colin.macdonald.com

September 14, 1961

macdonald — Sat, 16 May 2009 16:21:00 -0700

Goals

Wolfram|Alpha's long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything. Our goal is to build on the achievements of science and other systematizations of knowledge to provide a single source that can be relied on by everyone for definitive answers to factual queries.

Wolfram|Alpha aims to bring expert-level knowledge and capabilities to the broadest possible range of people-spanning all professions and education levels. Our goal is to accept completely free-form input, and to serve as a knowledge engine that generates powerful results and presents them with maximum clarity.

Wolfram|Alpha is an ambitious, long-term intellectual endeavor that we intend will deliver increasing capabilities over the years and decades to come. With a world-class team and participation from top outside experts in countless fields, our goal is to create something that will stand as a major milestone of 21st century intellectual achievement.

Status

That it should be possible to build Wolfram|Alpha as it exists today in the first decade of the 21st century was far from obvious. And yet there is much more to come.

As of now, Wolfram|Alpha contains 10+ trillion of pieces of data, 50,000+ types of algorithms and models, and linguistic capabilities for 1000+ domains. Built with Mathematica-which is itself the result of more than 20 years of development at Wolfram Research-Wolfram|Alpha's core code base now exceeds 5 million lines of symbolic Mathematica code. Running on supercomputer-class compute clusters, Wolfram|Alpha makes extensive use of the latest generation of web and parallel computing technologies, including webMathematica and gridMathematica.

Wolfram|Alpha's knowledge base and capabilities already span a great many domains, and its underlying framework has the power and flexibility to support ready extension to essentially any domain that is based on systematic knowledge. More »

Future

Wolfram|Alpha, as it exists today, is just the beginning. We have both short- and long-term plans to dramatically expand all aspects of Wolfram|Alpha, broadening and deepening our data, our computation, our linguistics, our presentation, and more.

Wolfram|Alpha is built on solid foundations. And as we go forward, we see more and more that can be made computable using the basic paradigms of Wolfram|Alpha-and a faster and faster path for development as we leverage the broad capabilities already in place.

Wolfram|Alpha was made possible in part by the achievements of Mathematica and A New Kind of Science (NKS). In their different ways, both of these point to far-reaching future opportunities for Wolfram|Alpha-whether a radically new kind of programming or the systematic automation of invention and discovery.

Wolfram|Alpha is being introduced first in the form of the wolframalpha.com website. But Wolfram|Alpha is really a technology and a platform that can be used and presented in many different ways. Among short-term plans are developer APIs, professional and corporate versions, custom versions for internal data, connections with other forms of content, and deployment on emerging mobile and other platforms.

History & Background

The quest to make knowledge computable has a long and distinguished history. Indeed, when computers were first imagined, it was almost taken for granted that they would eventually have the kinds of question-answering capabilities that we now begin to see in Wolfram|Alpha.

What has now made Wolfram|Alpha possible today is a somewhat unique set of circumstances-and the singular vision of Stephen Wolfram.

For the first time in history, we have computers that are powerful enough to support the capabilities of Wolfram|Alpha, and we have the web as a broad-based means of delivery. But this technology alone was not enough to make Wolfram|Alpha possible.

What was needed were also two developments that have been driven by Stephen Wolfram over the course of nearly 30 years.

Crisis Of Craft

macdonald — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 13:21:11 -0700

"Crisis Of Craft

By Steven Van Zandt

It is an interesting time in our business is it not?

Now you wish you listened to your parents and went to college, huh?

We are experiencing the biggest changes in forty years as the main revenue producing medium shifts from the album to...we don't know what? Keep in mind that up until the Beatles and the rest of the British Invasion landed in 1964 the vinyl single ruled what was called the Business. It wasn't exactly a business to tell you the truth. It was more like the Wild West with a bunch of freaks, misfits, outcasts, outlaws, entrepreneurs, renegades, wiseguys, and hooligans running around making it all up as they went along. Finally in 1967 the Beatles made an album called Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – ask your Grandfather if you can borrow his copy – and with that record the album became undeniably King. And the difference between 79 cents for a single and $4.98 for an album created a music business.

