Net Neutrality bid gone for good. Welcome to Switzerland [The Register]

 

10:36:26 AM    comment []

 

BBC seeks 'Digital Assassins'. Fifty quid. Bring your own blog [The Register]

 

10:35:43 AM    comment []

 

Gallery: Gadgets for the Lazy. What good is technology if it can't make your life pathologically easy? If you read CliffsNotes, only eat frozen dinners and never leave the boat on cruises, you'll love these tech toys. [Wired News: Top Stories]

 

10:32:01 AM    comment []

 

How Can I Be More Green?. Leaving a smaller footprint on the planet isn't easy. Caveats abound for those who turn to hybrids and renewable energy to make a difference. By Brendan I. Koerner from Wired magazine. [Wired News: Top Stories]

 

10:30:56 AM    comment []

 

On The BBC 2.0. novus ordo writes "BBC has been exploring the 'Web 2.0' approach in its future plans 'to keep the BBC relevant in the digital age.' They have also put an experimental catalogue online. 'This will allow you to find out about any of the one million programmes that the BBC holds in its archive, going right back to 1937. It's a window onto an amazing cultural and national resource.' They have also opened up a competition to completely redesign its home page."

[Slashdot]

 

10:29:59 AM    comment []

 

Life on the Other End of the Tech Support Line. Ant writes to mention a PC World article about life on the other end of the tech support line. From the article: "According to interviewees, entry-level jobs at U.S. tech support firms pay about $7 an hour. Workers for a third-party tech support firm in New Delhi, India, make less than half that. Akanksha Chaand, who holds an advanced degree in computer science and had a job fielding calls for Hewlett-Packard at Business Processing Outsourcing in New Delhi, India, made the equivalent of $13,000 a year working in tech support--significantly more money than many less fortunate people in India earn. In contrast, a tech support pro who now lives in Arizona says she was barely scraping by on her $7-an-hour salary with no benefits. The rep, who asked that her name not be used, said it was only a bit better than her previous job--delivering pizzas. She said she received two weeks of training before taking calls from the public. "

[Slashdot]

 

10:28:27 AM    comment []

 

The utter futility of geekness.

Alex Barnett led an intense lightning-fast discussion yesterday that quickly went to the predictable place. I'll explain.

When bloggers get together, the topic of every session drifts into "How do we make money doing this" no matter what the original topic was. It's the same way with artists. It's so funny, because bloggers don't do it for money, and no matter how you try, the discussion never actually uncovers any ways to make money, it's just about how we need to discuss how to make money. It's a meta-discussion of a hopeless subject. Sort of like debating the need for world peace at the UN. Come to think of it, I bet that's exactly what they do debate at the UN. ";->"

When a roomful of smart geeks gets going (3Gs!) the conversation always slides down the slope to its own predictable place (sds => pp) -- How are we going to convince the users to use this. No point, you can't convince the users to use anything. What geeks do, in idle years, is discuss this, until the users find something new to adopt, on their own, then we catch up with them, and then do it all over again.

I promised I'd explain once and for all why it's hopeless to "try to get the users" to use social bookmarking software unless they're already using it. Here's why: I don't know. But I do know it never works. It's so bad that when I try to solve the problem (I'm a geek, so I fall into this trap myself, can't help it), I hack at making it easy and painless, figuring it's a user interface problem (if you're a geek you're nodding your head right now, right?) but when I make it so easy anyone would have to do it, not only doesn't anyone else do it, I don't even do it myself! Why? As I said, I don't know! Makes no sense to me at all. But there you are.

I do know that Dan Bricklin posed something like a law to explain the phenomenon, as best as a geek possibly can. Software that rewards you for doing something one percent of the time will get used (email, word processing, SimCity) and software that punishes you for doing it only 99 percent of the time will not get used (calendars, PIMs, categorizing stuff, social bookmarks). The genius of del.icio.us is that it falls into the former category, even though it appears at first to fall into the latter.

