Scherillo v. Dun & Bradstreet, Inc., 2010 WL 537805 (E.D.N.Y. Feb. 17, 2010)

I teach my Cyberspace Law students that the most effective online contract formation process is a "mandatory non-leaky clickthrough agreement":

* mandatory = the user cannot proceed to the destination without going through a screen soliciting their consent to the user agreement.
* non-leaky = there are no alternative ways the user can reach the destination. I realize this is redundant with "mandatory," but I remind students that a seemingly mandatory process can have leaks. For example, if customer support representatives will manually set up user accounts occasionally, the mandatory online process has become leaky because now a few users reached the destination without consenting to the agreement.
* clickthrough = the user manifests assent to the contract by clicking, and the user is told that the click signifies assent.

There are other ways to form online contracts (e.g., email exchanges), but if executed properly, the mandatory non-leaky clickthrough process should do very well against contract formation challenges. But even this description leaves open a number of user interaction judgments. Does likelihood of contract formation vary if:

* the agreement terms are presented on the clickthrough page itself or are only available for review by hyperlink?
* the agreement terms are presented in a scrollbox? If a scrollbox is used, must the user be forced to scroll through the scrollbox?
* the user is asked to check an additional box, such as a certification that the user has read the agreement?

In all of these cases, I believe the contract should be properly formed whether the answer to these questions is yes or no. However, I'm now a fan of adding a bonus mandatory checkbox as part of the formation process after reading today's opinion. A user mounts a sophisticated challenge to a mandatory non-leaky clickthrough process, and the bonus mandatory checkbox helps squelch the challenge. I think the court would have enforced it without the checkbox, but it sure put the user in an awkward/untenable position.

Scherillo bought a financial report about a company from Dun & Bradstreet's Small Business Solutions website. Scherillo alleges that the report painted an overly rosy picture of the company, leading him to make bad investment decisions that cost him money when the company tanked. Scherillo wants D&B to cover his investment losses.

Scherillo is almost certain to lose on the merits. Indeed, this case brought to mind one of the earliest cyberlaw cases, Daniel v. Dow Jones, 520 N.Y.S. 2d 334 (N.Y.C. Civ. Ct. Spec. Term 1987). (This case is a fun read--see how the court discusses electronic networked communications almost a quarter-century ago). That case involved Dow Jones' publication of an ambiguous report via a dial-up online service that led the plaintiff to make a bad investment decision. The court said that any tort claim for publishing inaccurate information required the plaintiff to show that it had a "special relationship" (analogous to a fiduciary relationship) with the information vendor, and an ordinary customer-vendor relationship did not qualify as a special relationship.

Interestingly, D&B would rather hear the case in NJ rather than keep it in NY and hope to benefit from substantive NY law that surely would doom Scherillo's case. (Perhaps NJ has a similar law). To move the case to NJ, D&B invoked the venue selection clause in its user agreement. Let's look at the online contract formation process. The court says:

"since 2007, the SBS website has included a page that requires users to register before purchasing a Dun and Bradstreet product ("the registration page"). On the registration page, users input information, including their e-mail address and name. The bottom quarter to third of the page contains a scrollable text box with the title "Terms and Conditions" [which contained a mandatory venue selection clause designating NJ]. Directly below this text box there is more text that reads: "I have read and AGREE to the terms and conditions shown above." Immediately adjacent to this text is a much smaller, empty box ("the terms and conditions check box"). Also at the bottom of the page is another box containing the phrase "Complete Registration" ("the Complete Registration box"). Clicking on this box completes the user's registration. McDonald testified that if a user clicks on the Complete Registration box without checking the terms and conditions check box, the user is unable to complete registration and is returned to the registration page."

Check out the page yourself as I saw it in Google Chrome on Feb. 18 (with cropping). The formation process looks pretty standard to me.

Scherillo attacked the formation process by saying he never consented to the agreement because "it was possible for him to unknowingly and involuntarily 'check' the terms and conditions check box." Not only that, he lined up Sean Chumura, "a cyberwarfare and computer forensics expert" who is also [LINK NSFW] helping Perfect 10 in its lawsuit against Google, to testify that "it was possible for plaintiff, while 'tabbing' through the registration page, to inadvertently hit the space bar and thereby 'check' the terms and conditions box."

[Snarky paragraph alert] First, this may prove the adage that you can find an expert to testify about ANYTHING. Second, Scherillo alleged $75k of investment losses. For a low-value lawsuit like that, he needs a cyberwarfare expert??? Third, I believe Chumura has a MySpace page. Really...? I wonder if he uses an AOL.com email address too. The MySpace page also reveals that its author appeared to attend the Dan Quayle school of spelling.

OK, back to the case. The judge was no more tolerant of this nonsense than I am. He resolves the factual dispute by saying:

even under plaintiff's theory--that, while "tabbing" through the fields on the registration page, he accidentally hit the space bar key and thereby "checked" the terms and conditions box--plaintiff would have seen the check mark appear in the box and then still would have had to hit the "return" key (or clicked the "complete registration" box with the mouse) to complete the registration and advance to the next screen. Plaintiff would have had an opportunity to see that he checked the box inadvertently before he then hit the return key on the "complete registration" box. Thus, to accept plaintiff's theory, the Court would have to find that plaintiff hit two keys accidentally-the space bar and the return key-and that he was then involuntarily and unexpectedly sent to the next screen where he nonetheless proceeded to enter his credit card information and complete the purchase of the report. This alleged chain of events is simply not credible.

Therefore, Scherillo's click on the "Complete Registration" box manifested Scherillo's assent to the terms, even if Scherillo chose not to review them. The court says that the fact that the terms were in a scrollbox is immaterial, and the fact that some sites require the user to scroll through the scrollbox before proceeding doesn't affect the effectiveness of D&B's implementation.

I believe this court would have upheld the formation process even without the bonus checkbox, but you can see how the checkbox defused the withering assault of a cyberwarfare expert. Thus, you might consider implementing the bonus checkbox to discourage similar silly attacks against your contract formation process in the future.

Less than 100 tickets remain for Mashable's Social Media Week event, NextUp NYC The Future Journalist on Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 at 92YTribeca.

Join us for networking and a conversation and Q&A with Sree Sreenivasan (Professor and Columbia Journalism School Dean of Student Affairs and contributing editor of DNAinfo.com) and Vadim Lavrusik (new media journalist and digital media graduate student at Columbia University Journalism School).

Details

Location: 92Y Tribeca, 200 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10013

Socialize: Facebook Event Page

Pricing: $20 in advance, $25 at door. Tickets on Sale Now.

Food and drink: Full cash bar and food menu available

Schedule

• 6:00 7:15 = Open Networking
• 7:15 8:45 = Conversation and Q&A with Sree Sreenivasan and Vadim Lavrusik
• 8:45 Bar Close = Open Networking

A Conversation and Q&A with:

Sree Sreenivasan Prof. Sree Sreenivasan, Columbia Journalism School Dean of Student Affairs and contributing editor, DNAinfo.com.

Sree Sreenivasan is a tech evangelist and skeptic specializing in explaining technology to non-techies. He is a professor and dean of students affairs at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, where he teaches in the digital media program. Sreenivasan is contributing editor at DNAinfo.com, a Manhattan-news startup he helped launch in 2009 with Joe Ricketts, the founder of Ameritrade and whose family just bought the Chicago Cubs and Wrigley Field. He also has been a fixture on NYC-area television. For more than eight years, he served as technology reporter for WABC-TV and WNBC-TV and now occasionally appears on various TV shows (on CNN, NBC's Today Show, CNBC and elsewhere) to talk tech. He has written articles for The New York Times, BusinessWeek, Rolling Stone, National Journal, Bloomberg, Forbes and Popular Science. You can find him on Twitter at twitter.com/sreenet and on the Web at sree.net.

Vadim Lavrusik Online journalist and M.S. candidate in Digital Media at Columbia Journalism School

Vadim Lavrusik is a new media journalist and social media consultant studying digital media at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism where he is launching NYC 3.0, a tech start-up news site as part of his Master's project. He's reported for publications like the Star Tribune, The Minnesota Daily, the Mpls./St. Paul Business Journal and most recently was a guest feature writer for Mashable.com, where he covered trends in news media, and contributed to Poynter Online's E-Media Tidbits. You can follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/lavrusik and the Web lavrusik.com.

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Tags: Events, nextup-nyc, social media week

Our little Apple Tablet scavenger hunt has come up mostly empty-handed. Steve Jobs is gonna drop some knowledge on us today, and we're as in the dark (mostly) as we were weeks ago. And you know what? One of the main things we've learned from this little exercise is that the people who are most interested in today's announcement are also the least interested to learn anything in advance.

Here was one of the most fascinating and downright poignant responses our contest elicited, from a reader in India:

I want to make a kind request to you please to call your scavenger hunt off.

We all know why we are so intensely trying to find out the littlest morsel of information about the Apple Tablet and are hardly interested in any other company's slate device - only because Apple will create history with such a device.