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, we've now come full circle back to singles and if you were wondering what 1962 was like, well you're looking at it.

And, as if that wasn't enough to deal with, just to make it interesting, let's throw in a little worldwide economic holocaust shall we? You thought you were having problems a year ago?

Well the truth is, it might take a year or two, but those two things will eventually sort themselves out. There will be some new revenue model, be it the 360 or subscription or whatever, and frankly there's been enough boring discussions about the mechanics of our business already. Enough to last a lifetime.

And as far as the economy…Obama's going to fix the economy so stop worrying about that!

No it's a third topic I want to look at. All we ever talk about is the delivery system of the product, the mechanics, the technology, the infrastructure; I want to spend just a minute on a topic that never ever gets discussed in the music business – the music.

The reason nobody wants to talk about it is because it mostly sucks! It blows! It is sucking major moose cock! Who are we kidding here? Nobody's buying records? Because they suck!

And I know why.

Nobody wants to deal with this but we have to.

Yes we are experiencing big changes in the business but much more importantly over these last thirty years or so we have been witness to a crisis of craft.

I started to notice the crisis around the time MTV appeared. Not that it's their fault, one must assume video was as inevitable as the combustion engine, food preservatives, the digital format, and all the other invented horrors of Commerce disguised as Progress.

You can fight it but you're better off adjusting and dealing with it. Save your energy because you're going to need it. And MTV may save us yet. When they put our TV show on!

Rock and Roll is the working class art form.

Real Rock and Roll, traditional Rock and Roll, the music you hear every week in the Underground Garage and every day on Sirius 25 & XM 59. Equal opportunity regardless of race, education, or money. Since the working class don't think too much about what is art and what isn't, mostly because they're too busy working, they spend their time on the craft. The practical, useful stuff.

So let's go back to basics.

What is our craft?

Rock and Roll had always been a two part craft, performance and record making, which turned into a three part craft for bands when songwriting was added after the Beatles changed the world.

But that self-contained archetype may have been a temporary blip in the big picture. Recent history is starting to suggest they may turn out to be the Exception rather than the New Rule. It was, after all our Renaissance. That approximate 20 year era, 1951 to 1971, will be studied for hundreds of years to come and still directly informs everything today that is Popular Music.

So as to our craft – performance, record making, songwriting-what happened exactly?

The crisis in performance is I believe based on one simple fact. When it started, Rock and Roll was dance music. One day we stopped dancing to it and started listening to it and it's been downhill ever since.

We had a purpose. We had a specific goal, an intention, a mandate. We made you dance or we did not work – we did not get paid – we were fired – we were homeless. That requires a different energy. It is a working class energy. Not an artistic intellectual waiting around for inspiration energy. It's a get up, go to work, and kill-energy. Rip it up or die trying.

The advent of the video was just the final nail in the performance coffin, a coffin that had already been constructed by years of excessive immersion in ganja, hashish, and all forms of water cooled bong therapy. You didn't have to make people dance anymore. They were too stoned to dance! You didn't even have to play your instrument anymore – all you had to do was act!

Act like a Rock Star and bada bing you were a Rock Star.

And now there's a new trend that's even more dangerous. And this affects songwriting as well as performance. Bands are starting to skip the bar band stage of their development. The club stage. Where, ideally you're still a dance band, but equally important, you get the opportunity to play other people's songs. Your favorite songs. All of a sudden I'm hearing it's not cool to play other people's songs. That's for the less gifted. The losers. The way we thought of the top 40 bar bands growing up has been extended to include any songs that didn’t come from your own personal genius.

This is a major problem.

Performance-wise the energy you discover, manufacture, and harness as a dance band stays with you for the rest of your life. You never lose it.

And as far as songwriting, the analysis you must do while learning to play classic songs is how you learn to write. This melody, with that chord change, produces this effect. It's how you learn to arrange. The verses go here, the bridge there. It's how you learn the specific job of each instrument.

