Monthly Archives: January 2006
Google in China
So it has happened. Google has caved in. It has agreed to actively censor a new Chinese-language search service that will be housed on computer servers inside the PRC.
Obviously this contradicts its stated desire to make information freely available to everybody on the planet, and it contradicts its mission statement: "don’t be evil." As Mike Langberg at the San Jose Mercury News puts it: their revised motto should now read "don’t be evil more than necessary."
Best Law Money Can Buy: Sensenbrenner & Conyers
Ed Felten writes about his attempt to find out about the VEIL content protect technology specified in the Sensenbrenner/Conyers bill that would mandate that electronic devices plug the “analog hole.” (The analog hole is the fact that analog playback can be converted into digits. E.g., point a digital camcorder at a movie screen. Or, play a DRM’ed mp3 on your computer and use digital recording software to intercept the analog signal on its way to your speakers.
Obviously, these matters are vital to Wisconsin and Michigan constituents.
The World’s Oldest CEO?
Jack Weil, founder and CEO of Denver-based Rockmount Ranch Wear, turns up for work every morning just as he has done since 1946. At 104 years old, he’s not planning to go anywhere else because “what else am I supposed to do all day?”.
Ford’s New Way
I sat there listening to the Ford Motor Company press conference Monday morning – as first Bill Ford, Jim Padilla and then Mark Fields outlined the “Way Forward,” confirming the elimination of up to 30,000 jobs and the closings of 14 manufacturing facilities over the next several years, while basically admitting that the company was culturally bankrupt, bureaucratically paralyzed, and woefully and relentlessly clueless about how to function in the modern automotive world – and the first thought that came to my mind is that it’s a flat-out miracle this iconic American company has managed to survive this long.
Monday morning’s presentation, designed to take us under the tent with Ford executives thinking and talking out loud for the assembled media, financial analysts and a worldwide Ford company audience, was a lurid combination of multiple mea culpas and a blatant pep rally – and the net-net of it was that it exposed Ford to be a company so far out of touch and so far removed from being a competitive force in the U.S. market that I was literally stunned at what I was hearing.
I have to agree with Peter. Reading the blowback from Ford’s Monday announcements, I, too wondered where the company is heading, and, if indeed it has been so rudderless, how has it survived?
Convert Customers into Evangelists
Marketing is not a do-it-to-the-customer, one-way process. The highest aim of marketing is to create products and stories about them that empower customers to sell for you. Don’t simply create loyal customers. Create customers who are enraptured with your product and sell for you. Turn customers on so they will turn others into customers.
Think of eBay conclaves where loyal users tell eBay CEO Meg Whitman how to run the company and what acquisitions to make. Hark back to 1984 and the launch of Apple’s Macintosh computer. Think of all those Mac users who tried to convert you to their form of technology.
What is a Torrent?
Developed by Bram Cohen as a solution to large-file download bottlenecks—not to mention the problem of “leeches,” people who download files but then don’t share them as uploads—BitTorrent is a very effective tool for distributing big files online. And with good reason: BitTorrent works amazingly well to spread out the burden of creating thousands of copies of a file across the clients, or peers, that are downloading the file. That means there’s no large central server to keep running, or massive bandwidth bills to pay for. It also means we can download, say, a 600MB Linux distro in a few short minutes.
Marketing Tips for New Entrepreneurs
Today you absolutely need a quality presence on the Internet, and that needs to be crisp, clean and informative. Consumers need answers to questions quickly, and, online, it’s just like the telephone. People have the same high expectations in dealing with your business. They need to get answers to their questions quickly. They need to know what products or services you offer, how to find them and what differentiates you from your competition.
Internet: Freedom or Privilege?
At issue: Is Internet access a freedom or a privilege? Just as Freedom of Speech means that, with very few limitations, nobody has the right to tell somebody else what to say, so should Internet freedom mean that gatekeepers should not control Internet applications or content. This is essential not just as a matter of freedom, but also as a matter of commerce, because the Internet’s success is directly due to its content-blindness. If the United States fails to understand this, U.S. Internet leadership will follow U.S. leadership in agriculture, in steel, in autos, and in consumer electronics to other countries that do.
Democracy in America, Then and Now, a Struggle Against Majority Tyranny
During the War of 1812, an angry mob smashed the printing presses of a Baltimore newspaper that dared to come out against the war. When the mob surrounded the paper’s editors, and the state militia refused to protect them, the journalists were taken to prison for their own protection. That night, the mob broke into the prison, killed one journalist and left the others for dead. When the mob leaders were brought before a jury, they were acquitted.
Alexis de Tocqueville tells this chilling story in “Democracy in America,” and warns that the greatest threat the United States faces is the tyranny of the majority, a phrase he is credited with coining.