“We just completely ran out of green felt and wood – this has got to be good for the environment.” – Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering Craig Federighi’s flippant answer to explain why the new iOS7 is so different visually is there to cover a bigger issue. Some would see that Apple is finally feeling the pressure from companies like Samsung, who’s recent Note, S3, and now S4 phones have been pushing Apple on both market share and top of mind public awareness.

There are plenty of details in this The Next Web article, as well as this interesting BBC News story. Safe to say that this will be a very big chance for many of Apple’s biggest supporters, and shows that they can no longer stand pat as the kings of the mobile mountain.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Broadband Wireless Access

Samsung Electronics said sales of the latest version of its flagship Galaxy S smartphone have reached 10 million since its launch in late April, making the model its fastest selling smartphone. The S4, the South Korean firm’s challenge to Apple’s iPhone, is already selling in 60 countries and Samsung plans to expand sales to 327 carriers in 155 countries by next month, the world’s biggest smartphone maker said.

Many people are seeing the S4 as a true competitor to Apple’s Iphone, particularly now that Apple is in the lull between two product cycles. The S4 has been selling incredibly well, and Samsung has also wisely partnered with many carriers to offer good deals which have helped to spur consumer uptake.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Broadband Wireless Access

Tuesday was not a good day for the operators of the Liberty Reserve virtual currency system, who found themselves indicted on various money laundering charges, arrested, and their system of websites shut down. It’s hardly surprising that with the uptake by consumers on virtual currency that these sites would be investigated, but the breadth and depth of this investigation goes much further than virtual money.

The main point made by Preet Bharara, the Manhattan U.S. attorney, is that almost all of the transactions being done on LR were for various illegal activities. Those ranged from the single buying of drugs to the payment for hacking services, for prostitution, and even for child pornography. It was also considered a very good way to obtain stolen credit card numbers, and then to move the money collected from using those cards to other users, making it difficult to trace and all but impossible to recoup losses.

Underlying this indictment is the concept of the anonymous internet. Liberty Reserve’s biggest selling point (and the one that got it in trouble) is that their accounts are essentially anonymous, requiring a name (easily made up), an email account (easily obtained through free mail services) and selecting a password. That means that Liberty had no idea of who was using it’s services. They charges 1% of every transaction to move the money from account to account, and charged and additional 75 each time to hide the account numbers from both parties, so that the transaction was done only on the basis of the fake names on the account, and nothing more. That willful ignorance of the user base appears to be a real issue at hand.

Systems like Liberty Reserve work because they are anonymous. They can charge substantial transaction fees (1% just to update data records is an insanely high profit level) because people feel they are avoid authorities. They avoid paying tax, they avoid declaring income, and in the case of criminal enterprises, they can move money from country to country without a blink, with none of the tracking that would come with a real banking transaction.

What this really points out is that the anonymous internet isn’t compatible with the real world. It doesn’t align with the laws of most countries, and more importantly, it works in the cracks between the treaties and mutual agreements that bind countries together. People like Kim Dotcom, the indicted operator of the former Megadownload empire built his business model on spreading his operation over many countries so that no one country could take action against him. While the extradition case in New Zealand is ongoing, Mr Dotcom has already learned that trying to hide in the cracks between the laws in different countries isn’t work out as well as it should.

The banking crisis in Cyprus also exposed major issues. Russia is the home of many hackers and online workers, who wisely choose not to bring the profits of their acts into Russia, thus avoiding taxes and also avoiding legal issues. When the banks in Cyprus got locked up, there was panic in the online community, as so many of the bot herders and hackers had most of their income and profit from years of hard work lost. Their attempt to remain anonymous, at least in their own country, backfired in their faces. At the same time, it shows just how large the problem of these ill gotten gains can be.

Just like the Swiss banks which use to hide the real world gains of criminals and dirty politicians, the virtual currencies and money havens of the world have become the playground of the anonymous online world. However, with the actions taken by the US and other countries in the matter of Liberty Reserve, we can see that there won’t be much tolerance for it. The risk factor of using such a system just went way up, that is for sure. It also shows that regulation is needed in this area, and it’s likely to see the US leading a push for a move to regulate or outlaw virtual currency systems, making them either become certified money trading companies under the law, or to shut down. That would remove a layer of anonymous on the internet, as you wouldn’t be able to move money in anything other than your legal name. That could go a long way to changing how the internet works.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Stuff Channel

I am the sort of person who can spend hours reading stuff online, cruising from one site to another. I am sort of a internet junkie with an endless supply of my favourite drug right in front of me, all of the time. Heck, over Christmas and New Years when many companies go into re-runs and pre-canned “best of the year” stories, I start jonesing for some real news and information. The internet is an amazing source of information, that is for sure, and an endless source of entertainment to many of us.

There is an interesting motto that seems to have been coined for the internet, which is “information wants to be free”. I am sure this was around before the world wide web that we have today, but the internet has brought this to a head. With hundreds of millions of people all poking and prodding, tweeting and status updating, sharing links and such, we get almost overwhelmed at times by the amount of information coming our way. Many companies make their livings only on reposting the works of others, making them often the first echoes of information as it supposedly struggles to be free. Yet, it’s that very act of copying and reposting that causes so many of the internet’s problems as well.

