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The Toronto Star ran a Reuter's item from Amsterdam, the headline for which says it all: Porn expected to fuel growth of wireless Web, survey says. The piece notes that it was porn that largely drove the development of the Web in the first place. A snip:
AMSTERDAM -- Mobile phone users worldwide will spend the equivalent of $1.2 billion (Canadian) a year on pornography sent to their cellphones by 2008, which may boost the wireless services sector much as it fuelled growth in the fixed-line Internet, a market research firm said.Gambling and porn: the embarassing grandparent scions of the Internet family.In the United States, consumers will be dishing out some $90 million (U.S.) for adult entertainment in four years' time, the Yankee group said in a survey released yesterday.
Rogers is in the long-distance game at the home as well as in the car. The story-ette about their steps into land-line telco territory is here: Rogers offers long-distance residential phone service courtesy of the G&M.
Karolinska Institutet, in Sweden, is a famous cancer (research) hospital. What they say ought to be given weight. Recently a study from Karolinska finds that long-term cell phone use is causing "acoustic melanoma." So, your cell phone use on crowded airplanes and buses is not just making us sick -- it's making you sick too. Story here: Mobile phone use and acoustic neuroma; snip here:
A study from the Institute of Environmental Medicine (IMM) at Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, found that 10 or more years of mobile phone use increase the risk of acoustic neuroma and that the risk increase was confined to the side of the head where the phone was usually held. . . . Acoustic neuroma is a benign tumour on the auditory nerve that usually grows slowly over a period of years before it is diagnosed. It occurs in less than one adult per 100,000 per year.
About 12 years ago I had an idea of distributing music one track at a time to locations where music lovers could make their own CDs almost instantaneously. At the time, satellite transmission of the files to music stores seemed the most logical route. It didn't work; couldn't get funding.
Anyway, it probably would have been wrong anyway since the self-made disc really was in product line conflict with the other wares at an HMV (for instance). But, at a coffee house, like Starbucks, where you go, sit, have a coffee, read a paper, select some music and burn a disc? Interesting. And, they both have money to try it and a nascent track record selling music (to go with the double-espresso). Here's the story: Starbucks launches first of 'music bars' for CD burning> A little snip:
In a partnership with Hewlett-Packard, Starbucks will allow customers to create personalized CD compilations and burn full-length albums from a library of 150,000 songs. . . .Starbucks said customers will use self-service screens placed throughout the store and use a stylus pen to select music. They can create a custom CD for 8.99 dollars for the first seven songs and 99 cents for each additional song.
Don't get me wrong, I am hardly a spendthrift and have a keen respect for those business people who can "skin the beaver off a nickle" as they say. And, it seems that Canadian business people find cost-based productivity the easiest to control, understand, and appreciate. But, as the following quote from James Milway, executive director of the institute for competitiveness, at Rotman, says,
What our Canadian businesses ought to be doing is looking for ways to enhance revenue, instead of just the cost line . . That has as much of an impact on productivity and has a longer-term impact on productivity if we can focus on how do we get more sophisticated products out there, better branding, and more innovation on the product line.It all comes from a Globe and Mail article today covering the most recent OECD downgrading of the Canadian competitive standing. Full article is here: Canada slips in competitiveness.
Gotta admire Jack Mintz's chutzpah -- well, if he were doing what he's suggesting rather than just talking about it. At a conference in Chicago tomorrow (according to this G&M article: Canada urged to take lead in economic block) he'll propose that Canada should give action to the creation of a North American economic block that would be a global "tiger."
Creates greater certainty for Canada: rather than being a remora swimming alongside the American Great White, we would simply be consumed within what would otherwise be an American shark. OK. Just telling it like it is. Despite current currency fluctuation generally resulting from natural resource commodity strength, a relatively stronger Canadian economy vs. U.S. right now, etc., etc., we shouldn't get confused about the relative sizes of our economies and foundations.
Mintz's notion is not new or unique. Sometimes I agree with it. But, it does have certain likely unanticipated political and economic consequences that might best be addressed prior to heading forward on this kind of path.
Don't get me wrong: I think spam (both kinds, actually, but you know what I'm referring to) is a troubling unanticipated consequence of the Internet age, a bother, ocassionally offputting, and, in the context of phishing, criminal. But, as I've gone on record saying before: 1. it's just junk mail, not quite on par with terrorism or cancer; 2. it will be eliminated by action against underlying conditions not by counter-action.
Still, there is the "first" international conference on . . . yes, you guessed it . . . spam. It's being held in London and is a joint production of the US FTC and the British Office of Fair Trading. The interenet.com report article: Spam Summit Kicks Off and snip:
The conference, which brought together agencies from more than 20 countries, focused on consumer protection, data protection and telecommunications agencies to promote cross-border cooperation on spam and spam-related problems, such as online fraud and computer viruses.
It's a ridiculous proposition, but Google -- fixture of the Internet search landscape (a "verb" even) and recent stock market phenom -- has moved wireless with an SMS service. A snip from a This is London item titled Google searches go mobile in US:
The service, called Google SMS, allows users to retrieve business and residential listings, product prices and even includes a dictionary.Whoa! Can you say "tipping point?"
As noted in my blogs a month or so ago, Netflix and TiVo are now in an alliance to distribute movies over the Internet directly to TiVo PVRs. Story from The Register is here: Netflix, TiVo sign VoD alliance
Now broadband needs to become really broadband.
Like many things in life (e.g., sales), the odds are long so you have to keep at it. Take phishing for example. This relatively new approach to fraud through spoofing of a legitimate corporate Website (and email) to incite consumers to provide their personal information -- thus creating the identity theft and subsequent vaccuuming of the bank accounts -- is a real numbers game. A story in Information Week (Deceptive E-Mail Could Cost Consumers $500 Million, Study Finds) yesterday makes it clear.
What I see in the information from the following snip is: first, this is a bad thing being done by bad people; second, these (naive, gullible, . . .)people are the weakness that allows it to happen. That is, no amount of technology is available to protect those who don't protect themselves. Ironically, it's the same story as is being told viz. privacy from invasive direct marketing: many people rail about wanting their privacy protected from marketers but will give up their personal information for a free sample. Go figure.
Phishing could cost consumers $500 million this year, according to a new study conducted by the Ponemon Institute, a privacy research and watchdog organization.The study, based on a survey of 1,335 Internet users in the United States, finds that 76% of respondents experienced an increase in the deceptive E-mail practices known as phishing and spoofing. Perhaps more alarming, 70% report having unintentionally visited a spoofed Web site, and more than 15% admit revealing sensitive personal information in the process. [bold mine] Two percent claim to have experienced direct monetary loss because of phishers.
According to a July report from the Anti-Phishing Working Group, phishers are able to convince up to 5% of recipients to respond to them. [bold mine]