I get serious about what is happening in the Tech Blogging space and this Monkey business that Comcast is up to! Are you ready to get it on!
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Thankfully I do not live in a area serviced by Comcast. Sadly though many of you do, and some of you have no choice to use an alternative carrier as Comcast has a monopoly in some areas that they serve.
With the confirmation last week that Comcast was blocking BitTorrent traffic, I am sure many people are just seeing red. While I use BitTorrent everyday for legitimate uses like delivery of my podcast, I can only imagine the frustration people are feeling.
Comcast has decided to ignore Net Neutrality and go their own way. Meanwhile, it is being reported that they are blocking legitimate traffic from business applications as well.
Actions taken by Comcast cannot be tolerated and those affected by their blocking need to start holding some protests outside of Comcast offices to inform the public at large that they are blocking legitimate services from being utilized.
Comcast should not be involved in censoring what people do with their Internet connection. If the person is using the connection for supposed illegal purposes that is not for Comcast to deal with unless informed by law enforcement.
Since they are now examining and killing BitTorrent and supposedly other business traffic, I feel that Comcast is now setting itself up to have to police all of their traffic. If you're gonna sniff a small section of the traffic, you are then telling the world that they know what is moving around on their network thus should be responsible to monitor it all.
No longer can they say they have no control over what customers do, because what they have done is essentially hacked their customers connections.
It's pretty scary when you think about it. Your own ISP snooping on what you do. If you have a choice please look at a different carrier. Second if you are in a area that is a monopolized by Comcast take your grievance to your local city council. Finally, get some signs and go protest at the local Comcast offices. EFF
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Found on Slashdot.
IBM has applied for a patent for a “system and method for extracting value from a portfolio of assets”, filed in April, but becoming public on October 18. While the Slashdot article infers that it is a formalisation of a patent protection racket (which is loosely the large company version of what a patent troll does) it is unlikely that IBM would try to patent this style of operation. Too much prior art.
This appears to be my un-lawyerly eyes to be ‘patent-troll’ insurance. One method to protect yourself from certain types of patent claims is to have a protective portfolio of patents yourself. A suit of patent infringement can then turn into a case on who's patent is valid in that case. For an opportunistic claimant, pursuing a case against you is harder and more risky.
IBM has lots of patents (over 40,000 according to them) and are highly skilled in IP law. The thought of having to defend themselves against a rival IBM patent would be a negative motivator to a prospective lawsuit. For a small to medium company to have access to this protection would be worth some money.
For IBM this also would simplify the management of their IP and make it easier for others to license IBM technology, which increases the revenue potential for them. While it appears to be a good business idea, whether it should be patentable is another matter. I have a personal dislike of patenting business models or ideas, or of the patenting of the use of a technology. Maybe a lower class of patent needs to be introduced, where the patent office can say “yeah, interesting idea but a bit anti-competitive to have a patent. Have 2 years of exclusivity only.”
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I am real happy that Microsoft picked up Rob Greenlee to be their Podcast Programming & Marketing Lead for Zune. Rob understands the podcasting space and was one of the original podcasters over at the Tech Podcast Network.
While Rob’s show has been on hiatus for a while, he has been engaged in the podcasting space since the beginning. Rob and I share many of the same fundamentals in podcasting and I could not think of a better guy to be at Microsoft and on the Zune team.
The Zune team is in a unique position now to really make a difference in the podcasting space, unlike Apple, I think. Rob and his team are going to be very open and very publicly talking about the process of how shows are featured, how to get listed and have a open feedback system that will be beneficial to the community. Zune Insider
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Last night I attended a book launch party here in Honolulu. At that party I met a marketing person from a SEO startup who told me a little about what they were doing in the search optimization space. I found it very intriguing and as competition is very tough in the SEO space he was not willing to say a lot about their strategies.
But I do know it includes mainstream “A” list bloggers in their “specific” categories who are paid to link to specific sites. While this is not new per se, some of the other things he hinted at (such as how the linking was done), were unique, in at least that I have not heard of the practice before.
So as I was driving home I got to thinking about the way tech blogging has changed in the past year. Many Tech Bloggers use Techmeme.com as a prime source for material. Because public relations firms are feeding stories to “A” list bloggers before everyone else the “A” list bloggers posts of those announcements drive incredible weight in TechMeme.
As an example, a recent post on TechCrunch.com achieved a top listing on TechMeme.com only after 3 other sites had linked in to the story. While I watched that story grow to have nearly 25 sites linking to it, giving it the long tail effect, which is a Public Relations Manager's dream.
You have an “A” list site like TechCrunch that rarely writes a negative review, you then have a auxiliary base of 25–100 blogs that link to the same review as their sourced material. Then Google comes around and indexes all the sites.
What you have just achieved is a #1 spot in the Google Search Results for an article on a product update or new site release. While this is not PayPerPost it is definitely “Public Relations Gaming” of the Tech Blogging community.
All bloggers pay attention to tagging and titles of our articles, so of course this plays into the hands of the PR people, too.
So what has changed? In the past before Techmeme.com we all had a larger daily reading list of RSS feeds; thus, we all may have linked to sites that were covering something yet may not have been the initial source. Thus, the companies did not get such a huge bump in Google Juice ranking.
I am not sure what can be done to fix it with the exception of no longer reading Techmeme.com and other sites that pull together top stories of the day. It is time to go back to a broader review of websites daily on topics and spread the link love a lot further.
This means reading the 600+ blogs I used to read each day instead of going straight to Techmeme.com
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Airship manufacturer Aeros has announced its plans for a new cargo airship that will haul 100 tons of cargo or can also be outfitted as a cruise liner or personal yacht. It is much slower than a jet (120mph) but faster than a conventional blimp, and what it lacks in speed it makes up for in space comfort and flexibility with its VTOL.
I'll take one, I just have to work out whether I have the space to store it next to the Space Shuttle I'm never going to own either. Maybe when Todd makes his podcasting fortune he'll take me for a ride in his.
via Gizmodo
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I have used FeedValidator.org to validate my feed for several years and noticed a couple of days ago that 2 new errors were showing up. I am not sure what prompted the change. For years my feed has been ok.
But now I am seeing this error “
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This show is a wild ride and I get pretty wound up. Big thanks to all the loyal fans that are part of the Geek News Central Ohana. Are you going to Podcamp Boston?
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Comments to 619-342-7365 e-mail to geeknews@gmail.com