See, the internet is also a tool which is very good at removing moral restrictions on anything, including taking what is not yours, piracy, and “re-using” other people’s work. The things we would never do AFK (away from keyboard) like stealing a CD from a store or filling the local newspaper we run with articles from the New York Times without credit are the very things that some people point to as making the internet somehow great. Many websites are packed full of material from other sites, from other companies, from other sources – mostly uncredited.

Perez Hilton got rich and famous on just that, his website started out with all of the images being stolen from one place or another, and the difference between internet time and real world time meant that he could build enough of an audience to afford to pay for the stuff later, and actually appeared to get a discount because he had collected such a large audience. It’s wild how things go. He basically got rich by playing fast and loose with the rules, hoping to cash out before he had to pay out – and it worked for him.

Where the real issue lies in the end is that the current state of affairs isn’t a full on free for all, rather there are plenty of people who still have a moral restriction against stealing / borrowing / copying without permission, so they don’t do it, or only do it in small ways. They don’t try to make their living off of it. That difference is key, but it’s also something that creates misinformation.

Many people say “the new business models for music are working!”. You can see the famously amusing “Sky Is Rising” report, which is perhaps one of the most dishonest pieces of work you will ever see, even as each and every item it chooses to point to is true. Incomplete truth is, however, a lie, and the issue lies in those very people who resist the freeloading mentality of pirates and the “new” music business (which isn’t a business at all, because it’s all free). The proof is in a recent study in the UK, which showed that while certain pirates are also the bigger buyers of digital media, they are in fact such a small part of the market place as to be only 10% of it. In fact, they only buy 3 times as much as the average person does, including those people who buy nothing at all.

The Sky Is Rising types will suggest that it means that more piracy would lead to more sales, but they fail to understand the basic problems: The existing, non pirating customers are in fact the ones paying for the content to be created. More importantly, there is no indication that the average person, given an open and endless stream of free stuff without any moral issue, would bother to pay ever. The only thing truly supporting the creation of the content that the pirates want is the honest average jane and average joe who buy from time to time. They aren’t rabid fans, they aren’t huge buyers, but they do buy about 1/3 as much as a rabid pirate mega fan. Without them, there would be no content to pirate.

If this situation shifts at all, it could be a spectacular and perhaps fatal blow to the content producers that we all love. Scratch the record labels, dump the movie houses, because without the average people paying for the product, there is no way to make it.

The sky isn’t rising, it’s just that we are sinking into the mud. It just looks higher.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Stuff Channel

To keep this discussion on the level, let me tell you up front: Unless I show you a specific source for something, you can assume everything I write is my opinion, and nothing more. We are all entitled to our opinion, and having a blog happens to give me a place to express it. It doesn’t make me right, and that’s perhaps the point of this post.

Having been around the internet for as long as there has been a public internet, and quite a bit of time before that, I can say without a doubt that I am seeing a trend in our times that is most disturbing. The internet is clearly killing the print news industry, I have written about how newspapers were rendered almost irrelevant during the Boston Bombing deal, but there is much more to the situation than just that. Sites like Twitter, facebook, and various blogging sites are replacing news sites as people’s primary sources of information.

What is more disturbing is the longer term trends in both TV news and online news to move to combining “factoid” style reporting and talking head opinion shows. Factoid reporting similar to what USA Today pioneered with small pieces on unattached “facts” often shown as a graph or something, TV news often uses it as a bumper from commercials. It presents information without context, and seems often driven to frame the story that follows so that the narrative presented makes sense. Too often, it appears to be used to slant the following story, by presenting only one side of something, or to give slanted poll results like “80% of Americans think that…”, pretty much telling you that you should think it too.

The talking heads shows are even more scary. Foxnews pioneered it, making their entire prime time into nothing more than slanted conservative opinion, and MSNBC and others have followed. Even the relatively staid BBC has more and more “talking about the news” pieces these days, it’s pretty scary. These talking heads also tend to run blogs and personal opinion sites, and this is where the real harm has been done. These people generally don’t quantify their stuff as opinion, rather they play in what Stephen Colbert would call “truthiness”. Basically, you take a small piece of truth (sky is blue) and work from there (the blue is a reflection created by Obama as an excuse to seize your guns!). The basic truth (sky is blue) is used to hang the opinion on.

Blogs and opinion sites are worse. There are plenty of people out there with axes to grind and a single mindedness about the topics at hand. From gun control to copyright, there are zealots out there more than willing to play the truthiness card to try to make their points. It wouldn’t be so bad if people in general could filter this stuff, but apparently they can’t. What happens is the “facts” they create end up getting caught up in the internet echo chamber, and some people really do believe things to be facts. An example is that according to this survey, 17% of American voters think that Obama is a Muslim. Or perhaps combining that “fact” with the concept that 30% of Americans feel that an armed rebellion is needed… all from the power of misinformation and misdirection by people playing loose and fast with “facts”.

What has happened with the internet and opinion site blogs is that it allows people with very extreme positions to have their voices heard, and to influence others with more moderate beliefs into joining their causes. It creates a horrible situation where much of the Western World is operating in near open civil war, as groups who support and oppose issues don’t just debate, they draw hard lines in the sand and threaten “action”. In many ways, these people have become the domestic terrorists that we all fear, willing to hurt, kill, or take control of things for themselves to make the rest of us understand and do it their way.

