If they figure all that stuff out, then the possibility exists for Google to make some big bucks serving as the distribution platform for mainstream video content. But that sounds like Yahoo's model, not Google's.

Far easier, given the kinds of businesses Google runs today, is one that taps into the Long Tail. If Google is hosting terabytes of video content created by amateur documentarians, Aunt Sallies and the like, the asking price for content might well be zero. In that scenario, Google can apply what it knows how to do best and allow advertisers to place ads in certain kinds of content or to target certain viewerships. Aggregating vast amounts of content for auction-based ad placements is what Google is all about. Jennifer concedes, "I could see advertising at some point but there are no plans for that right now. ... Like all of our products, there are a huge amount of queries that would happen in the tail."

Indeed the uploading license agreement explicitly states, "Google reserves the right to display advertisements in connection with any display of Your Authorized Content."

Ultimately, video search, discovery and playback could be a key piece of the core Google product. As Larry said at the analysts' conference call last week, "Many of our products are integrated into the main search product. These products improve our core products and the core products enhance our ability to monetize the other products."

In other words, even if, as may prove to be the case with news, Google doesn't monetize video as a discrete business, the value to the core search product and the businesses that hang off of it make video an intriguing "experiment."

To upload your content, visit Google's upload.video.google site

BTW, Jennifer Feikin just happens to be my cousin, which I discovered when I read her interview on SearchEngineWatch.)

April 27, 2005 | Permalink | Tag: Google [GOOG]
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Google is testing ad placements for RSS feeds

By Richard MacManus for SiliconValleyWatcher
In a delicious piece of Web irony, a Microsoft Longhorn blog is the first site to trial Google's Adsense in its RSS feed. Robert McLaws of LonghornBlogs.com says that it's a pilot program and "may disappear for a while, or be discontinued altogether."

RSS feed management company Feedburner, which has been running an RSS advertising service from Overture since late 2004, was quick to announce its piggy-back support of Google's RSS Adsense. Feedburner promises "additional flexibility in determining frequency of ads, ability to prevent ads on short posts and other ad control mechanisms for your feed."

Update, by Richard MacManus: CNET reports that Google has confirmed the test. Also Jason Calacanis from Weblogs Inc, one of the biggest commercial blog networks, has confirmed his company is testing Google adverts in its RSS feeds.

Note also that Robert McLaws from LonghornBlogs.com, the first reported tester, left a comment here on Silicon Valley Watcher questioning whether Feedburner's announcement of support "is legit". My understanding of Feedburner's announcement is that Feedburner will help their users to implement the Google Adsense service into their Feedburner-powered RSS feeds - as well as provide additional flexibility.

Bill Flitter of Pheedo told Silicon Valley Watcher that "Google putting ads in RSS validates further the work we've been doing at Pheedo for the last 18 months. RSS advertising works."

It's no surprise to Bill that Google has entered the market. He remarked that "it will only help our business as advertisers will see it as a serious medium."

While the news is still unconfirmed by Google, it seems apparent that RSS advertising is about to go mainstream. It will be interesting to see how bloggers react to adverts in RSS. Uber-blogger Dave Winer wants a bit of romance in his RSS ads. Others may react negatively to advertising within an 'opt-in' medium such as RSS.

One side benefit for writers and readers alike is that we may see many more full-text RSS feeds in future, because content providers will not see as much need to drive eyeballs to their websites.

Richard Koman Note: Indeed, the focus on web page impressions will likely fade as RSS develops its own metrics models, auditing services and techniques for verifying that feeds have actually been read and not just automatically downloaded.

Update, by Richard MacManus: CNET reports that Google has confirmed the test. Also Jason Calacanis from Weblogs Inc, one of the biggest commercial blog networks, has confirmed his company is testing Google adverts in its RSS feeds.

Note also that Robert McLaws from LonghornBlogs.com, the first reported tester, left a comment here on Silicon Valley Watcher questioning whether Feedburner's announcement of support "is legit". My understanding of Feedburner's announcement is that Feedburner will help their users to implement the Google Adsense service into their Feedburner-powered RSS feeds - as well as provide additional flexibility.

April 27, 2005 | Permalink | Comment on this post | Tag: RSS Watch
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April 26, 2005

Notes from Software 2005: Lunch with the Swami of the enterprise software sector...

I saw MR in his element on Tuesday, when I dropped into Software 2005, the second annual enterprise software conference organised by MR and his team at the Sand Hill Group. And judging by the Silicon Valley hack pack and top exec and VC turnout at the VIP lunch, MR’s hustling and bustling has been rewarded.

I spent an interesting afternoon at Software 2005, which surprised me because I have found the enterprise software space much less interesting now that consolidation has reduced the sector to a few giants and many smaller software-as-a-feature companies :-)

I sat with MR at lunch, (he is a big SiliconValleyWatcher fan BTW). Here are some notes from my chat with the “swami of the software sector”. (MR, I hope it’s not offensive to call you swami; I did wikipedia it…!)

M.R. Rangaswami:

[On consolidation trend and valuation of startups…] Yes, the big players do control valuations; and I think that is going to lead to VC funds delivering much lower returns to their limited partners. It’ll probably drop to about 12.5 percent return, rather than the 25 percent that we’ve gotten used to.

[On trends at the show…] The software-as-a-service sessions have been jam packed; that wasn’t the case last year. This makes me wonder if we’ve seen the last of the $1bn software company, whether any software company will ever again reach that level of revenues.

[On stacks and platforms…] SAP’s Netweaver is certainly going to be an important stack and platform because of the user base. If you look at everybody’s stacks, it’s interesting to see that Microsoft and IBM don’t have any applications at the top of their stacks; and I think that is going to be a challenge for IBM. They should probably have gone after PeopleSoft.

[On startups…] Greg Gianforte’s session on how to bootstrap your company was packed. Next door, the venture funding session was packed too! That is so very typical of Silicon Valley. About 50 percent of the people here at the conference are from startups.

Sand Hill's web site has become a very good software enterprise magazine,take a look here: http://www.sandhill.com/index.php

April 26, 2005 | Permalink | Tag: VC Watch
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Businessweek cover story on blogs...nothing new and no mention of trackback!

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

I didn't see anything I haven't seen a million times in a million articles, in the Businessweek blogging cover story. And it featured all the usual suspects, Dan, etc, etc.

Also, the cover story didn't mention trackback once! It was all about publishing, nothing about the two-way media technology that blogging represents.I have to ask if Businessweek gets it. I guess Businessweek got half the story. BTW, Businessweek, the backlash to blogging started around about Easter time.

