December 09, 2009
Text messages now outnumber mobile voice calls three to one, according to the Nielsen Company.
via www.nytimes.com
07:53 AM | Permalink
Fascinating Stat that @stoweboyd picked up on.
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
Text v Voice caught from @stoweboyd /Message
Monday, November 30, 2009
#SecretDCHC - just a few hours away
Newspapers - the slow death continues
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Happy Thanksgiving! The Muppets: Bohemian Rhapsody
The Muppets are looking pretty good in HD on YouTube!
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Report: Microsoft may help News Corp. delist sites | Digital Media - CNET News
Maybe Rupert Murdoch was serious about wanting to go without Google.
Murdoch's News Corp. has initiated discussions with Microsoft over a plan to have the media company's content essentially delisted from the world's largest search engine, according to a report Sunday in the Financial Times that cited a person familiar with the situation. Microsoft, which owns rival search engine Bing, has also reportedly approached media giants about having their content removed from Google search results as well.
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Microsoft representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two companies have been linked discussing a Web-search partnership in the past. During Microsoft's failed bid for Yahoo in 2008, the tech giant was reportedly in "serious" talks with News Corp. to make a joint bid for Yahoo.
Murdoch, the chairman of a newspaper, TV, and Internet empire that includes The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, 20th Century Fox, Fox News, and Hulu, warned earlier this month that his sites may soon disappear from the search engine's listings. Murdoch accused search giants of "stealing" his company's content during an interview with Sky News Australia. When he was asked why he just doesn't pull his Web sites from Google's search results, he said: "I think we will. But that's when we start charging."
Murdoch and other News Corp. execs have said that they intend to charge readers and viewers for access to the company's content, forsaking the ad revenue model.
For several months, executives at some of the nation's most influential newspapers and periodicals, including The Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press, have been blaming Google and similar Web services for at least some of their deepening financial troubles.
Google sells ads tied to the news blurbs it "scrapes" from news sites. It links back to the Web sites from which it acquired the content but doesn't share ad revenue with them.
"Publishers put their content on the Web because they want it to be found," Google said in a statement earlier this month. "Very few choose not to include their material in Google News and Web search. But if they tell us not to include it, we don't."
Critics of the media companies' bashing of Google point out that if media companies were serious about not being indexed by search engines, they could accomplish the feat on their own by inserting a single line of code into their URLs. For example, if the Wall Street Journal added a line such as online.wsj.com/robots.txt, content from the site would be rendered invisible to Google.
Microsoft is playing a dangerous game if this report is true. It is one thing to win audiences by being a better search engine. It is an entirely different situation if you are incentivizing content producers to hide content from competitors.
This could backfire on Microsoft if they are not careful.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
EFF Tackles Bogus Podcasting Patent - And We Need Your Help | Electronic Frontier Foundation
EFF Tackles Bogus Podcasting Patent - And We Need Your Help
News Update by Rebecca Jeschke
Patenting podcasting? You've got to be kidding. Yet a company called Volomedia just got the Patent Office to grant them such exclusive rights.
EFF and the law firm of Howrey, LLP aren’t willing to just sit by and watch. This patent could threaten the vibrant community of podcasters and millions of podcast listeners. We want to put a stop to it, but we need your help.
The Volomedia patent covers "a method for providing episodic media." It's a ridiculously broad patent, covering something that many folks have been doing for many years. Worse, it could create a whole new layer of ongoing costs for podcasters and their listeners. Right now, just about anyone can create their own on-demand talk radio program, earning an audience on the strength of their ideas. But more costs and hassle means that podcasting could go the way of mainstream radio -- with only the big guys able to afford an audience. And we'd have a bogus patent to blame.
In order to bust this patent, we are looking for additional "prior art" -- or evidence that the podcasting methods described in the patent were already in use before November 19, 2003. In particular, we're looking for written descriptions of methods that allow a user to download pre-programmed episodic media like audio files or video files from a remote publisher, with the download occurring after the user subscribes to the episodes, and with the user continuing to automatically receive new episodes. You can read the entire prior art request here, and if you have something that could help, please send it to podcasting_priorart@eff.org or fill out the form on our Volomedia page.
