Technology360

Radio tunes out Google (and vice versa)

Having already gotten out of the newspaper ad business, the Wall Street Journal reported today that it's also getting out of the radio ad business.  Jessica E. Vascellaro writes:

... radio tripped up Google. The company is pulling the plug on its attempt to automate radio-ad sales on May 31, exposing how far Google is from its goal of grabbing a big chunk of the multibillion-dollar business of off-line ad sales.  ¶  A look at what went wrong shows that Google misjudged the capacity of its technology to work beyond the Web, and underestimated the human side of the business. Radio stations refused to turn over airtime to a computer algorithm that set prices far lower than their own rates. Big advertisers steered clear.

Link:  Wall Street Journal.  The radio industry, for some reason not enthused about the "dollar a holler" financial return, didn't buy in.

For more analysis, see Charlene Li, Why Google's One-Trick Pony Struggles to Learn New Tricks.  She writes:

But Google faces a tough situation in that, in 2008, 97% of its revenues come from Web advertising, and 68% of that advertising is on its own Web sites. That's down only slightly from 69% in 2007. This is a problem because while Google has been on a torrid growth pace for the past few years, it's essentially a one-trick pony: search advertising. Make no mistake, it's a very nice trick, but one that has little upside outside of organic growth. And Google isn't likely to grow much more in search advertising given its dominance, especially in advertising-rich markets like the United States.

Link:  Harvard Business Publishing.  --Dennis

Mike Homer, public media visionary and benefactor, dies at 50

My friend Mike Homer died today at his Silicon Valley home at age 50 after a more than two-year battle with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare, devastating and incurable neurological disorder.  Long-time public radio colleagues may remember that the same disease claimed Pat Joy, former manager of Oregon Public Broadcasting's radio unit, several years back.

I first met Mike when a small group of us (I recall it being technology journalist Steve Gillmor, Stephen Hill of Hearts of Space, Tim Olson from KQED) met with Mike early in 2005, We were part of a group working on a CDN for public broadcasting, a need Mike had also forseen and, not only that, was already building one.  That began a nearly two-year partnership in which we worked with Mike's team on both design and business plan aspects of what Mike called Open Media Network.  Although we weren't successful in Mike's ultimate dream of giving this to a national public broadcasting organization, I'm convinced that we will eventually (and, I hope not too late) come to see Mike's vision as important part of public media's future.

Mike was a former executive at Apple, Netscape and AOL, was founder of Kontiki, and more recently an angel investor in a number of ventures and philanthropist.

Kara Swisher has a very nice Farewell to Mike Homer in her BoomTown blog today.  I know that those of us who worked almost daily with Mike for that extended period all salute Mike's memory and his vision.

Update 2 February 2009:
Also see Leslie Katz's Silicon Valley fixture Mike Homer dies at 50 in CNet News.

Update 3 February 2009:
Tim Mullaney has a substantial piece, Mike Homer, Internet Innovator and Microsoft Foe, Dies at 50, at Bloomberg.com.

And Mike McCue has a nice remembrance, Thanks for the Ride, Mike, in D|All Things Digital that's pretty close to my own.

Update 4 February 2009:
This will be the last update on Mike, an obituary written by his friend and fellow angel investor, Ron Conway:

Michael (Mike) J. Homer: February 24, 1958 –February 1, 2009

Mike Homer, high-technology executive, passed away on February 1, 2009 at his home in Atherton. He suffered from the rare neurodegenerative disorder Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, known as CJD. Mike, 50, is survived by his wife of ten years Kristina and their three children, James, Jack and Lucy, as well as his mother Irene and sister Sue. In addition to family, he leaves a legion of friends, colleagues and business associates, including his best friend, Bill Campbell. Everyone who knew Mike will miss his extraordinary intellect, tenacity, fierce loyalty and of course, his hearty sense of humor.