Businessweek: Blogs Will Change Your Business

April 26, 2005 | Permalink | Tag: Media Watch
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Public video-on-demand service launched by Internet pioneers...

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

Open Media Network (OMN) launched this Tuesday an interesting public service project founded by Mike Homer, the man who co-founded Netscape with Marc Andreessen. Mr. Andreessen is also involved in this new venture, which is based on video-on-demand technology from Kontiki, where Mr. Homer is chairman.

“When we founded Netscape, we always had the goal of helping people easily publish on the Internet. That took a while; and now, with blogging and technologies such as RSS, we are finally there,” Mr. Homer said last week in a pre-briefing about the launch.

OMN allows anybody to upload video and share it. Kontiki uses a type of peer-to-peer distribution mechanism, while at the same time containing strong digital rights management technologies.

Will we see Flickriscious-like groups forming on OMN? Maybe, if it gets enough users. It'll be interssting to see how it is used.

From the press release...

Internet pioneers form OMN (www.omn.org) to let users easily access movies, music, video blogs, podcasts and public television and radio programming.

Open Media Network (OMN) was founded by Internet pioneer and Netscape veteran Mike Homer and includes Marc Andreessen as an advisor and board member.

The service offers users a broad selection of free public programs with a simple TV-style program guide and automatic background deliveries of favorite scheduled programming. Content producers can easily add their programming to the network, with unlimited free delivery of their shows and with digital rights protection.

Through the service, consumers can view the content on multiple devices, including PCs and iPods today and televisions and cell phones by this summer.

Open Media Network is powered by grid delivery technology from Kontiki, which already provides secure delivery of content libraries for a range of companies such as Ernst & Young, Verizon, AOL and the BBC. Kontiki’s grid delivery technology speeds the distribution of video and music files by allowing participants to share unused bandwidth on their computers and servers. There are already over 20 million users of Kontiki’s technology today.

The programs on OMN are authorized for public use by the producers and most are licensed under Creative Commons.

The Open Media Foundation is a private, non-profit foundation founded in 2005 by Internet and media pioneers who believe Internet users deserve a better, simpler and free way to get video and music programs that are authorized by their producers for Internet distribution. It is powered by grid delivery technology from Kontiki. More information can be found at www.omn.org.

April 26, 2005 | Permalink | Tag: Tech Watch
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April 25, 2005

Are bloggers journalists? This is one of the most important cultural questions facing society today....

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

Here is a version of an entry I wrote for New Communications Forum, in which I postulated that one of the most important cultural questions facing society is: Are bloggers journalists?

It is an important question; because the media is part of the trusted channels of communication that society uses to think, distribute ideas, and exercise its right to free speech.

It's an important question; because the answer carries with it considerable responsibility. If bloggers are indeed journalists, then they deal in the same currency of ideas and influence as the established media.

But this fragmentation of the mediasphere, into millions of blogs, upsets society's trusted ways of distributing its ideas and free speech; and, in the process, journalism is being transformed in many ways. Print journalism, the most dominant form, is under economic threat from online media, with its lower cost business models. And the profession of journalism is under society's microscope, as millions of bloggers challenge the accepted notions of what journalism is, and who can, or should be allowed to, practice it.

The Internet is a disruptive media technology

This transformation of journalism is best understood if the Internet is understood as a disruptive force, not of the technology sector, but of the media sector. The Internet is a collection of disruptive media technologies; and blogging, RSS, wikis, podcasts, etc., are part of a second wave of powerful media technologies that are accelerating this disruptive process.

The first wave of Internet media technology was the flood of web browser technologies that enabled anyone to read a web page, regardless of the computer or operating system. Similarly, blogging allows anyone to easily publish a web page, regardless of the computer or operating system.

But blogging is more than a web browser; it is more like an "asynchronous" media technology, Geek speak for "can move both ways." And this is reflected in how the early pioneers understand this Internet 2.0 or Web 2.0 emerging phase of the Internet.

Richard MacManus, one of my new colleagues on SiliconValleyWatcher, (and ionRSS.com coming soon!), has a web site called ReadWriteWeb.com. Joe Kraus, co-founder of JotSpot, developer of a corporate wiki platform, said he'd considered using Escher's drawing of a hand drawing a hand for the logo of his company.

This two-way web concept is just emerging into the mainstream culture, having been closeted in the Geek community for the past few years. But the concept of a two-way media is more than just a handy way of describing the blogging phenomenon. It is leveling the "free speech" playing field of journalism between established and new media.

In a nutshell, bloggers can now publish their free speech, their ideas, their influence, and reach 4/5ths of the world's population for virtually nothing. I'm not saying that 4/5ths of the world's population would read the bloggers; but the reach is there, and essentially for free. It costs less than $10 per month to host a blog; and the online network of bloggers can carry the content far and wide for free.

Anyone can have a powerful web publishing platform that is near completely automated. And that upsets the channels of influence in our society, which were protected from competition because of the high cost of publishing high quality content.

In Part II: Apple's hunt for leaksters threatens to muzzle the press...
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April 25, 2005 | Permalink | Comment on this post | Tag: Media Watch
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Podcasts from Ad Tech conference...

The Ad Tech conference is in San Francisco Monday and Tuesday and Eric Schwartzman of ipressroom.com says there will be podcasts of one-on-one interviews with keynote speakers, session moderators and panelists "so if you're interested in what some of the biggest advertisers and their ad agencies think about where the media business is headed, subscribe to our RSS news feed or register to stream the interviews on-demand at: http://www.ipressroom.com/

Here are the Monday and Tuesday lineups:

Monday
o John Costello, EVP, Home Depot
o Bambi Francisco, reporter, CBS Marketwatch
o Taddy Hall, chief strategy officer, Advertising Reach Foundation
o Mike Shields, senior reporter, MediaWeek
o Carolyn Tang, Orbitz.com
o Peter Figueredo, CEO, NetExponent
o Michael Tchong, CEO, Trendscape

Tuesday
o Dr. Jeffrey I. Cole, director, Center for the Digital Future, Annenberg, USC
o Rebecca Lieb, executive editor, ClickZ Network
o Dr. Roger D. Blackwell, professor of marketing, Ohio State University
o Kris Oser, reporter, Advertising Age
o Mitch Oscar, executive vice president, Carat Digital
o Jeff Lanctot, vice president, Avenue A / Razorfish

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April 25, 2005 | Permalink | Tag: Tech Watch
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April 22, 2005

[thoughtleaders] Doc Searls on blogging made easy….

