The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- NSFW: Nobody suspects the Spanish politician
- McAfee Calls Operation Aurora A “Watershed Moment In Cybersecurity”, Offers Guidance
- Ending Our Advertising Relationship With BigDeal
- FoursquareX: Foursquare Addicts Need To Get This Desktop Fix Immediately
- OpenCandy Shows Some Sweet Growth, Adds Joe Kraus To Board
- Only The Paranoid Are Scared Of TV Everywhere
| NSFW: Nobody suspects the Spanish politician Posted: 17 Jan 2010 09:00 AM PST
And now, thanks to the FBI, we also know that he bears more than a passing resemblance to a 53-year-old Osama Bin Laden. This most recent fact about Llamazares came to light his week when the bureau published a computer generated photograph of what Osama Bin Laden – 9/11 mastermind; cave-dweller; last remaining user of audio cassettes - might look like today. The photograph, we were told, was produced using the FBI’s special digital aging software, the technical brilliance of which we could only dream about. One is led to imagine gigantic whirring super-computers, surrounded by federal agents in white coats, feeding in old Bin Laden family snapshots, screen-grabs from his video messages; perhaps even trimmings from his beard. Then, when the miracle machines have done their week – after weeks of computation, burning through enough energy to light the whole of Holland – a printer whirs into life, rendering a single wanted poster-sized image. The current face of evil. No wonder the bureau was proud of the photograph, posting it on their website and distributing it to the world’s media, from Minnesota to Madrid. And no wonder Izquierda Unida was shocked – no, terrified – when one of his friends pointed out that the resulting photo was his spitting image. What were the odds? A million to one? A billion? Well, not quite. In fact, as the FBI were later forced to admit, one of the things their super-computers aren’t very good at drawing is beards. Or hair. Or noses. Or faces, really. So the poor agent tasked with producing the image did what any of us would do when faced with an impending deadline and a multi-million dollar operating budget: he fired up his laptop, went to Google images, found a photo of someone who looked a bit Bin Laden-y, copied his features onto the photograph, added a few wrinkles and hit ‘print’. Unfortunately for all concerned, the face donor turned out to be a high profile Spanish politician – a politician who is now, quite rightly, worried that he’ll be lynched if he ever sets foot in the USA. It goes without saying that the incident raises a couple of pretty serious questions. For a start, what precisely did the FBI agent type into Google image search to find someone with similar features to an older Bin Laden? ‘Sinister middle-aged guy’? ‘Swarthy foreigner’? Presumably not, as the former brings up a photo of Liam Neeson while the latter returns Borat. More worryingly if the FBI’s cutting-edge photo aging technology is nothing more than a kid with a laptop, an Internet connection and a copy of Microsoft Paint, then what else are they lying to us about? It’s bad enough that we have the ‘CSI Effect‘ – the phenomenon, resulting from the popularity of TV shows like CSI, where the public and criminals have unrealistically high expectations of what crime-fighting technology is capable of. But TV shows are supposed to lie to us. Finding out that the government is playing the same game – massively exaggerating their technical abilities in order to give us comfort and to terrify our enemies – is just weird. Particularly when they’re doing it using our tax money. And so, in the interests of investigative journalism, I contacted TechCrunch’s source in the intelligence community (the same guy who got us hooked on Spymaster). I asked him, simply, “how much of the technology that we’re told is keeping us safe from evil-doers is in fact total bullshit – and how can we avoid falling foul of it like Gaspar Llamazares?”. His answers, given on the condition of total anonymity, make fascinating reading…
Stay safe, America!