I want to emphasize on the fact that Apple puts a lot of effort to building keynotes, which, for many people like myself, are like blockbuster movies. We never had the fortune of being at a live one, so we try to make the best of it being streamed online. Like you remember at the 2007 iPhone keynote, every other moment there was surprise. People had never seen anything quite like it before. And all of it coming from Steve Jobs made it a historical day in technology.

It is my earnest request to you, please let Apple do it again. We all want to know what the Tablet is going to be like. Your bounty offer may (and probably will) instigate people who want to sell their souls. I'm not blaming you or criticizing you. We don't want a few details or pictures to leak out before the official announcement. There's just a few more days left till Jan 27. Please let Steve Jobs introduce it the Apple way. Pretty please. It will be a lot more fun !

Would this guy have clicked through if we had received a real picture? Most definitely. Has he probably clicked on all of the hundreds of mocked up photos and videos? Almost certainly. But the fact that those were fakes was all part of the fun. Sure it's all a bit cynical in its consumerist frenzy, but the Apple's big, heavy-handed reveals are also a good time a bit of mystery, of (imagined) corporate intrigue, of envisioning suddenly-available outer space future products that were previously just the stuff of science fiction classics like Freejack and Demolition Man. (Classics, I tell you!) Remember the iPhone? When ol' Jobsy carted that thing out a few years ago it sufficiently blew most of our brain bones, and wasn't that kind of fun. I mean, rather than knowing all its details ahead of time?

Like blockbuster movies! That's sort of sweet in an irredeemably nerdy way, isn't it? There is something about the grandeur and anticipation of one of these keynote magic shows. Yes it's all nasty and capitalistic and cold and inhuman, but a little bit of excitement never hurt anyone, especially in these penurious times, when a Cosmo centerfold has assumed the regency and rules us all from his throne made of the bones of the New York Yankees.

That doesn't mean every scrap of purported "truth" about Apple's mystery tablet can't drive tons of pageviews (I mean, uniques!). But the real kick of feverish Lost guessing and obsessive Tablet rumoring is the pure joy of speculation with gleeful abandon. Here's the root truth of it all: No one actually wants to be proven right, because then it would all be over and we'd just return to our lives, the answer never actually being as big as we'd hoped, nay, dreamed.

It's a childish thing this entity we call imagination just turned a bit hard and practical by adulthood. No longer do we imagine whole unknown worlds existing in wardrobes or cupboards, but we can be fascinated with the possibilities of that ABC show starring the dude from Party of Five and the potentiality that Penny's computerbook from Inspector Gadget might sort of be real. The minute those youthful fantasies are quelled and quieted by cold hard facts, well... the whole activity loses a bit of its sparkle.

It's the kind of thing the internet can ruin too often. Take another small pleasure: movie previews. Remember movie previews? Oftentimes they were the best part of the whole moviegoing experience. What fresh new hell awaited us come springtime? What joys would poet-scholar John Woo soon be foisting upon us? It was nice to see some new things, things you'd never heard of!, before settling into your seat and getting progressively more bored by your feature presentation. They made movies seem big, eventful, singular. If you wanted to see what was coming up, you had to go sit in the dark and wait for them to show you. But now! Now you've got internet web sites all over the highway that'll show you a teaser sneak trailer for a movie that won't be out until Armistice Day 2014. They've got previews for everything, those internet people. And it ruins all the fun.

Sure it's still sort of exciting when they pop up on the online, but it ruins some of the formality, it just spreads and bleeds the thing out so everyone can see it. Movie previews aren't as controlled and specific anymore. By the time they're up on the flickering screen there, I've already seen them three times over. It's boring, it's vaguely sad to have basically ended this tiny pleasure I enjoyed as a kid. I don't know why I do it to myself. And yet I do.

Though I suppose the whole ruined movie trailers thing isn't the same as a spoiler. A spoiler would be, like... someone telling me about Lost, I guess. Well, I haven't spent five sweaty years emotionally invested in just what the fuck the iTablet or iPad or whatever is all about, but it's still the same giddy joy of anticipation. In the end, what do we get out of either thing? Nothing, really. We're either $700 poorer or we're in six years of emotional debt to friends and family for being unbearably annoying about What Is In the Hatch. But screw it, we gotta take fun where we can get it and I appreciate it not being squashed.

So thank you Apple robot security guards for taking your whirring steel pincer claws and strangling that lab tech who was trying to smuggle an iNewspaper out of the office. That entrepreneurial fellow (he'd have been a hundred-thousandaire!) didn't die in vain. A not-so-well-kept secret is kept so for a few more hours, which will give me (and all of youuu) some dull sort of pleasure in an otherwise bleak and windswept wintry state of the union. Surprises are good almost always better than knowing even when it's about electronic products I don't understand and can't afford. Maybe even especially then.

As startups enter the marketplace they are often looking for early adopters and evangelists for their product. A great way to get users on board is to create a developer community around the core product. A developer community is more involved than typical community creation.

A typical community is created through early access in a alpha or beta stage. Requests are made of the early adopters to give feedback on the product through message boards, email or most recently services like GetSatisfaction. It is the norm for these types of communities to focus on putting out fires due to outtages or product redesign. A developer community is different.

Developer community is a vessel of evangelism, product roadmap and pool of potential employees.

Here's how to create and groom a developer community:

1. It needs to be a win

The first thing to do is to understand what motivates a developer. There are plenty of things but the esoteric problem solving is at the top of that list.

2. Treat the developers like rock stars

Go above and beyond to make sure that developers feel appreciated and reward them with contests, prizes, full code examples in a few languages and complete documentation. Also, let them see inside your company and work with your staff.

3. Allow them to create the next big thing

This pays two dividends to developers credibility and monetary. Developers can advance in their career by developing apps around your product or create job stability for themselves think legacy products. Enough said on this one.

4. Grooming

During this stage there are two things that are important: a staff member(s) dedicated to supporting the community and continuing to quench their desire to be best problem solver in room. On the latter, they often they are, so keep feeding them challenges.

A successful developer program depends on the amount of effort that your business puts into it. The yield of the program depends on it. Sun Microsystems and Intel are two great examples of engaged and active developer communities.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Grooming a Developer Community is a post from: TechStartups.com

The question of what effect an employee's disloyalty has on authorization to access an employer's computer has arisen in numerous cases in which employers have added civil claims under the CFAA in actions brought against employees alleged to have misappropriated of trade secrets. A typical scenario in which such a claim would be made is where, before departing for a new job, the employee is alleged to have copied or transmitted an employer's computer files for the benefit of a new employer.

Often, what is at stake in such cases is the employer's ability to maintain an action in federal court. A dispute over misappropriation of trade secrets is likely to involve only state law issues, and unless there is diversity of the parties, there is no basis for jurisdiction in a federal court. But, of course, federal courts have jurisdiction over a CFAA claim, and the trade secret misappropriation claims are then swept into federal court along with the CFAA claim as pendent state law claims.

The Seventh Circuit opinion in International Airport Centers v. Citrin is the ruling that is cited by employers seeking to press CFAA claims in such cases. In that case the circuit, in an opinion written by Judge Posner, ruled that under common law agency principles, an employee who breaches the duty of loyalty to an employer thereby becomes unauthorized to access the employer's computer, at least for the purpose of furthering an act of disloyalty to the employer. In LVRC Holdings, LLC v Brekka, the Ninth Circuit ruled to the contrary, finding that under the plain meaning of the language of the CFAA, acts of disloyalty on the part of an employee do not render the employee's access to the employer's computer unauthorized within the meaning of the statute.

In LVRC, the Ninth Circuit panel concluded that under the ordinary, contemporary, common meaning of the statutory terms, an employer gives an employee 'authorization' to access a computer when the employer gives the employee permission to use it. The court found that there is no statutory language to support the contention that authorization terminates when an employee determines to act contrary to the interest of an employer. The court looked to the term "exceeds authorized access," and concluded that the definition of that term made it clear that Congress had no intent to include in the statute any implicit, rather than explicit, limitation on the term authorization. It is an employer's act of allowing or terminating an employer's authorization to access a computer that determines whether the employee's access is authorized within the meaning of the statute, not the employee's disloyal act. The court reasoned:

Section 1030(e)(6) provides: the term exceeds authorized access' means to access a computer with authorization and to use such access to obtain or alter information in the computer that the accesser is not entitled so to obtain or alter. 18 U.S.C. 1030(e)(6). As this definition makes clear, an individual who is authorized to use a computer for certain purposes but goes beyond those limitations is considered by the CFAA as someone who has exceed[ed] authorized access. On the other hand, a person who uses a computer without authorization has no rights, limited or otherwise, to access the computer in question. In other words, for purposes of the CFAA, when an employer authorizes an employee to use a company computer subject to certain limitations, the employee remains authorized to use the computer even if the employee violates those limitations. It is the employer's decision to allow or to terminate an employee's authorization to access a computer that determines whether the employee is with or without authorization.

