As a news junkie and a history junkie, I have to say that Google’s newspaper archive is just about as fascinating as it gets.

Announced on the official Google blog the other day, it appears the monolithic search company is going to attempt scanning and indexing just about every North American newspaper ever.  They are going to be working their way through scanning and indexing them for the fore seeable future, but as you can see from the example to the right, you enter a search term and you get highlights showing why it was brought up.

What I love is they are scanning these as they were printed, so if you feel like just browsing a paper, you get the ads, headlines, the little odd stories and things that have disappeared over the years.  In the sample newspaper I was looking at, there was a column called “Daddy’s Evening Fairy Tale” which was a short story for fathers to read to their children at night.  So cool and such a slice of America from years ago.

The part that just amazes me is the depth this can add to term papers for students.  Will they use it is another question, but you can get a real taste for how a historical event was viewed at the time it was happening by reading actual accounts.  I would have killed for something like this when I was in school.

Kudos to Google, I think this is a very worthy effort.

Normally I go all crazy for the new iPods, but this year… this year they have left me totally cold. I’m not tempted to buy a one of them.

I already wrote New iPods For 2008 over at StarterTech, but I figured I can always talk more bluntly about them here.

iPod Shuffle

While nothing new was done to them, they did drop from $79 to $49. I finally can see a point to them and they would make a great stocking stuffer for a kid.

iPod Nano

This got the biggest changes this year with a whole new look, new colors and better pricing.  They doubled the capacity and kept the price points the same as last year.  You can now get an 8GB for $149 and a 16GB for $199 with the added ability to turn them on their side for landscape video and image viewing.  Again, I can see these being great for kids, but heavy iTunes users and music collectors will scoff at the capacity.

iPod Classic

This one worried me. Last year the iPod classic came in a “thin” 60GB and a “thick” 160GB. As loyal readers know, I went for the 160GB, and documented How long does it take to load 119.41GB of music on an iPod?, meaning the 160 was my only choice.

So, this year we are seeing the “thick” eliminated and the “thin” bumped up to 120GB. While 120GB is great for most people, this tells me that the Classic is on its last legs.  I still haven’t filled my 160, all I can hope is by the time I hit that barrier that they have come up with something of a higher value.

iPod Touch

This was probably thebiggest letdown.  The made it thinner, they lowered the price, but the upgrades consisted of an external speaker for casual listening and they added external volume controls.

Whee?

Sure I’ve wanted an external speaker, but it isn’t worth me buying another one this year just for that.  They did drop the prices, but it still doesn’t change it enough for me to want to run out and buy another.

In Conclusion

For once I am going to say Steve Jobs blew it, and he blew it badly.  The reason they have sold tens of millions of iPods is people such as myself that have constantly upgraded.  With the exception of the Nano, which is at best a casual user’s device, they essentially did nothing this year.  There may be some chance of new users hoping on board with the new lower price points, but they sure aren’t going to get their normal upgrade business this year.

While I don’t think this spells utter doom for the product line, it makes you wonder if they are possibly finding the limits of what such devices can do.  Why didn’t the Touch get GPS?  There are numerous apps that use this function, they could have sold more of those apps and still not cut into their iPhone sales.  Why didn’t the Nano go to 32GB?  16GB is still laughable by most people.  Why didn’t the Classic get landscaping?  There are more questions than answers this year, and that is highly unusual when it comes to this product line.

When an old tube television died in our house, we were left with a quandry about how to replace it.  Do you go with another tube TV when they are so outdated?  Get a smaller flat panel?  Or buy a bigger flat panel HDTV, moving the current one out of the family room and putting in a newer, bigger, HD set?

Yeah, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out we went with a bigger set.

So, moving from a 32″ LCD to a 42″ LCD presented some problems I couldn’t predict.

1. Were you aware Amazon shipped anything by truck?  I sure wasn’t, but they do.  It really wasn’t a problem, but it just took me by surprise, and then it sat in a St. Louis warehouse for a week because they had no trucks heading my way, but that was survivable.
2. Where I was taken by surprise was Amazon paid for “white glove service” which meant the driver not only brought the TV into the house, but he assembled the stand for me, attached the TV, checked it for any physical scratching and stuck around until I hooked it up, turned it on and tried the remote. As they didn’t charge me for shipping, I was completely shocked they went that far, but kudos to them.
3. Okay, where I sit in the family room puts me a bit to the left side of the set so I see it at a bit of an angle, not a problem normally, but when you increase the screen this much, it’s a bit like sitting in the front row of the movie theater.  With television shows it isn’t too bad, but then I popped on a video game and… all I can say is I am thankful that game controllers are now wireless so I could go sit across the room on the couch.  It was like sensory overload playing Call of Duty 4, but moving across the room made it better.

All in all I’m thrilled we went with a larger screen, but I will say I wish Amazon had warned me about the way it was going to be shipped before I ordered, but I had no clue until it had already shipped.  Also, since we are still receiving standard definition satellite signal, the signal noise is really evident on this larger screen, so it looks like it may be time to finally upgrade the receiver to boot.

