mediajunk

I've just noticed the results of a survey by iProspect, published earlier this year, which finds that women are more likely to click on paid-for links on websites (e.g. Google Ads).

For me, this is not too surprising. When giving workshops or seminars on the topics of search engine optimisation or marketing, I usually ask for a show of hands to find out how many people click on Google's sponsored listings. I've found that while people are generally resistant to clicking on paid-for links, hands that go up tend to be predominantly female.

In keeping with this is another finding I reported on some time back, that women are more receptive to spam than men.

That the internet is polluted is not in doubt. Email spam is the example of pollution with which we are most familiar.

If you keep a blog, however, you may also be familiar with "comment spam", whereby malicious individuals post mass, automated comments to as many weblogs as they can, in order to get links to their own (usually porn, gambling or pill-pushing) sites.

Pollution also comes in the form of search engine spam -- the bane of a Googler's existence -- where individuals try to mischeviously manipulate search engine results (not to be confused with legitimate search engine optimisation, the topic of my own book).

As if all of this wasn't bad enough, we now have to contend with worm pollution which, according to Kelly Martin of The Register, is getting out of control:

Take a few short moments to watch the receive light on your modem or unfettered ethernet connection. Here in high bandwidth Canada, that flashing light now flashes almost solid. It's almost unbelievable. It's almost all malicious traffic.

... I am finding it increasingly difficult to explain to laypeople about security on the Internet. The situation is only getting more complex, and worse. My Aunt Fern pulls her old computer out of the closet and plugs it in. Big mistake. She'd be better off with a typewriter, I tell you. In a few minutes her machine is already 0wn3d, and she just flipped it on.

And the bad news? It's getting worse...

Linus Torvalds, once called the "creator of Linux" but now more often referred to as the "leader of the Linux movement" spoke to BusinessWeek a few days ago about open source and the future of Linux.

Here are some excerpts:

On Open Source vs. Commercial Software
I think, fundamentally, open source does tend to be more stable software. It's the right way to do things. I compare it to science vs. witchcraft. In science, the whole system builds on people looking at other people's results and building on top of them. In witchcraft, somebody had a small secret and guarded it -- but never allowed others to really understand it and build on it.

Traditional software is like witchcraft. In history, witchcraft just died out. The same will happen in software. When problems get serious enough, you can't have one person or one company guarding their secrets. You have to have everybody share in knowledge.

On a Potential Legal Challenge from Microsoft

I'm not that concerned about the threat of Microsoft (MSFT ) enforcing patents against Linux. I think their mode of operation isn't through the legal system. I think they hate lawyers more than most companies. They've been on the receiving end. [CEO Steve] Ballmer and [Chairman Bill] Gates have pride in the fact that their competition may have tried to crush them with legal wars, but they overcame. I think they would have a hard time using legal tactics. They would be ashamed.

On Open Source Art
People have been playing around with using the open-source innovation model with arts and novels and even music. I have heard discussions, but I'm not a big believer. These things tend to be personal, and writing text is linear. It's hard to have more than one person working on it.

Ben Hammersley, writing in the Guardian last week, asked whether recent setbacks in the growth and popularity of the Internet Explorer browser were indications of larger storms a-brewin:

The tiniest shift, history shows us, can signal the greatest change. News last weekend that Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) web browser had lost a single percentage point of market share might not sound all that significant today, but it could well mean the browser wars are back on. One percent is all it takes.
...
With its immense market share, IE has an enormous effect on the ecosystem of the internet. Development is being slowed: differences in the way IE treats certain technical standards compared with the more modern systems, means that web designers must be continually aware of work-arounds and hacks to get things to work, and online security is seriously damaged. Screens full of pop-up adverts, automatically installing spyware, and unstoppable redirects to porn sites, are all due to problems with IE.
...
[So] why did Microsoft stop developing Internet Explorer? Why would a company so vocal about innovation cease work on perhaps the most used application in the world, and for nearly three years? The answer is not definitive, but the prevailing thinking points to the third aspect of the browser war: it is the beginning of an even larger, if deeply curious, battle for the domination of the entire computer industry.
...
However, what would happen if people's web browsers were capable of running complex applications, with code based on openly published specifications? Two things: first, the operating system would become irrelevant, so there would be no need to upgrade to the next version of Windows, and second, the playing field for everything else would be thus levelled. The majority of Microsoft's business, therefore, could have been threatened if the IE browser team had continued past 2001.

