ICANN haz .cheezburger?

At its meeting in Singapore, the Board of ICANN today gave final approval to the most dramatic change to the Internet in four decades — allowing the expansion of new Top-Level Domains (TLDs).  This decision will allow companies to go beyond the typical .com nomenclature to allow them to turn their own brands into Internet domain extensions.  So prepare to see .coke, .addidas, as well as .car and .bank.  Now this isn’t going to be cheap; word is to buy a .brand will cost around one hundred eight-five grand per brand name with five grand of that being an up front fee.  Oh yeah, that name will also cost twenty five grand a year to maintain.  What cord do I pull to have the safe fall on my head? 

Of course, not everyone will necessarily be granted a top level domain name. Who gets lucky depends on what ICANN decides. Smaller brands, which are brands nonetheless, obviously won’t be able to afford the names. Who gets to have hot generic names like .money or .tickets will be decided, to my understanding, solely by ICANN.  What happens when two companies with the same trademark both decide they want the same top level domain remains to be seen. Who gets to be .giants — the San Francisco Giants baseball team or the New York Giants football team?  I guess that might depend on who writes the biggest check to ICANN.

Because, let’s face it, this is nothing but a money grab for ICANN.  Neither you nor I can afford to play this game; we are talking about high rollers here.  The losers in this are the cybersquatters, those folks who have purchased every conceivable spelling of every combination of words out there and are holding them ransom.  ICANN states that this really revolutionizes the web, but they were saying the same thing when they rolled out .mobi, .info and .biz

And those have really worked out well, haven’t they?

New Corporate Headquarters? Uh-Oh

From my experience there seems to be an unwritten rule that I have noticed when it comes to corporations. 

First comes the Growth phase.  You know you start off with a handful of employees in a relatively small space.  Cramped, sure but you know your going places.  You make do with what you have. 

Then comes the Getting There phase.  You move up and out.  First one building, then a bigger building, then a lease on a second, then one more across town.  You’re being noticed.  There’s a little swagger to the company step.

Then the Real Expansion phase.  Offices in other cities.  One in New York.  One in L.A.  Maybe even London or Tokyo.  You are in the know.  People come to you.  People write about you. 

Then comes the Curse.  Realizing that your home office is a real patchwork of offices throughout your home city, you decide to build a campus.  One. Big. Building.  Your Corporate mark.  The site that is on every cool commercial.  The place where everyone would kill to work.  So why is it a curse?

Because, from what I’ve seen when it comes to corporations, that is the moment just before the shark is jumped.  Sears – builds the largest tower in the world at the time; after that a long sad slide into being bought out by K-Mart.  Budget Rent a Car, a company that I am personally entwined with; moves out into a beautiful suburban building – crushed by the wheels of industry in under five years.  Bank of America – a sixty story gleaming corporate center tower in Charlotte, a few years later all hell breaks loose.

Now, it doesn’t happen to everyone.  Look at Microsoft.  The Redmond campus has been around for some time and well, …

OK, it doesn’t happen to everyone.  So of course, we should all just admire the architectural porn that Steve Jobs showed the Cupertino city council and know that it will never happen to Apple.  Just imagine – a self supporting building housing twelve thousand people.  A circular symphony of clean modern lines and glass. The capstone of Steve’s tenure at Apple.  A move that will show, without a doubt, that no one can fill the shoes of Steve Jobs.

No one.  And I mean that.  Sometimes, that in itself is a curse. 

The Letter “W” And The Number 8

Microsoft unveiled their new operating system today, code named Windows 8 (Yeah I know, not much of a code name, but at least it isn’t named after food).  It is just as has been suspected; two kinds of applications for Windows 8, one that runs in a traditional desktop, and the other pseudo-mobile apps based on HTML5 and Javascript.  Both environments have been rebuilt to support touch, but keyboards and mice will still be accepted.  Multitasking is just a pull to the center of the screen, and there is a new version of Explorer, version 10.  Yes, there will be the ubiquitous app store.  Microsoft is being coy about when this will be released into the wild, given the walk back from Ballmer’s statements last week, but it looks like it could be a done deal and sooner than later. 