[thoughtleaders is part of a new series consisting of vignettes of advice and observation]

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

It was a pleasure to meet Doc Searls recently. Doc is what I call a "big link" in the online world: one of the early bloggers, a pioneer of online marketing concepts, co-author of the popular 1999 book "ClueTrain Manifesto," and senior editor at Linux Journal.

Doc said several interesting things during his presentation at a recent Bite Communications sponsored seminar. Doc: "I blog about an hour a day; and I find it easy."

This is an excellent observation on blogging. Doc is right, blogging should be easy. It should be as easy as writing an email to a colleague or buddy. It's not so easy breaking stories, writing news, interviews, analysis and features --the type of journalism that we also have on SiliconValleyWatcher; but the blogging part, like this entry, should be easy. This is my "blog voice," and it is very similar to my "email voice." My blog voice, however, does change according to mood, and how late I stay up blogging (!)

If any one of you is hesitating about writing/starting a blog because you are not yet "ready," I suggest you jump in anyway. It is a forgiving environment; few will read you initially anyway, which means you can experiment with the format and build your readers one by one. And you will understand what this blogging fuss is all about :-)
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April 22, 2005 | Permalink | Comment on this post | Tag: Thoughtleaders
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Can this man save the Net? Verisign's chief security officer has his work cut out for him

By Deb Radcliff for SiliconValleyWatcher

Just a few days before the presses started rolling on the announcement of Ken Silva as VeriSign's first-ever chief security officer, I was dining with the man over filet mignon and crab at the trendy Tonno Rosso's near San Francisco's wharf, barraging him with questions about the very serious issues faced by internet infrastructure and in particular the DNS system.

VeriSign is the world's largest digital certificate authority, and is steward of the A and J root servers (two of the 13 computers representing the top of the Internet's hierarchy). With 40 percent of North American e-commerce payments going through its gateways, 100 percent of .com registrars running 15 billion queries a day through its system, and 50 percent of North American cellular roamings going through its servers, VeriSign has a significant role in seeing that the Internet infrastructure runs securely.

Over the years, the root DNS servers have proven vulnerable to domain name spoofing (through a technique called DNS cache poisoning), and Distributed Denial of Service attacks (the latter of which came to light during a concerted effort to take down the DNS root servers in 2002). Not to mention the search query redirect debacle in 2003, in which VeriSign took advantage of its position as DNS manager, and forcibly rerouted all unresolved search queries to a paid-for advertising site created by a dubious spammer. This forced redirect broke a lot of DNS servers, and raised such a ruckus that VeriSign shut down the service barely a week after it went live.

In the past three years, VeriSign has hardened its own DNS servers, so that they're not vulnerable to the DNS poisoning attacks that phishers are starting to use to reroute legitimate addresses typed into browsers. DNS servers hosted by large ISPs and other busy Internet hubs are increasingly being exploited to send large blocks of users to fake Web addresses, where phishers get them to type in their personal information. The trend was reported in January, when the Anti-Phishing Working Group reported that DNS poisoning was used to redirect Google and Amazon users to a phony pharmacy site.

So I asked Silva how he, as VeriSign's first CSO, would help other DNS owners lock down their servers so that users weren't vulnerable to being sent to a spoofed Web site. At which he crossed his hands patiently, and explained his vision for a safer Internet.

"We can't be responsible for the millions of DNS servers on the Internet; but we can certainly do more in the form of education," he says. "A year and a half ago, VeriSign published a white paper with CERT on how to lock down DNS servers so they're not vulnerable to cache poisoning and hijacking. And we've been actively involved in the DNS SEC standard, which would require DNS servers to validate the routing path. But the standard would require a change be made to all DNS servers; and it's being held up in the IETF."

Education is strong on Silva's agenda, which he describes as taking a more holistic approach to security by working with all of VeriSign's business units and platforms to provide stronger authentication at the browser, through the ISPs and at Web sites, so that users can surf the Web, send secure e-mail, make purchases, and transact businesses seamlessly without having to spend so much time on their own personal security.

"Users are the weakest link in all of this. They can't understand what they need to know about intrusion detection, firewalls, anti-virus, spyware and DNS hijacking. And it's technically difficult for users to look at Web site certificates to validate that they're at a legitimate Web site," he says. "Users should be protected by their ISPs; and those e-commerce companies where they do business should do more to validate their legitimacy to users."

As such, VeriSign is committed to a number of standards groups for open authentication platforms, certificate management and DNS Security. But whether or not Silva can impact such change remains to be seen.

Silva spent 10 years at the National Security Agency working in signals intelligence before becoming a C-level executive in technology. He came to VeriSign in 2000 as its senior VP of internal technology and networking security. He serves on the board of directors for the Information Technology Information Sharing and Analysis Center (IT-ISAC, which is under the auspices of the Department of Homeland Security), and is an adviser/participant in the National Infrastructure Protection Center, the White House ISP Security Panel, the ICANN DNS Security Panel, the Network Reliability and Interoperability Council, and the National Security Telecommunications Advisory.

If pedigree means anything, he certainly stands a fighting chance.
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April 22, 2005 | Permalink | Tag: Security Watch
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April 21, 2005

Google execs look ahead and see even more more from their powerful business model

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

I've transcribed my notes from the analyst conference call Google held today to discuss their earnings. It was a pretty interesting conversation, I must say. I believe they really care about providing great user experiences. Ultimately, I think they're mostly interested in the improvements that also allow a rich stream of data to flow back to Google, from which they can figure out better ways to sell advertising and targeted marketing. I don't think it's any more nefarious than that; but I do think it's the basis of their ability to monetize user patterns as brilliantly as they do.

OK, here's the conversation, at least the part that I managed to take notes on.

Q: Can you talk about monetizing some of the non-search products, such as Google News and Froogle?

A: We don't think about it that way. Many of our products are integrated into the main search product. These products improve our core products and the core products enhance our ability to monetize the other products.

Q: Are you going to extend the advertising content to support graphical ads/more brand-oriented ads?

A: There are a number of efforts to make advertising more graphical which will be rolled out in coming months. We're also working on doing more targeting, which is pretty minimal right now.

Q: Can you explain the increased capital expenditures (which went from $86m to $142m)?

A: We invest in technology needed to provice services at the level we do. We build very sophisticated hardware platforms to do that. Not all of that money is in computer equipment but most of it is.

Q: I know you've said you're not building a browser, but are you thinking about products that let users get at content without having to go through IE or Firefox?

A: Well, you can already do that through Google Desktop. But our goal is to solve very large user problems. You can see amazing things are going to be possible inside the browser if you look at Google Maps.