Hammersly goes on to make some points I've raised in Mediajunk before -- that Google's Gmail is an example of a web application that replaces the need for a local hard drive, among other things. There have been rumours, too, that Google is developing a complete operating system. Hardly true, but it is easy to see how Google can muscle in on Microsoft's territory, how the browser, if it was capable of richer functionality, could eventually replace the operating system.

Hammersly's point is that Microsoft may have recognised this threat before anyone else -- hence why they stopped developing the IE browser once they had won the browser wars. The first browser wars, that is. Could we soon have BW2?

Yahoo is teaming up with British Telecom to introduce an internet phone service that sits on top of Yahoo's Instant Messenger programme.

Yahoo IM is one of the three most popular messaging programmes (the others are AOL IM and ICQ). Messaging is hugely popular in the US, and catching on fast elsewhere. Like text/SMS messaging, it has spread from a largely teen user base.

The service will be launched in the UK, where messaging is not yet as prevalent as it is in the US, and will utilise VOIP (voice over internet protocol).

Yahoo News reports:

BT cited recent studies that say one in every 10 IM conversations end in a phone call. "BT is responding to this cultural change in how we communicate by making it simpler for people to use the various services," said Gavin Patterson, BT Group MD for Consumer Ventures.

BT said that from an IM dialogue box a user can send the other party an instant message, e-mail or engage in a voice conversation through the PC.

A call to another BT VoIP user's PC is free. A call from the computer to a landline or mobile phone carries the same tariff as BT's normal BT Together telephone service.

BT said the service is available to over 19 million UK consumers with a BT line, and the software will be made freely available.

Verisign's latest report on domain registration claims that 63 million different domain names are currently registered. That's roughly one for every 100 people in the world. This doesn't mean that one in every hundred actually owns a domain name -- even though certain reporters, such as Joe Best, writing for CNET, have erroneously interpreted the figures this way. Rather, a small number of people and businesses (domain squatters, spammers, affiliate-builders, etc.) have registered a bulk of the these domains. Verisign claims, nevertheless, that 64% of the registered domains are associated with active websites. I suspect that the definition of "active" is a very broad one, however, and that many of these sites may be "parked", or may contain the standard "purchase this domain" garb. Still, 63 million domains. Sheesh. I gotta get me some of that.

According to the BBC News website, China has set up a "censorship committee to monitor games," and has already banned a Swedish game called Hearts of Iron, which portrayed Manchuria, Tibet and Xinjiang as independent nations. "The committee is charged with banning content that 'could threaten national unity', said the state press. "'Online games with content threatening state security, damaging the nation's glory, disturbing social order and infringing on other's legitimate rights will also be prohibited,' said a Chinese Ministry of Culture statement carried by the official Xinhua news agency." While this seems like a typically extremist move by the Chinese, they do have a point when they say that the contents of computer games "are often related to sex and violence", and may even have a point when they say that such content could "adversely affect young people's mental health". Of course, social science has found it notoriously difficult to establish clear links between the consumption of certain types of media content and social behaviour (for example, a common counter-argument is that watching violent programmes reduces our desire to behave violently in real life). The governor of Washington state doesn't buy that argument, however. He recently signed a bill "that bans the sale of certain violent video games to minors". That is, video games that contain a specific type of violence: Tacoma's News Tribune reports that "House Bill 1009, which goes into effect in late July, will make it a civil violation to sell or rent to youths under age 17 video games that graphically depict violence against law enforcement officers. Violators can be fined up to $500."

With the current spate of internet-related paedophile cases, and the assumption of guilt that automatically shrouds anyone who's accused, in the media, of downloading child pornography, we should all be worried about the proliferation of malicious programmes such as browser "Hijackers". Get a hijacker on your computer and you might find that you are unwittingly being directed to -- or even downloading without your knowledge -- all sorts of "adult" and even illegal content. Wired news tells of the dangers posed by these programmes better than I can. My advice? I regularly use Spybot Search and Destroy and the excellent (albeit a little daunting for novice users) Hijack This to scan my system and remove any "scumware". You should too.