The Ninth Circuit rejected the Seventh Circuit's reasoning in International Airport Centers, LLC v. Citrin, concluding that relying on whether an employee's mental state changed from loyal employee to disloyal competitor to determine whether the statute had been violated would be problematic in the criminal law context. The statute should be interpreted consistently in civil and criminal contexts, the court reasoned. Relying on the employee's mental state with respect to disloyalty to determine whether the statute had been violated would run afoul of the proscription against interpreting criminal statutes in surprising and novel ways that impose unexpected burdens on defendants.

In this respect, the ruling echoes (but does not cite) the recent district court opinion in United States v. Drew, No. CR 08-0582-GW (C.D. Cal. Aug. 28, 2009) (the MySpace "cyberbullying" criminal prosecution). There, the court dismissed a misdemeanor charge of violating the CFAA that was predicated on a user's alleged violation of the MySpace Terms of Service, finding that it would run afoul of the void for vagueness doctrine because individuals of 'common intelligence' arguably would not be on notice that a breach of the terms of a service contract could become a crime under the CFAA.

And conversely, the Ninth Circuit ruling appears to contradict the recent opinion in United States v. Nosal, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 31423 (N.D. Cal. Apr. 13, 2009), in which the district court declined to dismiss an indictment charging a violation of 18 U.S.C. 1030(a)(4). The indictment alleged that the statute was violated when a former employee accessed an employer''s computer network to copy proprietary information for use in a competitive enterprise. The court found that the statutory element of intent to defraud in subsection 1030(a)(4) could be found in the employee''s knowing access of electronic records for uses outside their intended purpose. The court in Nosal also rejected the defendant''s argument that because subsection 1030(a)(4) had never been addressed in the criminal context the indictment should be dismissed under the rule of lenity. Citing International Airport Centers, LLC v. Citrin and a number of opinions following it, the court found that there was ample authority in civil cases construing this section to conclude that the CFAA was violated by the 'access to the employer's confidential and proprietary information to advance his own competitive enterprise.

No doubt more will be heard on this issue in the Ninth Circuit, and other courts as well. And eventually, perhaps, the U.S. Supreme Court.

My guest for this week's Innovators show is Mike Dunn, a veteran media technologist who recently attended, and spoke at, the 2009 Semantic Technology. Mike and I were both impressed by Tom Tague's keynote talk, which avoided theory and focused on practical ways that here-and-now semantic technologies are helping media businesses work smarter and more profitably. In this conversation, Mike describes some of the ways that his company, Hearst Media Interactive, is proving that point.

Search engine optimization is currently one of the best ways to profit from data-enabled content. Meanwhile, one of the expected benefits of semantic technology better search recall and precision hasn't materialized. But although most users may not care about querying archives more comprehensively and more precisely, writers and editors should. And not only because it helps automate the assembly of context around a current story. If you can review an archive in a precise and comprehensive way, you can do a better job of planning future stories that acknowledge and advance the ones you've already done.

Stay's main beef with the changes is that no one was notified of these changes (to verify_credentials(), incidentally). Stay further reported that an email response from a Twitter rep stated that the company "assumed (apparently incorrectly) that people were only using this method occasionally."

Sponsor

The change in the API limits the number of username/password verifications to 15 per hour. According to the afore-linked developer wiki, "Because this method can be a vector for a brute force dictionary attack to determine a user's password, it is limited to 15 requests per 60 minute period (starting from your first request)." The wiki language was changed June 29.

Granted, Twitter has had a bit of a media tsunami on its hands lately, but we still must note that no official announcement has been made about the API changes. This seems to be the case with other API changes, as well. For example, earlier this month, API request limits were increased from 100 to 150, as several blogs and end users noted at that time. No official announcement was made; the information was confirmed, as with this most recent change, through an update to the API wiki.

Although the company is usually tight-lipped, do you think developers whose apps and livelihoods rely on the service and the API deserve a dedicated blog? Google Code is a great resource that acknowledges the ecosystem of apps built around that company's APIs.

Even if Twitter can't afford to support developers with resources of a Googlesque stature, we do tend to feel that developers who rely on the API deserve advance warning of certain changes, even ones the company might consider minor. As it stands, app developers are subjected to a string of pleasant surprises followed by sucker punches.

Time is usually - nearly always - displayed by a circular indication: one dial and two (or three) with the time displayed around a perpetual circle. However, this 360 representation of time goes against everything we learnt as we grew up drawing a straight line on a blank page and marking it Past, Present and Future. Why do we think of time as travelling in a straight line yet display it rotating around a circle? The answer is straightforward: mechanisms that continually rotate are much simpler to produce than those that trace a straight line then return to zero. In fact, the latter is so difficult that, until now, nobody has ever managed to develop a production wristwatch with true retrograde linear displays.

The triple-cam is crafted from bronze beryllium, a metal selected for its inherently self-lubricating properties and low co-efficient of friction, and takes the form of three small inclines. The precise shape of the curve of the incline is relayed to the pivoting rack, while the teeth on the end of the rack mesh with and rotate the minute cylinder. The triple-cam makes a complete rotation in three hours so that each of the three inclines takes 60 minutes, and 180 points of reference have been calculated on each of the three cams to ensure the precise and isochronic rotation of the minute cylinder.

Model: UR-CC1

Case: available in either grey gold with titanium case back (limited edition of 25 pieces) or black gold with titanium case back (limited edition of 25 pieces); brushed-satin finish

Movement: calibre UR-CC1; automatic winding regulated by fly brake turbine pneumatic shock absorber

Indications: linear display for hours and minutes with jumping hours and retrograde minutes ; second display both digital and linear

Dimensions: 45.7mm x 43.5mm x 15mm

Dial and Bridges: ARCAP P40. SuperLumiNova treatment on hours, minutes displays

Genesis of a creation

1958. Messrs Gilbert Albert and Louis Cottier combine their talents to create a watch destined to revolutionize the horological world. Their idea is completely outrageous: it is the world's first watch to feature a linear display. It is an extraordinary, avant-garde piece that fulfils none of the aesthetic criteria of the time. As for its linear indication, the idea may seem simple but the execution is a technical headache of monumental proportions. However Messrs Albert and Cottier believe in it and they stick with it, creating a prototype for Patek Philippe.

1959. A patent is deposited by Louis Cottier, detailing the technical scale of the achievement. Then nothing. The prototype is put on to one side. Does the watch even work? Today nobody knows for sure. It took its place in the corner of the Patek Philippe museum and proceeded to arouse curiosity from time to time.

1998. With pencil and paper Martin Frei, co-founder of the URWERK brand and an aesthete at heart, sketches the first outline of his future creation: a watch in which the hours and minutes are indicated by two straight, parallel lines. But he hesitates. With Felix Baumgartner, master watch-maker and co-founder of URWERK, another idea springs to mind the concept of the hour satellite, presented for the first time at Basel. The earlier project is postponed, sine die.

2006. URWERK is henceforth known and recognized for its mechanical hour satellite watches in which orbiting hour satellites indicate the minutes. But the idea of developing a different way of telling the time continues to fascinate Felix Baumgartner. In the end it is the Alfred Hitchcock film The Birds that gives him the decisive nudge in the right direction. In one of the most famous scenes from the film, the heroine seeks refuge in an old Dodge. The image lasts only a few seconds but it is crucial a close-up of the dashboard and its linear speedometer. Yes. That's it! A continuous line with which to mark time. Felix and Martin work non-stop on this new project. Their research leads them to the discovery of Gilbert Albert and Louis Cottier's watch. It will be their muse.

Original Prototype Movement

Watchmaker Felix Baumgartner

I am not big on nostalgia, but I have always loved the linear speedometers found on old cars. My older brother had a 1960's Volvo and it was that which gave us the first idea for a horological linear indication. I recently watched the film The Birds' by Alfred Hitchcock, and in it the heroine took refuge in an old Dodge with a linear speedometer- it is one of my favourite scenes. There are very few wristwatches with linear indications. One of them, if not the first, was The Cobra', which was developed in the late 1950s by Mr. Louis Cottier. It is sensational! Although it was created over half a century ago, it is still very contemporary. Unfortunately, it only exists as a single prototype and was never put into production. Now, 50 years after he filed his patent (1959), URWERK pays homage to the work of Louis Cottier by creating its own interpretation of the Cobra. -Felix Baumgartner

Designer Martin Frei

I am interested in the perception of time. Physicists tell us that time can be warped or stretched, and our daily experiences are with the circular cycles of the days, seasons and years. But I am also intrigued that time can be ordered, even straitjacketed, to flow in a linear direction - a straight line from the past, through the present, to the future. And, because this can represent an individual's lifeline, I feel that this linear format can be a very human way to look at time. That plus the fact that I think it looks really cool! -Martin Frei

Time is usually - nearly always - displayed by a circular indication: one dial and two (or three) with the time displayed around a perpetual circle. However, this 360 representation of time goes against everything we learnt as we grew up drawing a straight line on a blank page and marking it Past, Present and Future. Why do we think of time as travelling in a straight line yet display it rotating around a circle? The answer is straightforward: mechanisms that continually rotate are much simpler to produce than those that trace a straight line then return to zero. In fact, the latter is so difficult that, until now, nobody has ever managed to develop a production wristwatch with true retrograde linear displays.