Of course, come the critics.  Basically it’s the same old song and dance: that Apple is Fred Astaire, while Windows is more like Kirstie Alley on “Dancing with the Stars”.  It can move, but do you want to be seen in public with it?  The criticisms boil down to this: Microsoft needs something bold and different.  Windows 8 looks to be a sad compromise of some sort. 

Still, this is a work in progress.  There are plenty of questions, but the point that everyone seems to forget is that there are plenty of businesses out there that are not and will never be ready to uproot everything they have and move to a brand new system.  That is the reality.  They didn’t do it for Vista and they won’t do it just because the fanbois out there are urging Microsoft to be more like Apple.  Windows 8 allows them to still have all that comfortably familiar legacy while introducing the next move.  It might work, it might not.  Only time will tell.

Protecting IPs From Whom?

It may be summer soon, but there is a chill in the air.  Legislation known as the “Protect IP Act” has been introduced in Washington.  Basically it is the successor to the Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeits Act that made its way through congress back in November. 

This is how the bill would work.  The U.S. Department of Justice would receive the power to seek a court order against an allegedly infringing Web site, and then serve that order on search engines, certain Domain Name System providers, and Internet advertising firms–which would in turn be required to "expeditiously" make the target Web site invisible.

Needless to say, Google is not happy.  The bill would also make Google, which makes most of its profits from its online advertising products, stop serving ads or sponsored links to those sites deemed as infringing. To quote Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt on Wednesday:

"If there is a law that requires DNSs [domain name systems] to do X, and it’s passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the president of the United States and we disagree with it, then we would still fight it.”

…

"If it’s a request, the answer is we wouldn’t do it. If it’s a discussion, we wouldn’t do it”

…

"So, ‘let’s whack off the DNS.’ OK, that seems like an appealing solution but it sets a very bad precedent because now another country will say ‘I don’t like free speech so I’ll whack off all those DNSs.’ That country would be China.”

As my dad used to say, those are fightin’ words.  And in many ways he is correct, because the main thrust of this is not the Pirate Bay and similar sites, as one might suspect, but rather Wikileaks. 

You see, under this law, leaking information such as governmental cables or embarrassing and/or damaging bank information showing rampant fraud and the like is basically distributing copyrighted material, and therefore subject to the takedown.  See how that works? Do not think for a minute that any of that was lost upon the members of congress who see the site as something they would like to see go away, and soon.

Of course the MPAA had words to fire back, seeing that they basically wrote the bill for the esteemed members of congress.  Michael O’Leary, an executive vice president for MPAA, in a statement:

“Is Eric Schmidt really suggesting that if Congress passes a law and President Obama signs it, Google wouldn’t follow it? As an American company respected around the world, it’s unfortunate that, at least according to its executive chairman’s comments, Google seems to think it’s above America’s laws. And the notion that China would use a bipartisan, narrowly tailored bill as a pretext for censorship is laughable, as Google knows, China does what China does.”

That last part may be true.  But if China does it, does that mean that we must follow their example?

Micronokia?

Eldar Murtazin strikes again.  According to a post from the Russian, Microsoft and Nokia will enter talks next week to discuss the potential for the American software giant to purchase the Finnish company’s mobile arm. That means smartphones.  He went on to say that both side are in a hurry to complete the deal and that it could close by the end of the year.  While the rumor may seem to some as a strain on reality, Murtazin is usually more right than wrong.  Also,  after Murtazin’s post came out, Mark Squires, UK Communications Director for Nokia, issued a no comment:

We typically don’t comment on rumors. But we have to say that Eldar’s rumors are getting obviously less accurate with every passing moment.

Which, for many, means that Murtazin must have struck a nerve somewhere. 

So the question is why?  Why not?  Nokia market value is 33 billion and the company has been in profit since 1996. Taking away 9-10 billion cash after debt it sums to 23 billion. Microsoft could give its own shares to the Nokia owners and not to use any money. They would get for 23 billion a company that sells every third mobile phone on this planet plus 1/2 of the Nokia Siemens Networks (worth billions) and Navteq Corp..