You learn greatness from greatness.

Nobody is born a great performer. Nobody is born a great songwriter.

The Beatles were a club and bar band for five years. And then continued playing covers for five albums. Let me say that again. The Beatles were a club and bar band for five years. And then continued playing covers for five albums! Then the Rolling Stones were a bar band for three years and played covers for their first five albums. Do you think you're better than them?

The other nefarious infection regarding modern songwriting is the auteur theory which became dominant as Rock and Roll became the art form of Rock beginning in 1965. That was the year the Beatles, Stones, Byrds, and Bob Dylan influenced each other right into a new art form. Suddenly Rock was personal, it was important, and an industry of journalists sprang up to explain it to us. And that was, and is great, except an inaccurate balance was created between the post-art form Rock and pre-art form Rock and Roll. Keeping in mind the art form part of Rock was only the last quarter of the Renaissance. It was born in the Folk-Rock era of 1965, continued through Psychedelic, Country-Rock, Hard-Rock, and into the Singer/Songwriter era of the early '70's.

An inaccurate emphasis on the importance of the self-contained artist has led to the ocean of mediocrity we're all drowning in today. Journalists work in words. They love words. They are words. So it is perfectly natural for them to labor under the misconception that lyrics are the most important part of a song.

And lets keep in mind, there are of course major journalist exceptions, the two best Rock and Roll books after all – Nick Tosches’ Hellfire – the Jerry Lee Lewis story, and Dave Marsh’s Louie Louie both celebrate pre-art form Rock.

Don't get me wrong, great lyrics make a song better, I made five political albums and spent months on the lyrics. Just don't start thinking that is why people are coming to see your band because that is not enough reason.

And don’t start thinking your grammar school poetry makes you a great songwriter. Bob Dylan is the greatest lyric writer that will ever live, if he wasn't a great singer and able to write (or in the early days steal) great melodies, he'd still be in Greenwich Village at the Cafe Wha. The problem with this imbalance is singers that don't write or don't write about the correct subjects, aren't taken as seriously. Believe me it's true.

In spite of Elvis and Sinatra!

The 15 years of pre-art form lyrics may not seem as important or meaningful in a social or political way, but as a 13 year old hearing super sexy Judy Craig and the Chiffons singing Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry’s “I Have a Boyfriend” you couldn’t have told me that wasn’t important! More than anything else in the world I wanted to be that boyfriend! And still do! That was my “Blowin in the Wind,” my “Day In The Life,” my “Sympathy For The Devil,” absolutely.

If you want to write then you’ve got to learn how to do it. This is why the great song publishers like Lance Freed are always encouraging the young writers to co-write with the older ones.

Just as it’s important to perform with a purpose, it is equally important to write with a purpose. Whether that purpose is to express your most personal anguish or to simply have a hit record. If you’re going to do it, do it right.

The third part of our craft is record making and that discipline has been almost completely abandoned.

A record is four things – Composition, Arrangement, Performance, and Sound. Four different crafts overseen by a Producer that understands, to some extent all four elements plus the Big Picture of the Industry, plus the psychological stuff of being the artist’s psychiatrist, plus the liaison with the business people, etc. etc.

Where are the Producers? Where are the Arrangers? The point being once upon a time it took an army of very talented people to make great records. Writers, singers, musicians, producers, arrangers, engineers and now you have to do it yourself? No wonder everything sucks!

Well when the major record companies abandon development yes, DIY is born. Do it yourself. And the auteur theory works well with DIY anyway so why not? Ok there's one reason why not. Everybody isn't a star. Isn't a songwriter. Isn't a singer. Isn't a performer. Isn't a record producer. But who's there to tell them? To help? To suggest a different direction? To teach?

To impose discipline? To be honest?

Even the Majors are starting to adjust and I hope they succeed because they’re almost useless to us as banks in this new paradigm shift. It was very encouraging and impressive that Sony stuck with MGMC for 18 months before it broke. Maybe they looked back and learned from Steve Popovich who stuck with Meatloaf for over a year when no one was interested.