The triple-cam is crafted from bronze beryllium, a metal selected for its inherently self-lubricating properties and low co-efficient of friction, and takes the form of three small inclines. The precise shape of the curve of the incline is relayed to the pivoting rack, while the teeth on the end of the rack mesh with and rotate the minute cylinder. The triple-cam makes a complete rotation in three hours so that each of the three inclines takes 60 minutes, and 180 points of reference have been calculated on each of the three cams to ensure the precise and isochronic rotation of the minute cylinder.

Model: UR-CC1

Case: available in either grey gold with titanium case back (limited edition of 25 pieces) or black gold with titanium case back (limited edition of 25 pieces); brushed-satin finish

Movement: calibre UR-CC1; automatic winding regulated by fly brake turbine pneumatic shock absorber

Indications: linear display for hours and minutes with jumping hours and retrograde minutes ; second display both digital and linear

Dimensions: 45.7mm x 43.5mm x 15mm

Dial and Bridges: ARCAP P40. SuperLumiNova treatment on hours, minutes displays

Genesis of a creation

1958. Messrs Gilbert Albert and Louis Cottier combine their talents to create a watch destined to revolutionize the horological world. Their idea is completely outrageous: it is the world's first watch to feature a linear display. It is an extraordinary, avant-garde piece that fulfils none of the aesthetic criteria of the time. As for its linear indication, the idea may seem simple but the execution is a technical headache of monumental proportions. However Messrs Albert and Cottier believe in it and they stick with it, creating a prototype for Patek Philippe.

1959. A patent is deposited by Louis Cottier, detailing the technical scale of the achievement. Then nothing. The prototype is put on to one side. Does the watch even work? Today nobody knows for sure. It took its place in the corner of the Patek Philippe museum and proceeded to arouse curiosity from time to time.

1998. With pencil and paper Martin Frei, co-founder of the URWERK brand and an aesthete at heart, sketches the first outline of his future creation: a watch in which the hours and minutes are indicated by two straight, parallel lines. But he hesitates. With Felix Baumgartner, master watch-maker and co-founder of URWERK, another idea springs to mind the concept of the hour satellite, presented for the first time at Basel. The earlier project is postponed, sine die.

2006. URWERK is henceforth known and recognized for its mechanical hour satellite watches in which orbiting hour satellites indicate the minutes. But the idea of developing a different way of telling the time continues to fascinate Felix Baumgartner. In the end it is the Alfred Hitchcock film The Birds that gives him the decisive nudge in the right direction. In one of the most famous scenes from the film, the heroine seeks refuge in an old Dodge. The image lasts only a few seconds but it is crucial a close-up of the dashboard and its linear speedometer. Yes. That's it! A continuous line with which to mark time. Felix and Martin work non-stop on this new project. Their research leads them to the discovery of Gilbert Albert and Louis Cottier's watch. It will be their muse.

Original Prototype Movement

Watchmaker Felix Baumgartner

I am not big on nostalgia, but I have always loved the linear speedometers found on old cars. My older brother had a 1960's Volvo and it was that which gave us the first idea for a horological linear indication. I recently watched the film The Birds' by Alfred Hitchcock, and in it the heroine took refuge in an old Dodge with a linear speedometer- it is one of my favourite scenes. There are very few wristwatches with linear indications. One of them, if not the first, was The Cobra', which was developed in the late 1950s by Mr. Louis Cottier. It is sensational! Although it was created over half a century ago, it is still very contemporary. Unfortunately, it only exists as a single prototype and was never put into production. Now, 50 years after he filed his patent (1959), URWERK pays homage to the work of Louis Cottier by creating its own interpretation of the Cobra. -Felix Baumgartner

Designer Martin Frei

I am interested in the perception of time. Physicists tell us that time can be warped or stretched, and our daily experiences are with the circular cycles of the days, seasons and years. But I am also intrigued that time can be ordered, even straitjacketed, to flow in a linear direction - a straight line from the past, through the present, to the future. And, because this can represent an individual's lifeline, I feel that this linear format can be a very human way to look at time. That plus the fact that I think it looks really cool! -Martin Frei

What websites do you usually go to for design news, inspirational, or tutorials?

I'd have to say probably my favorite place right now for inspiration is ffffound.com. It's not really web design exactly but it's a lot of really cool imagery, a lot of cool colors, shapes and stuff like that.

As far as design news, I don't know if there's anything so interesting out there that I'm really watching for, but there's new great design in all directions, coming from all different places all the time. Things like poster design, new typography ideas, etc.

Is there a particular web designer that you're looking up to right now?

You know, I'm seeing more and more good design actually all the time. However, I can't say that I have a favorite right now.

Generally I'm seeing just a lot of cool stuff and stylistically, style continues to advance. But the copy and the clarity isn't necessarily getting better. I'm not seeing very many sites where I think, Wow this was really well thought out and well written. I still don't see a lot of that.

Why is there a lack of copywriting skills among web designers?

Nobody seems to be talking about it. Where are all the blog posts about how to make really super-clear content?

The thing that's really easy to look at and copy are pixels, color combinations and type. I think it's really hard to look at a website as a writing project because as a designer, we have all these magic tricks we can do with our CSS and our HTML and everything and we kind of have to put that in the back and make that take a back seat to, do I really have anything to say here?

Last week I posted to our blog about Jacob Neilsen's site, praising the the Alertbox articles. Each one is completely crafted as a piece of writing. Something to be read and understood and digested. I love the way certain points are bolded and the way the whole thing is structured is really well thought out. I think it's a really inspiring example of great copy.

If you're a designer who doesn't do any writing, you're going to hit a brick wall in your career at some point.

What books can designers read to get better at copywriting?

One of my favorite books is by a guy, William Zinsser, it's called, On Writing Well. That was an inspiration for me and I remember reading that and feeling like it really helped me a lot.

What's the one skill that new designers focus on?

You gotta start handcoding! It's the number one basic craft of web design, if you don't handcode then you're not going to be able to move into doing web app interfaces, which is really what I'm doing now.

You're not going to able to work on applications or collaborate on code or make apps, websites that really have a lot of behavior unless you get into handcoding, so I think that's like the barebones thing that for sure everybody should be doing.

What software do you use for coding?

I happen to use Vim, which is a little bit of a nerdy tool, but a lot of my coworkers use Textmate and love it. A lot of people say that BBedit is great and I also hear that Coda is really nice. There are all kinds of options out there.

As a designer, do you need to understand frontend development?

The more you understand about frontend development, the better designer you'll be. If you are really familiar with handcoding and you understand basic HTML markup and you know how CSS selectors work then you're really well prepared, for example, to use the fact that jQuery and Prototype both have a way to refer to pieces of your mark-up using CSS selectors even though your not using CSS.

If you're designing web app user interfaces, then I think it's important to get into understanding how an MVC framework works like Rails or Django. If you can understand how your templates fit in to the view, as the V in MVC then that's a huge leap. You can really start doing work with programmers and you can have ideas and you can make them into reality instead of just making designs and handing them off to somebody and hoping that someone else can plug them in.

How do you learn about MVC?

It depends on your situation. If you're a designer and you work with programmers already (who are friendly) then just ask them questions. They can really get you started on the right path. Don't be afraid to ask dumb questions - they'll appreciate the fact that you're trying to learn.

If you are a little more programming minded and you're on your own, there's all kinds of stuff you could read, a basic primer on Rails would help a lot.

Getting into programming in general is quite useful. Before I did web design I setup Access databases and Filemaker databases and stuff like that. Jason Fried did the same thing actually - he started with Filemaker databases, and I think that basic understanding about how does a database work, just what are the pieces and trying to visualize, how could I display that or how could I manipulate that data, is a really good kind of foundation level.

What is a typical day in the life of Ryan Singer?

Ugh, it's pretty busy lately. We are a small team and we try to do a lot with a few people. We actually just brought on a new designer, so we're up to three designers now which is going to help. I spend a fair amount of time designing UI for new features. We always design the interface first, before building anything.

So part of my day is actually designing new features, another part of my day, because I'm also working as a product manager here, is to figure out what we should be doing next and who's going to be doing it.

Also I love, I just love, getting into Rails and making things work too, so I do a fair bit of programming everyday. As much as I can plug stuff in, I do it.

Do you think being a product manager has helped you become a better designer?

No, not at all. I think that it's the opposite actually. When you're wearing your Manager Hat' you start to create a barrier between you and the designers and developers that are actually implementing the app.

It's really harmful to the product because anytime you have a separation from the one whose coming up with the ideas and the ones who are doing the work, it's a bad thing.

As a designer, is it important to be interested in the business side of things?

No. Either you're interested in the business side or you're not. However, if you have an understanding of what compels people to make buying decisions and how marketing works, you can feed it into your design work.

Okay, well with that, I think that our time is up, thanks so much for your time.

Yeah sure thing, thanks for chatting.

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Should you care? Which database technology should you be using?

Of course the answer is it depends, but that's not very helpful. Let me ask you a few questions to help you figure out which technology is appropriate to your particular application. Then I can give a few pointers so that you can find out more.