After all, Microsoft is sitting on a ton of cash as well.  While people cringed at the 8.5 billion spent for Skype, the fact is, Microsoft had the cash to throw around. 

You also have to think of the patents that Microsoft would get, along with two more mobile operating systems to use/pilfer. 

So why the rush?  Because if as planned, Nokia starts to sell phones with Windows Phone 7 on them and sales start to pick up, Nokia becomes more expensive.  Better to do it now, if you’re going to do it. 

It is going to be fun to see how this plays out.

Weekend Wrap Up–Bad Moves Edition

It has been a busy week, at least if your job is spinning jaw-dropping stupid stunts.

Bad Move Number One.  I think that people have a right to talk about “conflict of interest” in an honest way when you approve one of the largest mergers in US history, then four months later go to work for the company you approved the merger for.  Meredith Attwell Baker, one of the two Republican Commissioners at the Federal Communications Commission decided to take a lobbying position at Comcast. But, as we all know, one did not have anything to do with the other. 

Bad Move Number Two.  You know it’s a bad move to plant smears on your corporate opponent when the PR company you hired to do so suddenly says “Wait a minute, this isn’t right”.  But Facebook went ahead and did it anyway.  Really, Zuck?  Do you really feel that people are going to leave Facebook for whatever the flavor of the month Google is pitching to be relevant in the social market? 

Bad Move Number Three.  Rupert Murdoch decided to create his own version of Wikileaks, called “Safehouse”.  Yeah, I know, it took me a while to stop laughing on this one.  Of course, unlike Wikileaks, if the heat gets to be too much (you know like someone asks “who sent you this?”), they will sell you down the river to the authorities.  Really, the man is known for spreading lies concerning just about everyone on the planet and we are supposed to believe that if it is posted in “Safehouse” then it must be true?  They say that two positives don’t make a negative.  Yeah.  Right.

Bad move Number Four.  Something that really has something to do with technology, although it doesn’t look like it on the surface.  The political season is once again upon us and unfortunately, we are going to have to put up with political ads.  So far, we have a tie for what are the worst political ads ever, and we have only just begun, so the only place you’ll see them is either on “Web Soup” or the internet.  Really, Newt Gingrich has no reason to be turning out this cheese.  He has been in the game too long to think that this pile of excrement is actually good for him.  But Dan Adler’s ads are starting off by being, well, different.  And by Different, I mean just WTF?  I mean, Patty Duke, in the Muscle Beach weight lifting area telling constituents “Dan Adler gets sh*t done.” and a second ad that makes as much sense as the first.  I don’t know whether the guy is serious or is trolling the southern half of California. BTW, his campaign manager is Sean Astin, he of LOTR fame and Patty Duke’s son.  So there is no excuse for these either.

Just remember, folks, technology is a tool.  Unfortunately, so are many people. 

Skip Skype-ing Away

Well, Microsoft spent around 8 Billion (with a “B”) and bought internet voice company Skype last night. What is amazing is that while most people actually think that Skype and Microsoft is a better fit than Skype and Google or Skype and Facebook (the other two suitors), the deal was somehow the worst possible move that Microsoft could have done.  Doomed, I tell you.  Doomed.

I will give the fact that Microsoft’s acquisitions have not fared well.  How this is different from every other large company out there is beyond me, but let us forget that Google’s failure rate is fastly approaching that of AOL and that Apple has tasted the sour taste of failure as well.  This is about Microsoft, so we must go through the storyline that everything that Microsoft touches turns to lead.  Even when it doesn’t.

So what does Microsoft get for 8 billion dollars?  663 million total users, although most users are not active callers.  However, according to Paolo Pescatore, an analyst at CCS Insight in London. In voice services, “Skype has certainly set the benchmark and gained a lot of traction.”  Skype is a well known player.  It’s technology is fairly mature.  And unlike previous acquisitions where the question “What are you going to do with it now you have it?” was met with awkward pauses, the answers came fast and furious.  Skype on Windows Phone, Skype in Outlook, Skype in X-Box, and Skype with Lync, Microsoft’s corporate telephony services.  There are a lot of places in the Microsoft world where Skype could be used. 

