Category Archives: Gadgets and Technology

Throwing the book at them

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What’s the advantage for libraries seeking to move to e-book formats?  Not much, according to this article from Library Journal:

HarperCollins has announced that new titles licensed from library ebook vendors will be able to circulate only 26 times before the license expires….Josh Marwell, President, Sales for HarperCollins, told LJ that the 26 circulation limit was arrived at after considering a number of factors, including the average lifespan of a print book, and wear and tear on circulating copies.

This is utterly ridiculous.  One of the major advantages of e-books is that they don’t wear out.  Whatever happened to products that become “new and improved” with innovation rather than “same because crippled”?

Oh, that’s right — copyrights create a legal monopoly that allow for monopolistic behavior of the sort we regularly see from utility companies and the DMV.  Now I remember.

Even so, HarperCollins’ move here seems incredibly short-sighted.  They may well be killing off a lucrative new market (e-books for libraries) before it has a chance to develop fully.  After all, most people still don’t have e-book readers and find it inconvenient to read books from a computer screen.  As for libraries,

further license restrictions seem to come at a particularly bad time, given strained budgets nationwide. It may also disproportionately affect libraries that set shorter loan periods for ebook circulation.

Between the growing number of contemporary authors who distribute their books with a Creative Commons license and the growing repository of easily accessible public domain works in electronic text (“book”) and spoken (“audiobook”) form, there may be a great swath of written culture from the 20th century that becomes effectively inaccessible.

Update 2/28/2011: TechDirt has now picked up this story.

The Turing Test and what makes us human

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Each year, the Loebner Prize competition takes place where judges are asked to interact through computer terminals with humans and computer programs. The judges then vote on whether they were talking with a human or a computer in this version of the Turing Test.

Two things struck me in this article:

1. The writer frames this issue of “mind vs. machine” as a more fundamental question about what separates humans from other animals:

Philosophers, psychologists, and scientists have been puzzling over the essential definition of human uniqueness since the beginning of recorded history. The Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert says that every psychologist must, at some point in his or her career, write a version of what he calls “The Sentence.” Specifically, The Sentence reads like this:

The human being is the only animal that ______.The story of humans’ sense of self is, you might say, the story of failed, debunked versions of The Sentence. Except now it’s not just the animals that we’re worried about.

We once thought humans were unique for using language, but this seems less certain each year; we once thought humans were unique for using tools, but this claim also erodes with ongoing animal-behavior research; we once thought humans were unique for being able to do mathematics, and now we can barely imagine being able to do what our calculators can.

If this is the case, then the Turing Test, or Ken Jenning’s battle with a computer on Jeopardy!, become the final battleground as humans lose what we thought made us distinct: thinking or reasoning. But this quick definition of human selfhood seems to leave out a very important component: the human search for meaning. Sociologists, like Peter Berger, have talked about this for decades in order to help explain the prevalence of religion. Berger argued that religions arise because people have enduring questions about why the world is the way it is and what their place is in it. Do other animals pose such existential questions? Is spirituality or religiosity what might really separate humans from other animals?

2. As the writer explains his strategy for showing the judges that he is human, he recounts past conversations computer programs have had with humans. Several of these were quite interesting. One program from the 1960s, Eliza, took a more therapeutic approach to dealing with humans:

User: Men are all alike.

Eliza: In what way?

User: They’re always bugging us about something or other.

Eliza: Can you think of a specific example?

User: Well, my boyfriend made me come here.

Eliza: Your boyfriend made you come here.

User: He says I’m depressed much of the time.

Eliza: I am sorry to hear you are depressed.

User: It’s true. I am unhappy.

Eliza: Do you think coming here will help you not to be unhappy?

User: I need some help, that much seems certain.

Eliza: What would it mean to you if you got some help?

User: Perhaps I could learn to get along with my mother.

Eliza: Tell me more about your family.

This program was apparently quite effective in fooling people and some even went off to have therapeutic conversations with this program. Another program acted belligerent at random points and threw some people off.

It sounds like these computer programs will continue to get more sophisticated.

