Newstaxi forum| CNET | The Register | ZDNet | Wired | Slashdot | MacNN | Webpronews | Breaking IT News (Google News and Yahoo News) | ||||||||
Explore Picasa's latest and greatest community shotsPicasa's got a brand new photo exploration page to let you browse user shots. There's even a game to figure out where photos have been taken. SanDisk stock surges on buyout rumorsStock for flash memory maker SanDisk is up on rumors that a buyout by Samsung is in the works. Making Word multiuser: PlutextPlutext, currently being developed, will bring nearly live editing to Word documents. NetSuite boasts of Google Chrome supportAll NetSuite's customers will be able to use Google's browser by mid-October. What are the odds any are actually clamoring for it? EIC Squared: Chrome, iPods, and a Dell-Salesforce unionOn this week's EIC Squared podcast CNET's Dan Farber and ZDNet's Larry Dignan discuss Google's latest rocket launch--the Chrome browser--as well as Apple's iPod event next week and a Dell-Salesforce.com union. Images: The art of 'Spore' prototypesWill Wright and his Maxis team worked on dozens of prototypes to test the elements of their soon-to-be-released evolution game. Here's a sampling. Start-up launches spectrum marketplaceA new company called Spectrum Bridge has launched a Web site for buying and selling wireless spectrum licenses. Umbrella Today keeps you dry, informed about moistureWant to check the weather without worrying about temperature? Let's face it, you just need to know if you need an umbrella or not--and this site gets that. Demo + TechCrunch = Launch WeekAs two competing Web 2.0 product launch conferences kick off, CNET keeps track of the best products and companies in the spotlight. CNET News Daily Podcast: Microsoft makes ad push with Gates, SeinfeldThe software maker shows it's not going to let Apple's "I'm a Mac" ads dictate how their products are positioned. Photos: Future Combat Systems, here and nowThe U.S. Army has ambitious plans for a widespread high-tech refresh of its vehicles and other soldier gear. It's also finding a way to make some parts happen sooner rather than later. Video: Why Apple says it's ready to rockWe'll soon get a look at Apple's highly-anticipated Q3 product refresh. But in advance of next week's rollout, check out what's likely going to be on the agenda with Charles Cooper and Tom Krazit on the CNET News Daily Debrief. Google forms OpenSocial Foundation to woo friendsSocial networks are designed to be all about friends, right? Yet when it comes to the competition behind the scenes at social networks, that '70s song by War, "Why can't we be friends?" comes to mind. Hands-on with the new Joost: Software still requiredThe new Joost is no longer a piece of software, but you'll still need a special site-specific plug-in to run it. Why I'm passing on Google's 10th anniversaryI'm quite sure I didn't make a big deal about Microsoft's 10th, either. But Google at 20? Now that will be something to behold. Microsoft adding to its Labs collectionStartup Labs will be an effort under Ray Ozzie, joining others including Live Labs, adCenter Labs, and Office Labs. Security Bites 113: The security of ChromeBilly Hoffman of HP Web Security talks about Google's new browser, how it handles Javascript and what it means for Web 2.0 security. Are Demo and TechCrunch50 fragmenting their audiences?With both events scheduled to start Monday, many press, as well as venture capitalists and others are having to choose which one to attend. A user guide to following DemoFall and TechCrunch50More than 100 products are going to be introduced during the week of September 8. Will they be any good? What's McCain doing in front of my junior high?Speculation has it that it was a goof-up that had the Republican nominee standing in front of Walter Reed Middle School during his acceptance speech. In any case, the image brings back memories for CNET News' Ina Fried. Microsoft tries to reclaim Windows' imageAfter years of letting Apple's attack ads go unanswered, software maker sets out on difficult, costly journey of trying to take back control of what Windows stands for. |
MySQL daddy quitting Sun?'Technically, there is no resignation letter'MySQL co-founder Micheal "Monty" Widenius may quit Sun Microsystems, less than seven months after Sun paid $1bn for his free database outfit.⦠World goes mad as Bill and Jerry eat churrosMicrosoft's Seinfeld ad ignores MicrosoftMicrosoft has debuted the first commercial starring its $10m Vista pitchman, Jerry Seinfeld.⦠Japanese researchers check IDs with eyeball twitch'Spoof-proof' biometricsBiometric identity scanners are attracting more attention as safe way to handle user authentication and security. But a team of Japanese researchers claim current methods are bunk if approached by a sufficiently sophisticated intruder.⦠Crimeware giants form botnet tag teamRock Phish's big, fat, fast-flux networkThe Rock Phish gang - one of the net's most notorious phishing outfits - has teamed up with another criminal heavyweight called Asprox in overhauling its network with state-of-the-art technology, according to researchers from RSA.⦠Yahoo! shares! hit! five! year! low!Microhoo! chances 'negligible'Yahoo!'s share price dipped to $17.75 on Thursday, hitting its lowest point since October 2003.⦠EA Europe struggles squeezing out SporeLogin problems at launch
