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BookExpo (BEA) 2006: whorishly expensive wi-fi!

whorishly expensive wi-fi
photo by baratunde, via Flickr (click for more)
Rule: Wi-Fi access at conferences should never, ever, cost more than the conference itself! Ever. I'm in Washington, D.C. (my hometown) for my annual pilgrimage to the great meetup and mashup of the publishing industry: BookExpo America. Here booksellers, publishers, authors and wannabes of all those categories descend on a city's convention center to find out what's coming out in the Fall, issues challenging the industry (Google, Internet. Plagiarism anyone??) and just kick it. This is my fourth year, and I was looking forward to posting updates throughout the day, but there is something rotten in the state of Wi-Fi. The entire, new, DC convention center is wired (or unwired, whatever) with the most WHORISHLY EXPENSIVE WI-FI ever. Yes, WHORISHLY EXPENSIVE. courtesy of Instant Internet (brought to you by Smart City): $25 per day for 64Kbps connection speeds?? $50 per day for 128Kbps connection speeds?? Dude, my friggin cell phone is faster than that? How can they even call that Wi-Fi? It's neither Wi, nor particularly Fi! As for "Smart City," here's what their website says:
Smart City is a full-service communications provider across the nation and one of the world's largest communications providers to convention centers and hospitality venues. Smart City provides technologies that make our cities smarter places to work, live, and play.
and their motto is:
Making the world smarter. One city at a time.
How about this instead?
Making the world dumber. One overpriced kilobit at a time.
For a four-day conference, that's $200, and it only cost $150 to be here. The point of a conference is to connect people, to hype the rep of the conference itself, and to make the experience as exciting and productive as possible for the attendees. ALL conferences should include wi-fi in the registration, for MAYBE $5 per day. They should assume bloggers and reporters and vigilante pundits want to file their stories and thoughts and ideas. They should expect that I'll want to check out the website of the publishers and other industry folk I meet. In fact, the DC Convention Center should never contract with a company like "Instant Internet." What kind of name is that anyway? How is 128Kbps instant?? Convention Centers should include Wi-Fi for all conferences of a certain size just as a cost of doing business. The point for you readers is that you'll have to deal with these batch uploads of posts, where I submit like three to five THOUSAND entries at night when I have a more powerful and more affordable signal available. In a few weeks, I won't miss their stinking whore-y wi-fi because I'll have EV-DO from Sprint on my Treo 700p paired with my Blacbook. In the meantime, I'd like to thank Tryst in Adams Morgan for providing the FREE WI-FI which makes this post possible hours upon hours after I wrote it. Oh, and just a minute ago I met two other BEA attendees. Denise, from a Latino literacy group and Tony Diaz from Nuestra Palabra which hosts the largest book events in Houston, and they're all about Latino literature. peace people. I'll see if I can bang out a few more entries tonight, but no promises!

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MySpace sends me more traffic than Google now. dangit!

MySpace overtakes Google as my #1 referring site
click on photo for larger chart view
So I was just checking out me webstats and noticed that, for the first time, Google isn't my number one referring site. It's friggin MySpace!!!!! Here's a breakdown of the top 16 sites that refer visitors to me
  1. MySpace: I'm assuming it's my profile there
  2. Google: search results (btw, the #17 ranked term that lands people at my page is "assssss")
  3. SPAM: various spam bastard robots whose operators should be tarred and feathered or hit up with that Abu Graib treatment
  4. SurveyMonkey: I use them to operate a poll for people downloading my free book
  5. MacJams: www.macjams.com. I have no idea why I was on this site
  6. downhillbattle: website dedicated to the destruction of the existing horrible music industry. They still send a lot of traffic for this analysis I did YEARS ago on the price fixing settlement from the labels
  7. The Comedy Studio: my home comedy club, one of the best in the nation
  8. Singing Fish: they have some episodes of my podcast
  9. MSN: Microsoft search
  10. catless.ncl.ac.uk: The BIfurcated Rivets link blog which posted a link to my first MoJo Quarterly
  11. Yahoo: the other search company
  12. dailykos: most popular political blog online; links are probably due to some of my diary posts there
  13. Blogwise: no idea
  14. webqtdesign: my web designer
  15. feedburner: they host my subscription feeds for this blog and the podcast
  16. mieka.com: amazing singer/songwriter
How did you find my site? hollaback in the comments!

