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Valleywag
Your Privacy Is An Illusion
Your Privacy Is An Illusion
How does Google compare to Microsoft after ten years?
Google is celebrating its tenth birthday this month — so how is it doing compared to Microsoft, which is a ripe old 33? Microsoft is still the big dog, earning three times the revenue in the last year. But Bill Gates and company had only booked $140 million in revenue by its tenth year. Google employees are also punching above their weight, booking $1 million per head to Team Redmond's $672,000. If Google figures out how to make money on anything besides search advertising, the $99 billion market value differential might evaporate in time for a bar mitvah in Mountain View. [NYT]
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Shipping, wages make China less attractive to electronics manufacturers
Thanks to rising fuel prices and wage inflation in China, it's actually more expensive to manufacture and ship electronics across the Pacific for the American market than it would be to produce them domestically, according to a report from The McKinsey Quarterly. But iPhone assembly plants won't be coming to a depressed rust-belt community near you, because it's cheaper still to produce those electronics in a Mexican maquiladora. Though I hear prison labor is a real bargain, and there's no shortage of that here in the states. [Broadstuff]
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Online Video
Amazon.com's video on demand more "piddling" than "streaming"
While Amazon.com makes no claims as to the quality of video from its new "video on demand" online streaming service being comparable to DVD quality, a measly 1.2 megabit-per-second data rate is still laughable. To put it in perspective, standard-definition DVDs typically run well over 6Mbps (Apple, also risibly, calls the 5Mbps offerings from iTunes "HD," purely based on pixel dimensions and not data depth). And based on your connection speed, Amazon might deliver even less digital resolution. All of this for up to $14.99 to "own" a movie stored wrapped in Adobe's Flash copy protection. Granted, Amazon is hindered by the slow broadband connections typical in American households, but keeping the bitrate low also keeps bandwidth costs down — and margins high.
Failanthropy
Google touts charity-race win, ignore injured competitor, charity
Team Google, stocked with runners from company outposts across the country, finished third out 147 corporate teams in the Hood to Coast relay race sponsored by Nike. The course takes runners from Mount Hood to the Pacific Ocean through Oregon. Team Yahooligans? They finished 140th. Google proudly touted the efforts of the team on the official corporate blog. Fast, sure, but were the ultracompetitive Googlers good sports? More »
Politics
Join Tom Siebel and Sarah Palin for lunch
John McCain's pick for his running mate, Sarah Palin, will be dropping by the Bay Area for a fundraising lunch hosted by Siebel Systems founder Tom Siebel and his wife Stacey. Don't worry, Republicans won't have to visit San Francisco and be pestered by illegal immigrants, environmentalists, activists judges or Siebel's new cousin-in-law, hunky God-mayor Gavin Newsom — the lunch will be held on Thursday, September 25th at the Siebel's manse in sleepy Woodside. How much will it cost you? More »
Online Video
Michael Moore's latest agitprop will be free at Blip.tv
Slacker Nation, which focuses on chubby doc jock Michael Moore's trip around the country to drum up support among the youngs for "voting," will be distributed online for free. Online video site Blip.tv will be hosting the download in a nice little marketing coup (the fact that Blip.tv cofounder and CEO Mike Hudack loves him some Obama couldn't have hurt in striking that deal). "This is being done entirely as a gift to my fans," Moore said in a prepared statement. Time will tell if it's a gift to the Democratic party — Moore's stunt tactics, like his ramen noodle giveaways featured in the trailer, often galvanize older Republicans who actually do show up to the polls on election day, unlike young Democrats.
Microsoft
Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Gates star in nonsensical new ad campaign
Long-time Macintosh enthusiast Jerry Seinfeld kicks off the new Microsoft campaign by spotting company cofounder Bill Gates at a fictional discount shoe store. The 90-second spot makes a lot less sense from there. Can't say for certain if this is the spot that Michel Gondry directed, but it certainly has the loopy narrative touches, playful music and one giveaway visual cue: A shot of someone wearing shoes and socks in the shower. It makes no mention of technology until the end, when Seinfeld asks when Microsoft will make an edible computer — and then the audience is treated to Bill Gates adjusting himself in his boxer shorts, hands-free. The whole production says "quirky," not slick or cool, but then Windows Vista is full of maddening quirks.