Democracy will eat itself, and someone will blog it and get it wrong.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Stuff Channel

The events at the Boston Marathon were tragic for so many, with death, dismemberment, and of course a certain loss of innocence for many as well. What appears to be an act of two rather twisted brothers has caused so much pain and harm to people and a community. It also prompted one of the most intense police man hunts on record, and perhaps one that had another victim: Newspapers.

What happened in Boston is perhaps the best indication of changes in the way people get information. No longer as we bound to wait for the 6 O’clock news or the morning paper, we get our information instantly, on the spot, as it happens. People were listening to the police scanners, they were glued to twitter, to facebook, and every other social media site around. CNN and other online news stations were running near constant updates, and local TV news in Boston pretty much went around the clock with full on coverage, wall to wall, often streaming online making it available to everyone.

Newspaper? Day late and a dollar short. Breaking news happened so fast that front pages of the Morning papers were pretty much out of date before anyone even opened then. The developments came think and fast, and most importantly, the public’s hunger for that information was key.

Was their confusion? Oh yeah, plenty of it. Rumors were treated as facts, facts as rumors, and even CNN apparently blew it on more than one occasion covering this story (I saw one of the anchors actually apologizing in a tweet, go figure!). There was a tidal wave of information, opinion, police statements, corrections, and down right false crap flowing at us like a fire hose.

… and we loved it.

The real proof in all of this is that the suspects were tracked down basically because of private security tape, videos people had taken, pictures snapped on cell phones, and the like. Police got tons of help and quickly two suspects were singled out. Events happening to the conclusion of the manhunt was a matter of days, not months. The world for a short while at least spun at internet speed.

Newspapers? They were left to print the out of date “stories of record” on the event, to be at best the historians of the situation. I makes me think of what Time and Newsweek use to be for so many, the “follow up” source for background and detail you didn’t get in other media. At the time, that other media included TV news and Newspapers. Newsweek stopped publishing last year, and Time is a thin slice of it’s former print self. Newspapers are getting thinner by the day, and are fighting with Time for the table scraps of stories, no longer being a source of breaking news or “EXTRA EXTRA!”. These days they are the day late and a dollar short on almost everything.

The 2013 Boston attack will go down in history for a lot of things, and while it may only be a signpost on the highway to oblivion for newspapers, it was a day many of us stopped caring so much.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Stuff Channel

One of the things about being around the internet for a very long time has done for me is that it’s given me a big appreciation for the power of so many people reading and seeing the same thing. The whole concept of memes comes from that power, as does the horrid parts like 4chan and Anonymous.

One area that has really become intense is celebrity news / reporting sites, such as TMZ, Perez Hilton, and even People magazine online. They keep their readers (and building their readership) with titilation, scandal, and outrageous things that happen with celebs. They can pump almost anything up and immediately it’s trending on twitter and getting yabbered about in Facebook and instagram.

This last week has been a Justin Beiber extraveganza, as the Canadian born brat singer has been really slowly going off the mental cliff. His UK tour has been a bit of a personal disaster, turning up one night 2 hours late for the show (where most of his younger fans have to bust curfew to stay on) and then passing out and ending up is hospital at another one. When it comes to being big news, that is barely up there with me stubbing my toe in the washroom last night, but the TMZ style sites of the world make a killing on this stuff.

However, the topper on all of this was a scuffle between Beibs and a paparazzi photographer as he was entering a van, a moment of contact that left Beiber cursing and threating the attack the photographer and using the F-word to full effect. This might be an amusing aside, except that it is starting to show a real problem with the celebrity reporting world, where once again the actions of the reporters in trying to close cover celebs is turning out to be bigger news that anything else. Without the scuffle, this would have been a non-event Beiber to a car movement, and nothing much more. Instead, it’s front page news and has people questioning if he can take the pressure.

Yet, it’s only been a couple of weeks since a photographer was killed crossing a busy road attempting to film one of Beiber’s cars (without Beiber in it), and there have been numerous situations where celebs and photographers have come to blows and violence has erupted. In all of these cases, what should have been non-events turned violent, tragic, or some combination of bother. TMZ in particular seems to be making a real living on this stuff, with plenty of stories about who is driving Beiber’s cars while he is away, about Chris Brown and Rihanna and a whole “war” between Brown and singer Drake. It’s mindless stuff, except that it’s intent appears to be to create news where none exists.

With the internet being so powerful, stories like TMZ’s “CHRIS BROWN Did He Really Say ‘F**k Drake’?” end up fueling the fire rather than reporting on it, turning these people’s silly, excessive lives into a running real time soap opera, with the inevitable bad results. Is it really needed, does it really add anything?

At this point, TMZ reminds me more and more of the exploitative and silly Morton Downey Jr show of the 80s, which made more news about the antics of it’s own star, and his ability to egg his guests into full on battle mode. TMZ seems content to follow around the more aggressive paps and wait for something to happen, and gleefully report it. That reporting of course gives those paps their 15 minutes of fame, which in turns eggs others on into doing the same sorts of things. That creates a feedback loop that has ended up with at least one dead pap, and many celebrities living their lives out as hidden, hounded people who cannot have a moment of peace. Is that sad or what?

