First, let me inventory the raw materials that got me thinking this way. Recently JC Hutchins posted that he had been dropped as an author by St. Martins Press and that they would not be publishing the 7th Son sequels. The post lives between a gut-check and a crisis of faith from one of the pioneering new media creator/ novelist hybrid guys. He also posted about monetary realities of writers pubishing via ebooks. Not that long before this, I had listened to JC's Hey Everybody interview with Pablo Defendini and Ami Greko from The New Sleekness blog. It's a really interesting discussion about the future of book publishing by industry professionals young enough in their careers to be less invested in the status quo and more willing to help a new future emerge. (Side note 1: I met Pablo and Ami at last year's Dragon*Con in the classic SF con fashion I wanted to meet them, saw them in a hotel bar, asked if I could sit with them, introduced myself and hung out for an hour. Try it, it works! ) Much in my thinking was informed over the last month by the Amazon/Macmillan ebook pricing wars of far too large a trail to link to anything. In that debate I did first run across Joe Konrath, his fiction and some of his posts with amazingly open and detailed statistics of what he sells and what he makes from digital publishing. (Side note 2: I bought, read and enjoyed his book Whiskey Sour as fallout from the debate).

There are many other bits of thought in the mix, such as my feelings about beginning my own novel during NaNoWriMo and thinking about hiring my friends at Sterling Editing to work on it and what I might choose to do with such a book when)it is finished. That's enough of a prelude, though. Time to hit it.

JC Hutchins struck a nerve when he basically waved the white flag on his current way of working.

Creating podcast fiction does does not generate direct revenue for me. Based on anecdotal and statistical data, very few people are willing to pay for general podcast content, much less podcast fiction. Since my goal is to make a living wage with my words, the current monetization models including in-show advertisements will not deliver this. Dedicating time and effort to my non-fiction podcast projects will deliver equally underwhelming monetary results.

It is also apparent to me that using the Free model to promote a tangible product, such as I did with 7th Son: Descent and Personal Effects: Dark Art, does not deliver sustainable sales results. I have friends some of whom are my best friends, the most talented people I've had the privilege to know and work with who have absolute faith in this model. I treasure their trailblazing efforts and enthusiasm. My faith, however, has been fundamentally rattled.

Put simply: The new media model viably supports only the most blessed and talented of authors. The time, effort and money I invest in entertaining you for free pulls my attention and talent away from projects that can generate revenue. While podcasting, podcast fiction, and most importantly your support and evangelism has positively impacted my life and career in ways I'll never be able to fully express, I cannot continue to release free audiofiction if I wish to make a living wage with my words.

This is pretty big stuff in the world of podcast fiction. Hutch was one of the pioneers of the form and his getting picked up by St. Martins was considered a watershed and a validation for the medium. So if he can't make it in this world, what does that say about all the other podcast novelists who are less engaged, have less of a fan base, less sheer horsepower? Does it mean this medium is screwed?

I am positing that Hutch had a terrible misfortune of timing, that he arose as a viable author at exactly the wrong moment in publishing history. As he started down his path it seemed like the end game was to get a book deal with a major publisher. For writers of the last 100 years, this was the reasonable career success path for authors, and practically the only one. In the last few years though a sea change has happened so rapidly and thoroughly to flip that Hutch got his boat capsized in the process and he will be far from the only one. As crazy as it may sound, for a certain kind of author at this point I think a major publishing contract may seem like winning the game but is in fact losing it.

The red flags I got from the JC Hutchins post started here:

Examining the lead up to, and release of, the novel, I cannot see how I could have promoted it any better than I did. I literally went broke promoting this book and Personal Effects: Dark Art (another novel that will not have a sequel; it also underperformed). I conceived numerous brand-new online marketing campaigns that dazzled you and others. I asked you to purchase the novel, and many of you did.

If JC is literally going broke promoting 7th Son and Personal Effects book, I think a reasonable question to ask is What is St. Martins Press' role in this? If JC is willing and able to put so much of his own time and money into the promotion of the books, what value is he getting from the big publisher that is worth giving away 90% of the sale of the book to them? 50 years ago, and 20 years ago and 2 years ago, this made sense. It was pretty much impossible to get a book published and into the hands of the world in any significant way especially in a way that a writer could make a full-time living without a major publisher contract, especially one paying advances at a level to be a livable wage. Nowadays, especially due to the markeplace enabled by the Kindle, Nook, Sony Reader et al, that's a different equation.

Joe Konrath's post about the money he makes from the Kindle store shows a really clear pattern that he summarizes with:

My five Hyperion ebooks (the sixth one came out in July so no royalties yet) each earn an average of $803 per year on Kindle.

My four self-pubbed Kindle novels each earn an average of $3430 per year.

If I had the rights to all six of my Hyperion books, and sold them on Kindle for $1.99, I'd be making $20,580 per year off of them, total, rather than $4818 a year off of them, total.

So, in other words, because Hyperion has my ebook rights, I'm losing $15,762 per year.

For a writer with an engaged audience, like JA Konrath has and like JC Hutchins has, there may well be more money in their books self-published primarily through the Kindle and other ebook stores. An interesting bit from the Konrath numbers above, that's from making 35% of the sales price for his direct books. When it changes to 70%, he'll be making twice as much per book as he posted above for the self-published ones.

Let me say it again: for a writer who is engaged with their audience and reasonably prolific (because you need new books to keep this engine turning), we may be at the turning point where a better living is available through self-publishing than a big New York publisher book deal.

There are certainly authors that this model will not work for. During my preparation for last year's Podcasting for Working Writers panel at Dragon*Con I talked to both James Patrick Kelly and Kelley Eskridge on this topic and they both raised the point that for a number of old school writers, the idea of engaging at the level of podcasting and doing large parts of their own publicity is anathema. A reasonable chunk of authors don't want to get out in the limelight and picked this career specifically so they don't have to engage. They write their books, maybe do a few conventions a year, do some bookstore events and that's it. Back to the keyboard where the serious work happens. That's fair enough and those writers will always need a publisher to do the parts of this business that would make them unhappy to pursue.

I think of the classic big publisher and big record label model as basically serving the function of the bank or maybe as VC. The manufacturing and distribution of the creative work was too capital intensive for an individual so this company would lend that money to the process, make the books or records show up in the store, do some publicity and keep most of the money. They insulate the creator from the process and from the retailers and fans. What publicity efforts exist, the big media company acts as a semi-permeable membrane to let a little of the public through, but not a lot. Ultimately in this model, the relationship with the fans of the buying public is owned mostly by the retailer and the publisher or label, very little by the writer or musician. For the author that doesn't want to feed and water that relationship, that's perfect.

For the other kind of author, a JC Hutchins or Mur Lafferty or Scott Sigler, going with a major publisher outsources to a third party a relationship with their fans that these writers are really really good at maintaining. When Hutch is paying his own money to publicize his books and his his own direct line into his own fanbase, what can the big publishers do for him? They could give him large enough advances to keep his bills paid while future books are written, but obviously they aren't willing to do that because sales aren't high enough. JC's books earn money, but not enough money to keep him in that system. For me, the real question is Did St. Martins Press do 9 times the work than JC did to get the work promoted? If not, what did they do to deserve a 90/10 split?

Last November for NaNoWriMo I began a novel that I have literally been thinking about since 1991 when I was 23. While I came nowhere near finishing it that month and am nowhere near finished now, I have a goal to finish this novel in 2010. I've already been thinking about what happens when I finish the book. Do I try to find an agent and then try to have them place it with a major publisher? Since I don't have any plans beyond that one book and thus don't necessarily have a writing career in mind, how does that affect my decision making? At the moment I'm leaning towards not bothering to place the book with any publisher at all. I'll pay Nicola and Kelley at Sterling Editing to work with me to get it publishable and hire a book designer and/or artist to hone the final product and then publish it to the Kindle store, Smashwords, the Nook store and whatever else seems reasonable at the time. I'll probably release it via Podiobooks.com at the the same time, do my publicity via that and the other usual online suspects and let it ride. The key point to me is that the energy I could spend in placing my book at a big publisher could be spent selling the book to readers and I'll probably make more money that way in the long run. This isn't the way things worked for the 19th and 20th century and it may not be the way it works in the future, but March 2010 it is the way it looks to me now. The validation of having a major publisher decide I'm their sort of writer doesn't do anything for me. I don't need the book contract to pay my living, I'd end up doing mostly my own publicity anyway so what the hell does the publisher have to offer me anymore? Rather than have them put out a $15 Kindle book that I see a buck or two from and no one buys with a print version that is on and off the shelves in head-swimming time on a death march to the warehouse remainder store, I'd rather put out a $5.99 ebook version that I see $4 from each one and more people buy. I have a whole rant on how the true function of ebook platforms is to enable impulse buys, but this current post is already too long. That must come later.