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Perhaps the strangest thing I've ever read

I've been looking into this whole "virtual worlds" thing which includes online places like Second Life and World of Warcraft. We are definitely building the real matrix. In trying to find out how many people are living in these online worlds, I came across the strangest thing I've ever read. There are some great points and predictions, a lot of silliness and a few hoaxes for good measure. What an interesting mind the creator must have who put this together. Here are a few examples:
In the future, long after World of Warcraft has gone the way of ARPANET, everyone will have a virtual-world twin. An upgraded, digital representative of yourself which I'll henceforth refer to as Awesome You. And you'll see a time in your life when more people know Awesome You than know the real you. ... So when will we start to see laws prohibiting the theft and misuse of game-world objects? As soon as members of the gaming generation become lawmakers, that's when. ... And if you're chuckling and shaking your head at the glazed-eyed geeks who can't tell the difference between game money and real money, let me ask you something: when Square bought Enix for $727 million two years ago, do you think they they actually stacked crate after crate of cash on a flatbed truck and then drove the $727 million over to their offices? ... There will be a branch of government to rule the virtual world.

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Google disses the Federales

Update 6:40pm ET: I found a much better explanation of everything from SearchEngineWatch.com. This guy clearly has more time than me. After Google refused a government subpeona for access to its users' search patterns, the Bush administration has asked a federal judge to order Google to comply. In response, Google announced its latest product: Google Government (Beta), which it said would live by the company's motto: don't be evil. Ok now for a more serious look at this. Here are some quotes from the story.
Nicole Wong, an associate general counsel for Google, said the company will fight the government's effort ``vigorously.'' ``Google is not a party to this lawsuit, and the demand for the information is overreaching,'' Wong said.
Yay, Google!!
The government argues that it needs the information as it prepares to once again defend the constitutionality of the Child Online Protection Act in a federal court in Pennsylvania. The law was struck down in 2004 because it was too broad and could prevent adults from accessing legal porn sites. However, the Supreme Court invited the government to either come up with a less drastic version of the law or go to trial to prove that the statute does not violate the First Amendment and is the only viable way to combat child porn.
Guess what the government chose? Trial baby!
The government indicated that other, unspecified search engines have agreed to release the information, but not Google. ... Google has the largest share of U.S. Web searches with 46 percent, according to November 2005 figures from Nielsen//NetRatings. Yahoo is second with 23 percent, and MSN third with 11 percent.
The gov is arguing that it needs to prove how many times people find child porn online to defend its online child protection act which was struck down in 2004. The gov says it has the cooperation of other search engines but not Google. The gov says it needs Google in because G has 46% of the search engine market. The gov is full of poo. They don't know jack about stats!! You don't need to know everyone's behavior. Just use the sellout search engines who gave up their customers' privacy as a sample. I'm sure its representative of the whole, unless they thing Google searchers are just way more into porn.

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CES: Google. Dun Dun Dunnnnnh!!