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Stuff Channel

There are a few stories out there showing that Android phones are really taking off and dominating the market place now. This report about Q3 2012 shows them with 72% of the market place, andeven with the new Iphone5 and Windows phones in the market place, overall this report shows Android with 68.8% of the total market for 2012. It’s pretty amazing to see how Google has once again figured out how to wheedle their way into the lives of so many all over the world.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Broadband Wireless Access

note: They say you should never write angry, or you should never write when you aren’t detached from the subject, but I guess I will break all the rules and do it anyway…

A while back I wrote a post about how causes like Occupy, Anonymous, Medical Marijuana, and bit torrent all have in common, and what happens to the very best ideas. Those who stand for what is good in these things are used as patsies by those who seek to use the cause, the technology, or the situation for personal gain.

This week the world has been saddened by the mass killings of children in Newtown, Connecticut and the mall shooting in Newport Beach. It’s incredibly sad to think that 20 very innocent children had their lives taken by one whackjob armed with his mother’s gun collection. It’s incredibly sad to think that this is so easy, that it keeps on happening without end.

What comes out of it? Well, President Obama said the typical “we gotta do sump’tin”, and that set off the gun lobby in a very predictable fashion. Watching mental midgets like Alex Jones cry out that they are “coming for our guns”, and seeing the almost endless parade of pro-gun wingnuts cheering him on is enough to make anyone cringe. These are people who should be contrite and concerned for their fellow citizens, but they are not. They are worried only about their rights to bear arms, no matter what harm is done to others as a result of their person desires.

Yes, for the gun nuts out there, I understand. By taking a poorly written clause of the constitution and spinning it just so, you have the right to bear arms (just which militia are you part of, anyway?). However, I think that this standing on the head of a legal pin to own something that has little positive benefits and pretty much only negative benefits seems almost self-defeating. I cannot think of a bigger contradiction in life than someone who wants to be “safe from all the guns” by owning a gun. The proliferation of weapon toting criminals in the US is exactly as a result of the gun culture that exists. According to a US Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Guns and Crime, 4/94 report, there are 341,000 handguns stolen each year in the US (and that is old data, the current numbers are likely much worse). That means 341,000 guns on the black market, with many of them ending up in the hands of criminals. So what do the pro-gun people suggest? The best way to fight all of these guns on the street is to buy more guns – which get stolen and end up on the street.

This is a perfect example of where a “legal right” to own guns has been subverted by those who seek to arm themselves to the teeth against whatever and whenever, to the point where it no longer makes any sense. It seems to have the horrible knock on effect of allowing the marginal and the sick in society to get their hands on “legal” weapons, and to perform horrible, unspeakable acts with them.

I have yet to have a single pro-gun person justify gun ownership without making self-referencing points. We need guns because of all the guns type stuff never makes much sense to me. Your desires of unlimited gun ownership without much responsibility has left the US awash is weapons, where ever street corner hood and every housewife in a minivan is packing heat. The results are there, 20 innocent children and a handful of brave adults dead because a Mom decided that it was good to have a pile of guns around a house with her mentally unstable child. The desire to use all of the limits of a “legal right” without considering the longer term implications is really the problem here.

Oddly, when I visit sites like Torrent Freak and read the discussions about piracy, I find the same sorts of people that I find in pro-gun groups. These are people who are standing on the heads of legal pins, hiding behind the well intentioned and reasonable people, hiding behind a “cause” to further their own personal needs and desires. The right they claim to be fighting for is “free speech” but the reality is it’s more to do with their own desire for “free consumption”, without considering the longer term implications of their actions. Just like the gun lovers, poke these people (seemingly mostly younger people) with a stick and watch out for the reaction.

What is truly sad is that the US (and much of the world) has degraded itself down to a series of bizarre legal absolutes. You MUST have absolute free speech, you MUST have access to weapons, you MUST be allowed to do anything you want… and all of it without much consideration for others. It’s “me me me” in a screaming chorus like the seagulls from Finding Nemo – and equally moronic. The true nature of society is that your actions have repercussions on other people. Your decisions to arm yourself or to take what is not lawfully yours has implications beyond the scope of what your are considering when you look at it from your selfish, self-serving point of view.

Those who trade away tomorrow for short term pleasure today ruin it for all of us. For 20 children in Newtown, they don’t get that choice. Too bad the Alex Jones types of the world can’t get off their high horses long enough to see what their steed is trampling on.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Stuff Channel

Having been around the internet since long before there was an internet, one of the things you learn is that sites, companies, and products come and go. For every mountain that is built, there is another group with earth movers set to tear it down. So while companies like Facebook and Google currently dominate the internet landscape, there is little indication that they will be there in the future.

There has been plenty of people suggesting that Both Facebook and Google have already “jumped the shark” and have move to points where they are harder to take seriously. Facebook in particular has suffered in dealing with the public on privacy issues, and have dealt business wise with significantly poorer income on mobile based customers. Recent moves to try to shore up the bottom line have gotten some users upset, and lead to Google pointing out that their social network does not permit sponsored stories forced into your timeline.

Google itself is facing plenty of issues. This story from the CNBC suggests that Google could be all but gone in 5 years, but I think that this story misses perhaps the bigger issues that exist within Google, namely that their core search product is actually getting to be a poorer and poorer choice for searching online.