An article by Faisal Islam in yesterday's Observer, entitled Great moments for rivals of Gates, contained many thought-provoking insights into the future shape of the IT industry. I was struck by this assessment of Google's forthcoming Gmail service: "Rather than using a Windows desktop, everything - software, photographs, documents, music - could be based on a remote supercomputer and accessed through the web using efficient 'slim' mini-computers and souped-up mobile phones. 'This is what Larry Ellison at Oracle and Sun Microsystems have been banging on about, but haven't actually executed,' says one former Microsoft executive. 'They did not have the crucial killer application - search - but Google does.' At work, and increasingly at home, an information overload puts a premium on effective ways of filtering, indexing and quickly retrieving filed documents, photographs, videos and music. Software programmes matter, and have made Microsoft its billions. But the really important function for many people is navigation and access. So the search methods Google has developed, for mapping six billion web pages around the world, will become potentially critical within corporations, besides being seen as crucial for home use." Of course, Gmail also opens up all sorts of privacy concerns ... but many have predicted for some time that the future of computing lies with network storage. Google is making that future a reality.

The web has posed a dilemma for newspapers. Whether it's a good idea to be online is a question few of them now ask, but whether they should charge for content -- there's the rub. Readers pay for the print version, goes the argument, so why shouldn't they pay for the downloaded version? But the experience of reading from the screen isn't the same as that of reading from paper, goes the counter-argument. People prefer paper. The internet helps grow the brand and widen the audience -- ultimately increasing sales of the print version. Regardless, many major titles -- such as the Irish Times -- have become subscription-based. The UK's Guardian newspaper has held out the temptation to make online readers pay -- until now. At least, those who want an online version of the newspaper will have to pay. Those who simply want the text, won't. "Huh?" I hear you ask. Well, the Guardian is making exact digital replicas of its print format available for download, for a fee, as PDF files. The "regular" site will still be free, but those who want to recreate the experience of the original paper publication can download the PDFs and print them locally. In theory, you could even download the PDFs, then print and sell copies of the newspaper wherever you are. The only snags would be the quality (and one-sidedness) of the paper, the difficulty in putting the pages together -- and the small but significant fact that doing so would be illegal. You can demo the PDF version of the Guardian at http://digital.guardian.co.uk/demo/

Six Apart, the guys behind the popular blogging software Movable Type, have just created a new service in response to the growing problem of weblog comment spam, called TypeKey: "The basics about TypeKey: TypeKey is a free, open system providing a central identity that anyone can use to log in and post comments on blogs and other web sites. Why should I use TypeKey? TypeKey helps ensure that people who comment on a site have a verified identity, keeping conversations on track and helping to prevent abusive or offensive content (comment spam) from being posted. Sites that enable TypeKey have better accountability for the content that's being published. As a TypeKey user, you get your own free TypeKey Profile Page, displaying only the information you choose to share. Those who are interested in finding out more about the person behind the comments on a site can visit the identity page to see what information is publicly available. You can even publish a TypeKey Profile Page while remaining completely anonymous." I think this is a development worth watching, and might become an Orkut-like social networking tool. Who knows how it might evolve... ?

The Register reports that the “technology gender gap” has been bridged, at least in the US: “A survey of over 4,000 students found that men and women spend similar amounts of time playing computer games online, are equally likely to own a handheld game system and to send text messages on their phones. Net use is pervasive: 95 per cent of students are online, and 65 per cent connect via broadband.” While no barriers exist to prevent either sex accessing popular technologies, each has its techno-preferences. Guys are more likely to invest time and money in games consoles, while gals own more mobile phones.

Months after several US states legislated against email spam, now Utah is leading the way in outlawing spyware and adware. Spyware is a software programme that, without the user's knowledge, tracks his online behaviour, while Adware serves pop-up, pop-under or other unsolicited, unwanted forms of advertising at him while he browses the web. ZDnet reports that these and other "pests" have become the new target of legislators in three different states: "Utah apparently became the first state to pass a law regulating spyware and other advertising software, although the bill has yet to be signed by the governor. Lawmakers in Iowa and California also have introduced their own spyware control proposals in the past several weeks." Let's hope the trend spreads worldwide.