Raw broadband data

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Curious about what your broadband Internet options are?  Ars Technica has a write-up on the U.S. government’s recently released National Broadband Map:

The map indicates that up to 10 percent of Americans still don’t have access to broadband speeds that support basic broadband uses like video and video conferencing, notes the DoC’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration.”There are still too many people and community institutions lacking the level of broadband service needed to fully participate in the Internet economy,” intoned NTIA Chief Lawrence Strickling, following the map’s release.

But the good news is that the National Broadband Map is very accessible and lots of fun.

Indeed it is.  Have fun exploring the data.

Modeling “wordquakes”

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Several researchers suggest that certain words on the Internet are used in patterns similar to those of earthquakes:

News tends to move quickly through the public consciousness, noted physicist Peter Klimek of the Medical University of Vienna and colleagues in a paper posted on arXiv.org. Readers usually absorb a story, discuss it with their friends, and then forget it. But some events send lasting reverberations through society, changing opinions and even governments.

“It is tempting to see such media events as a human, social excitable medium,” wrote Klimek’s team. “One may view them as a social analog to earthquakes.”…

Events that came from outside the blogosphere also seemed to exhibit aftershocks that line up with Omori’s law for the frequency of earthquake aftershocks.

“We show that the public reception of news reports follow a similar statistic as earthquakes do,” the researchers conclude. “One might also think of a ‘Richter scale’ for media events.”

“I always think it’s interesting when people exploit the scale of online media to try to understand human behavior,” said Duncan Watts, a researcher at Yahoo! Research who describes himself as a “reformed physicist who has become a sociologist.”

But he notes that drawing mathematical analogies between unrelated phenomena doesn’t mean there’s any deeper connection. A lot of systems, including views on YouTube, activity on Facebook, number of tweets on Twitter, avalanches, forest fires, power outages and hurricanes all show frequency graphs similar to earthquakes.

“But they’re all generated by different processes,” Watts said. “To suggest that the same mechanism is at work here is kind of absurd. It sort of can’t be true.”

A couple of things are of note:

1. One of the advantages of the Internet as a medium is that people can fairly easily track these sorts of social phenomenon. The data is often in front of our eyes and once collected and put into a spreadsheet or data program is like any other dataset.

2. An interesting quote from the story: the “reformed physicist who has become a sociologist.” This pattern that looks similar to an earthquake is interesting. But sociologists would also want to know why this is the case and what factors affect the initial “wordquake” and subsequent aftershocks. (But it is interesting that the paper was developed by physicists: how many sociologists would look at this word frequency data and think of an earthquake pattern?)

2a. Just thinking about these word frequencies, how does this earthquake model differ from other options for looking at this sort of data? For example, researchers have used diffusion models to examine the spread of riots. Is a diffusion model better than an earthquake model for this phenomena?

3. Does this model offer any predictive power? That is, does it give us any insights into what words may set off “wordquakes” in the future?

Follow-up: Netflix vs. sewage

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Update:  There is a follow-up post available here.

Last week, I posted a reply to Alan Roth’s post over at The Hill comparing the economics of Netflix with D.C. sewage treatment.  Although Mr. Roth sent his follow-up later that same day, I have not had a chance to respond until now.  Here is what he said:

Thanks for your comment and for giving me the opportunity to reply and clarify. Unfortunately, I think you ARE missing something — or at least, not understanding my basic point.

For starters, despite the title of your blog entry, this has nothing to do with net neutrality. Netflix’s own CEO acknowledges as much in his shareholder letter, where he says that the FCC’s recent Open Internet order dealt with ISPs’ relationships with their retail customers, not their business arrangements with upstream wholesalers. He then goes on to make an argument about who should bear what costs.

My analogy likewise relates to the issue of equitable cost-sharing among the users of a network. And whatever you might want to say about who provides how much “value” and to whom, the fact is that the data bits in question here are largely flowing in one direction, just as the sewage being treated at Blue Plains is flowing in one direction.

You’re right that Netflix has built or rented its own lines up to the interconnection point with the local ISP — just as the suburbs have built their own sewer lines up to the interconnection points at the DC border. But the expense of taking both the data and the sewage to their ultimate destination is vastly greater in the last mile than in the first. If WASA’s retail ratepayers had to foot that whole bill themselves, you could be sure that one of two things would happen: Either DC would tell the ‘burbs, “sorry, ain’t gonna take your sh*t no more,” or DC would stop investing in its sewage treatment capacity at Blue Plains and elsewhere in its system. Or both.