In the last year or so, Google has rolled out many changes to it’s systems for indexing the web and return the results to users. The so called Panda and Penguin updates have had the effects of churning up the results and really giving the displayed results a different look and feel. But these changes are to me at the very core of a problem within Google. The P&P updates have been aimed at rising “quality” sites to the top of Google’s results, with that quality calculated in many different ways. One of the significant drivers at this point isn’t links to a given site, but rather links with social relevancy. So a link on a twitter or facebook post may have more weight than a link from another site, example.

The effects are that Google tends now to return popular pages in it’s results. It’s sort of like the old Ray Davies song, “Give the People What They Want”. Google has moved to become perhaps one of the most obvious mirrors of what society likes and talks about. In doing so, however, I think they have made the mistake of making their results less relevant to themselves, and more relevant perhaps in a social media discussion sort of a way. It’s not the best pages that are at the top of the results, but rather, it’s the pages people are talking about the most.

Oddly, I find that this is creating a sort of bad feedback loop. Rather than helping people to find the best pages, Google helps them find popular pages, which is something that is already occurring in an organic fashion through social media. So instead of proposing the best pages for a given search and expanding people’s horizons, Google is instead focusing more on what people already like, and are returning them results which narrow the world’s focus to a smaller and smaller subset of sites. The real issue comes when people then go to social media as a result of their search on Google and post up links and talk about something. That completes a feedback look, as those very links will help to determine what is returned in the next Google search. Those search results drive social media discussions, and the whole thing starts to spiral out of control.

It should be noted that Google’s algorithmic changes have also severely cut into the reported traffic to index sites, guides, reviews, and promotional websites, even when these sites might be the most relevant pages out there. Google now appears to treat those sites as “middlemen” on the internet, and seems intent to make them less relevant in their search results, which in turn drive social media discussion, which in turn reinforces those narrowed search results.

At this point, Google has taken the sort of steps that leave it vulnerable to more nimble and more focused competition. As more and more people realize that Google search results aren’t really the best around, the more these people will take to other sites and other search methods. If Google’s search traffic drops in a notable way, the effects on their stock could be significant.

I should also say that I think that Google will be hit with anti-trust investigations that will lead to significant changes inside the company (and in the way it works) over the next few years. Their failure to separate “church and state” (search and other products) as well as their current dominant position in search makes it very likely that someone, somewhere will take a legal swipe at them, and all the cash in the world may not be able to save Google from a changed and perhaps separated future. At that point, Google as we know it will have reached it’s end game, eaten apart from the inside rather than the outside.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Stuff Channel

An interesting story today over on CNN, where Zynga has announced 5% workforce cutbacks. If the name of the company doesn’t mean anything to you, perhaps this will: They are the maker of all of those Ville games on Facebook, such as Farmville, as well as other social media games such as Mafia Wars.

The staff cutbacks come as they choose to shut down 13 games and to trim in other places. It also comes as Facebook’s own financial reports have shown that in the last year, their income from Zynga has dropped 20%, which suggests that Zynga’s revenue has been dropping in that same sort of range. What is key here is that Zynga is the biggest and most prolific player in the social media gaming sphere, and their trials and tribulations are perhaps an indication of things to come.

This also matches up with Facebook admitting that they have a problem monetizing mobile traffic, and now Google admitting the same: mobile users are not as valuable at this point. The same shift to mobile, bypassing much of Facebook’s interface, may be hurting Zynga by taking the games out of people’s view. Changes made over the last few years by Facebook certainly have limited the exposure that most people have to other people’s gaming activity, making them somewhat less social.

It is also perhaps an indication that the whole social media thing is on the wane. While Facebook claims to have topped 100 million users, even conservative estimates suggest that up to a quarter of all of their profiles are either fakes, duplicates, or pseudonyms for existing users. Moreover, as users move to mobile and use apps to access the service, it appears that their activities are more directly social updating, and less about other social aspects of the service such as games.

When Zynga releases their results, it’s like to be a good indication that the vast majority of the easily mined gold in the social media world has already been scooped and spent.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Stuff Channel

Unless you have been hiding in a hole or totally ignoring the internet, most of you know that this past week was the 1 year anniversary of the death of Steve Jobs. The reactions, the write ups, and the stories published over the last few days really got me thinking as to what this man’s real legacy is, and why people try to hold him up as some sort of near deity.

First off, I have to make a tip of the hat to the people at Wired magazine. Clearly their offices run on Apple Kool-aid, judging on the recent spate of “the Iphone5 is amazing great perfect” style reviews that really weren’t reviews. Moreover, their article “Why We Will Never Stop Talking About Steve Jobs” is one of the pieces that sort of triggered this blog entry. They are perhaps one of the more obvious faces of why Steve Jobs continues to be over-hyped and nearly sainted.

The biggest error that most people seem to make is that they think Steve Jobs came up with all the Apple stuff. The reality is that Jobs wasn’t a creator, as much as a refiner. He had a very strong eye for spotting what was right and what was wrong with a product, and would stick with his ideas right to the end. His ability to find ways to market Apple as the cool option, to create artificial shortages, to pander to the fan base… those are all the things he was so good at.

The products? Very little of what Apple actually does is leading edge, rather under Jobs they were very good at spotting developing markets and putting out the defining product before the market matured, and in doing so, took dominant positions in it. The Iphone defined the smart phone market for ages because it was by far the best device at the moment that the market really opened up. The same with the Ipad, it’s not the best device, but Job’s shrewd product positioning and such made it into a product that defines the market.