Imaging browsing through the pictures on a Canadian Missing Children website only to see a familiar face -- your own -- in a baby photo. This is what happened last year to a 17-year old Californian resident, who recognised his own face in a photo that had been taken 14 years earlier. The teen sought advice from his teacher, who helped him contact the police. They confirmed the authenticity of the website with the Canadian authorities. Giselle-Marie Goudreault, the boy's mother, had abducted him in 1989 after his father, a resident of Alberta, had won full custody rights. Goudreault, 45, has since been arrested at her home in the San Fernando Valley, and is being held without bail until Canadian authorities can extradite her on child abduction charges, according to various US and Canadian media reports (see Google News). Bizarre -- and tragic.

Forget domain names. Now you can sell your phone number for a fortune on eBay! Uh, providing that phone number has featured as the anthem-jingle of a major pop song. Fortunately, such is the case for the seller of the New York phone number 867-5309, which featured in the 1981 hit "Jenny" by Tommy Tutone. The bidding is currently up to US $80,700. Hmmm... let's see, that's over $11,000 a digit. Anyone feel like writing a song about + 353 91 704850? Be my guest.

Back in the late 1990s, the internet gold rush was well underway: domain names were being snapped up, with speculative buyers hoping to make millions in the re-sale of their dot com, dot org or dot net names. Precedent was in the buyers’ favour; domains were selling for hundreds of thosands, even millions of dollars. Business.com remains the most expensive domain purchase in history, selling in late 1999 for US $7.5m. I had personal experience of this frenzy when, in early 2000, I was involved in the decision to choose a web moniker for UK-based internet bank, Intelligent Finance. Since the bank was planning to use the word IF as a core feature of its print and TV advertising campaigns, I argued it should drop the clunky domain (www.intelligence-finance.net, I think) it had set aside for its launch, and opt instead for the short, simple www.if.com. The snag, of course, was that if.com was already taken. I admit I was stunned at the final figure (US $1m) Intelligent Finance paid -- a price that remains one of the record domain sales to date. Soon after that, the dot com bubble burst. The cottage industry of domain name broker and reseller sites such as greatdomains.com were suddenly filled with sellers rather than buyers; people couldn’t offload domain names quickly enough. Fast forward four years. As leading world economies -- and technology sectors in particular -- begin to recover, it seems that interest in domain names is finally picking up again. In recent weeks, there have been six-figure sums paid for no less than three dot com domains: men.com, woman.com and truck.com. This is not to suggest that all domains are suddenly going to lift in value, or that we are going to see a return to those heady, feverish days of the late 1990s. Most domains still sell for less than $30, and the broker and reseller businesses are tougher than ever – as Ron Jackson explains, in his excellent introductory article to the subject. “The fact is the domain ocean is filled with ravenous creatures who gobble up every good domain name long before they hit the deleted list you are looking at. These guys are the industry’s killer whales and tiger sharks. You are the minnow.” Sounds like the domain name industry is like any other -- it’s tough at the top. And it’s a hell of a crush at the bottom.

Well, of an eBay addict's son. A user of the somethingawful.com forum has posted pictures of his mother's junk-filled house, to illustrate how hooked she is on making unnecessary purchases via eBay. On the upside, he's not likely to be asked to tidy his room...

Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig has, for several years, condemned the ever-expanding definition of intellectual property in the US. Not only does Lessig condemn those multinationals for their greed in trying to "own" ideas, he argues that the pursuit of IP laws amounts to over-regulation, and could stifle creativity, particularly in the areas of software and the internet. In the February edition of Wired magazine, Thomas Goetz argues that companies and other nations who pay little heed to these "property" laws are already benefiting: "Researchers in Australia and India are sidestepping agriculture patents held by the likes of Monsanto and DuPont to develop competitive technologies and foods (such as a high-protein potato) that are, by design, open and unrestricted. In pharmaceuticals, India is skirting patents to create generic AIDS drugs that are orders of magnitude cheaper than those made by the transnational drug companies ... Media industries, meanwhile, are besieged by millions of MP3 traders and DVD bootleggers in open revolt against copyright protections. ... Last year, China began installing the open source operating system on 500,000 computers, with perhaps 200 million more machines on the way. ... Taken together, these developments demonstrate how an alternative culture is arising in our midst - or rather, outside it. They reflect the gulf between IP owners, with their rigid sense of controls, and those who would seek to use that intellectual property with all the flexibility afforded by technology -- the Internet, in particular. And that's not just a difference of opinion, it's a technological generation gap." Empires are about to crumble, but those who get it will succeed.