When I interviewed Cory Doctorow in 2006, one of the things he said is that the generation coming of age now is the first one to arise without a stigma attached to self-publication. Since I've been paying attention to the world of science fiction and writers in general, a giant shift has happened. When I joined GEnie in 1992, the notion of self-publishing your work meant that it was unreadable tripe and the very thought of it was risible to any serious author. Nowadays, it might well be the most rational economic choice available. If you aren't already in the system and earning livable wages from advances on your books, and you are the sort of writer and person with that drive a JC Hutchins, a Scott Sigler, a Tee Morris, a Mur Lafferty, an Alec Longstreth, someone willing to do more than thrown the manuscript over the wall and wait for finished copies to return it might be time to take the reins yourself and just do this. The costs are low which means the cost of failing is low. The traditional publishers aren't paying that much anyway so the opportunity costs are low. Just do it. Lynne Abbey, CJ Cherryh and Jane Fancher did. The writers at Book View Cafe did. I will. Don't pin your hopes on a big publisher with economic drivers that are different than yours. Just do it yourself, work the people yourself and keep as much of the money as you can.

Tags: akismet, amazon, ebooks, jakonrath, jchutchins, kindle, macmillan, publishing, sterlingediting, stmartinspress

About twice a week I think, "Why don't I try this crazy idea and see if it works?" about some element of my career. With no label, no manager, and no inner voice of reason slow me down, I get to experiment all I want. 90% of my crazy ideas have to do with social networking -- which I spend half a lifetime doing, despite the crap I take from my family and Real Life friends. (Hey, some of us actually do bond over web comics, starship replicas, the fail whale, and photos of stuff on cats.) Mostly my nutty ideas work just a little bit. Some are epic failures. But my experimental flopping and floundering inches me closer to the day when I'll be totally financially independent as a full-time musician. Plus it's more fun than having a real job.

But every now and then a crazy idea works really really really good. Bam!

I planned to sell 20-40 of my little bootleg CD's. Silly me. I sold well over 200. My little stack of jewel cases looked so pathetic.

WholeWheatRadio.org broke every record for online listenership, CD sales, tips -- everything. The more listeners tuned in, the more tuned in, and the more money they gave, the more money they gave. The crowd online was thrilled to be breaking WWR records. I drove away from Talkeetna having earned about $4,000 in one night, with a new CD to produce in just a couple of days and an avalanche of e-mail and publicity requests to deal with. Seldom have I been so happy and so panicked.

But that doesn't mean we can't learn something from how China is reacting to the recession with quick and massive stimulus that is succeeding in creating jobs and growth.

The world's largest human migration the annual crush of Chinese traveling home to celebrate the Lunar New Year, which is this Sunday is going a little faster this time thanks to a new high-speed rail line.

The Chinese bullet train, which has the world's fastest average speed, connects Guangzhou, the southern coastal manufacturing center, to Wuhan, deep in the interior. In a little more than three hours, it travels 664 miles, comparable to the distance from Boston to southern Virginia. That is less time than Amtrak's fastest train, the Acela, takes to go from Boston just to New York.

Even more impressive, the Guangzhou to Wuhan train is just one of 42 high-speed lines recently opened or set to open by 2012 in China. By comparison, the United States hopes to build its first high-speed rail line by 2014, an 84-mile route linking Tampa and Orlando, Fla.

China spent $88 billion dollars on high-speed rail investment in 2009 alone, a substantial increase from previous years. It rivals the construction of the interstate highway system in America in the 1950s for its audaciousness and use of public monies to spur jobs and growth. And it's working:

As China upgrades and expands its rail system, it creates the economies of large-scale production for another big export industry. The sheer volume of equipment that they will require, and the technology that will have to be developed, will simply catapult them into a leadership position, said Stephen Gardner, Amtrak's vice president for policy and development [...]

Officials drafted a plan to move much of the nation's passenger traffic onto high-speed routes by 2020, freeing existing tracks for more freight. Then the global financial crisis hit in late 2008. Faced with mass layoffs at export factories, China ordered that the new rail system be completed by 2012 instead of 2020, throwing more than $100 billion in stimulus at the projects.

Administrators mobilized armies of laborers 110,000 just for the 820-mile route from Beijing to Shanghai, which will cut travel time there to five hours, from 12, when it opens next year.

You can do this far more quickly in a command economy, of course. But it's the priority order that is striking. China needed economic stimulus, and rapidly accelerated public investment. The US (which actually has added more in stimulus than most countries in Europe) took a balanced approach based more on tax cuts. Aside from the question of what approach works better in terms of economic activity, look at the end result practically all of China will be served by high-speed rail within a matter of years.

It's not perfect. Some Chinese have complained about the fare costs. And again, a single decision-maker rather than a phalanx of competing interests makes decision-making that much easier. But there's something that can be learned here. If you want to create jobs, rather than the Rube Goldberg approach of tax breaks and nudges toward private investment, just go ahead and create the jobs. In the long run you'll have higher growth and a better quality of life for the nation.

In a post on the declining revenues of the record business, progressive blogger Matt Yglesias wrote last week, "It is, of course, possible that at some point the digital music situation will start imperiling the ability of consumers to enjoy music. The purpose of intellectual property law is to prevent that from happening, and if it does come to pass we'll need to think seriously about rejiggering things."

Is that the purpose of copyright law? Sonny Bunch at America's Future Foundation didn't think so, but his debate with Yglesias turned out to be much more than one of the numerous daily spats that make up life in the blogosphere. Instead, it went to very nature of a crucial institution like copyrightand it asks whether that institution exists to help the creators or society at large.

It's worth thinking about the answers.

Alicia Keys

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Alicia Keys
Keys performing at Pavilho Atlntico in Lisbon, Portugal on March 19, 2008
Background information
Birth name	Alicia Augello Cook
Also known as	Lellow
Born	January 25, 1981 (1981-01-25) (age 29)
Origin	New York City, New York, United States
Genres	R&B, soul
Occupations	Singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger, record producer, actress, music video director, author, poet
Instruments	Vocals, piano, keyboards, cello, synthesizer, vocoder, guitar, bass
Years active	1985present
Labels	Columbia, Arista, J
Website	www.aliciakeys.com

Alicia Augello Cook (born January 25, 1981), better known by her stage name Alicia Keys, is an American recording artist, musician and actress. She was raised by a single mother in the Hell's Kitchen area of Manhattan in New York City. At age seven, Keys began to play classical music on the piano. She attended Professional Performing Arts School and graduated at 16 as valedictorian. She later attended Columbia University before dropping out to pursue her music career. Keys released her debut album with J Records, having had previous record deals first with Columbia and then Arista Records.

Keys' debut album, Songs in A Minor, was a commercial success, selling over 12 million copies worldwide. She became the best-selling new artist and best-selling R&B artist of 2001. The album earned Keys five Grammy Awards in 2002, including Best New Artist and Song of the Year for "Fallin'". Her second studio album, The Diary of Alicia Keys, was released in 2003 and was also another success worldwide, selling eight million copies. The album garnered her an additional four Grammy Awards in 2005. Later that year, she released her first live album, Unplugged, which debuted at number one in the United States. She became the first female to have an MTV Unplugged album to debut at number one and the highest since Nirvana in 1994.

Keys made guest appearances on several television series in the following years, beginning with Charmed. She made her film debut in Smokin' Aces and went on to appear in The Nanny Diaries in 2007. Her third studio album, As I Am, was released in the same year and sold six million copies worldwide, earning Keys an additional three Grammy Awards. The following year, she appeared in The Secret Life of Bees, which earned her a nomination at the NAACP Image Awards. She released her fourth album, The Element of Freedom, on December 15, 2009. Throughout her career, Keys has won numerous awards and has sold over 30 million albums worldwide, establishing herself as one of the best-selling artists of her time. On December 11, 2009 Alicia Key's was ranked as top R&B artist, the fifth top overall artist and the second top female artist (behind only Beyonce) of the 2000-2009 decade by the Billboard Magazine decade end chart. ^[

Credit card usage is slowing. Revolving credit largely made up of credit card debt fell by nearly 20% in November, the largest drop on record, according to the Federal Reserve, reflecting less borrowing by consumers and banks' tighter lending standards. Through October, the number of new credit card accounts was down 46% from the same period in 2008, according to Equifax.

But abandoning credit cards is a much more radical step than using them less. Consumers who don't own a credit card often have a hard time renting a car. Some hotels won't book rooms to travelers who want to pay with a debit card or cash. Those that accept debit cards may place a hold on several hundred dollars in the customer's bank account, which could cause checks to bounce. And many consumer experts say that responsible use of credit cards is one of the most effective ways to build a good credit record.

It will be interesting to see what the long term implications of this will be, because I sense a lot of people now run with the baseline perception that banks and credit card companies exist only to screw their customers.

I cant wait to get my hands on the IPad. Its going to be a HUGE hit.

You can book it right now that it will be the product that kids of this generation grow up with and look back on with affection just like we did with the first video games. Video games changed how we grew up. The IPad will change how kids grow up.