Q: [Some question about Adsense]

A: We're looking at a number of ways to extend the advertising network. We're already shipping image ads and testing targeting techniques.

Q: MSN is running on 64-bit architecture. Do you think you'll also switch to 64-bit?

A: I think architecture is invisible to users, so it's not really a competitive factor.

Q: Talk about how you'll monetize video?

A: Right now we're just collecting video, we're not distributing although we want to. We're not sure what the details are.

Q: Enhancements to advertiser support?

A: [Eric Schmidt:] For large advertisers, we have support teams and people we call maximizers, who make sure the creative really works well. We have automatic tools to submit, rank and change your advertising, so they can change what they're doing every week, day, hour, minute.

[Sergey Brin:] The system is really optimized for the middle. We do special solutions for larger advertisers. We need to achieve greater simplicity for new and smaller advertisers.

Q: Is there some intention to monetize the new Search History function (which recently came out in beta]?

A: The only intent is to deal with a real user issue. It's a great research tool. I don't think anyone has thought about advertising with respect to Search History.

Q: Any plans to institue a stock buyback plan?

A: We're focused on accumulating cash right now, so no.

Q: Have you thought about extending Google's approach and brand into offline media?

A: The way we look at questions like that is, what is the end user benefit? Our advertising model is a beautiful thing and we're certainly going to extend it as far as we can.

Q: Comment on the French news service AFP's suit against Google News?

A: We've got a number of situations where we've become an important distribution channel. Our strategy is to work with copyright holders; our goal is to make all information available and accessible while respecting the rights and needs of copyright owners.

Final comment from Sergey: We are very busy here at Google.

We're focused on end users. We're focused on making better products for end users and advertising will flow into that. This is a very powerful model.
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April 21, 2005 | Permalink | Tag: Google [GOOG]
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Advertising booms for Google, as they report earnings of $1.29 a share

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

With cofounder Sergey Brin proclaiming their advertising model, "very powerful," Google announced the results of a successful first quarter today. Net income was $369m or $1.29 per share, compared to $64m or 24 cents per share a year ago. The search giant had net revenues of $1.2 billion, a whopping 93 percent improvement over a year ago.

"Our advertising model is a beautiful thing; and we're certainly going to extend it as far as we can," Brin said in the quarterly conference call.

While the numbers were stronger for Google's own properties (which made $657 million in revenues, a 166% boost over year-ago numbers), the AdSense numbers ($584 million, a 75% increase over last year) are nothing to sneeze out.

The wild card of profitability in the network model is the "traffic acquisition costs," or TAC, as Google calls it, which is the amount of money paid out to publishers on the network, as well as larger partnership deals. The TAC number was $462 million, which brings total revenues down to $794 million before other operating expenses.

One big piece of the TAC was Google's relationship with AOL Europe, which enabled Google to increase international revenues from 35% to 39%. In the quarterly conference call with analysts, CEO Eric Schmidt said, "Unlike overall GDP growth in Europe, internet adoption is growing very fast. We're looking for very strong growth in Europe."

TAC (Traffic Acquisition Costs), the portion of revenues shared with Google’s partners, increased to $462 million. This compares to total payments to partners of $271 million in the first quarter of 2004.

The quarter's traffic acquisition costs amounted to 79% of revenues, up from 77% last quarter; but Larry Page emphasized that these costs fluctuate substantially from quarter to quarter. In any case, he said, TAC was very low as a percentage of revenue in Q4 because revenue grew so rapidly that quarter.

Google's leaders also emphasized that the advertising business is historically strong in the first and fourth quarters, and weak during the summer quarters; and that analysts should expect Google's business to follow that trend.
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April 21, 2005 | Permalink | Comment on this post | Tag: Google [GOOG]
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Sony clarifies online strategy and "iTunes for Hollywood" position and video mashups....

[From Steve Banfield, senior vice president at Sony Connect, the online music store in response to our recent story about Sony not seeking an iTunes for Hollywood. Previously, there had been reports about Sony exec Mike Arrieta's comments at the Digital Hollywood Conference that Sony would seek such a strategy.]

Sony Pictures Digital, of which Mike Arrieta is senior vice president, is engaged in the sales, licensing and distribution of Sony Pictures Entertainment in the digital marketplace, including casual games, mobile products, and movies.

Sony Pictures Digital is not building an aggregated service. Rather it is committed to making its content and digital products available to a number of emerging distribution outlets and platforms in this developing market.

Comments made and reported at the Digital Hollywood Conference were intended to state Sony Pictures continuing commitment to developing this market by embracing new technologies, understanding consumer interest and demand, and serving these interest through innovative business models.

Sony Pictures has historically demonstrated leadership in the digital Media world and the comments were intended to suggest that the company would continue to be a pioneer in these efforts. The report also contained a reference to establishing pricing, distribution and usage models.

The more accurate comment is that in these early days of these emerging markets, we across the digital industry have the opportunity to participate in such decisions rather than have others decide for us.

Regarding Connect, as we have said before, video is a logical progression of our strategy, but no specifics have been announced. Sony has not yet agreed to allow it's video clips to be repurposed or reused in mash up formats, but in response to the audience question I was trying to illustrate that it has been done with content owner support in audio and I would expect that video content owners might allow this in the future. I was not making a commitment on future Sony policy.

April 21, 2005 | Permalink | Comment on this post | Tag: Media Watch
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April 20, 2005

Google Browser? Maybe Not

By Nick Aster for SiliconValleyWatcher

There's a reason I'm an MT expert and not a stats analyst. Avid readers have pointed out that the fine print dosn't add up to what the browser stats displayed. Alas, I knew it was too good to be true.

After digging manually through the log files, it seems that the stats program was interpreting "GGLD:2005-09" as Google, which is correct in the sense that it's probably either the googlebot scanning the page or something funny going on with someone's Google toolbar, but most likely this is NOT a Google browser.

It was exciting for a few hours, but ultimately proof that information that gets posted will quickly be fact checked by people who might know more than you do. Score one more point for the wisdom of crowds.

April 20, 2005 | Permalink | Tag: Google [GOOG]
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Scoop! Is this a sighting of the Google browser?

By Nick Aster for SiliconValleyWatcher

Speculation has swirled for months that Google was working on a browser. The company has hired browser engineers from Microsoft and Firefox. The BBC reported last year that the search giant owns the domain name gbrowser.com. None of that ultimately proves anything, though.

Checking out SiliconValleyWatcher's browser stats this morning, however, I noticed that, oddly, a few visitors are using a browser identified as "Google 0.X".

We know our readers are on the cutting edge, but this is too cool. Drum roll please? Is anyone else seeing this in their logs?