The Majors have largely passed the creative stuff off to the production companies. There's nobody home artistically. They can still find a record and occasionally break one. But there ain't gonna be a second one. Because nobody knows how they made the first one! There's no development. There's no long term thinking.

So it's up to the Indies isn't it? But whether it’s the Indies or the Majors, whoever it is better establish a new work ethic, better find some new patience, get back to the basics, and better be qualified to go the distance.

The standards have been set by Sam Phillips, Leonard Chess, Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler, by Berry Gordy. They all had one thing in common – the instinct for that unbeatable combination of art and commerce. You want to be in the record business? These are the standards we must live up to.

We must reintroduce a new dedication to the Craft.

And worry about the new technology, and the Art, later."

Steven Van Zandt

According to Bob Lefsetz "You've Got To Read This..."

macdonald — Fri, 15 May 2009 19:37:32 -0700

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/13/long_tail_p2p/

P2P study: Music crackdown is bad for business

Music biz throwing away cash

By Andrew Orlowski (andrew.orlowski@theregister.co.uk)

Posted in Music and Media, 13th May 2009 19:09 GMT

A study of P2P music exchanges to be revealed this week suggests that the ailing music business is shunning a lucrative lifeline by refusing to license the activity for money.

Entitled "The Long Tail of P2P", the study by Will Page of performing rights society PRS For Music and Eric Garland of P2P research outfit Big Champagne will be aired at The Great Escape music convention tomorrow. It's a follow-up to Page's study last year which helped debunk the myth (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/07/long_tail_debunked/) of the "Long Tail". Page examined song purchases at a large online digital retail store, which showed that out of an inventory of 13 million songs, 10 million had never been downloaded, even once. It suggested that the idea proposed by WiReD magazine editor Chris Anderson, who in 2004 urged that the future of business was digital retailers carrying larger inventories of slow-selling items was a Utopian fantasy.

The P2P networks are harder to quantify, but apparently show a similar pattern, where most of the action - and profit - is in the 'head'. Each Top 100 CD on on PirateBay averaged 58,000 downloads a week, for example. Lady GaGa's The Fame was downloaded 388,000 times in a week from PirateBay alone. Like its predecessor, the new study also finds that downloads follow a log-normal, rather a Pareto (or "power curve") distribution as Anderson envisaged. The WiReD man had guessed the shape of the internet - and picked the wrong shape.

P2P swaps: where's the action?

The gap between bestsellers and the rest is widening, Page and Garland conclude, a pattern also seen with movie and TV consumption too. The authors cite one knock-on effect for live music promoters, who say bands fourth of fifth on a bill are relatively worse off than they were ten years ago. So much for the internet as the great leveller: You literally got lost in the noise.

For Andrew Bud, who worked on last year's study, the answer is simple:

"An obvious answer is that it’s through people chatting to each other and seeing the music talked about in the media. That’s what culture is. So the fact we’re seeing the log normal distribution here may point to the power of culture on people’s choices. Chris Anderson’s hypothesis of a Pareto power law would be much more about random, individual choices – people alone with their computers. So perhaps, this debate of 'thick versus fat' is really about the power of culture in determining demand".

Page says that once the nature of the digital market is understood, we can build businesses that reward composers and songwriters. (Not something a concern for the Pirates).

Make money not war

Instead of enforcement, the study implies that copyright holders should view P2P file sharing as a new kind of broadcast medium, one which should be licensed. A legitimate market, in other words.

"If sellers sell it, it might never be bought. But if the swappers offer it, at least one person will likely take it," the authors point out.

Polls suggest many music fans would gladly pay for such a service. The University of Hertfordshire last year found over 80 per cent (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/16/bmr_music_survey/) interested in voluntarily paying for services which offered exchanges of sound recordings, and a survey of music fans in Sweden - home of The Pirate Bay - found (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/23/sweden_p2p/) that over 86 per cent would cough up: over half the sample would pay up to £12 a month.

