So at Lift07 there was an announcement that the Google-challenging behemoth (in Wikisari’s eyes anyway) known as Wikipedia has only enough cash to sustain itself for another 3-4 months. Phil over at ViaDigitalis has the details:

“At this point, Wikipedia has the financial ressources to run its servers for about 3 to 4 months. If we do not find additional funding, it is not impossible that Wikipedia might disappear”. The warning by Florence Devouard, chairwoman of the Wikimedia Foundation was certainly dire, and Lift07 was as good a venue to make an appeal. But it is another illustration of how difficult it is to find the proper business model in the digital age, and more precisely in this case in what Florence called the “gift economy”

Its funny how the quote ended with the “gift” economy, since Wikipedia has recently raised over a million dollars in as many weeks (a little more than a month) for charity.

But the issue of Wikipedia raising money or even taking ads is a contentious one. A really big one.

* Mat Ingram thinks that perhaps acquiring a patron might be the answer.

* Duncan Riley thinks that they’re ripe for a huge multinational with large pockets to buy them out.

* Robert Scoble discusses on how Techmeme isn’t linking to the original post.

I’m not sure if any of those things will pan out, mostly because of my understanding of how zealous Jimmy Pales and Wikipedian’s are to Wikipedia’s vision, and its belief in maintaining a neutral point of view. Wealthy patrons and an all-out buyout would clearly violate that.

My belief is that this statement about a lack of of cash might be true; but its ought to be qualified about how fast it previously raised cash in the form of donations. Even if you believe that advertising in and of itself compromises Wikipedia’s neutrality (and I think there’s a way to do it that doesn’t) I think there’s a way to set things up so that Wikipedia becomes the PBS of the Internet.

In other words, completely funded by its viewers.

When an organization is so large and so popular, they don’t even have to do a “good” job of marketing itself and acquiring charitable contributions. If they were to do a *lousy* job, they’d still raise buckets and buckets of cash. And quite frankly, the cynic in me almost thinks that the announcement that they only have 3-4 months is only a way to raise awareness to that fact.

Bandwidth costs money … that’s for sure. But Wikipedia’s chapter on the Internet isn’t closed by a long shot. And I suspect if nothing else, Wikipedian’s will pay to make sure that their works remain open for a long time — they’re recent fund drive was merely a hint at that, I think.

Update: Seth Finklestein does the numbers, and it looks Wikipedia is going to be in the black for quite a while.

Its been a crazy nutter week for me, what with busy clinical responsibilities, and it seems to be culminating in some personnel changes at the BlogHerald. For the past 5 weeks or so, Abe “Yugatech” Olandres has been at the helm of the ship as the Editor. However, he’s run into some changes with his personal and professional responsibilities, and we’ve agreed to switch roles.

Yes, that’s right.

I have agreed to step in to take over as the Editor of the BlogHerald. The official announcement and other details have been made over here at the BlogHerald.

Life has taken some extraordinary turns over the past 6-7 months. Needless to say its been pretty amazing that I have been given this opportunity and I am going to do my damndest to make the most of it — not just for Mark, J. Angelo, and the rest of the crew at the BlogHerald (and it is a damn fine crew), but for everyone who is a fan of where the BlogHerald has come from to where it is right now.

More to come in the near future about more thoughts and feelings on the issue, but I felt it wasn’t right NOT commenting on it in some fashion on the “home” blog and letting you guys know. As always, I’m always welcome to your thoughts and opinions on the matter. Leave’em below or contact me at your leisure.

Cheers,
Tony.
anthony{dot}hung{at}gmail{dot}.com

So you may have heard about Steve Job’s public denouncement of DRM.  Pretty important stuff for the CEO of a company who stands to benefit a hella lot from the DRM system built into iTunes. 

[DRM stands for Digital Rights Management, and prevents people who buy music with DRM technologies from using it in all the ways that they ought to, so as to protect record companies 'rights' and prevent stealing inappropriate usage of said music.  There's a great write up at Wikipedia if you're interested]

I think you can file this under “a generally good thing“, because now both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs have both gone on record to denounce DRM, hopefully paving the way for a gilded future where we will have DRM’less music being able to be played in limitless combinations.

But … so, what. After all, that’s pretty much what everyone else is saying.

While I think its great in so far that it heralds a public departure from the old school way of things, and floats my own anti-establishment views a little, the cynic in me feels the need to make a few observations:

First off — it takes NO balls to make a public denouncement of DRM when you’ve ALREADY established iTunes as the pre-eminent brand in downloadable music.  If they WERE to lift DRM from iTunes tomorrow do you think iTunes would lose much music? 