Apple was brilliant in how they cultivated apps for the IPhone and Touch. With so many apps for kids, any parent with young kids and either of these 2 devices will tell you that their kids use and love them. In fact, it was this very reason that I helped create Puzzle Palace for the IPhone. It allows my kids to take the pictures they take and turn them into puzzles. My 3 year old loves it.

The IPad will take this to the next level. I recognize that its very expensive for most families right now. Hopefully that will change over time. If it does, you can bet every home with kids will have an IPad. And the first person to create the kidproof covering will make money as well (Hint to entrepreneurs) On the flipside, the minute these devices hit critical mass in families, the DVD market for kids, who watch the same movie over and over will end as we know it. Download Scooby Do one time and the need to hassle with all those DVDs for the kids at home or on trips becomes a distant memory. A relic of an older generation.

Thats big.

Whats also big is the exclusion of flash. The reason is obvious. No flash. Far less streaming over 3G. Less streaming over 3G means less bandwidth consumed. Less bandwidth consumed means ATT can offer a GREAT price on the 3G data service. I personally have never had problems with the ATT Network. The limits on 3G streaming probably means I wont going forward either. Thats a good thing.

Its big that there is no USB port. As a content producer thats not a good thing. It means that Apple wants to force us through ITunes to sell content. It will be the path of least resistance for consumers to add content to the IPad and a HUGE source of revenue for Apple. Im sure there will be work around alternatives, but they wont be able to match the simplicity of the ITunes Store.

Outside the Apple Universe, the company that should be licking its chops is Dish Network. Their SlingBox product just became a grand slam. I absolutely LOVE the sling box app I run on my IPod Touch to watch NBA League Pass games, HDNet in a hotel room and other shows that I record on my DVR. I cant wait to put it on the IPad and its big screen.

And finally, if i was just out of school and fluent in all things Wi Fi , networking and wireless, I would immediately go door to door offering to fine tune your home's wireless network. With new HDTVs coming out with Wi FI, the IPad, SlingBox, Netflix Streaming and other applications consuming tons of bandwidth in the home, it is an ABSOLUTE certainty that 99pct of home networks can be improved and perform significantly better. Be that kid in your neighborhood that comes in and fine tunes everyone's wi fi in their home for 50 or 100 bucks (or more if you live in a fancy part of town) and you will make some good money.

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Apple tablet is OLED + back has solar pad for recharging, but (the charger) really doesn't work quickly. More a gimmick. Verizon+att, wifi yes!

Apple Tablet has thumbpads on each side for mouse gestures, reads fingerprint for security. Up to 5 profiles by fingerprint for family.

Yes, there are 2cameras: one in front and one in back (or it may be one with some double lens) so you record yourself and in front of you.

I can tell u the battery life is great in ebook reading mode but not great when on wifi or playing games. 2-3hrs.

Yes, the apple tablet is running an iphone os flavor with ability to have multiple apps running at same time (ie pandora, browser).

The price will be $599, $699 and $799 depending on size and memory in apple tablet. Also, wireless keyboard + monitor connection for TV.

Also, the apple tablet is really amazing for newspapers. Video conferencing is super stable, but nothing new.

The best part of the apple tablet as beta user has been the built in HDTV tuner and pvr, and the chess game.

Yes, it's true I've been beta testing the Apple tablet for the past two weeks and it's amazing!

Given that neither Amazon nor any of the other e-book/e-reader retailers has managed to provide a compelling electronic textbook, I should have known that Apple might be the one. ... McGraw-Hill just happens to be the number 3 textbook publisher in the world. That spells a lot of potential content.

It can be difficult to guess judicial decisions based on the judge's oral questioning of the lawyers, but it's certainly possible to see where judges are having trouble with an argument. In today's case, judges repeatedly went after the FCC's contention that it was acting legally in the Comcast case. Because Comcast's behavior ran afoul of an "Internet Policy Statement" rather than an official rule, the company claims that the FCC had no grounds for action until it made the Policy Statement into actual policy (which FCC Chair Julius Genachowski is trying to do right now).

Judges questioning the FCC's legal team said that the Policy Statement was "aspirational, not operational," that the FCC had not identified a "specific statute" Comcast violated, and that the FCC "can't get an unbridled, roving commission to go about doing good."

What difference would a pro-Comcast ruling make, given that the company has already changed its traffic management practices? It would "free us of this black mark on our record," said a Comcast attorney, according to the Wall Street Journal. That attorney, Helgi Walker, comes from the high-powered Wiley Rein law firm in DC. Ironically, former FCC Chair Kevin Martin, the Republican appointee who sided with the two Democrats on the FCC in the Comcast ruling, was himself a former Wiley Rein lawyer.

In a statement after today's hearing, current FCC Chair Genachowski said, "This case underscores the importance of the FCC's ongoing rulemaking to preserve the free and open Internet. I remain confident the Commission possesses the legal authority it needs and look forward to reviewing the court's decision when it issues."

That decision should come in the next several months.

One of the side effects of being bipolar is that many of your senses are heightened. For example, there are times when I will smell gas on fire, when there is none, or a knock at the door when no one is there. As a kid, seeing flashes of people out of the corner of my eye made me believe my house was haunted (and kept me scared of the dark for most of my life). Even feeling hands on my leg or as if someone was in the bed with me freaked me out.

Of course, being me, I swore I had super powers. I knew I could see, hear, smell and feel better than anyone. (Taste was one I never spent much time with, dunno why) I remember things in images. When I used to take tests, I could see the specific page the answer was on, and I would imagine myself reading that page. Even now, I can remember weird facts and places, even as I forget the most mundane things (I have no idea where my keys are).

I know I had super powers.

I spent time looking in the mirror at each millimeter of my face and body. When I see people in photos I will absorb the photo, memorizing the crease under the right eye, or the slight dimple that only appears when the person is half-smiling. I note the curve of the forehead and the shape of the nose. The nape of the neck. The slope of the shoulder.

Its not just people.

I will notice the smallest spot on my dogs snout, where hair doesnt seem to grow, or the change in her skin tone depending on her level of activity. When I go to movies I spend time looking at the entire screen, trying to understand where the characters were coming from, why the set was built in the way it was. Where the story was going. Could I see the monster before it jumped out of the tree?

Over the years its has become not just visual. I try to observe emotion and body language where I can. Sighed just a little too long? IM responses are really short? Perhaps you are talking excitedly, but your eyes are tired.

Often I mis cues (especially in terms of relationships and romantic interest. Man, do I miss that stuff), but many times I am right. Which in many ways, is awesome.

But there is the opposite side. I see all my negatives. I see all the negatives of people around me. Friends will tell me how a particular woman that I am hanging out with is super hot, and I will see the white hairs and the standoffishness. People will show me what they are working on, and I can see the holes, and why something cant work before I spend time worrying about if it can.

Growing up, I used to joke that if I brought home a report card full of A's with a single A minus, the conversation at home would be about the A minus. My parents spent more time discussing the things I could improve on, than the things I doing well.

In my first couple of positions, and certainly at my company, that was the standard. You are expected to do a great job. Not a good job. Because you are expected to excel, lets spend our time on correcting the errors. Ive never much believed in bonuses or commission plans, after all your motivation should be perfection, not hitting some (semi)arbitrary numbers or goals.

In the past year or so, I have started to change how I look at things. I still see everything. I try to use that to understand the holes and the positive directions we are moving in. I have stopped spending time in the mirror looking at me (although, on occasion, I still do it), and when I do, I try and force myself to look at the positives. At work, I have started to do the same. In all situations, there are positive elements and negative elements and spending time on any specific element is not holistic. It is not a complete approach. It is a failure waiting to happen.

Now as a bit of a tangent (I promise to come back to center), each year, it seems that I am inspired in a large way by a single individual. In 2008 it was Jeffrey Kalmikoff, and in this past year (as a whole), as I think about, it kinda surprised me, but it was Michael Galpert. Neither of these guys said or did anything specific TO me, it was more how they conducted their lives, the struggles they dealt with, etc. In fact, I have a pretty good idea who might be my inspiration/muse for 2010, but I will wait a year to see if I am right.

Last year, one of the things that MSG did that I really liked is that he recorded his interactions with the world. Either a quick video or a photo.

I dont do that. I see nothing but negative in photos of me. There is a reason that about 15 pictures of me exist in the world. (BTW, I used to say that one day I would be rich and famous, so less pictures meant they would be more valuable. Always squeezing a dollar out of 15 cents)

So, as I start to try and see myself holistically, I am going to start recording my interactions (and allowing others to record my interactions) with the world. I am going to try this coming year to take a photo of myself every day. I have started to play with DailyBooth, which is wonderful (except I want an RSS feed of my own photos *AHEM*).

I might spend a bit more time in front of the video camera. After all, I do have a lot of things to talk about with the launch of a new company, and other cool stuff that I will talk about later (that, my friends, is an admission that I have nothing else interesting to talk about. Yet.)