US startup launches online airwaves marketSecondhand spectrum swapSpectrum trading - the ability for licence holders to sell on, or sub let, their frequencies - has been broadly endorsed by both the FCC and Ofcom, so now a US company has done the obvious thing and set up a market for the buying and selling of radio frequencies.⦠Orange can't find BlackBerry mapsBut will sell you their alternativePunters getting themselves a BlackBerry Bold from Orange are finding the in-built mapping application absent, and are being asked to pay for the Orange alternative despite the original adverts clearly stating the in-built app would be included.⦠Price cutting rivals eat into Nokia's market shareShares fall sharply on falling market shareNokia has signalled an end to its uninterrupted growth, predicting that its market share would shrink, slightly, during the current quarter - though it will of course still increase over the whole year.⦠Blazing Vaios: Sony's hot-tops hit the UK, tooBurning laptops not just in USSony secretly wrote to its UK channel partners earlier this week warning them that the company planned to recall some Vaio TZ-series laptops, The Register has learned.⦠America's CTO: We have a winnerThe people's choice vs LarryPoll Results In one of the tightest contests ever seen in a Reg poll, columnist and software developer Ted Dziuba has emerged as the people's choice to be Barack Obama's "Chief Technology Officer". Dziuba beat off a stiff challenge from Hans Reiser, the fallen Linux guru who was sentenced to 15 years for murder in an Oakland, Ca. court last week.⦠DARPA funds radical disco-copter conceptSpinning-platter switchblade chopper takes wingPentagon boffinry chiefs, not content with the existing panoply of wacky new whirly-copter concepts, are to fund still another radical rotary wing project - the "DiscRotor".⦠MS preps four critical updates for SeptemberPatch Tuesday train chugs into viewMicrosoft plans to release four security bulletins next Tuesday as part of the September edition of its monthly Patch Tuesday update cycle.⦠Sun and NetApp gain market shareGartner data bad news for top 5 external storage vendorsSun showed everyone a clean pair of heels as it grew its external disk storage market share faster than any other vendor in the second quarter of the year according to Gartner. IDC's quarterly disk disk market tracker also shows Sun way out in front.⦠Ten tweaks for a new Acer Aspire OneTake charge of LinpusHands on Acer's Aspire One is ready to go out of the box, but if you've opted for the Linux version and you're new to the OS, you may be wondering how to started. Here are ten things to try.⦠Debian components breach terms of GPLv2You want source code with that?A top Debian contributor has been left "pretty disappointed" by elements of the Debian community for failing to comply with the conditions of the GNU GPLv2 license.⦠Sophos DNS snafu creates update problemsBad hair day nothing to do with hackersDomain name system problems left some users of Sophos unable to get security updates on Friday. The same issue, blamed on a mistake by one of the security firm's service providers rather than hostile action, left many surfers unable to access its main sophos.com website.⦠Police quiz BT on secret Phorm trialsRIPA? Never heard of it officer...City of London police questioned BT earlier this week as part of a probe into the covert wiretapping and profiling of the internet use of tens of thousands of BT customers during tests of Phorm's adware system.⦠EA free petrol stunt triggers north London gridlockShoot-em-up promo creates real life car chaosAnother great moment in the annals of computer game PR stunts today - Electronic Arts caused gridlock this morning by offering £40 of free petrol to punters in Finsbury Park, north London.⦠DNA database costs soarPrying is priceyHome Office figures show that the cost of running the national DNA database has more than doubled since 2002-03.⦠Boffins use heartbeat to thwart wireless implant hackChinese cardiac cryptoInterfering with wireless medical implants sounds like a movie threat plot rather than a real risk - but if there is a threat, Chinese boffins have come up with an ingenious solution for combating it.⦠I was a government guinea pig, and all I got was this lousy t-shirtGargantuan US child health study - all take?What will the US government owe the hundreds of thousands of Americans it will swab, prick, track and trace over the next 21 years, in the largest children's health study ever? So far, the answer from the National Children's Study is "not much".⦠Chubby crims more likely to leave dabs'You're nicked, fatty'Obese criminals are more likely to leave their fingerprints at crime scenes because of the amount of salty food they eat.⦠Pure Digital Evoke Flow internet radioPure entertainment pleasureReview After two years in development, Pure Digital has created what it hopes will become internet radioâs first genuinely iconic product.⦠Hadron boffins: Our meddling will not destroy universeNo 'strangelet soup' for youBoffins preparing to fire up the most powerful particle-smasher ever built have released another reassuring report which says that their machine will definitely not destroy the universe - nor even the planet Earth.⦠Employee has no privacy on company computers, US court rulesWhat's yours is oursEmployees do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy for material stored on computers owned by their employers, a US court has ruled.⦠Columbia set to resurrect GhostbustersEgon, your mucus - againColumbia Pictures has asked The Office co-executive producers Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky to work up a script for a third outing of Ghostbusters, Variety reports.⦠My name really is Ivan O'Toole, admits Ivan O'TooleParents, eh?The regular readers among you will know we're a bit fond of stories relating to parents who slap their sprogs with ill-advised or downright perverse names, as evidenced by the cases of 4Real, Metallica, @, John Blake Cusack Version 2.0, Renault Megane and, spectacularly, Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii.