Monthly Archive for November, 2005

Page 2 of 2

Wealthy Belgian Bloggers v3

Published on November 11, 2005 in Belgium. 8 Comments

Here we go again with another update:

Where do the $ numbers come from? See Wealthy Belgian Bloggers v1 and Wealthy Belgian Bloggers v2 (based on business-opportunities.biz)!
In order to limit the length of the list and to make it easy to see if your blog should be in this list, I only list blogs with a value > $10,000 (almost 50 now).
I had a lot of input from BVLG who also has made his own Top 60 based on Blogshares (v2.0). Check it out too!

$270,979 : dopplerradio.net
$233,719 : veerle.duoh.com
$169,362 : brusselsjournal.com
$123,634 : lvb.net
$99,359 : zattevrienden.be
$97,665 : mathibus.com
$83,551 : dominiek.be
$82,987 : blog.forret.com
$70,567 : standaard.typepad.com
$65,486 : coolios.net
$62,663 : kapingamarangi.be
$60,405 : pdw.blogspot.com
$56,454 : pietel.be
$52,502 : blog.u2u.info/DottextWeb
$51,937 : gent.blogt.be
$51,937 : culture-buzz.com
$49,679 : domilog.be
$47,985 : sempermagis.be
$47,985 : eug.be
$47,985 : blog.coolz0r.com
$43,469 : vsdotnet.be/blogs/tommer
$39,517 : druppels.be
$38,953 : onepointzero.com
$37,259 : maarten.typepad.com/blogologie
$34,436 : kruimels.blogspot.com
$32,743 : epicurien.be
$28,791 : 7seconden.be
$28,791 : pascal.vanhecke.info
$28,227 : kurtminnen.be/tafelzoetstof
$27,662 : polskaya.be
$27,097 : smetty.be
$24,275 : kerygma.blogt.be
$23,710 : wereldkeuken.be
$22,581 : promethee.blogspot.com
$22,017 : blog.volume12.net
$22,017 : jopx.blogspot.com
$21,452 : bloggingthenews.info
$19,758 : users.skynet.be/chipsandcookies
$19,194 : baeyens.net
$19,194 : memori.be
$18,629 : blogs.cocoondev.org/stevenn
$18,065 : www.middernacht.be/udn
$18,065 : blogs.bartdesmet.net
$16,936 : katrien.blogspot.com
$16,936 : antwerpenblogt.be
$16,371 : zonderzever.blogspot.com
$16,371 : brussel.blogt.be
$14,678 : www.studiomuscle.com/blog
$14,678 : percept.be
$13,549 : weblog.dederdebelg.be
$12,984 : clopin.be
$12,984 : maarten.typepad.com/brusselsblog
$12,419 : edublogs.be
$11,855 : tenderfeelings.be/blog
$11,290 : brussel.blogt.be
$11,290 : standaard.typepad.com/en_nu_even_elders
$10,726 : benbk.blogspot.com
$10,161 : dwangbuis.blogspot.com
$10,161 : friedkitten.com

If you have – or know of – a Belgian blog (EN/NL/FR) that has a valuation with the above system that is > $10.000, please let me know by adding it to the comments below. Or send me an email at blog @ forret.com.

The only criteria are ‘Belgian’ (written by a Belgian, or in Belgium) and ‘blog’ (must have RSS/Atom, archives, …). Podcasts, videoblogs, photoblogs, … are welcome.

Technorati: blog – belgium – business – blogosphere – blogium

Adam Curry goes 100% podsafe

Published on November 10, 2005 in copyright and podcast. 3 Comments

Adam Curry, godfather of podcasting, has had an epiphany:

I was told – maybe I should say … threatened is not the right word – but ‘promised’ that they (the music/broadcasting companies) are gonna come after podcasters, and they’re gonna shut them down. What was implied, is that they were going to shut podcasting down.
(at 9:58 in DSC-275-2005-11-07.mp3)

So he did not take this ‘promise’ lightly and got rid of all his licensed music.

11:10 Wondering why certain episodes of DSC are not in the archives? Adam has been contacted by several Dutch representatives of international music services tell him “hey, this file’s on your server, it’s licensed music, get it off there.” Adam has removed episodes with such songs on there. Adam has even “cleaned” his computers at home of every possible mp3, and now has only podsafe tunes on there. Adam will not play any non-podsafe song on the DSC. No more Mashups. If it’s not on PMN, it doesn’t get played.
from Daily Sourcecode Show Notes

Adam was actually in Brussels while doing that podcast, visiting some European Parliament contacts. He is concerned that the music industry could get a European directive passed, making sure that there will be no way for podcasters to play licensed music, no reasonable priced yearly/monthly license. Playing commercial music is only for the big boys.