I think they might actually GAIN from it, for a whole bunch of reasons.  Most importantly because they already have the biggest brand and biggest “mind share”.  When many people think “mp3″ they already think of “iPod” and “iTunes”. 

Steve Jobs (yes, in my enormous hubris I’m talking directly to Steve right now) it would take balls for you to make the SAME announcement before iTunes ever started, when it was still a “level playing field’.  Yes, I understand the big bad media companies “made” you sign deals to include DRM because its “them” and not “you”.  That’s fine. 

And the fact that you *didn’t* makes me believe that you either don’t hold those opinions about the evils of DRM as close to your heart as you say you do.  Or, if you do, you only hold them when its convenient for you.

As in, not publicly announcing them while iTunes grows to be the gorrilla-in-the-room it currently is.

Much like Google’s bully tactics in trying to establish legislation in varying states as they expand their operations, let’s not forget there are probably real reasons why Jobs is saying what he is when he is.

Other worthwhile opinions: 

• Dave Winer hits the nail with this one: its easy to run your mouth on a technology that added billions to your bottom line when record companies are just about to go a DRM-less route anyway. 
• Thomas Hawk has interesting thoughts on it: with the iPhone around the corner, he’s reinforcing his Apple as the iconoclast hipster brand by thumbing his nose at the big, bad, music companies.  With millions (billions?) of bucks down the pipe due to phone sales (and ringtones?) blowing one part of Apple up for the sake of a newer part is entirely consistent with who Jobs is and what he’s done.
• And Nick Carr also gets the right of it: by denouncing DRM he’s putting the ball squarely back in Europe’s court and making it the record companies’ fault.  He’s now either counting on European bureaucratic sluggishness to make things a moot point OR playing the fanboy card in front of new DRM-less changes anyway.

So there’s was this new “meme” going around called 2000 Bloggers. But, news is its actually *over* due to pressure from Technorati [although it sounds like they have a new algo to filter these kinds of things out] … but I think its its still worth talking about.

The story is that a guy named Tuni Tino (thanks Elaine!) decided, innocently enough, to put up a giant grid, compete with pictures, of a few hundred bloggers. Some were names you know. Then, it added an “add yourself” feature, and where the rest of the 2000 bloggers have since added their names. Oh. And there’s ALSO a way to add a “2000 bloggers” widget type script to your page. This has resulted in many of those 2000 bloggers adding that widget — and subsequently getting linked TO by many of those bloggers.

What’s the big deal? It inflates your link “worth” so to speak. As Webomatic mentions — its basically a linkfarm in new clothes. Imagine you’re a new blog with a few dozen inbound links, and then you’re flooded with almost 2000 of them. Bongo bonanza! People use Technorati for all kinds of things — tracking buzz, is one of them. They also use it as a metric, to measure a blog’s “worth” or “influence” given how many inbound links its got. 2000 new inbound links? Artificial inflation of your Technorati ranking … or, at least, in theory, as Technorati has new algorithms for this kind of thing.

At the end of the day the appropriate people got outraged, Dave Sifry et al. got wind of it, 2000 Blogs got officially taken down, and the whole issue was probably forwarded it to Google who will also make note of it as well. After all, some of those 2000 inbound links are going to be from some pretty high ranking sites, and with the culture of “no Google-bombing anymore, because it makes us look foolish — don’t ask us why *now*”, you can bet someone will be listening.

Now, I like to get worked up over all kinds of things, but I’ll be honest:

This isn’t going to be one of them.

(more…)

Mat Ingram makes passing mention of “the Impossible Standard” in reference to Bob Scoble’s recent fooferaw with PayPerPost.  Here’s the one line summary for the extremely bored: PayPerPost is having a conference and they would like Bob Scoble as their keynote speaker; also, they were going to pay him an honorarium, like any other conference, and also the Scobeleizer has decided to “disclose” his payment.

Cue the sound of crickets … now.

Fine.  Since there’s a bit of silence, I’ve got a few questions for you all (all three and a half of you).

• Is any one else tired of the seemingly perpetual outrage at the idea of paid postings? 
• Is anyone else vaguely amused that the blogospheric indignity of it all is only fueling MORE free marketing for Ted Murphy and his gang of posties? 
• And is anyone else just a little bit angered about the delicious double standard some bloggers hold about themselves and others?

I don’t think anyone has done a better job about articulating what I mean by the latter than Seth Finklestein. 