Not a good outcome there. If reasonable, thoughtful people in the DC metro area have been able to agree that the sharing of capital, operating, and maintenance costs for that ultimate destination is both appropriate and economically sensible, it’s hard to believe that Netflix — which currently pays the US Postal Service hundreds of millions of dollars each year to have a postal worker deliver its DVDs to its customers’ homes — doesn’t think it should have to pay a cent to get the same end product to those homes via a different delivery infrastructure.

But I do appreciate your willingness to engage in a healthy dialogue and to allow me to draw out the analogy a little further.

Here is my reply:

I guess we’re still at an impasse on the issue of who is paying for what. In the long run, it is the customers that are paying for the total cost of service provided, both for sewage and for video on demand.

In the case of sewer services, the retail customers pay their suburban sewage provider money to make their sewage go away. They don’t really care how it happens; they just want it to happen. According to your description of the process, “how it happens” involves a two-step process: (1) the local D.C. suburb maintains the lines to local houses that first take the sewage away and (2) WASA maintains the Blue Plains facility that treats the waste. I agree with you that it is totally appropriate for WASA to require payment from local suburbs for step (2) as a “subcontractor” (probably not the technical, legal relationship, but seems to be functionally equivalent). I think we also can both agree that the suburbs probably pass on their costs for step (2) directly to their retail customers.

In the case of Netflix, however, the retail customers pay TWO entities: (1) their ISP and (2) Netflix. You are correct that a similar, two-step process occurs with the video delivery as with the sewage: (1) the ISP maintains the lines to local houses that bring the bits in and (2) Netflix maintains the servers and the connections to the “regional front doors” (to use your phrase) that provide the streaming. (Also, of course, Netflix pays the underlying content owners for the use of their works.)

Again, however, unlike with D.C. sewage, the retail customer is paying both actors directly: both the ISP and Netflix are receiving a monthly payment from the customer.

Given this state of affairs, I’m more than a little confused by your argument that the ISPs have the moral high ground in demanding payment from Netflix. All ISP’s are providing here is a connection to the wider Internet (to the “regional front doors”). Retail customers then pay Netflix for the rest because Netflix is providing the rest. On what basis do the ISP’s challenge Netflix’s contention that it “should pay only to transport its bits to a regional gateway, after which the costs of delivery to the end point would fall on others”? Doesn’t that precisely reflect how retail customers are being billed?

The only justification I can see for your position is if subsidies are involved-in other words, ISP’s are somehow lowering their retail customers’ bills for Internet service because they are paid by content providers. If that’s true, however, that is very different situation from the D.C. sewage situation to which you analogize.

Feel free to jump in with comments.

Senate hearing on COICA

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Ars Technica has a good wrap-up of yesterday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the proposed Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA):

The bill would give the government legal tools to blacklist a “rogue” website from the Internet’s Domain Name System, ban credit card companies from processing US payments to the site, and forbid US-based online ad networks from working with the site. It even directs the government to keep a list of suspect sites, even though no evidence has been presented against them in court.

If you’d like to watch the hearing yourself, video is available on the Senate’s website (note:  the actual video doesn’t begin until around the 20 minute 15 second mark).

CBS infringes…itself

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From the left-hand-doesn’t-know-what-the-right-hand-is-doing department, CBS appears to have infringed its own copyrighted works:

A CBS reporter embedded a video of one of their own pieces of content onto a CBS-owned web property. Only to have it soon yanked down by lawyers (or lawyer-bots – AKA auto-DMCA patrol).

Click on over to the original piece on The Future Buzz to see the screenshot, which is pretty hysterical.

A $4000 mistake

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Talk about turning lemons into lemonade.  A Canadian-based copywriting firm is attempting to parlay a very expensive mistake into favorable publicity:

“Like many other creative types in the web industry, our copywriters were not clear on image copyright laws, and we were taught an expensive lesson,” said Rick Sloboda, Senior Web Copywriter at Webcopyplus, which provides designers and businesses optimized web content. “We’re sharing our story, so others can learn from our experience and avoid the same mistake.”

