archiving the day

Very nice visualization makes it easy to see just how much money is being spent by the federal government. Also shows the percent change from last year. A couple of interesting areas:

1. Public Broadcasting -55%

2. National Endowment for the Arts -12%

3. FEMA -15% (really?)

4. Joint Strike Fighter +55%

In another great example of how “2.0 properties” (seriously hate that phrase) are starting to get it Facebook has announced its intention to make your data on the site portable to other sites. Now there is a lot to that but the basic idea is this: I have a Facebook account then let’s say I discover Yelp and want to become a member. If Yelp is a partner with Facebook in the data portability game then I can conceivabley transfer all of my information (profile basics, friends, privacy standards, etc.) from Facebook to Yelp. Completely handy and exactly the kind of thinking that is needed.

From an advertising standpoint (you know the stuff that makes all this work and pays all the good people that develop it) I’m still trying to decypher if this makes the site any more profitable. I feel like it is invaluable to media planners because it will further illustrate what types of people are engaged in which websites and exactly how they are interacting. If anything it will at least give us a chance to serve ads/content to people who will find them useful/interesting. 

Here is a video from the data portability group:

DataPortability - Connect, Control, Share, Remix from Smashcut Media on Vimeo.

The Get Out Clause is a band from Manchester wanted to make a music video. Being starving/savvy artists they were able to do it on the cheap and give it a really cool aesthetic by performing in front of England’s various CCTV cameras then filing for the footage through the Freedom of Information act. Lugging a drum kit around to eighty differen locations in Britain (mostly in Manchester) is quite an undertaking, let’s hope they get signed.

Here is the vid:

Cory Doctorow is completely correct in demanding an end to his contract with Virgin Media in light of their new CEO’s comments about Net Neutrality.

 From the article:

Last month, Neil Berkett (the new CEO of Virgin Media, one of my ISPs in London) announced that Network Neutrality was “bollocks” and that Internet services would have to pay for premium connections or be relegated to the “Internet bus-lane.” In other words, rather than giving me the sites I asked for as fast as they could, Virgin would henceforth deliver the sites that paid bribes faster than other sites (Virgin tried to spin this by saying that the sites that paid would get priority traffic — but how do you prioritize one service’s packets without de-prioritizing other sites’ packets?). 

Letter from Doctorow to Virgin Media:

 Complaints,
Virgin Media,
PO Box 333,
Matrix Court,
Swansea SA7 9ZJ

May 7, 2008

To Whom it May Concern:

We are writing to you today to cancel our Virgin Broadband account, having read the remarks of your new CEO, Neil Berkett, in which he described the idea of Net Neutrality as “bollocks,” promising that any Internet service that failed to pay off Virgin to deliver its packets would be put into the “Internet bus lane.”

We contracted with Virgin Broadband to provide us with access to the Internet, on the implicit understanding that Virgin would supply us with the packets we requested at the highest speeds it could manage. We did not sign up to be used as tokens in a tawdry game in which Virgin demands back-handers from the world’s websites in exchange for access to us. We want to access the Internet, not be traded to another inmate for two packs of cigarettes.

We believe that this is a material violation of our agreement with Virgin, that Virgin has substantially altered the nature of the service we are paying for. Therefore in accordance with your own terms and conditions, para, J4, “If we and/or Virgin Media Payments break the terms and conditions of this agreement, you’re free to end this agreement” we would ask you to terminate my contract without any penalties or fees.

Sincerely,

At some point this is going to be a very big deal. The RIAA and the big content providers want to kill any hope of a net neutrality bill being passed before regular people actually understand the issue. By regular people I mean the ones that actually pay for the bandwidth and exorbinant salaries of the same executives that want to own their Internet and control how the bandwidth that they pay for is used. Net Neutrality is a question of basic rights of the people. I think that it’s not only time for regulation to insure neutrality it’s time for a complete Internet Bill of Rights.

Former magician and current guy with too much time on his hands, Francisco Guerro has invented a machine that can make foamy cloud shapes that float in the air. This medium may change branding as we know it… Soon you’ll hear consumers saying, “Hell if they can make clouds that look like their logo they must be good at making widgets!”