Capitalist Banter » Technology

More web sites shifting to paid service/content

Jon — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 13:40:04 +0000

Many web sites have discovered that one of the sure-fire ways to attract visitors is by providing free content and free “features” and “services”. It’s a business model that has served web sites well for the last few years. These web sites earn from the advertising that basically funds and subsidizes the But it looks like there is currently a shift ongoing that will change how web sites will earn profits.

Companies and web sites like LinkedIn Corp., ESPN (owned by Disney), and Skype Ltd. are now trying to increase their profits by adding in new features that its customers will have to pay for in order to use.

This increasingly popular method of earning profits is a reflection of the companies’ new views about making profits. They want to reduce their dependence on advertising. The new view is to entice customers and visitors to enter their web sites with compelling free content and then when they are hooked sell them premium services or subscriptions.

And there’s really a good reason to get more money from visitors. US consumers are expected to spend up to $8.55 billion on online content. That’s big bucks!

Texting while driving should be banned

Jon — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 12:41:48 +0000

Mobile phone companies are earning a lot of money through its added services, particularly text messaging. Text messaging is the most used mobile phone feature right after voice calls. Actually, I think text messages are more commonly used rather than voice calls.

This doesn’t mean people should send text messages wherever they are. I’ve seen people texting even while driving, what seems to be a physical impossibility is being done with impunity by a lot of people. Thankfully, more rational minds are beginning to see the dangers of texting while driving.

US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood wants to make it illegal to text while driving and he has publicly denounced the practice with the same level of gravity as drunk driving and wearing seatbelts.

About 16 percent of deadly crashes that happened in 2008 involved a driver whose attention was distracted in one way or another. This is an 11 percent increase from figures posted in 2005.

This is the right move to make. I’ve seen motorists who text while driving and they are road hazards. They’re so dangerous on the road that I want to shove their phones down their throats.

China and its “fake” industry

Jon — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 14:35:09 +0000

A friend of mine recently showed me the infamous HiPhone — the China-made iPhone clone that you just have to see to believe. It may not have the newfangled technologies that Apple’s iPhone may have but the HiPhone’s manufacturer really did a good job of imitating the whole look of Apple’s Jesus Phone. It will really dupe anyone especially seen from afar.

Which brings me to the whole point of this post. We all know that China is the world hub for imitation goods. Name the fake item and most likely it was manufactured in China. I think it would even be fair assumption that the whole underground economy of the country is firmly entrenched in bogus and fake goods. But what most people fail to realize that manufacturing counterfeit goods actually have a far more significant effect than just fueling China’s underground economy and the proliferation of fakes around the world. By reverse engineering all sorts of stuff, the Chinese are actually learning what makes each quality item tick, what makes it expensive and ultimately be able to actually learn the skills to manufacture something just as good (if not better, in the most extreme circumstances). I respectfully submit that this thriving industry of fakes is going to be the real force that will make China the undisputed world economic power.

Why do I say this? Well, it’s simple. What would stop the Chinese from actually learning the secrets and taking advantage of the technology transfer that happens when a big manufacturing company transfers its operations to China? What would prevent them, for example, to learn the ropes of aircraft manufacture from established leaders like Boeing and Airbus if these are contracted to Chinese factories? I won’t be surprised if, in a decade or two, we’ll start seeing Boing 868s and AirTaxi B400s flying the friendly skies.

Legalizing Prostitution and a Car That’s Gone to the Dogs…. REALLY!