Its all about absorbing life holistically. Let the absorption begin.

In a bizarre case involving teen YouTube sensation Justin Bieber and a riotous crowd of his fans, a record exec from Island Def Jam Records was arrested Friday for, among other things, failing to Tweet when told to by authorities.

When the Beiber event at Roosevelt Field mall became unruly (video below), police appealed to the artist's label to send a Tweet telling the crowd to leave. When that allegedly didn't happen, police arrested James Roppo, a senior vice president of Island Def Jam Records, for endangering the welfare of a minor and obstructing government administration.

An Associated Press feed reads:

Police arrested a vice president from Bieber's record label, Island Def Jam Records, saying he wasn't cooperating with attempts to disperse the crowd. James Roppo, 44, of Hoboken, N.J., was charged with a series of misdemeanours, including endangering the welfare of children and obstructing governmental administration.

We asked for his help in getting the crowd to go away by sending out a Twitter message, said Nassau County Police Det. Lt. Kevin Smith. By not cooperating with us, we feel he put lives in danger and the public at risk.

The report doesn't put the police in a good light, especially considering that Bieber's feed does contain Tweets asking the crowd to leave.

But all may not be as it seems: contrary to the AP reports, the NY Daily News implies that the arrest was for sending out updates that Bieber was signing autographs even after the crowd had dispersed.

Roppo is pleading not guilty to the charges.

[via MediaMemo]

Tags: twitter

Yes, really. Rupert Murdoch's crusade to blame Google for the failing newspaper business model continues today, as it emerges that News Corp has conducted talks with Microsoft about de-indexing the company's sites from Google and (presumably) being paid to include them in Bing instead.

The concept makes sense only if you buy Murdoch's claims that Google is stealing content rather than simply helping people find it.

The revelation comes from the Financial Times, which has a strong track record for accurate reportage this is unlikely to be a fluffy rumor. The piece reads, in part:

Microsoft has had discussions with News Corp over a plan that would involve the media company's being paid to de-index its news websites from Google, setting the scene for a search engine battle that could offer a ray of light to the newspaper industry.

The impetus for the discussions came from News Corp, owner of newspapers ranging from the Wall Street Journal of the US to The Sun of the UK, said a person familiar with the situation, who warned that talks were at an early stage.

However, the Financial Times has learnt that Microsoft has also approached other big online publishers to persuade them to remove their sites from Google's search engine.

News Corp and Microsoft, which owns the rival Bing search engine, declined to comment.

I say go for it. So, I'm sure, do all the other web publishers who see that removing many of the major news sites from Google will provide even more traffic for the upstarts. News Corp is merrily making itself irrelevant to web consumers, while continuing to use Google as its punch bag rather than addressing the radical transition of media into the online world.

The first panel up at Webby Connect today was to address branded comedy content and its production. My original intention was to have my wife attend since she's the funny one in our civil arrangement. I'm glad that I didn't!

I'm glad not because I could have learned what comedy gold is but that the panel literally had nothing to do with comedy. They spoke my language about distribution, production, creatives, agencies and building out campaigns for brands. This would have killed my wife and I in turn would have turned into her comedy gold in her next act.

On the panel were Jennifer Kavanagh from Oxygen Channel, Douglas Scott from Ogilvy and Steve Wax (@campfiresteve) from Campire. The moderator for this session was Gillian Reagan from The New York Observer. I will spare you the titles, but just know that these people are at the top of their game and industries.

Gillian asked the panel questions that had a comedy focus in them but they were taken by the panelists and shaped to match their experiences with production of branded content for clients. This isn't a bad thing, believe me. They were able to riff off of each other and share information about their processes.

Some of the most useful information about how to create these campaigns came from Douglas Scott. He broke Ogilvy's process down at a high level and touched on the life-cycle of that production and on through distribution. He highly recommended to have the brand involved in the creative process from the beginning of a project.

If you're a creative you can stop gnashing your teeth. He made sure to point out that working with the client before hand to understand the process and the iterative nature of developing content. The goal of this is to create a more authentic product that would make the brand not feel propped up or think that the content was poorly written due to too much or too little brand exposure.

Steve Wax addressed this issue after being asked about creative freedom and it brands get in the way. He simply stated that for a boutique agency like Campfire there isn't a real need to continually bend to a brand since they are project based. Unlike agencies which are tied to the brand as matter of record and have built massive budgets around multiple campaigns.

Later in the panel Douglass Scott addressed his experience with CMO's that are new to the digital and branded content space. Here's the take away from this three minute lesson:

• Teach them the language of the writing room scripts, dailies, etc.
• Show them examples of what has been successful
• Madison Avenue, Creatives and Hollywood are being driven together by economic realities and to continue high quality content production they need to work together

This was a jumping off point for the moderator to ask about mobile. Jennifer from Oxygen put this into perspective by giving out the percentage increase in mobile traffic over last year, up 500%. She reiterated that now is the time to begin figuring out how to produce for mobile to get the most out of it for brands.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/4

Webby Connect NYC Branded Content is a post from: TechStartups.com

Like any great lesson this one is short.

Know your audience, deliver and charge.

The movie Precious didn't win the overall box office this weekend Carol did. But what Precious did is set the record for average gross at $100k per theater. Compare that the to the gross per theater of Carol at $8k and some change. Slight difference.

Precious was a limited release in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and Atlanta at 18 theaters. Attendees were 68% female and 50% black, according to Variety. The filmmakers and backers of this film were able to maximize there investment and start the word of mouth ball rolling by focusing on regions with the highest number of potential audience members.

This is a precious lesson in understanding an audience and delivering a product or experience that they are willing to pay for. It is proof that indie projects, which most online projects are, have value and can be monetized when the right audience is engaged.

Finding the right audience for content is possible producers just need to be open to maximizing their investment through limited and targeted releases.

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

A Precious' Lesson is a post from: TechStartups.com

What I am about to say is because I have been a long time member of the eBay affiliate program, now called eBay Partner Network. It is also of value to anyone that is starting or currently responsible for managing an affiliate program for a company.

My affinity for their brand is the result of being a partner for over three years, my wife being a seller on eBay for nearly ten years, API ease of use and the ability to earn revenue consistently for three years as part of the partner network.

But try as they might, eBay has not driven me away from the partner network . . . yet. They transitioned the program from Commission Junction to an internal program two years ago. The metrics and other monitoring tools suffered as eBay had to get their affiliate legs underneath them. No longer could an affiliate view the extensive reports for click monitoring, referrals, purchases, week to week comps, etc.

Then eBay transformed the program most recently from their CPA (where a partner was paid if their link resulted in a sale) program to a CPC program. This isn't your average CPC program with prices set per click it is based on an algorithm that calculates the quality of the clicks from a given link on a 24 hour basis and assigns them a monetary value.

With this most recent transition to CPC and a program controlled by an algorithm (see: bot) eBay developed a Transparency Team. This team has the task of reaching out to partners that have links that aren't performing in a manner that matches the eBay partner agreement (see: fraudulent).

This is a great idea in theory. However, this team wouldn't need to exist if the eBay partner network returned to the same type of reports that Commission Junction used. Instead, when reinventing the wheel, eBay eliminated any useful monitoring for partners. Thus making participating in their program as opaque as it can be. Metrics that provide a payout, ranking or trip the algorithm to send an automated email stating that a partner is somehow engaged in fraudulent activity are nonexistent.

Ebay has removed any substantive accounting for themselves in the process of monitoring or payouts, the crux of a developer or user becoming an affiliate. Hiding reports from users that are accustomed to them as part of other vendor programs.

The problem is a that is a basic customer service issue that has not been addressed by eBay. Reporting, prompt replies and useful feedback data would allow partners to build better programs that meet eBay's standards and can be crafted to drive more quality traffic to eBay.

This example says it all:

Two months ago I was contacted by the eBay Partner Network Transparency Team (see: bot generated email) stating that in their quest to be transparent I should do the same and that I was failing as a large percentage of my links weren't sending referrer data. Meaning that they don't have a record from these links of the website where the link was displayed and clicked on.

Fair enough to ask me about the links. Not fair or right, accusing someone of not being transparent when all of the click data is hidden away. Not fair is waiting two months to reply back with meaningless data stating that eBay is right. See below:

Ebay sure is right that I have a high non-referrer rate and that bots are removed. I guess I should stop questioning their authority . . . sure. I'd do that if I knew what the criteria were or what bots are being removed. Because for nearly two years they didn't remove a single bot from click data.

I've requested more data from the Transparency Team like IP addresses and user-agents of those clicks. Since I can't track the click that is actually going to eBay without breaking the user-agreement with eBay I will be at their mercy to figure out if the clicks are coming from mobile devices or and some proxy bot that has a lust for finding its way to eBay auctions. Maybe the bot master was blocked by eBay for not being transparent enough when scraping their auctions.

