Archive for the Technology category
Video: Evolution of Media
by Rio Flores on October 2nd, 2007
This is a very cool video showing the evolution of advertising and media through the the past century. This was put together by some friends at whatisaggressive.com for use in a presentation by Grey Global Group (an ad agency).
The Digg Mafia Turning Users Away? Digg Failing? Let’s digg a Little Deeper…
by Rio Flores on February 18th, 2007
A recently Dugg (and then buried) post by Ajay over at Techtities.com draws attention to a recent fall in traffic to Digg.com. He essentially, declares the sky falling on Digg. Apparently, Kevin Rose must do something “before the Digg Mafia drive away all the normal users.” Eek.
While I have my own concerns about Digg, let’s take a closer look at the data. As Ajay points out, there does appear to be a bit of a drop off.
Now, let’s dig a little deeper…
Oh Look, del.icio.us is experiencing the same trend! Oh look, craigslist.org is experiencing almost exactly the same trend line!
Digg is hardly driving away users. Whatever is going on, it’s broader than Digg.
Plausible Explanations:
- While Digg’s demographics are generally broad and continuing to diversify, I’d argue that Digg’s most active contributors are students (not just undergrads) and others in academia. November, December and January are months particularly packed with exams and vacation days.
- These are holiday months. Every year the web experiences traffic lows during these months, when people are visiting with family, doing their X-mas shopping, tending to end of year closings and attempting to honor their New Years resolutions.
- Alternatively, perhaps Alexa is re-weighting their user base to reflect changing web demographics.
One final consideration: If you look at the very tail end of the graph, at least for now, it looks like Digg and these other sites are prepping to bounce back.
New Ethanol Adapter for Existing Vehicles
by Rio Flores on October 22nd, 2006
via Wired’s Autotopia
A Brazilian company, ABC Esso, will soon sell an Ethanol adapter in the U.S. that lets any gasoline vehicle burn up to 100 percent ethanol. It works with the vehicle’s existing sensors to detect the ethanol/gasoline ratio and instruct the engine to operate accordingly.
The company claims there are no cold start problems when using E85. ABC Esso says some fuel pumps that are not so ethanol-tolerant may have to be replaced.
The company has developed adapters for Ford, GM, Honda, Mazda, Volvo and Toyota vehicles and will sell for between $500 and $900.
FireFox Optimization Download: Search & Translate From Your Address Bar
by Rio Flores on May 4th, 2006
If you’re not familiar with Firefox’s keyword search capability, it’s a great way to efficiently search the web without having to scroll through search plug-in in the search bar. Downloading this set of 140+ keywords will allow you to translate and search directly from your address bar. The keywords use simple two letter acronyms for most major search engines. So if you wanted to search digg.com for youtube you could type “di youtube.”
The keyword set also has easy access to translations via Google. If you wanted to translate por que from Spanish to English, you might type “esen por que.” If you wanted to translate a URL from Spanish to English, you could type “esenu www.example.com.”
Download Unavailable at this time.
Chevrolet Appears to be Lying to the New York Times
by Rio Flores on April 4th, 2006
Taken from Viral No.de: “The New York Times takes a look at Chevy’s new create-your-own-ad contest. According to Chevrolet spokeswoman Melisa Tezanos, Chevy anticipated the “critical submissions,” but accepted the risk. According to her, the company doesn’t plan on shutting down the anti-SUV ads.” But they appear to be doing that very thing!
This probably isn’t the best way to win over the hearts of the shrinking pool of customers. I hope they get nailed for it in the mainstream press.
Awesome Video: Trusted Computing
by Rio Flores on April 1st, 2006
There is a great video featured on YouTube promoting awareness of Trusted Computing. The vide clip asks: “If the industry doesn’t trust you, why should you trust them?” First Chevy gets trashed with their remixed advertising contest, and now this! I’m really impressed with the level of sophistication that people are able to bring to the causes the care about, but am puzzled by a few things that don’t completely add up.
I just don’t understand why they link to a page that hasn’t been updated since October 2005. I don’t understand why the folks at againsttcpa.com don’t mention this really awesome video promotion. I wonder how closely the video makers are really working with againsttcpa.
While I commend their remarkable efforts, I just wish they had chosen a more active partner.
Broadband for All? Who Isn’t Already Online that Wants to Be?
by Rio Flores on March 20th, 2006
As mentioned on Slashdot and in this press release, the Democratic Party is proposing affordable broadband for all Americans within 5 years. While I’m very eager to see my fellow Americans become more tech-savvy and more eagerly embrace the future, I really wonder how effective such measures could be. I really wonder who isn’t on broadband that wants to be, studies show cost isn’t a major barrier. I wonder how do the Democrats hope to accomplish such things and wonder what role government should be playing.
A Parks Associates study published late February shows slowing internet and broadband growth. Just this week BusinessWeek published their take on the study. Their analysis: Many consumers who want to go online are online. Of the 39 million homes without Internet access only, 8 million have computers in the home and only 2 million of these plans to get internet service of any kind. Another 300,000 homes might go online if the price were cheaper.
Based on the preceding paragraph, we can say that about 2.3 million offline households would be affected by a affordable broadband. As a point of reference, there are 108 million U.S. households. So, one million homes translates into slightly less than 1% of all U.S. households. Making broadband as cheap as dial-up won’t have much of an effect on the remaining households with computers, but lacking internet service. Many of these homes’ are content to simply access the internet from work. So.. What about moving people from dial-up to broadband?
In terms of dail-up to broadband transitions, the Parks Associates study indicates that “42% of the U.S. population has broadband access at home, while 22% use dial-up.” (Why were not talking about households anymore, I don’t know – I’m going to assume they meant 22% of households since all other citations reference households). About a month ago, a study came out suggesting that about1/3 of dial-up users would adopt broadband if the price were cheaper (Sorry – I can’t find the source). So, let’s just assume that 1/3 of 22% of America’s 108 million homes would be additionally affected by the Democratic “Broadband for All” proposal. That translates into another 7% or 7.8 million homes.
I hope delivering affordable broadband to these 10.1 million households (7.8 + 2.3), or 9% of all households, would be accomplished by creating some real competition in the broadband marketplace. Unfortunately, due to the various decisions of the FTC competition to provide broadband service is somewhat limited in this country. You generally will only find a 2 or 3 companies, if that, offering broadband to a given household. The situation gets worse in smaller cities and more rural locations. At this point, there is little reason for cable companies and telecoms to compete on price. I hope this is what Nancy Pelosi means when she speaks about providing affordable broadband for all.
There is really no need for any expansive government program. While I’m not conservative, I just don’t want another instance to emerge where Democrats can be painted as advocating “big government” or “big spending.” Instead let’s see what real market competition can do to the price of broadband.