ISP: Net Neutrality, Legislation and the Food Chain

I’ve previously written about my thoughts about gripes that ISPs might have to enforce legislation to show that users aren’t downloading illegal content. I had intended to follow up with more thoughts on the legislative threats to firms that make their bread on the net. However, I’m growing tired of ISPs crying wolf in the press. Most recently, the news that Internet Service Providers want to get in on the advertising game with Phorm. Merely a service say the ISPs – to give users more relevant ads, yeah right say others.

It has also came to light that a number of Service Providers are upset with the BBC and the extra traffic that the BBC’s iPlayer is bringing. I found this amusing as in the US, ISPs have to pay ESPN a fee so that the ISP’s customers can access their ESPN360 service. UK ISPs shouldn’t be bitching about how the BBC is costing them money due to bandwidth or trying to kick-off a debate about net-neutrality; they should be thanking the BBC for not charging them a fee to access premium content.

Internet Service Providers forget their place in the food chain; you’re about “the tubes” and doing it in such a way that doesn’t invade our privacy. The reason that I pay for my internet connection is that I want to get some content, the reason I have broadband is because I want it quickly and without any new adverts “injected”.

One more thing, Internet Service Providers should not jump into bed with a company that has developed root kits in the past… it doesn’t inspire confidence that privacy will be respected.

UK ISP Legislation, just the beginning?

The BBC are reporting that the UK Government are considering proposals that would see people who download pirated material losing their internet connection. This follows on the heels of proposals by the Australian and French Governments that will affect ISPs in their country.

It is clear, that western governments are taking the issue of piracy seriously but the bigger challenge will be convincing people that piracy is wrong. While campaigns by the movie and music industry has an impact, nothing beats a clear law and if implemented correctly these proposals would have the desired impact.

ISPs have generally been able to avoid legislative concerns; although Demon internet were sued successfully for hosting defamatory content back in the 90s. Some industry’s are more adept to keeping abreast of legaslative changes, such as financial services. In general it stiffles inovation, it raises the bar of entry and it increases the cost of “staying in the game”.

Putting the impact of the proposals aside; this is the beginning of a trend that all technology firms must prepare for. Industry’s that become more regulated become better at working the system and ensure they have their voice heard when legislation is drawn up.

This is something that the industry in Europe has generally failed to accomplish so far. Lobbying has been left to privacy groups and it’s resulted in legislation that doesn’t go far enough in enabling innovation in Europe.

Granted some of the big boys are on the case. But the industry as a whole needs to be better prepared for the coming storm.

Update: Techcrunch have further coverage here and here.

Better Rocketboom in Google Reader

For those of you not familiar with Rocketboom - it’s worth checking out.

One source of annoyance is that none of the RSS feeds consistently present the content embedded in Google Reader. Clicking “Open in New Tab” in your browser of choice is so 2006.

However, help is at hand as the folks at Rocketboom use YouTube as one of their distribution channels. YouTube allows you to create custom RSS feeds by user or tag. The feed http://www.youtube.com/rss/user/rocketboom/videos.rss presents a superior Google Reader experience.

The same trick can be applied to other videoblogs, however you’re mileage might vary as not every show updates their YouTube feed on a regular basis. For example Ask A Ninja are a few shows behind on YouTube.

Google Rocks

Google have released a Mobile product called “Sync” to allow users to “Synchronize your BlackBerry® calendar with your Google calendar.” It’s Over-The-Air (OTA) too, which is the only way to go with syncing now. Reading on the forums, some users are having a few issues but it works for me.  I’m going to give Google Calendar with “Sync” a spin and we’ll see how it plays out.

I’ve written before about the pain of being a mobile user when I investigated Plaxo. Google seem to be committed to making an effort in this area, just look at all the applications they have and their efforts with android.

Just like Facebook; it is too easy to forget just how good a job Google is doing because the expectations are so high. Bravo Google!

A Frame Changer?

I remember being introduced to the concept of framing by a friend a couple of years ago when discussing the US presidential elections of 2004.

The New York Times depicted similar intensity among Republicans:

In one recent memo, titled ‘The 14 Words Never to Use,’ [Frank] Luntz urged conservatives to restrict themselves to phrases from what he calls … the ‘New American Lexicon.’ Thus, a smart Republican, in Luntz’s view, never advocates ‘drilling for oil’; he prefers ‘exploring for energy.’ He should never criticize the ‘government,’ which cleans our streets and pays our firemen; he should attack ‘Washington,’ with its ceaseless thirst for taxes and regulations. ‘We should never use the word outsourcing,’ Luntz wrote, ‘because we will then be asked to defend or end the practice of allowing companies to ship American jobs overseas.’

I hadn’t been planning to write anything about OpenSocial and facebook. But as fate would have it, two of my regular podcast listens touched on the subject of developing for facebook. Having the concepts explained again in a manner that assumed no prior knowledge was refreshing and after a period of reflection, I thought I’d give my johnny come lately views.

It is easy to forget just how far social networking has come in the past year, it’s easy to forget that MySpace were tired of companies piggybacking off them, it’s easy to forget that no one had a platform that developers could use to integrate their applications into a network less than a year ago.

It was facebook that changed the game, but it is OpenSocial that is changing  the frame.

In the blogosphere, it’s been argued that OpenSocial is a facebook killer, that facebook will be forced to join OpenSocial, that developers will desert facebook based on numbers.
I think users might need a bit more convincing. In social networking, users are king and their network is facebook’s castle.