Of course, analysts at Bloomberg couldn’t resist pointing out that “Microsoft’s backing of Skype may be seen as a threat by wireless carriers such as AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless because it could cut into voice revenue.”  Funny how the introduction of Apple’s Face Time wasn’t met with the same dire predictions.  After all, Apple is the market right now.  Microsoft is a far distant third.  One also tends to forget that Skype is available right now on Apple and Android products.  Yet the sky is falling only when Microsoft is in the room.  Funny, that. 

The question I have is the execution of the plan.  If this is going to work and really scare people, it will need to be done quickly.  No two years later-this will have to hit the ground running within the next six months.  Maybe not everything, but movement will need to be shown.  The good points are that Microsoft has now become the clear leader in video communication and that Skype’s leader, Tony Bates is staying along for the ride.  Microsoft says it will be exciting times ahead.  I certainly hope so. 

Hubris

As more and more details come out about this week’s security breakdown at Sony, one thing is becoming clear:  even if you think you’re safe, add a couple of more security layers.  Because you are not safe. 

According to the New York Times, the hackers made off with a database that included customer names, addresses, usernames, passwords and as many as 2.2 million credit card numbers.  Reuters is running a story that covers the number of class action lawsuits being filed on account of the breach.  The price Sony could eventually pay out in time, legal fees and lawyer costs are on the clock. 

Why? 

VentureBeat tracked down George Hotz, aka “GeoHot”, who recently settled a lawsuit with the company over hacking into the PlayStation 3’s hardware. While Sony may consider him as public enemy number one, Hotz relies that he had nothing to do with the attack.  Considering the fact that he recently settled with Sony rather than go through years of legal wrangling, (plus the fact Hotz’s main gig is hardware hacking, not database cracking), it would tend to exclude him from the line up.  But his reaction sums up what is going on nicely:

“The fault lies with the executives who declared a war on hackers, laughed at the idea of people penetrating the fortress that once was Sony, whined incessantly about piracy, and kept hiring more lawyers when they really needed to hire good security experts. Alienating the hacker community is not a good idea.”

And therein lies the point.   Companies feel it is easier to hire another lawyer rather than to fix the problem.  That the threat of lawsuits is a deterrent to hackers.  It isn’t.  You have a database with the names of customers and and their credit card numbers.  Threatening legal action with a room full of empty suits doesn’t matter, especially when the chance of catching the bad guys is slim. 

As Hotz points out, engaging the hacker community may be the best option.  Hackers are, for the most part, highly intelligent and creative people who are usually more than happy to point out the failures of your system. Make it a once a year game – give the money you would pay an overpriced lawyer to write nasty letters to the first person who can crack your system and show you where to fix it.  Admit you don’t have all the answers. 

After this fiasco, it might even be seen as a huge cost savings.

A Perfect Storm?

The outage at Amazon over the last two days now has been more than disconcerting. Many businesses have been sorely affected, and unfortunately at the time of this writing still are.  The social news site, Reddit has now been under “emergency read only” mode for over twenty four hours. Quora was hit hard yesterday, but seems to be slowly coming back.  All Things Digital has a list of companies that were hit, and opened up comments so that readers could add others they missed.  The list is impressive.

But unfortunately, the big question is still unanswered.  What is going on?  Amazon has been tweeting and posting as to the fixes and status, but no one has answered the basic question.  In fact, reading the messages coming from Amazon, it felt as if the public is hearing “Don’t Panic”, while all hell is breaking loose behind the closed door. As people have pointed out, it sounds more like damage control rather than a full blown explanation to their customers as to the real problem.  And for companies who are using AWS, a lack of a real explanation to what was going severely hampered their own disaster recovery efforts.  Roman Stanek, CEO of GoodData blogged:

My ops people were ready at 1:00 am PT to start our own disaster recovery, but status updates completely failed to indicate the severity of the situation. We relied on AWS to fix the problem. Had we had more information, we would have made a different choice.