First of all, calm down. Chances are that your current database is perfectly fine for now. But you might want to keep an eye open in case you notice some symptoms which show that you are pushing the relational model to its limits. Some symptoms relate to the structure of your data:

• Do you have tables with lots of columns, only a few of which are actually used by any particular row?
• Do you have attribute tables where each row is a triple of (foreign key to row in another table, attribute name, attribute value) and you need ugly joins in your queries to deal with those tables?
• Have you given up on using columns for structured data, instead just serialising it (to JSON, YAML, XML or whatever) and dumping the string into your database?
• Does your schema have a large number of many-to-many join tables or tree-like structures (a foreign key that refers to a different row in the same table)?
• Do you find yourself frequently needing to make schema changes so that you can properly represent incoming data?

Other symptoms relate to the scalability of your system:

• Are you reaching the limit of the write capacity of a single database server? (If read capacity is your problem, you should set up master-slave replication. Also make sure that you have first given your database the fattest hardware you can afford, you have optimised your queries, and your schema cannot easily be split into shards.)
• Is your amount of data greater than a single server can sensibly hold?
• Are your page loads being slowed down unacceptably by background batch processes overwhelming the database?

In my opinion, too much emphasis is often placed on scalability, despite being a very remote problem on most projects. It's understandable large-scale computing systems are sexy, and everybody likes to think they are building a service which is going to be massively popular but more often than not, developers would be better off focussing on their customers' needs, and solving the scaling problem only if it actually arises.

That said, there is one more reason to consider non-relational databases: they are fashionable. It sounds like a silly idea to base a technical decision on fashion, but remember the human aspects of managing software projects. Great developers generally want to work with cool people in a cool environment using cool technology. That means if you want to hire great developers, providing all this coolness gives you a better chance of getting the best people to work with you. If you want to get on Hacker News, cool technology is also the way to go. Fashion shouldn't be your primary reason, but all else being equal, you can probably err on the side of coolness. Don't forget the cool people and the cool environment though. And now I'll stop saying cool it's not very cool.

Document databases and BigTable

The BigTable paper describes how Google developed their own massively scalable database for internal use, as basis for several of their services. The data model is quite different from relational databases: columns don't need to be pre-defined, and rows can be added with any set of columns. Empty columns are not stored at all.

BigTable inspired many developers to write their own implementations of this data model; amongst the most popular are HBase, Hypertable and Cassandra. The lack of a pre-defined schema can make these databases attractive in applications where the attributes of objects are not known in advance, or change frequently.

Document databases have a related data model (although the way they handle concurrency and distributed servers can be quite different): a BigTable row with its arbitrary number of columns/attributes corresponds to a document in a document database, which is typically a tree of objects containing attribute values and lists, often with a mapping to JSON or XML. Open source document databases include Project Voldemort, CouchDB, MongoDB, ThruDB and Jackrabbit.

How is this different from just dumping JSON strings into MySQL? Document databases can actually work with the structure of the documents, for example extracting, indexing, aggregating and filtering based on attribute values within the documents. Alternatively you could of course build the attribute indexing yourself, but I wouldn't recommend that unless it makes working with your legacy code easier.

The big limitation of BigTables and document databases is that most implementations cannot perform joins or transactions spanning several rows or documents. This restriction is deliberate, because it allows the database to do automatic partitioning, which can be important for scaling see the section on distributed key-value stores below. If the structure of your data is lots of independent documents, this is not a problem but if your data fits nicely into a relational model and you need joins, please don't try to force it into a document model.

Graph databases

Graph databases live at the opposite end of the spectrum. While document databases are good for storing data which is structured in the form of lots of independent documents, graph databases focus on the relationships between items a better fit for highly interconnected data models.

Standard SQL cannot query transitive relationships, i.e. variable-length chains of joins which continue until some condition is reached. Graph databases, on the other hand, are optimised precisely for this kind of data. Look out for these symptoms indicating that your data would better fit into a graph model:

• you find yourself writing long chains of joins (join table A to B, B to C, C to D) in your queries;
• you are writing loops of queries in your application in order to follow a chain of relationships (particularly when you don't know in advance how long that chain is going to be);
• you have lots of many-to-many joins or tree-like data structures;
• your data is already in a graph form (e.g. information about who is friends with whom in a social network).

There is less choice in graph databases than there is in document databases: Neo4j, AllegroGraph and Sesame (which typically uses MySQL or PostgreSQL as storage back-end) are ones to look at. FreeBase and DirectedEdge have developed graph databases for their internal use.

Graph databases are often associated with the semantic web and RDF datastores, which is one of the applications they are used for. I actually believe that many other applications' data would also be well represented in graphs. However, as before, don't try to force data into a graph if it fits better into tables or documents.

MapReduce

Going on a slight tangent: if background batch processing is your problem and you are not aware of the MapReduce model, you should be. Popularised by another Google paper, MapReduce is a way of writing batch processing jobs without having to worry about infrastructure. Different databases lend themselves more or less well to MapReduce something to keep in mind when choosing a database to fit your needs.

Hadoop is the big one amongst the open MapReduce implementations, and Skynet and Disco are also worth looking at. CouchDB also includes some MapReduce ideas on a smaller scale.

Distributed key-value stores

A key-value store is a very simple concept, much like a hash table: you can retrieve an item based on its key, you can insert a key/value pair, and you can delete a key/value pair. The value can just be an opaque list of bytes, or might be a structured document (most of the document databases and BigTable implementations above can also be considered to be key-value stores).

Document databases, graph databases and MapReduce introduce new data models and new ways of thinking which can be useful even in a small-scale application; you don't need to be Google or Facebook to benefit from them. Distributed key-value stores, on the other hand, are really just about scalability. They can scale to truly vast amounts of data much more than a single server could hold.

Distributed databases can transparently partition and replicate your data across many machines in a cluster. You don't need to figure out a sharding scheme to decide on which server you can find a particular piece of data; the database can locate it for you. If one server dies, no problem others can immediately take over. If you need more resources, just add servers to the cluster, and the database will automatically give them a share of the load and the data.

When choosing a key-value store you need to decide whether it should be opimised for low latency (for lightning-fast data access during your request-response cycle) or for high throughput (which is what you need for batch processing jobs).

Other than the BigTables and document databases above, Scalaris, Dynomite and Ringo provide certain data consistency guarantees while taking care of partitioning and distributing the dataset. MemcacheDB and Tokyo Cabinet (with Tokyo Tyrant for network service and LightCloud to make it distributed) focus on latency.

The caveat about limited transactions and joins applies even more strongly for distributed databases. Different implementations take different approaches, but in general, if you need to read several items, manipulate them in some way and then write them back, there is no guarantee that you will end up in a consistent state immediately (although many implementations try to become eventually consistent by resolving write conflicts or using distributed transaction protocols; see the algorithm of Amazon's Dynamo for an example). You should therefore only use these databases if your data items are independent, and if availability and performance are more important than ACID properties. For more information, read about Brewer's CAP Theorem, which states that amongst Consistency, Availability and Partition tolerance, you can only choose two, and no database will ever be able to get around that fact.

Richard Jones, co-founder of Last.fm, has written up an excellent overview of distributed key-value stores. Also Tony Bain gives an introduction to the conceptual differences between relational databases and key-value stores, and recently there was a NOSQL event in San Francisco at which a number of different non-relational databases were presented.

Distributed systems are hard really hard. I suggest that you use them only if you really need the scaling aspects they offer (or just for fun outside of a production environment).

Closing remarks

In this article I have concentrated on open source projects. If you are willing to bind yourself to a particular vendor/hosting provider, Google's Datastore, Amazon SimpleDB, Windows Azure Storage Services or Force.com might be worth considering. They are good technologies, but keep in mind the business risk of potential lock-in.

I can't make judgement about particular projects' suitability for particular purposes. There is some very clever software out there, but also some very new and unstable software. If you want to consider using them, you should do your own research:

• look around their websites for a list of sites using the database in production (and for which aspect of their service they use it);
• check if they have a lively open source community, in case the original developer loses interest and stops maintaining the software;
• try to find some benchmarks (though beware that many benchmarks published on the web are methodologically flawed and/or outdated, so if you are serious about it you should run your own tests, using data which matches your application's characteristics).

As with any fashionable topic, there are many people with strong opinions, both positive and negative; don't let yourself be put off by them. I hope I've given you an overview of the kind of things you can do with different types of databases so that you can choose the right one for your application.

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Yet another person is figuring out how to make decent money off Twitter that isn't CEO Evan Williams: HarperCollins has commissioned former Valleywag editor Nick Douglas to collect and edit Twitter Wit, a book of ... well, witty tweets. According to Valleywag, Douglas is getting a "five-figure sum" for the book, which is slated for release this fall; Douglas and HarperCollins editor Kate Hamill set up a submission site that automates the collection of the tweets (from anywhere and everywhere) and gets each user's permission to republish. Given Twitter's seemingly unstoppable surge in popularityJohn Battelle compared its search potential to YouTube's, and NBC's Nightline dedicated a segment to it last night (via MediaMemo)who knows, it just might fly off the shelves. Anyone else care to wager?