Yet, for all of this, Steve Jobs is not god. In death as in life, he is still not god, not a diety. Sorry to burst bubbles.

Credit where credit is due: Jobs helped to define many of the products we use today. He defined an esthetic, a design style that was unlike everything around it. His greatest accomplishment might actually be Itunes, which is the razor blade that supports the Ipod razor, pulling Apple away from being a hardware only business into being a software one.

His other key was the presentation. This is where Steve Jobs the marketing guru really shows through. His tough approach to keeping products secret until launch, and then using those massive launch shows to generate hype was much of what drove Apple’s success.

Sadly, his desire to keep things secret may have been his own undoing, his illnesses kept under wraps, and his desire not to allow them to dominate his life means that he probably went years earlier than he should have. Even the near god Steve Jobs discovered that he cannot defeat nature.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Stuff Channel

Over a year ago, I discussed some of the actions by Wikileaks leader Julian Assange to control the organization and to limit leaks of it’s own materal. I felt that Julian Assange Hurts Wikileaks Credibility with those moves, and more than a year later, we see more proof that he isn’t thinking very clearly here.

Just over a year after that last post, we are now looking at the mindless spectacle of Julian Assange, hiding out in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, having been given asylum from that country so he can avoid prosecution. Well, you might think that this is a good thing, because clearly the US and perhaps a few other countries might want to talk to him about how various leaks were sourced. You would think this is all about freedom of the press and such. But you would be very much mislead if you felt this way.

This entire process is because Mr Assange does not want to be extradited to Sweden to be questioned (and potentially charged) in relation to two complaints of a sexual nature. It’s not a question of freedom of the press, or freedom of political ideas, or any of those things, it’s simply that Mr Assange does not want to deal with the allegations of two women who felt they are either forced into sex or forced to have non-consensual un-safe sex with this man.

Yet, there he is, at the embassy window, yabbering on about about the Geneva convention and police sneaking up the embassy fire escapes. He’s calling on Obama to do this, the world leaders to do that, the UK to do something else… and yet nowhere does he seem willing to directly address the very reason he finds himself in his current position.

There is an interesting article on CNN from Micah Sirfy, perhaps one of the best people in the world looking at Wikipedia and it’s implications in both journalism and politics. Even he can see now how much harm Assange has done to wikileaks, and how much this current circus is drawing eyes away from the message and more towards the man. To quote:

There’s something deeply ironic, and sad, about watching WikiLeaks’ founder turn to a country with a terrible record on press freedom to avoid falling into the hands of another government, or governments, if you count the United States as the other major player in this melodrama.

Wikileaks is now almost lost as an organization, lead by a man who’s own transparency is entirely under question, and who refuses to come clean. Julian Assange has allowed his personal life and perhaps his personal indiscretions to become the focal point of the discussions. He finds himself slowly backing into a corner, sleeping under a roof provided by a government who generally treats journalists poorly, who does not generally respect free speech, and he acts like the martyr all the way. It’s truly sad.

Moreover, Mr Assange’s entire logic, that he does not want to be extradited to Sweden because he may then be extradited to the US seems a fair bit wonky by itself. Clearly, the UK is capable of extraditing people, they are trying to do it right now to send him to Sweden. If the US charged him, it is very obvious that the UK (and many other countries) would do their duty and process the extradition request. The reasons for Assange to hide in Ecuador seem entirely of his own making, not on the internet, but in a bedroom or hotel somewhere in Sweden.

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An announcement this past week by Google that they would start to adjust the search rankings for sites that get numerous DMCA / copyright complaints came as a surprise to many. For those who try to push Net Neutrality as a cover for piracy, it’s a shocking announcement that has them stammering and without a real answer. The announcement by Google (blog entry here) really adds a whole bunch of fire to an already raging debate.

It comes at a time where there has been a pretty big shift against the piracy infrastructure. The biggest cases include Megaupload, and just this last week the major site Demonoid was both shut down in the Ukraine and apparently had it’s leadership nabbed in Mexico. Paypal and other payment processing systems have been shutting off accounts for file locker sites left and right, as it’s being determined that more and more of these sites depend on piracy to make a living. Sites like Stop File Lockers update the battle from the content producer side, as rights holders go after the lockers with a renewed zeal.

What I have found interesting is that the arguments of the pro-piracy and piracy apologists is that the issues of right and wrong are not relevant on the internet, as they are moral standards which are not important. Mike Masnick, who runs a blog very supportive of the piracy side of things, said in a comment the other day “Arguing over morals is a waste of time, because it doesn’t move the discussion forward. That’s why I don’t focus on moral questions, but practical questions.” I found this a little surprising, because it seems to go against the grain of humanity, the thing that separates us from apes, as it were.

What Masnick seems to suggest is that our moral compass of right and wrong doesn’t enter into it. Rather, it’s purely a function of what is actually possible. If you can copy something digital, it must be okay. At bare minimum, he tries to paint it as inevitable, like the rising of the sun, and something nobody should fight against. In the purely technical sense of “it can be done” he is correct, but within the constructs of society, is it truly acceptable?

What it brings in practical terms is the simple question: Just because you can do it, does it make it right?