The guest commentary in Geek Wire by Keith Smith, CEO of BigDoor, a Seattle startup that builds game mechanics into online publisher’s Web sites was precise about this.  BigDoor relies on Amazon Web Services for their business.  And Keith’s comments echoes the thoughts of every manager of every company hit by this outage.

There are a lot of really obvious and relatively easy things that any startup can do to avoid an all-out reliance on any single cloud provider, but those things take additional time and money – two of the most important things that every startup is constrained by.

We absolutely love AWS because of the pace of innovation and scale that it has allowed us to accomplish. But after today’s episode is over, we will have a big decision to make.

We can spend cycles designing and building technical belts and suspenders that will help us avoid a massive failure like this in the future, or we can continue to rely on a single huge partner and also continue our break-neck pace of iteration and product development.

I can’t tell you today which option we will choose. But I’m sure it will be the question on the mind of many startups across the country.

Amazon’s lack of transparency is remindful BP’s mishandling of the Gulf oil spill.  One reason why people were angered then was because officials within the company were not forthcoming about what was going on.  Companies using IaaS rely on technical communications written by technicians, not lawyers.  The idea of the internet is about transparency.  This is what happens when it isn’t. 

Why Apple Is Your Psycho Ex

Ah yes, the Ex who had to know everywhere you were going.  Some of us have had the displeasure of dealing with someone who feels as if they have to track our every move.  But I bet you didn’t think that it was Apple .  You see, in the Guardian today there was a really great story about how Apple keeps tabs on where you are and when you were there in a secret file on your iPhone (and iPad) that hooks up with a file on your computer when you sync your files.   

How bad is this? Let us start with what is tracked by going to radar.oreilly.com where they first broke the news: 

All iPhones appear to log your location to a file called "consolidated.db." This contains latitude-longitude coordinates along with a timestamp. The coordinates aren’t always exact, but they are pretty detailed. There can be tens of thousands of data points in this file, and it appears the collection started with iOS 4, so there’s typically around a year’s worth of information at this point. Our best guess is that the location is determined by cell-tower triangulation, and the timing of the recording is erratic, with a widely varying frequency of updates that may be triggered by traveling between cells or activity on the phone itself.

Up to a year’s worth of unencrypted information.  Yes, unencrypted.  Which means that basically anyone could get in and see.  That is not good from a privacy standpoint.  Now, the cell phone companies all ready have this information available to people in the law enforcement sector, but in order to get it, they need a court order to do so.  If the information is on your phone, well, what’s to stop a techno-savvy officer from “accidently” seeing what should not be seen? 

Of course, the first rabid argument is that Google tried it first.  Oh, yes, the great Googly-Moogly tried the “Latitude” system, which allowed people to enable their mobile to give out details of their location to trusted contacts and ran afoul of privacy mavens for that as well.  But here’s the slight but most important difference: Google allowed you to opt into the service.  If you wanted to let the world know where you were in your private reality show, you could.  With Apple, there is no choice.  You are being tracked, whether you like it or not.  And so far, Apple ain’t talkin’.  No word as to why this was created or if this can be disabled.  So there are various theories as to the whys and wherefores, which comes back down to marketing and advertising. 

But in case you want to get mad about this, you may well be out of luck, as you forgot that ever present 15,200-word terms and conditions agreement for Apple’s iTunes program, used to synchronize with iPhones, iPods and iPads.  In it  is an 86-word paragraph about "location-based services".

“Apple and our partners and licensees may collect, use, and share precise location data, including the real-time geographic location of your Apple computer or device. This location data is collected anonymously in a form that does not personally identify you and is used by Apple and our partners and licensees to provide and improve location-based products and services. For example, we may share geographic location with application providers when you opt in to their location services.”

In other words, you might want to consider alternatives in handsets if you want to keep your life private.