Monthly Archives: July 2010

The Data Bubble

Posted on July 31, 2010 by Doc Searls

The tide turned today. Mark it: 31 July 2010. That’s when The Wall Street Journal published The Web’s Gold Mine: Your Secrets, subtitled A Journal investigation finds that one of the fastest-growing businesses on the Internet is the business of … Continue reading →

Posted in Berkman, Business, Journalism, problems, Technology | Tagged | 52 Comments

Opening new common ground

Posted on July 31, 2010 by Doc Searls

So that’s the logo for the first VRM+CRM workshop, which will happen on 26-27 August, at Harvard Law School. It’s free. You can register here. ProjectVRM, which I’ve been running as a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center has been growing nicely over … Continue reading →

Posted in Berkman, Business, Events, Ideas, Technology, VRM | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments

Remembering Ricochet

Posted on July 30, 2010 by Doc Searls

From roughly 1996 to 1999, my always-on Net connection at home was a wireless one, through Ricochet. Throughput in both directions was faster than dial-up, and always-on. Customer support was good too. As it happened, both homes I lived in … Continue reading →

Posted in infrastructure, Past, Places | 9 Comments

It’s even worse than it appears

Posted on July 30, 2010 by Doc Searls

The Common Errors of Telecom CEOs, by Rudolf van der Berg, is required reading for anybody who cares about the future of the Internet, and whose hands it’s in.

Posted in Ideas, infrastructure | Leave a comment

Informal vs. Illegal

Posted on July 30, 2010 by Doc Searls

Immigrants and Crime: Time for a Sensible Debate is a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Francis Fukuyama with the subhead, The gardeners and maids who cross the border illegally are very different from the tattooed Salvatrucha gang member who lives … Continue reading →

Posted in history, Ideas, Places, Politics, problems | 6 Comments

A lost moment in email marketing hell

Posted on July 29, 2010 by Doc Searls

So I get an email from The River: Integrating Web Intelligence, subtitled “Bridging the Web and Physical Channels”. The first section is this: 1. Audio Tweet 4 min. : Clickstream Trust / Privacy in Telcos – Part 1/4 in the “Who owns … Continue reading →

Posted in Business, problems | 3 Comments

Padding a category

Posted on July 29, 2010 by Doc Searls

This graphic, of Apple’s revenues per quarter, broken down by products, tells several stories at once. One is that the iPhone remains huge. (I was amazed by how many I saw in the UK and France.) Another is that the … Continue reading →

Posted in Business, Gear, Technology, Travel | 7 Comments

The Wikileaks Story

Posted on July 28, 2010 by Doc Searls

… is about Wikileaks. Not the war. But not oddly. All stories have three elements: 1) A character. A protagonist. The main human subject. Sometimes it’s a cause, but it requires personification. In sports it’s a player or a team. … Continue reading →

Posted in Journalism, News, problems | 2 Comments

Bring back the old Google Image search

Posted on July 27, 2010 by Doc Searls

I hate the new Google Image search. I used the old one constantly and understood it well, because there wasn’t much to understand. You clicked on an image, and it went to a page with two frames. The one above … Continue reading →

Posted in problems, Technology | 13 Comments

Nice production on consumption

Posted on July 26, 2010 by Doc Searls

At Consumer Choice, Judi Clark has a nice interview with Jerry Michalski, Tara Hunt and myself. I learned a lot. Highly recommended.

Posted in Business, Ideas | Leave a comment