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| McAfee Calls Operation Aurora A “Watershed Moment In Cybersecurity”, Offers Guidance Posted: 17 Jan 2010 02:58 AM PST
Computer and software security company McAfee last week identified a vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Explorer as a key vector in the cyberattacks that hit Google and over 30 other companies in a high-profile, multi-staged and concentrated effort to hack into specific computer systems in order to obtain intellectual property. Redmond has since issued a security advisory and later published its own risk assessment of the zero-day threat. This morning, McAfee announced that it is offering consumers and businesses further guidance on what it refers to as ‘Operation Aurora’. And it’s bringing out the superlatives to describe the attacks. George Kurtz, McAfee’s worldwide chief technology officer, has been blogging about how the browser vulnerability was exploited for the cyberheist and is now quoted in this morning’s press release as saying that it is the “largest and most sophisticated cyberattack we have seen in years targeted at specific corporations”. Kurtz stops short of saying that the planet nearly stopped spinning, but refers to the attack as a “watershed moment in cybersecurity” that has “changed the world”. McAfee, of course, has a commercial interest in spreading the word about the attack and how its security products can guard consumers and businesses from exploitation of the aforementioned Internet Explorer vulnerability, but the company is doing a service too, considering the fact that the code used to exploit the security hole has made its way to the public domain already. Needless to say, this increases the risk of further, more widespread attacks significantly. Detailed guidance is available at McAfee.com/OperationAurora.
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| Ending Our Advertising Relationship With BigDeal Posted: 17 Jan 2010 01:04 AM PST
We’ve now ended that relationship and have removed all BigDeal ads from our site. And we have asked them to take down the cobranded version of the service at techcrunch.bigdeal.com. BigDeal offers a service that is completely legal, and is backed by very well known venture capitalists. On the surface we shouldn’t have any issues with working with them. But the service is, in my opinion, at best misleading and at worst little more than a scam. Users are encouraged to bid for items, and are told that the “winners of guaranteed auctions get a huge discount, typically 65%-90% off retail.” But the way the service works is extremely complicated. In fact a few of us here at TechCrunch debated exactly how it worked for a half hour after reading the tutorial, and never quite understood it. It took winning an auction and then actually buying the item to understand just how unattractive the whole scheme is. If your service is so complicated that users have to be mislead to use it, it’s probably not all that great of a deal. Users must pay $0.75 every time they bid, and to win an auction generally requires quite a few bids. In one auction I won yesterday I had to bid 12 times to win. I spent $9 for those bids. Others bidding against me also paid $0.75/bid, and there were at least 25 total bids on that item. That’s $18.75 in revenue to BigDeal, with no costs. After the auction, all the money from the bids is gone. Vanished. Poof. That’s the confusing part of the “deal.” Even as the winner, I then had to pay the price I bid for the item, on top of all the bids. Plus shipping. The losers get the option of buying the item at normal retail plus shipping, and can use their lost bids as part of the price. But BigDeal’s retail prices range about 25% higher than the same items on Amazon, so there isn’t much of a deal there. Confused? That’s the point. At the end of the day, as the auction winner, I paid $19.84 for an item I can get for as little as $25.70 (new) on Amazon. That’s not much of a discount. And the losers would pay $41.99 for the item if they wanted it, plus shipping. That’s 63% MORE than the Amazon price. BigDeal makes much out of the other side of their service, which lets users get gift cards at a variety of merchants for whatever they’ve spent on bids. But those gift card sales are set up so that only 25% of the price can be paid in credit. So if I spend $100 on bids and I want to convert that to gift cards, I have to shell out another $300 for them. That’s not much of a deal, either. BigDeal is very similar to other services like Swoopo, and there’s no reason to call them out specifically. I have no real problem with the service other than the extremely confusing tutorial which I believe misleads people into thinking that the service works differently than it actually does. But I don’t want to send TechCrunch users to that site to potentially waste money on something they don’t understand. And I don’t want our brand associated with theirs on techcrunch.bigdeal.com. So we’re ending the relationship. And we will donate any money we’ve received from them to charity.