So Adam’s reaction is: “Scr*w you, we’ll make you irrelevant”. Don’t know if it’ll work, but it’s a big step.

Once they get to know new artists in the free-and-legal bag they aren’t reliant on music which can only be shared in the underground, but getting them over the hump is not so easy: they have to hang around long enough to absorb new sounds and stop being disappointed that they can’t have the old ones. With Adam and the many podcasters he influences on board, we have a good shot at breaking through.
from Lucas Gonze’s blog via beatmixed

I am still before that hump, I’m not ready yet to throw out all my RIAA/IFPI licensed music. There’s just to many memories linked to music I have. Long Hot Summer, I Keep Forgettin’, Knocks me off my feet, That Night, these songs mean something for me, I cannot switch completely to podsafe music. Yet.

Technorati: podcast – music – podsafe – riaa – ifpi

Folksonomy and google bombs

Published on November 9, 2005 in Google and Web2.0. 3 Comments

Folksonomy or social tagging

A folksonomy is a system that consists of 2 elements:

categorisation: the adding of free-text categories or ‘tags’ (as opposed to a taxonomy/classification, where only a pre-defined set of classes is possible)
user-generated: added by users/readers (as opposed to information professionals or authors)

The classic examples are of course del.icio.us and Flickr.

Some people regard folksonomies as just one of those web-crazes, a fashion for a while and afterwards irrelevant. I would like to argue that we have been using folksonomy-like logic for a long time already, and probably will continue to do so for even longer. Two important examples:

Folksonomy already powers contextual ads

Think about how Google Adwords/Adsense works: an advertiser bids on several keywords (and combinations). When one of these keywords is featured on a web page where Adsense ads are displayed, the advertiser’s message might show up (depending on how much he is prepared to offer). Well, a keyword is a tag, is a category! These tags may not be added explicitly but Google/Yahoo/MSN use technology to extract relevant keywords from the page’s content. The whole contextual market is driven by folksonomy-like tagging: the buyers (advertisers) use explicit tags, the sellers (websites) have the keywords extracted from the content and the mapping between the two is done by overlapping both sets.

Folksonomy already powers search

How does search work? People use 1 or more words to describe what they are looking for and the search engine tries to come up with the most relevant web pages for the search terms. Some folks prefer the natural language way of asking questions (e.g. “how can I create a podcast with Blogger?”) but most seasoned users would probably search for “podcast blogger”. As with the previous explanation, the buyers (of information) provide explicit tags or keywords, and the web pages have their content processed and reduced to a set of keywords. A search term is a tag! Mapping between supply and demand is done with keywords or tags.

Fractional tags or tag relevancy

To extend the analogy a bit further, one could say that search engines create ‘fractional’ tags. What do I mean with that? In the del.icio.us, Flickr or Technorati tag universe, the content providers choose the tags of an item explicitly. A word is either a tag (100% relevant), or it is not a tag (0% relevant), there is no in between. On the other hand, search engines crawl and index web pages, and try to guess which words are most representative or relevant for that page. If the word “context” appears in the <title> or <h1> of a page, it is more relevant than it would be if it would be hidden in a text of 1500 words. So you could say that depending on a number of algorithms, a keyword can be a 5% or 99% relevant tag for a certain page.

Google bombs are folksonomy at work

Even if the word does not appear in the page, it can be a relevant tag (as is proven with Google bombs). The way Google works, every time a link appears in a web page, the link text (and the “title” attribute) becomes a fractional tag. If enough people use the same words, the fractional tags add up to establish an important relevancy for that combination of words and you get e.g. “miserable failure” pointing to the biography of George Bush.