⦠North Korean Mata Hari in alleged cyber-spy plotTales of sex, spying and spywareUpdated South Korea has accused its neighbour North Korea of cyber-espionage during the trial of a suspected Mata Hari-style spy. However some political commentators are suggesting that the case against alleged spy Won Jeong Hwa is unsupported by evidence and riddled with inconsistencies.⦠Facebook - The Movie! Exclusive storyboard peekWhite-knuckle rollercoaster of a movie in prospectThe recent shock news that Sony had commissioned West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin to knock together a screenplay about how Facebook redefined just about every paradigm open to redefinition was greeted with a mixture of horror, disbelief and out-and-out jaw-dropping incredulity among Reg readers.⦠Enough is enough! Plasmon board recommends sale$25 million private equity bid approach supportedEnough's enough! Get me outta here. The Hanover Investors-backed Plasmon board has had it up to here and is pulling the plug.⦠Wireless music streamersSends songs to your hi-fi with these four systemsGroup Test The Roku Soundbridge M1001, Logitech's Squeezebox Duet, Philips' Streamium NP1100 and the Sonos Digital Music System all offer ways to get the music on your hard drive to pump out of your stereo.⦠How Chrome puts the skids under NokiaWhat does Gears mean for the mobile web?Analysis Google's first web browser is here, and I've been trying it out.⦠Government told: Release secret Iraq documentsAdditions to sexed-up weapons docsThe Information Commissioner Richard Thomas has told the government that it should release draft versions of a dossier about Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction and comments made on it by spy chiefs.⦠Those old timer sign results in fullAnd the winners are...It's hats off to you, our beloved readers, for your massive response to our challenge to create an "Elderly people" sign to replace the current couple of cripples hobbling down to the bingo - an image which doesn't much impress campaigning old timers organisation Age Concern.⦠Dell plots worldwide factory sell-offOutsource to competeDell is trying to offload ownership of its factories worldwide as part of an overhaul of its production strategy, reports say.⦠NetApp brings StoreVault home to momStoreVault becomes standard NetApp product available world-wideNetApp has brought its separate low-end StoreVault product range in-house, as a standard NetApp S family product available to its worldwide resellers.⦠Carbonite muscles alongside Mozy in LenovoCloud backup for IdeaPad notebooksAccording to a report, Lenovo, which picked EMC's Mozy cloud backup for its SL business notebook line, has rejected EMC and picked competing Carbonite cloud backup for its consumer IdeaPad notebooks⦠HDS revving AMSMonterey mid-range storage refresh comingThe wires are humming that Hitachi Data Systems is going to update its AMS mid-range storage array line with three new Monterey models. We should expect an announcement quite soon.⦠Bosch strategy boutique fails greenwash testSaving the planet, one space shuttle launch at a timeThe marketing robots at the UK tentacle of remorseless Teutonic engineering firm Bosch haven't quite mastered the art of eco-friendly promotion guff.⦠7-year-old faces M&S InquisitionNot just data protection, this is M&S data protectionCalls by the Information Commissioner for organisations to stop hiding behind the Data Protection Act (DPA) fell on deaf ears this week as Marks and Spencers insisted on a seven-year-old giving official permission before an operator could talk to his mum.⦠Samsung set to buy SanDisk?Checking out 'various opportunities'The flash memory market is abuzz as Korean news sources, along with Reuters and Bloomberg, are reporting that Samsung Electronics is thinking about buying SanDisk.⦠How to stop worrying and enjoy paying for incoming callsLearning to love termination feesTermination fees - the money paid to a receiving network for connecting a call - are for the chop. The question is what, if anything, will replace them; moreover, will ordinary punters ever even notice they're paying to receive calls?⦠Next-gen netbook Intel Atom due Q3 2009Roadmap reveals dual-core CPU-GPU debutIntel's next-gen Atom processor for Small, Cheap Computers - the successor to today's 'Diamondville' - will debut a year from now, according to the chip giant's latest roadmap.⦠88% of IT admins would steal data if firedSo the survey saysAn IT administrator scorned is not to be trusted, according to a study recently conducted by Cyber-Ark.⦠Report: IRS networks riddled with vulns, rogue serversTaxpayer bewareThe US Internal Revenue Service is putting tax payers at risk by operating thousands of web servers that contain security vulnerabilities or have not received proper authorization, a new report has concluded.⦠Amazon opens (American) video streaming shopDown with downloads
Comcast files FCC impotence suit'We will comply without complying'As expected, Comcast has appealed the landmark FCC order that sanctioned the American ISP for secretly blocking BitTorrents and other peer-to-peer traffic.⦠Open source release takes Linux rootkits mainstreamScript kiddies, the DR will see you nowThe art of burying invisible malware deep inside a Linux machine is about to go mainstream, thanks to a new open-source rootkit released Thursday by Immunity Inc., a firm that supplies tools for penetration testers.⦠Applet accelerating Java update M.I.A.Last minute glitch kills welcoming partySun Microsystems planned to push out a significant update to Java today, but a last-minute snag has made its date of arrival uncertain.⦠|
