Into Tech

In 1997, the name Slashdot was cool, because most people really weren’t familiar with the idea of web addresses: we’d tell them to go to “slash slash slash-dot dot org” and their eyes would glaze over. The /. site was pretty cool, too. It was billed as “News for Nerds” and the net had a very high proportion of nerds back then.

What it didn’t have was a plethora of blogs where someone could post a short story with a link so that thousands of people could pile in and discuss it. But at the time, I thought of Slashdot more as a replacement for Usenet newsgroup discussions than a precursor of blogging.

Either way, Slashdot soon became so popular that it gave rise to “the Slashdot effect”. Slashdotters would see a new user-submitted story and click the link, and the target site would promptly collapse under the sheer weight of visitors. Sites that carried stories about Linux and open source, and geeky science news, usually hadn’t been set up to handle huge spikes in traffic.

Naturally, many people tried to exploit the Slashdot effect, including me. There was no quicker way to get noticed.

Unfortunately, one of the downsides of nerdy sites is that they attract loads of nerds. These are the people who don’t have girlfriends or proper jobs; who live on pizza in their parents’ basement, and rarely see the sun; who have an encyclopedic knowledge of Star Wars but no common sense. It’s a running gag on Slashdot that everyone is like that, even though they’re not.

Slashdot’s standard nerd hypocrisy is another running gag. Everyone knows that anything related to Apple/Linux/open source is innovative and cool, whereas if Microsoft had done exactly the same thing, it would be evil and monopolistic. Double standards rule.

But unlike Usenet, Slashdot has an innovative and cool Karma system to bury a lot of the rubbish. Comments are labelled (flamebait, troll, redundant, insightful, interesting, informative, funny etc) and rated, and Slashdotters can vote them up or down. The perceptive comments should therefore get voted up to +4 or +5 while the stupid ones are voted down to -1. If you browse Slashdot with a threshold set at +3, you can read the best and ignore the rest.

The good stuff on Slashdot is still very good, but perhaps the site is past its best. Although it has expanded beyond the nerd ghetto into politics and YRO (Your Rights Online), the site has been superseded by newcomers such as Digg and Reddit, Techmeme and Tailrank and other sources of news links. Slashdot’s responses to this competition - which include Idle and Firehose - don’t seem to have the same sort of momentum.

Any site that has signed up more than a million members and has several million visitors a month is clearly getting lots of things right. It’s still the primary place for nerds to discuss news. However, as the internet grows, the proportion of nerds declines, and so does Slashdot’s relative importance.

As was widely expected, FCC boss Kevin Martin has come out saying he believes Comcast violated FCC rules in its traffic shaping program, and he’s recommending that the FCC sanction, but not fine, Comcast and order it to stop its traffic shaping (something it’s already planning to do). Kevin Martin’s favoritism towards the telcos is well known — so it comes as no surprise that he’d come out against Comcast. He’s given every indication that such a move was in the cards. However, the lack of a fine — combined with telling Comcast to do what it was already doing — is an interesting move. If anything, it may be an attempt by Martin to quietly assert control over cable and hope that the cable industry doesn’t fight back.

Whether or not the FCC’s mandate really does include cable is an open question — and the cable companies have at least a decent claim to the fact that their systems are not covered by the FCC. So, here’s a situation where the FCC is slapping Comcast’s wrist in such a way that Comcast is unlikely to mind — but if it “agrees” to the response, then it may be effectively admitting that the FCC does have a say in how cable companies operate, which could open quite a Pandora’s box in terms of the FCC’s overall mandate.

There is, of course, a simpler way out of this that no one appears to be taking. The real problem most people had with Comcast’s actions was that it wasn’t at all transparent about them — continually insisting that they weren’t doing anything. Effectively, Comcast may have been guilty of false advertising in terms of how its network worked. So why not have the FTC, rather than the FCC, slap them down for their lack of transparency, rather than having the FCC step in where it might not belong?

As for those who are claiming that Martin’s statements are somehow a “victory” for network neutrality, you might want to think again. Martin has made it clear in the past that he’s not a supporter of network neutrality — especially when it comes to the telcos, telling AT&T that if it felt it needed to start discriminating traffic for a valid business reason, it should feel free to do so.

