently foresaw a market for reliable, high quality digital music players which would be popular with both consumers and the record labels. It could actually be argued that he was still ahead of Apple after the firat iPod went on sale — that had a hard drive and Kramer had moved onto flash memory years earlier.
Much has been made of Apple somehow “stealing†the technology. But the patent did what all patents do, whether used or not. It lapsed, and whether Apple took the idea from there or from somewhere else, it was all perfectly legitimate. In fact, when Apple was suing (and counter-sued by) Burst.com in 2006 it cited the invention as “prior art†to dispute Burst’s patents. Apple even called Kramer in to give evidence.
But anyone can dream up a magic futuristic gadget. That’s where James Campbell came in. Campbell was an electronics whizz and between them the men came up with four prototypes. According to Kramer’s website, a fifth, pre-production unit actually went on sale at the APRS exhibition at Earls Court, London.
But the really surprising part of Kramer’s invention is not the hardware but the infrastructure behind it. It eerily foreshadows the iTunes Store and pretty much any modern online music store.
Content was to be stored on a central server and distributed to music stores vie telephone line (remember — in these days there was no internet and almost no home computers). Customers would take their players into the store and buy music which would be loaded onto the IXI chips inside (the chips were removable, like a tiny cassette). This alone would obviate the need for physical media, but take a look at a few points from Kramer’s investor pitch to see just how close he got to the future:
Immediacy of delivery
No physical inventory and therefore no production costs
Live performances taped and then made immediately available
Entire back catalogs could be put on sale at almost no cost
New, risky artists can be promoted with low cost
Instant micro-billing, handled centrally
Vending machines for self-purchasing — located in bars, filling stations, supermarkets (it seems quaint now that these were to be coin operated)
Uncanny. Kramer also foresaw DRM, or digital rights management, before it even had a name. This is worth transcribing (the original was written on a typewriter):
For every record or tape of conventional format sold, over one copy is made in an illegal form.
Therefore over 100% of the total sale potential is lost.
With IXI, all programme material (recordings) is stored and transmitted on a high security enclosed digital network, all terminals being supplied under license to retailers. Because of the attention to security, it is impossible to break into the system undetected, thus preventing bootlegging of the programme material by fraudulent means.
The first stage at which the digital encoded programme material is converted to analogue (audio) signals, is when the IXI CHIP is played back in the home playback unit.
It can be seen from the above, that the format prevents mass copying of programme material by fraudulent traders and home copying.
Though it is easy to laugh at this optimism, it’s possible that Kramer foresaw the recording industry’s huge reluctance to online delivery and attempted to diffuse it. What is really laughable, though, is that the same recording industry is still thinking in exactly the same way almost thirty years later.
Now Kramer is working on something called the "Bully Button", a wearable recording device which can be discretely activated by kids (or adults) when they are set upon by bullies. It's a laudable idea, but the leap into the future he made with the IXI and it's ecosystem. Back in the 1970s, Kramer was thinking way ahead of his time. Sadly for him, it took the market until now to catch up.
Development of the first MP3 player [Ken Kramer]
IXI Systems Report 1979 [Direct pdf]
Microsharing becomes the top story
09
Sep
Laura Fitton via Pistachio
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by Mark Dykeman of Broadcasting Brain
There’s been a lot of speculation this year about when microsharing will finally have its moment in the spotlight and move firmly into the mainstream. A BusinessWeek Special Report: CEO Guide to Microblogging may be the sign that early adopters have looked for.
This special report includes several features on the capabilities of tools like Twitter, Pownce, and Jaiku. The articles cite how well-known companies like JetBlue, Dell, and GM are taking advantage of the power of what we call microsharing. Whether a company is listening for customer feedback, answering questions, or otherwise helping the customer meet their needs, large companies are finding the customer at point of need.
Here’s a quick guide to the contents of the Special Report:
- How Companies Use Twitter to Bolster Their Brands provides a few examples of how companies are reacting to consumers. JetBlue reacted with stunning speed to a Tweet about one of their terminals. GM corporate communications helped a customer in need buy a Saturn. Southwest Airlines empathized with a customer who lost his luggage.
- Brands That Tweet – Comcast, Kodak, Newell Rubbermaid, Whole Foods Market, and Zappos are other prominent examples of brands that are listening and speaking on Twitter, extending their customer service presence.
- CEOs’ Take on Twitter – Twitteriing CEO profiles: how 18 leaders and entrepreneurs are using Twitter for work and play.
- Getting Intimate (With Customers) On Twitter – a look at how companies are conversing and sharing directly with their customers. The customer has the microphone and is in the driver’s seat – companies are getting onboard for the ride… and the conversation.
- AMC’s MadMen: Running Amok on Twitter reports on the apparent “Fan Fiction†characters from the popular AMC TV show who have been Twittering in character since mid-August. (Our post on this trend).
Just one example from the report is that H&R Block, which helps customers through one of the least sexy tasks ever, is using a tool like Twitter to listen to its customers. Web 2.0 technologies coupled with a focus on listening, are helping the venerable tax preparation institution to better introduce itself to younger customers. H&R Block is a good example of reaching out to a previously underserved segment of its potential customer base.
The report provides general tips and examples that will be familiar for those who have already adopted 140 character exchanges of links, information, and socialization into their daily routines. What’s significant is that businesses not already visiting these online gathering areas will find it increasingly harder to ignore the unfolding opportunities. When BusinessWeek targets a special report to the C-suite, the trend is certainly growing, a few more executives will feel the concept “tip†in their minds, and more will start exploring the space.
Is microsharing mainstream yet? Maybe not. But it’s a whole lot closer than it was last week.