Empty List |
Jobs E-Mails: Are They Real?A close look at e-mails supposedly sent by Steve Jobs to customers shows inconsistencies that make it likely that some are fakes. Meet the Latest Copyright Scofflaw -- the GOPAs the Republican Party seeks to control the Oval Office, it has become a copyright scofflaw along the way. On Friday, the publishers for the Seattle rock "Heart" sent the party a cease-and-desist order to stop it from using the band's hit song "Baracuda," which was blaring at the Republican National Convention late Thursday. That marks the third time in as many months the GOP has been accused of hijacking intellectual property. Teach Your Kids the Basics of Hydro Power By Building a WaterwheelWater wheels have been powering factories and mills for centuries, and now
they can power your kids' weekend activities. Follow our guide to build a
water wheel out of cups and picnic plates. It's a simple enough project for
kids of all ages; more ambitious minds can modify the design to generate
electricity or power more complex machines. Weekend of Web Apps, Tech Talks Awaits at DjangoConThe open source Django web framework gets its very own coming out party this
weekend at the first-ever DjangoCon. More than 200 web developers will converge
on Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California, on Saturday and Sunday to mingle and discuss the future of the fast, flexible web app framework with the funny
name. Code JavaScript Shortcuts With JQueryCoding animated selection tools and text effects can be a nice
but time consuming task. Why reinvent the wheel? JQuery is a library
of code which sits on top of JavaScript to quickly and easily insert
useful functions into your web site. Blow your mind with JQuery
shortcuts with Adam Duvander's tutorial. Crowdsourcing Book Excerpt: The Canary in the Coal MineFirst identified by journalist Jeff Howe in a June 2006 Wired magazine article, "crowdsourcing" describes the process by which the power of the many can be leveraged to accomplish feats that were once the province of the specialized few. Howe reveals that the crowd is more than wise -- it's talented, creative and stunningly productive. Crowdsourcing activates the transformative power of today's technology, liberating the latent potential within us all. It's a perfect meritocracy, where age, gender, race, education and job history no longer matter, where the quality of work is all that counts and every field is open to people of every imaginable background. If you can perform the service, design the product or solve the problem, you've got the job. But crowdsourcing has also triggered a dramatic shift in the way work is organized, talent employed, research conducted and products made and marketed. As the crowd comes to supplant traditional forms of labor, pain and disruption are inevitable. When the original article was published, crowdsourcing still constituted a nascent business model. A few small companies had achieved limited successes with it, and large companies had only begun to test the waters. In this excerpt, Howe argues that in just two years crowdsourcing has revolutionized an entire industry -- stock photography -- and may well be poised to create disruption in other fields as well. - - - Adapted from Crowdsourcing: How the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business, by Jeff Howe. More at Howe's Crowdsourcing Blog. Chapter 7: The Canary in the Coal Mine There's a story people like to tell about Bruce Livingstone. In late 2005, Getty Images, the world's largest photo agency, was looking to acquire Livingstone's company, iStockphoto, the world's most successful crowdsourcing company. Long before the contracts were drawn up, Livingstone, to show his commitment to the deal, tattooed the word "Getty" in cursive across the tender flesh on his inner wrist. Then he e-mailed Getty CEO Jonathan Klein photos of the tattoo under the message: "Don't make me write another word after this!" It's just the kind of tale -- emblematic of determination and just the right amount of quirky eccentricity -- that tends to burnish the reputation of its subject. In Livingstone's case, it has the added benefit of being demonstrably true. With his penchant for muscle cars, rockabilly haircuts and, yes, tattoos, it's tempting to call Livingstone an unlikely CEO. But I prefer to think of Livingstone as a perfectly reasonable chief for some corporation from, say, the year 2020. A company not unlike iStockphoto. Located in a single, cavernous room inside a former factory in downtown Calgary (Alberta, Canada), iStockphoto houses a tiny fraction of its actual workforce. And Livingstone, dressed in T-shirt and jeans, occupies a desk -- chosen, it would seem, at random -- in the middle of the floor. The corner office clearly loses significance in a company that thrives on decentralization. Jeff Howe explains crowdsourcing, which activates the transformative power of today's technology, liberating the latent potential within us all. Video: Courtesy of Jeff Howe