-sigh- Technology.

I have come to the conclusion that it is impossible to figure out exactly how Digg works.

For those of you unfamiliar with Digg, it is a social bookmarking site that once you add a link to it, people can vote, or “digg it”, to rank it higher.  In theory, the more diggs you get, the better chance you have your article going popular and making the front page (FP) of the site.  While just being on Digg brings you some traffic, making the front page brings you INSANE traffic.

Naturally, every blogger wants to make the front page, but it rarely happens.  To that end, people endlessly try to figure out the formula of what it takes to make it, and about the only thing most people can agree on is that it must happen in the first 24 hours your article is on the site, but beyond that, it’s a mystery.

In general the articles from this site rarely make it on to Digg at all, I think maybe 10 times total.  The one I did the best with was Anonymous Takes On Scientology, but I was fairly certain it wouldn’t make the FP.  Over on Mashable, just about everything I write gets put on Digg, and on average I make the FP once or twice a month.  Even with a good track record, I can’t figure it out.  I thought I had it down to a mix of number of Diggs with a high number of comments.  I had some with lots of diggs/low comments and they didn’t make it, and then had low diggs/high comments and they didn’t make it either, so obviously the formula was a balance.

Today a friend of mine is nearing the 24 hour mark, he has almost 300 Diggs, almost 100 comments… still not popular.  Say what?

It’s probably a good thing that bloggers can’t figure out the formula, otherwise we’d all be writing the perfect Digg articles on a daily basis and the site would be useless, but at the same time it becomes a bit depressing when you think you’re so close, and then it just never happens no matter how many of the factors you’ve hit.  Apparently I need to go back to the drawing board though as my friend’s lack of FP has totally chucked all of my theories right out the window!

So, what do you think it is?  What makes a Digg article go popular?  Throw out some funny theories if you want, because we all know that none of us have it figured out.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is at it again. I know… you’re all shocked.

The RIAA, the goverening body that is charged with the protection of musical copyrights, is again going so far in their efforts to protect music, that they seem to be doing more harm than good.  The latest confirmed casualty is the startup website called Muxtape.

The site, without a doubt, was questionable in its legalities from day one.  It allowed users to upload MP3s to the site and they could then make a “Muxtape” from those.  It was meant to bring back some of the feeling people got from making mix tapes for friends back in the 1980’s and 90’s.  You were limited to putting 12 songs on each Muxtape, and there was no means for downloading the songs present in the site, all in an effort to show the record industry that this was merely a way for people to promote the music they loved.

As of August 19th, the image shown above here appeared on the front page of the Muxtape site.  The problems more than likely stem from the fact that third-party developers came up with ways for people to download the music, even though one of the owners of the site repeatedly pleaded with poeple to not do so.  The company blog does make things a little less clear, though:

No artists or labels have complained. The site is not closed indefinitely. Stay tuned.

Whatever is going on with Muxtape involves the RIAA, and that is never a good thing.

So, while clearly Muxtape was on shaky legal ground all along, you then have the case of Pandora, which is 100% legal, but may be shut down by virtue of the greed of the music industry.  According to a story in the Washington Post, last year a federal commission, the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB),  ordered that the royalty rate online radio stations pay to SoundExchange be doubled.  Mind you that at this time terrestrial radio does not pay any royalties (although the RIAA is looking to charge radio stations now), and satellite radio, which is subscription based, pays a lesser fee rate than online radio does.

Pandora is free to its one million daily users, and has become one of the most popular applications on the iPhone/iPod Touch app store, and all of this is made possible via advertising revenue.  Under the new fee structure, Pandora will have to pay somewhere in the neighborhood of 70% of its projected $25 million in revenue to SoundExchange.  If this should go into effect, Tim Westergren, the founder of Pandora, says he will have to shut the site down because the company will only be wasting money at that point.

Okay, lets do some simple math for the music industry shall we?

Old Pandora fee structure
35% of $25,000,000 is $8,750,000
Sales of music discovered due to people listening to Pandora is impossible to calculate

New Pandora fee structure
70% of nothing due to Pandora shutting down under new fees is $0
No sales of music discovered due to people listening to Pandora is not impossible to calculate, it is $0

Which one looks more attractive to you?  The old fee structure, or the new, greedier structure, that leaves the music industry with earning nothing?  I think I’ll take curtain #1, Monty!

The music industry is going berserk with the online industry because I think they feel like they finally have a way to track stuff.  The amount of piracy that went on while I was in high school was astronomical.  We were all constantly taping off CDs for each other, passing them around, taping music off the radio and so on, but the industry could do nothing about it because they had no way to track it.  Now comes the Internet and they have ways to see how many times everything gets played, how many times something gets downloaded, and they have gone absolutely bat crazy with trying to figure out how to squeeze every penny they can out of it.  Remember when they wanted a percentage of each iPod sold because Steve Jobs couldn’t sell them if it wasn’t for the music to put on them?  Yeah, prove to me they aren’t trying to take insane amounts of money they shouldn’t be able to.