April 20, 2005 | Permalink | Comment on this post | Tag: Google [GOOG]
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April 19, 2005

RSS may generate 25% or more of NY Times total website traffic within 3 years

By Richard MacManus for SiliconValleyWatcher

Alex Barnett did the math on the NY Times RSS growth trends highlighted in Silicon Valley Watcher yesterday. Alex estimates that if current growth rates continue, in 3 years RSS click-throughs will represent 27% of total page views for the NY Times website!

I wouldn't be surprised if the NY Times' RSS growth rate increases in comparison to total site growth over the next few years, given that only an estimated 12% of the population use an RSS Reader at this time. If RSS reader take-up increases (which I expect it to) we may well see RSS feeds driving 33% or more of the NY Times's total website traffic by 2008. I suspect that's a conservative estimate.

Makes you realise how strategically important RSS feeds are for news media companies, most of which are scrambling to figure out how best to deliver news online.

April 19, 2005 | Permalink | Tag: RSS Watch
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"Carders" can put fraudulent info on swiped cards - a "very serious threat" to smartcard security - Visa won't say what if any action they will take

By Deb Radcliff for SiliconValleyWatcher

I never really thought about the magnetic strip on the back of my credit card until Dan Clement recently sent me a tutorial on how to hack the mag strip to change the information contained inside it. Clement copied the tutorial off a “carder” Web site, where he spends a lot of time looking for stolen cards and information he can use to protect clients subscribing to his Malibu-based credit card protection service, CardCops.

The tutorial explains in great detail how to buy a $725 machine called an msr206 which, along with some expensive software, can be used to "dump" new data into track one and track two of the magnetic strip to change the cardholder name and credit limit.

"Merchants who swipe the cards don’t look to see if the data printed out by the mag strip reader on the sales slip matches the data on the front of the card," says Clement. "So you can put fraudulent information in the magnetic strip and it will go through."

The tutorial tells how to do this anonymously by purchasing $25 prepaid credit cards and gift cards out of vending machines and from merchants requiring no identification, then "dumping" the false information into the tracks. The dumps come from other carders with "clean" sources of phony and stolen credit information that won’t alert fraud detection systems at the issuing banks.

After reading the tutorial, which Clement has found at multiple carder sites over the past six months, I contacted Don Davis, editor of Card Technology Magazine. Davis says his biggest concern is how this type of fraud will affect the security on bank-issued smart cards, which are now rolling out in Europe and have the potential to become big in the U.S. The problem, he says, is what happens during the transition from magnetic strip reading point of sale terminals to smart card chip reading terminals.

During the transition, he says, terminals read the magnetic strip, which indicates what kind of card they’re dealing with.

"The carders could take off the mag strip data that says, this is a smart card, and the terminal doesn’t know to ask for the chip and the user’s PIN. This could be a very serious threat," Davis says.

Clement agrees that this poses a serious problem for the adoption of chip-based smart credit cards.

"I talked to Visa," Clement said. "And they say it’s a growing problem. But they won’t tell me what they’re doing about it."

When I called Visa, I got the same runaround. The spokesman there said that yes, the problem is growing, but was unable to get me anyone at Visa who could advise issuing banks to protect against this type of fraud. This has happened before when I’ve contacted Visa to help with stories about credit system problems for which they have no answer.

For example, last year when I wrote a sweeping report on how "phishers" were using brand-impersonating e-mails and Web sites to separate people from their financial accounts and passwords, Visa’s response was pretty much, "We did our bit. We educated our consumers. Now go away."

But now that a host of anti-phishing consortiums and organizations have sprung up and invited Visa to join them, Visa was all over me to include them in my one-year update on phishing that was published on Monday.

So I gave Visa a chance to redeem itself by offering some answers to this mag strip hacking problem. And all I got was a two-week runaround.

Sometimes it scares me how security-clueless our e-commerce leaders really are.

April 19, 2005 | Permalink | Tag: Security Watch
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How we know that multitasking is out of control

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

Yahoo and Mediaedge:cia are releasing a study today about the "media meshing" trend they discovered in a study of broadband Internet users. The real story, however, is not the impact for major media but this stunning piece of social anthropology, which we flushed out by reading to the bottom of the press release.

... A surprising 21 percent use their wireless access in the bathroom. No matter the location, study participants agree that this freedom of choice is resulting in even more integrated experiences.

Now that the truth is out, let's have a little poll. Have you ever gone online on the throne? Post a comment here. (I'll be the first to admit it.)

In other findings, the Internet is becoming a sort of media glue, the study found.

More than half of broadband users are using the net and offline media together -- often at the same time. People are in front of the computer, while watching TV, reading the paper or listening to radio.

The study terms this trend "media meshing," and it suggests that old media don't necessarily have to fear uptake of the Internet. Rather they should find ways to exploit consumers' willingness to go online to supplement their offline experiences.

The "It's a Broadband Life" study found that 64 percent of broadband users also use some form of traditional media while actively online, compared to 57 percent of dial-up users. The number jumps to 71 percent for wireless broadband users.
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April 19, 2005 | Permalink | Tag: Media Watch
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April 18, 2005

Scoop! Sony has no plans for an iTunes for Hollywood says senior exec

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

UPDATE: [Please see Sony clarifies online strategy]

A top executive at Sony America told SiliconValleyWatcher.com that it has no plans to create an "iTunes for Hollywood" saying that a senior Sony Pictures executive misspoke at a recent conference.

Steve Banfield, senior vice president at Sony Connect, the online music store, said that it had no plans to produce an online movie download store modeled along the lines of Apple Computer's iTunes digital music download store and software. He said that the Sony executive making the claim was not speaking about any Sony project in the works.

Less than three weeks ago, Michael Arrieta, senior vice president of Sony Pictures, said at the Digital Hollywood Conference that Sony had big plans for online movie sales. From the Cnet News.com story: Hollywood seeks iTunes for film.

"We want to set business models, pricing models, distribution models like (Apple Computer CEO Steve) Jobs did for music, but for the film industry," Michael Arrieta, senior vice president of Sony Pictures, said at the Digital Hollywood conference here. "I'm trying to create the new 'anti-Napster,'" he added.To that end, Arrieta said, his group plans to digitize Sony Pictures' top 500 films and make them available for the first time in various digital environments within the next year. He said the distribution for films like "Spider-Man 2" will go beyond just Movielink, the video-on-demand joint venture of Sony Pictures and several other major studios, which to date has hosted a limited library of Sony's movies.