Jon — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 06:59:00 +0000

Seems everybody is out for a gimmick to get their goods on the selling block with Honda coming up with their “doggie friendly car”. Honda is one of Japan’s leading automakers has introduced it’s Element Utility Vehicle with provisions for man’s best friend. Starting from a padded doggie seat, a water bowl, dog restraints and a fan all for their own use to cater to the many dog lovers in the US. Dogs have long been our constant companions and with this comes a very enticing package that allows you to take your dog with you on your vacation not having to worry about the poor guy when you do go on vacation. The seat restraints are there to act as seat belts for the lucky pooch which should prevent injury in the event of a crash. It even has an on-ramp where less than agile dogs can get up, sit down and simply enjoy the ride. Talk about gimmicks, this might be one of the best so far for the auto industry that is more known for technological innovation in the quest for excellence!
From the state of Nevada, seems the local government is scraping the bottom of the barrel when they proposed to tax on prostitution which was proposed to compensate for the state’s burgeoning $3 billion dollar budget. Nevada is one of two US states that still allows some prostitution in a form or another, but with the rising problems due to the faltering global economy they have been forced to dig deep into their creative minds and they came up with a Prostitution Tax proposal. Talk about desperate measures, they seem to have gotten away with it, till lawmakers kicked their behinds and killed it dead in it’s tracks. The global recession must be biting really hard on these people who may have lost a little of their common sense, what do you think???

Media Blunders and More Signs of the Times

Jon — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 05:17:15 +0000

From thousands of free pizzas to Lemon Cola baptisms, the world is truly an interesting yet weird place to live in. First on the block, In Oslo Norway, baptisms were turned odd when the city’s water supply pipes froze and the priests at a baptismal ceremony were forced to use Lemon Cola as their symbol for holy Water. According to the faith, any liquid can be used for baptism in the absence of H2O to serve as the symbolic water which was used to baptize Christ.
Times must be getting hard for the man or he may simply be sick of some unknown disorder, in our next odd news, who was convicted of Serial Shrimp Shoplifting, after the Massachusetts man was caught and subsequently pleaded guilty to the crime. He describes the situation as an addiction that has him craving for the frozen crustacean, he made off with an estimated $500 worth of the frozen item before he was caught. He is still in custody after news surfaces of him having another stint at another fish market where he ran off with a jacket full of the same frozen food stuff.
Best of all, Domino’s Pizza ends up giving away 11,000 free pizzas due to a nosy customer who peeks into the company web site and stumbles upon a “Bailout Special” promotion that was never used and activated. The nosy customer, upon discovery of the unused promo code (“Bailout”) spread news and before the company caught on after a few days, they have already given away 11,000 pizzas.
In another corporate blunder (more of a misprint), a cereal manufacturer from Oregon has been getting calls of their hot line being directed to phone sex lines, upon verification they discover that there was indeed a typographical error on a specific batch of cereal boxes for several types of their products. The company had already shipped out many of the erring typo-boxes for weeks when the error was discovered, much to the surprise of their customers who took it in stride. More of signs of the times in the coming posts, where we take a look at the funny side of business and the people who make it so.

I have No Idea….No I do… No I Don’t…. Oh Okay I did it!!!!

Jon — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 03:31:56 +0000

This was the response of Senator Chris Dodd, when he was repeatedly asked about the instances where bailout money was going into top executive bonuses (some were rumored to get $1million). Bonuses in a recession is truly crazy, but getting an answer that he deliberately included loopholes into the bailout laws (which by the way would be several hundred or so pages of mind boggling discussions, instruction and actions in legal wordings.) which was intended to help the economy and boost businesses like AIG. Unbeknownst to us ordinary folks, these crazy yet crafty business managers were issuing back-pay bonuses to their top executives with a little help from the government itself that had so strictly criticized the allotment of the taxpayer’s money for such purpose as the bailout, funny eh!
Now some of the honorable or sensible people in those almost bankrupt firms have started returning their bonuses (coz they were caught by the way) and the government is now nailing to the cross the new president they so desired last year and his staff a few months after they took their offices.
Wake up people, no short term magic fix is available and you’d have to accept it as such. In more crazy news, have you forgotten the term discrimination, well it seems as though its still a live and kicking in society (as if it never existed and persisted) for a lady steel worker was suspended from work for answering the call of nature on the job. She has been reinstated after she filed a suit against the union and the company she works for, the complaint also mentioned the fact that a fellow co-worker who also happened to relieve himself at the same time wasn’t even reprimanded for peeing his frustrations (maybe he peed on the spot and unlike the other party for apparent reasons had to leave literally for the same purpose). That’s business in today’s setting, where people try to get away with all they could as much as they could, don’t forget Madoff who’s fixed assets alone were almost worth a billion dollars.
From Japan, a quickie aftertaste of the daily oddities, models beware for it seems the very tech savvy Japanese have come up with a robotic model to grace the runway. Considering the fact you have to pay a lot for models these days, why not automate the whole thing, literally. Now you people who almost dies from the auditions gone wild with a reality TV show, better watch out!