Ebay, this isn't how to be transparent or run a valued affiliate program. If my experience hadn't begun with your program on Commission Junction I wouldn't have such high hopes for how the current partner network could operate. As an affiliate, I want to make money, but I also want eBay to succeed.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/4

Ebay Partner Network and Transparency is a post from: TechStartups.com

I wonder if they will look more their mom or dad? Which one is which in this situation?

Okay, that was lame.

Last week Focal Press, an imprint of Elsevier Books, announced that it has partnered with Variety to begin publishing books focused on the entertainment industry. What that really means is that these are books written in partnerhsip with Variety by media professionals that are now finding their way online.

This is for the record I haven't read either of these books and am strictly commenting on the press release itself.

The first two releases in the arrangement have focused on what has become the most important question in creating content today how to make money. One of the books, quite possibly has the most ambitious title filled with a bazillion keywords, The Business of Media Distribution: Monetizing Film, TV and Video Content in an Online World. I'm sure it's Amazon search hits are sky high.

Focal Press has a reputation for taking on new growth opportunities that are presented by technology. They have been very astute at following trends online and being able to cash in on them. A few years ago it was podcasting and now they have moved on to what became of the podcasting landscape the Media.

Now that Hollywood is arriving, with wise media faces and a neophytes sense of producing for the internet, they are ripe for education. You could say that they have been producing content for the internet for years and just haven't been paid for it. But let's not tell them that yet and let this illusion persist.

Collectively, with independent producers, the Hollywood crowd is helping to ease us into the next phase of Media. I'm using a capital on the word Media to make it the royal Media the one that we are all now participating in since the tools to create and distribute that media are so ubiquitous. Entertainment is simply an inherent element of this Media.

It makes sense for Variety and Focal Press to hook up and make beautiful books together. For now they will be cute and stuff. However, as they age, they'll start talking back and become insolent ne'er-do-wells that become a reckoning point in the history of media production.

So love these little babies while they have a shelf life and a twinkle of something new and shiny in their eyes. Because the Media is coming and soon enough it will take with it the idea that this newness is anything other than shifting distribution mechanisms that are no different any of the others that have caused this industry to quake in its boots.

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

Variety and Focal Press Hook Up to Make Books is a post from: TechStartups.com

Of course, TweetLevel doesn't ignore numbers altogether. It does take into account the number of followers a Twitter account may have and the account's participation in the community (I assume that means tweet frequency). However, the tool places a much greater weight on what is being said and how trustworthy an individual twitterer may be.

Using a 100-point scale, here are some of TweetLevel's highest rated Twitterers:

• Perez Hilton (score: 86.5)
• Mashable (86.3)
• Twitter Tips (85.2)

Perez Hilton!? Edelman's developers may have to go back into the lab for a rewrite

Microsoft PR Agency of Record Waggener Edstrom launched a similar tool called Twendz earlier this year. Twendz monitors trending topics on Twitter while providing sentiment analysis on those topics. As of this post, I was unable to get Twendz running in Chrome, Firefox or Safari on my MacBook running Snow Leopard 10.6.2. The Company plans to offer a premium version of the tool later this year.

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

Twitter Startups Born from PR Firms is a post from: TechStartups.com

BlogTalkRadio recently released an iPhone app for sharing short audio messages and photos while on the go called Cinch. The app is designed to that you can record your thoughts, message or short interview with a photo and then send it to the Cinch service.

Cinch then takes your media and syndicates it to Facebook, Twitter and puts the content into an RSS feed. Once the content hits the RSS feed it is immediately available to subscribers and followers within the Cinch.com website.

The application and service combined are really a giant API that can be utilized by media makers to produce from their mobile device. Cinch isn't limited to just the iPhone app. It can be used by simply calling a phone number listed on the site, recording a message and hanging up.

A savvy developer could use Cinch to extend their own products to mobile devices and utilize the infrastructure that BlogTalkRadio has built over the last few years.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/4

Post from: TechStartups.com

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• Developers who have been active in the developer preview we started back in June
• The first users who signed up and offered to give feedback on wave.google.com
• Select customers of Google Apps

While there are plenty of web polling services around where can you create online polls and surveys for free, there are couple of reasons why the form builder in Google Docs rules them all.

Reason 1. You can create any number of polls and surveys using Google Docs for free and virtually unlimited number of people can participate in such surveys via the web browser.

Reason 2. The forms created with Google Docs are mobile friendly and people can therefore send in their responses from mobile phone browsers as well (perfect for conducting polls in a conference).

Reason 3. All the votes and responses are automatically collected in an Excel spreadsheet and that makes it easier for you to analyze large sets of data using charts and other complex spreadsheet functions.

Reason 4. You can chose to get email notifications as soon as people fill in a Google Docs form with their responses.

Reason 5. Forms in Google Docs support a wide range of question types including scale and grid that are generally not available in other web polling services (at least the free ones).

Reason 6. With Google Docs, you can pre-populate form fields via URL parameters. This is pretty handy in case you want to pre-fill some fields of the form with default choices or if you are planning to integrated a Google Docs form with another system like the comment section of your site if someone has filled their name and email in the comment section, they need not fill that data again in Google Docs form.

Reason 7. Google Docs is probably the only free polling software that supports logic branching. This is like serving a different set of questions to a user based on their previous responses.

Let me explain that with an example. Say you have created a survey for your site visitors that asks whether they have upgraded to the latest OS or not.

Since there's little point in asking Mac related questions to a Windows User (and vice-versa), you can create different sets of questions for Mac and Windows related questions and redirect visitors to the right set based on what OS they use. Here's how you do that inside Google Docs forms.

Reason 8. Google Docs forms are great for conducting internal surveys as well if you are using Google Apps in the organization. That's because Google Docs can automatically record* the email addresses of people (your employees) who fill out the form.

Also see: The Google Docs Guide

[*] You can also have anonymous surveys inside Google Apps.

Why Forms in Google Docs are Perfect for Creating Online Surveys

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

While many people stereotype geeks as only being interested in using the computer all day, the truth is that a geek is actually a person who often contemplates many of the deeper questions of the universe while busy installing the coolest new add-ons to Firefox or tweaking their mobile phone so that they can control it from their desktop. One of the universal debates many geeks have centers around an important question that involves neurobiology and the science of artificial intelligence, and that question is Does a human think faster than a computer?

What a question. Just think of the necessary evidence that one would need to produce in order to prove, or disprove, that statement. In fact, what is the question about really? Is it whether a human brain or a computer is faster, or is it which form of information processing is better? Is it even a fair comparison? Today, I'd like to engage MakeUseOf readers into a debate on this subject by first providing my own take and then asking for yours.

The Question: Does a Human Think Faster Than a Computer?

The question itself represents the fallacy of how people think about computers. When a person uses a computer, if it's slow then it's junk. But there are certainly other factors to consider when examining intelligence what about image recognition, language recognition, multi-tasking capabilities or self-learning and self-healing features?

First, to partially answer the speed question we need to examine data transmission. In the Hartford Examiner, writer Joy Casad answers the question, How fast is a thought by describing the chemical/biological propagation of thinking neurons before getting to the point in the final paragraph these neurons transmit signals at 0.5 milliseconds. That's pretty fast!

In 2006, the fastest reported fiber optic transmission rate was 2.56 terabits a second. Okay, but a bit is nothing more than a zero and a one. Well the current state of the art is the cutting edge subatomic technology created by Stanford researchers representing one bit with 35 electrons, or 35,000,000,000 electrons a millisecond. Due to the fact that axon/neuron electrical transmission depends on the chemical and biological environment it is in, data transmission of one neuron is actually millions of times slower than the fastest electrical transmission rates over copper electrical wire, and even slower compared to fiber optics. Score one for computers.

What About Processing Power?

The question of processing is a tricky one. According to the Top500 list of super computers, the fastest one as of 2009 is the RoadRunner BladeCenter at 12.8 GFlops (floating point operations per second).

A GFlop represents a billion operations per second. Now, you're thinking of that Monday morning in class when your professor asked you to perform a simple calculation and your mind went blank. You're ready to chalk up another point to computers, right? Wrong.

While the transmission of electrical impulses may be slower in the brain than over wire, the processing power of the brain is represented by not one, but thousands of processors backed into one major super computer. One example is the retina, which is sort of like your computer web cam, in that it transmits light (images) to the brain for processing. Except the retina itself has its own processing power, sort of like a subprocessor 100 million neurons packed into a one centimeter by one millimeter space.

This stunning little processor is capable of processing ten images, each of about a million light points, every single second. Not only that, the data isn't transmitted over a single fiber of nerve cells, but over a cable to the brain made up of a million of these fibers, all transmitting bits of data at the same time in parallel. If you multiply the processing power of this volume of neurons by the overall size of the average 1,500 cubic cm human brain, the overall processing power of the brain is about 100 million, million operations per second. For those of you who are trying to do the math with your super computer brain that's over 100,000 times more processing power than today's cutting-edge super computer.

