It’s been fascinating, at times dismaying, watching what’s happening in in the financial markets since Summer 2007. The subprime lending meltdown which has spurred the Feds to lower the interest rates several times, and possibly once more again tomorrow making two rate changes in the last week alone.
Meanwhile, there’s a government sponsored stimulus package in the works that passed 385-35 in the House today and is on it’s way to the Senate.
Under the House plan, most workers would receive $600 from the government, $1,200 for couples, plus $300 per child. Eligibility for the full check would be capped at $75,000 in adjusted gross income for individuals, $150,000 for couples. Workers with at least $3,000 in earned income last year but too little earnings to pay income taxes would receive $300, along with $300 per child.
These checks could be in the mail as soon as May this year. Of the 35 no votes, 10 were Democrats and 25 Republicans.
Speaking of the subprime mess, it got messier today as the FBI announced it is investigating 14 companies for accounting fraud relating to subprime loans:
[Neil Power, chief of the FBI’s Economic Crimes Unit] indicated that some people knew about the subprime crisis well ahead of time.
Last night we signed up (again) for the unlimited Hollywood Video DVD rental plan 3 DVDs out at a time which runs $19.99 for the first 30 days and $29.99/mo. thereafter, but I’m feeling buyer’s remorse after reading Netflix has expanded their streaming option.
With Monday’s change, virtually all Netflix subscribers will be able to stream as many movies and TV shows as they want from a library containing more than 6,000 titles. There will be no additional charge for the unlimited access.
So essentially we paid $3 more + gas and travel time to/from to be able to cycle through the Hollywood Video inventory of movies we haven’t seen. I’m certain the quality of the DVD streaming will be less than watching DVDs, but will it be worth the extra $$? We’ll be canceling at the end of the month and going back to Netflix to try the streaming option.
Netflix move looks intended as a spoiler to Apple’s expected announcement that they will be offering movie rentals for $3.99 a movie at their annual MacWorld event which kicks off today. This pricing is similar to the Xbox Live movie service which our family has enjoyed, renting over a dozen movies. Good quality and convenient. Getting in the car to go back and forth to the video store might be exercise of sorts, but it gets old. That’s why we only do the unlimited Hollywood Video in one month surges once a year or so.
Another downside of Netflix deal is selection. 6,000 titles available for streaming versus 90,000 DVDs. On Xbox Live the selection of movies is even smaller. No idea yet how many movies will be available from Apple. Selection and video streaming quality will ultimately decide how long we stay subscribed to Netflix.
From the photo at the top of this movie you can see our first three movie picks at Hollywood: Epic Movie, Ball’s Fury and Hot Rod. Epic Movie was one of the stupidest movies I’ve ever seen. Ball’s Fury was medicore, but had some funny parts. Will be watching Hot Rod later today but it won’t be difficult to be better than the other two.
By the time you read this the doors to the biggest consumer electronics show in the world will be open in bustling Las Vegas, Nevada. For those who’ve never been there, this is also the technology swag mecca; tons of goodies. If you go to CES, plan to pack an empty suitcase worth of goodies to bring back.
CES 2008 kicked off last night with what is being billed somewhat sadly as Bill Gates “last” CES keynote. He’s hosted the CES keynote 11 times and 8 times consecutively, with the first in 1994. You can watch it at microsoft.com/ces using Microsoft Silverlight platform inside your browser.
Silverlight is Microsoft’s cross OS compatible answer to Flash and being widely toted (by them) as a viable alternative. While writing this post and listening to Gates keynote in a separate tab using Windows Vista Silverlight crashed Firefox. I decided to try Silverlight on the Mac with Firefox instead and see how that went. I’ll update before the end of this post if it doesn’t crash (Update: it didn’t on the Mac, go figure).
Summarizing Gates Keynote
In case you don’t want to sit through the Gates keynote, here’s a brief rundown on what happens.
The Xbox 360 is showing prominently in the living room in the “if you believe in magic” video opening as Microsoft chairman Bill Gates enters the stage. He’s dressed in typical Gates attire, a drab purple sweater. He segues into a spoof video of his last day at Microsoft which is funny. Did he just play Mario on a Guitar Hero guitar? Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Bono and others are included.