Mike was born and raised in San Francisco, attended St. Ignatius College Prep, and treasured the many lifelong friendships developed during those years. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of California at Berkeley. A Silicon Valley presence for more than twenty years, Mike launched his career at Apple, excelling as both a technical innovator and savvy marketer. He held executive positions at GO and EO, before making an indelible mark on the success of Internet pioneer Netscape. Mike was an active board member at Opsware and Palm, and an investor and advisor to Tellme Networks, Tivo and Google. He started Kontiki and Open Media Network and served on the board of Cinequest. His appreciation for film led to the role of executive producer for an award-winning documentary, “Speed and Angels.”

All who have enjoyed the privilege of knowing Mike would agree that his love of family defined his success even more than his professional accomplishments. Mike enjoyed every opportunity to share his free time with family and close friends, gathering for backyard BBQs or Tahoe getaways that always included plenty of boat rides. An avid baseball fan, Mike could often be found cheering for the San Francisco Giants at the stadium or at The Old Pro in Palo Alto surrounded by a table filled with friends. He inherited his love of baseball from his father Jim, passed it onto his own children, and jumped at the chance to coach both of his son’s little league teams.  
 
Often sought after for his sage advice, Mike was always generous with his time and friendship. Mentoring was a way of life for him and he took great pleasure in sharing his expertise with others. His larger than life personality and genuine warmth will be profoundly missed by all whose lives he touched, and his legacy reflected in part by their accomplishments.  
 
Mike was also a philanthropist. He and Kristina started The Homer Family Foundation to fund education and programs for the underprivileged. He was a major donor to the Ronald McDonald House at Stanford, The Haas Center for Responsible Business at Berkeley, The Computer History Museum and The California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences at UCSF. This past fall, Sacred Heart High School in Atherton unveiled the Michael J. Homer Science and Student Life Center.
 
A rosary will be recited at 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday, February 4 at the Church of the Nativity, 210 Oak Grove Avenue in Menlo Park. On Thursday, February 5 at 10:30 a.m., a service will be held to honor Mike’s extraordinary life at Saint Raymond Catholic Church, 1100 Santa Cruz Avenue in Menlo Park. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Creuzfeldt-Jakob Disease Foundation at www.cjdfoundation.org <http://www.cjdfoundation.org/> .

--Dennis

The Semantic Web

I'm interested in how humans attempt to extract value from the flood of information they create (search for my earlier posts on "Myth, Media and Meta"), devising more and more effective ways of extracting this value.  My candidate for the next big thing in this regard is what's labeled the Semantic Web, which the anonymous authors of Wikipedia describe as:

... an evolving extension of the World Wide Web in which web content can be expressed not only in natural language, but also in a format that can be read and used by software agents, thus permitting them to find, share and integrate information more easily.^[1] It derives from W3C director Sir Tim Berners-Lee's vision of the Web as a universal medium for data, information, and knowledge exchange. ...

Link:  Wikipedia.

In a 2001 article in Scientific American, Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler and Ora Lassila described it in some detail.  The article, The Semantic Web, is still freely available on its web site.

The December 2007 issue of the same magazine has very good update on this effort, titled The Semantic Web In Action (authors: Lee Feigenbaum, Ivan Herman, Tonya Hongsermeier, Eric Neumann and Susie Stephens).  Unfortunately, the Scientific American web site currently has it available for paid access only and that payment is greater than the cost of the magazine, so look for it on newstands before it disappears.  Highly recommended.

Also see Nigel Shadbolt, Wendy Hall and Tim Berners-Lee, The Semantic Web Revisited, IEEE Intellilgent Systems, May/June 2006 and, for the technically inclined, the World Wide Web Consortium's W3C Semantic Web Activity page.  --Dennis

PBCore metadata standard

The PBCore metadata standard is, IMHO, one of the most important and, arguably, the most progressive thing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has ever funded.  It's a necessary tool to enable public media to transition to the digital age -- assuming, of course, that public media's managers can find their way to the digital age. 

Marcia Brooks is directing the project from the Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National Center for Accessible Media at WGBH in Boston and she's written a great article on it for the December 17th issue Current, the public broadcasting newspaper.  Current seems to delay posting its articles online for some reason, so the the Public Television Digital Archive has posted a copy of Get going in metadata today with this amazing free kit! online [PDF].  Nice job, Marcia, and thanks to Nan Rubin for posting this important overview.