Moreover, the Stop File Lockers people have revealed one of the other seamier sides of the piracy would, that of great gobs of money. They are doing what is possible, which is charging people for access to pirated material, and in theory trying to sidestep the law by calling them “user contributed files”. However, they double down on it by creating affiliate programs that pay the uploaders every time someone downloads their file. The best way to get a lot of downloads? Upload a copyright movie or album that everyone wants, spread the links far and wide via social media, and rake in the bucks.

This is the worst sort of situation, because it’s no longer piracy for the sake of piracy (the idea of getting that movie you couldn’t find anywhere else, or that video game you couldn’t afford this week), but rather it’s a direct grab to take money out of artists pockets and put it into their own. They aren’t just giving it away, they are charging for their pirated products. This is a shift that seems to have finally started a fire that is burning down the house.

Piracy is not a normal state of affairs, no matter how much the self-assured pundits may natter on about it. Google seems to have realized it, processing more than 4 million reports against URLs for DMCA / copyright violations. Perhaps those who support piracy from a high moral ground can come to understand that most of it exists not as some great sociality revolution, but just another group of money grubbers giving the finger to the man.

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It’s sort of a never ending saga, with plenty of rumors and maybes and who knows… the Apple Iphone5 is apparently on the way, and there are all sorts of rumors that it will be announced next week. Yet, even the rumor mongers can’t agree if it will even be called Iphone5, or if it will be shifted to some other name / platform, allowing apple to keep selling it’s Iphone4 and 4s in peace. It’s interesting for sure. CNET has a nice roundup of rumors here.

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Unless you have been hiding under a rock, you have pretty much heard that Facebook recently went public. That is to say they are now listed on the stock exchange as a publicly traded company. The immediate effects seem mostly to have confirmed Mark Zuckerberg as one of the richest men on the planet, at least on paper. It’s not been an easy start however, as there are more questions than answers about the true long term outlook for Facebook. The shares have dropped almost consistently since the IPO, and that has some people concerned. Mostly, people seem unwilling to accept the concept that the stock price was nearly 100 times earnings, which is an insane valuation for almost any company. Google, by comparison, trades at 17.5 times. Priced like that, Facebook is worth well under $10 a share, and not the $38 or so asking price to start.

The bottom line profitability of Facebook today however isn’t what I would consider the big issue. For me, the real concern is the cycle of the internet, and how things change over time. You only have to go back and look at companies like Yahoo, MySpace, and other similar internet only companies to realize that things come and go. MySpace was for many the original social media platform, and it was big for sure. Many companies based marketing on MySpace pages, and things were big. My Space has since pretty much collapsed, and was sold off for pennies on the dollar a little while back.

Facebook faces the same challenge. The online world is fickle, and people are often distracted by the next great shiny thing. Most online sites have only a couple of years near the top before they slowly fade away, becoming last year’s news. Facebook also faces the challenge of user fatigue, that is to say that for people over a certain age, there is only so many old class mates and old boyfriend to meet up with before you are done. Since middle age women were one of the big driving factors in making Facebook truly huge, their enjoyment of the site holds a key to the long term success. There is only so much farming and mafia games you can play before it’s all worn out, I guess.

Moreover, Facebook faces the challenge of Google+, which while not the most popular platform in the world, is slowly but surely gaining ground. Splitting up the social media market, just as the market itself is perhaps cooling down doesn’t bode well for those players in the field.

For those of us who have been online for a long time (my experiences date back long before the internet), you see that things come and go. Right now, Facebook is a big deal, but even today, I can say it isn’t as big a deal as it was 12 months ago. More media people are moving towards twitter, and the next great thing is “just around the bend”. Stay tuned.

PS: I should point out that I personally deleted my Facebook profile some time ago. I reached the point where it was less and less meaningful to me than ever, and the effort to update it became more of a burden than it was worth. I may one day soon have another Facebook profile, but I doubt that I will use it more than sparingly. The next big thing will be more interesting!

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Next week, the Space Shuttle Discovery will take to the air for the last time, aboard NASA’s special 747. But why wait to see the combo soar above Washington when you can watch this video?

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Like last year, YouTube will live-stream the giant music festival. You can choose from three channels, and (probably) see the headliners, all without bathroom lines.

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A story in ISSSource says that Iranian double agents used an infected memory stick to hit the facility with the worm that severely damaged Iran’s nuclear program.

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At the Cool Product Expo, entrepreneurs show off everything from electric cars to personalized 3D printers to a scent production machine.

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The hit Tumblr got Hillary Clinton to make a submission. But now the site has become too much, and its creators said today that they’re pulling the plug on the project.

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Modern warning systems plus radar and a better sense of oceanography make it unlikely that a ship could be lost at sea–with hundreds or even thousands dead–in 2012.

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The “Star Wars” filmmaker had hoped to build a 260,000-square-foot technology production facility about 30 minutes north of San Francisco. But neighbors didn’t want the project.

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With the acquisition, the 3D printing giant gains access to a new customer base, one that is familiar with personalized 3D creations and primed to buy many other types of products.

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The hottest new Tumblr features witty fictional text messages between the U.S. secretary of state and the likes of President Obama, Lady Gaga, and others. Now Hillary herself has weighed in.

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Everyone knows that talented, young software engineers are getting handed bags of money these days. But older tech workers are also finding it easier to get hired in the Valley.