Afterwards Gates shares statistics that PC sales have increased 13% over the last year and then has offers a demo of a program that makes panaromas out of pictures, looks baked into Windows. And then to Microsoft’s perceived geek tabletop of the future: Surface. I love the idea behind touchscreen activity but touch doesn’t work very well for everything.
A keyboard is really important for typing. I wonder if Surface will display a QWERTY keyboard and let you type on it? How will that would feel typing on a flat surface? I see IGT (disclaimer: I own IGT stock) is one of the Surface partners. Does this mean we’ll see this used a lot more in future slot machines?
Robbie Bach comes out on stage next and shares stats on Xbox Live and other media properties. Microsoft has now passed the 10 million subscribers mark and they currently sell more online content than the Wii and PS3 combined.
Zune - The new versions are doing well according to Bach. Microsoft believes Zune has become a clear alternative to iPod. Zune Social now has 1.5 million members. There is some discussion of Zune cards which are similar to Xbox Live gamer cards, only focusing a la last.fm on activity around/inside Zune like your favorite songs and artists (e.g my zune card is located at: http://social.zune.net/member/XBoxTDavid).
Next up: Gates on the future - he holds a device that you can point at people, places and things and it recognizes them. Reminded me of scanning bar codes on the useful inventory program Delicious Library.
Close on a rocking note
Bach and Gates bring out Guitar Hero in a $20 bet. Bach has a famous Xbox Live player playing Welcome to the Jungle and Gates brings in a ringer: Slash! The crowd has what sounded like to me the biggest keynote applause of the night for the former Guns ‘N Roses guitarist. Microsoft upstaged by a guitar legend?
The Slash applause factor sums up the keynote which was lackluster. Nothing that new or revolutionary. If this is Gate’s last keynote ever, it went out with a whimper.
Update 1/7/08 10am PST: Wow, looks like I’m not the only one unimpressed with the keynote. Duncan at Techcrunch says it sucked. Let me save you some more time by showing you one of the best parts: the Gates last day video below:
AmazonMP3 may start seeing DRM-free tracks from Sony BMG at some point in 2008. Sony, a company with a checkered proprietary past is planning on dropping DRM on at least “some” of their library. The some with DRM-free tracks remains a big obstacle for all the music companies. Lots of library gaps. This could happen sooner than later too.
Sony BMG, a joint venture of Sony (SNE) and Bertelsmann, will make at least part of its collection available without so-called digital rights management, or DRM, software some time in the first quarter, according to people familiar with the matter.
From the sounds of this Sony is dipping toes in the water and not taking the full plunge, but we’ll have to wait and see how many artists and songs make it onto AmazonMP3 and iTunes.
Not sure about you, but I don’t want Sony to stop at DRM-free music. I’d like to see them get off the backs of the homebrew developers building games for the PSP. And what kind of content creation will be allowed, if any, on the upcoming Sony HOME service through the Playstation Network? Would be nice if they’d open that up as well and offer something similar to what Second Life offers.
Since Sony is the last of the four major music companies to agree to offer DRM-free tracks, the path has been cleared for a future of someday being able to legally purchase MP3 for all the music you enjoy. I’d say currently it’s maybe 30% of the music I like (rock and roll) is available legally for sale on MP3 at AmazonMP3. A lot of incomplete artist libraries at iTunes and AmazonMP3. Can’t blame the music companies for not offering every artist as there are still some holdouts like the Beatles (I thought the Beatles had promised to get their music out there digitally, what’s the hangup?).
It would be nice to see this number jump to 95%+ by 2010. How much of the music you enjoy is available via MP3?
Update 1/7/08 8:01am PST: In the second quarter Reuters is reporting that Napster is going to start offering MP3 files for sale. Talk about returning to roots.
A success and failure in legal online downloading to discuss. I’ve done business with both AmazonMP3 and Wal-Mart video, the former being a more satisfying customer experience.
AmazonMP3 grows by adding Warner Music to their library of online songs being sold DRM-free in MP3 format. This adds artists like Van Halen, Green Day and Led Zeppelin and brings their total to nearly three million songs. The iTunes store only sells DRM-free music from EMI while AmazonMP3 now offers EMI, Universal Music Group and Warner. If Sony offers their catalog to AmazonMP3 and that’s a big if, they’ll have four major music outlets licensing digital music for download legally.