Image and Language Recognition, Learning and Common Sense

If our brains are such super computers, then why do we feel so dense and so slow sometimes? I don't know about you, but I'm horrible at doing calculations in my head. The problem is that people think of computers only in terms of how many calculations it can do per second. The truth is, when it comes to intelligence there's so much more to process than calculations alone. How do you calculate what the tone of someone's voice implies they are really saying? How do you calculate the irony of a joke that, when taken literally, makes no sense at all? This is where the true power of the human brain makes itself known.

Have you ever had a friend who was such a genius that they could perform the most astounding calculations in their head, or they could fathom the most complex equations or problems imaginable yet when faced with the simplest common-sense joke, they just didn't get it? This is the major difference between a human brain and a computer.

Author Gary Marcus writes, in his book on the human mind that, The fundamental difference between computers and the human mind is in the basic organization of memory.

What he means is that a computer organizes information in a logical way. To retrieve data, the computer uses logical storage locations. A human brain, on the other hand, remembers where information is stored based on cues. Those cues are other pieces of information or memories connected to the information you need to retrieve. This means that the human mind can connect an almost unlimited number of concepts in a variety of ways, and then sometimes disconnect or recreate connections based on new information. This allows the human to step outside the boundaries of what has already been learned leading to new art and new inventions that are the trademark of the human race.

There are a lot of other ways the human mind blows computers away it can self repair itself, it can produce chemical reactions within its host body to induce instinctive reactions and protect itself from danger, it can handle every last function required to operate the machine of the human body while simultaneously processing information from outside that body, and most importantly it can continue learning and building new connections within that contextual storage array in ways that seem infinite.

In short, the answer to the question Does a human think faster than a computer? is yes. And it can also do a whole lot more than that.

Geeks out there weigh in with your opinion in the comments section below!

Image Credits: cbowns

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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His dad's quips have resulted in more than 231,000 followers under the account name @smydadsays. But after it attracted wide attention in recent weeks as followers retweeted postings, and blogs and mainstream media covered it, Mr. Halpern finally broke the news.

But his dad didn't really get it. He asked if I had to start up the Internet to get on Twitter, and then I felt better because I knew he wouldn't understand the grand scope of what was going on, said Mr. Halpern in an interview.

Shortly after the revelation, his dad, who doesn't have Internet on his personal computer by choice, changed the subject. Mr. Halpern asked his father if he wanted to see the site. He responded with an adamant no, so Mr. Halpern read him some posts to check for accuracy, to which his dad responded, Yeah, I said that.

Mr. Halpern said that if his dad had been upset by the account, he would have discontinued it. He's my dad, and I live in his house rent-free. That's not a very nice thank you, he said.

He has long been documenting the quips of his father, who grew up working on a farm in Kentucky and was a doctor for more than 40 years. As a child, he recorded them in his diaries, and when he got older, he would post them as his status on Gmail Chat to give his friends a chuckle. In August, he found a new medium for disseminating his father's expletive-loaded one-liners: Twitter.

Mr. Halpern started the account after he left a job in Los Angeles and was unable to retrieve all of his personal documents on his work computer. He had just moved back in with his parents in San Diego, and a friend suggested he use Twitter as a way to document his life, because he had stopped keeping journals. He was reluctant because of the 140-character cap on tweets, but then thought it could be a good way to keep a record of his dad's quotes. I didn't expect it to have more than 10 people following it, he said.

A month later, he has become an Internet sensation. On Aug. 3, he began posting such gems as Your brother brought his baby over this morning. He told me it could stand. It couldn't stand for s. Just sat there. Big let down. Watching the Little League World Series, he said, These kids are all fat. I remember when you were in little leagueyou were fat. Other posts are best read on his page.

Mr. Halpern works from home as a writer for Maxim.com, and his father is retired, so throughout the day he collects the funny, and sometimes outrageous, things he says and chooses one to post each day. Early on, one of his friends brought up the possibility of his dad not saying anything quote-worthy, but he knew that wouldn't be a problem.

During the course of a day, he says tons of funny things because there's no filter. He admits some of his dad's best quotes are over 140 characters and are disqualified because of the limit.

Since his account has blown up in the media he's been approached by book agents, publishers and producers. In Los Angeles he tried to make it as a screenwriter but didn't find much success. It's ironic to think that I busted my ass trying to get my own writing out there, and what has been successful for me is something I didn't even write, he said.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission is considering a ban on a stock market practice known as "flash trading," where supercomputers get access to information milliseconds before other traders and can rapidly buy and sell in ways that are argued to influence the market unfairly - thus discouraging mere mortals from participating.

Many bleeding-edge trends in the consumer web play out writ large in financial markets; as all of us look at the growing prominence of real-time information on the web, the debate over flash stock trading raises issues worth considering outside the stock markets as well.

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If the real time web at large grows up open and democratic, then we're likely to see innovation, understanding and growth. If it's priced out of reach to all but marketing and state interests, then an experience analogous to that of small-time stock traders today could become what the web at large looks like.

It's easy for technologists to say that this is progress and rejecting the advantages technology brings would demand a return to time before the abacus. It's not so easy to explain why we have to take an all-or-nothing approach to judging technologies and their implications - why not look at them one at a time and evaluate them intelligently?

Here's how the introduction of real time information is being debated regarding financial markets, followed by some thoughts about the analogous transformation going on around the web.

This isn't just a story about robot stock traders and the SEC; it's also a story about Twitter, Facebook and the Pushbutton Web.

Robots in Financial Markets

Last month the New York Times' Charles Duhigg wrote a high-profile story about the practice of high frequency trading, including this juicy description of the practice:

Powerful algorithms -- "algos," in industry parlance -- execute millions of orders a second and scan dozens of public and private marketplaces simultaneously. They can spot trends before other investors can blink, changing orders and strategies within milliseconds.

High-frequency traders often confound other investors by issuing and then canceling orders almost simultaneously. Loopholes in market rules give high-speed investors an early glance at how others are trading. And their computers can essentially bully slower investors into giving up profits -- and then disappear before anyone even knows they were there.

Rich Miller, writing at Data Center Knowledge, a blog that tracks the powerful computers that high frequency traders (among many other industries) use, called the article one-sided and inconsiderate of the argument that "this activity provides liquidity to execute trades that would otherwise not be possible, making the market more efficient." He also said the press was widening the debate over the practice by bringing it into the mainstream.

Now U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) has sent a letter to the SEC this week, calling for action to be taken against the practice of flash trading in particular, the act of selling for a fee access to trading information milliseconds before it is otherwise available. He argues that the practice "creates a two-tiered system where a privileged group of insiders receives preferential treatment, depriving others of a fair price for their transactions. If allowed to continue, these practices will undermine the confidence of ordinary investors, and drive them away from our capital markets."

Schumer focuses on the early access to information, but always in the context of the computer-driven trading that occurs based on it.

Trader John Hempton writes that critics over-estimate the financial impact of flash traded stock, needlessly complicating a situation that he describes with the following, fascinating, story:

We trade electronically at our fund. We were recently trading in a stock with a large spread. I have changed the numbers so as not to identify the stock - but the ratios are about right. The bid was about 129.50, offer was about 131.50. We did not want to cross the spread - so when we bid for the stock we bid $129.55. Within a second a computer (possibly at our own broker but it makes no difference which broker) bid $129.60 for a few hundred shares. We fiddled for a while changing our bid and watching the bot change theirs. We would have loved to think we were frustrating the computer - but alas it was just a machine - and we were people up late at night.

Actually obtaining the stock required that we paid up - and when we did so it was probably a computer that sold the stock to us.

...It is always there - even when buying defaulted debt that trades once per month. We simply ALWAYS find the bot.

What About Real-time Robots on the Web?

Could the real time web give some people such an unfair advantage over everyone else that non-early adopters of new technologies or people outside of marketing firms could be left out in the cold? Presuming we're talking about important, actionable information online and not just real-time chat and fun - it's possible. The question is: will the most important parts of the real time web be open and democratized, or proprietary and shared only with those who can pay a high price for access? That question hasn't been answered yet.

If you were among the people who purchased the new Breaking News Online (BNO) iPhone app (released an eternity ago, yesterday!) then today you probably found out about the two US journalists being freed from North Korea and the shooting in Pennsylvania at least 45 minutes before almost anyone else did. (CNN posted a link to local PA news 45 minutes after the BNO network published.) That notification system costs $1.99 to purchase and $1 per month to stay subscribed.

If you've visited Yahoo's social-bookmarking turned real-time news service Delicious since this morning, you've seen that hot news links are now found not just by vote counting, but with a new method augmented by tracking the open, rapid conversations on Twitter.

These are innovations built out of elbow grease and publicly available feeds of data. Yahoo might be, but the scrappy guys at Breaking News Online definitely aren't, using software something like IBM's new stream processing software, for which it will charge "at least" hundreds of thousands of dollars.