Duck!!!! – Exploding ipod Touch

Jon — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 03:46:58 +0000

Sour Apples are those that explode in your pocket and not in your mouth. Apple is being sued by a mother who says his son suffered second degree burns due to his iPod Touch exploding in his pants pocket claiming damages and attorney’s fees to the tune of a hundred thousand plus. Just can’t understand a child with an iPod Touch in school who may have had tons of stuff in his pockets that may have caused the burns. She takes the child to the hospital for treatment that came out to $15.00, with a few bucks for the pants and the underwear which also suffered. Why $100,000 +, well the lawyer seems to want the company to pay for the mental anguish the child is to go through that resulted from the burn(he may have not had the facilities to process the fact he ran into the bathroom to take off his pants with the help of another boy, he’ll get it in a couple of years). Wow, mental anguish, that’s how they call the boy’s suffering in spite of the millions of Americans without jobs, health insurance or homes.
The lawyer also claims to involve ten of the Apple employees in his lawsuit(10 people to sell one iPod Touch eh) for they have failed in one way or the other to properly test and detect the defect in the said product. The gadget has Lithium Poly batteries that are more powerful and easy to mold into any shape desired(attributed to be the reason for the success of the iPod and iPhone series of gadgets) but just so happens to be quite dangerous and is known to really explode. The industry has heard and analyzed the story, the burns are more likely to be chemical burns as the battery shorted out causing a catastrophic failure of the cells.
The point of all this ranting? Why does a grade schooler have an iPod Touch in his pocket, it should’ve been in his bag or something that would not place any stress on the fragile gadget. Apple should address the issue but i doubt if they’ll shell out $100,000 dollars to pay for a piece of underwear, a pair of pants, $15.00 in bandages and last but not least the “mental anguish”(here’s a copy of the legal complaint). They should start by revising their manuals that must have a special booklet for parents to tell their kids not to place their iPod Touch’s in their pockets and that parents should advise them of the dangers of sticking them in there along with the several other stuff they manage to fit in there or risk getting their, you know what blown off or burned. Better yet, why not tell them not to bring them to school and leave them at home. Come on parents, be responsible, we all want the best for our kids but having them with them in school is kinda’ bit too spoiling.

Everything You Do…..

Jon — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 03:46:38 +0000

Seems the public can’t get enough of the new President, call it infatuation or whatever, he seems to attract everybody’s attention whatever he does. From his favorite soft drink, his blackberry to the family’s dogs, everybody has an opinion. The first family has suddenly been thrust into the celebrity status that comes with the position at the helm of the worlds most powerful, most damaged by the recession and most gun related incidents of a country. From desperate people who have nowhere else to run, or who are simply fed up with life in the recession, picking up their guns and deciding they can end it with everybody they see.
Wall street seems to be going up and down in a mood that is similar to some of the best roller coasters on the planet which just happens to exist in the US(or maybe they’re just glad Madoff’s in jail). Afghanistan is again on the agenda, with soldiers being sent there into a battle that the US started but failed to finish. The say they’ll be pulling out of Iraq, which they should have done so a long time ago that has caused so much lives from both sides of the spectrum.
Businesses are still closing while some say they’re managing to get through just fine(right after filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy), sending bonuses to employees the government has banned. Call the world nostalgic or call it crazy, the most affected people are those who live in the developed world, unable to take the stress of the economic turmoil they themselves caused. The Japanese resort to suicide when scandals hit, Americans turn to guns when all else fails and so do the Europeans, everywhere else, anything is fair game. The recent shooting in Germany shows how our society is losing grip of reality, bringing up children who live out their favorite movies and video game characters, only this time for real.