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Does Comcast believe the FCC has authority over its traffic shaping efforts? Well, it may just depend on who’s asking. When the FCC asserted that it did have a say in regulating Comcast’s traffic shaping efforts, Comcast emphatically stated that the FCC’s authority does not extend that far. And, technically, Comcast is probably correct that it would be an overreach of the FCC’s mandate — though the FCC clearly disagrees.

Still, when defending itself against a lawsuit in California over the very same traffic shaping, Comcast has convinced a judge to suspend the lawsuit by noting that the FCC has clear authority over these matters:

This issue “i.e., the reasonableness of a broadband provider’s network management practices” has, however, been firmly placed within the jurisdiction of the Federal Communications Commission (”FCC”), an administrative agency whose authority to regulate internet broadband access companies’ services is well-established.

That seems like a quote that could come back to haunt Comcast. Either way, it looks like the FCC is about to show Comcast who’s boss. Reports are coming out that Kevin Martin is about to slap down Comcast for its traffic shaping. This should come as little surprise to anyone. If you’re playing the home game, recognize that if the question concerns cable companies, Martin will rule against them. If it involves a telco, Martin will rule in favor of them.

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BT yesterday snapped up the online business directory firm Ufindus for £20m as it prepares to take on Yell.com, Google and other dotcom start-ups in the local information market.

The deal will help BT as it creates an online directory with social networking technology, so that users will not only be able to find businesses and services in their area but will also be able to rate and review them, for subsequent users.

BT has already launched a test version of such a service, called BT Exchanges, and is planning a full launch of the site in the autumn. The Ufindus portfolio will bring the company advertisers and technical expertise. BT used to own the Yellow Pages publisher Yell, but sold it seven years ago to reduce debt.

Ufindus has more than 20,000 small and medium-sized business customers and nearly 2m online directory listings on its three main internet directories: SmileLocal, MoreUK and Ufindus. It also has a host of niche directories for individual trades, such as builderregister.com and bathroomspecialistfinder.com.

“Ufindus will play an important role in the continued development of BT Directories’ online portfolio,” said David Benjamin, head of BT Directories. “Through Ufindus’ considerable expertise and experience in online classified advertising, we access further local classified product offerings, significant search traffic and new customers.”

Ufindus generates more than 9m searches a month and last year made £14m. The company was sold to BT by the AIM-listed Iomart Group. Shares in Iomart closed yesterday up 4p at 49.5p.

The local information market is booming as more people get fast broadband access at home and the new generation of mobile devices such as the iPhone make it easier for people to get web-based information when on the move. Google and Yell are already heavily involved in the online directories market, linking business information with maps and directions.

But the sheer wealth of information available has brought into fashion websites that offer feedback as well as names and contact details. There are already a number of such sites, such as LocalLife.co.uk. TouchLocal.com is a full-scale social networking site that allows users to review everything from pubs to plumbers.

Demand for the new 3G version of the iPhone has outstripped supply, and O2, Apple’s exclusive UK mobile phone partner, says it has run out of stock for customers wanting to pre-order the device before it goes on general release on Friday.

The new phone was made available for pre-order on the O2 website at 8am this morning. The site crashed within the first hour due to the volume of traffic, and by this afternoon O2 said it had run out of pre-order stock.

Carphone Warehouse, the only independent retailer in the UK to stock the phone, says it still has stocks available to new O2 customers who wish to pre-order it. Existing customers wanting to upgrade an O2 handset to a new iPhone will have to wait until Friday.

Some of O2’s rivals are speculating that the company limited supply in order to add to the hype of Friday’s launch.

The company used similar tactics for the arrival of high-profile music acts such as Prince, who performed at London’s O2 arena. In the past, the venue has released tickets on a show-by-show basis, even when an artist had signed up for many nights.

However O2 maintains that half the phones it ordered were made available for pre-order customers. It has given no details of how many phones it expects to stock in total.

It claims more than 200,000 people registered an interest in the 3G iPhone; 35,000 people registered interest in the previous version of the phone before it went on sale.

Carphone Warehouse reckons interest in the new phone is 10 times greater than it was for the original version, launched last November.

The 8GB version of the new phone - which can store about 2,000 songs - is free for customers willing to sign up for a year and a half at £45 per month, while the larger capacity 16GB phone is free for anyone on a £75-per-month deal.

Broadband in the UK is a touchy subject: either you’re one of the very lucky ones with a great 24/7 connection or one of those with massive contention rates or your ISP is constantly capping your download speeds.