This is a positive story for expansion of DRM-free legal digital music delivery. Conversely, Wal-Mart trying to sell digital video with DRM on the same day the DVDs release has failed. Wal-Mart might be good at offering cheap prices in their retail stores, but at least some of their online retail efforts aren’t successful, as shown on December 21 when they killed their online video service launched back in February.
Wal-Mart will continue offering physical DVDs for sale at its stores and online … Wal-Mart’s attempt at downloading came two years after it pulled out of online DVD rental and directed its subscribers to Netflix Inc, and months after it protested Walt Disney Co’s move to sell movies on Apple Inc’s iTunes online music store at below-retail prices.
We bought one movie through Wal-mart Video and had trouble with the video software backed by HP. We were able to watch the movie one time but it remains a stinging $15 memory that might as well have been two tickets to a crowded theater because it was a one watch only experience. This remains the major danger with buying any DRM-infected file and the reason we buy very little music and video this way.
The day after Christmas is as good a time as any to go over the $200 mark for the first time and now Apple (AAPL, disclaimer: I own stock) is part of the 200 club. I’ve been watching here and there this morning waiting to see this happen.
Apparently news that Apple cut a deal to get to the Apple rumor site Think Secret shutdown has had no bearing on the stock price, nor the fact that Leopard crashes more than Vista (for me anyway, YMMV).
2007 has been an outstanding year for AAPL stock performance, making the list of top tech performers for the year at +116%. Apple was beaten by Amazon +120% and Gamestop +121%.
I can’t find any credible news source to back this information up so I hesitantly am putting in the “news” category, but please keep that in mind before getting too excited. This morning a Sirius employee told me, a Sirius customer, that regulatory approval of the Sirius + XM merger has been approved. It’s especially interesting how the discussion came up because it was totally unrelated to what the call was about.
You can hear our discussion below and to be clear I didn’t receive a vague confirmation, I received several confirmations of this being a fact during the call. Listen and judge for yourself. It is possible this is just one misinformed employee, especially since no news sources are carrying the news, but is it possible they know something internally that the rest of the world does not?
The call took place within the last hour and I informed Matthew the call was being recorded. Sirius also records calls with their customers so they have a record as well. I edited out the non-relevant portions of the call before and after the merger approval discussion in the audio below, but I do have a complete recording from beginning to end. I uploaded the edited recording to my Utterz account as well.
Note: not only does Sirius employee Matthew confirm the regulatory approval but provides additional details about the merger that I couldn’t find anywhere else including siriusmerger.com. Was Matthew just making this up, being overconfident, misinterpreting some internal Sirius information or is this true?
Update December 19, 2007 8:25pm PST: Received a few questions about the authenticity of this recording because it “sounds too good to be a telephone call.” Now that’s funny. I did expect people to question whether the employee knew what he was talking about but didn’t expect people to say the recording itself was staged.
This is not a staged call. It was recorded through Skype — the VoIP client I’ve used in business for several years now (see many posts about this at this blog) — using the Pamela for Skype commercial plugin and that explains the call clarity. You don’t hear normal audio artifacts when recording this way.
As I said in the original post, I have the entire (7+ minute) call where I was complaining about an unrelated issue and would be more than happy to make this recording available unedited to accredited members of the news media that want to listen to the entire unedited call and fact check from there.
Also, if enough people are interested (leave comments below if you are) I’d be willing to post the entire call but would beep out my customer account number with Sirius which is nobody’s business but Sirius and mine. For verification purposes however, I would be willing to share the unedited call which contains my customer account number for any member of the press that I can first verify their identity (and ascertain that this account information will not be made public).
The information the employee shared with me in the call could be bogus, I’m fully admitting that both now and when I published the original post but the call itself is authentic and not staged. If you see somebody claim the call is staged then they are full of, well, you know what. I’ve been writing and publishing online for many years (check for yourself) and will put my reputation behind this recording being authentic. If it was a hoax I would have put it in the “humor” category.
If you operate a web-based business in the United States that shows advertising and haven’t gotten the stern message about online gambling ads, you might want to read this post carefully.