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Ah, lawyers. It's a love-hate relationship.

Just this week alone, I'm working with a literary attorney (publishing), an entertainment attorney (TV), and a corporate financing attorney (angel investments). All three are great.

Yesterday, though, I received the threatening letter below from Protocol Integrated Direct Marketing, whose call centers I recommend in the 4HWW. WTF?

Click to enlarge

But what did I say about Protocol specifically? Here it is, after an group intro where I indicate providers can also be compensated per-minute:

Protocol Marketing: One of classic sales-oriented call centers. I've used them for years.

I used them as a start-up CEO and felt the recommendation was valuable to readers. Blasphemer! Even if a correction were needed somewhere, the legal bitch slap isn't needed.

My response was simple: I called the lawyer and told him I would both have the mention removed and also announce the correction to readers (that's this blog post).

I suspect the CEO, Don Norsworthy, is not aware of this letter, as he would have no doubt approached it differently after recognizing a few things:

1. How you say something IS what you say.

Ever heard it's not just what you say, it's how you say it? I would go further: how you say something is what you say. A simple call or e-mail to Random House with we're getting too many calls for the wrong services; would you mind changing it to the following? would have sufficed. Have a normal human conversation and don't come off sounding like Robocop (video above).

But what if you need to be forceful? If someone's motives are clearly bad? I've dealt with this as well. First of all, if their actions are done with obvious malevolent-intent or law-breaking, you can be more forceful. Second, for those cases that fall in the middle, it's possible to be forceful and clear without being rude. For example:

It's come to our attention that [action your want them to cease in neutral terms]. I'm sure you are unaware, but this causes [negative consequences for you], which results in [other problems]. We thank you in advance for removing/stopping/correcting X as soon as possible [notice how less abrasive this is than 'immediately', but it achieves the same effect] and confirming when this has been done. Legal action is always a last resort, but if we do not receive confirmation within one business week, we'll be compelled to take appropriate next steps. Your fastest correction and confirmation is both important and appreciated.

2. It's counterproductive to threaten someone until you determine their incentives to refuse compliance.

In other words, what do I gain by refusing to remove them? Nothing. In fact, it's in my readers' best interest to make it accurate or remove it. Threatening me with Darth Vader-speak like compel compliance with [our] demand just pisses people off, and I could have still been a strong proponent of theirs. Too bad, so sad.

3. It's better to steer the golden goose rather than kill it.

If I'm sending them enough calls to inundate their phone lines (ironic in itself, since they're offering call center services), it would be in their best interest to just make the description more accurate, no? It's free advertising in a #1 NY Times bestseller to be published in 33 languages. How much advertising cost or cost-per-acquisition (CPA) does that save them if it's accurate? Knowing the revenue model and having worked with call centers, I'd guess hundreds of thousands of dollars at a minimum. To save what? A few thousand dollars in filtering out mom-and-pop callers at $.90 per minute? That's just penny-wise and pound-foolish.

4. Don't mistake symptoms with root problems, or confuse correlation with causation.

There are no income investment requirements that I can find listed anywhere on their call center site. It strikes me that their main problem relates to a system-wide issue with pre-qualification. The blurb in the 4HWW is just a symptom any successful PR or marketing that brings people to them will produce the same filtering bottleneck. Fixing the root cause instead of threatening the person who makes the root cause come to the surface.

If they have a problem with closer, Protocol might also consider removing the following from the second paragraph of their main call center page:

Whether you need a salesperson to close deals or specialized technical support services, Protocol's contact center services can help.

Confused? Me too.

5. If you threaten someone in a digital world, it might become what your prospective customers see first.

Principle one: Better not to threaten people whenever possible. Principle two: Google someone before you threaten them. If their PageRank and SEO beats yours, recognize that the public will see what they say first and foremost. Principle three: if someone is sending you business, and you threaten them because of a positive description (even containing inaccuracies), you are disincentivizing all partners, journalists, and customers from evangelizing for you if it becomes public. Given the new dynamics of personal branding in a digital age, being nice should be company policy, if not for cheap Google insurance.

Oh, and being rude sucks.

Be firm when necessary, but be nice whenever possible. Long-term, it doesn't pay to do otherwise.

In conclusion: Protocol, I'm sorry for endorsing you and reflecting my experience in a positive description. I was wrong and you are right. Readers, please pull out your Sharpie and strike Protocol from pg. 201.

Ah, lawyers. Use them wisely or the problem you create could be bigger than the one you solve.

Anyone have suggestions for good call centers that won't threaten me for recommending them?


To lighten the mood, a photo from the American Apparel factory, which I visited last Saturday. More pics here.

Nikon has announced their new D90 camera, a 12.3-megapixel DSLR that retails for $999.95 and includes the ability to shoot 24fps 720p HD video.

Commercial photographer Chase Jarvis had a chance to try out the camera in advance, making a video as he and his crew tested out several D90's.

In related news, Canon announced their new 50D DSLR.

Check out the D90 write-ups by Thomas Hawk and David Pouge (New York Times).

This is a blog post from Laughing Squid For more content like this, subscribe to the RSS feed, Twitter & FriendFeed.

New Nikon D90 Camera, Includes Ability To Shoot 720p HD Video

By sharing my statistics openly, it will now be obvious to the world how little real traffic I get, opening me to ridicule. The emperor has no clothes, it could be said. Also, maybe the traffic I receive isn't seen as "quality" traffic? I still get a lot of visitors from Google image searches looking for R-rated material in vain. Maybe I don't want everybody to see that, and, therefore, take the site less seriously?

By sharing my statistics openly, it could be shown we're bragging, highlighting traffic, growth, and the trends. Smaller bloggers just getting started might see the data as unattainable and could throw potshots.

Just as it makes sense to visit Salary.com and determine what other people with your title in your geography are commanding, viewing other's statistics can give you a reference point for how you are performing against your peers.

One of the most interesting things I find from my statistics are where people are coming from, in the referral logs. It's likely that those people caring enough to send a link my way might be interested in the same topics I am, and, using the transitive property, my readers would be interested in what they are as well.

Despite one's best efforts, not every single story gets the same amount of solid traffic. There are peaks and valleys. Making this data public could better give guidance to other writers as to what topics are most interesting, might get the most engagement, or views.

Whether the total number of unique visitors, page views, referrals is in the hundreds, thousands or hundreds of thousands, by establishing that data publicly, your traffic now becomes part of the conversation, relative to yourself and relative to others, so you'll need to come to terms with this in advance.

A good blogger who knows their statistics can get used to specific readers. With a good combination of MyBlogLog, and location-based visits, I have a good idea of who the most frequent visitors are, and I think I know what stories they read, if I get the time to look it up. Maybe others could be as aggressive and figure out the same information. Some visitors might not like having this potential to be snooped expanded to the masses.

It's one thing to post data at your peak when things are going well. But if you have a slow week or months, and your numbers collapse, there's no hiding it. You can't undo a number once it's out, so that too would be a risk.

My last 2 pay checks where paid thanks to home equity loans taken out by [the] CEO and president. I have also had a hard time getting my final pay check from them. They claim they are unable to pay me ( $400 after advance repayment ) until they receive funding. The last few months I was at the company they kept promising funding would be coming "this friday we should have it..." was said at least 4 times. In the 2 years I worked there, I never once heard the term "profitable" mentioned, only the far off idea's of being snapped up by [some] big company

February 2008:

Four large newspaper companies are joining forces to sell advertisements on the Internet, hoping that the combined heft of their Web sites will encourage large advertisers to spend more money.

Each of the four companies the Tribune Company, the Gannett Company, the Hearst Corporation and The New York Times Company is transferring a portion of its online ad space to quadrantONE, a new company that will be announced Friday.

The purpose of the joint venture, which will be based in Chicago and will hire 17 people [commitment!], is to let national advertisers place ads on local Web sites with a single phone call [phone call!].

The sites belong to papers like The Los Angeles Times (which is a Tribune property), The Des Moines Register (Gannett), The Houston Chronicle (Hearst) and The Boston Globe (The New York Times Company).

Some of the companies' flagship sites, however, will not be included, because they are not considered local. These include the sites of USA Today, a Gannett paper, and of The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune, which are owned by the Times Company. [These are also known as the ones that actually have reasonable numbers of readers.]

Executives involved said the newspaper companies understand [by which they mean, "used to have a local monopoly but don't anymore"] the local market better than Google, Yahoo and Microsoft...

The companies were also all part of the New Century Network in the late 1990s...

Source: New York Times.

March 1998:

[W]hen New Century Network was kicked off last April by nine [newspaper] giants teaming up to conquer electronic competition, even the launch party bombed...

In a ballroom at the Newspaper Association of America convention in Chicago, a thousand bottles of champagne emblazoned with ''New Century Network: The Collective Intelligence of America's Newspapers'' awaited the hordes expected to come to toast the watershed new-media joint venture. When fewer than 100 people showed up, Chief Executive Lee de Boer made an abbreviated speech before retreating...