Paying for a broadband package and actually getting what you paid for is not always straightforward and this week Virgin Media got its wrist slapped - again - for ads quoting inaccurate download speeds. Remember, Virgin’s already out to get torrent users.

The ‘Hate To Wait’ ad series in the national press showed a chart of glowing download speeds for different Virgin Media broadband packages but Virgin neglected to mention that its traffic management system could cap those speeds during peak hours.

Apparently this got some discussion a few weeks back, but I was just alerted to the fact that some European politicians have been debating how to handle the new media landscape that makes some odd and totally contradictory suggestions which the possibilities of bloggers becoming a problem by “polluting cyberspace.” While some of the argument has been blown way out of proportion, there are some things that are very problematic in the way the paper is written.

The oddest contradiction in the piece is the fact that much of it is concerned about the lack of diversity in media these days, and then it seems to see bloggers as a threat, rather than the solution:

“The cases of unrestricted ownership concentration or of scarce content pluralism in the media are endangering cultural diversity and freedom of expression not only within national markets but also at European level. We need therefore strong European commitment to overcome those challenges especially in view of the new technologies and services in the media sector.”

One would think that such politicians would then champion the rise of easy publishing platforms that allows anyone, professional or amateur, to join the game. Yet, that doesn’t appear to be the case.

“The blogosphere has so far been a haven of good intentions and relatively honest dealing. However, with blogs becoming commonplace, less principled people will want to use them…. We do not see bloggers as a threat. They are in position, however, to considerably pollute cyberspace. We already have too much spam, misinformation and malicious intent in cyberspace. I think the public is still very trusting towards blogs, it is still seen as sincere. And it should remain sincere. For that we need a quality mark, a disclosure of who is really writing and why.”

If I’m reading this right, it appears that these politicians are afraid of media consolidation, because it limits the diversity of voices — but at the same time, it’s afraid of bloggers polluting media, because that diversity of voices might be “bad.” Right. In other words, the real fear isn’t either the diversity of media or the rise of bad bloggers — it’s just that they’re afraid that speech they don’t like will become popular, whereas those who agree with them might get drowned out. That would also explain the ridiculous assertion that Europe needs a “right to reply.” A sort of cousin of the fairness doctrine, a right to reply is designed to let someone respond if a publication says something about them that they don’t like. This isn’t the first time this has been proposed in Europe. Way back in 2003, we wrote about plans in Europe to regulate bloggers with a demand for a right to reply.

The thing is, everyone already has a right to reply: your own website. A right to reply makes sense when there isn’t a way for you to reply. With the internet, however, that’s just not the case any more. And, yes, some people will say “but, if the original report is on a popular publication, and your site doesn’t get any traffic, then that’s not the same.” However, that’s inaccurate as well. In this day and age, if the media says something incorrect about you, and you write up your own thoughts, it seems that others are only too eager to hype it up and show the news report was wrong. You just need to let some other folks know that you’ve responded, and the word spreads pretty quickly.

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Apparently Chrysler is looking to turn your car into a rolling WiFi hotspot, allowing you to connect to the internet both for the sake of accessing information, but also for providing it (such as traffic info). Of course, automakers have talked about internet access in cars before, but it hasn’t gone very far — so unless you brought your own EVDO card, you weren’t doing much. But is there really a strong demand for such things? As some analysts note, it seems like the automakers may be “leapfrogging the market,” when they should be focused on making cars work better with the gadgets we already have. This is a problem that has come up before. Automakers love to build new technology into their cars in order to control the experience, but that’s not what consumers want. Having an MP3 player is nice, but it’s easier if you can just use your iPod. Having a built in GPS system is cool, but the new Garmin has a lot more features. Working with consumer electronics devices that people buy seems like it may be a lot more sensible than trying to recreate the wheel. And, then, of course putting WiFi connectivity in cars may eventually lead to xkcd-style scenarios:

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In the wake of the ridiculous dustup between bloggers and the AP, where the AP threatened bloggers who help promote AP articles, some are starting to point out that the AP’s problem goes well beyond a seriously distorted view of copyright law. The reason this came up at all was because the AP’s business model is pretty screwed up in a web world. This was clear from the fact that the more involved the AP gets online the more it ends up competing with all its member newspapers. Almost every action it takes seems to help the AP’s business model, while hurting its members. With the latest skirmish, the AP is ensuring that those partner sites get fewer links in and less traffic. Back when the AP signed a deal with Google News, we pointed out that its member newspapers should be pissed off. Basically, the AP and Google had worked out a deal to keep traffic away from the member papers. That’s no way to survive. Eventually, if this keeps up, those members freak out and stop supporting the AP.