As I see it, the problem here is that the industry is forgetting that without the ability to discover new music, they won’t have any sales.  I have no desire to listen to commercial radio and be forcefed they drivel they program.  Sites such as Pandora are amazing because they learn from you and what you like, and then they will recommend new music based off of that.  I have discovered several bands I had never heard of via this site, and now it may go away because the music industry just simply can’t control their never-ending greed.

Perhaps this actually is there plan.  Perhaps they want to be able to dictate how we discover music so they can continue to force us to listen to the likes of Britney Spears.  There is something horribly broken in the music industry, and it isn’t a couple of stolen MP3s from the likes fo sites like Muxtape, or from Pandora not paying enough in royalties, it is from the music industry having this omnipotent style attitude that essentially everyone in the world works for them.  Enough is enough.

In the above linked article about Pandora, towards the end, there was this quote from a musician (you know, the people this is supposed to all be about?) that I think sums it all up pretty well.

Matt Nathanson, a singer-songwriter who has recorded for both major and independent record labels, said he is worried that the demands placed on Internet radio could “choke” the industry before it gets its footing.

“Net radio is good for musicians like me, and I think most musicians are like me,” he said. “The promotion it provides is far more important than the revenue.”

There you have it folks.  True, this is just one musician, but this is still an actual musician saying that this is more important as a promotional tool than a revenue stream.  Every industry has promotional tools, why does it seem the music industry can’t have one without taxing it to death?  And if they aren’t taxing it to death, they want to sue people who listen to music… or they want to dictate how you can listen to it via Digital Rights Management (DRM)… or they want to impose a tax on all Internet subscribers to help cover “the cost” of piracy… the list of endless as to how this industry is attacking the consumers.

It is time you finally voice your opinion on this in various manners.

• The best way possible by skipping buying a new album, even if it is by your favorite artist, go to their concerts instead, buy their tshirts, make sure THEY get the money, but try everything you can to make sure the companies don’t see a dime.
• Write your congressman, let them know you think this new royalty scheme is a joke.
• Write the music companies themselves and make sure you tell them of your intentions.
• Blog about it, spread the word.

It’s up to us folks, how much longer will we stand for an industry that so clearly hates us, but isn’t essential to our everyday well-being like food or water, dictate such insane policies?

One of the features when you log in to your WordPress blog dashboard is you can see past entries from the same day in years past.  Well, I typically take a look at these to see if they inspire a new entry from me, and Firefox haters go to a whole new level, published one year ago today, led me to some interesting discoveries.

As a refresher, there was a man who had determiend the Firefox plugin Addblock Plus was just pure evil, so he had set up his websites to block Firefox users.  Instead of just blocking folks, though, it redirected them to WhyFirefoxIsBlocked.com, which, at the time, explained his thought process behind this and how Mozilla allowing Adblock Plus to exist meant that Mozilla was endorsing it.  I ended up covering this for TECH.BLORGE.com also, and at that time Danny Carlton, the owner of the blocked site, and I had a… well… less than friendly exchange of emails.  Well, let me rephrase that in that I was friendly and he wasn’t.  You can see the quotes in either of my original pieces.

So, flash forward to today, and just for grins I decided to revisit his site while using Firefox to see what would happen.  Well, low-and-behold, I got onto his main site, JackLewis.net, with no problems.  So I decided I should go see what was on WhyFirefoxIsBlocked now, and what I found was a site that used to sport no ads covered in Google Adsense ads, and now just filled with news gathered from other sources telling you how horrible Firefox is.  I did a search on the domain name to make sure it hadn’t been taken over by someone else, but it is still registered to the same Danny Carlton in Oklahoma that owned it last year.

Considering how friendly Mr. Carlton was last year, I didn’t bother emailing him to see why things had changed, and since this isn’t a news piece, but an opinion piece on a personal blog, it wasn’t really necessary.  Seeing as this is my opinion, I’m thinking Mr. Carlton discovered that:

1. His campaign was pointless and never going to take off.
2. He claimed Firefox users were a small percentage of the Internet, but I showed in both stories I wrote that my personal research showed they were well over 1/3 of Internet users.  Perhaps he missed the traffic?

It’s just interesting to see how much changed in a year.  From a freelance web designer who was angering a third of the web, to someone who seems to have lost their willingness to fight in something they believed in so hard… what an odd little journey.  Oh well, my little write-up on him on BLORGE led to my most popular post ever while I worked there, so I guess I owe him some sort of thanks.

Back in April of this year, I did one of the largest lists I had ever done for Mashable: Dating Toolbox: 120+ Sites For Singles To Find Love.  I thought I had hit the majority of the dating sites out there when I even found one dedicated to farmers, but somehow I completely missed The Ashley Madison Agency.