Microsoft took the biggest hit from the justice department for promoting online gambling between 1997 and 2007, having to pay $21 million, followed by Yahoo who’s penalty was $7.5 million and finally Google with $3 million.
“These sums add to the over $40 million in forfeitures and back taxes this office has already recovered in recent years from operators of these remote-control illegal gambling enterprises,” U.S. Attorney Catherine Hanaway said in a statement.
Even cursory Hmm readers already know I think the government is missing a huge opportunity with online gambling, on a fool’s errand going after recreational gambling in people’s homes and that internet gambling will be legalized in the United States at some point in the future. But in the present fellow US citizens, and it disturbs me to write this, it is not a good idea to be putting up internet gambling advertising on your websites or doing any gambling online yourself.
Washington State House Bill 1243
If you live in Washington state where gambling online is a class C felony, you might also be interested in this comment which talks about proposed Washington State House Bill 1243 which seeks:
to quash the felony charge language in last year’s legislation addressing in-home internet gambling.
Being that was back in February 2007, I checked up on the progress of HB 1243 which, if passed, will provide legal defense for those adults who gamble online in their home for “recreational purposes.” The bill further defines (PDF) that as:
… for the defendent’s own enjoyment and not as part of an enterprise that derives income from operating an internet web site that transmits or receives gambling information.
Sadly, it appears that the bill is languishing, still (anybody got an update?) awaiting a hearing in the House Commerce and Labor Committee. How is it that the bill to make this a class C felony got passed in less than six months and the bill to defend what people do for recreation has taken 11 months and gone nowhere? Punish fast, defend slow, ain’t politics grand? Oh, and let’s not forget that shortly after passing this law to punish recreational online gambling, they voted to expand tribal gambling in our state.
Is your state sending mixed message on gambling like Washington state?
The war on our home soil against internet gambling must end. It’s a fruitless battle that should be redirected into legalizing and taxing the proceeds. Let’s use this money to improve our schools, reduce the debt, enhance the roads, bulk up the problem gambling services (remember, there are already legal gambling on indian casinos and state sponsored lotteries). I may not be interested in playing poker online personally, but I don’t believe in preventing other adults from doing so. I can see why the indian reservations and those who stand to lose money (or political support?) from gambling in this state are against this, but don’t see why any reasonable thinking adults are in opposition.
I’m sure somebody will mention the social ills of gambling, let’s put that violin away. We’ve already got legalized gambling here and getting rid of all the advertising for online gambling while leaving the billboards for legal terrestrial gambling isn’t going to help the social problems.
We could be seeing a major battle in the making between Amazon and Google (disclaimer: I own GOOG stock) down the road.
Look at what Amazon’s been having a huge amount of success with lately: their S3 storage and server processes. They are building out datacenters and bulking up servers, quietly getting more and more companies and developers to use them as their server infrastructure. Their recent S3 competition had the winners taking a giant gold hammer to a server. The message: you don’t need servers to scale, you need us.
Let’s not forget Amazon tried to take on Google with Alexa search and failed, then they tried OpenSearch and didn’t make a dent. The new battlefront is hosting.
Meanwhile Google is offering mostly ad-supported products and services with clean UI where they provide the hosting. At first glimpse one might wonder why Google wants to be in the content business. If you’re in the content business you have to deal with spammers.
Controlling how the world’s information is searched is largely impacted by having the data at your disposal. The more direct control Google has over the information, as they do by hosting, the easier they can combat spam and search what they feel is the best content. Google is extremely careful to clarify what I italicized there, by saying it is what each individual user deems the best content, but Google — and any search engine — already decides what is the best on some level in the way the results are returned.
Ranking.
This is becoming very tantalizing with news of their Google Knol project. In their own words, Google Knol:
The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors. Books have authors’ names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors — but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted. We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content. At the heart, a knol is just a web page; we use the word “knol” as the name of the project and as an instance of an article interchangeably. It is well-organized, nicely presented, and has a distinct look and feel, but it is still just a web page. Google will provide easy-to-use tools for writing, editing, and so on, and it will provide free hosting of the content. Writers only need to write; we’ll do the rest.
