Companies scouting for technology

Source: NY Times

Ping
Thinking Outside the Company’s Box
By G. PASCAL ZACHARY
Published: March 30, 2008
More businesses are learning how to buy the great ideas of others.

Blu-ray break

Source: Information Week

Blu-Ray Copy Protection Breached

A West Indies company says it has defeated the BD+ DVD copy protection scheme, which was thought to be virtually impenetrable.

By Thomas Claburn
InformationWeek
March 24, 2008 05:05 PM

The second line of defense to prevent Blu-ray discs from being copied has been breached: SlySoft, a software company based in Antigua, West Indies, said last week that its AnyDVD HD 6.4.0.0 disc copying program can now "make backup security copies of Blu-ray discs protected with BD+."

Yet I put out a simple copy protection system that just requires that a user's own system encrypts its copies last year.

The industry wants to lose money. No matter what it says.

Business plan for Internet radio

It is such a great deal of choice and control when it comes to music today as unlike when I grew up when phonographs or cassettes dominated, you can instantly go to a song of choice and hear it play or quickly download something you like, yet I wasn't very surprised when regardless of all that when I had the chance I was listening to a mainstream radio station over the Internet--listening like I had done as a kid with far older technology.

And thinking about it, to me radio more than any other media, considering it as a media delivery object, is totally for the Internet, even more than video, or books or any other because there is that need for uniqueness, and the ability to have it in the background.

Videos are not in the background--or not usefully in the background. They demand attention, while with music and song, you can do other things so there is a natural listening to music or songs in the background that isn't there for anything else. A book demands attention. A news article demands attention.

Music can be the muse, in the background, ready when needed to spring forward, or demurely sit back and allow you to do other work.

But there is our human need for novelty which drives a need to hear music that is not personally selected, so that I have a library of my favorite songs which I will listen to as I want to hear one--but I still love radio and hearing songs picked by others.

Still, music does at some level demand some attention even in the background, so D.J.'s and commercials provide a useful relief, which is where I think satellite radio just totally missed on something basic, as from what I've seen they thought that taking away commercials was a good thing, but it's not.

Being someone who has driven across the United States of America, more than once, I remember that familiar feeling from hearing the familiar sounds that radio would give, and I would hate for them to go away and to miss that sense of comfort.

Ok, so a lot of talk but I put "business plan" in the title of this post, so what's that about?

Well, the Internet is the medium for radio, despite the name, and a human voice, and song choices from others are part of it, introducing much needed novelty and new sounds that are otherwise hard to find, so the business plan is for the major radio stations to contract at-home D.J.'s who select songs, and add their voice, to the mix, bringing in their own crowd with the radio station providing the library of songs and handling the payment issues. The contract would cover a lot of what would be needed without the radio station even needing to be known as the source for the D.J. and the D.J. could be paid with money from advertising.

If they don't get listeners they don't get paid.

I am borrowing a bit from what I know of Google's AdSense program but with a different twist, as I'd think that people with some proof of their ability would be the ones licensed or contracted, and for the big radio stations it would be a way to have their huge libraries optimally used without a huge investment on their part.

IF someone is terrible at picking songs and doing the D.J. work then they don't get listeners, don't get advertisers and as the Internet is a consumer's choice environment, they just kind of sit out there without having any impact--negative or otherwise.

But if someone takes off---well then the sky is the limit as Google has already shown with its AdSense program.

The business plan is open source as in FREE. I want more choice on the Internet, and I want good voices and music choices that can comfort me on those lonely highways of life.

The world should give them a chance to be heard on their own terms.

And the Internet makes that possible.


James Harris

People and processes

Your company is only as good as its people and processes. You can have the best people with crappy processes and they'll be frustrated, or great processes with inept people and you will be frustrated.