Beer and Nappies

Many have warned about the power of supermarkets, in particular citing market basket analysis and the urban legend regarding beer and nappies. All joking aside, Tesco (Britain’s largest retailer) is getting very good at mining for gold in their data, Orwellian almost. My Wife and I use our club card at every opportunity – it’s worth a penny for every pound at Tesco or up to four pence if you use it on special offers.

As I paid for a small number of groceries the till printed out an extra voucher for me. Previously, I’ve been handed vouchers for extra points when buying bread or milk by a friendly cashier. I didn’t really think much of it. But this voucher was different, this time it struck me that Tesco are mining information about me.

The voucher offered me 150 points (£1.50 -> £6.00) if we purchase a £10 Top-Up for my Wife’s pay as you go mobile phone. Back-story: my Wife used to get her Vodafone top-up vouchers from Tesco before an unfortunate incident where the self serve machine didn’t print out her voucher and the store refused a refund. Since then, we’ve always made a point of getting them from somewhere else.

From a system’s perspective, Tesco obviously know that we’ve spent a fair amount of money on vouchers for Vodafone network in the past and that we’ve bought at a certain rate. We’ve stopped buying it at Tesco and they’ve worked out how much it’s worth to them to get our custom back once with the hope that we’ll stay. This voucher carries more to us than most of you reading. You’ve probably got a contract phone, or you live outside the UK or you use a different network. Don’t worry though, Tesco probably have a promotion relevant to you ready for the next time you checkout.

Battle of the StartUpWeekends…

So Birmingham, Alabama and Atlanta duked it out in the battle of StartUpWeekends… well not really. First, Birimingham isn’t affiliated with StartUpWeekend and in reality both sets of participants were focused on building a startup and taking a whole lot away from their experiences.

I’ve not had the time to follow both groups closely – I’ve had a poke at both applications and my first impressions are that Birimingham’s site is a bit rough around the edges. I’m a little unclear on the financial side of things, but clearly there is an audience that perhaps isn’t being catered too.

I don’t think I fully grasp Skribit – mainly because in my humble opinion the problem doesn’t exist. It does look very polished though.

Reading the Birmingham blog and the code for equity debate, I have a greater appreciation of where Andrew Hyde is coming from, weekends do need standards and for me Code for No equity isn’t where I’d like it to be. But, it’s Birmingham’s weekend so it is their choice and everybody seems to have got a lot out of it.

As founding principles I believe most of the Founders Bill of Rights are great. As I previously blogged, I don’t like the fact that StartUpWeekend is a company and while it’s clear and transparent, I don’t like the fact Andrew takes 5% of the company founded over the weekend.

I found it interesting that both Mike Arrington of TechCrunch and David Cohen of TechStars have focused on the community of StartUpWeekend. But I’m confused? This is a company, but it is a community? I’ve already shared my thoughts on this, but ultimately they don’t really matter… Most of the participants at these weekends seem to come away with a lot from the experience, it’s clearer to me that many see that as being the real value of the weekend.

If you book them, they will come…

- Who are you?
- I’m Jim Morrison.
(Wayne’s World 2)

I was going to write a long post about my thoughts on Google’s Open Social anouncement. But I thought this article by Anne Zelenka from GigaOM hit the spot.

StartUpWeekend.com

I absolutely love the idea of StartUpWeekend and I followed the first event’s blog very closely. My interest went as far as contacting Andrew Hyde; the man behind StartUpWeekend about organising something in the UK. I never took it any further than that.

Mark Butcher of TechCrunch UK, has a well researched write up about how StartUpWeekend has progressed since then. It’s well worth a read.  After reading the article and parts of the blogosphere (see article for lots of links) I thought I’d throw in my 2p on the subject.

There is an interesting paradox here: it strikes me that the founders (the participants at each event) are expected to give their best ideas for the other founders to judge, select and to eventually build. Yet, StartUpWeekend is Andrew’s baby – from what I can tell he’s not taking undue credit for any of the companies founded. But I get the impression that the tension is down to the ownership of the weekend. I think the community expects Andrew to explicitly give his idea to the StartUpWeekend community at large.

Now, Andrew might feel that he’s already done this, and I concede I might not have read enough about it. Reading between the lines it seems to me that there is an expectation there that comes from BarCamp. It’s what the idea needs to spread further.

Make Your Excel Area Charts Beautiful!

Excel is one of my favorite applications. So I was a little disappointed when Excel didn’t quite behave as I had expected when I created an Excel Area Chart.

Step One

Here is some sample data that I’ve loaded up in Excel to illustrate the point.

Step Two

Select the Chart Wizard and pick any of the Area Charts. For this example I’ve picked a 100% Stacked Area Chart.

Step Three

We can see already from the preview that the Area Chart shows a “drop off” from 2007 to 2008. That’s not quite what I had expected.

Step Four

Note the X-Axis setting – we’ll revisit this shortly.

Step Five

We need to change the X-Axis to a date and insert a duplicate entry for the last bits of data.

Step Six

By applying a custom format to the range of cells, we’ve changed the data back to the original four digit year. However, Excel clearly understands the data it’s working with.

Step Seven

We now need to go back and edit some of the Chart Options. Notice in the screenshot below the duplicate entry is shown.

Step Eight

By changing the X-Axis to time-scale that ugly drop-off is removed.

Step Nine

Now admire the finished product – sans ugly drop off