A few months back we noticed a trend. Whenever we heard fear mongering reports about the internet running out of capacity, they almost always came from folks who weren't technologists. Instead, they tended to be telco business folks, lobbyists or politicians. When it came to actual technology people who had real experience and real data concerning what was happening on the network, we would see over and over and over and over again that the "threat" of a bandwidth crunch is pretty much a myth. We're not running out of bandwidth, and the ongoing upgrades to the network should be able to handle whatever growth comes along. There's no reason to panic... yet, that's not the message that the telcos want you to hear. After all, it's in their interest to work up fears of internet capacity problems so that politicians will pass legislation providing them with subsidies or other unnecessary benefits.

So, when Broadband Reports pointed us to an op-ed piece in the Boston Globe by a Harvard professor talking about the coming bandwidth crunch and the need to switch to metered pricing (another telco favorite, after they were too clueless to accurately predict that unmetered pricing would lead to more usage), it wasn't difficult to guess that she didn't have a technology background. Instead, it appears her background is entirely in public policy. There's certainly nothing wrong with folks looking at this issue from a public policy position (in fact, it's important). But, before they claim that the internet is running into trouble, shouldn't they look at what those who actually have the data have to say about the matter?

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Unknownuser2007 has posted a great little HOWTO on Instructables -- a "senior remote" for a TV with only five buttons. I'd love one of these, but I'd also add a Play/Pause button (a few years ago I would have needed "mute" -- but with everything coming through a PVR, pause works even better when the phone rings).

My mom was born in 1931. She is from the generation of radio and WWII. Her eyesight is failing and she isn't good with anything electronic. TV remotes confuse her. This mod came to me after she called me one day, claiming her TV remote stopped working. It turns out, she inadvertently hit the button that activated the VCR functions. She didn't know or couldn't see the button to reactivate the TV functions. So I decided to "dumb" down the remote to only three functions: On/Off, Channel and Volume.

Link (via Wonderland)

Flickr user Tikaro made this needlepoint semacode QR code (a kind of two-dimensional barcode) -- it scans to the Semapedia URL for "pillow". Link (via Wonderland)

(Image: Downsized crop from P1060816.JPG, appearing in tikaro's Flickr stream, used here for commentary, under the aegis of fair use)

Logo Lounge has a good piece on logo trends from 2007:

Charlie the Tuna and the Jolly Green Giant, these are not. Advertising characters have danced the line between logos and mascot for years. Even the Cingular Jack was a bit of a hybrid with a personality that animation played out beyond the printed page. Urban vinyl is a subculture that is starting to cross over into logo design. These small vinyl characters are ubiquitous shelf clutter, enshrined in nearly every designerís desk collection.

First made popular in Hong Kong by Michael Lau in the 90's, these imaginative imps have become highly collectable and have entire stores, KidRobot and magazines, Super 7, dedicated to their notoriety. The art of Tim Biskup may start on canvas but it soon translates to designer vinyl characters. Usually they can be as mundane as fire breathers to as outlandish as slimy cyclops ghost aliens. Though not a serious influence on Fortune 500 identities, urban vinyl has its place in pop culture, and that has translated to two-dimensional applications in logo design.

Link (via Kottke)

Buoyed by the news that three of the four labels are now making music available as DRM-free MP3s, Wired's digital music columnist Eliot Van Buskirk has resigned from all the DRM-based subscription services he had subscribed to: Yahoo, Napster and Rhapsody. In a fascinating piece, he recounts the process of resigning from each one. Yahoo only took one minute, but check out the rigmarole Napster puts you through!

Napster
What a pain. There's no way to cancel online, so I called the cancellation number (800.839.4210) and waited on hold for about 20 minutes listening to messages like "Did you know that your Napster subscription lets you access over 5 million tracks? Please hold, and a customer service representative will be with you shortly."

A woman came on the line and asked me a bunch of questions (Was this my first call? Could I confirm my email? Is there a phone number on which she could call me back in case something goes wrong with the call? Can I hold again?). Granted, this is two days after Christmas, but still, I wasn't too happy at how long this was taking.

When she took me off hold again, I told her I wanted to cancel because 2007 was the year 3 of the major labels started selling music without DRM. Back on hold.

