Webby News

You may wonder whether it’s too early to make the call given the lack of interoperability standards, security concerns, and common definition of cloud computing. Well, the IPTV space shares many of the same similarities – emerging technology, emerging standards, emerging adoption, varying definitions, and yet the call was made in that space.

Cloud computing is a shot across the bow for the giants of the IT industry. They are on notice. Certainly, some will make the transition, slowly, at the speed which the overall market develops or slower, as they have no incentive to drive the market and rapidly cannibalize their existing businesses for a less lucrative business model even if it is more cost effective, flexible, and efficient for most of their clients.

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People find interesting ways to “prove” that Elvis and Tupac are alive and that the Loch Ness Monster really exists. So we shouldn’t be shocked that some people are trying to do the same thing with the King of Pop, especially around what would have been his birthday.

Earlier this week, a video surfaced on both LiveLeak and YouTube purporting that not only is Michael Jackson alive, but that he faked his death and left the Coroner’s van in perfect shape. Conveniently, the video doesn’t show the man’s face and cannot make out the license plate number. That hasn’t stopped this video from racking up over 1.75 million views combined.

We should have known that this would happen, and we should have known that social media would be used to spread this almost certain hoax around. What do you trust: one grainy video … Or the entire Jackson family, multiple government offices, and scores of examiners? Yeah, we’ll go out on a limb and call this one a hoax.

Rather than dwelling on this, we should be celebrating the man’s life today on what would have been his 51st birthday. So here’s the video in question and a bonus video that shows why he was truly the King of Pop.

BONUS: Michael Jackson Singing with Britney Spears

Reviews: YouTube

Tags: LiveLeak, michael jackson, youtube

Well, here’s a nice gesture: Google co-founder Sergey Brin and his wife Anne Wojcicki have donated half a million dollars to Creative Commons, a non-profit organization behind the Creative Commons licenses.

Google as a company already regularly donates to the valuable Creative Commons organization, but this private donation is also welcome. A post over at the Creative Commons blog says:

“Today’s challenging economic climate has made it difficult for nonprofit organizations like Creative Commons to raise funds, making Wojcicki and Brin’s wonderful gift all the more appreciated. CC is busier than ever – we’re working with artists, scientists, educators, students, programmers, entrepreneurs, companies, universities, governments, and cultural institutions around the world to increase sharing and improve collaboration in ways that benefit all parts of society.”

To find out more about Creative Commons, go here.

Reviews: Google

Tags: Anne Wojcicki, creative commons, donation, Sergey Brin

You may not be aware of this, but Microsoft now provides a rather powerful charting control free of charge as an add-in for .NET 3.5. It’s available for download at http://xrl.us/ben3pm. Because it supports 35 different chart types (see Figure 1), it can add significant new charting capability to PowerBuilder applications.

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Music’s long struggle with the web has been well documented. As consumers shifted from CDs to digital media, music labels, artists, and the RIAA have struggled with how to cope. While some have decided to sue consumers for $22,500 per song, others have found ways to embrace the web.

Now Microsoft’s Director of Consumer and Online in the UK predicts that the same turmoil is going to hit the television industry in the next few years. And unless the TV business “aggressively move its content online” and builds “a critical mass of content that the traditional buyers of airtime will understand and buy into,” they will face an “iTunes moment” where their online business becomes dependent on Apple.

According to The Guardian, Microsoft’s Ashley Highfield believes that TV execs have just two or three years to adapt or be thrown into chaos the music industry is currently experiencing:

“So realistically I think the industry has about two to three years to adapt or face its iTunes moment. And it will take at least that long for media brands to build credible, truly digital brands. But, importantly, I do believe TV does have a small two to three year window in which to respond.”

More than anything, Mr. Highfield believes that TV needs to find ways to generate significant revenue from online video and to make it easy for advertisers to buy ads in bulk for online TV. He also strongly suggested that the TV industry aggressively move its content online, on its own terms.

It’s interesting that it is a Microsoft exec making these suggestions and mentioning Apple as the online enemy of the TV industry. We can see his logic though: you don’t want one company to dominate online sales like Apple does with music in the iTunes store. The music industry’s been between a rock and a hard place for a long time now.

However, we think there are a lot of flaws to Highfield’s logic. TV doesn’t make its revenues based on sales, as the music industry does, but by advertising – something that is both effective and measurable on the web. We’ve also seen TV more readily embrace the web successfully, most notably with Hulu.

So yes, TV needs to embrace the online world or suffer losing control over its content distribution. However, the television industry is already light years ahead of the recording industry in that regard.

Reviews: Hulu

Tags: apple, itunes, microsoft, tv

Google Voice users have been complaining the last couple of days that calls using the service are unceremoniously terminated after 15 minutes. The service is still in beta, but as we’ve written before, users expect perfection when it comes to voice calls. Problems like this make it hard for people to trust the service.

From one user: “almost every call I make now dropping at 15 minutes and some seconds.” Other users complained of the same issue, and Google confirmed the problem, saying: “Thank you everyone for your reports. We identified the cause of the 15 minute dropped call problem and we expect the issue to be resolved now. If you continue to see this issue, we appreciate your feedback.”

I’m using Google Voice for all of my mobile calls and haven’t noticed the issue, but my calls are rarely more than a few minutes. And as a recent iPhone user, I’ve learned to live with dropped calls, so I probably wouldn’t even notice. I’m not sure I ever managed to go fifteen minutes on the iPhone without the call dropping at least once.

While the Pirate Bay sale has dominated headlines recently, it wasn’t that long ago where the focus was on the Pirate Bay trial. The founders of the controversial peer-to-peer sharing website were convicted of copyright infringement, which factored into their decision to sell the website they created.

The Pirate Bay fiasco made an impact on European politics as well. The Sweden Pirate Party, whose main issue is copyright reform, secured at least one seat in the European Parliament with 7.13% of the vote back in June. Now the success of that movement has jumped across the pond and inspired a new movement and a new political party: The Pirate Party of Canada.

Yes, a movement has been in the works since late last month to make the Pirate Party and official, registered political entity, and they are more than halfway towards their goal. And like its Swedish counterpart, it has a very simple platform, which I have included below:

Started in 2009, the Pirate Party of Canada strives to reform Canadian copyright laws, reform the patent system, and protect every Canadian’s right to privacy. It is our current goal to complete the registration process to become an official federal party.

We are in favour of :

– Copyright Reform

– Reform of the patents system

– Better respect of privacy

– Net Neutrality

– Open Government

In order for the Pirate Party to become official in Canada, it needs 250 people to sign a declaration of membership to the party. Yes, that’s all the Pirate Party needs to have the ability to accept donations and run on the ballot.

We think it’s inevitable that the Pirate Party gets its 250 signatures. Whether it will have the same type of success as its European counterpart remains to be seen. It needs a lot more work to be taken seriously, starting with a more detailed party platform. People are passionate about copyright reform though.

I would watch this movement if I were you.

[via Hacker News]

Reviews: Hacker News

Tags: Canada, copyright, Pirate Bay, Pirate Party, trial