The reception was the first public humiliation for New Century Network, but only one in a series of blunders that culminated in the company's abrupt shutdown on Mar. 10. Created in 1995 to unite newspapers against Microsoft Corp. and other competitors girding to woo electronically advertisers and readers, New Century Network came to embody everything that could go wrong when old-line newspapers converge with new media...

Started with $1 million each from Knight-Ridder, Tribune, Times Mirror, Advance Publications, Cox Enterprises, Gannett, Hearst, Washington Post, and New York Times, New Century seemed an entrepreneurial dream. The Internet had just opened to the world, creating vast new competition for readers--and for the advertisers that pump $40 billion into newspapers. But it also gave newspapers a chance to capture national accounts that favored the one-stop-shopping convenience of TV and national magazines...

[T]he [newspaper] companies had wildly diverging philosophies about how newspapers should make the electronic leap and what role the new venture should play. ''You had private companies and public companies and companies that were risk-averse and those that were risk-tolerant,'' says Harry Chandler, head of new media for Los Angeles Times. ''You had big-city papers and small chains. We shared a need. But it was frustrating trying to come together.''

While the wired world moved at warp speed, New Century spent 18 months hiring a permanent ceo and two years creating an electronic doorway to 140 newspapers... ''This [Internet] thing is really racing,'' says Al Sikes, the former Federal Communications Commissioner who is president of Hearst New Media. ''Organizations of a number of co-equals can't turn on a dime.''...

The partners ultimately invested more than $25 million in the virtual venture... The board decided... to pull the plug, coming to a remarkably quick agreement--for the first and final time...

Source: Business Week.

[With apologies in advance to Martin Nisenholtz, who I believe is genuinely fighting the good fight, and who will no doubt end up with a great job at some fine Internet company.]

The hiring of Bill Kristol was the last straw.

I can't take it anymore.

I hereby inaugurate my New York Times Deathwatch, which will continue until the last Sulzberger has left the building.

Recent dispatches that are fit to print:

Leading the way [in terrible end-of-year news from the newspaper industry] was The New York Times Company, where total [quarterly] revenues fell 1.7% to $865.8 million, due mostly to a 4.1% drop in ad revenues... Advertising revenues at the news media group in particular fell 5.6%.

Source: Media Daily News.

Actually, that's being perhaps overly fair, since it takes into account an extra week last year. The straight year over year performance was:

[F]ourth-quarter revenue totaled $865.8 million, down 7.1% from $931.5 million a year earlier. The decline included a 9.1% drop in advertising revenue and a 4% fall in circulation revenue... [T]he company had an extra week in the final quarter of 2006, which boosted the year-earlier quarter's revenue by $50.8 million and its pretax income by $14.3 million.

Yes, we are dealing with a business where missing a single week means the difference between revenue falling 1.7% and 7.1%, and advertising revenue falling 4.1% and 9.1%. Go figure.

Source: Forbes.

Now, normally, beating up on someone like this isn't very much fun. But we are talking about a profession that specializes in passing judgment, often snide, on everyone else. And so, onward...

Turns out that December 2007 was particularly bad, and things may be getting even worse:

Separately, the [New York Times] reported that December ad revenue dropped 25.2%. Excluding an additional week in December 2006, ad revenue declined 12% for the month.

...[W]eakness across several national [advertising] categories including health care, books, technology products and transportation hampered results in the month. Classified ads, the traditional lifeblood of newspapers, saw steep declines in help-wanted, real estate and automotive sales. [Craig, you bad bad boy...]

"To date in January, the percentage decline in advertising revenue is trending similar to that of December..." said Janet Robinson, chief executive of New York Times...

As they say, sometimes it's darkest right before it goes pitch black.

Source: Marketwatch.

How are the company's other papers doing?

The [New York Times-owned] Boston Globe will soon announce cutbacks at the newspaper, including hundreds of layoffs, and an increase in the per copy price of the paper to 75 cents as of Feb. 1...

The Globe saw a nearly 7 percent decrease from 386,417 to 360,695 in its daily circulation between Sept. 2006 and Sept. 2007, according to numbers released in November by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. That report showed the paper's Sunday circulation down about 6.5 percent...

When you have an obsolete, inconvenient physical product that nobody wants in an era of universal online access, the appropriate strategy is clearly to raise the price.

Source: Metro Boston, which amusingly itself is 49 percent owned by the Boston Globe, which is owned by the New York Times.

How about revenue at the Globe?

At the New England Media Group, which includes the Boston Globe, ad revenue fell nearly 16%. Circulation revenue fell 7%.

Source: Marketwatch.

How about the company's smaller newspapers?

The company's regional-media group, including papers in medium-sized markets such as Wilmington, N.C., and Santa Rosa, Calif., saw ad revenue decline almost 17%, while circulation fell 7.4%.

Source: Marketwatch.

Meanwhile, the Times faces its second assault from a major hedge fund in the last two years:

A hedge fund manager who acquired a stake in the New York Times Company and is pushing to gain seats on its board sent a letter to the company on Sunday in which he criticised directors as "ineffective" and called for it to shed more non-core assets.

Scott Galloway, founder of Firebrand Capital, who sent the letter, has joined with another hedge fund, Harbinger, to try to put forward their own nominees for the four independent seats on the media company's 13-member board at its meeting in April. The funds have amassed a combined 4.9 per cent stake in Times' shares.

Source: Financial Times.

An ineffective board? What could they be talking about?

Hmmmmm. That's not the direction you want to see those things go.

Well, given that the Internet is the central force dismantling the company's business, I'm sure that by now they've stocked their board with noted Internet experts. Let's see:

• Brenda C. Barnes -- CEO of Sara Lee; noted snack cake expert
• Raul E. Cesan -- former CEO of Schering-Plough; noted Levitra expert
• Daniel H. Cohen -- president of DeepSee LLC, "an oceanic exploration and submarine leasing company"; noted Jacques Cousteau expert
• Lynn G. Dolnick -- former head of exhibits for the National Zoologic Park in Washington DC; noted marsupial expert
• Michael Golden -- current publisher of the International Herald Tribune; former head of the company's Women's Publishing Division; noted sundress expert
• William E. Kennard -- former head of the FCC; noted "seven dirty words" expert
• James M. Kilts -- former CEO of Gillette; noted smooth, smooth shave expert; prior to that, unindicted coconspirator at Philip Morris; noted expert on your grandfather's hacking cough
• David E. Liddle -- here I have to take a pause as I actually know this one; based on what's happening at the company, it could be reasonably asked whether he's actually attending the board meetings.
• Ellen R. Marram -- former CEO of Nabisco; noted Oreo expert. Oh, wait, she actually ran an Internet company: "From 1999 until 2000, Ms. Marram was president and chief executive officer of efdex Inc. (the Electronic Food & Drink Exchange), an Internet-based commodities exchange for the food and beverage industry." Ooh. I wonder if that ended well.
• Thomas Middelhoff -- former CEO of Bertelsmann; noted expert on complicated family politics -- well, that's probably coming in handy...
• Janet L. Robinson -- current CEO of the New York Times Company; noted expert on horrific business implosions
• Doreen A. Toben -- CFO of Verizon; noted 30-year debenture expert
• And finally, Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr. -- the Big Kahuna -- the Man -- the Guy In Charge -- the chairman and scion -- the dude with the cojones to actually defend Judy Miller. Not noted Internet expert.

So, if you want to issue bonds to pay for FCC-approved snack cake manufacturing in a submarine on display at a national park by a sundress-wearing cigarette-puffing Levitra-popping Judy Miller, you're pretty much set.

Go team!

Verizon seeks unspecified monetary damages and wants Cox blocked from using the patents in the future.

Below is a list of the specific patents and links to the actual patent. Four of the eight patents are ones that Verizon alleged Vonage had infringed. A federal appeals court affirmed Vonage infringed two of Verizon's patents. In October of last year, Vonage agreed to pay Verizon up to US$120 million.

This case against Cox is significant because rather than seeking the same win it got from Vonage from other similarly situated companies, Verizon is now seeking to expand the breadth of its winning patent portfolio to fixed VoIP. To the extent that Verizon wins here, this could have broad implications for other fixed services using Docsys (as Cox and the rest of the cable industry generally use), presumably other fixed VoIP that doesn't use Docsys, and depending on which if any patents are upheld to VoIP billing systems, routing systems, network management, and other technologies. So while this is the first major suit against a fixed VoIP services, my quick read of the patents suggests that only in a few cases (like the 930 patent) are the patents limited to fixed functionality. Among analysts, there is still speculation as to why Verizon chose to go after Cox cable instead of a cable company like Comcast who presumably uses the same technology, shares a greater competition footprint, and has a larger number of customers.

