June 2012

A shallow alcove on the left.

Submitted by Jon on Fri, 06/08/2012 - 20:27

"The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound [...] would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard.[...] [T]hey could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live--did live, from habit that became instinct--in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.

[The] promising technology in a set-top box that can, “can distinguish who is watching, potentially allowing Intel to target advertising”. The technology could potentially identify if the viewer is an adult or a child, male or female, and so on, through interactive features and face recognition technology.

The product description on the left is from George Orwell's 1984's telescreen. On the right, we have Intel's ad-targeting, face-recognizing TV.

Speculative fiction nailed reality, but missed the target on who was doing the spying.

The title here is, of course, from a later passage:

ARRRR: More on Piracy and HBO

Submitted by Jon on Thu, 06/07/2012 - 21:54

The Atlantic has a solid follow up piece on the growing demand for HBO to play ball and sell access to their content independent of cable, focusing on three key points. Paraphrasing, (1) is that HBO probably receives much more than the premium-only fees for bundling with cable, (2) is that well, HBO is wholly owned in a vertically-integrated cable company, Time-Warner, and by allowing a disconnect, while it could potentially raise HBO's subscribers, would be a hit against parent T-W's cable empire. (3) reminds us that most content subscribers are still on cable. Well, for now.

I of course debunked some of this last week, here, (and larger parts of it 10 years ago in rants that have been lost to the dustbin of Internet history), but to specifically respond to this post, a few more salient points.

Actually, T-W is losing ~200 per month from me. They could reduce that margin by selling HBO access to me. I have a nice TV - it's hooked up to the internet, but not cable. There is no value for me in paying for a cable subscription, when I can access the few shows I'm interested in, usually, via iTunes or Netflix, which I happily pay money for. So (1) - Sorry, but you must play in the market - you must offer a price; merely saying it's too expensive is not acceptable.

Maddening Development Madlibs

Submitted by Jon on Mon, 06/04/2012 - 12:44

There is a set of tropes, if you will, in startup social-enterprise projects. You can almost imagine them as a set of madlibs to be filled out and magically transformed into a development project. While I'm getting tired of hearing these tropes rolled out as innovative new business models, clearly others have not yet gotten so worn out by them. I'd like to fix that, with this one-size-fits all madlib-style business plan builder.

Let's play! fill this list out:

1 Office or commercial space/building: ___________
2 Consumer good: ___________
3 Vulnerable population: ___________
4 Affluent neighborhood
5 Clothing item
6 Country where rich people live:
7 Your favorite MDG: ___________
8 Type of professional: ___________
9 "third world" country: ___________
10 Number between 1 and 10: ___________

Done? Great! Too lazy? I've automated the process for you.

Let's review your business plan...

On Piracy, Business Models, and Game of Thrones

Submitted by Jon on Sun, 06/03/2012 - 09:00

Over at FastCompany, Robert Levine writes that pirating Game of Thrones is a direct attack on this emerging genre of actually good TV shows, and those of us who would pirate it are simply being un-supportive of this business model:

The idea that HBO’s exclusivity amounts to an outrage seems silly, since it essentially amounts to commerce: If you want it, you have to pay for it. Obviously, HBO sets its own terms--it sells content by the month, not the episode--but so does every other company, in some way. Beer isn’t sold in five-packs. And, of course, Thrones is available on iTunes a year after it airs. (I waited to buy it and I’ve managed to lead a fulfilling life.)

June 2012

A shallow alcove on the left.

ARRRR: More on Piracy and HBO

Maddening Development Madlibs

On Piracy, Business Models, and Game of Thrones

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