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| FoursquareX: Foursquare Addicts Need To Get This Desktop Fix Immediately Posted: 16 Jan 2010 02:01 PM PST
This new application built by software developer Eric Butler is easily the best way I’ve ever seen to interact with Foursquare on a computer. Using Foursquare’s API, Butler has made a OS X client that not only allows you to see where your friends are, but even allows you to check-in at venues. And when paired with the notification application Growl, it’s a great way to get alerted about what’s happening on Foursquare without having to check your phone every few minutes. The app is mainly meant to run in the background in your menu bar to serve you notifications (again, via Growl) when friends check-in places. But the more interesting part of the app may be its map component. If you open that up, you’ll get a window displaying a Google Map with all of your friends’ Foursquare icons overlaid on it to show where they are in the world. You can zoom in or out to show more detail of where they are. Or you can click on their names displayed in a timeline to the left of the map to bring up more details about their latest check-in. There’s another view to this map too which gives you a visual representation of the Foursquare venues close to where you currently are. Clicking on any of them allows you to easily check-in. To the right of this map view there is a list of the venues currently trending on Foursquare (where multiple people are checking-in) as well as your “favorites” (the venues you check-in to the most). There is also a setting for the app that lets you get notifications when other people check-in to the same venue you’re checked-in at, even if you don’t know them. Some people may not like that, but if you’re interested in meeting new people that you have at least one thing in common with (your use of Foursquare), it’s kind of an interesting way to do that. Again, this app is currently Mac-only (and specifically, Snow Leopard-only), but if you’re addicted to Foursquare, it’s a must-have. Find it here.
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| OpenCandy Shows Some Sweet Growth, Adds Joe Kraus To Board Posted: 16 Jan 2010 12:30 PM PST
Alongside the news, OpenCandy has also shared a pair of graphs showing their growth over the last year. They haven’t provided any absolute figures so we can only get a vague idea of how well they’re doing, but they’re clearing showing some hockey stick growth. OpenCandy operates in territory that’s long been the domain of spam: bundled applications. Oftentimes when you download a piece of Windows software you’re prompted to install another application along with it (the most notorious of these are apps like WeatherBug and the Ask Toolbar). Most of the time, people don’t actually want this additional software they’re installing, but they inadvertently agree to install it anyway because their installer makes that the default choice. Despite griping from users, developers continue to offered bundled apps with their software, because it provides them with an extra stream of revenue. When you install a bundled app, the developer of the original application gets a kickback. OpenCandy is trying to make this process more transparent and intelligent. When you install an app that’s using OpenCandy, you’ll be asked if you want to install a bundled promotional app. But instead of making this the default action, installing the second application is opt-in, so you’re not going to do it accidentally. OpenCandy also looks to ensure that the applications it offers are high quality, without spam and spyware. It lets software developers “recommend software they love”, without losing the bundle revenue stream. Of course plenty of people object to bundled apps in the first place, but this is clearly a better solution than the misleading install flows. See an OpenCandy Recommendation (80 seconds) from OpenCandy on Vimeo.
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| Only The Paranoid Are Scared Of TV Everywhere Posted: 16 Jan 2010 09:30 AM PST
Editor’s note: This guest post is by Andrew Keen, the author of Cult of the Amateur and an advisor to Arts and Labs, a collaboration between entertainment companies, software providers, telecommunications providers, artists and creators. Some people don’t like TV Everywhere, Comcast’s and Time Warner’s plan to bring cable TV to the Web. They are just paranoid. Allow me to explain. In his 1964 Harper's Magazine essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics", Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter argued that American politics has often been a stage for excessively conspiratorial and suspicious minds from both the left and the right. What disturbed Hofstadter most of all was the sanity of the paranoid. "It is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that make the phenomenon significant," he explained. By infecting normal people, Hoftstadter worried, the paranoid style had made conspiratorial fantasy a troublingly recurrent feature of American political culture. Hofstadter is correct. From Andrew Jackson to Joseph McCarthy to contemporary Americans on both the left and the right, the paranoid style—with its obsessive targeting of the Roman Papacy or Russian communists or Wall Street bankers or Muslim terrorists—has replaced rational discussion with what Hoftstadter called "heated exaggeration, suspiciousness and conspiratorial fantasy." As the Internet has become more and more of a central political issue in American life, so the paranoid style has, unfortunately, begun to infect our public discussion about technology and media. Much of this paranoia focuses