EFF's Patent-Busting Project has taken on ten of the worst free-speech and innovation crushing software patents approved by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Eight of the ten have had a bite taken out of them so far, with two busted entirely, one narrowed, four reexams granted by the Patent office, and another one invalidated by the courts. We weren't looking to add to our list of the "worst of the worst," but this one was so bad we had to add it as a special bonus offender, and we can't wait to shoot it down. As Renee DuBord Brown of Howrey said, "Overbroad patents deter innovation. Congress specifically authorized the reexamination process to correct such errors, and we are looking forward to working with EFF on this reexam."
Related Issues: Patents
EFF looking for Prior Art to November 2003. They obviously need to look at material used at BloggerCon I which took place in October 2003.
Who, other than Dave Winer were at BloggerCon I and still have notes and copies of presentations?
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Upcoming Webinars
Event Information: Achieving Vitality & Wellness in a Web 2.0 and Health 2.0 Environment - Participatory Healthcare in a Consumer-Driven Era
Registration is required to join this event. Event status: Not started (Register)
Date and time: Wednesday, November 18, 2009 3:00 pm
Eastern Standard Time (GMT -05:00, New York)
Panelist(s) Info: Mark Scrimshire
Director, Internet Channel Strategy
CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield
Duration: 1 hour 15 minutes
Description: About the Webinar: The HealthCare market is changing. The emergence of High Deductible Health Plans and other changes in the Employer market are ushering in an era where more consumers are more engaged in their own health care than ever before. Transformation is coming to HealthCare driven by consumers and supported by a new generation of Web 2.0 and Health 2.0 tools and services that empower consumers to take ownership of their Health. The challenge for the industry is to embrace and support this transformation to achieve wellness and vitality for the population it serves. To tackle these challenges, Global Media Dynamics' webinar on "Achieving Vitality and Wellness in The Era of Participatory HealthCare" offers a comprehensive review of emerging Social Tools for health, and targeted approaches to engage consumers in managing their own health, wellness and vitality. During this session, Mark Scrimshire, Director of Internet Channel Strategy at CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield and Chief Instigator for HealthCamps, will also address approaches that use the new breed of socially oriented tools to simplify consumer interactions and improve customer satisfaction. Learning Objectives:
- Understand the structural forces impacting new products in health plans today - Learn how simplification and integration can lead to improved adoption of tools and services by consumers - Recognize the emergence of two-conversational marketing and the power of customer service as a marketing power house - Understand how transparency is moving out of the hands of the industry and in to the hands of the consumer - Prepare for adaptive engagement and the emergence of hyper-customization. One size no longer fits all. About the Speaker: Mark Scrimshire is the Director of Internet Channel Strategy at CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, an independent licensee of BlueCross BlueShield operating in Maryland, the District of Columbia and Northern Virginia. His role is to guide the transformation of CareFirst's Internet-based systems to meet the needs of a new era in Health Care. Outside of CareFirst Mark is a blogger and is active in Social Media (@ekivemark on Twitter) and is best known as the Chief Instigator and Troublemaker for the HealthCa.mp movement which is driving the conversation around the reinvention of health care on a participatory model using social networking, open standards and the latest Internet technologies to deliver more effective care of our health. In the past 18 months 1,000 people have taken part in HealthCamps around the world. Mark has been delivering strategic technology and business process solutions to major organizations for more than 20 years. A veteran of international business and the global consulting industry, he has undertaken many challenging assignments. Who Should Attend:
From Health Plans, Employer Plans, Commercial Plans, and Retail Plans:
- Vice Presidents, Directors, Managers, and Executives of:
Marketing & Sales
Web Design
e-Solution
Benefits
Wellness Health Promotion Health Management Human Resources Corporate Health Occupational Health Medical Affairs Consumer Engagement & Education Product Development Product Innovation Public Policy Regulatory Affairs Product Management Information Technology e-Business Health Reimbursement Accounts Transparency Business Development Communications Consumer Markets Consumer Directed Health Plans (CDHPs) Health Savings Accounts
I am presenting a Webinar on Vitality in a Web 2.0 and Health 2.0 World. I keep promoting the concept of the engaged patient and Participatory HealthCare.