Westeel Rosco built the factory in 1925 to manufacture nails, screws and other bits of hardware. Unlike Westeel Rosco, iStock's products -- stock photos, illustrations and videos -- aren't manufactured on-site. They're created by a global, fluid workforce of 60,000 part-time photographers and artists, only a fraction of whom make a living from the work they sell on iStock. Yet they have a devotion to the company matched by few traditional firms. The full-time staffers who spend their days in the old Westeel Rosco plant play a support role for the community -- and community is the only applicable word -- that is making the product iStock brings to market every day. And that community has been very, very good to Livingstone and his investors. In the course of several years iStock has grown from a hobby to the third-largest purveyor of stock images in the world. When Getty purchased iStock in early 2006, Livingstone took home more than half of the $50 million Getty paid for the company. The first stock photo agency was founded in 1920, and for most of the 20th century the industry was an afterthought, trafficking in the outtakes from commercial magazine assignments. Very few photographers tried to make a living off the market in preexisting images alone. This changed after the desktop publishing revolution of the mid-1980s led to a rapid growth in the publishing industry, and to a commensurate demand for images. Suddenly photographers were making six figures a year selling photos they'd already been paid to shoot. It was like minting money. Stock photography is, in relative terms, a tiny industry. The annual global gross for the entire business is estimated to be around $2 billion, which makes it a bit bigger than the market for gift baskets, but a little smaller than the annual sales of orchids. But this little industry has undergone big changes, and could well be a case study in how the crowd will impact much larger businesses. In just the last few years the influx of talented amateurs armed with inexpensive, high-resolution digital cameras has upended the economics of stock photography. Five years ago, a professional-quality image was still a scarce resource. No more. This isn't to say the market for high-end photographs has disappeared. A gifted photographer will always find work. But the professional no longer has a lock on the middle and lower ends of the stock photo business. With a modicum of training, just about anyone can take a decent shot. Sophisticated cameras and photo-editing software do the rest. iStock exploits this fact. Design firms and other small companies working on a budget quickly embraced what became known as the "microstock" model. One graphic designer told me he went from paying hundreds of dollars an image to less than $10. "I pass on some of the savings to my clients and keep the rest. We're both delighted." iStock might be great for buyers, but it's caused all sorts of headaches for professional stock photographers. In my original Wired article about crowdsourcing I quoted a Los Angeles-based photographer, Mark Harmel, saying that this influx of cheap images had caused a slight decline in his income from stock photo sales, which had dropped to $60,000. But in the two years since that decline has fallen off a cliff, to $35,000 in 2007. "If I look at the trend line, it just keeps going down. I'm really concentrating on getting assignments now," says Harmel. "I recently came back from London with 70 really wonderful shots. I'll probably use them on my website, but it's not worth my time to bother submitting them to a stock agency. They won't sell." Harmel's far from alone. In fact, Getty's other businesses have struggled in the crowdsourced era. In the year I spent writing this book the company's stock slid 60 percent, falling to just under $22 by February 2008. That month Getty was acquired by the private equity firm Hellman Friedman for $2.4 billion, a considerably lower figure than the company had originally sought. According to a report released at the time of the sale, Goldman Sachs estimates that Getty's core business -- the sale of rights-managed, professionally produced images -- will continue to suffer an irreversible decline, falling to just 29 percent of its revenues by 2012. In the same period the investment bank projects iStock to continue its rapid rate of growth. iStock sold $72 million worth of images in 2007, a figure expected to jump to $262 million by 2012. In this light, paying $50 million for a crowdsourced photo company looks like the smartest decision Getty ever made. The company is in the midst of transforming its business, from one reliant exclusively on professionals to one that is at least equally reliant on amateurs. As the Goliath of the industry, where Getty goes its competitors are sure to follow, which is to say, stock photography itself has been utterly transformed through crowdsourcing, in which a once-scarce commodity has become abundant. The question to ask is whether the upheaval roiling stock photography is only a leading indicator, like the minor volcanic eruptions that can precede a catastrophic earthquake. Already the trend is migrating to other fields. Most immediately, the same dynamics that made the stock photo ubiquitous -- affordable digital SLR cameras and burgeoning communities of enthusiastic amateurs -- are affecting other markets for visual images. So-called "citizen paparazzi" use cellphone cameras to snap impromptu shots of stars and then sell them to new photo agencies such as Scoopt, which specialize in buying up and marketing their work. Amateurs can beat professional paparazzi for the simple reason that they vastly outnumber them. It's a question of probability: The throng of pedestrians in Greenwich Village, for instance, have a much better chance of catching an unkempt Gwyneth Paltrow than a single paparazzo. And photography may well be just the beginning. iStock itself is doing a burgeoning business in the sale of stock video footage, and the crowd is also making commercials, collaborating on TV scripts, and recording and distributing their own music. They're writing