Update 29 December 2007:  I see that the PDF has also been posted at the PBCore web site.

Update, 4 January 2008:
An HTML version is now posted at Current.  --Dennis

RoboWheat

My son Andrew is a senior industrial design major at the Rhode Island School of Design.  He's taking several digital media courses this semester and as a final project he designed a "robotic wheat field" inspired by the real wheat fields that surround the woods where our home is located.  The "wheat" in this case are 28 stiff vertical wires mounted seven at a time on each of four boards on the floor.  As you walk through the "field" and move your arms, animated light streams from the ceiling in the form of projected RSS feeds (the feed he set up for the show was a Technorati search for all posts relating to "sunshine").   The light follows your movement through the field.  The device is currently in its second edition - you can check it out on his site and on YouTube.  Click on the images to the right for larger versions.  More information and pictures here and here.   Very clever, says Dad.  --Dennis

Watching What You See on the Web

You better not pout,
Better not cry,
Better be good,
I'm telling you why:
Santa Claus is coming to town!

He's making a list,
Checking it twice,
Gonna find out who's naughty or nice.
Santa Clause is coming to town!

He knows when you've been sleeping,
He knows when you're awake.
He knows when you've been good or bad,
So be good for goodness sake!

[Chris Isaak: "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town"]

Back in February of 2006 I wrote a short essay here called The "new Hoover" and attention metadata about privacy concerns relating to our ability to collect metadata about our Web browsing.  Usually, these metdata enhance our Web experiences as in the case of a site like Amazon which gets smarter about our preferences as we revisit the site.  But this technology has also been used for government snooping.  Again, I'm sure most of us don't mind when that's used against child porn distributors or real terrorists, but on the principle that "if it can be done, it will be done," it doesn't take too great a dose of paranoia to imagine less beneficial uses.

Now comes Bobby White of the Wall Street Journal with a distrubing story about companies (NebuAd, FrontPorch and Phorm are mentioned) that are supplying technology to Internet Service Providers to monitor your surfing and target ads to you based on the metadata it collects.  Since your ISPs already have your name, address, phone number and payment information, it's a small step to associating you with the metadata.  White writes:

... This technique -- called behavioral targeting -- is far more customized than the current method of selling ads online. Today, it's an imperfect process: companies such as Revenue Science Inc. and Tacoda Inc., which was recently bought by Time Warner Inc., contract with Web sites to monitor which consumers visit them, attaching "cookies," or small pieces of tracking data, to visitors' hard drives so they are recognized when they return. The targeting firms feed the data to Web site owners, who use it to charge premium rates for customized ads. But the information is limited, since the tracking companies can't monitor all of the sites an individual visits.  ¶  The newer form of behavioral targeting involves placing gear called "deep-packet inspection boxes" inside an Internet provider's network of pipes and wires. Instead of observing only a select number of Web sites, these boxes can track all of the sites a consumer visits, and deliver far more detailed information to potential advertisers. ...

Link:  Wall Street Journal.

According to the article, NebuAd says it "doesn't track traffic to sites related to sex, health or politics."  Sure.  How does it know you're headed there unless it's tracking some aspect of that?  [See clarification from NebuAd CEO in Comments section below.  It does sound like that company is making a good faith effort to protect privacy, but I feel that the following paragraph is still generally valid.  --Dennis]

All this stuff is subject to subpoena and press scrutiny.  Or, perhaps under the Patriot Act that's not even necessary.  Ask a librarian.  All this is extremely troubling and goes to the core of the value of information exchange to us all.  These ISPs and technology companies want us to trust that they're not abusing this  (the article notes that some ISPs are permitting consumers to opt out).  OK, but we've gone far enough down the road of constitutional erosion in this country that it's not them I'm worried about.  --Dennis

Facebook facing criticism over usage information

Catherine Holahan writes:

Facebook made modifications to a controversial advertising system that many users considered an invasion of privacy. On Nov. 29, the social network gave users greater control over the tool, known as Beacon, which broadcasts what they do on partner sites to other Facebook users. ...