My point is: eventhough social tagging services are less than 5 years old, the concept of categorisation (tagging/keyword extraction) has been instrumental for the Web for several years now. It is an intuitive way for organising/searching information. Not the only way, not the best way, but very crucial.
(Note to self: I have to rewrite my Sorted/Categorised/Indexed article at some point, it should be ‘classification’ for a taxonomy)

Technorati: google – adsense – adwords – search – folksonomy

Invest in Belgium

Published on November 7, 2005 in Belgium. 1 Comment

Invest in Belgium

Reasons to invest in Belgium
1. Workforce
2. Excellent logistics and technology infrastructure
3. Location
4. Openness
5. Quality of life
6. people don’t expect life to be simple:

BRUSSELS – The Belgian capital is the fourth most attractive European city to locate a business, according to the European Cities Monitor 2005.
In the 2005 edition of European Cities Monitor, an annual survey carried out by property consultant Cushman & Wakefield Healey & Baker, London and Paris are Europe’s two top cities to locate a business. Frankfort comes third and Brussels fourth.

They might want to reconsider the #2, Paris.

Technorati: belgium

How not to do copy-protection: Sony Music

Published on November 4, 2005 in copyright and music. 1 Comment

Error #1: take a really broad definition of “backwards compatible”

Smith said the goal of the XCP technology is work with record labels and help them in better controlling the amount of copies made per user. He agreed that copying CDs for fair/personal use is acceptable, however, certain users exceed that limit. Now, he said, record labels and other software developers have the capability to limit the number of burns per CD. He further stated that record labels and others could control various aspects of copying, such as the quality of music at which the data is burned onto the new CD – in addition the number of burns.
The company said its technology is backwards compatible. Sony added that it has shipped approximately two millions compact discs that are equipped with XCP.
Sony tests CD protection technology (May 2005)

Error #2: assume all your customers are evil and should be protected against themselves

Our proprietary OD-DRM (On Disc Digital Rights Management) enables Record Labels and content owners to provide copying features such as controlled copying to hard drive, protected burning to CDR and transfer of protected files to portable devices. Consumers can therefore be enabled to make limited copies on CDR for personal use at the discretion of the Record Label but further copying is denied as these CDRs themselves are copy protected with no further OD-DRM.
from XCP Press Protect

Error #3: assume all your customers are stupid and won’t discover what you’ve done

The firestorm began when Mark Russinovich, a computer security expert with Sysinternals, discovered evidence of a “rootkit” on his Windows PC. Through heroic forensic work, he traced the code to First 4 Internet, a British provider of copy-restriction technology that has a deal with Sony to put digital rights management on its CDs. It turns out Russinovich was infected with the software when he played the Sony BMG CD Get Right With the Man by the Van Zant brothers.
from The Cover-Up Is the Crime (Wired)

Error #4: provide a really streamlined uninstall process

Mr Gilliat-Smith said Mr Russinovich had problems removing XCP because he tried to do it manually something that was not a “recommended action”. Instead, said Mr Gilliat-Smith, he should have contacted Sony BMG which gives consumers advice about how to remove the software.
Getting the software removed involves filling in a form on the Sony website, visiting a unique URL and agreeing to have another program downloaded on to a user’s PC that then does the uninstallation.
from Sony slated over anti-piracy CD (BBC)

Error #5: even when it’s discovered, no one will do anything against it

And because we are increasingly technology aware, your ever-increasing assault on not only our fair use but also our common sense will virtually guarantee that we use our God-given ingenuity to find a way around whatever bizarre restrictions you see fit to impose. Why? Not because we’re dying to break the law, but because you have sold us a crappy product, and, fundamentally, because it is not our responsibility to protect your profits.
from DRM this, Sony! (CNET)

It’s a pity the CD standard was developed by a company (Philips) and not by a standard body that is independent of commercial pressure. Otherwise the record companies could have been forced to call their shiny gray discs something else, because they are not CDs/Compact Discs. But Philips (former owners of Polygram, now Universal) won’t be hurrying to counter the amateuristic copyright-control efforts of Sony, Warner, Universal and the others.

I was already complaining about this last year:

Result: my Windows Media Player keeps crashing on it – mostly taking my PC with it, because the CD-ROM becomes inaccesible. My MusicMatch won’t play it, and I haven’t even tried RealPlayer, because I don’t want to reboot more than 3 times in a day, life’s too short. So I can only look at the cover and wonder what it sounds like.
from Portable audio & copy protection

