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Congress pushes more Internet business off-shore

Details are still coming in, but it looks like the U.S. Government is hoping to make it more attractive for Internet Radio businesses to be run off-shore then in the States. The decision (like much Internet-related policy) creates a market condition that potentially pushes revenue and innovation to other countries.

“The new rules issued by the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board earlier this year prescribe rate hikes of 0.08 cent per song per listener retroactive to 2006. They would also climb to 0.19 cent per song by 2010.” [cnet]

The fees are high enough that many small players (where small==independent) will be forced to shut down. The irony, of course, is that broadcast radio continues to pay no fees at all (and to not play the songs I want to hear, which might be why they get the free ride.)

For more on the issue, see:

• Shaken Internet Radio Stations Face Specter of New Fees Sunday (Via washingtonpost.com.)
• D-Day Sunday For Internet Radio As Court Rejects Royalties Appeal (Via TechCrunch.com.)
• Court declines to postpone Internet radio royalty hike (Via ars technica)
• Court rejects Webcasters’ plea for relief (Via cnet.)

And of course, the blog post that almost saved the day:

• Online Radio Is Saved; SoundExchange Will Not Enforce New Royalty Rates on Sunday (Via wired.com)

Local Search patent wars: another reason software patents suck

Found this today on TechCrunch, “Patent Wars: Local.com Nabs Local Search Patent“.

From the post:

“Local.com saw its stock price rise 52% today after it was awarded patent number 7,200,413 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. According to the text of the patent, it covers what they term “Enhanced Directory Assistance”, which will deliver keyword specific ad referrals based on user input via operator, SMS, WAP, or voice.

This is in addition to their recently granted patent number 7,231,405, which covers crawling the web and geocoding location based content.”

That second bit is even more troubling, since it could impact anyone crawling web pages for addresses. The unfortunate thing is that we’re just starting to see sites doing interesting things with scraping and geocoding — and many of the possibilities are actually quite helpful. For example, sites like Zillow already scrape property addresses from local tax records and plot real estate prices on an interactive map… Chicago Crime plots scraped crime reports… Heck, anything that scrapes content with an address for use in plotting on a map would conflict with this patent.

If the idea of locking down automated crawling and geocoding isn’t enough to raise concern, check of these listings of mapping-related concepts that may also end up off-limits if the patent race continues:

• Google Local Search Glossary
• Microsoft Virtual Earth and Local Search Patent Applications

We are the robot invaders

It’s ironic how much sci-fi involves saving Earth from robot space invaders, yet we’re the one’s sending laser-packing robots to Mars:

(Via:

• Newest Mars Rover packs heat
• NASA’s next Mars rover is a laser-equipped monster
• Future NASA Rover Will Scare Aliens with Rock-crushing Lasers

)

Today is Wiretap the Internet Day!

Starting today, your intertubes are tapped. You weren’t using those civil liberties anyway, right?

For more, see:

• Today is America’s wiretap the Internet day (Via BoingBoing)
• Reminder: Monday is Wiretap the Internet Day (Via Wired)

The Hindenburg and the AACS

There was a bit on NPR this morning about the Hindenburg (today is the 70th anniversary of its crash), and the part of the story that stood out the most to me was that the majority of deaths were caused by people jumping out of the burning ship, rather then staying on-board. Wikipedia has this to say:

Despite the violent fire, most of the crew and passengers survived. Of the 36 passengers and 61 crew, 13 passengers and 22 crew died. Also killed was one member of the ground crew, Navy Linesman Allen Hagaman. Most deaths did not arise from the fire but were suffered by those who leapt from the burning ship. (The lighter-than-air fire burned overhead.) Those passengers who rode the ship on its descent to the ground survived. (Via Wikipedia.)

