Apple, What Are You Up To?

Word comes today that Apple has applied for a patent for an “enforcement routine” that will force viewers to see commercials on various devices. And when I say force, I truly mean force.

The patent application indicates that the forced-advertisement will freeze a device until you indicate that you’ve actually read/responded to the ad (through the use of clicking a box or answering a test question). This technology would work on any device with a screen, including televisions, computers, media devices, cell phones, etc. The ads can appear at any time while the device is being used.

What the patent application calls the “enforcement routine” involves administering periodic tests of the user, like displaying a pop-up box within the ad, requiring a response (a button that must be pressed within five seconds before disappearing) to confirm that the user is paying attention.

These tests then become progressively more aggressive and difficult to confirm if a user has failed a previous test. The response box can be made smaller and smaller, requiring more concentration from the user to find and press to confirm they are reading/responding to the advertisement. There may be a need to press various keyboard combinations, enter a date, or type in the name of the advertiser as commanded, to demonstrate that the user is paying attention.

Of course, Apple does not think this is nefarious in any way. They are saying that having this type of forced advertising would allow devices to be sold for lower prices or even be given for free, and that to avoid the advertising, simply paying a fee should free up your device from the forced advertising.

This whole thing feels like a 180 turn from Apple’s usual business practices, at least in my mind. It certainly doesn’t endear me to Apple products and services, that’s for sure. What Apple, and many other businesses, fail to accept and embrace is that the business model is changing. This type of George Orwellian behavior is not appreciated nor desired by users. I have seen plenty of intrusive “free” services that only frustrate me and keep me from using them in the first place (”free wifi” in the airport, anyone?).

If you want me to “see” advertising, then make it compelling. Make me want to watch it. But the minute you start forcing me to watch it, you can almost guarantee that I won’t be buying whatever that product is. Like an elephant, I have a very long memory, and I will not forget. That can’t bode well for any advertiser’s long-term future.

Paying for Online News

Are you willing to pay for the news. That is what Rupert Murdoch maybe betting on. Rupert Murdoch is the owner of a media empire which includes the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones. Lately he has been talking about removing his news empire from Google Search and putting them behind a pay wall

Clearly for this to work it would depend on if people are willing to pay for their news. I found an article on Technologizer that said that 45% of people surveyed were willing to pay for news. When I saw this article red flags immediately went up in my head, based on what I had previously heard and read. I wanted to find out more about this survey. The original article came from the New York Times, upon reading the Times’ article I found that the survey was done by the Boston Consulting Group.

I went to their Web site, where there was a fuller explanation of the survey. People are willing to pay for the news, but only under narrow and specific circumstances. This is the key paragraph that the New York Times and Tech chose to ignore.

“• Unique, such as local news (67 percent overall are interested; 72 percent of U.S. respondents) or specialized coverage (63 percent overall are interested; 73 percent of U.S. respondents)

• Timely, such as a continual news alert service (54 percent overall are interested; 61 percent of U.S. respondents)

• Conveniently accessible on a device of choice.”

Consumer, however are not willing to pay for news that is freely available all over the Internet. The consumers that are most willing to pay for their news are those that are already paying for newspaper. I suspect that this is an older and increasingly smaller audience. Even if consumer are willing to pay for their subscription, they are not willing to pay enough to make up for the lost of advertisement that newspapers have been dealing with. A pay wall might slow the decline but it will not stop it. The only way that newspapers can survive is to adapt to the new world, the old model is no longer viable and to try to save it is doom to fail

Google, Google Chrome, and the Cloud

This past week, I attended and presented at a conference for Adaptive Technologists. This is my official

 geek-tech title. I work with people, primarily students, with disabilities, providing technical solutions to their accessibility needs. This is the premier conference for geeks like me, and I spend the entire week networking with others who do what I do. Usually our keynote speaker is someone from the disability services community — a counselor at a school, or head of a deaf institute or something along those lines.

This year, we had Dr. T.V. Raman, Research Scientist, from Google, Inc. The title of his keynote was Cloud Computing — Access Opportunity and Challenge. Dr. Raman spoke extensively about how cloud computing was the goal for the future, and that anyone who wasn’t headed toward that goal was going to be left behind. He also spent considerable time talking about how cloud computing could be the answer to the accessibility needs of our disabled population, in a way current software providers were not. Dr. Raman, blind since the age of 14, believes that accessibility should be, and will be built into future applications. Instead of a blind user having to purchase specialized (and expensive) software to work across all platforms and applications, the platforms and apps themselves will house the accessibility functions within them. This means that no special device or extra software will be required by anyone to use any application on any platform.

For a non-disabled person, it may not be clear what an advantage such innovation would be. Right now, a blind user is best equipped to do everything a sighted person can do only with their own laptop/computer/iPhone loaded with specialized (often expensive) software that allows them to “read” what they need to read. Imagine then, if the operating system, or the app being used, included adaptive technology built-in? That would mean that blind user could use anyone’s computer, anyone’s smart phone, and do what they needed to do. Imagine the freedom that this would bring. Expand that for low-vision users, for deaf users (built-in closed captioning on all multi-media), mobility impaired users, and virtually any other impairment, and you’ve got a whole new audience ready to use your apps.

And this was Dr. Raman’s message, the future he was seeing. He didn’t mention specifically a Google operating system at the time, but most of us have seen this as a potential future for a long time. Today we are told that a Google Chrome operating system will be released in late 2010. Featuring a much friendlier interface than most Linux installs, plus a decreased memory footprint and the expanded use of cloud computing, this has the potential to bust wide open access for a chunk of our population that is currently limited for many reasons. Accessibility software like Jaws for Windows or Zoomtext can cost a thousand dollars a pop; imagine getting that functionality built into the operating system or application being used.