on the supposed selfishly monopolistic intentions of mainstream media which, for many otherwise sane people, represents a deadly threat against the so-called "people's Internet". Thus, from Rupert Murdoch's obstinate determination to protect the economic value of his content on the Internet to Bono's latest defense of intellectual property to the perpetual hysteria around the Network Neutrality debate, any criticism of piracy or defense of paid content is viewed in the darkest and most apocalyptical terms by paranoid advocates of an "open" and "free" Internet. Richard Hoftstadter's "angry minds" who, in the 19th century, obsessed over the threat of masons, Jesuits and munitions makers, have, in the digital 21st century, discovered record labels, movie studios and, above all, telecoms and cable companies as the root of all our problems. Take, for example, the paranoia that has greeted Comcast and Time Warner's announcement of their TV Everywhere pilot. On the face of it, the non-exclusive TV Everywhere service is a perfectly rational and reasonable effort by the cable companies to combine the values of their offline and online businesses. The test scheme – which is about to be rolled out to 5,000 Comcast customers – enables subscribers to access content from Time Warner’s TBS and TNT channels which they've paid for on their cable boxes for free on the Internet. So what's not to like about TV Everywhere? If you choose to pay for cable service, then you'll be able to access this content for free on the Internet. If not, then you won't. And if current cable subscribers object for any reason to the TV Everywhere scheme, then they can simply end their commercial relationship with Comcast and go elsewhere to acquire their media. But TV Everywhere has been greeted with exaggerated suspiciousness and conspiratorial fantasy by some Internet groups. This paranoia is particularly palpable at lobbying groups like Free Press and Public Knowledge—organizations which often appear to be intrinsically opposed to the online business initiatives of large, established media companies. For example, Josh Silver, Executive Director of Free Press, has argued that TV Everywhere is really a "desperate bid by old media giants to crush the emerging market for online TV." And here's the paranoid language with which Marvin Ammori, senior adviser at Free Press, characterized TV Everywhere:
Well of course Comcast —a part of this supposedly evil "cable cartel that gouges consumers" —wants to be the gatekeeper to the video programming world. That's their business model, their very raison d'etre. But the idea that TV Everywhere could be a threat to "innovative" video start-ups like Vuze, Roku and Hulu is an example of the kind of paranoia about large media companies that has infected groups like Free Press and Public Knowledge. Content businesses such as TNT, TBS and CBS are free to run their content on both TV Everywhere and ad-supported free websites like Hulu. It's their choice. And that choice—as all commercial decisions—will presumably be determined by solid business criteria. If Hulu or TV Everywhere makes sense in commercial terms, then content producers will allow their content to run on these networks. If not, then they won't. “If Comcast is not attempting to stifle competition, then why is it only available to Comcast cable subscribers and not nationwide for all Internet users?" Ammori goes on to ask about TV Everywhere. But why would Comcast make its content available for non-subscribers who haven't paid to access this content? Does Ammori imagine that this multi-million dollar business initiative is really a charity intent on the public good? TV Everywhere shouldn't be confused with TV For Everyone. If you don't pay, you don't play. Like it or not, that basic economic truth applies to both new and old media. Not all truths, however, should be applied in exactly the same way in both old and new media. In contrast with traditional media, on the Internet the more empowered consumer has become comfortable with picking and choosing the content for which they pay. Thus the success of iTunes over the Rhapsody model. So the really interesting business question which TV Everywhere raises is whether the old media model of bundling all-you-can-eat content in a single monthly price can work in the digital age of this empowered consumer. Perhaps, in parallel with TV Everywhere, cable companies would be wise to also offer the option of paying for online video content on an a lá carte basis. But that is a different discussion. Beyond all the paranoia, TV Everywhere is actually good for consumers who choose to legally access high quality video content on the Internet. The paranoid camp would, of course, disagree. “Under the TV Everywhere plan, no other program distributors would be able to emerge, and no consumers will be able to ‘cut the cord’ because they find what they want online," Gigi Sohm, Public Knowledge president argued last year. But Sohm's pessimism about technological innovation is misguided. TV Everywhere is good news for program distributors because it opens up a potentially huge online channel for new content that wasn’t previously legally available on the Web. The more consumers who watch commercially viable video on the Internet, the more opportunities will exist for innovative online entrepreneurs. TV Everywhere represents one of the most promising business initiatives for bridging old and new media. By putting some of their most valuable content on the Internet, Comcast and Time Warner are doing all non-paranoid consumers and entrepreneurs a huge favor. Photo credit: Flickr/Photomish Dan
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