The world's first voluntary P2P service was due this spring from UK cable giant Virgin, but the ISP suspended the initiative (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/23/virgin_puts_legal_p2p_on_ice/) late in the day due to record company nervousness.

Although they are loathe to acknowledge the "try before you buy" aspect of P2P, labels are well aware of it - and understandably want their most popular investments (artists who are played dozens of time at home) to command more than somebody who is song may be downloaded, hoarded, and never listened to once.

That's a tough nut to crack, and since consumers won't stand for intrusive play counting technology, is probably solved by pricing reform. But it's not a problem the major labels want to address. This week the music business renewed its emphasis on enforcement (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/12/film_filesharing/), rather than income growth. ®

New Scrum Resources to Download

macdonald — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 10:55:45 -0700

From http://www.scrumalliance.org/news_items/67

"We've recently added two new resources to our site that you can download and share with others. The first is a whitepaper by Audrey Troutt that takes agile terminology, including Scrum, and tranlates it into "plain English" for a non-IT audience.

The second is a whitepaper by John Puopolo and Derek Wade that explores how agile methodologies like Scrum can be applied to distributed teams.

_{posted by Rebecca T. Traeger (14 Apr 09)"}

VANOC concludes operational testing on a high note with exceptional venue and athlete performances at Richmond Olympic Oval

macdonald — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 19:27:34 -0700

For further information: John Gibson, VANOC Communications, (604)
403-1585, john_gibson@vancouver2010.com; Jason Macnaughton, VANOC
Communications, (604) 403-2734, jason_macnaughton@vancouver2010.com

Re Post:

http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/March2009/15/c8981.html

Just because I'm nice, don't assume I'm dumb!

macdonald — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 22:52:12 -0800

I read the above quote today on http://www.hbr.org which was followed up with 'people see warmth and competence as inversely related' and I could not agree more.

You may be tired of having to take responsibility for tasks that others should be doing. You might even feel as if you are the only one who actually follows through on what you promise. But don't be too quick to fix someone else's mistakes today because you could drive everyone nuts with your obsession of an unobtainable perfection. Instead, be flexible enough to honor each person's contribution. Keep in mind that you probably won't be quite as judgmental next week.

Twisten.fm (pronounced TWISS-en-dot-eff-em) - What are you listening to?

macdonald — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 22:55:17 -0800

Twisten.fm (pronounced TWISS-en-dot-eff-em) is a mashup that crawls Twitter for tweets about music. It then takes those tweets and throws in a play button so that you can listen to the song being talked about. Way cool huh?

"Eric K. Clemons: Another Point of View: The Internet is Neither Friend nor Foe of Participatory Democracy"

macdonald — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 22:52:55 -0800

Too Soon for Self Congratulations

In the heady days immediately following Obama's victory it is easy for liberals to feel not only self-congratulatory, but to be filled with an enthusiasm for the internet and its prospects for creating an informed and empowered democracy. The facts are strung together in a tenuous web of argumentation. Obama won. Obama was internet savvy. Therefore Obama's victory was a triumph for empowered citizen democracy and the internet will ensure triumph for empowered citizen democracies everywhere. Connect the dots and draw the desired inferences. Thanks to the internet we have no more Bush. No more conservative-dominated Washington politics. No more powerful, financially well-endowed special interests dominating elections. The internet gives us participatory democracy and we have a return to the Golden Age of Athens and of Pericles .

Would that things were ever that simple, even in Athens. The Golden Age lasted less than a quarter of a century. After Pericles came economic disaster, due to the plague and the Spartan invasion. Athenian democracy was hijacked by Alcibiades . Athens fell.

The Internet Did Not Elect Obama

So what really happened in the 2008 election and what do I fear might happen next? Didn't the internet enable an informed electorate to select and fund Obama?