Its interesting how counter-intuitive it is that riding a burning ship to the ground would be safer. Although perhaps people have learned that lesson. The recent explosion in public mockery of the AACS decryption keys certainly hasn’t deterred the HD-DVD crowd from hanging on to a technology that’s going down in flames. Calling it a “lost cause” isn’t close to capturing the humor in this statement:

Michael Ayers, the chairman of the AACS-LA … vows to use technical and legal means to shut down the 802,000+ websites that have reproduced the key. (Via BoingBoing, “AACS vows to fight people who publish the key“.)

Although perhaps the difference is that people like airships… and no one likes DRM.

Dead birds shut down downtown Austin (was: First day in the new office)

I was hoping to start today by posting a few pictures of our brand-new Optaros office in downtown Austin. Today was to be our first day in the new space. Unfortunately, downtown Austin is closed today, after authorities found a number (possibly dozens) of dead birds along Congress Ave (the street the office is on), which happens to be right in front of the State Capitol building. With the legislative session scheduled to begin tomorrow, the authorities have taken an extra-paranoid view on the situation (which is fine by me.)

The State called in the police, fire department, and the 6th Civil Support Team (WMD) a “Texas National Guard unit, created in 1999 to respond to terrorist incidents involving Weapons of Mass Destruction, as well as other disasters and catastrophic events, both natural and man made.”

As of 10:45am, the local paper (The Statesman) and news sites have no updates.

For more:

• Dead birds shut down Congress Avenue
• Health Dept.: No Public Health Threat Despite Large Number Of Dead Birds
• KXAN Photo Gallery: Dead Birds Shut Down Congress Avenue

–
[Update: 11:15am]
The news makes it to MSNBC, which reports that the dead bird count is more like 60! Downtown Austin shut down after bird deaths

First week on the new job

Yup — a new job. It’s a strange feeling after nearly five years with my previous employer, but the time had come to take on some new challenges and change things up a bit. I’ve joined a company called Optaros, based out of Boston, although I’ll be working from the Austin office scheduled to open in 2007.

Optaros is an “international consulting and systems integration firm” specializing in “Next Generation Internet” development, with a strong focus on leveraging (and participating in) Open Source software. That last bit was particularly import for me, and thankfully, the Open Source and Agile Development memes run strong in the company. In fact, the culture of the company is probably the number one reason I decided to join, though it doesn’t hurt that I’ve worked with some of these folks before (and was happy to be working with them again.)

I hoped up to Boston for my first few days, which was warmer or colder then Texas, depending on who you ask. The difference, of course, is that Boston had snow Monday morning, which was a welcome novelty for me. My time in Boston was spent getting to know people, getting plugged-in to the company, and wiping my new laptop to install linux (Ubuntu Edgy, to be specific, which is what I run at home on my non-OS X machines.)

It’s an exciting change, and hopefully I’ll be able to share more details once I’ve had a few more weeks to get settled in.

“Scientists say video games can reshape education”

Having just recently picked up a copy of Big Brain Academy for the DS Lite, this article comes as no surprise: “Not playing around: Scientists say video games can reshape education.”

“The theory is that games teach skills that employers want: analytical thinking, team building, multitasking and problem-solving under duress.”

What is a surprise though, is to hear that there are still people who are skeptical about using games for education. I mean, where would my mad dance floor skillz be without Dance Dance Revolution? Ok, bad example.

Looking back though, I fondly remember going to my elementary school library to play typing tutors and Oregon Trail (which taught us the value of 4×4 vehicles.) But past elementary school, educational games went away. At home, I was slingin’ LOGO and playing Zork, but my in-school computer use evolved into using spreadsheets and, eventually, programming Pascal.

The article does mention one important fact though:

“The gaming industry has already figured out that educational games don’t make money in the consumer marketplace. The new approach would instead market them directly to schools.”

This is key. You definitely don’t want some “education council” designing the games — they’re going to suck. You need professional game designers. And if you can organize enough of our tax dollars into funding such development, then you give the gaming industry a reason to take the educational market more seriously.