This sounds like a promising, worthwhile project and history shows that not everything Google does is a runaway hit. A lot of what they do, most of what they do frankly, isn’t as successful as their search and Adwords.
Writers could always write, long before Google and long after Google will be gone. Do writers want to make Google the new Random House? It’s one thing for Google to organize the world’s information, but they are fast becoming the hosting company of the world’s information with only Amazon as their major competition on this front.
I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to wonder if I want Google to be my hosting company. Giving any one entity too much control and power requires a huge amount of responsibility.
Can we continue to trust Google to do the right thing?
The growing Google content business
Google has already been in the content hosting business since buying Blogger from Pyra Labs. The number of Google content-related projects include, and this list is incomplete, the following services:
Blogger - create and store your own blog, hosted by Google
Google Base - store items that rank better in search
Google Code - download APIs and open source code
Google Page Creator - create and share your own hosted web pages
Jaiku - mobile microblogging service like Twitter
Picasa - store and share pictures
YouTube and Google Video - share and store videos created
It’s way too early to speculate on what impact Google Knol will have, it’s in invite-only stage at this point, but if it can make the list above as a viable alternative to the heavily spammed Squidoo and what Techdirt labels too early to call Mahalo, I’m sure both those services won’t be pleased.
As for being any competition to Wikipedia? Predictably, many are out there already talking and speculating too. Remember how Google offered at one time to host Wikipedia and was denied? Google would rather host Wikipedia than compete against it. But what do they do when they are denied? They find another path to take. Welcome to Google Knol.
The sports radio dials are juiced. Even non-sports radio is hopping with talk about steroids in baseball.
While waiting for the 6,000 mile checkup on our car today, I learned of Senator Mitchell’s report to Major League Baseball detailing the list of athletes linked positively to steroids and human growth hormones (HGH). I’ve been fascinated and disturbed in an accident scene way since reading Jose Canseco’s book Juiced. I wasted no time downloading the PDF from ESPN and searched through for our local Seattle Mariners and on other names.
The biggest surprise to me was the rocket, Roger Clemens (Update 3:20pm PST: Roger has hired attorney Rusty Hardin and vehemently denies the information in the report), but there were a few other names that raised my eyebrows, particularly other pitchers like Andy Petitte. When Ryan Franklin in Seattle was suspended for steroids, I realized it wasn’t only for homerun hitters, but why would solid pitchers like Clemens need the juice? Really, it was that important for him to stay in the game longer? It couldn’t be about the money with him … or could it?
10 Seattle Mariners juicing
A search for ‘mariners’ revealed 15 results including the following former or current (Update 4:17pm PST: a check of the Mariners active roster doesn’t show any current Mariners players in the 10 below so struck the “or current” part) Seattle Mariners players:
1. David Segui
2. Josias Manzanillo
3. Glenallen Hill
4. Ron Villone (pitcher)
5. Ryan Franklin (pitcher)
6. Todd Williams (pitcher)
7. Fernando Vina
8. David Bell
9. Jose Guillen
10. Ismael Valdez (pitcher)
Wow, 40% pitchers?
Selig responds
On my way back to the office MLB Commissioner Bud Selig was giving a press conference and detailing the three things he announced MLB would be doing right away in response to the Mitchell Report:
1. eliminate the 24 hour notice given to clubs prior to testing/screening.
2. mete out appropriate punishment for each of the players named in the report on a case by case basis
3. work with the player’s union to try and come to agreements on many of the other 20 recommendations made in the Mitchell report.
How will this impact future Hall of Famers?
If they are going to continue to keep Pete Rose out of the Hall of Fame (HOF) for gambling, then I don’t think any of these players named should be in the HOF either. It will be interesting to see if that happens.
I continue to be disgusted by this whole issue. A sport I love is being ruined by performance enhancing drugs. This shouldn’t be an issue that is in dispute by the player’s union. They should want the game kept clean. If they do anything differently, I may have to become an MLS fan instead.
The day after Christmas is as good a time as any to go over the $200 mark for the first time and now Apple (AAPL, disclaimer: I own stock) is part of the 200 club. I’ve been watching here and there this morning waiting to see this happen.
We could be seeing a major battle in the making between Amazon and Google (disclaimer: I own GOOG stock) down the road. 