One Laptop Per Child
HiVision to ship $98 MiniNote laptop in October
In the race to develop the first mass-producible laptop that costs less than $100 has apparently been won by Chinese company HiVision, which currently offers an adorable, pink, 7" MiniNote for $120 but plans to introduce a model in October that will retail for only $98. Like the Lemote laptop that radical open source guru Richard Stallman uses, it couldn't run Windows if you wanted it to. But it comes with a free installation of Xip, a Linux distribution from China, and runs Firefox. But then Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child project decided to go with Windows and with that decision alone the size and cost ballooned. Would be just the thing for running Google's new Chrome browser — that is, if the Chrome browser supported Linux.
online advertising
Sexing up Sarah Palin with Photoshop draws AdSense ire
A photo that may or may not depict a young, nude and brunette Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska and the Republican Party's vice presidential nominee, has made the tabloid rounds after being featured on blog Hollywood Newsroom. It was sent in as part of a Photoshopping contest, but looks legitimate enough as a photograph (though not necessarily of Palin). Either way, it's too racy for Google — which strictly forbids placing its automated advertising next to "adult or mature" content. More »
Caption Contest
Kindle on a plane
Kindlespotting continues, with a reader sending us this picture of a reader on a flight from Dallas to San Francisco. Considering how much the e-book readers cost and the premium prices for the content, you'd think this reader would be in first class — then again, after paying Amazon $359 plus shipping for the gadget, maybe all he could afford was coach. Go on, write a better caption in the comments. Best one will become the new headline. Yesterday's winner in our very special caption contest: "And now that I've had Firefox dig this hole in the desert for me..." by Beachfront_Perk.
National economy offers more disincentives to breed
This year, healthcare costs are set to rise nearly six percent, again, and guess who will pay the expense? Employees, not employers. You will be allowed to choose between paying more to insurance companies for the same deductible or the same amount but with a higher potential emergency outlay. [AP] (Photo by Vick the Viking)
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lazy valleywag
Please share your semiconducted romances and microprocessed fears
Let's face it, the world of Web development and production is a glamorous sham. The real science is in semiconductors. That cute Ajax script kiddie with the asymmetrical haircut? Ask him to design a microprocessor cache bus. Learn a little ActionScript? Go ahead and try to get a job pinning Intel chips to nuclear reactor control systems or laser-guided bombs. Even if you're a C++ jock or MapReduce expert, your gonads shrink when an actual electronic engineer is in the room. It's okay, you can admit it. We will. More »
Doubtsourcing
Google to pay Indian students with certificates of appreciation
Google India is offering students a prize for convincing their respective schools to adopt Google Apps by December 15th. What's the prize? It's certainly not a cash grant, or expensive hardware. Nope, it's naught but illiquid honor. More »
Startups
BigStage creating plowshares from CIA's, um, swords?
BigStage — which lets you map your face from carefully staged photos into a video clip — was built on technology originally developed by the Central Intelligence Agency. The obvious and unanswered question is why in the hell was the CIA developing technology to automagically replace one person with another in photos and videos? Sure, the CIA was deeply involved in early LSD research, but this seems like a trippy idea even for that particular fratty bunch of Yale Bulldogs. More »
Online Video
The Internet past and future, but mostly present
The Insane True Story Behind the Birth of the Internet, by Those Aren't Muskets. Because clearly, the best way to satirize the vapid faddishness of Internet culture is for a group of white men to create an online sketch comedy video. (Via Laughing Squid) More »
digital divide
How the riches use the Internet
Here in the Bay Area, we have a skewed view of both who qualifies as a rich and what constitutes typical technology adoption. Households earning $100,000 a year or more account for 20 percent of the American population but earn 58 percent, or $4.6 billion, of aggregate household income. That's according to the latest release of the Mendelsohn Affluent survey from Ipsos. A new section of the study focuses on Internet browsing and buying activity. What does the data reveal? More »
Crime
Cheap stolen solar panels, now on Craigslist?
A rash of solar panel thefts has hit the Bay Area and Sacramento according to a report from local news station KPIX. Recently hit was the Hearst Elementary School in Pleasanton. Best part of the story? The main suspect in the case, a Pittsburg, Calif. resident, is alleged to have used Craigslist to fence the goods. According to reporter Jeffrey Schaub, each panel can fetch from $800 to $1000, much more than stolen copper piping or the platinum from catalytic convertors in car mufflers, which are also hot items. Putting it all together — the East Bay, late-night theft and Craigslist — my money is on meth addicts.
Caption Contest
"And now that I've had Firefox dig this hole in the desert for me..."
Everybody's having so much fun with Google's Chrome comic, we figured we'd give our readers a crack. In this very special caption contest, the best caption left in the comments won't just become the headline, we'll even update the graphic — to live on in Google's index for Webternity. So don't let us down, and bring your A-game. Yesterday's winner was ROIpositive for "Have you wiped your dirty temp-files lately?"