That leads to great suggestions from Danny Sullivan on how it’s time for the AP to totally rethink its business model, recognizing what the web does for its business:

Well, wake up call. You need a new model. Really. Or you’re going to die.

The AP should have a news portal. You should take in content from your members, put it up in an easy-to-find way and generate the ad dollars to be redistributed back to your members. Like do it now, before since the entire licensing thing ain’t going to live that long.

It’s worth reading the whole thing, as it’s right on point. However, there is one additional thing that’s worth mentioning: the AP really needs to learn to keep its news online. Back when I would link to AP articles, one of the most annoying things was that they would disappear after a couple weeks. We used to get complaints all the time from readers who would find an older post and the underlying AP article would be gone. I had thought that maybe its deal with Google would change this, and started pointing to the Google versions of AP articles… but, nope, those disappeared after a few weeks as well.

In the narrowminded world of an AP exec, they probably think this leads to more licensing revenue, since it will make people search out and license the article after it can’t be found any more. Nope. It just makes people pissed off. Many newspapers have realized that there’s tremendous value found in freeing up the archives, and monetizing that long tail of traffic via advertisements. That’s a lot more effective than pissing off large groups of folks (including the people who promote your articles) and hoping it leads to a little more licensing revenue. So, while I agree with Danny’s recommendations for the AP to join the internet era, I’d also add a recommendation that it open up its archives and recognize that URLs should be permanent rather than fleeting.

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Not many websites have kept their pre-eminence for more than a decade, but Expedia has managed it. The design is showing its age but it’s often the simplest, quickest and cheapest way to book a trip if it includes a flight and a hotel. Even if you eventually book through a travel agent, Expedia is a great source of information.

The cheapest long-haul flights usually involve a change of planes, and I’ve found that Expedia UK often comes up with options the travel agent can’t see. Most importantly, you can instantly see how long the flight will take, and you can sort flights by duration to juggle price and time. You can - and I do - save money by booking flights to Las Vegas via Phoenix, or Vancouver via Seattle. But you don’t want to spend more than 20 hours getting somewhere that’s 10 hours away, and that’s an easy mistake to make.

Because Expedia pulls up lots of options quickly, you can also save money by trying different travel dates, especially if you can include a Saturday night. If you can travel midweek, it may be cheaper to stay for six or seven days than for a weekend.

But the biggest savings usually come by constructing a package with a flight and a hotel where Expedia has special prices. These aren’t as good as they used to be, but Expedia’s deals can still come out cheaper than making separate bookings on discount sites. And by using Expedia’s hotel area maps, you can also balance convenience (eg close to the beach or conference centre) and price.

Expedia is based in Bellevue, Washington, which is a good place to stay if you’re visiting Microsoft. This isn’t a coincidence: Microsoft launched the website in 1996, before spinning it off as a separate business. Expedia has had no connection with the software giant since 2001, and it is now part of a group that includes Hotels.com, Hotwire.com and the excellent TripAdvisor.

But the site still carries Microsoft’s fingerprints: you can sign in using a Microsoft Live ID (your Hotmail or Passport address), and Expedia still uses Microsoft’s MapPoint. However, you can’t move its maps around easily, as you can in Microsoft’s Virtual Earth and Google Maps.

Unlike some of its rivals, Expedia also has a reasonable global network, with sites in 15 countries. These now include Australia, China, India and Japan, as well as the major European countries.

And although Expedia has its detractors, when Fortune magazine published its annual list of America’s Most Admired Companies in March 2008, Expedia was placed third in its category, between Google and Amazon.

Like Amazon, eBay, Yahoo and a few other giants from the 1990s, Expedia’s site is showing its age. However, it’s so big, and has so much traffic, it is increasingly hard to change.

If you’re prepared to shop around using some of the newer, more focused travel sites, you may get a better deal. But as a one-stop supermarket that covers everything from cruises to corporate travel, Expedia does the job.