google keynote - 19 Here's my take on the Google keynote: it was ok, Larry Page shouldn't be let out in public, these guys are some serious geeks and Robin Williams is amazing So there was massive anticipation of the Google Keynote. The line was long, people were in overflow. Everyone wanted to know what they would release next: an operating system, a mobile phone, free Wi-Fi for all the world's children, a toaster/search engine, a bag of dog food? Actually, thanks to the Wall Street Journal scoop, there wasn't too much in the way of surprises. But before I get there, let's talk about the pre-product announcement part. So co-founder Larry Page rolled out onto the stage riding on the back of a robotic car. This is a car that Stanford built. It's the first one to win the Darpa Challenge, a race through the desert of robotic cars. Would google announce its own Robotic car? Did its search engine somehow help Stanley avoid desert ditches? No and no. Larry was just proud of his fellow Stanford geeks and thought he'd give them the world's biggest shout out. That's some ghetto ish right there. Geek-ghetto. google keynote - 3 Then does Larry get to the point, maybe describe the market like every other keynote speaker. "Consumers want things!!!" No. He rants. He bitches. He moans. And he lectures an audience of industry press, analysts and leaders on open standards. He argued for a standard power adapter, so we don't have to have all these different size power bricks and cables. He ranted about networking devices, about why I can't plug my USB-enabled camera into my USB-enabled hard drive and move the photos off. Why do I need a big ol' computer in between them? Why can't my bluetooth cell phone start my bluetooth car? And did he read off his nice teleprompter that all other keynotes relied on? No. He shuffled back and forth across the massive stage, wearing his google lab coat and reading from a stack of papers in his hands. The man who is essentially leader of the free (Internet) world, whose company "organizes the worlds information" and has the largest distributed computer network ever assembled, reads paper notes in front of a crowd. All I can say is, you go boy. Google is always buckin the system. They did it with their IPO, they did it with their initial search engine, and they even did it with their CES keynote. But now for the products Product Announcements Googe Pack
  • a collection of software we all need to maintain our computers, including antivirus, web browser, photo organizer and more. Available at pack.google.com
  • all this software would take a while for a user to find and download. Google puts it in one download
  • the download itself makes sure not to consume all your internet bandwidth, and the programs start installing themselves as soon as they've arrived
  • all the software keeps itself up to date automatically
Google Talk
  • this is the company's instant messageing and voice chat program
  • announced interoperability with AOL instant messenger and partnerships with lots of ISPs
Google Earth
  • this is the desktop application version of Google Maps which allows for flyovers and much better control
  • there's now a Mac version
  • Google is working with VW to embed this in their car GPS systems
Google Video Store
  • people who upload their videos to google now have the ability to sell them for as little as 5 cent
  • google announced partnerships with lots of folks including the Charlie Rose show, Fashion TV
  • oh yeah, and CBS. how could i forget
So now we have NBC and ABC in iTunes, CBS with Google and Fox I don't know where yet. Larry Page is a bad speaker, and the announcements were already known, but Google still had the best keynote, because they brought out Robin Williams. He messed around a lot and actually moderated teh Q&A. Oh yes, I forgot to mention, bucking another trend, Google offered time for Q&A with the audience. Robin Williams actually did a great job moderating. Not only was he funny, but he clearly understood what he was talking about. Hooray for Google. * * * Overall, I still think we should all be afraid of Google. Even though these announcements didn't reveal them as the Anti-Christ, that company has too much money and too many smart people employed. They can't help but build a death star.