As you can see, there slogan is, “Life is short.  Have an affair.”  I’m kind of surprised this didn’t end with an exclamation point, but oh well.  As you’ve guessed from that, this site is dedicated only to married individuals who are looking to cheat on their spouse.  I admit I didn’t bother signing up to peruse the site myself, but I would imagine there are more than a few single men in there also whom are sure they can provide some lonely housewife with just what they need, but in general it is for married folks.

Though the site has been around since 2002, I had never heard of it until the news came out that ESPN’s parent company, Disney, had instructed the network to stop running television ads for the service.

Wait…

They run television ads for a site built specifically for people who want to have affairs?  According to the article in AdFreak, Noel Biderman, president of the agency, doesn’t understand how the service differs from the beer ads run on ESPN and why those are allowed to continue while this site isn’t.

Er… well, you see, the thing is…

Honestly, I have a very “live and let live” mentality when it comes to other people’s lifestyles.  I have known people of of so many varied backgrounds that it would be impossible for me to be judgmental of anyone who chooses to do anything short of murder.  What I do have is a problem with is a website whose sole puprose is to profit from facilitating the breaking of marital vows.  I am not naive in that I don’t know this happens on other dating sites on a daily basis, but those sites are not built around that lone concept.  The site says they don’t encourage infidelity, and they say that just because it exists it won’t cause people to stray, they are merely providing a service.

urk… I think my brain just broke.

Just because you can build a site or service doesn’t always necessairly mean you should, and this is one of those cases.

I mentioned back on July 26th that Yahoo Music is shutting down, and due to their Digital Rights Management (DRM) their music files would be rendered unplayable when this happened.  Well Yahoo has come up with a solution… kinda.

Yahoo Music will be issuing coupons to their customers so they can buy their musical tracks again from Rhapsody.  The problem with this is that their tracks, while not protected by DRM, are “tethered” to devices that have PlaysForSure computability.  In other words… not on iPods, the world’s most popular digital music player.  You also can’t burn them to CD… oh yeah, this is so much better!  Great solution Yahoo!

While I understand the prediciment those who already bought the music are in, I would certainly hope no one else would continue to support these types of systems.  It is time for malarkey such as this to come to an end.  Again, you bought the music legally, you should be able to play it as you wish.  Ever bought a CD and been told you can only play it in certain CD players?  No.  So there is no reason digital media should be any different.

Just me yammering at you this week folks, and I apologize in advance for my voice starting to go towards the end. Stupid pollen.

This week I talk about this story at Valleywag about people getting angry, again, about how Google Street View violates your “privacy”.

I give some thought to a comment left by Kim Greenblatt in regards to the post I did about The Dark Knight still not being profitable at the $314 million dollar mark.

And lastly I go on about this story of the band Buckcherry “leaks” their own music, and blames pirates. Stupid people.

Here’s a link to the MP3 for those who wish to download it.

Yahoo Music is shutting down, and with them go their Digital Rights Management (DRM) servers.

What this translates to is that after October 1st you won’t be able to authorize new computers to play your tracks on, meaning your songs you bought would be living with an expiration date hanging over your head.  This news was first followed by the suggestion you burn the songs to CDs and then rip them back to MP3 format to remove the DRM protection, which could result in lower sound quality.

Yahoo told InformationWeek that they would not be abandoning their customers will be goign case by case with some sort of compensation or possibly providing DRM free versions of the MP3s.  This, however, will require you contacting Yahoo by using the “Contact Customer Care” button at the bottom of their FAQ page.

This story goes in conjuction with MSN announcing they will only support their tracks for three additional years, and Sony will stop supporting tracks bought at their Connect store at the end of the year.

Folks, when are you going to stop buying tracks with DRM coding?  You are allowing people to tell you how, when and where you can listen to music you legally purchased, and when they decide to stop supporting it, well, too bad for you.  Notice that every solution listed requires the consumer to be proactive in getting their purchases taken care of, not the other way around.  Why isn’t Yahoo coming up with either some sort of file that can be emailed out to consumers so they can strip the DRM without any extra steps, or why not just allow them to go in download versions without DRM?

Every time I write about DRM, some yaabo comes through and “schools” me in the comments on the option to burn to CD and then rip back, and now even Yahoo is suggesting this as an option.  Well, here are the problems with this method.

Blank CDs cost money - If I purchased something legally, why should I have to spend more money to make it work like anything I purchase should?

Burning CDs takes time - It’s not exactly a speedy process.

Ripping from a CD takes time - Again, not a super fast process.

Wear and tear on your equipment - I am using my equipment to correct a company mistake, so not only is it costing me for CDs and in time, but you are also asking me use up some of the life of my equipment.

Potential loss of quality - If your equipment isn’t up to snuff, you could lose some sound quality of the recordings.

So now you have DRM laden music you are facing either losing your ability to play, or having to go through steps you should never have to go through to make it work.  Someone I spoke with said this is no different than people who have vinyl running out of options of how to play it.  Well, the problem is that turntables are still being built, so, yes, that option is still very much alive to people who have vinyl albums.