She came back -- presumably after consulting a manager or the internet to find out what DRM is -- and then responded, "I don't understand, because all of our music contains DRM." Back on hold. This time, I told her I wanted to cancel because the files were DRMed, and she finally canceled my subscription.

Total time for cancellation: 30 minutes and 32 seconds

(Emphasis mine) Link

mudimba writes "Apple and Twentieth Century Fox are about to announce a deal that will allow users to rent Fox movies over iTunes. The deal will allow people to download movies that will only play for a limited amount of time. 'Pali Research analyst Stacey Widlitz said the deal follows a trend of Hollywood studios selling directly to consumers and cutting out the middleman. "It's just a sign the studios feel ... that another distribution channel is where they are choosing to go, and incrementally it hurts Blockbuster and Netflix," Widlitz said.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Wired News contracted with P2P survey company BigChampagne to pull together a series of top-ten charts for P2P music, movies, TV and artists. Interestingly, these diverge in some important ways from the box-office charts . For example, box-office-smashing turds like Spider-Man 3 didn't even crack the top ten -- neither did Shrek 3; and Transformers, ranked third at the box office, slipped to seven on the P2P chart.

Top Movies of 2007

1. Resident Evil: Extinction
2. Pirates of The Caribbean: At World's End
3. I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry
4. Ratatouille
5. Superbad
6. Beowulf
7. Transformers
8. American Gangster
9. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
10. Stardust

Link

Ape Lad (nickname: Adam Koford) is selling this cute Pip hoodie for just $27.16. Link

ericatcw brings us a Computerworld article about how businesses are still hesitant to switch to Google Apps as an alternative to Microsoft Office. While a Google spokesman claims "millions of active users", only "several thousand organizations" have paid for the Premier service, which was launched earlier this year. From Computerworld: "'If we deploy it correctly, Google Docs can replace some [of] our Office apps -- but not all of them,' said Les Sease, IT director of Prudential Carolina Real Estate in North Charleston, South Carolina. Sease would like to switch everyone over completely to Google Apps. But first he would like to see better synchronization between Google Apps and mobile devices, shared online file storage similar to that of Apple Inc.'s .Mac, as well as a simple desktop publishing tool similar to Microsoft Publisher."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A few weeks ago, the USPTO revealed a patent application from Apple that's getting some attention in the press from folks like Forbes and InformationWeek. Those publications are using the app to guess at what Apple has in mind for future innovations on its mobile devices, as the patent application is for using a mobile device to place a shopping order at a store, and then being alerted to when it's ready. The real question, though, should be why Apple could possibly deserve a monopoly on this idea? I remember four or five years ago, some folks pitching me on a very similar idea. It had been inspired by the plastic light-up pucks that some restaurants give you when you're waiting for a free table. Many of those are based on old pager networks, so it doesn't take a rocket scientist to try to update that concept for the mobile age, and realize that you could do the same sort of alerting via someone's mobile phone. From there, it was about a five minute conversation before it became obvious that since this was a two way system, you could easily add ordering functionality for take-out, or put a "reservation" in remotely before getting to the restaurant. As far as I know, these guys never moved forward with the business plan, but it's hard to see why, years later, Apple suddenly deserves a monopoly on the concept. However, it does show, once again, that a lack of official "prior art" shouldn't automatically be reason to grant a patent. Just because something hasn't yet been done commercially doesn't mean that it's not a fairly obvious idea to people in the space. Hopefully, the USPTO recognizes that and rejects the patent application, but given what gets approved these days, that doesn't seem likely.

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greg65535 writes "Today Microsoft launched a blog about the internals of their IT security research and patch development process. There are already some posts that you will not find in the official security bulletins or KB articles. One of the posts says, 'We periodically identify workarounds or mitigations like this that we can't use for official guidance because they're either too nuanced or have some exception cases. When we discover something potentially useful but are uncomfortable listing it in the bulletin, we'll do our best to describe it here in this blog.' It looks like Microsoft is making an effort to become more 'open' in the area of security research and communication."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A few weeks ago we noted that a company named Guge was suing Google in China, claiming that Google ripped off its trademarked name by using the name Guge in that country. The problem? The company Guge only named itself that a few days after Google announced plans to use the name Guge in China. That seemed like a pretty blatant moneygrab, and thankfully, the Chinese courts have agreed, tossing out the lawsuit and allowing Google to continue to use the name.