Mr Banfield said Sony was digitizing its movies, and it would also allow some clips of its digital video to be used royalty-free for video mashup projects, in which music and video footage is remixed, sometimes in live performance.

But Sony was not concerned about creating an iTunes for Hollywood. He said that it did not matter to Sony, or other movie producers, who would sell digital movies online, and that it already had its own store, Sony Connect. He also said that Sony understood the online music market very well from its involvement in several high profile online music sites.

April 18, 2005 | Permalink | Tag: Media Watch
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Not much Fear or Loathing on the road to NAB2005...

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

I wanted do a parody/homage on Hunter S. Thomson’s seminal book “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” But, my co-driver Jochen Siegle from Der Spiegel, pulled out at the last minute.

The plan was to drive a convertible to Las Vegas for the National Association of Broadcasters show (world’s largest electronic media show!), where I was speaking Monday, as part of a panel of top media execs from Sony, Electronic Arts, CinemaNow, Disney Interactive, moderated by Cisco Systems’ head of M&A, Dan Scheinman.

I tried to get a replacement co-driver but it was too late. I resolved to drive anyway, it would be about 8 or 9 hours and I’d been hankering for a road trip for some time. I picked up a blue Mitsubishi Spyder from Fox Rentals, almost brand new, just 66 miles on it, and headed south. But I was late getting out of the house, I was finishing up a piece on the future of journalism, for Jennifer McClure at New Communications Forum until about midnight Saturday. Then I fell asleep on the couch and didn’t leave for Las Vegas until 5.30am Sunday.

I did find a co-driver along the way, and the day was pleasantly spent playing music loudly, and stopping at greasy spoons for snacks. Not much more to report than that. Blogo-journalism is clearly not quite so exciting as Hunter’s Gonzo-journalism :-)

April 18, 2005 | Permalink | Tag: Tom Watch
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Technology Review looking for those young geniuses

Nominations are now open for the TR35, Technology Review’s selection of 35 top young innovators whose contributions to emerging technologies will shape the world. Nominees can work in any area of technology, including computing, biotechnology, nanotechnology, energy, medicine, telecommunications, and transportation.

Nominees must be under 35 as of October 1, 2005. Technology Review will showcase all 35 in a special October 2005 issue and recognize them at a gala awards ceremony at the Emerging Technologies Conference at MIT on September 28-29.

The deadline for nominations is April 30, 2005.

April 18, 2005 | Permalink | Tag:
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RSS becoming a key driver of traffic for NY Times - Feed-related traffic up more than 300%

By Richard MacManus for SiliconValleyWatcher

The NY Times issued a press release today that claims a massive 342% annual increase in RSS click-throughs. RSS-generated click-throughs totalled 5.9m pageviews in March, representing a 39% increase from February's 4.3 million, the press release said, noting that the Washington and Business feeds were most popular.

The Times offers a variety of RSS feeds - one of the first major newspapers to do so. They publish excerpted RSS feeds, so users have to click through to view the whole story.

It's interesting to look at how the RSS click-throughs for March 2005 compares to the total traffic for that month. The Times reported 5.9 million pageviews from RSS and there were a total of 555 million pageviews for the whole website. So that equates to a little over 1% of the whole site's traffic. A drop in the ocean, in terms of bare figures.

But when you consider that traffic for the whole website only grew by 17% over the past year, whereas the RSS click-throughs grew by 342% in that same period... well you begin to see how RSS is going to be a key driver in growth for the NY Times. Strategically, that's how the NY Times will view this.

I'm sure they're also hoping that in time the volume will increase - which it will, once RSS becomes mainstream.

April 18, 2005 | Permalink | Comment on this post | Tag: RSS Watch
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Of course, you know what RSS is ... so here's an article for your clueless boss

By Nick Aster for SiliconValleyWatcher

Even among the readers of tech publications like SVW there are a lot of people that don't really know what RSS is all about (or at least they won't admit it). Even if you do know all about RSS, no doubt there's someone in your organization is bluffing their way through conversations about it. If so, quietly slip them this article and help them get up to speed.

RSS variously stands for Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication. As a reader, all you need to know is that it's a way for you to keep track of new content on numerous websites without having to go view each individual site (such a chore!). Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble claims to consume 500 or more information sources on a daily basis, something no human could do without using an RSS reader.

For publishers and bloggers, RSS allows you to provide a constant stream of content to your readers, without having to send out email alerts, with all of the maintenance and spam filtering that involves. Indeed, Scoble famously asserted, "if you don't have an RSS feed, you should be fired."

RSS is especially associated with blogs because just about every blogging service generates RSS (or the similar Atom format) feeds. RSS existed for several years before blogging really took off, so it's not to much to say that blogs made RSS what it is.

RSS is so great because it frees you from having to deal with slow-performing websites, flashing ads, poor site navigation and other hazards. You can have content sent to you instead, like a well-organized piece of email. Because an RSS reader can alert you to new entries, it's great for following the news or finding out when your competitor has posted something new on their website.

The only hard part is that you need an RSS reader (like a browser for RSS) - or "aggregator" (because the software pulls together various feeds). There are a bunch of different ones out there, but the easiest ones to use are the ones that attach to your email client (like Outlook or Thunderbird). This means that your email client includes a special set of folders for RSS. Each folder will be filled with relevant news that you've specifically tailored for your needs.

I highly recommend Mozilla's Thunderbird for both your email and RSS needs. If you are married to Outlook on Windows, there are both commercial and open source plugins to RSS-ify Outlook. NewsGator is probably the leading commercial product; for something free, check out rsspopper. Mac Users probably have something similar, but I'm afraid you'll have to google around for it.

You can also use web-based readers like Bloglines and My Yahoo, which have their advantages; but I much prefer Thunderbird because I can download everything at once and go.

Once you have your RSS reader set up, you're ready to start subscribing. In an ideal world, the reader would automatically find the feed and you could subscribe to it with a single click. The Firefox browser does actually identify RSS automatically, so if youre' content to read RSS in the context of browser bookmarks, you're all set. That's really too clunky for more than a few feeds, though. (Firefox's Sage bookmarks extension does improve matters somewhat.)

If you use My Yahoo, you may want to install the Yahoo toolbar, which gives you a one-click option to subscribe to RSS.

In other clients, though, you may have to manually find and paste the RSS URL into the app. On SiliconValleyWatcher, scroll about half way down to the Syndicate section in the left sidebar. We actually have several feeds available. To subscribe, click on the link you're interested in, copy the URL and paste that into your reader. Our main feed is at http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/index.xml.

