Category Archives: Science & Technology

Ringtone Scams and PPC Fraud – why so little outrage?

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One of my most read and commented blog posts relates to Ringtone Scams, a scandalous scourge of the internet, with collusion of most of the major phone companies. I’m confident these ringtone scams will soon be making more mainstream headlines.

Along with Pay Per Click fraud, ringtone scams, unlike some other online frauds and deceptions like phishing, have not quite made the big radar screens because they are harder to understand than traditional deceptive business practices such as bait and switch at a store or salespeople lying. In those “storefront” cases you can often confront the scamming salesperson or store directly, a powerful tool lacking in the online world.

What frustrates me is the level of tolerance for these practices, especially in the online community. Very questionable in scope and scale was the recent slap on the wrist of Google for failing to catch what appears to be massive PPC fraud – perhaps as much as a billion dollars per year. Contrary to the claims of all the PPC players much of the fraud could be eliminated with more careful screening and identification of contracted parties in the online transaction. This would eat into profits and therefore has been a low priority, but when as much as 25% of online advertising revenue may be obtained through fraud it’s time to stop expecting advertisers, often unwitting ones, to paying the price. This means the PPC outlets, especially Google who reaps the lions share of PPC profit (and therefore PPC ill gotten gains), should be paying a LOT more attention.

Google Books = Good Google. Adding UC Books = Great!

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What I really like about Tim O’Reilly is that he’s almost always …. right.   More importantly he does a fine job of seeing where things are going in our increasingly frantic and complex digital maelstrom.

As a publisher Tim’s insights into the Google scanning controversies are very relevant and over at his blog he’s making a lot of great points about why Google should be cut loose to spread the digital word.

O’Reilly suggests that “Google’s initiative is innovative, useful, and a real boost to an industry that has yet to make significant headway with electronic books….”

Right on O’Reilly.

Global Challenges vs Global Warming. An Inconvenient Truth * * *

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I finally got to see “An Inconvenient Truth” On the upside I think Al Gore comes off like the fine, sincere, bright fellow he is.    A movie like this around election 2000 would have given Florida, and the Presidency, to Al Gore.   The film’s creative use of graphics and video is also very impressive.  This is educational media used in compelling fashion and all presenters should take note of this approach which cleverly blends animation, video, and lecture.

Unfortunately the fundamental premise of this film – that global catastrophe is looming just around the corner – is misguided and not supported by the science Gore claims he holds so dear.   As the film suggests, global warming is well established and it has become clear that much of that warming is a result of human processes (anthropogenic warming).   However, the film strongly implies that castastrophic sea level rises and weather conditions are “likely” when science says only that they are “possible”.   Many things are possible and it’s very foolish to allocate resources without addressing “how likely is this to happen?”.

The science Gore abuses to support the wild claims comes mostly from IPCC reports which actually suggest that sea levels will probably rise at most a few feet *over the next century*.  The best estimates suggest that global climate change is not creating catastrophic sea level rises and killer storms.

What is certain is that we have many current global catastrophes.  They are the hunger, disease, and bad water supplies that plague hundreds of millions of people on earth right now, killing tens of thousands of people *daily*.

First let’s solve those problems, which are much cheaper and easier to solve than global warming and have much clearer and immediate positive benefits.

Clear thinking people should work towards prioritizing issues of global concern and then solving as many of those significant global concerns as possible given the constraints of money, politics, and human ignorance.  Drive less?  Sure.   Support wise resource use?  Of course.   We should apply common sense principles to all problems and wiser use of resources is important.   It’s just not the world’s most pressing problem.  Not by a long shot.

Rather than simply jump on another alarmist bandwagon of the many that litter the historical landscape I’d hope folks will ask themselves “If I could allocate a billion dollars to solving some global problems, what would be the best use of that money?”

Need a hint? It’s been done here:  Copenhagen Consensus 

Myspace vs Congress

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Myspace and other social networking sites won’t be accessible from schools or libraries as a result of  congressional legislation passed a few days ago.   The Myspace ban was a fairly predictable type of response from congress, reflecting increasing concerns by adults who basically had no idea what their children were doing online.