This is a whole new set of problems that we have not seen before the invention of DRM, and it is just getting worse as challangers crop up to take on iTunes, and then ultimately fail.  This was never a problem before digital files, and it’s the only place that it could surface.  Imaging buying a DVD and finding out you could play it only in a Sony produced DVD player.  How long would you stand for this?  You wouldn’t, you would scream bloody murder about it.  DRM files are exactly this situation and now you are coming to find out that at any time a company could just flip off a server and… oops, no more music for you.

I just don’t get why people are allowing themselves to be shackled by the music companies like this.  Buy used CDs, trade them on sites like Lala, but whatever you do, support sites like the Amazon MP3 store which is DRM free, but just say no to DRM or you may find yourself in a very similar situation one of these days.

Welcome back to the second episode of Scattercast! I hope you all enjoyed the first one, because the second one is far better, I feel! Here is what you can look forward to this week.

Intro - Me taking care of some housekeeping of the podcast.

7:15 Bruce Lidl from DivX comes on the show - Bruce talks about the D-Link DivX Connected HD Media Player (DSM-330) which is a follow up to a list I did here called How To Watch Internet Videos On Your TV back in February.

29:30 M and I review The Dark Knight. Instead of the normal surly review by me, I bring in my best friend, M, to help with the review, and temper my opinion some.

Wrap-up of the show and info on subscribing and what is to come next week at the end of the show.

For those who wish to subscribe, you can do so by the RSS feed or on iTunes.

Here’s a link to the MP3 for those who wish to download it.

A year and a day ago I wrote about how some bloggers had the idea that messaging on Facebook would replace email.

Yeah… anyone seen this happen yet?

As I have become more immersed then ever in the world of working on the Web, I have become even more convicned that thisis never going to happen.  This isn’t to say that something won’t eventually replace email, but it certainly isn’t going to be something like Facebook messaging.

When I was at the SummerMash Seattle last weekend, only one person asked to friend me on Facebook, and that was only because he had a computer right there he could do it with.  It is far too complicated to give someone your Facebook address as opposed to me saying “seanpaune@such and such”.  If you remember my name, you remember my address essentially.

You also don’t see anyone making a native way to gain access to your Facebook messages on your phone and other mobile devices.  Yes, there is now a Facebook application for you to use on the iPhone and iPod Touch, but that still isn’t as easy a concept as email.  If anything, I think services like Twitter are replacing the one line emails I thought Facebook might replace, and if anything, my Facebook traffic has declined in the past year.  Even more so than anything online, text messages seem to be being used more and more.  While I was in Seattle, I sent and received more texts in 2 days than I usually do in a month, and when not texting, I was getting messages on GTalk.  Even crazier?  People who usually don’t talk to me on the phone actually called me.

Total Facebook messages received while I was gone?  None.

While I do think the nature of communication is changing, moving to Facebook is about the last place I see it going.  It is still an enclosed system that takes too much work to access to be used as an effective messaging system for busy people.  So, one year on, I would have to call this concept even crazier than I did a year ago.

Fans of Joss Whedon may want to rush over to Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog before Sunday.

For those who haven’t heard about this yet, this is a wacky little project Joss came up with of a series of 3 short films to be broadcast on the Internet.  The story follows Dr. Horrible’s (Neil Patrick Harris) quest to get in to the Evil League of Evil while also trying to woo Penny (Felicia Day). The problem with both of the Doctor’s quests is that Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillion) is getting in his way by stopping his evil deeds and wooing Penny.

So, why do you need to watch these before Sunday?  Well, for now, they are free to watch, but after Sunday they will be taken down and you will only be able to purchase them through iTunes, or wait for some sort of DVD release.  Each episode is 13 - 14 minutes in length, and episodes 1 & 2 are out, with episode 3 coming out on Saturday.

Now, I am sure some folks out there are wondering how they actually are quality wise, and I have to say I have loved the first two episodes.  I get the feeling Mr. Whedon is a frustrated musician, but I would love to see him do a rock & roll musical film, or dare I say, a Broadway show?  I think he may actually have the chops for this after this project and the Buffy, The Vampire Slayer musical episode showing what he can do.

Anyway, it is great fun, and well worth your time.  It has his common theme that no one is black or white, but we are all shades of gray.  And, could someone please tell me when I started enjoying Neil Patrick Harris’ work so much?  I love him in just about everything he does now.  Nathn Fillion is Nathan Fillion as always, but his last line in episode 2 made me nearly cry I was laughing so hard at his delivery.

Get over there and watch it for free before it’s gone!

Back in May I publiched a post named “Microsoft Walks Away From Yahoo“… I’m not 100% sure that was correct.

In what has become a saga fit for any daytime drama, it appears that Microsoft and Yahoo started talking again, with corporate raider Carl Icahn thrown into the mix somehow.  Mr. Icahn has been calling for the ouster of Yahoo’s board of directors for some time now, and today made his proxy fight official by filing papers with the SEC to replace the existing board with his own slate.