We Must Stop The $20 Indian Laptop!

Paul — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 20:30:29 +0000

A group in India has announced plans to build and market a $20 laptop computer, making it cheaper than the $100 Children’s Machine designed by MIT, the $200-$400 EeePC made by Taiwan’s Asustek and the $300 “Don’t Ask Why It’s Dented, Do You Want It Or Not?” PC from my neighbor who sells steaks out of his trunk. The name of the new cheap laptop is the “Sakshat,” which is Indian for “Crapple.”

Leave it to India, the makers of the $2,000 car and the 50-cent national sewage system, to come up with a netbook that even people who were laid off when they’re jobs got outsourced to India can afford. Who cares if it’s immediately obsolete? At that price, they can buy a new one every week and still have money left over for cool new Indian computer games like Grand Theft Brahma and Sim Slum.

The Sakshat was developed and financed jointly by the Indian Institute of Science, the Indian Institute of Technology and the Indian Institute of Nuns Who Got Rich Selling Mother Teresa Souvenirs. It has 2Gb of RAM, wireless connectivity and folds up to make a handy coaster. A prototype was demonstrated at an electronics trade show in India. At about the same time the Sakshat was powered up, a curtain was ripped in half at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond and a MacBook Air with voice recognition software being tested at Apple headquarters in Cupertino suddenly began speaking in tongues.

India’s secretary of secondary and higher education said that, although the initial cost of the Sakshat is about $20 a unit, he expects the price to fall. At about that time, Michael Dell reportedly clutched his chest, looked skyward and cried, “This is the big one, Lizabeth!” The initial target audience for the Sakshat is the 550 million Indians under the age of 25 who need to learn computer skills to compete in the global market and study to win on “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.”

This is why the $20 laptop must be stopped. Once they have their cheap computers, Indians will use them to build a bridge across the Pacific on which they will drive their $2,000 cars to America and buy our foreclosed houses. Before we know it, the Oscar will go to an Indian movie, all-American condiments like ketchup and salsa will be replaced by curry and the Cleveland Indians will be moved to Calcutta. HP, Dell and Apple will be forced to merge into one failing computer company called GMPC.

Email, call or Twitter your Congressional representatives and tell them to stop the Sakshat before it’s too late. Suggest distracting India from its goal by giving Google a chunk of the $800 billion bailout to redirect all searches made in India to porn sites featuring well-endowed Indian men and female snake charmers. Do it today!

Facebook Lays Off Workers No One Knew It Had

Bill — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 12:00:07 +0000

PALO ALTO —Facebook, the largest online social network on earth, announced at a press conference Friday that it will lay off 50 employees by the end of the month. Web 2.0 pundits were shocked to learn the company actually had employees to let go.

“Yeah, there was an actual office and everything,” said Roland Shipley, a former member of Facebook’s inexplicable workforce. He also claimed to have personally seen hundreds of other Facebook employees during his tenure, and to have received regular paychecks, although he could not produce one friend, Facebook or real, to back up his claim.

Founded in 2004 by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook grew exponentially in online presence and workforce size despite the fact that nobody has the slightest clue how it makes money. During the early days, Zuckerberg says he was constantly being poked by some guy named Madoff. Some of the personnel cut included staff from sales, marketing and finance—although observers point out it may be more than coincidence that they’re all named “Smith.” “Users don’t notice online advertising anymore, not even for Obama plates,” said Michael Calore of Wired. “I suppose they could start charging people to join, but who would pay money to learn that some guy they barely know just went to the grocery store? Excuse me, I just got tweeted.”

When asked about the long-term viability of the company, Zuckerberg said, “Users depend on Facebook as an integral part of their daily lives. Without Facebook, how could you find out what their friends are doing? How would you invite them to parties or tell them how awesome they are? You think people could play a game like Scrabulous in real life? Impossible.”