Some links and thoughts on a Saturday night…
The Matrix is still my favorite movie of all time. I explained why here in Linux Journal, back in 2006.
Spoke to the Chief of Naval Operations Strategic Studies Group, of the U.S. Naval War College earlier this week, in Southbridge, Mass. The session was three hours long, with additional conversations before and after. The challenge was to present a view of the connected world from five decades back in the past to several more into the future. The discussion was one of the best I’ve had with any group, which wasn’t surprising, given the high level of competence and curiosity required of CNO fellows and other personnel, starting with Admiral Hogg, who runs the show there. Sometime soon I’ll put up an essay summarizing what I came up with there.
Google Maps for iOS rocks. I’ve tested it driving from Southbridge to Manhattan, and for walking and riding public transportation around Manhattan as well. On the way down in the car it had me going from 84 to 91 to 95 — my usual route — but then re-routed me over to 15/Merritt Parkway when traffic started to back up on ’95 thirty miles ahead. I assume that was the reason, anyway. Oh, it also vocalized. Huge improvement over the old Google and the new Apple Maps app. And today it got us to Brooklyn, the Village, Eatery on 23rd & 5th, and then back home to “upstate” Manhattan, with precision and clarity. Well done.
I also want to give Nokia’s NAVTEQ-based Here.com and its Here app props, even though, as of today, Google’s Maps app beats it. That’s because NAVTEQ welcomes user input. I suppose Google and Apple do too, at least to some degree. But my fantasy here is making a connection between Open Street Map and Nokia/NAVTEQ. The timing wasn’t right for that in the past; but I think it might be soon — especially after Nokia (inevitably) starts offering Android-based phones.
Google’s Lost Social Network, by Rob Fishman in BuzzFeed. Long piece, still sinking my mental teeth into it.
Season Has Changed, but the Drought Endures, by John Eligon in the New York Times. I took some shots of the dry Mississippi last month on a flight from Houston to Boston. Here they are. Compare those to Google Earth’s view of the same scene in wetter times.
How Much It Would Cost Google To Become A National Cable Company Like Comcast? asks the headline above Jay Yarow‘s story in Business Insider. How about … To Become a National Internet Company Like Comcast Never Will Be? The answer, from Goldman Sachs, is $140 billion. So how about Google and Apple chipping in and doing it together? Hey, why not?
In a related matter, here’s Time Warner Cable: Demand Not There for Google Fiber: Insists That if People Want 1 Gbps, They’ll Provide it, by Karl Bode in Broadband. This reminds me of a conversation Craig Burton once had with a honcho at a BigCo to whom Craig explained a huge opportunity. The honcho at the BigCo said, “We’ll do it when there’s a demand for it.” To which Craig responded, “When somebody says something like that, they mean one of two things: either ‘Over my dead body,’ or ‘I don’t understand what you said.’” With Time Warner, it’s the first of those. By the way, I just ordered Time Warner’s Internet service here in New York City, after it became clear that Verizon FiOS, which provides me with 25Mbps symmetrical service in Boston, won’t be coming through here for a few more months. I want more than the 5Mbps upstream that Time Warner provides, so there is at least one customer’s demand for something better what they offer with their best package — at least from me. And I’m sure I’m not alone. Not if “the cloud” means anything. (The cost for 50/5Mbps, btw: $85/month.)
Federal agency wants black boxes in every new car by September 2014, by Cyrus Farivar in ArsTechnica. The idea is to help the car companies and feds toward “understanding how drivers respond in a crash and whether key safety systems operate properly.” Correctly, Cyrus asks in a subhead, “Who owns the black box data?” How about the car owner? Here ya go:
As per NHTSA’s proposed rule, the collected data would include vehicle speed, whether the brake had been activated, crash forces at the moment of impact, the state of the engine throttle, airbag deployment timing, and whether or not seatbelts were in use.
Since 2006 the NHTSA established recommended guidelines for EDRs, but did not mandate them. As we reported in April 2012, car manufacturers have been required to disclose the presence and physical location of an EDR in a car’s owner’s manual since 2011. Seven years earlier, California became the first state to mandate such disclosure.
The NHTSA has a policy that EDR data would be treated as the property of the vehicle owner and not accessed without his or her permission. The agency also noted in its new 56-page document (PDF) that it “does not have any authority to establish legally-binding rules regarding the ownership or use of a vehicle’s EDR data.”
Copyright: Holding back the torrent. In TheNextWeb. Grist for many mills.
The Power of Selling Out: Customers as Political Capital. As only The Onion can put it. Close to home.
D.O.A.: Death of Advertising, by Edward Montes in MediaPost. It lauds RTB, without explaining what it is. (Answer: Real Time Bidding.) The gist (just to pick one paragraph among others like it):
RTB empowers the tailoring of every aspect of a brand’s communication with a consumer, transforming mass media to direct communication between brand and consumer. The ability to buy individual advertising impressions, based on large quantities of data about that impression and inevitably about the consumer of that impression, enables the concept of “customization at scale.” This notion is not advertising as most recognize it using mass media, but rather the death of advertising, because it alters the interaction in the intermediate communication layer between brand and consumer. This level of close interaction imposes a tremendously more difficult environment for marketers, as every single media brand exposure has the opportunity to be definitively more valuable and thus requires much more detailed planning and purchase. It also rewards marketers able to learn, adapt and generally be dynamic. Interestingly, this does not pose a new paradigm for publishers or producers of content — but rather, in maturity, should place even higher values on publishers that can deliver high value audiences via quality content and quality environments.
Speaking as the human target of this kind of shit, let me put it the way The Cluetrain Manifesto did, almost fourteen years ago:
we are not seats or eyeballs or end users or consumers. we are human beings and our reach exceeds your grasp. deal with it.
The next Web will grow faster. By Dave Winer. Comment there by yours truly.
And with that I’m going to bed. More in the morning.