When advising individuals on how to manage their online identities, I usually start with domain names. (For example, I own several domains related to my name, such as michaelheraghty.com and heraghty.net.) However, if your name is Michael Rowe, this may not be such a good idea -- particularly when there are paranoid, pedantic legal departments of certain multinationals out there.

I mentioned yesterday that not all teenage bloggers are geeks. Well, one of the “surprising” findings of the first world internet report is that the average web user does not conform to the stereotype of being anti-social. Far from it: internet users are perhaps more social than those “addicted” to other media. The internet is a many-to-many communications medium, where popular content emerges from the bottom up, and converstaions are truly weblike. Most other media, in contrast, conform to the one-to-many -- or “broadcast” -- model, whereby viewers are passive consumers of infotainment, typically produced by large corporate organisations. Television was traditionally considered an entirely passive medium until communications theorists argued, in the last couple of decades, that viewers do not simply consume television output -- they engage with it, and interpret stories and messages in their own ways. However, engaging with a television programme is a far cry from interacting with other humans. In this sense, TV still is very much an anti-social activity. Couch potatoes are still the epitome of social passivity. Internet users may be known for their tendency to rant, but a rant posted to a site that allows comments becomes a dialogue. And let's not forget that advertisers find the internet much harder to infiltrate. I take heart, then, in the study’s findings that the internet is shaving at least five hours off television viewing among its frequent users -- who, it turns out, also like to read: “The typical internet user is an avid reader of books and spends more time engaged in social activities than the non-user, it says. And, television viewing is down among some internet users by as much as five hours per week compared with Net abstainers.” (CNN) Of course, too much internet, like too much television, isn’t a good thing. I look forward to the day when the web is decoupled from the current PC and monitor arrangement. Until then, it's neck exercises and eye lubricant for me, groan.

Emily Nussbaum has written a lengthy, insightful article about the phenomenon of teenage blogging -- one of the largest sectors of the blogosphere. I was surprised to learn, among other things, that blogging is not confined to geeks, and that cliquishness exists within the teenage blogging community: "Blogging is a replication of real life: each pool of blogs is its own ecosystem, with only occasional links to other worlds. As I surfed from site to site, it became apparent that as much as journals can break stereotypes, some patterns are crushingly predictable: the cheerleaders post screen grabs of the Fox TV show ''The O.C.''; kids who identify with ''ghetto'' culture use hip-hop slang; the geeks gush over Japanese anime. And while there are exceptions, many journal writers exhibit a surprising lack of curiosity about the journals of true strangers. They're too busy writing posts to browse." If anybody thinks that weblogging is a fad (some people still think the *internet* is a fad!), just wait until this generation of high-school bloggers reaches the workplace. Given the way these kids wholeheartedly embrace the medium, blogging -- and the web -- are sure to grow in new and exciting ways.

Yahoo is toying with an RSS system on its site, which will allow it to display headlines from weblogs and news sites, customisable by the reader. RSS -- which stands for Rich Site Summary -- is a way of using XML to create a summary version of websites. The feature is particularly useful for news sites, weblogs, and other sites that are regularly updated. The site summary usually consists of a headline, author's name and opening sentence -- though individual site owners can decide how they wish to set up their summaries. Summaries can then be exported, or “syndicated”, to other websites as “feeds”. While I provide an RSS version of Mediajunk, I’m not convinced that RSS has many useful applications for the average web user. For example, I couldn’t be bothered going to a site such as bloglines (even though I like the way it displays Mediajunk’s feed) and choosing which site headlines to subscribe to. I’d have to go and read through all the blogs I’m not familiar with first, which sounds like hard work -- for a reward that isn't particularly enticing. For now, I’m happy to check in on blogs I’ve bookmarked from time to time, and to stumble upon others if and when I find them through Google, or they are mentioned in the various blogosphere filters (see bottom of right-side column). In fact, blogosphere filters are the best use of RSS I've yet encountered. If there is to be a new web trend involving RSS, it will probably come from the bottom up. Web trends tend to percolate from humble beginnings; it’s much harder to impose a new behaviour (like signing up to receive blog headlines) from the top town. Which is probably why Yahoo! is being non-committal on the subject…