All of this came about over the weekend as Yahoo rejected another offer from Microsoft that seems to have been quietly brewing for a while now.  The new joint deal between Icahn and Microsoft was proposed Friday night and would have reportedly put Microsoft in charge of the search business and Icahn controlling the rest of the company.  The proposal included ousting the current board, including CEO Jerry Yang, and replacing them with Icahn’s chosen people.

According to a story in the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo has been willing to talk about selling at $33 a share, but their current board must stay in tact.  This has been the main sticking point for Microsoft/Icahn, and their offer seems to have been more than generous.  Reportedly it would have paid $1 billion now, with $2.3 billion per year for five years, with a minimum payment of $1.6 billion for the length of the agreement.  Microsoft would have also purchased $3.9 billion dollars worth of shares and acquired $2.8 billion of Yahoo’s debt to pay shareholders a special dividend.  This would have covered just Yahoo’s search business, leaving them their content business.

With yet another offer rejected, shareholders are demanding answers, and with their annual meeting coming up August 1st, they’re going to want blood to know why Yang keeps rejecting these proposals.  Mr. Yang may very well find himself out of a job, with no money, if he keeps this up and doesn’t explain himself better to the shareholders.

It would be fascinating to know which part of this whole debacle was on Mr. Yang’s mind as he lunched with the Google co-founders in the pictures above.  Sure it is impossible to know all of the finer details in a situation such as this, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out why Microsoft is so insistent in their desire to acquire the company, or why Yahoo is so blasted resistant to the concept.  It’s obvious they aren’t going away, and the longer Yang and crew hold out, the worse this is potentially going to be for every one as Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, and Icahn get more and more aggressive.

Even from my far removed vantage point, I think it may be time for Yang to take the money and run with it.

Google Street View was launched in May of 2007, and is an attempt by Google to give you a street level view of their Google Maps service.  Their special cars drive around, shootingtheir images all over the United States, and while there have been some people not thrilled with the idea, in general they’re being left alone.

When they recently tried to launch in the United Kingdom, the privacy advocates of the area have had massive coronaries over the idea of Google violating people’s privacy in such a way for commercial gains.  The privacy concern has also been raised in various locations around the United States of America, and North Oaks, Minnesota even banned them from coming into the city.

The first thing that comes to my mind is if you are out on a public street, do you really have any claim to “privacy”?  With the ever growing amount of closed circuit television cameras all over the world, isn’t all privacy gone in these times?  My view is if you are on a public street, out in the open, you have no claim to privacy.  Even if you are just outside of your house, standing in the yard, if it is a public street, then you have no claims in my book.  If it is a private road, then, yes, you have every right to be annoyed by this.  If it is anything a normal person could see while passing by, then, oh well, that’s life.

The privacy advocates also seem to to feel that part of this issue is because Google is using these images in a commercial venture, and that is part of what makes this so wrong in their views.  Google has said they are working on technology to automatically blur people’s faces, as well as hiding license plates on vehicles.  The folks in the UK are still saying this isn’t good enough and they would prefer to see Google not do this at all in their country.  Simon Davis of Privacy International told the BBC,”"Google likes to think of itself as a global player. In reality it is acting like an irresponsible adolescent.”

Well, if Google is acting like “an irresponsible adolescent”, then what of the number of webcams popping up all over the world?  As the technology has gotten cheaper, and easier to use, people are setting them up all over the place, transmitting images of whatever happens to pass in front of them to the entire Internet.  This image to the left is one of four webcams set up on Mathew.st, monitoring activity on Mathew St in Liverpool, UK, outside of the infamous Cavern Club where The Beatles were discovered.  These cameras became famous in 2006 when a man in Dallas, TX helped the Liverpool police apperhend three men breaking into a business on the street.  He had been watching the cameras when he spotted the break-in happening, called the Liverpool police and the men were taken into custody.

Why do I tell you all this?  Well, if people are concerned about the Google cameras, why are the Mather St cameras okay?  The picture above was taken on July 5th, 2008 at 11:58 AM local time.  Were these people aware they were on camera?  Did they give their permission?  Doubtful to both questions, but this isn’t very different than what Google is doing as these images are shown on a page that features advertising on it, i.e. a commercial interest.  Why is a situation like this okay, one that has received international attention over that robbery, but Google is doing something so horribly wrong?  (for the record, I have no problem with what Mathew.st is doing, it’s public streets, more power to them)

I’ll be blunt in that I feel this is a form of a witch hunt.  There are times that anything a big business does something, people immediately see it as evil and wrong, but if someone small is doing the same thing, no one says a thing about it.  Again, Google is taking images on public streets of things any person driving by in a car can see, why does this make them in violation of privacy rights?

When I first talked about the iPhone 3G, I mentioned as long as the phone was exclusive to AT&T, I wouldn’t be getting the device for myself.  Well, it seems things could be far, far worse… I could have to deal with Rogers in Canada.