But note the language: not “classy”, “sidewalk hookers”, vs “I’m a capitalist”. It’s basically, again, they are blue-collar, we are white-collar. I think “I’m a capitalist” in this context really means: “Despite my relatively well-off status, economically I still need to convert social relationships into a commercial context” (which should be acceptable) - i.e. doing it ultimately for commercial purposes, no matter how much one may seem to to be in it for a purely social relationship. Which is of course breaking the marketing of human connections.

I wrote about it yesterday as well — but let’s face it.  Its OK for A-list bloggers to monetize their blogging relationships by being paid to talk at conferences, or merely to be paid for their blogging activities as a function of their influence …

But its NOT ok for bloggers without influence, capital, notoriety, or celebrity to monetize the relationships THEY have with their readers — even with they’re disclosing it?

Bloggers who poo-poo Scoble and PayPerPost need to take a step back, stop reading about their own hype in the MSM, and take a good hard look at reality.  Because its slapping you in the face.

The ideals of transparency, authenticty, and engagement are just that.  Ideals.  But the only bloggers who are pure enough to have the moral authority to tsk-tsk anyone are those who would NEVER take ANY money for ANY kind of blogging activity.

And I don’t know of any blogger of any substance who fits into that category.

So why are we holding bloggers up to this impossible standard, where they are supposed to be better, more rigorous, and held to a higher ethical standard than seemingly everyone else?

(more…)

So, there’s a small blurb about Bill Gates saying in a particularly long winded fashion that yes — he would trust Vista with his life, because its secure and stable enough to “run life support” systems.

Well, I can’t help but chime in with my own opinions on this.

At the hospital where I’m currently working, they use a electronic records system that is also integrated into the imaging systems, where you can view imaging stuff “on-line”.  That is, unlike my medical school days, you can actually read Chest X-rays, CT scans, and even MRI’s at almost any desktop that has the electronic records system.

Pretty cool, no?

I thought so initially.  After all, I spent the majority of some entire rotations in medical school running between the ward and x-ray department finding, and retrieving chest films.

What’s funny is how I came across Bill Gate’s own comment about running “life support systems” on Vista.  First of all, that’s not really how “life support systems” work — they don’t run, as far as I know, on operating systems.  They’re self contained machines that help patients breath (ventilators).

However, what IS true is that most hospitals that I’ve worked at DO use Microsoft XP.  And most hospitals DO have some kind of electronic record.  And if you’re interested in talking about stability, MOST are just fine.

What is quite funny — but not in a “ha ha” sort of way — is how at SOME facilities, when using specific programs to view x-rays or CT scans, the program sort of hangs.  You DON’T get the blue screen of death, but I find myself using the alt-control-del solution to try and close the program process — and eventually get hit with the “this program isn’t responding” window.

Imagine that. 

Trying to read a chest x-ray, or review some imaging with other colleagues and *that* window pops up.

“Whoops … better restart the whole program!” (looking sheepishly).

I’m not sure if its fair to dump on Microsoft; I’m not sure if that kind of thing is a Microsoft or OS level issue.  Maybe its a program level issue.

But if it IS an OS level issue regarding stability of programs and so on, its funny how Billy G would state that he’s confident it could run life support, when it has a difficult time running much more mundane programs (mundane being a relative word).

Update: Looks like the folks at Feedburner have resolved the issue quickly and amicably — see the comments below — and its just the way things ought to be fixed.  Well done, Eric and the gents (and ladies) at Feedburner!

In the battle for news aggregator supremacy, Megite made a respectable name for itself alongside the current champion (in my mind), Techmeme, as an aggregator to contend with. I use it from time to time myself, as there are news tidbits that aren’t readily found in many other places. Kudos to Matt Chen and his crew for rolling out the service.

In spite of its growing popularity, however, it looks like Feedburner is no fan of Megite. I just got off the horn with Matthew, and it seems like Feedburner is blocking Megite’s feed crawlers. This is a problem, as feedburner serves thousands of blogger’s feeds, and its has a double-whammy effect.

First of all, Megite won’t be able to credit Bloggers with appropriate links to their site when a story comes up — because it can’t “find” their feed if its being served by Feedburner.

Secondly, because Megite can’t find them, it can’t list their story either underneath the appropriate story item. As it stands now, many of the news items are quite bare with no “discussion” item below them.

I wonder if it has anything to do with how often Megite’s crawlers “ping” the feedburner system, as I know when I’m getting picked up by Megite, this blog certainly does get contacted every few minutes on their behalf.

More to come as it develops.