The patents Verizon says Cox is infringing upon:

U.S. Patent No. 6,970,930 available here (not in Vonage case) Method and system of providing differentiated services

U.S. Patent No. 6,104,711 available here (Vonage was found to have infringed) Enhanced Internet domain name server to translate information from a public, packet-based network

U.S. Patent No. 6,430,275 available here (Vonage found not to have infringed) Enhanced signaling for terminating resource

U.S. Patent No. 6,137,869 available here (Vonage found not to have infringed) Network session management

U.S. Patent No. 6,282,574 available here (Vonage was found to have infringed) Method, server and telecommunications system for name translation on a conditional basis and/or to a telephone number

U.S. Patent No. 6,335,927 available here (not in Vonage case) Multi-protocol telecommunications routing optimization

U.S. Patent No. 6,292,481 available here (not in Vonage case) Inter-carrier signaling and usage accounting architecture for internet telephony

U.S. Patent No. 6,636,597 available here (not in Vonage case) Method of and system for providing services in a communications network

It's no secret that consumers are quickly turning to Internet voice services because they are exciting, innovative and often do things never before possible with traditional PSTN phones. It's just disappointing that rather than trying to win over consumers, companies have tried to win over judges. As TeleGeography notes as Vonage's growth has slowed, "US VoIP subscriber growth is falling well behind the blistering pace set by European VoIP service providers." It means that "by 2011, VoIP penetration in Europe will be approximately twice as great as in the US." One of the key differences as TeleGeography points out is that in Europe, incumbent service providers have had to compete against VoIP providers and now themselves account for 26% of VoIP subscribers, while in the US incumbents have remained largely on the sidelines in terms of VoIP.

At the dawn of a new era, we should be trying to lead the world in broadband based communication technologies and putting new ideas into action for consumers. It would be a shame if because of policy and patents, that America lost its leadership in a key enabling technology because we argued more over who invented which aspect rather than how we advance it.

We can and should do better.

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Readers of my blog are invited to join me on both twitter and Facebook.

Tags: Vonage, Patent, Cox, Verizon, VoIP, Jeff Pulver

I've been getting asked by lots of people lately, How do I break into new media?

I'm a firm believer that all the tools are out there and the great thing is that anyone can start today if they want to. There is no velvet rope, no casting couch, everyone is invited to the party. But, I do think that if you really want to do this as a career (which is what most people are asking me about) then there are some other things you need to think about.

I didn't state the obvious which is to get in on the ground floor with a company working in the space. I completely forgot to say this during the show, but it is a great way to do it. While The Advance Guard isn't hiring at the moment we are always open to the idea of interns who are willing to work hard and get some great experience at the same time.

It is more about hard work, passion, curiosity and determination then about any tool, trick or tantrum. Get out there and make it happen. You've got the tools, but do you have the drive to make it happen?

On the show I mentioned that I'd love to hear what your goals for the year are. Call them into 206-309-4729 or drop me an e-mail.

Tags: new media careers, podcast, cc chapman, podshow, the advance guard, tag, marketing podcast, career advice

All economists know that when American jobs are outsourced, Americans as a group are net winners. What we lose through lower wages is more than offset by what we gain through lower prices...
Suppose, after years of buying shampoo at your local pharmacy, you discover you can order the same shampoo for less money on the Web. Do you have an obligation to compensate your pharmacist? If you move to a cheaper apartment, should you compensate your landlord? When you eat at McDonald's, should you compensate the owners of the diner next door? Public policy should not be designed to advance moral instincts that we all reject every day of our lives.
In what morally relevant way, then, might displaced workers differ from displaced pharmacists or displaced landlords?...
If you're forced to pay $20 an hour to an American for goods you could have bought from a Mexican for $5 an hour, you're being extorted. When a free trade agreement allows you to buy from the Mexican after all, rejoice in your liberation -- even if Mr. McCain, Mr. Romney and the rest of the presidential candidates don't want you to.

Well, for one thing, this isn't a matter of morality, it's a matter of equity, not to mention enlightened self-interest. And for another thing, it's entirely consistent to both rejoice in being able to buy cheaper goods, and attempt to help out those who have lost their jobs as a result.

But it doesn't really matter: I suspect that Landsburg lost about 95% of his readers when he found himself forced to start his argument with an "all economists know that" sentence.

Update: Rodrik weighs in.

Whether you were just invited to speak at an international industry event, a regional conference, or a local event, it is up to YOU to make the most out of the speaking opportunity. This is one of the times where a little bit of planning will go a long way.

Should you accept the speaking opportunity? The choice is up to you. Before you accept the invitation you might want to take a look at the tentative schedule and see whether or not this is an event you would have wanted to attend if you were not invited to speak there. If when looking at the content, there are no sessions you can relate to, chances are that you might not want to be speaking there. Over time you will learn to be more selective about your speaking opportunities.

Once you make the decision to speak and accept the chance to speak, you now have an opportunity to prepare for you chance to be in the spotlight. The chance for you to shine amongst your peers. A chance for you to stand out. It is now your responsibility to get the most out of your commitment to speak.

Once you commit to speak at a conference, you should find out what hotel the other speakers will be staying out. If this is an event in one hotel, the answer is simple. If you are speaking at an conference at a convention center which has multiple conference hotels, you should contact the event organizer and ask them which hotel they are recommending to their speakers to stay at. Traveling a great distance to speak at an event and staying at the wrong hotel during the event is one way to ensure yourself that you will feel not as productive as the person who spoke at an event and stayed at the hotel that all of the other speakers were staying in.

One of the things I love about conferences are the chance meetings that occur. Staying at the same hotel as the other speakers just increases the chances you will also have chance meetings that amount to something. Sometimes it is the late night conversations that take place in the lobby of your hotel that make the entire trip worthwhile.

Whenever possible, try to avoid Hit and Run speaking opportunities. Whenever you hit and run a conference, you lose any chance you had to connect with the community and network and you might damage your standing within the industry / group of people who you did connect with during your talk. Conference organizers appreciate it whenever the people they invite to speak decide to stay for the entire conference and become active members of the event community.

When preparing for the speaking opportunity, you should spend some time understanding the demographics of the community of people attending. Look at the conference program and make sure the talk you are working on is on target. If the event organizer contacts you and asks what you will be talking about, be as specific as possible. Listen and think about what they have to say before you say a word. Being on target with your message is important if you want to get invited back to speak again.

When I plan my attendance at an event, I scan the conference brochure and identify the people I want to meet. I recommend finding out the social networking platforms being used by the community and join the appropriate networks. Look for the people you want to meet on these networks and try to schedule meetings in advance. Within the online community do whatever you can do to get noticed. Stand out in your own unique way.

As the conference gets closer, take another look at the conference program.

Be aware of when you are speaking in the conference schedule. If you are speaking early in the conference, there is a good chance you will be noticed by your peers in the audience which will help your on-site networking. But if it turns out you are speaking in the second to last session of the event, you may need to make a special extra effort during the event to network with everyone else, unless you are speaking at an event where you are well known since the audience will be introduced to you just an hour before the conference is ending.

Look at the conference schedule and look for when the networking opportunities are. If you are speaking at the event because you want to benefit from the on-site networking, make yourself available and plan to be on-site at the conference early in the morning. Surprise the event organizer and show up during breakfast. Sit down at a table of strangers and have coffee with seven new friends. Get up and grab some food and sit down and meet another table of people. Repeat this for as long as you can. Position yourself in a strategic location during the scheduled breaks so you can be nearer to the people you are looking to meet. I'm not advocating that you stalk anyone but just taking advantage of any and all opportunities that present themselves.

Whenever I attend an event, besides speaking at the event, a series of questions goes through my mind. I ask myself: Why am I really here? Is it to generate business for my company? Am I here to prospect for leads? To share a vision? To promote a cause? To validate a concept? To raise money? To get noticed by the media? To sell an idea? To find the people for a team? Or something else. And it doesn't really matter what the answer is but the point is always know what the answer is. Understanding your goals and objectives gives you a much better chance of being able to satisfy your goals rather than going home feeling unfulfilled.

If I'm looking to maximize the networking with the other speakers, what I always do is look at the conference schedule and take note of the times the people I'm looking to meet are speaking. I then make it the point to show up in the Speakers Lounge or Green Room up to an hour before that person is scheduled to speak and hang out and wait for them to show up. While not every speaker shows up in the speaker's lounge before their talk, many do. Being a speaker gives you full and unfettered access to the areas generally reserved only for fellow speakers. Use the status of being a speaker to spend time in the speakers lounge. This is your ticket for premium networking opportunities.

Most of the time, your speaker badge will also be your ticket to get access to the press room. Just tell the person at the door you have an interview scheduled. Once inside, it is up to you to get yourself into a story by making yourself available to the media. Politely overhear a conversation and share a comment. You never know who may be listening.

If you are invited to a speaker's dinner or lunch or breakfast make it a point to be there. These are usually special VIP events which offer great networking opportunities.

And should you have a conflict and can no longer meet your speaking commitment, the event organizer appreciates it if you can let them know as soon as possible that you are not able to speak. Do not wait until the last possible minute to tell them. And do not wait until the day of the event and just not show up unless you want to be assured that you won't be invited back.

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Good luck with your speaking gigs. And please feel free to share your own tips on how to get more out of speaking opportunities.

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Readers of my blog are invited to join me on both twitter and Facebook.

Tags: conference, speaking, trade show, Social Media, Jeff Pulver