Stand to attention

"Two things strike me. He mentions playlists as replacing the CD, and allieviating the constant decision of what track to play next. To me playlists are interesting because they are what directs your attention. I believe there is money in attention. Lots of money. I've written before that the only money in traditional telephony (without the addition of new presence etc. features) is in managing the ring and interrupting the user's attention. To me, the playlist is the thing for sale in a music store - the music comes for free. Indeed, if you're a really cool person, you can sell your playlist. This is, in effect, what a DJ does."

Web site offers after-death e-mail

"But a Spanish Internet company is breaking fresh ground on the Web by offering people the chance to write one last e-mail, complete with video clip or photo attachments, and send it to loved ones, friends or even enemies after the person who wrote it is dead."

Less than a Decade

"The second? That the consumers who make the biggest difference (the busy ones, the ones who earn a lot, spend a lot, vote, talk a lot and change things) are the ones most likely to be online and least likely to watch TV. Yes, Oprah is still far more powerful than Yahoo. But at the same time, Drudge and Jeff Bezos and Doc Searls are way more influential than their offline cousins."

Earthlink Says Keep the Net Open

"'EarthLink believes an open Internet is a good Internet. An open Internet means users have full end-to-end connectivity to say to each other whatever it is they say, be that voice, video, or other data exchanges, without the help of mediating servers in the middle whenever possible. We believe that if peer-to-peer flourishes, the Internet flourishes.'"

The Voice over IP Insurrection

"It only took ten years after the arrival of the commercial Internet for most people to get an email address. The same outcome seems likely with regard to VoIP telephone numbers. In any case, the challenge of producing a low cost VoIP version of traditional telephone call seems largely solved. The most interesting developments remain to come as VoIP enables capabilities that go beyond the plain old telephone call. With the price of the traditional telephone call going to zero, there will be enormous incentives to offer more value."

Virtual Post-it Notes

"'WorldBoard is a proposed planetary augmented reality system that facilitates innovative ways of associating information with places. Short-term, the goal is to allow users to post messages on any of the six faces of every cubic meter (a hundred billion billion cubic meters) of space humans might go on this planet (see personal web pages when you look at someone's office door; label interesting plants and rocks on nature trails). Long-term WorldBoard allows users to experience any information in any place, co-registered with reality.'"

Michael Song on Chinese music industry

"My 'take-away' was that in a market where the record industry basically doesn't function, artists and agents are going to be pushing the cutting edge of music business models and might in fact discover the post DRM/RIAA business model before Hollywood does. Obviously, it helps to have a huge growing market such as China, but I think it would make sense for artists and music industry people to keep an eye on China for breakthroughs in the music business."

Meet Mr Rights

"Lessig helped the corporation meet its legal challenge. It is his Creative Commons licence that the BBC has refashioned to get the archive off the ground. The history of this licence is embedded in a wider struggle against the current copyright system, and is Lessig's attempt to design some flexibility back into a system he believes will choke internet-enabled innovation. 'It is incredible that at a time when we have an unprecedented power to distribute ideas around the world, we have a growing body of restrictive intellectual property law that forbids us to do so,' he says. "

IM Smackdown!

"Now match those numbers to some of the more aggressive IM users in the U.S., as described by Danger's Hank Nothhaft: But the thing that's really amazing is the messaging activity that takes place. I call them messaging engines. The people who are using IM on these devices are sending and receiving 110 instant messages a day. They're also doing 25-30 emails a day, and they're accessing 25 web pages a day. We also support SMS on this, and have a range of around 4 SMS messages a day. Pretty amazing, isn't it?"

Eyetrack III - What You Most Need to Know

"News websites have been with us for about a decade, and editors and designers still struggle with many unanswered questions: Is homepage layout effective? ... What effect do blurbs on the homepage have compared to headlines? ... When is multimedia appropriate? ... Are ads placed where they will be seen by the audience?"

How to Think like Leonardo...

"In business, it's important to employ ambidextrous employees -- people who have business and technology skills. For they can imagine the future. If you don't employ multi-talented professionals, you lose out on business oportunities that cannot be imagined by the linear worker."

Watching the Alpha Geeks

"So often, signs of the future are all around us, but it isn't until much later that most of the world realizes their significance. Meanwhile, the innovators who are busy inventing that future live in a world of their own. They see and act on premises that are not yet apparent to others. In the computer industry, these are the folks I affectionately call 'the alpha geeks', the hackers who have such mastery of their tools that they 'roll their own' when existing products don't give them what they need. Watching the alpha geeks -- people whom more traditional marketing analysts might call 'lead users' -- can give insights into the future directions of technology, gaps in existing products, and new market opportunities."

Big Flexible Software Or Focused Situational Software?

"However, from Between the Lines, comes a pointer to an analysis that appears to be suggesting exactly the opposite. As the world moves towards service oriented architectures, it predicts 'the end of craft software', which will be replaced by big, but flexible, web services components that can easily be modified to meet ever-changing needs. The suggestion is that, by designing to web services standards, developers will finally be able to wipe out some of the quality problems associated with existing software offerings. Both sides seem a little idealistic in their visions. For years we've had attempts at making programming tools for non-programmers and that hasn't gone very far. Meanwhile, the idea of componentized jigsaw puzzle software has been trotted out on a fairly regular basis -- and while there have been religious wars on various implementations, very little has actually changed in the way most companies develop software."

Internet Babylon

"'I spend basically every waking hour online, and I have seen all kinds of crazy things on the Web over the years, yet I was amazed by some of the incredible things author Greg Holden describes in Internet Babylon: Secrets, Scandals, and Shocks on the Information Superhighway. This guy has gone where many fear to tread, digging up the goods on some of the Internet's most questionable, fascinating, oftentimes disturbing oddities. He has put all of this knowledge to a higher purpose, using it to describe the all-pervasive social change the Internet has wrought.' Read on for the rest of Jolley's review."

The Youth of Today

"Troops on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq were issued “kits” that were less than perfect for their jobs. But with an Internet search, soldiers found clothing and equipment better suited to Middle Eastern environments. They began ordering their gear online, ignoring established procedures. Eventually, military brass was won over."

It's 2014, and life is the same. Only better.

"As a science-fiction writer, my job is predicting the future. And that's gotten harder with each passing year. Moore's law tells us that computing power doubles every 18 months. If that holds up - and i believe it will, with breakthroughs in nanotechnology, new techniques of producing three-dimensional circuits, and new substrates for microprocessors - then in 10 short years, we will have computers 128 times more powerful than those that exist today. Can anyone guess how that much computing muscle, widely available and inexpensively priced, will affect our day-to-day lives? Well, let's find out."

The Myths Of Growing Up Online

"As the Livingstone report notes in its conclusion: "Some may read this report and consider the glass half full, finding more education and participation and less pornographic or chat room risk than they had feared. Others may read this report and consider the glass half empty, finding fewer benefits and greater incidence of dangers than they would have hoped for." Unfortunately, many more people will encounter media coverage of the research than will read it directly, and its nuanced findings are almost certainly going to be warped beyond recognition. If we can't talk about youth access to new media thoughtfully and calmly, then we have little hope of avoiding the greatest dangers or achieving the best potentials these media offer us."