The Myspace ban is very unlikely to have much of an effect on anything since kids, and the predators the bill is supposed to help thwart – probably were not using these access venues very much.   Hopefully the news about this will get some parents to pay closer attention to their children’s online activities, which in general should be supervised far more than they are by all but a few parents.

As a parent I’m more supportive of restrictions and content filtering than most other internet folks, but I think the entire debate is missing a key point regarding a dramatic change in social norms.

I’d suggest that changes in social norms are something like those that happened in the USA in the 1960’s in both scope and substance, but that these changes in morality, personal identity, and social responsibility are “going global” thanks to online activities, online communities, and the explosive cross-cultural connectivity facilitated by 24/7 broadband access and online awareness.

Silly laws like this will hardly put the online Pandoras back in their boxes.   However it will also be funny to hear free speech zealots whining about government intervention which will never have a chance of making truly significant changes.

The ships of sweeping social change sailed long ago and they are powered by exploding global online communities.   Our best course is to look forward to the uncharted waters.

Gadgets – the desktop revolution begins

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One of the best sessions at Mashup Camp 2  was Adam Sah’s “Google Gadgets” which outlined how rapidly gadgets are sweeping onto the desktop.   These were formerly called Google Widgets but Adam told me they have been renamed to avoid confusion.  Yahoo “confabulator” concept has a nice ring….but….perhaps some term standardization is called for here.    Apple can keep the widget idea because… they are Apple.
Gadgets are sweeping onto the desktop.    At MIX06 the MS Live team was also very bullish on the concept and has been developing a desktop and OS environment that will rely heavily on people populating their desktop with gadgets.     Although many of these are “whimsical” in nature, the number of functional gadgets is growing very fast.  I think this is the coming “battleground” – or at least a coming very fertile ground – for those vying for eyeballs.    In the meantime it’s a great way to customize the desktop easily.

Portland Airport PDX has free WIFI

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Hey California – Oregon’s got it’s act together, so get with the free Airport WIFI program!       Google will pay for it, right?   I’m at PDX in Portland enjoying another free wifi airport.   PDX correctly lists local tourism and travel resources at the login page which is something we really need to do at Medford.  Those listings can then pay for the fees needed to run the free WIFI.   Advertising continues to fuel internet innovation.

Have you thanked an advertiser today?

MFR Medford Airport has Free WIFI.

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Here I am waiting for the PDX flight and thanks to some clever visionary I’ve got a good wireless connection that is …. free.     Free wireless airports = pure goodness.  $9.95  wireless Airports = bad badness.

I guess I should thank *myself* and SOVA since we pushed so hard for this when we installed the byways and travel touch kiosk travel info system here a few years ago, but mostly I credit the MFR Airport’s great directory Bern for seeing the need and benefits, and Hunter Communications for setting up the system.

Mashup Camp 2 – Day 1 – wait, there’s more!

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The excellent unconference format makes the entire conference something of a networking session.  Still,  it’s great to have a few beers with folks who make the internet … so darn interesting.

I always enjoy talking with the brilliant Adam Sah who brings plenty of Google gadget enthusiasm to the mashup mix and I’m sure will have some great stuff to show us tomorrow during the last session. Also really enjoyed meeting mashup and housingmaps.com  legend Paul Rademacher  (whoa – not to be confused with this Paul Rademacher, who is dead).

Paul’s early mashup of Craigslist and Google maps (before there was a maps API no less!)  helped usher in the notion that mashups are a very useful, great way to mix data in innovative ways.   Had a great chance to talk about some travel mashing ideas with Adam and Paul.   There’s a hurricane of real time road data at the transportation departments but it’s non-trivial to pull even a fraction of that in effectively.   Mashups to the rescue?  Maybe.

Also got to meet the famous ex-googler blogger Mark Jen who was fired by Google for … blogging!    He works over at Plaxo now where he won’t get fired because … he wrote the blogging policy!  Very nice and sharp guy.