It seems that Rogers of Canada went so overboard with their pricing, raising so much ill will that over 53,000 people have signed a petition at RuinediPhone.com stating they will not purchase an iPhone under the Rogers plan.  Unlike American contracts that run for 2 years, Canadian contracts run for 3 years, and the current contract runs $60 for 150 minutes of daytime minutes, and 400MB of monthly data transfer.  As much as I dislike AT&T, at least their $69.99 plan gives you 450 minutes with unlimited data.

So, in light of people being angry with Rogers, Apple has decided to cut supplies to the Rogers’ stores, and they have also announced that the Canadian Apple stores will not be carrying the phone, so Rogers won’t receive any contract sign ups from that venue.

I understand why Apple signs these exclusive deals, better revenue sharing for them, but do they not check out the pricing plans before they sign the contracts?  How could they let Rogers be the exclusive carrier when they are offering such horrible pricing?  This reflects poorly on Apple as well as Rogers.  And, I’m sorry, but 150 minutes for that price is just highway robbery in my opinion.

Hopefully Apple will learn some lessons from this, such as when going exclusive with a company, make sure you read what is going to happen to your customers before you sign on the dotted line.  Sorry, Candians… you got screwed.

Apple is all over the blogosphere again, and again it is for the craziness of Apple fans more than the company themselves.

It seems that on Friday, July 4th people were spotted lining up outside the Apple flagship store on 5th avenue in New York City.  Why were they lining up?  Because they wanted to be in line the iPhone 3G release next Friday.

Normally this is where I would go off about obsessive Apple fans, but as time has passed, it is appearing to be more and more like a publicity stunt by some group with the website, WaitingForApples.com.  The site goes on about how they’re going to be green with recycling, and having organiaclly grown food brought to them, all while trying to set a world’s record for waiting in line to buy a product.

What disturbs me is that they have a baby with them.  Yes, you read that right, a baby.  Hopefully it is being taken somewhere else the majority of the time, and perhaps was only in line for Friday, I don’t know, but a baby being anywhere around this stupidity makes me nervous.

So, all well and good, perhaps it is just a publicity stunt, every one will shake their heads, laugh and move on with their lives.  That is until a site like AppleInsider decides to list why they feel people would be justified in standing in line for a week for the new iPhone.

…there exists more of a clear incentive to be first in line at the New York City flagship outlet. With customers required to activate iPhone in-store rather than simply walk out with their purchases, the time spent processing each customer is estimated to take at least 10 minutes — a process that will slow the line down considerably versus the original launch, in which many customers could buy their handsets and leave in just a fraction of the time.

Yes, 10 minutes of activation will slow down the line, but isn’t standing in line, inside a store, for one day, better than waiting outside for a week?  Or you could do some radical things like come back later in the day, maybe the next morning, how about the following week?  I know, now I’m just talking crazy talk!  Also, unlike last year, there is going to be plenty of supply, no one will be running out, so why not wait a day or two to get it?

Then there is the situation with the pricing.  If you are just starting up a contract, the iPhone 3G will run you $199 for 8GB and $299 for 16GB with the purchase of a two year contract.  However, if you bought an iPhone gen 1, at most you have burned through 1 year of your 2 year contract.  If you upgrade now, you are looking at $399 for the 8GB and $499 for the 16GB, and this will also make you extend your contract.

Look, I know a lot of people who had never gotten into gadgets before jumped into this one, as evidenced by people screaming for Apple to give a refund after a price drop, but I can just about guarentee you that the iPhone will get a major update once a year.  It’s what Apple does with the iPods every year, and this is considered part of the iPod family, so get used to it.  My suggestion?  Skip a generation each time.  That will put you right back at being able to upgrade with your contract expering.  The only major change for you this time will be the 3G fuctions, pretty much everything else will happen in your firmware update that is due out July 11th.

In short… calm down… it’s a gadget.  No need to make babies wait a week in line, no need to scare people they have to be there early to avoid lines and there certainly is no need to pay $399 - $499.  Deep breaths, folks… deep breaths.

Who are these analysts, and how do I get their sweet job?

Craig Berger at FBR Research has issued a report that he expects an iPod line refresh in the near future, especially on the iPod Classic and on the iPod Touch.  This is something akin to saying, “the sun will rise in the east tomorrow.”

According to my records, for the past two years the iPods have been updated on September 12th, 2006 and September 5th, 2007.  Gee… any one thinking September again?  Maybe that’s just me.  Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple, likes to do it then because then it gives time to ramp up for the holiday sales.  Well, okay, that’s my “analysis” of why he does it then.

For years now, I’ve been hearing these proclamations from “analysts” about new Apple products coming down the road.  “They’ll update the MacBook Pros this year.” er… Yeah, they will, what’s your point?  “The iPods will be getting a line refresh soon.”  Yes, they will… and the Earth will continue to rotate.  What I found amusing, and shows that they truly are guessing, is how many times they have predicted the death of the Mac Mini.

Pretty much every time an Apple event comes around, someone will say, “Well, they’re going to kill off the Mac Mini this time, and replace it with such-and-such.”  Take this post from AppleInsider on May 24th, 2007 as an example.