... The Beacon brouhaha underscores the dilemma faced by social networks and other Internet companies such as Google (GOOG) attempting to generate revenue from the wealth of information they collect about users. Letting advertisers capitalize on such information helps Web companies collect sales and grow. But sharing too much data can result in the kind of backlash encountered by Facebook.  ...

Link:  BusinessWeek.

No one has been more critical than Umair Haque.  Here are five recent posts:

Edge Principles: Love > Indifference.  Link:  Bubblegeneration.

Fixing Facebook.  Link: Bubblegeneration.

Beacon 2.0: How Not to Think Strategically About... Link: Bubblegeneration.

Industry Note: More Evil Than Evil.  Link: Bubblegeneration.

Research Note: Google vs Beacon, Or Why Advantage is in the DNA.  Link: Bubblegeneration.

Brad Stone has an interview with Facebook about all this.  Facebook Executive Discusses Beacon Brouhaha.  Link:  New York Times.

Also see Louise Story and Brad Stone, Facebook Retreats on Online Tracking.  Link: New York Times.

Update 2 December 2007:
Om Malik has the background on this.  See To Save Its Bacon, Facebook Weakens Beacon.  Link: GigaOM. --Dennis

Myth, Media and Meta podcast

As I noted in the previous post below, audio files and presentation decks from the 2007 Iowa DTV Symposium have now been posted online.  This includes my own presentation from Oct. 2nd (and intimidating it was to be presenting the same afternoon as John C. Dvorak and Mark Schubin) titled Myth, Media and Meta: Three Information Epochs and What They Mean for Broadcasting.  Here is the agenda description:

Humans have always created information faster than we create humans. And, consequently, humans are in a constant struggle to extract value from the "noise" of too much information in their environment. The title refers to epochs that are characterized by the techniques we've used. "Myth" being story-telling, poetry, music, etc. "Media" dates from Gutenberg and encompasses traditional broadcasting. "Meta" is the digital age, characterized by use of metadata, compression, "pull" distribution, and distribution systems that can learn user preferences. Broadcasters use all these techniques and social systems may enable them to be successful in "many-to-many" distribution in the future.

Links:  MP3, PPT or for Flash version of the deck click here and scroll down in the Content Track to 4:30 on Tuesday.  Also, I've placed both the MP3 and PPT links permanently in the Files section to the left.

For a written version, see these four posts from early June.  Reboot Redux: Myth, Media and Meta; Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.   --Dennis

First Monday has moved

The excellent online peer-reviewed journal about the Internet, First Monday, has moved from www.firstmonday.org to Open Journal Systems at the University if Illinois at Chicago.  Its new (unmemorizable) URL is www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/ and it now requires a free registration.  Its archives have been moved here also.  In a big step forward, it now has RSS and Atom feeds, so I've subscribed in Bloglines and will be seeing new things as they're posted rather than every few months when I happen to remember I haven't visited the site in awhile. 

From the September 2007 number, check out Desperately seeking the consumer: Personalized search engines and the commercial exploitation of user data by Theo Röhle.  Here's the abstract:

With reference to surveillance studies theory, this paper critically assesses the role of personalized search engines as a mediator between advertisers and users. It first sketches the economic and technical background of online marketing and personalized searches. Then, it engages in an in–depth discussion of two examples of personalized search engines with regard to the data collection process used and the way in which this data is used for advertising purposes. The discussion shows that users’ information needs, as well as their personal data, are subject to a growing pressure in terms of commercial exploitation. Essentially, search engines now fulfill the task of translating information needs into consumption needs.

Link:  First Monday.  --Dennis

Vin Crosbie's giving away consulting advice

Consultant and blogger (Digital Deliverance) Vin Crosbie will be resident this academic year as an adjunct professor at the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.  He's posting several essays online "giving away consulting advice," four so far.  The first was about immediacy, the second about multimedia, the third about podcasting and vodcasting, and the fourth is about interactivity.  He mapped out six others, but haven't seen any more posted since mid-September.  These are well worth your time.  --Dennis