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I am a pretty big fan of reality based TV shows, which is a good thing these days because that is pretty much all of what is getting shoveled at us by the networks. A&E in particular has really gotten on a roll with reality based programming, and one of their huge successes has been Storage Wars.

For those who don’t know, Storage Wars involves what happens to abandoned or unpaided for storage lockers at those U Store Stuff style places. Almost every town in America has one or has one nearby, they are a growing business it seems. When these lockers go unpaid, they get auctioned to the highest bidder, and Storage Wars shows us the interest stuff that they find in these lockers, and reveals how much many of these seemingly innocent items are worth.

As a concept, at least on the surface, it’s really quite cool. You have the fast paced, adversarial action of the auction, and then the digging out of the lockers and the discovery of treasures. This sort of gives me a feeling of sort of an Antiques Roadshow with more dust and less class. It’s been a winning combination, with A&E adding a second Storage Wars Texas series, and Spike TV also doing very well with their Auction Hunters take on the subject.

However, you only have to sit back a very short distance to realize that all of this excitement and discovery is built on a lot of misery. Basically, these lockers have been unpaid for, a sign of the times in America with high unemployment and people losing their homes and so on. According to a USA Today article, “Storage Wars deliberately keeps away from the back stories behind each abandoned storage locker. “All you see is misery there, and I didn’t want to trade on that,” says executive producer Thom Beers”. There in lies the barely hidden misery of this show.

What for me is painful is seeing articles that are clearly worth more than any amount of late storage fees, being pulled out and sold for cash. The original owner apparently couldn’t bring themselves to part with them, or didn’t understand the value, and as a result they lose much more than they bargained for. It seems odd to try to figure out how people got into that position. It’s particularly odd when the material is something that is clearly salable (like coins, comic books, or other obvious collectables), and that people seem to have just given up. That is quite the sad part of all of this, and something that the shows clearly don’t want to touch.

So while they shows are somewhat addictive, the characters amusing, and the shows overall enjoyable, I am always stuck on the sad parts, the sign of the times. Storage Wars is just another way of showing how society is more than willing to eat itself to keep the wheels spinning.

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CNET reporter Daniel Terdiman is canvassing readers for ideas on where to take his Road Trip project this summer. Suggest an idea he uses, win a prize.

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Whale Alert is designed to give ship captains a warning that right whales are in their vicinity. The hope is that mariners will be able to avoid colliding with the highly endangered animals.

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The famous musician has filed several trademarks related to a new high-definition MP3 alternative, reports Rolling Stone. The government could register the trademarks by the holidays.

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For 50 years, the famous toy maker has turned out little plastic wheels. Last year, it produced a mind-boggling 381 million.

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Publishers who join the program can increase visibility with their own sections that readers can choose when setting themselves up on the popular news reader.

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There’s no shortage of people rooting for Facebook in its patent battle against Yahoo — and they say they have good reason.

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The social network countersued Yahoo today for patent infringement. Here’s what Facebook laid out in its legal complaint.

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Q&A In his book “Tough Sh*t,” Smith muses on his long career in movies and transitioning to running a podcasting empire. But in a CNET interview, Silent Bob argues the MPAA can’t protect kids.

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Not only did the Internet TV channel give out a Twitter ID that doesn’t belong to new anchor Eliot Spitzer, but it turns out the former New York governor doesn’t even use Twitter.

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An app that employed Foursquare and Facebook data to show the real-time location of women has raised an uproar and is making people think about how social media exposes them.

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A new initiative will make it possible for any language version of the online encyclopedia to automatically pull in data rather than enter the information manually. But will it drive off editors?

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During the first CNET Community Series event, three Silicon Valley investors debated the state of funding today. The upshot, there’s plenty of money, but too many companies wanting it.

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45 Minutes on IM Jacob Krupnick’s film “Girl Walk // All Day” was made in the middle of, and with the help of, a community. And it’ll leave you smiling for hours.

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The first product to emerge from Bump Labs is an app that makes sending friends cash as easy as bumping phones together. Now, you don’t have to worry about bringing cash to lunch.

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Over the years, Paul Graham and his partners have graduated 384 companies from their influential incubator. Today, 65 new startups went on stage to vie for investors’ attention and dollars.

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Visitors to the Carlsbad, Calif., theme park will soon get to enjoy more “Star Wars” models than ever.

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Built by longtime Web search veterans, the new iPhone app is built around pointing users to things–meals, movies, books, and more–that are highly tailored to their interests.

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The aviation giant unveils a new private jet–a modified 737-700–that is geared for luxurious long-haul flights. Think multiple HD monitors and very big beds. Plus a shower!

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The efforts of James Cameron, the first person to make a solo dive to the ocean’s deepest spot, and those by Richard Branson are finally putting ocean exploration in the public eye.

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The TAG Challenge is a one-day competition based in part on 2009′s DARPA Red Balloon challenge. Teams will face off to see if anyone can track five “thieves” in cities around the world.

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Your eyes aren’t deceiving you. The Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson built–and successfully flew–a giant paper airplane. How great is that?

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Q&A After years of successfully busting myths and creating Discovery Channel’s most popular show, Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman are adding a new show to the mix.

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Fans were unhappy about the existing ending to the game, and the publisher listened. Now, says its co-founder, it is considering giving players what they want.

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