Ladies and gentlemen, AppleInsider believes in all sincerity that the Mac mini is dead.

True, this is an Apple blog I am quoting here, but it is just one of many examples of people thinking the Mini was dying off.  Well, funny, the Mac Mini is still here, and has even been updated in the past year.  It may very well die off, most products usually do, but it is still here, and analysts keep saying it’s doomed.  Doesn’t this tell us something about the value of their “analysis”?

Essentially analysts are doing nothing more than making educated guesses, and yet people act like it’s some sort of message from on high.  Mr. Berger’s report is burning a path across the blogosphere with people reporting on it, and I just have to scratch my head.  We all know the iPods will be updated, it’s a given, so why give so much free publicity to some guy stating the obvious?

To be honest, I think it’s a little disingenuous on the part of the analysts who make these types of predictions about Apple.  It’s almost as if they take a look at the clock on a Friday, and say to themselves, “ugh… I didn’t get any predictions out this week, I need to get an easy one out… new iPods are coming!  Brilliant… let’s go hit the bar!”  It’s a softball prediction, there’s no risk in it, and yet they are able to spin it into coverage all over the Internet because it’s about Apple.  Sure, it’s their job to make predictions, and maybe they should be thankful there is the occasional no-brainer such as this one, but it just comes across silly when it makes it out to the general public.

In short, yes, new iPods are coming, and trees will continue to produce oxygen.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) group, the people responsible for regulating the rules of domain names, passed a new measure today that could either be the greatest idea ever, or the worst.

According to Times Online, people will be able to purchase pretty much any top level domain they can think of, so instead of seeing .com, you might see something like .apple or .microsoft.  This is only going to be for big corporations, though as prices will start at $100,000.  So, lets say I bought .seanpaune, and then sold the right for people to buy domains on it just like you do a .com now, those are the type of people they are looking at.

My problem with this is that up until now I knew if I needed to go to a website, all I really needed to was remember the first part of the domain name.  So long as I remembered that part, I knew the last part had to be .com, .net, .org and so on, but now I will have to remember everything.  I know this doesn’t sound major, but lets say I’m driving down a highway, and I see a billboard for a company that I am interested in.  Instead of just having to remember one word, now I also have to remember the extension, and that may not be easy while going 65 mph.

The only big success story I can think of using one of the off-shoot extensions already is Del.icio.us.  They hit on a beautiful idea by using the underused .us extension, but how many times are you going to see something like that under this new scheme?  Sure some people will try it, but most of those styles of extensions will only be good for a limited number of domains, and the person will have trouble recouping thier $100,000 investment.

It is obvious that ICANN is doing this to make more money, but I feel they have done a horrible disservice to the Internet at large with this decision.  Yes, all the good .com names are gone, but such is life, and this will only lead to a rash ever increasingly confabulated names and user confusion.  This will only serve to confuse the Web at large and possibly frustrate people to the point of not even wanting to bother with it.

Then comes the idea of how fast do you think people will rush for things like .sex, .porn and any other number of popular Internet activities such as .betting and so on.  This will also cause a problem for small companies that could easily see their name snapped up as an extension because they can’t afford a $100,000 price tag, and even in just the scenario of needing to buy thier addresses with yet another extension.  I already have several misspellings of my main domain names locked down, now I will have to worry about a possible endless wellspring of new domain extensions I may need to snap up also to protect my company name?

The better idea would have been to release a few new extensions a year, but now we will just see a flood of bizarre names, people investing in extensions and domains that will do them no good and users that are just fed up. Good job, ICANN.

Message forum etiquette is one of those things that you could say seems to have disappeared over the years, but that would imply it ever existed.

Cries of “newb/n00b” whenever someone joins, insulting choices when one likes a piece of technology another member doesn’t, and on and on. Well, apparently I am not the only one who has ever found all of this to be silly as the guys over at Red Vs Blue put together a video of things you never read in forum posts.

If you don’t follow Red Vs. Blue, you won’t get a couple of those jokes (such as why the robot speaks Spanish and Caboose is… well… Caboose), but that doesn’t change that this may be the best thing ever said about the actions of people on the Internet.

As I have discussed several times before, the nastiness on the web seems to do nothing but get worse over time.  In particular, I have never understood the whole “newb” thing.  Like the people yelling about you being new to a forum weren’t also new at one time?  Were they somehow magically born with the knowledge of the forum, so they came into it knowing how to do everything?

One of the best comebacks I have heard to this was while playing an online game the other day.  Some people were mocking a “newb”, and a guy spoke up, saying to leave the new person alone.  Someone replied that they got mocked when they joined, so why shouldn’t they do it in turn?  The defender said, “Well, you know that you should mock all new people, but you don’t see me hitting my kids for not knowing how to do things.”

The newb got an apology from those mocking him.

Somehow I doubt we will ever see this age-old trend stop, but it sure would be nice.  So listen up the RvB guys… even they rant about Lost.