No, this real-time public web is very low cost and increasingly both open sourced and decentralized. It's akin to what Anil Dash calls the pushbutton web.

Pushbutton is a name for what I believe will be an upgrade for the web, where any site or application can deliver realtime messages to a web-scale audience, using free and open technologies at low cost and without relying on any single company like Twitter or Facebook. The pieces of this platform have just come together to enable a whole set of new features and applications that would have been nearly impossible for an average web developer to build in the past.

As long as it's open and low cost, real time information on the web should be as democratic and fair as computer use is. It's not perfect, but it's no longer the David and Goliath-on-steroids fight that critics of high frequency stock trading say that market has become because of real time stock data.

The Risk: Facebook

The real time web is a shimmering mass of conversation and data, but there's no guarantee that it's going to stay open, free and democratic forever. Already, in fact, there's no bigger river of the real time social web than Facebook. Facebook is simply huge, it holds huge sums of information and so far it allows aggregate access to no one. As far as we know.

If Facebook, or some other equally important site of the real time web, began offering access to its data but pricing mere mortals out of that market - then we could have a situation where individual software developers and social scientists were like grandpa reading the stock pages in the newspaper and huge marketing firms and government agencies had the kind of advantage that high frequency traders are alleged to have in financial markets.

Anil Dash puts it this way:

Pushbutton technologies are not just free and open, they're decentralized, which is a serious threat to the "lobster trap" model of social software. We can expect serious competition from the centralized networks that are currently building these sorts of systems. If a threat arises to Pushbutton's adoption, this is the most likely source. Worry? Definitely.

In addition to development concerns, there are also analysis concerns. If stock trading equals liquidity and knowledge is the new currency, then open access to aggregate data could be the equivalent of high-powered stock-trading tools for all instead of for just the already-richest few.

Some research has already been performed on the connection between communication on social networks and real-world events. The Information and Language Processing Systems Informatics Institute at the University of Amsterdam, for example, correlated mood messages on LiveJournal closely with world events. ("Mass increase in the level of worriedness around major weather phenomena, such as hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2005 - Excitedness around global media and culture events, such as the release of a new Harry Potter book on July 15, 2005 - Mass increase in the level of distress and sadness after terror attacks, as witnessed by the response to the London bombings on July 7, 2005.")

Analysis of real time mass communication could lead to a world of innovation and understanding - if that communication is an open fire hose of data and not shared only with deep pocketed commercial partners.

Everything is Complicated, Some Can Afford to Ponder It

Is high frequency, low latency, computer executed, "flash" trading unfair? It must feel that way to individual and small investors who can't afford killer number-crunching robots - but it's also pretty awesome technology and is said to provide liquidity that the markets depend on.

Could the real time consumer web be made undemocratic by being priced out of reach for edge-case developers and social scientists outside of government and the corporate world? That could happen.

As we speak, though, there's a lot of innovation going on in the real time web that's open, based on standards and available to all of us. Let's hope it stays that way

One key thread in that conversation: are the rules different for journalists - for instance, around repeating rumors - when they're blogging than when they're writing for the front page?

Sponsor

It's an interesting question... but it draws me of the broader question of what rules we follow and ethical lines we draw as social media types, journalists or not. One example: a lot of us do a lot of personal disclosure, and we sometimes drag the people in our lives along with us into the spotlight.

What are your rules? Is any conversation potential blog fodder, or have you drawn sharp, inviolable boundaries in your life?

More Noise to Signal

Names added to that list yesterday included one local writer: the ludicrously prolific Michael Nagrant of Hungry Mag, Serious Eats, New City and just about any paper or website that publishes a byline. Owning to all sorts of biases here as both a colleague and friend, if the Times really wanted to make a splash in naming Bruni's heir apparent few food critics have the resume of Nagrant; one that includes collaborating on a Beard Award-winning cookbook; a critic whose voice is constantly evolving; a entertaining and engaging writer equally comfortable in traditional and new media; one whose personal code of food journalism ethics is downright Orthodox Catholic in the age of the Yelp! Elite Squad.

I contacted Nagrant about his name popping up. He responded by saying that he's sent Times "Dining In/Dining Out" Editor Trish Hall samples of his work in the past two months for her consideration. Nagrant replied, "The New York Times food critic position is one of the most important jobs in American food writing. Whether it's (Ruth) Reichl or Bruni or (William) Grimes et al, as a writer I've looked to those who've held that chair and always tried to write to that standard. The NYT critic spot is very much a goal of mine." As to wanting to take the job in these uncertain times for print journalism, Nagrant said, "In these tough times for print journalism where some would rather be the next food TV star or own a restaurant, I want to write. I don't want to be rich or famous. I only want to sustain myself, practice the craft and get better everyday. I want nothing more as a writer and I'm willing to give everything I am if the honor came my way."

Nagrant acknowledged Eater's speculation yesterday with (natch) twitter updates, paraphrasing Groucho Marx and even providing a headshot so the Times doesn't have to.

A great number of celebrities have found Twitter is a great way to communicate directly with the public, without filtering by the news media or a record company. In Reznor's case, his fan base consisted of a few too many angry, depressed people to make Twitter a pleasant experience.

It turns out the industrial rocker's fans weren't too happy when he started Twittering about the joys of being in love. And so he warned that he was going quit the Internet: "You are right, I'm not the same person I was in 1994 (and I'm happy about that). Are you?"

Rather than fade away as Dave Matthews seems to be doing, Reznor followed up on his threat by just cold deleting his account sometime within the past few days (he posted as recently as July 17). Which is especially startling since Reznor has been a pioneer in using the internet to distribute his music and connect with fans. He's now discovered that it's possible to connect too closely and unlike internet fameballers trying to convert online fame into real celebrity, he doesn't have to pretend otherwise.

Andy Borowitz: Goldman Sachs in Talks to Acquire Treasury Department

In what some on Wall Street are calling the biggest blockbuster deal in the history of the financial sector, Goldman Sachs confirmed today that it was in talks to acquire the U.S. Department of the Treasury. . . .

"The Goldman spokesman said that the merger would create efficiencies for both entities: "We already have so many employees and so much money flowing back and forth, this would just streamline things."

Mr. Hestron said the only challenge facing Goldman in completing the merger "is trying to figure out which parts of the Treasury Dept. we don't already own."

Goldman recently celebrated record earnings by roasting a suckling pig over a bonfire of hundred-dollar bills.

Sony was supposed to win this. The company made magnetic tape out of like paper and mud back in the 1940s, turned out a "pocketable" transistor radio in the 1950s, and invented the "portable" television by 1960. They had their first video tape recorder by 1963. They weren't the only ones, but they were among the first and best.

The so-called VTR business had a rocky start. The things were hulking bastards, with huge price tags and poor recording capability.

A company called Ampex put out the first "home entertainment" VTR in 1963, only it cost $30,000 in the Neiman Marcus Christmas catalog, and was nicknamed Grant's Tomb because the product manager who thought it up was going to be shoved inside by the company's accountants. (He would have fit, too, the thing was so big.) Sony comes along in the middle of that decade and puts out a $1,200 "portable" VTR that came with a leatherette case and its own TV. It still weighed 65 pounds.

The worst part about these 1960s VTRs was that they were basically reel-to-reelyou had to thread your own 1-inch videotape through spools and stuff, and by the end of the decade, a one-hour spool of tape was like 8 inches in diameter. Can you imagine your TiVo needing 180 spools of videotape to get the job done?

As Sony toiled on the videotape problem, Matsushitawho we now call Panasonicand its independent subsidiary JVC weren't really standing out in the VTR business. Let's say this: Nobody would have guessed they'd be able to overthrow Sony and kick mecha ass within the decade.

However, these guys were among the biggest manufacturers, dwarfing Sony many times over. Matsushita, known for efficiency, not innovation, tended to focus on big boring appliancesTVs, refrigerators, air conditionerswith a smaller team, branded Technics, devoted to dominating the hi-fi realm. JVC was all about TVs and audio gear, and had decent video know-how.

It was Sony who solved the reel-to-reel problem withta daaa!a video cassette. It was called U-Matic, and at 3/4" thick, it was smaller than the earlier formats, but still a bit of a chunkster. Since video was a bit of a Wild West, Sony felt like it needed partners to firmly establish a format, and to avoid a format war. It asked Matsushita and JVC, who said "yes" as long as Sony adopted some changes. They key here: The partnership included a deal where everybody shared all the patents. Turns out, probably not the smartest move by Sony.

Sony was right to form a posse, though. Every single electronics maker in Japan, Europe and America was trying to build a video recorder. Some American firms were obsessed with lasers (though ironically it would later be the Dutch and Japanese firms who actually put lasers to good use); other American firms were jazzed about microfilm...for video. None of them had success. Before we get on with the story, here's a list of totally failed video players and recorders:

Matsushita VX-100 and VX-2000
Matsushita AutoVision
Toshiba/Sanyo V-Cord
Ampex InstaVision
MCA DiscoVision/Magnavox Magnavision
CBS Electronic Video Recording
RCA HoloTape
Sears/Cartridge Television Cartrivision

See what I mean? A friggin' mess it was.

