eConsultant

If every iPod came with note that said "10,000 songs - Buy them for $10,000 at iTunes", people will stop buying it unless thay can spend flat fee to fill it with new music.

Digital music: flat fee futures | The Register

"Digital music: flat fee futures"

2004 was the year that discussions of alternative licensing models for digital music finally reached the mainstream. At the start of the year we interviewed two of the leading proponents, Professor William "Terry" Fisher of Harvard's Berkman Center think tank, and Jim Griffin; in September - thanks to Factory Records' Tony Wilson - your reporter took these ideas to the biggest music convention in the UK; and Fisher's long-anticipated book Promises To Keep, which discusses several of the alternatives in detail, appeared in the fall. So it's fitting to close the year with Fisher's views on the state of the landscape.

But first, we must commend the book: it's very good indeed. It's rare to find an academic lawyer writing for a general audience without a polemic slant. The backbone of Promises To Keep is a detailed discussion of the many ways a digital pool, or flat fee system, may take shape; it is also a lucid introduction to copyright in general and the specific, Byzantine peculiarities of the US compensation system.

A good step-by-step process for keeping a computer safe ....

How to fix Mom's computer [Scribbling.net]

"How to fix Mom's computer"

* Deleted spyware with Ad-Aware
* Updated Windows
* Secured Internet Explorer
* Switched default web browser to Firefox
* Trimmed down startup programs
* Removed Personal Web Server
* Installed ZoneAlarm firewall
* Uninstalled unneeded applications
* Installed spyware protection with Spybot Search & Destroy
* Installed virus protection with AntiVir
* Scanned and defragmented the hard drive

32 items per second is such a phenomenal number.

Amazon.com Tops Record for One-Day Sales

"Amazon.com Tops Record for One-Day Sales"

SEATTLE (AP) - Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) on Monday said sales of consumer electronics surpassed book sales for the first time and was its largest sales category over the Thanksgiving weekend, launching the online retailer's busiest holiday selling season in 10 years.

The company also said it set a single-day sales record during the period with more than 2.8 million units, or 32 items per second, ordered across the globe.

Visitor traffic peaked at an estimated 700,000 users during a 60-minute period, according to Amazon.com's Holiday Shoppers tracking program.

Its top-selling electronics products include Apple Computer Inc. (AAPL)'s iPod media player, DVD players and digital cameras, Amazon.com said.

The retailer added that customers bought more than 1 million items from its music category during each of two back-to-back weeks this month. Its jewelry and watch segment sold more than one watch per minute since Nov. 25.

Alternate Headline : CraigsList Saves People Lots of Money!

Internet Week > Craigslist Costs Newspapers Millions In Classified Ads Revenue > Craigslist Costs Newspapers Millions In Classified Ads Revenue > December 27, 2004

"Craigslist Costs Newspapers Millions In Classified Ads Revenue"

Popular community web site Craigslist, which launched in the mid-1990s, has cost newspapers in the San Francisco Bay area from $50 million to $65 million in employment advertising revenue, a consulting group said Monday.

The non-profit site has also cost newspapers millions of dollars more in merchandise, real estate and other traditional classified advertising businesses, Classified Intelligence LLC said in a recent report on the self-service site's impact. Craigslist, which is a quarter owned by EBay Inc., has grown to a billion page-views a month.

"Craigslist has created an extremely important and valuable marketplace, and perfectly illustrates the changing nature of the classified advertising industry," Peter M. Zollman, founding principal of Classified Intelligence, said in a statement.

Earlier this year, market-tracking company Corzen Inc. reported that leading online job boards nearly tripled the revenue growth of traditional newspaper classified ads in the third quarter.

Revenue growth at national online boards Careerbuilder, Monster and HotJobs was 47.4 percent in the quarter, compared with the same period last year, versus 15.9 percent for newspapers's recruitment category in classified ads, the New York company said.

In terms of revenues, however, online boards were way behind newspapers, $217 million versus $1.1 billion.

Online job boards, however, have posted higher revenue growth than newspapers for the last three consecutive quarters, and Corzen predicts they will eventually overtake classified ads in volume and revenue.

Classified advertising represents a $28 billion to $30 billion business in the United States, including $16 billion in daily newspapers, and an estimated $100 billion business internationally, Classified Intelligence said.

Google Press Center: Zeitgeist

"2004 Year-End Google Zeitgeist"

Popular Queries

2004

1. britney spears
2. paris hilton
3. christina aguilera
4. pamela anderson
5. chat
6. games
7. carmen electra
8. orlando bloom
9. harry potter
10. mp3

5 of the top 10 - web surfers looking for nude photos !

eConsultant is run by Sanjeev Narang

Broadband Use Surpasses Dial-Up in U.S.

Move to Firefox 1.0 and install all the necessary extensions from here:

Firefox Help: Extensions

'BitTorrent' Gives Hollywood a Headache

By ALEX VEIGA, AP Business Writer

LOS ANGELES - Bram Cohen didn't set out to upset Hollywood movie studios. But his innovative online file-sharing software, BitTorrent, has grown into a piracy problem the film industry is struggling to handle.

As its name suggests, the software lets computer users share large chunks of data. But unlike other popular file-sharing programs, the more people swap data on BitTorrent, the quicker it flows — and that includes such large files as feature films and computer games.

Because of its speed and effectiveness, BitTorrent steadily gained in popularity after the recording industry began cracking down last year on users of Kazaa, Morpheus, Grokster and other established file-sharing software.

The program now accounts for as much as half of all online file-sharing activity, says Andrew Parker, chief technology officer of Britain-based CacheLogic, which monitors such traffic.

'BitTorrent' Gives Hollywood a Headache

Facts about Salon

At an estimated $2 million per year in subscription sales plus an additional estimated half a million in Day Pass ad sales, that 20% of gated content is now contributing roughly half of Salon's total income.

Lessons from Salon:

Lesson #1. Bells & whistles don't work unless visitors really, really like you
Lesson #2. Spend some energy on renewals
Lesson #3. Maximize promos when the fish are biting
Lesson #4. Day Passes can be a major production pain, but sponsors adore them

ContentBiz.com : practical news and Case Studies for publishers and aggregators selling and syndicating text-content online.: "4. Day Passes can be a major production pain, but sponsors adore them"

An excellent article in FastCompany:

1. Creativity Comes From Creative Types
2. Money Is a Creativity Motivator
3. Time Pressure Fuels Creativity
4. Fear Forces Breakthroughs
5. Competition Beats Collaboration
6. A Streamlined Organization Is a Creative Organization

Fast Company | The 6 Myths Of Creativity

Google suggests finishes your words .... Try it out ...

Google

Fatal flaw: It doesn't work within the browser.

Wired News: Yahoo Searches Desktops, Too: "Yahoo is adding a tool to search computer hard drives as it scrambles to catch up with Google and stay a step ahead of Microsoft in the battle to help users sort through gobs of information on the internet and the desktop.
Unlike Google's (GOOG) desktop search tool, Yahoo's won't operate within a browser. The distinction means that Yahoo's (YHOO) desktop searches won't be co-mingled with online searches conducted at its website. "