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CES: Yahoo

yahoo keynote - 11 Here's my take on Yahoo's Consumer Electronics Show keynote and displays. Hotness combined with crappy Tom Cruisaziness and hilarious Ellen DeGeneres-ness It should come as no surpise that glitches and Tom Cruise go hand in hand. That's a bit of what happened to Yahoo during it's keynote. They had some problem with their Internet connection, blamed Microsoft, then brought out Tom Cruise so he could promote his movie twice. I'm not going to mention the name of his movie here, because I don't want to support him like that. Here were the main points raised. The setup, if you will: Yahoo's users and community is hot
    400 million unique monthly users
  • 26 countries
  • 250 million email accounts; the largest email service in the world
  • 2 billion photos across Yahoo Photos and Flickr
  • served up 5 billion music videos last year
  • users rated 6 billion songs last year
Other relevant observations
  • "The Internet is an infrastructure and delivery vehicle for communications and experiences and entertainment and data"
  • What makes this possible is ease of use, open platforms and connections to devices
  • Today's user is his own media programmer. It's not mass media but "my media," and for kids today, this isn't even a shift. It's just the way things are
  • There's two types of content: established and the long tail
  • Consumers are becoming producers and generating a lot of content
  • There are 900 million PCs in the world but 2 billion cell phones
  • If we lose our cell phones, we lose our phone books!
  • It's too hard to get photos off the cell phone
Therefore, Yahoo introduced a suite of services under the umbrella, "Yahoo Go," trying to create a "seamless experience" across the desktop, mobile phone and television. Yahoo Go Desktop
  • They bought the company Konfabulator and renamed it Yahoo Widgets. These are a lot like the Widgets in Apple's Dashboard. And really, Apple stole the idea from the original Konfabulator. So there. Who says companies can't steal?
  • A desktop sidebar, just like Google Desktop
Yahoo Go Mobile This is where stuff gets interesting
  • local web search with click-to-call and user ratings on the results plus navigation. Basically, you search for pizza, and it will show you all the pizza joints nearby. You can call them, see the ratings and get turn by turn directions.
  • can get all email. not just yahoo
  • address book is synced live in the background to your Yahoo contacts
  • photos are synced in background to existing online Yahoo photo albums, and in the other direction, your pics are "downscaled" so you're not downloading a gigantic image on your itty bitty cell phone screen
  • initial partners are Nokia and Motorola
  • partnering with Cingular wireless
Ok, have you caught your breath? Auto-syncing of the phone book!! Never again do I have to get an email from a friend being like, "Um hi everybody, but I seem to have gotten a little drunk last night and left my panties and cell phone in a cab. Can you please send me your phone numbers and, while you're at it, tell me where I live." Finally, there was Yahoo Go TV
  • Intel Viiv-optimized
  • Includes Yahoo video search with community-driven navigation
  • access to your Yahoo music playlists
  • movie listings, trailers etc
  • watch television and do the TiVo thing
  • view Yahoo and Flickr photos
Unfortunately, they weren't able to get the demo working. CEO Terry Semel said, "Well, we know whose software this is running on." More bitch-slapping of the Bill Gates. I did get to see the demo later in the week, but what really got me excited was the concept for the next version of Yahoo Go TV. Check out this pic. Go ahead, click it: Y! TV future: metadata That's an image of the future of television. Yahoo demonstrated this: Whatever you're watching (DVD, video on demand, live television, TiVo-ed television), Yahoo will be able to identify it in the same way that iTunes IDs your CD when you rip it. They can pull the title, running time, actors, critics rating, Yahoo user rating etc. At this point, you can rate the movie yourself, recommend the show to a Yahoo Messenger buddy, find out what movies the other actors have been in and even buy the DVD, order it on demand or schedule your Yahoo DVR to record the show when it airs. That's tight right? But wait, there's more. Check out this pic: yahoo's tv future. RSS! That shows how you can access the news and other RSS feeds while you watch TV. You can just see headlines or read a whole story, and the ads are kind of personalized in the same way that the ads you see on Yahoo are. They will depend on what you're up to and not seem so random like TV ads. You can even shrink down that vertical bar to a little box on the lower left corner that shows you one headline at a time. No more watching TV with the laptop in your lap or running to your computer. All this is done with the remote. * * * Overall, I say Yahoo wins dammit!! Between the phone book syncing and the future TV thingy, I'm hooked. Yahoo for Yahoo!

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CES: Intel - "I got Viiv on it!"

intel keynote - 7 Here's my summary and judgement of Intel's announcements from Paul Otellini's keynote at CES last week. Theme: Introducing the New Normal Intel announced two major products: Centrino Duo. This is intel's first major processor upgrade since the Pentium, and it's hot. Actually it's cool. It's built using technology known as "dual core" where there's a single chip but basically two processors on it. This makes for a faster, but also more energy efficient process, thus cool in both temperature and young people lingo. The result will be faster notebook computers with more battery life and smaller PCs overall. In fact, the model tiny PCs they showed looked a lot like the Mac Mini, and given that Intel is making chips for Apple too, I gotta assume the new Mac Mini and all those sexy Mac notebooks will have this new chip inside. Hotness Viiv. Every time Intel writes this word down, they mention "it sounds like five." So now you know the proper lingo. Viiv is a little confusing and hard to explain. Viiv is no single thing. It's a collection of technologies that includes a processor (often the dual core joint above), various media chipsets and networking capabilities. All this is in a nice little box powered by Windows Media Center Edition. That's the hardware. The real point of Viiv is to make it easier to distribute media across the Internet to the home and within the home itself. First, this means content. Intel signed up a bunch of content people (Yahoo MusicMatch, Movielink, AOL Radio, game services and more) and had them certify their stuff for Viiv. They even went international with a bunch of Bollywood stuff. And the big announcement was a deal with AOL for access to 10,000 backlisted TV shows which will be available for free download, supported by ads. These content people have made their source content Viiv-certified, which means something I still don't quite understand. Second, it means making it easy to move content around your home. All Viiv devices discover each other on the network. You don't have to fight anymore with WEP wi-fi access keys. Just Viiv it. You can watch your recorded TV shows on your Viiv laptop or desktop or media center PC set top in the living room * * * * To conclude, Intel is moving beyond making fast processor chips into creating a real platform for entertainment, or so they want us to believe. With all this TV I'll be getting over the Internet, I look forward to trimming back my cable package! I just hope my cable modem is fast enough to handle everything.

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