Part of the problem was the message. Nobody knew what the hell this was all about. Sony wasn't just a pioneer in the technology, they thought hard about how to explain why you totally desperately want something bad. At one point, Sony hired Bela Lugosi to dress up one last time as Dracula, and explain that, since he worked nights, he needed to catch up on primetime shows when he got home. Get it? Vampiresthey're out killing people when Barney Miller is playing! It was a good bit, and there were a lot more like it. Little by little, the public caught on to what VCRs were for.

Anyway, U-Matic, launched in 1971, wasn't a runaway success, either, but it was the bestselling video recorder to date, and the first successful VCR. In the realm of pro video, it was hot. Sony cashed in by steering from the home market to the businesses but JVC, who kept trying to pitch it for home use, got hosed. Like villains in some Shakespearean play, Matsushita and JVC kinda lurked in the background, planning for the next round when they might one-up that little charmer, Sony. The name of their plot? Video Home System, which you and I call VHS.

Sony was naive. Like, crazy naive. In 1974, it asked Matsushita and JVC to partner up again, this time on a fully baked format called Betamax. They weren't asking for intellectual collaboration, just a deal to make and sell the things. It was a nice system, with really small tapes, but the problem was, the tapes only recorded for an hour. Sony was like, "That's not a problem," but everyone else was like, "Yes, it is." The would-be partners dragged their heels suspiciously, not signing any deals. Sony kinda thought that was weird, but went ahead and launched the one-hour Betamax box in 1975.

Big mistake.

Not long after Sony went into wide release with the one-hour Betamax, JVC pulled a two-hour VHS out of its butt. And in time for Christmas 1976 no less. Sony had another flash of naivete when it pressed on with the one-hour system for a while, even though it had a two-hour system in the works. In that gap, JVC and its big poppa Matsushita scored sales and recognition.

Some people say Betamax was "better" but that depends on many factors, and could very well be an urban myth. The technologies were so close Sony's own chairman called VHS a copy of Betamax. What may have looked good in one system with certain settings might not look as good on another with different settings. And by some accounts, Betamax's more moving parts meant they were more expensive to manufacture and more costly to maintain and repair. It's not an open-and-shut case of quantity vs. quality. Either way you look at it, there are compromises.

By this point, it wasn't just some anything-goes contest with a million formats. By 1976, all those above had died or were dying. In Japan, there were just two choices. The Japanese government told everyone to sort it out. Hitachi, Mitsubishi and Sharp joined Team VHS, but didn't really move forward.

In February 1977, Sony grabbed Toshiba and Sanyo, and then signed the American powerhouse brand Zenith up for an order of Sony-made Betamaxes with the Zenith name on them. Was it going to happen for Betamax after all? Seemed like they'd finally drawn at least a few good cards from the deck.

Sony might not have been totally screwed at that moment, but there were two American powerhouses, and the other one, RCA, was undecided. Ironically, the fate of the Japanese VCR industry relied on how well it could handle the most American of sports: Football. In other words, now that both players could manage two hours of recording time, what RCA wanted was enough recording time to capture a gamethree hours would do.

What transpired next is unclear. Even though, at the time, both technologies were limited to two-hour capacity, Matsushita pledged to make RCA tape machines that could record for four hours.

Was this a lie? Was it vaporware? Whatever the deal, JVC engineers pulled off a four-hour capacity six weeks later, and RCA agreed to buy 55,000 machines that year, and up to a million more in the next three years. Better yet, RCA's SelectaVision VHS decks would cost $300 less than the two-hour Betamaxes, at $1000 a pop.

Although Betamax hung on for a bit longer, that, boys and girls, was the end of the competition. In 1979, Sony market share tilted downward, and by 1980, the jig was up for those poor bastards.

Note: I recognize that there are other issues that might have come into play here, including Universal's lawsuit of Sony, which lead to today's Supreme Court definition of fair-use copyright law, and the fact that some studios, including Warner, began squeezing movies onto videotape early, with varying degrees of success. However, I contend that none of that changed the outcomethe war above was fought between Sony and Matsushita, and Matsushita won.

SOURCES:
Fast Forward: Hollywood, The Japanese, and the VCR Wars - James Lardner (Special thanks to you, Jim, for chatting me through some of this)
Sony - John Nathan
The History of Television - Albert Abramson
Sony History - Sony Global Website
Made in Japan - Akio Morita
Quest for Prosperity - Konosuke Matsushita
[PDF] Case Report on Betamax - Verardi et al
"Why VHS was better than Betamax" - Guardian UK - Jack Schofield

Gizmodo '79 is a week-long celebration of gadgets and geekdom 30 years ago, as the analog age gave way to the digital, and most of our favorite toys were just being born.

Content owners are looking beyond straight-up advertisements and product placements. One opportunity lies in the ability to immediately sell products seen in video content. To that end, startup Clikthrough has just raised $1 million for its interactive clickable video efforts.

Clikthrough is an interactive video platform that allows content owners to associate video with specific products and places and then push that content out. Clikthrough is not a destination site, does not have its own player, and says it can work with any third-party video publisher.

The company is starting off with music videos because they are short-form and drive a lot of traffic. Clikthrough has 39 music videos up on its site to showcase, for example, how it highlights the shirt Kelly Clarkson wears (or the hotel she's in) so the viewer can learn more about it or purchase it.

Clikthrough can do this because when the record labels provide a music video, they also hand over a list of every item featured in that video. Clikthrough then pulls pictures and information from those product sites and associates them with the objects in the video on the back end before the videos are pushed out for distribution.

The company earns money by charging a set-up fee as well as a rev split for clicks generated for products featured, as well an affiliate fee for any purchases made. Additionally, because it knows what's in a video down to the exact frame, Clikthrough will be able to serve up better targeted ads.

Music videos are a starting point for Clikthrough, which has relationships with Phonogenic/Sony Music, Universal Music and Slip N Slide Records. The company has some nice musical backers as well with this latest round of funding coming from investors like Swedish music producer/hit maker Max Martin and Nick Byrne, who was a member of the Irish band Westlife. Clikthrough does not have an official partnership with Vevo, the forthcoming video site from UMG and YouTube, yet. The company is looking to expand its technology to TV shows and movies.

Clikthrough is certainly getting into a crowded space. Other companies doing interactive, clickable video include Overlay.tv and PLY Media, Zunavision and Innovid.

Based in San Francisco, the 2-year old Clikthrough has four employees and has raised $2.1 million in funding to date.

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Google Voice, the innovative invite-only telephone communication control service, is readying a iPhone version of its mobile phone app, which just became available on Tuesday for Android OS-based phones and Blackberries.

But will Apple and AT&T let Google sell such an app without hobbling it?

For instance, Google Voice offers free SMS services that appear to come from one's Google number rather than one's mobile phone number. That means users could text all they like, without paying AT&T $20 a month. That money is virtually all profit for the telecom giant, since the messages use almost no bandwidth and even travel on a special channel separate from voice or data.

So the motive is clear.

The answer to whether they will is unclear, but history suggests it's a strong possibility.

AT&T and Apple together have blocked video applications that compete with approved ones and forced the low cost phone calling company Skype to disable its most powerful feature free phone calls using a phone's data connection if it wanted to be included in the iPhone marketplace controlled by Apple.

AT&T has said that it expects Apple to block products that compete with its services. It puts the kibosh on some other apps that might be hard on a network Slingbox's video application for one, though it is fine with other streaming media apps, like Major League Baseball's, for one.

Such practices are part of the reason that Congress, public interest groups and the FCC have all been looking skeptically at U.S. mobile carriers, wondering if they need to be regulated more closely.

A Google spokesperson declined to answer specific questions about a potential app, but did say that it was working with Apple to bring similar functionality [as the Android/Blackberry apps] to iPhone users.

Still in an invite-only beta, Google Voice lets users combine work, home and mobile phones all under a single Google number. Voicemail can be sent to all of the phones, all calling histories are combined, voicemails are turned into voice files and also machine-transcribed, and users can set custom call handling rules for every person in their address book. Users can also make free conference calls, record calls and even switch phones during a call.

Apple, per usual, ignored a request for comment.

AT&T declined to comment on whether it considered the app as competition or if it was even talking to Apple about it.

In the meantime, Google says the Google Voice mobile website is optimized for the iPhone, and that it will continue to improve the user experience for the iPhone users.

There's also already an unofficial Google Voice app for the iPhone called GV Mobile.

Photo: Flickr/Cloneofsnake

See Also:

• Google Voice Now Available for Mobile Phones
• Google Voice: Revolutionary And a Bit Unnerving
• Google Voice Speaks of World Domination
• Google Turns Voicemail Into E-mail

Photo: Flickr/CloneofSnake