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Chris Null got some cheap Chinese toy "spy" pens for Christmas, and the text on the packages is funny. Link

SirLurksAlot sends us to Ars Technica for an article about the Warner Music Group's decision to allow DRM-free music downloads through Amazon. This reversal of Warner's former position has been underway for some time, and it boosts the number of DRM-free songs available from Amazon to 2.9 million. Quoting: "Warner's announcement says nothing about offering its content through other services such as iTunes, and represents the music industry's attempt to make life a bit more difficult for Apple after all the years in which the company held the keys to music's digital kingdom.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A humanoid octupus gives a lap dance to a bear in this TV commercial for Orangina soda. It's funny, but I prefer Orange Crush myself. Link (Via VSL)

Earlier this year, we wrote about how San Francisco Chronicle columnist David Lazarus had a ridiculous set of proposals for "saving" the newspaper industry. He wanted all newspapers to collude together and agree to stop putting content online for free and, in addition, to sue anyone who linked to the newspaper sites without paying a licensing fee. To appease him, we refused to even link to his column. Since then, the Chronicle has parted ways with Lazarus, who has made his way south to the LA Times, where he's basically written the same column (yeah, this time we'll link -- let's see if he sues). His argument is basically: "I have no idea what a good business model for the industry is, so why not use my really, really bad one!" He uses some high school students as a device in the column, basically mocking them for not wanting to pay for news online. He goes on to complain that "blogs" will somehow destroy newspapers by publishing so much junk that it "will be too blurry to discern" good journalism from junk. This is a common line from folks who think that if it's in a newspaper, it must be "good journalism" and if it's on a blog, it must be junk. There are so many examples of why that's wrong, it's not even worth pointing out how silly a statement that is (and the fact that it's published in a newspaper pretty much disproves the point anyway). There is plenty of good journalism found in both newspapers and on blogs -- just as there is plenty of junk found on both. And saying that people can't tell the difference is suggesting that your audience is really dumb. Next thing you know, Lazarus will sign up in support of the idea that bloggers should be credentialed.

But the bigger point is that Lazarus insists that since digital advertising revenue remains a small percentage of newspaper revenue, it means that it can't support a newsroom. This is clueless on a number of different points. First, it's using a snapshot view of a very dynamic world. Digital revenues are growing at a rapid clip, as there are both more readers and more advertisers buying online ads. Compare that to the pace (and direction) of growth for traditional newspaper revenue... and suddenly the digital realm doesn't look so bad. Second, it assumes (incorrectly) that online ads are the sole source of revenue. As plenty of other newspapers are discovering, if you stop focusing so much on being "newspapers" and start realizing that what you deliver needs to change as the market has changed, you'll find that there are plenty of ways to afford to pay journalists -- and in some cases, they'll even be able to make significantly more than before. Of course, you'd expect that sort of analysis not to come from some junk blog, but from a "real" journalist. So why is it the other way?

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Roland Piquepaille writes "European astronomers have for the first time ever been able to detect and monitor the visible light that is scattered in the atmosphere of an exoplanet. Designated HD 189733b, also known as a 'hot Jupiter,' orbits a star slightly cooler and less massive than the Sun about 60 light-years from Earth. According to a Zurich news release, 'Polarization technique focuses limelight,' the researchers used 'techniques similar to how Polaroid sunglasses filter away reflected sunlight to reduce glare. They also directly traced the orbit of the planet, a feat of visualization not possible using indirect methods.' The team thinks that their findings are opening new opportunities for exploring physical conditions on exoplanets."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Lucas123 writes "IDC just released its predictions for 2008 with regards to data storage trends. Its research shows, among other things, a greater adoption of online backup and archiving services, the 'prevalent' use of full-disk encryption in the data center, and mainstream adoption of solid-state disk drives due to falling prices. From the story: 'There are very simple situations and application scenarios where solid-state disks will be worth the risk. It does promise some great potential benefit in terms of I/O ... [and] solid state will make a significant impact on reducing heat from spindle usage in server blade deployments and to boost functionality in mobile devices.' According to IDC, storage capacity is exploding at a rate of almost 60% per year."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.