Dr. Raman’s assertion that cloud computing is our future is pretty spot-on. Many of us are using cloud computing in substantial ways already, either through the use of Google Docs, through cloud storage like quanp and Dropbox, and organization systems like Microsoft OneNote. Why are we using them? Because they aren’t platform-dependent, and they are readily available to us as long as we have an Internet connection on the device we are using.

The Google Chrome operating system promises to be a huge leap towards cloud computing as a standard practice, something neither Apple nor Microsoft have truly embraced with any sort of gusto. It took the brains at Google to take this idea and make it real. They already made a huge leap with the release of the Android software for smartphones, and now for netbooks. The times, they are a’changing, and Google seems to be ahead of the curve. We’ve been asking for this for years; our mobile society no longer wants to be tethered to hardware, to desks, even to offices. And if the old standards no longer apply, then we must embrace new ones.

Dr. Raman was a dynamic and fascinating speaker. Many of his presentations and interviews are available online; simple searches should find them. I encourage everyone to take a listen (or read) what he has to say.

Google, Bing continue gains at Yahoo's expense

Yahoo continues to lose share in the search market, as Google and Microsoft pick up the difference.

Comscore's measurement of the U.S. search market in October shows that Google--as usual--still dominates the search landscape. It now watches 65.4 percent of all searches pass through its servers, up 0.5 market share points from September of this year.

Yahoo, on the other hand, is going in the other direction as new friend Microsoft reaps the benefits. Yahoo lost 0.8 market share points in October compared to September, now down to 18 percent of the market. It has been in a steady decline this year, as Microsoft has gained share with the relaunch of Bing: Microsoft almost cracked the 10 percent barrier in October with 9.9 percent of all searches, gaining 0.5 percentage points compared to September.

Total searches grew 3 percent from September to October. Searches done through Google increased 5 percent and those done through Microsoft increased 8 percent. Yahoo searches decreased by 1 percent over the same period.

Brin: Google's OSes likely to converge

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Google's dual-pronged operating-system strategy will likely produce a single OS down the road, according to Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

Many Google observers were puzzled when the company announced plans for Chrome OS in July, coming amid growing acceptance of the company's Android operating-system project as a smartphone and Netbook OS. After all, why design an open-source operating system with the goal of reinventing the personal computing experience when you're currently developing another open-source operating system with the goal of reinventing the mobile computing experience?

Google executives, including CEO Eric Schmidt, have downplayed the conflict ever since, asking for time to let the projects evolve. And a few days after Chrome OS was revealed, Android chief Andy Rubin said device makers "need different technology for different products," explaining that Android has a lot of unique code that makes it suitable for use in a phone and Chrome has unique benefits of its own.

But Brin, speaking informally to reporters after the company's Chrome OS presentation on Thursday, said "Android and Chrome will likely converge over time," citing among other things the common Linux and Webkit code base present in both projects.

It's not clear when Google thinks it might want to merge the projects, but it seems to be eyeing a future in which the smartphones currently served by Android meld into the Netbooks Google has in mind for Chrome OS. Of course, Brin's vision might not necessarily be shared by all members of the Google management team.

"As Sundar [Pichai, Google's vice president of product management] said in his presentation, we're reaching a perfect storm of converging trends where computers are behaving more like mobile devices, and phones are behaving more like small computers," Google said in a statement in response to questions about how and when the two projects would merge. "Having two open source operating systems from Google provides both users and device manufacturers with more choice and helps contribute a wealth of new code to the open source community."

Any future combination of Chrome OS and Android could be aimed at a new type of device distinct from Android's smartphones or Chrome OS's Netbooks.

(Credit: Screenshot by Josh Lowensohn/CNET) This also allows Google to pick and choose the best ideas to emerge from each project, setting up a bit of friendly internal competition to develop new operating-system technologies. The main difference is that while Android is a shipping product, Chrome OS is still very much in the research stage, with devices not expected until late 2010.

It's way too early to know how that pending convergence will affect development for the different operating systems, as it seems pretty clear Google is spending most of its time at the moment building out each one separately.

But Brin--no idle bystander--believes at some point, Google will emerge with one next-generation operating system.

؟؟What is Forex

Foreign Exchange (FOREX) is the arena where a nation's currency is exchanged for that of another. The foreign exchange market is the largest financial market in the world, with the equivalent of over $1.9 trillion changing hands daily; more than three times the aggregate amount of the US Equity and Treasury markets combined. Unlike other financial markets, the Forex market has no physical location and no central exchange (off-exchange). It operates through a global network of banks, corporations and individuals trading one currency for another. The lack of a physical exchange enables the Forex market to operate on a 24-hour basis, spanning from one zone to another in all the major financial centers.




Traditionally, retail investors' only means of gaining access to the foreign exchange market was through banks that transacted large amounts of currencies for commercial and investment purposes. Trading volume has increased rapidly over time, especially after exchange rates were allowed to float freely in 1971. Today, importers and exporters, international portfolio managers, multinational corporations, speculators, day traders, long-term holders and hedge funds all use the FOREX market to pay for goods and services, transact in financial assets or to reduce the risk of currency movements by hedging their exposure in other markets.



MG Financial, now operating in over 100 countries, serves all manner of clients, comprising speculators and strategic traders. Whether it’s day-traders looking for short-term gains, or fund managers wanting to hedge their non-US assets, MG's DealStation™ allows them to participate in FOREX trading by providing a combination of live quotes, Real-Time charts, and news and analysis that attracts traders with an orientation towards fundamental and/or technical analysis.



Regards
Hussein

Love is like a war

Love is like a war : Easy to begin hard to end!








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