Many websites feature little orange buttons that say "XML" (RSS is a form of XML) or "RSS." Click on those to find the URL. Other sites have aggregator-specific buttons. If you click on an "Add to My Yahoo" button, for instance, a browser window will open that will allow you to add the RSS to your My Yahoo page.

Major publications may offer dozens of different feeds. The New York Times offers a whole page of these babies. So does Moreover. If you're looking for corporate news, check out the Nooked directory.

All it takes is an hour or so before you'll have a long list of RSS feeds ready to go inside your reader. If all went well, you'll be getting what you want delivered to you like a hot pizza. Give it a try!
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April 18, 2005 | Permalink | Comment on this post | Tag: RSS Watch
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Can't beat them? Buy them. Adobe to take over Macromedia in $3.4b deal

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

It was just a month ago that Adobe wowed stockholders with fantastic Q1 results - 23 percent year-over-year growth in net income, 12 percent in revenue. Adobe has been hitting on all cylinders - consumer photo, pro design and Adobe products, but they had basically ceded pro web design to Macromedia with their Dreamweaver and Flash lines. In a March interview with BusinessWeek, Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen took aim at Macromedia:

"I'm not willing to stand up and say we're going to beat them tomorrow or the next day. It'll take a long time, but we're going to get more aggressive, especially on alternative platforms like mobile and devices connected to HDTV.

Well, if you can't beat them, buy them. Adobe announced this morning that they are buying the company for $3.4 billion. Macromedia shareholders will get .69 shares of Adobe stock for each share of Macromedia stock.

Technology gadfly Marc Canter is happily singing the praises of the deal, to the tune of "Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead." The creator of Director, Canter sold the company that started it long ago and has been singularly unimpressed with the management of the company that pretty much abandoned his product when it started up Flash. He suggests he would be willing to return, a la Steve Jobs, now that MACR is in new hands, but if he thinks he's going to find in Adobe a company that doesn't sell software in a box, design for single users, or depend on patent protection, I really don't know what he's been smoking.

Over at the Macromedia user forums, dedicated Macromedia developers are definitely depressed - the forums are filled with words like shock, disappointment and sadness.

So Adobe will add Dreamweaver to its list of aging dominators and make more money. But where are the real synergies? It's hard to see synergies between the companies' two platforms: Flash is light-weight and strongly server-oriented. Acrobat is heavyweight and download-focused; they've had great success in data-centric industries like finance.

Over at Jupiter, David Schatsky notes:

[The CEOs] alluded to the importance of mobile applications and cited Macromedia's greater presence there as an advantage to the combined company that can help pull Adobe's technology onto a new platform.

He also hints, "Let's also see what sounds come out of Redmond."

Flash is the right app for mobile, especially with all the server-side stuff that Macromedia has added over the years. Perhaps they have some ideas for combining Acrobat and Flash; but it's hard for me to see. My suspicion is that Dreamweaver and Flash take them where they want to go; and and after years of acquiring the wrong companies, Adobe just decided to snatch up the real deal.
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April 18, 2005 | Permalink | Tag: Promo 3
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April 15, 2005

[Friday Watch 3] Ingenio does AOL ... Pissed off journalist looking for love ... Fear and loathing at NAB

Fear and Loathing on the trail to NAB in Las Vegas…

Jochen Siegle and I are off to the desert oasis town of Las Vegas this weekend. Jochen is covering stories for Der Spiegel, and I will be on a panel at the National Association of Broadcasters show - "the world's largest electronic media show."

And my fellow panelists are of a considerable pedigree (how I got into such august company, God knows…!) Senior execs from Sony, Electronic Arts, Disney Interactive, CinemaNow and ... SiliconValleyWatcher! Moderated by Dan Scheinman, head of M&A at Cisco. (See panel details)

In an homage to St. Hunter (S. Thompson), the patron saint of bloggers, we will be renting a convertible and filling up the trunk with plenty of digital devices. We did consider also filling up with the stuff Hunter kept on hand, but we decided it would be rather challenging to source most of them … unless our good readers can help :-)

So, it’s road trip week in the Watcher for the next few days … filing from greasy spoons along the way… Is this the launch of bloggo journalism?

Ingenio is set to announce prime AOL partnership

Ingenio, which has pioneered the pay per call business model concept, will announce next week that AOL will feature its search for local merchant listings search box in a very prominent location.

Mystery journalist looks for love...

Thanks to Craig's List publicist Susan Mactavish Best for this one...

...from a recent Best Of posting on craigslist.

Hi. I'm a journalist. Or a reporter. Whatever word pisses you off more, I'm part of the mainstream media, the liberal media, the so-called liberal media. I am the epitome of all that is wrong with contemporary journalism.

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April 15, 2005 | Permalink | Tag: Friday Watch
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[Friday Watch 2] You can’t get there from here… on blogs and journalists

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

I’m listening to a conversation between editors at two large established news organizations; and they are asking each other how they deal with blogs and news. What do you call a news story, and what goes in the blog? Do you have editors for the blog items? Do you get involved in the comments? Is it extra work? Can you write in your voice, or is it still the “house” voice?


All great questions; but I’m beginning to realize that “you can’t get there from here.”

You can't get there not only from news organizations, but also from PR firms, ad agencies, or in-house communication departments. You probably have to leave those houses behind, and start anew with what we call the NewRules enterprise, free from legacy cultural baggage.

Established news organizations, no matter how new, if they didn’t start with the blogging format/culture first, will find it nearly impossible to fully embrace blogs. The journalists working at these places are already way overworked; they are in already under-staffed offices, cut even tighter from natural attrition, layoffs, and the lure of greener pastures. Blogging is even more work, and they hate it.

Also, they cannot develop their blog “voice” in such an environment. Blogs at established media organizations are more like a column, and a place to dump second-class news items that couldn’t make it into the newspaper or the main online news section. One friend who has left the ranks of the news media for a place in the blogosphere tells stories of editors rewriting her blogs for "style."

Plus, the “are bloggers journalists” debate has strange applications at a media organization where writers blog. Are its journalists no longer journalists when they blog and thus their work is less trustworthy? (The first decision in the Apple v. Does case certainly didn't help matters here.)

You also can't get there from here by thinking and reading about blogs; and I have serious doubts that PR firms and corporate communication departments will be able to effectively integrate blog culture into existing operations. Some kind of skunk works (a la the IBM group that developed the PC far from White Plains) is probably necessary.

I keep telling people, "Start blogging, start small, start quietly, start simply, just start. You’ll find out what it is." It is like Tivo. You read all about Tivo; but you didn't get it until you've got one. Once you start blogging, you'll get it; and you'll get that it is the key to understanding the power of these asynchronous media technologies, like blogs, RSS, wikis ...