Never say Bricklin isn't a smart dude, if you remember his rule, you'll avoid hours of interesting discussions about how important it is to do something that is impossible to do. ";->"

My guess is there's a dozen Hugh MacLeod cartoons in this.

[Scripting News]

 

10:26:34 AM    comment []

 

Scientists make water run uphill. US physicists have made water run uphill quite literally under its own steam. [BBC News | Technology | UK Edition]

 

10:23:25 AM    comment []

 

Integrating Mobile Disk Into Your Data Management Strategy. A well planned and executed data management strategy can drive down IT costs and reduce complexities. One option that should be considered in any data management strategy is the integration of disk. RXT SabreDisk can be easily added to any backup environment. You donÂ’t need to change existing backup strategies and policies, and you donÂ’t need to add servers, software licenses, or applications. RXT Sabre scales like tape, rather than requiring the large scaling increments of standard disk. Data backups are protected with additional layers of RAID for offline and offsite protection.

[Computerworld News]

 

10:21:32 AM    comment []

 

Vonage readies IPO.

(InfoWorld) - VOIP provider Vonage Holdings is getting ready for its first public stock offering at $16 to $18 per share, looking to fund continued growth of its well-known voice Internet telephony services business.

The company, which offers VOIP (voice over Internet-protocol) phone service over its customers' own broadband connections in the U.S., Canada and the U.K., would be worth about $2.6 billion if its shares sell for $17, the midpoint of the proposed price range. Its proposed ticker symbol on the New York Stock Exchange would be VG, according to a filing it made to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Vonage has been in business since 2000 and has more than 1.6 million subscriber lines, about 95 percent of them in the U.S., according to the Form S-1 it filed Friday. It sells VOIP services that run over almost any broadband Internet connection. The company offers special features not available from conventional carriers, such as the ability for subscribers to choose an area code different from the one in their area, but it has less control over call quality because it uses other companies' networks.

The company, based in Holmdel, New Jersey, is one of the best-known names in VOIP. It offers local and domestic long-distance calls for a flat monthly rate as well as low-cost international long-distance. Established carriers including Verizon Communications Inc. followed Vonage with their own VOIP, which can lower the cost of delivering voice calls and is expected eventually to replace much of the conventional telecommunications infrastructure in the U.S.

Although its subscriber lines more than tripled during 2005 and revenue is rising, Vonage is losing money. In the first quarter of this year, it had almost $119 million in revenue but suffered a net loss of $72.8 million. A huge marketing campaign aimed at pulling in more customers was largely to blame, the company said. During 2005 and the first quarter of 2006, the company spent almost $332 million on marketing.

Vonage expects to bring in about $494 million from the initial public offering of 31,250,000 shares and use it to fund continued marketing as well as future operating losses, according to the filing. It may also use the money for acquisitions and other strategic investments. After the offering it will have about 156 million shares including current stock that will be converted to public shares.

Among the risk factors Vonage disclosed in the filing is its need to meet U.S. requirements for E-911 emergency calling services, which would automatically identify a caller's location to public safety operators. The federal government required it to provide E-911 to all its customers by Nov. 28, 2005. About 75 percent of its U.S. lines had the technology as of April 1, and the company has filed for a waiver to give it more time to comply. Vonage could face fines or other penalties if it doesn't comply.

SEE ALSO:

Phishers dial in to VOIP

Skype signs with four music labels for ringtones

By Stephen_Lawson@idg.com (Stephen Lawson). [InfoWorld: Top News]

 

10:15:41 AM    comment []

 

Super Mario Bros. in real life. Blog: Bloggers have been reminiscing about old videogames lately, so this post seems particularly appropriate. It's a five-minute video... [CNET News.com]

 

10:13:45 AM    comment []

 

So...you think you are a Photoshop Hottie??!!!

Create grass like a pro. Blog: Ever wonder how digital animators create those amazingly realistic details in movies like "The Incredibles"? The depiction of... [CNET News.com]

 

10:11:26 AM    comment []