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Trends in Business & Technology as the Economy Heads South

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A Quick Read on Some of Today's Top Stories

Greenspan speaks: "There may not be a seamless transition from high to moderate to low confidence on the part of businesses, investors and consumers." He suggests that the
economy may face a rocky transition.

Reuters Photo

To provide additional context for Greenspan's words, check out Mark Roberti's discussion of why
this time, it's different
in The Standard.

As a barometer of the changing times, we note that half-baked dot-com business ideas are nearly absent at this year's
DEMO 2001 in Phoenix, AZ. They were everywhere last year.

On Convergence:
Vodaphone struck an alliance with Sony's PlayStation division to extend the gaming environment to cell phones.

And in Sports Alliances...
Manchester United & NY Yankees form a digital content alliance, but some wonder about its success. In the article: "Ask any genuine fan...who has seen United taken over by marketing men, tarted up into a "brand" and sold like frozen peas, and they will tell you exactly what they think. Like "The Theatre of Dreams," the bloated moniker they have tried to foist on United's Old Trafford stadium, this latest megadeal consists of little but wind."

On Usability:
Connie Guglielmo/Interactive Week writes a spot-on plea for better design and usability, drawing on a cute little anecdote about researching the sun on the web and having her daughter ask why they couldn't just go to www.sun.com.

Search Engines Have Indexed Less Than Half of the Internet's web pages, yet 6 out of 10 people, new research shows, use them more than one hour per week. At least the Dewey Card Catalog was complete. While Google has improved the precision of searching, we still need to work on completeness.

Bucking the Trend... American Express has quietly launched its own free ISP for cardmemebers in the USA, as many others -- most notably www.bluelight.com are pulling back on the idea, citing a poor revenue model. CMGI shut its free ISP, 1stUp.com, last year. I haven't tried it yet, but the move looks very promising in their continuing attempt to "lock in" their customer base.

Until next time,
-bp.

Musings on Privacy & Intellectual Property

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Today was the day that the music stopped (NYTimes) At least for the Napster crowd. It was also the day that we learned just how clever virus writers can be. Cleverly preying on men's desire to see JPEGs of sexy tennis champ (Yahoo!) Anna Kournikova, a virus writer successfully propagrated this simple email virus around the world in a few hours. I learned something about senior people in my organization today that I never needed to know.

Which brings us to my topic for today: privacy and just how little we have of it anymore here in the USA. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a useful resource (EFF: EFF's Privacy Top 12) that should be a required starting point for any contemplation of personal privacy in this wired age. A promising, young academic has realeased a working paper on Kafkaesque? Big Brother? Finding the Right Literary Metaphor for Net Privacy (NYTimes) which proves intriguing. And the NYTimes has a piece on a new fad in Fortune 500 companies: the CPO (NYTimes: Chief Privacy Officers Forge Evolving Corporate Roles). One has to wonder if this position will last or if it is just nice PR. And then there is the issue of copyright, where we began this column. Users of software in the 1980s remember all too well the cat and mouse game of copy-protections placed on software. Users hated it, hackers cracked it and today no one uses the scheme anymore. But,wait! What's that talk of DRM? Here's a solid primer on why the hottest thing in content: Digital Rights Management may not be the right thing at all (Yahoo!: Digital rights management's hidden dangers).

And on the human interest side: New research suggests that blondes earn less than owners of other hair colours. As a natural blonde, this is discouraging... We shall overcome... (Yahoo!: Blondes Earn Less?)

Until next time, bp.

Bryce.WebLogs.com Launches...

Without any fanfare, Bryce launches his web log today, Monday, February 12, 2001.

Searching for a way to share knowledge ... Bryce.WebLogs.com

Welcome. Today marks the first day of my new web log. I honestly have no idea how regularly I will be able to contribute (daily, weekly, monthly -- hopefully more often than monthly), but I want to experiment with the experience. I read widely and bookmark voraciously. Recently, I have fallen in love with Backflip's useful bookmarking solution for web content. The problem for me has always been the same: I need a way to collect information I might see while at home, at the office, browsing in a university lab or in an internet cafe. And I want to be able to refer to any of it from everywhere. Just today I was studying for an exam with a friend and the topic of search engines and academic databases like Lexus-Nexus and Ebsco came up. As the conversation ensued, it became apparent I need to find a more effective to share knowledge -- that I have and that others contribute. I thought about putting links to static resources on my existing web site at WebBP.net (and I may still), but it also occurred to me is what the world does NOT need is more links. Rather, we need editorialized links, links with context. And so, after a delightful exam experience this afternoon, I have resolved to initiate Bryce.WebLogs.com for real. I invite you to join me on this brave journey. And it goes without saying, community-building is what this is all about so please drop me a note.