political analysis, creating their own video games, and making feature-length movies. For the time being, all this activity has taken place in something of a parallel universe, without causing any of the economic upheaval visited on the stock photo or pornography industries. But those universes are beginning to collide as more companies attempt to package all this outpouring of creativity into a marketable product. While crowdsourcing has already emerged as a potent force in the media and entertainment industries, it's also profoundly influenced the way even Fortune 100 companies like Procter & Gamble do business. Once famous for its insular culture, Procter & Gamble now crowdsources much of its R&D process, using global networks of scientists such as InnoCentive and NineSigma, which boast a combined membership of 2 million professional and amateur researchers. Even companies operating in a conventional field such as mining have found crowdsourcing applications. The Canadian gold-mining group Goldcorp put geological survey data online and offered a $575,000 prize to anyone who could identify likely areas for exploration. Goldcorp says the contest produced 110 targets that yielded $3 billion in gold. Following its lead, the mining giant Barrick Gold Corporation recently offered $10 million to anyone who could improve its silver-extraction process. The open call of crowdsourcing is also being used by companies such as Google (to develop applications for its Android mobile platform) and Netflix (to improve its recommendation system). The question is whether the iStock secret sauce can be applied to industries like television and journalism and, possibly, even beyond to any business that traffics in bits and bytes. To answer that question, it helps to know what's in the secret sauce. The Community Is the Company iStock has been compared to a cult, and the analogy isn't entirely unfair. It's no accident that the most successful companies in the web's second coming -- most of whom traffic in the crowd's creative output -- are led by outsize personalities. "Bruce is to iStock what Tom is to MySpace," notes Garth Johnson, iStock's VP of Business Development. (Johnson resigned his position after this book went to press.) For those readers over the age of 30, Tom is Tom Anderson, the president of the social networking behemoth MySpace and the first "friend" to greet any new user. Under this new archetype of a company -- in which the community, as much as the customer, comes first -- the cult of personality plays a crucial role in community building, and Livingstone has been as essential to the growth of the iStock community as Anderson has been to MySpace's. "Bruce has a really strong, extremely charismatic personality online," says Johnson. "And that's really helped us build the community." It's safe to say that iStock has left the community-building phase behind: Sixty-thousand people have combined to create an enormous portfolio of over 3.5 million images and 100,000 videos. By contrast, Getty's other divisions combined only use 2,500 photographers. The iStockers offer the company their artwork, and in return iStock goes to extraordinary lengths to keep the iStockers happy. The site offers the budding photographer all manner of free tutorials, and the forums buzz -- at a rate of 38 posts per minute -- with questions about lens sizes, polarized filters and F-stop settings. iStock doesn't offer a chance to get rich. It offers the chance to make friends and become a better photographer. "We don't own anything, the community does" says Johnson. "Everything we do affects these people, whether they're just earning enough to pay for their equipment, or they're making mortgage payments from their photo sales. They all want a voice, and we have to give it to them, because really, the community is the company." The upside to this state of affairs should be obvious -- a dedicated, efficient workforce with no expectation of receiving a living wage -- but there are downsides as well: Even the smallest changes can roil the fickle, passionate community of iStockers. In March 2006, iStock launched a new feature on its web forums, a "forometer" which measured an iStocker's popularity through "bafflingly complex scientific methods" including the date and number of posts to the forum. The forometer displayed its results through a set of red, yellow or green bars. It did not go over well. The community questioned the principles behind the feature, as well as its functionality. Not long after its launch, the feature had been removed. Employees may be hell on overhead, but they're paid to accept all but the most draconian policies with a polite nod. Communities, on the other hand, aren't paid to stick around, and nothing stops them from selling their photos to one of iStock's many competitors. "They don't work for us," Livingstone laughs. "We work for them." If the iStocker feels a sense of ownership over the site, that's understandable: The iStock community predates iStock the company. Livingstone didn't set out to revolutionize an industry, he just wanted to fill a personal need and help a few friends at the same time. In 2000 Livingstone was running a small graphic design and web-hosting firm in Calgary. Bruce is an avid photographer himself, and over the years he had developed an extensive network of photographers and designers. Early in the year he took 2,000 of his images and put them online. Anyone could download his photos in exchange for giving him an e-mail address. Livingstone's friends decided they wanted to share their images with the public, too. That June the budding community instituted a