What happened? A brilliant and charismatic candidate promised change, change we could believe in, and told us that we could, yes, we could. Frankly, after 8 years of Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld, after the greatest redistribution of wealth since the Normans stole England from the Saxons, and after the US was mired in the worst foreign wars since Viet Nam, almost any change seemed like a good thing. Likewise, after years of a White House that understood only half of Adam Smith's early analysis of capitalism, the self-interest part and not the rules part, the wheels finally came off the American economy. Almost any Democratic candidate could have won. Against the increasingly tired old man and the inarticulate, anti-intellectual and superficial self-styled Russian affairs expert, the Democrats won in an electoral college landslide. Combine the Republican Party's candidates, the economic environment, and their failure to harness the web either for communications or fund raising, and they simply had no chance.

The Internet is Not Inherently Liberal -- The Republicans Can Use it Too

But what happens next? Can the internet also undercut populist candidates and return control to big money donors? Can the internet actually limit informed debate?

First, on fund raising. Republicans tend to have more money. They tend to do a better job of getting political contributions, probably because they have more money. Under the guidance of Karl Rove they certainly mastered direct mail fundraising. And there is no reason to believe that they will be run over by the power of internet fundraising ever again. When the Obama campaign team refused federal funding and undercut Senator McCain's efforts to establish a precedent for a campaign run only with federal funds and without funding from special interests, it was a short-term triumph for the Democrats. After all, they appear to have mastered the net first. Over the longer term, however, this may come back to haunt Democrats and populists more broadly. In particular, it appears that McCain was the first to harness the internet for presidential campaign fundraising, back in 2000 ; the fact that he chose to run in 2008 using only federal funds cannot be interpreted to mean Republicans cannot effectively harness the net once again and reconstruct an environment of money and power in presidential politics.

But a broadly based truly informed small-d democratic campaign almost does not need funding, right? If we all know all the issues, and all the candidates' positions on all the issues, then TV advertising is irrelevant. If we all intend to vote, consistent with our true beliefs, then get-out-the-vote grass roots activism is irrelevant as well. We're informed, we reflect, and we vote. Why do campaigns need financing? What difference does a Republican financial edge make, really?

Unfortunately, the internet for most of us is not a place of careful introspection. If, "On the internet, nobody knows that you're a dog ," then likewise no one knows that you're a crank masquerading as a journalist, or a misrepresentation masquerading as a fact. Worse yet, simple, angry, rejectionist positions are easy to state. Careful refutation is more difficult, more lengthy, and more time-consuming for the reader.

The Internet May Not Support Introspection and Informed Debate? Really?

To take a single, simple example, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin rejected abortion, for any reason, even to save the life of the mother. When asked to explain the difference between her position and that of her presidential candidate at the head of her ticket, she simply restated her position. When asked again for an explanation, she offered simply that these were her beliefs. Implicitly, in matters of faith, no explanation is required. And increasingly this simple direct statement of beliefs is resonating with the American people. It is possible to explain the origin of Sarah Palin's position, solidly rooted in medieval Catholic Church teachings, which is still reflected in the British and American legal tradition. One does not execute a condemned prisoner while he was insane but waited for him to regain sanity. You simply did not execute a man who did not understand that he was being killed. This was not, as it might appear, spiteful, but actually was intended to be quite generous. By giving the condemned a chance to confess, and to make his peace with God, you were allowing God to judge his soul and to determine his afterlife in the best possible light. This of course is the reason that Hamlet does not kill his uncle Claudius when he first has a chance to do so, as his uncle is completing his confession of his sins; killing his uncle was not enough, and for true revenge Hamlet needed also to damn his soul. Candidate Palin, of course, did not wish to damn any innocent fetus. If, by killing the fetus to save the mother, you damn the soul of fetus, not yet able to confess, then the choice is clear; you save the fetus and allow the mother to live long enough to confess.

If you like this argument then you accept candidate Palin. If this argument strikes you as medieval nonsense, and if Sarah Palin cannot provide a better argument, then you reject candidate Palin and her views. But notice how simple it is for a candidate to express an opinion forcefully, no matter how superficial his or her analysis. And notice how much more cumbersome it is to address it, put it in context, refute it, and force the candidate to explain or defend it.