In May, 2010, with the assumption Web images without copyright notices were “public domain” and free to use, a Webcopyplus copywriter used Google images to find an unmarked 400 x 300 pixel scenic photo to complement an article for a tourism client’s blog.

Webcopyplus has posted additional details on their blog, as well as some resources for obtaining stock photography in a way that won’t get one sued (including Creative Commons photos available via Flickr).

San Fran “coffeehouse and tech incubator” inspired by idea of “third places”

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Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has said in recent years that the company seeks to become a “third place,” a space between work and home. This term was popularized by sociologist Ray Oldenburg in The Great Good Place. But exactly how a coffee shop should operate in order to be a third place is up for debate. A new San Francisco firm, The Summit Cafe, envisions a coffeeshop plus a center for technological incubation:

With its copious power outlets, Gouda-wrapped meatballs, and a curated magazine rack featuring vintage Steve Jobs covers, the Summit café sits at the intersection of San Francisco’s three most conspicuous tribes: techies, foodies, and yuppies. Yet what separates the Summit from being just another Wi-Fi boîte is the dual-purpose nature of the 5,000-square-foot space. One floor above the Laptop Mafia, the café features a cluster of offices where groups of programmers and developers toil away in an effort to launch the next Twitter—or at least the next OkCupid. Created by i/o Ventures, a Bay Area startup accelerator comprising former executives from MySpace (NWS), Yahoo! (YHOO), and file-sharing site BitTorrent, the Summit is equal parts Bell Labs and Central Perk—and probably the country’s first official coffeehouse tech incubator. Every four months, i/o selects and funds a handful of small tech ventures to the tune of $25,000 each in return for 8 percent of common stock. In addition to the cash, each team gets four months of office space at the Summit, mentoring from Web gurus like Russel Simmons of Yelp, and discounts on all the Pickle & Cheese Plates or White Snow Peony Tea they could possibly need. Since the café opened on Valencia Street last fall, two companies have already been sold, including damntheradio, a Facebook fan management tool. To hedge against any potential risk, i/o also rents half of the Summit’s other desk space to independent contractors and fledgling Web entrepreneurs. It’s even experimenting with an arrangement in which customers can pay $500 for a dedicated desk—on top of a $250 membership fee.

Is this sort of thing only possible in San Francisco (high-tech culture) or perhaps just in major cities?

But this space does seem more like a work space than a true third place. Are there people who come here just to hang out? Do fledgling companies that come here mix with other fledgling companies to form new ideas and firms?

Is search engine optimization key to Huffington Post’s success?

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This article suggests the Huffington Post’s value (exhibited in its recent sale to AOL) is based more on search engine optimization than on news or citizen journalism:

In addition to writing articles based on trending Google searches, The Huffington Post writes headlines like a popular one this week, “Watch: Christina Aguilera Totally Messes Up National Anthem.” It amasses often-searched phrases at the top of articles, like the 18 at the top of the one about Ms. Aguilera, including “Christina Aguilera National Anthem” and “Christina Aguilera Super Bowl.”

As a result of techniques like these, 35 percent of The Huffington Post’s visits in January came from search engines, compared to 20 percent for CNN.com, according to Hitwise, a Web analysis firm.

Mario Ruiz, a spokesman for The Huffington Post, said search engine optimization played a role on the site but declined to discuss how it was used.

Though traditional print journalists might roll their eyes at picking topics based on Google searches, the articles can actually be useful for readers. The problem, analysts say, is when Web sites publish articles just to get clicks, without offering any real payoff for readers.

This is an ongoing issue with online news providers: simply producing good journalistic content doesn’t get the same number of clicks as celebrity and gossip-laden stories. And as the article suggests, some search engines, such as Google, may fight back by reducing the rank or placement of pages or sites that rely heavily on popular keywords.

But aren’t these sorts of practice inevitable when making money on the Internet is based around page views and clicking on advertisements? The goal has to be simply getting the most viewers rather than providing the best or more complete or most useful content.