credit system: A user could download one image for every image of theirs that had been downloaded by someone else. It was a classic example of the gift economy, the non-monetary exchange that grew up alongside the internet. During iStock's early years, everyone took something and gave something in turn. "The feeders and the eaters were the same people," as Livingstone puts it. Everyone profited by acquiring new images, though no one made (or spent) a dime. Soon friends of friends heard about Bruce's nifty idea and started uploading their images, too. Then around 2002 a wider public got wind of iStock, and the site began to hit critical mass. Soon Livingstone was paying $10,000 a month for the bandwidth to support it. He could have taken advertising to cover the cost of hosting, but he felt that would violate the spirit of the site. "The focus was on the community, and good design. Advertising would have cluttered the site," says Livingstone. Instead, he started charging a quarter for each image, and he opened the system up to the public. This proved to be a momentous decision. Word quickly spread among publishers that there was a site offering cheap, usable images, and photographers began flocking to iStock to upload their portfolios. Traffic to the site skyrocketed, and soon Livingstone raised the price to $1 per image. "I thought it might become a sideline business," he says. It quickly became much more than that. The quality of the images wasn't always as high (or as consistent) as a traditional stock agency's, but the differences were indiscernible to the general consumer, and after all, you couldn't beat the price. By 2004 a host of other so-called "micro-stocks" had sprung up with strategies similar to iStock's. The professionals panicked. Microstock photos, they charged, were flooding the market with subpar images. At first, the industry aligned itself against iStockphoto and other microstock agencies such as ShutterStock and Dreamstime. Then in early 2006, Getty announced it would buy iStockphoto for $50 million. "If someone's going to cannibalize your business, better it be one of your other businesses," Getty CEO Jonathan Klein told me shortly after the sale. Smaller magazines, nonprofit organizations, and all manner of websites have continued to flock to iStock's high-volume, low-cost model. As of February 2008, iStockphoto had 2 million regular customers purchasing photographs, video footage, illustrations and animations. "Bruce's brilliance," Jonathan Klein once told me, "is that he turned community into commerce." Livingstone uses a slightly different formulation: "I turned commerce into community," iStockphoto has perfected the Jedi Mind Trick that's at the heart of crowdsourcing. It's an incredibly cost-effective strategy -- iStock boasts a 55 percent profit margin. And yet, Livingstone stumbled into this business model by creating a context -- a community of like-minded enthusiasts -- in which financial measures take a backseat to considerably less tangible concerns. Ask someone in the office, and they'll tell you: It's not about the money. Ask an iStocker and they'll tell you the same thing. In fact -- would-be crowdsources take note: If it is about the money, it won't work. It will fizzle, not sizzle, as one of iStock's designers put it. "What's funny is, the money people, they pretty quickly get pulled aside in the forums by the core people. Or they just don't have a voice. People will ignore them, like 'Oh, that's just so and so, they're just here to make money.'" That doesn't mean the iStockers are unmotivated by self-interest. The more a photographer's images are downloaded, the more recognition they receive in the community, and the more credits they earn to download other people's photos to use in their own designs. And the additional income is also welcome, of course. Unlike other cases in which large corporations have attempted to monetize community, iStock does reward its contributors. It paid out $21 million in 2007. It's significant that people in online communities like iStock's react with great hostility to the idea that crowdsourcing is a form of cheap labor -- despite the fact it demonstrably is. After all, no one wants to feel exploited. In the end, what iStock provides is an invaluable if impossible-to-measure currency: meaning. The crowd will give away their time -- their excess capacity -- enthusiastically, but not for free. It has to be a meaningful exchange. 
Fears Swirl Over Whether FCC Will Enforce Comcast Throttling DecisionFears abound whether the Federal Communications Commission will enforce its Aug. 1 order demanding Comcast stop throttling BitTorrent traffic. The non-profit law firm Media Access Project is asking three federal appellate courts to enforce the decision now. The FCC gave Comcast, which denies any throttling, until year's end to comply. Researchers Use Facebook App to Create Zombie ArmyFacebook users who choose to install the wrong third party application could find themselves inducted into a robot computer army controlled by a hacker. At least, that's what a team of Greek computer researchers proved with their rogue Photo of the Day application. Phoenix Lander Searches for Martian Microbial OasesThe Phoenix Lander confirmed the presence of water ice on Mars a few weeks ago. Now the lander searches for a bigger prize: thin films unfrozen water buried underground that could support microbial life. 'History Hacker' Brings DIY Science From Web to TVA shoestring experimenter takes his homemade Tesla coil and other amazing technological re-creations from YouTube to the History Channel. Exactly What's Under the Chrome, Anyway?