Does anyone truly believe that the internet has improved political debate? Over a century after the great Congressional campaigns of 1858 we still teach Lincoln-Douglas Debate and continue it as a form of debate competition. Does anyone anticipate that Bush-Kerry Debate will become a long-term competitive style? Worse yet, does anyone anticipate Palin-Biden debate will emerge as a form of competitive debate, with one candidate announcing in advance that she will speak about whatever she wants and ignore the questions, and the other candidate rambling until time is called by the moderator? Debate has been reduced to trivial posturing and we accept this.

Digg, Del.icio.us , and the internet more broadly all reward simplicity and the powerfully delivered sound bite. It is easy to say "The Obama relief package is socialist, taking your money and giving it to someone else." It's harder to say, "Well, no. The stimulus package is designed to create consumer spending and thus restart the economy, leading to rehiring and reduced unemployment, which of course leads to more spending and more hiring through the well-known multiplier effect. Government jobs are of course jobs, and have a great multiplier effect ... just see what happens to a community in the US or abroad when a military base is shut down ... the multiplier effect explains why civilians lose their jobs as soon as the military leaves, and why we really, really want the multiplier effect now. We don't accomplish that by taxing you or taking your money ... we printed a whole bunch of new money. That's likely to be very inflationary and a bad thing for people to whom we owe American dollars. The real losers, unfortunately, are likely to be Chinese holders of American Treasuries. Yes, social security recipients could be hurt, but, actually, with automatic COLA adjustments protecting them, the biggest losers are going to be foreign creditors." The first is 15 words and easily understood. The second is 170 words, almost a dozen times as long, and is probably mostly incomprehensible except to someone with at least one course in macroeconomics.

So, Now What? If Not Empowered Democracies, Then What?

So, what's my take on the internet and the inevitable creation of newly empowered democracies? I love the idea of an empowered and informed electorate, a return to the government of the polis, and a return to the popular democracy of classical Greece. Who would not? And if the internet gets us there, well, as we used to say in the 60s, "Power to the People." But if the internet is just another way to raise money, then money, not people, will have power. And if the internet is just another way to promulgate the simplest and the most popular sound bites, without any prospect of responsible journalistic vetting, this does not bode well for liberal agendas. I'm not suggesting that liberals panic, but it's certainly too soon for self-congratulations or over-confidence. Obama was the right candidate at the right time with the right message and the right technology; McCain did not understand the new media, but, frankly, nothing he did could match Obama's charisma, and no one could have run chained to the Bush legacy after the economy tanked.

The internet has its uses. Lies can be quickly refuted as lies, and lies and innuendo play a crucial role in tight elections -- Congressman Richard Nixon attacked his opponent for the Senate, claiming Helen Gahagan Douglas is a communist , "pink down to her underwear"; Swift Boat Veterans for Trust attacked presidential candidate John Kerry , claiming he had not served with distinction, and nameless, faceless sources claimed that Presidential candidate Barack Hussein Obama was a Muslim. But the internet is still an easier place to communicate lies and half truths to the faithful, even if it can also be used to set the record straight to those willing to listen.

2012 will be an entirely new story. The internet is a new medium and its political impacts need to be understood. Claiming that it makes things easy for the people and that the success of democratic ideals is now inevitable is dangerously simplistic. The internet simply moves the war of the parties and their funding machines, not just the battle of ideas, to a new domain.

Huffington Post

UK's MoBank - Optimized for Mobile Delivery

macdonald — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 08:17:24 -0800

MoBank, the UK-based mobile banking and payments said to be launching this month, is creating some buzz on the other side of the Atlantic (stories here, here, and here). Given the pedigree of its two founders, Steve Townsend and Dominic Keen, who blazed many online banking trails at Egg and First Direct, it should provide a glimpse of the future of mobile finance.

The company is establishing a call center in the Isle of Man, run by Steph Gregg, a veteran of Egg, First Direct and Vodafone. Melanie Hunter is head of marketing. David Rubin is head of mcommerce.

The company was named to Red Herring's top-100 global startup list last month (here) along with FinovateStartup alum ClairMail (demo video here).