Technorati: copyright – drm – sony – rootkit – xcp

Oakland installs free municipal Wifi

Published on November 3, 2005 in wifi. 0 Comments

The goal of Wireless Oakland is to prepare Oakland County and its workforce for the jobs and technology of tomorrow. In conjunction with the Emerging Sectors Initiative, it will enhance Oakland County’s ability to attract and retain high-tech and nanotechnology corporations.
(…)
The seven Pilot Projects (Royal Oak, Pontiac, Troy, Birmingham, Madison Heights, Oak Park, and Wixom) will be started by the end of 2005 and should be completed during the first quarter of 2006. County-wide wireless internet coverage is expected in mid to late 2007.
from co.oakland.mi.us

The county insists private companies will provide wireless Internet access for free, but participating companies will be able to charge fees for certain services, such as faster connections. Oakland officials also said providers could sell advertising on the system as a way to make it profitable.
from detnews.com

from Mike Thompson – Detroit Free Press

Technorati: municipal wifi

Adsense in all media: TV, cinema, sport, traffic

Published on November 2, 2005 in Google, Web2.0 and advertising. 6 Comments

The other day I was talking with Francois on Google’s tests with providing ads in printed media, i.e. buying up ad space up front and deciding just before the actual printing what ads should go on which page. Adsense for print media, as it were.

In Google: Thinking about the future of TV ads , Garett Rogers tries to imagine what Google Adsense for TV could be like.

Imagine the possibilities… You are watching Google Satellite TV through your “internet ready” Google DVR:
1) You receive a new Gmail and it pops up automatically on your TV (if you choose to see new messages of course).
2) A ticker at the top of the screen shows recent news that interests you… or better yet, it shows new items from my Google Reader!
3) A more personalized TV experience which will serve up relevant commercials on commercial breaks based on your interests.
(also see the NYT article)

But those are just 2 examples of where Larry and Sergey are heading. Let’s see where Google could go when it decides to attack ALL media channels with contextual advertising:

TODAY

Adsense on google.com: they started by putting advertising next to search results (on their own pages)
Adsense for Content allowed any webmaster to give Google a certain spot (’real estate’) on their site where ads could be placed
Adsense for Gmail puts ads within email messages (on their own pages)
Adsense for Search allows for rebranded search within a domain and the possibility to disallow ads from competitors (on their own pages)

TOMORROW

Adsense for newspapers: as mentioned above, Google reserves X cm² in each edition of a newspaper, that it can fill with whatever ad seems the most appropriate. Contextual: based on content of the page, demographics of the newspaper audience, date/time of publication
Adsense for magazines: similar to the one above, but the life cycle of a magazine is different. A newspaper is ‘hot news’ for a day and then becomes irrelevant and gets thrown away. A magazine might linger on cofee tables and in waiting rooms for ages. Contextual: content of page, demographics of audience. Once magazines could be printed on-demand, or even better, read on a paper-like electronic screen, the ads could be even more targeted.
Adsense for books: imagine an effort like the Bookmobile on-demand printing of Brewster Kahle. But instead of it costing $1 to print, the book is now free, because Google can put an ad in it just before printing. Or even if a book is printed in thousands of copies, but digitally, Google could add a mix of different ads on each copy. Contextual: content of the book, demographics of the average audience or even this specific reader.
Adsense for TV: a TV channel, or an individual program even, rents some ‘real estate’ (time-delimited, e.g. the first 150 seconds; space-delimited, e.g. the lower 10% of the screen; or a combination of these) to Google. Contextual: based on program contents, audience demographics and time-of-day.
Adsense for radio: if it can be done on TV, it can be done on radio! Contextual: based on program contents, audience demographics and time-of-day
Adsense for Wifi: they’re gonna cover the world with free Wifi, you connect through their secure wireless proxy, but now they also know exactly where you are (in a 500m radius) – the wet dream of localised marketing. This could be Adsense for Content on speed. Contextual: content of visited page, user demographics (language), user location
Adsense for cinema: it would be bad news for the Screenvisions of this world, but imagine Google using the 10 minutes of trailers/ads before the main feature? Contextual: content of the movie, location of the cinema, demographics of the audience
Adsense for movies: why not take some ‘real estate’ in movies? Why not even customised product placement? Imagine the lead character driving by local stores, and Google can choose for each city/country what brands to feature there. Contextual: content of the movie, location of the cinema, demographics of the audience.
Adsense for video-on-demand: Google provides the bandwidth and in exchange can put some ads before/in each movie. Contextual: content of the movie, demographics of the user, usage profile (previous movies).
Adsense for ticketing: while we’re at it, why not print ads on the movie tickets the moment they are printed? And on concert tickets, that are bought sometimes months before the event and cherished for years afterwards? Contextual: type of event, demographics of the audience, time before the event (if the ticket is bought 2 days before the concert, you would want to put ‘act now!’ ads on it.)
Adsense for billboards: most of the boards in Europe are ’static’, i.e. printed in paper, but imagine the screen-based billboards like on Times Square and in Japan showing content that is picked out for that occasion. Contextual: location of the billboard, time of day, maybe some demographics This is basically what Clearchannel Outdoor already does to some degree, but it could just provide the real estate and let Google pick the advertisers. Main issue here would be: how do you measure effectiveness?
Adsense for phone/GSM: imagine Google buying a competitor of Skype and offering you full phone service for free – even international – provided you listen to a short ad just before your conversation. Contextual: demographics of caller and receiver, time of day. God forbid they base it on the content of the conversations you’ve had before…
Adsense for fax: free international faxing and/or fax-via-email, but with a Google cover page or Google ads in the footer. Contextual: demographics of sender and receiver, content of the page (some quick OCR, how hard can that be)
Adsense for road traffic: the LED screens on top of cabs, the back and sides of trucks, trams, buses, all connected through Google’s free Wifi and adapting their displayed ads on-the-fly. Contextual: location of display, time of day, type of support.
Adsense for sport: the shirts of football players and cycling athletes, a logo overlay on the center circle of the basketball field, or even replacing the ad panels around the field (so the same ad space is sold twice: once for the people attending, and once for the TV audience – no science fiction). Contextual: type of support (shirt, bath cap, speedo, …), location/type of event, time of day