News from Portfolio.com
 Bob Rice is the author of Three Moves Ahead: What Chess Can Teach You About Business, and the former C.E.O. of a tech startup. He now runs merchant bank Tangent Capital, which he founded in 2005. Love 'em to death, but here's the thing to remember about Google: Your business is its business. Google doesn't sell software or hardware or content. It sells you -- or, slightly more precisely, its ability to understand your habits and deliver your attention to particular advertisers. And because of this, I am just a touch nervous about installing Chrome, its new browser software. Of course, Google already collects mountains of information about you from your searches (you do realize they keep track of those, right?), and from the huge cookie collection delivered fresh daily by their ad bakery (the cookie gathers information from all Google products and affiliates -- and doesn't expire until 2038). Gmail users may also have long ago realized they were conceding privacy for convenience and bells and whistles. Indeed, Google has far more and better data about your habits than the relatively modest amounts that set of privacy firestorms for AOL and DoubleClick (which Google now owns) back in the day. But so far, with Google, it's been like successfully boiling a frog: the temperature has gone up very slowly, so nobody's jumped out of the pot just yet. Perhaps that's because Google offers so many wonderful services. Who wants to head out without checking the traffic with Google Maps (oops, more footprints)? Or plan an event without checking everybody's calendar (oy...)? At first glance, Chrome seems just another browser -- and between us, who cares? IE, Safari, Firefox, Chrome -- one has more cup-holders, another has leather trim. So is the idea really just to take a piece of the "browser business," as many say? I doubt it, largely because there isn't one: Nobody's paid for browser software since about 1998. Firefox, remember, is the product of a nonprofit -- one that, interestingly, has been heavily funded by Google, for reasons previously unknown. At first, Google's goal will be to change the software game and speed your transition from a desktop-driven environment to its "cloud computing" applications: word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software. Google hopes that soon, you'll create these documents on one computer, leave them on their servers in the sky, and then continue working on them later from any other computer. Natch, you'll collaborate, share and deliver the docs this way, too. And Chrome will be the interface for it all, on top of serving more mundane web surfing functions. And all the while, Google will be doing the usual, capturing your data, your documents, your habits. And, how will they use all this information? To do what they do: deliver ever more precisely targeted ads, with concomitant higher response rates, and thus generate more dollars. Maybe we'll see "This cell sponsored by Fidelity" in our spreadsheets soon. Sure, other companies are in position to track your data, too. The difference is that, for the most part, their business models don't require them to exploit that knowledge. And certainly nobody has the reach that Google has and will have -- especially after they eliminate your last ability to hide with the G-phone this fall. Now we know Big Brother's real name, do we care? Free software and services are great, and I'd rather see relevant ads than irrelevant ones. But make no mistake: this lunch, too, has a real cost. It's called privacy. So that's the question consumers have to answer: Is it worth it? If they genuinely don't care about one company controlling a complete catalog of their surfing and working, talking and texting, and meetings and greetings, fine. For me, I think I'd rather pay cash and avoid a virtual peeping Tom who only makes money if he predicts my private behavior well. But, then, I admit it: I'm so 2005. So, shine up your computer with Chrome if you like; but at least consider getting that "Do No Evil" promise in writing first.
Google Reigns as World's Most Powerful 10-Year-OldWhen Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google Inc. on Sept. 7, 1998, they had little more than their ingenuity, four computers and an investor's $100,000 bet on their belief that an Internet search engine could change the world. It sounded preposterous 10 years ago, but look now: Google draws upon a gargantuan computer network, nearly 20,000 employees and a $150 billion market value to redefine media, marketing and technology. Palin Comparison: Which Ticket Would Be Better for Music?Word is that Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin gave one of her children the middle name "Van" so that his name would rhyme with Van Halen. Does that give the GOP ticket the edge on who would be better for music? Not necessarily. MIT Brainiacs Cutting Weather-Related Air DelaysResearchers find a better way of directing airplanes around storms. But then, anything's better than the current method, which amounts to little more than guesswork. Nokia Warns 3Q Market Share Will Fall; Shares DiveNokia warns that its 3Q global market share will decline from 2Q levels, sending its U.S. shares tumbling more than 11 percent in premarket electronic trading. Nokia gave no figures, but in July had predicted that "its mobile device market share in the third quarter of 2008 would be approximately at the same level sequentially" as the second quarter. Mon Dieu! Citroën's Psychedelic Hynos Will Fry Your BrainOne look at the Hypnos concept vehicle has us convinced someone's tripping in Citroën's interior design department. |
00:00:00 - 6. September 2008
â¦
â¦