It appears at launch the service will support bill payment and certain mcommerce activities, such as purchasing movie tickets. An iPhone app is expected at launch. Users will register their credit/debit card(s) with the service. The company plans to expand into mobile banking and money management activities in the future.

The company has raised more than $1 million according to news reports. The company was founded in 2006 and presented at The Essential Web conference in June 2007
(p. 43, here) and had 4 employees at that time.

Here's how the company described themselves 18 months ago:

MoBank is creating the world's first mobile-led online bank. The company believes that, for some sections of the population, small screen devices will become the channel of choice for most banking and payment services. moBank's business model is based on providing a free-to-use basic banking service with paid-for add-on features. Furthermore, moBank's users are enabled to participate in a range of unique, value-generating m-retail activities.

What's innovative: It sounds like a mobile-based account aggregation and bill-pay service, similar to Mint on the iPhone. But it could also contract directly with one or more banks like SmartyPig has (previous coverage). But as ING Direct proved, optimizing on a new delivery channel can pay off with great word of mouth and positive press.

Travails of the Great Recession - A Hollywood Ending

macdonald — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 08:02:00 -0800

It's time once again to take a short TV commercial break from the nightly news of travails of the Great Recession and run to our refrigerators for a snack.

Back in the 1930's, the country was in turmoil as the Great Depression took its toll on most everyone, but, as luck would have it, the 1930's were also the Golden Age of Hollywood, allowing people a couple of hours of respite at the local movie theater. Those good movies would transcend them for the length of the picture into another life and allow them to escape the pressure of countless worries about losing their jobs, their homes and their savings.

They would watch Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dance without a care in the world, William Powell and Myrna Loy snipe playfully at one another as they solved crimes, a frolicsome Clark Gable facing off against Claudette Colbert, Joan Crawford and Vivien Leigh, and Lionel Barrymore play out Grandpa, seeing nothing but goodness in life.

Today, in the Great Recession of 2008-2010, people are once again seeking refuge in movies, but now they can enjoy them in the comfort of their living room or bedroom, thanks to the countless movies on VHS, DVD and direct download.

Mainstream fare remains a different story. Multiplex options are a cheap date - the comfort food of the global entertainment business - and in 2008 filmgoers defied worldwide recessionary trends. In the U.S. and Canada, 1.37 billion tickets were sold, down a modest 4 percent from 2007. Overall North American ticket revenue, owing to increased prices, was up 2 percent over 2007. American and Canadian moviegoers spent $9.63 billion in 2008. The question is, what will 2009 ticket sales be?

At this juncture is when I bring up our company MotionWorks digital. Our great recession of 2008-2010 is similar in one major way to the Depression of the `30s. When the stress of today's survival becomes overwhelming, most people will escape the pressure and worries by "disappearing" into a DVD at home, hence the spike of now up to 10 million members to the mail-order DVD firm Netflix by a whopping 45% last quarter. A tinge of "Hollywood Ending'' improbability is pure escapism, which is what movie-goers are seeking for, particularly today. Given that in 2008 Americans alone spent more than $21 billion on video game systems, software and accessories, up from $18 billion in 2007, that's pretty good. However, in today's plunging economy, people can not afford social activities outside the home and so many will seek their escapism by bringing video content into their living rooms and bedrooms.

Back in the 1930's, and even later, any movie was suitable for anyone, regardless of age or maturity, but today careful selection is necessary. It's too bad. It seems that Hollywood doesn't consider a movie complete unless it carries at least one scene of naked sex. Whatever happened to public imagination? Scriptwriters today seem short on manufacturing good dialogue and compelled to plant the F-word here and there before the job is complete.

MotionWorks digital is the next wave for video subscriptions because of the spiritual, motivational and supportive content MotionWorks will provide to the wireless industry. We all admit secretly that TV is an invention that permits you to be entertained in your living room by people you would not have invited into your home. As an industry, MotionWorks can not only survive but succeed at expanding its growth potential in these tough times. It's all about reviewing our global history in order to envision our future as a company and making our own Hollywood Ending....