Any Big Brother scenario I forgot?

Technorati: adsense – contextual – advertising – google

Avoiding wiki spam in Mediawiki

Published on November 1, 2005 in spam. 4 Comments

The great thing about Wiki’s is that everyone can edit them. The problem is that this attracts a new strain of spam morons: the wiki spammers. My Tango Wiki has gotten spammed several times per day since I launched it. A page gets changed to a list of URLs for various drugs, mostly ‘male performance related’, let’s say.

A sample of the IP addresses of the offenders (basically all over the place):

67.86.88.200 (optonline.net – Brooklyn, USA)
80.58.4.46 (rima-tde.net – Madrid, Spain)
80.58.50.107 (rima-tde.net – Madrid, Spain)
81.56.56.80 (proxad.net – Paris, France)
81.138.240.12 (btopenworld.com – Watford, UK)
82.131.14.62 (starman.ee – Saue, Estonia)
82.92.4.145 (xs4all.nl – Amsterdam, Netherlands)
140.116.39.112 (ncku.edu.tw – Taipei, Taiwan)
195.175.37.7 (ttnet.net.tr – Istanbul, Turkey)
195.175.37.70 (ttnet.net.tr – Istanbul, Turkey)
196.7.0.160 (alter.net – Cape Town, South Africa)
210.55.18.80 (global-gateway.net.nz – Auckland, New-Zealand)
212.138.47.21 (isu.net.sa – Riyadh, Saudi-Arabia)
212.190.198.36 (uunet.be – Belgium)

They try to hide the spam by putting it inside a <div style="height: 1px"> (CSS hidden spam) so they are not visible to visitors, but get picked up by Google anyway. The goal, just as with splogs, is to create Google juice, not to get read or clicked on.

The ways to fight this abuse are based on the following techniques:

editor whitelist: only certain IP addresses, or only logged-in users, can edit the pages
editor blacklist: certain IP addresses are blocked (e.g. those of anonymous proxies – often used by spammers)
spam word detection: when the text contains certain words, the edit is not accepted
spam link detection: when outgoing links contain certain words, the edit is not accepted
rel=nofollow: makes the outgoing links valueless for Google

A lot of valuable information on fighting wiki spam can be found on: chongqed.org and on meta.wikimedia.org. What I have already done on my MediaWiki installation is to add the following to LocalSettings.php:

$wgShowIPinHeader = false;  # so no information on IP addresses can be added
$wgSpamRegex="/<div/";   # so the hidden CSS trick does not work
$wgWhitelistEdit = true;    # so only logged-in users can edit

Technorati: wiki – spam – chongqed

Monthly Archive for November, 2005

Page 2 of 2

Wealthy Belgian Bloggers v3

Adam Curry goes 100% podsafe