Terms of Disservice
Google backtracks on Chrome's copyright clause
Web wonks got into a tizzy over a clause buried in the terms of service for the new Chrome browser from Google which gave the search engine rights over all content created with the software. An insidious conspiracy to abuse copyrights! All your data is belong to Google! Not so much. Google's legal eagles, under the direction of general counsel Kent Walker, were just really lazy. They copied and pasted the text from other Google legalese without thinking. Now Google will be moving to strike the clause from the record. Just goes to show we aren't the only ones who don't read the terms of service — Google's lawyers can't be bothered, either.
Politics
Valley grunts may not get unemployment checks in the next bust
When the IPOs dried up and all that bloomed in the Valley were pink slips, there were plenty of anti-tax zealots lining up with hats in hand for their weekly unemployment stipend from the state. Now California's unemployment fund is getting more insolvent by the month, with optimistic estimates pegging the shortfall at $1.6 billion by the end of next year. Those same evil corporate taxes that Schwarzenegger Republicans want slashed while asking state employees to work for minimum wage. So remember to stash some Euros under the mattress. Because if your nest egg is tied up in small lots of common share equity in a company that won't IPO anytime soon, or in options that are underwater, good luck using that equity to cover your mortgage, car lease and health insurance payments. (Photo by Kamal Hamid)
online advertising
Facebook's ads still target your instincts and insecurities
Google regularly contends that well-targeted advertising is valuable to the end user. Facebook promises that its advertising technology will allow levels of refined targetting that even Google has yet to muster, thanks to all the information people willingly give the company about themselves. While computer graphics and animation specialists may have moved past the uncanny valley, advertising targetting lags behind. Washington Post reporter Rachel Beckman had to put up with ads promising to trim down any love handles. After complaining, those ads were removed and the site changed its policy towards aggravating fatties. But now that's she's changed her relationship status from engaged to married, did Facebook greet her with mazel tovs? More »
cloud computing
Google's Chrome dream -- a mainframe-era computing monopoly
"I think operating systems are kind of an old way to think of the world," Google cofounder Sergey Brin told a klatsch of reporters after the Mountain View ad agency's song-and-dance routine to announce its new browser, Chrome. Brin is a little older than me, which I find surprising — not because I'm so old, but because even I remember the days before there really was a personal computer on every desk (and on every lap, and in every pocket). What was there? More »
hires
Bob Dykes abandons privacy invader NebuAd for books cooker Verifone
Bob Dykes, the founder and chairman at ad targeting company NebuAd, has left his position as CEO and signed up as the new CFO at Verifone. NebuAd has raised the ire of privacy advocates by offering a service which monitors an individual's Web surfing habits by looking at the content of individual packets of data to better target advertising — a practice which is currently under congressional investigation. Verifone, which provides automated payment technology, recently let go of its old CFO, Barry Zwarenstein, after the publicly traded company wiped out $70 million in profits in restated financials. No rest for the wickedly wealthy, I guess. (Photo by AP/Paul Sakuma)
Virtual Worlds
There.com hopes Second Life hasn't ruined virtual worlds for everybody
With support for Mac users, a new Facebook widget and an instant messaging application, There.com is hoping to breathe some life into its 3D virtual world which has gone largely unnoticed for years since its launch in 2003. If publicity could support a business model, Second Life might not be the largely empty libertarian paradise it is today. Google's new entry Lively, on the other hand, has also struggled with adopting users — possibly because it refuses to cater to any interests that aren't G-rated. The question remains as to whether any 3D simulacrum that isn't explicitly for gaming has much attraction to all but introverted shut-ins and avant kinksters. With family-friendly rules to keep the virtual pimps and hustlers off the polygonal streets, There.com might just succeed in finally reaching a broadening demographic: Parents so scared, they'd rather keep their teens cooped up at home and nervously trying to interact with crushes online when not reading the Twilight series of chaste teen romance novels featuring abstinent vampires or getting dragged to dad's Promise Keepers meetings.
Online Video
Ustream.tv ups the oversharing ante with live birth
Stephen Heywood's wife Erin just gave birth to their daughter Samantha. Nothing special there — sexual reproduction stopped being much of a unique achievement after eukaryotes got into the habit over a billion years ago. But Ustream.tv wasn't around to bring the birth of a little baby eukaryote to the world live on the Internet. More »
DHS warned not to use Wikipedia in immigration cases
The Department of Homeland Security used Wikipedia in its effort to reject an application for asylum by Ethiopian woman Lamilem Badasa. Badasa had presented a "laissez-passer" travel document as a form of identification, and the DHS used the Wikipedia page in its successful petition to deport the woman. The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that "Wikipedia is not a sufficiently reliable source" to make such decisions, and handed the case back to the immigration appeals court. Too bad for Jimmy Wales — think of all the vulnerable hotties facing deportation from around the world he could have seduced in exchange for helpful edits. [Wired]
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