Some thoughts on Internet 2.0. . .

It seems that the survivors of Internet 1.0 are: technology-enabled media companies such as Yahoo, Google, EBay, AOL and Microsoft.

I think that the survivors of this next phase, Internet 2.0 will be: media technology-enabled companies; but we don't yet know who they are.
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April 15, 2005 | Permalink | Tag: Friday Watch
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As Become.com leaves beta, Michael Yang speaks up on their spam-proof algorithms

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

The Become.com shopping search site has come out of beta and has gone beyond 10,000 registered users. No registration is now required to use the site. Company cofounder Michael Yang recently clarified for me some of the anti-spam measures that Become.com has in place around its AIR (Affinity Index Ranking) technology, which is a different approach than Google’s PageRank method.

While it is true that AIR technology is superior to Google's PageRank for preventing spammed pages from showing up on the search result (and in theory it is spam-proof) we can not completely eliminate spams 100% in implementation. Also on the issue of patents for anticipated spam techniques … our patent lawyer recommended that we do [file] but we have not filed yet because we have not identified any spam techniques that would work against AIR.

April 15, 2005 | Permalink | Tag: Search Watch
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[Friday Watch 1] What does it take to be Flickricious? Sony might find out

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

The other night, dinner discussions centered on platforms and communities — and the spontaneous nature of community formation. Companies these days would kill for communities of users of the unusual sort that arise on Flickr and Del.icio.us. Yet there is no way to create Flickrlicious communities - they have to arise by themselves by interacting with open and open-ended technology. You can prepare the ground; but you are at the mercy of random events and factors.

We laughed at the memory of Friendster, which about two years ago tried to ban “fakesters,” a large community of users that were using fictitious names and acting out outlandish personas, such as a guy called Pure Evil.

That's right, stamping out a spontaneously formed, growing, community of users because they were not doing what they were supposed to do as a Friendster user. That wouldn’t happen today, I would think. Now, it’s the online communities that set the rules of what is acceptable and doable.

Aberrant behaviors…

I was wondering how large of a population is needed before a community starts exhibiting spontaneous, unpredictable, aggregate behaviors. Is it 500 people, 15,000? Dalton Caldwell, chief technology officer at Imeem, a personal network software company, figures it is probably about 10 to 15,000. He said he noticed that on Dogster, the Friendster for pet owners, a group of users talking in the voices of their dogs started up at around that population number.

What about the PSP?
Richard's take: Speaking of which, what will Sony do about the outpouring of creativity around the PSP? They could take measures to shut down the hackers, possibly by delivering a firmware update that blocked the hacks. They could be determined to maintain control of the device. But they would be well-served by letting the thousand hacks bloom and see what kind of community forms. Indeed, they should foster the hack community by taking a page from Flickr and provide an open API for developers to write PSP programs. It was Sony, after all, whose name is on the Supreme Court decision that allowed the past 20 years of technological creativity to flourish. Could the PSP be the next Betamax, the next way that Hollywood actually makes money despite best efforts not to? That might be difficult if the Court overturns Sony Betamax this summer in the Grokster case.
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April 15, 2005 | Permalink | Tag: Friday Watch
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April 14, 2005

Weber wins BEA…

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

The headline means more to some of our community of readers than it does to me. However, all I need to know is that it means the right thing :-)

I stopped in on BEA’s web site, wow. It just zips along, superfast loading of pages, and is easy to navigate. If that’s a showcase for the BEA platform, then let there be more companies using it; I’m fed up with my molasses-dunked Internet/PC experience.

Is anyone going to buy BEA? For the last three years, that has been the question, and I wish it would be answered. Larry is the obvious buyer; the patient praying mantis just needs to finish digesting a bit. Then he can take his time, talk down BEA valuation a while; after all, who could play white knight and rescue the middleware maiden?

Here’s my suggestion, and the obvious dream team: Sun-HP-BEA-MySQL-EDS. Plus a big business consultancy. That’s a lot of work; and IBM is already there ...but isn’t there room for three large companies in each market, as some studies have indicated?!
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April 14, 2005 | Permalink | Tag: PR Watch
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[Sponsor Watch] Not just for blogs anymore, RSS is looking like the media technology of the near future

Leading RSS-istas converging on New York City in mid-May for Syndicate conference

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

I’m not sure how many leading lights there are around RSS but it’s not many. It’s early days yet but RSS is very likely going to be the next important application, rivaling email and the web. We definitely want to be in this conversation, and you will see us expanding our coverage to key emerging media technologies, including RSS.

We're also pleased to sign on as a media sponsor for the Syndicate conference, May 17-18 in New York. Produced by IDG, the conference is an indication of how far RSS has come in the past year.

Case in point: ING Groep, a global provider of information services, recently started using RSS to broadcast information to employees using KnowNow technology. ING found that spam filters make email an unreliable medium for corporate communication.

It certainly looks like the media sector is rapidly shifting towards dominance by technology-empowered media companies. RSS can enable new types of media business models, and it can even do IT data messaging. And so far, it’s the most secure communications channel available, being spam- and spoof-proof, or at least tough to spoof.

I’ll be moderating a panel at Syndicate on the topic of "Enterprise Syndication with RSS." On that panel are Ross Mayfield, who has been selling wikis for several years at SocialText; Michael Terner, CEO of KnowKnow (which is sponsoring the panel); David Schatsky from Jupiter Research; and Paul Kedrosky of UC San Diego.

I hope to see some of you there.

April 14, 2005 | Permalink | Comment on this post | Tag: Tech Watch
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April 13, 2005

Searching for riches through short text message searches

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

Google this week announced a cell phone based search service using short text messaging, also known as SMS. UpSnap, privately held, is also in this space, offers a free directory assistance (411) mobile SMS service, and says that Google's entry has helped to validate the SMS market, but that only UpSnap! has a working business model.

Tony Philipp, chief executive of UpSnap, said that SMS is growing fast, especially among the 18- to 30-year-old demographic. He also points out that UpSnap has a business model already in place, in which merchants pay for listings and use a free phone call feature, based on UpSnap's VOIP infrastructure, to talk with customers.

Google is famous for keeping services in beta or undeveloped for long periods, so it could be a while before it gets around to monetizing search queries through SMS.

UpSnap says it has done the ground work and established many of the relationships that are needed. I would think that search on phones through SMS should be less brand-driven than on the web, simply because the cell phone user interface is cramped, and it’s difficult to click away to another search service.

UpSnap's business model depends upon the growth of text messaging in the U.S. Text mes