In an article on out-law.com the appeal from bloggers being sued by Apple is discussed. This case relates to a product called asteroid that was leaked on powerage.org and other blogs two years ago. It will be interesting to see the outcome of this case in view of how it will affect bloggers in general when they disclose information. Are bloggers considered to have the same rights as journalists or does having a newspaper behind you grant you with different constitutional rights ? Is a blogger writing for a newspaper a journalist ?
It would be interesting to see if bloggers need to ask for a type of press card to be covered in this type of case ! The main issue does seem to be whether bloggers are covered in the same way a ‘journalist’ would be.
Monthly Archive for April, 2006
I started writing an article about the HSBC survey that is discussed on USNews and was pretty astonished at the reference document from HSBC.
A quote from the USNews article gives away what the study is aiming at :
“Governments cannot afford to shy away from the enormous challenges and opportunities presented by the world’s aging population,” says Stephen Green, CEO of HSBC.
The document that is referenced on USNews has in my opinion been selectively produced by HSBC to uphold the statement from their CEO. Being accustomed to more elaborate and detailed statistics in order to discuss subjects like this, I wasn’t sure whether this study was just completely biased or presented in this manner to simplify the subject ? The very simple version referred to on USNews has three groups, North America, the US and Global (all others, or all countries combined ?). The question is obviously how simplification and objectivity cohabitate when producing documents like this.
In my initial article I had written this :
The question of “How individuals think governments should finance ageing populations (in percent)” that gives “Enforced additional private savings” coming first. Now remind me which area does HSBC provide services in ?
Now this one is a shocker, HSBC really should get a medal for figuring this one out : “Reasons for individuals wanting to work in their later years (in percent)”. The answer that comes up first : “Need the money”. This answer scores higher in the US than anywhere else.
Not having gone further than the document referenced by USNews I was at a loss to understand the value of this type of document.
The HSBC site has a version reviewing several countries (including several European countries). When you look at this document it has statistics with charts that are not all mentioned in the one available on USNews like this one :
In comparison you can see that a chart from the 2005 survey (on only 10 countries) was maybe too easy to understand hence the complicated type of chart chosen in 2006 to make the numbers harder to read :
Source : HSBC Future of Retirement Research 2005
I do like the choice of red for basic gossip and the real deal, i.e. the people have taken action, is a paler shade in both cases and doesn’t stand out that much. It is weird that ‘talked to friends’ is used as the first criteria here to rank the countries. Although using ‘consulted a bank’ instead would merely put France ahead of China. Note how the three countries that are considered as examples for private pensions come first and China that seems more and more like a capitalist country in disguise comes fourth.
The main pdf document on HSBC also explains the survey was conducted by Age Wave and Harris Interactive in 20 countries involving 21,329 adults aged 18 and over but doesn’t indicate what the male/female ratio was.
It is very interesting to compare the two documents :
The USNews document
The Main survey report on HSBC
Also the survey is summarized per country by HSBC on their on web site http://www.hsbc.com/hsbc/retirement_future/findings
To be fair the document that is on the USNews site is most probably not intended solely for people that have had to deal with statistics at university and would explain why a simplified version like this was used. However I do feel that the process that lead to a far simpler version, is clearly subjective, towards the message HSBC wants to get across.
An interesting article at NPR gives some insight from neurologist David Buchholz of Johns Hopkins University about which different factors may be at the origin of migraines. An interesting part is how certain food groups and more precisely specific types in these food groups are likely to be triggers for people that suffer from migraines. This pdf document provides a list that may help people test this theory. The article will also give you some idea of other factors like stress, a drop in barometric pressure (plains, weather) and hormones that can effect people and food trigger elements are known to take up to 72 hours to have an effect…
Reading an article published today in the New York Times I started feeling sick in the first sentences. The title of the article is “MTV’s ‘Super Sweet 16′ Gives a Sour Pleasure” and the reality show it talks about is not unbelievable but rather is just in real bad taste.
After having seen so many pictures of the so far hidden poverty in New Orleans and comparing it to this show which shows rich kids spending ridiculous amounts of money on a birthday party it makes you feel sick.
It seems pretty unreal when you think that there are discrete lobby companies that do everything they can to dissuade people from talking about the massive difference there is between the absurdly rich and the underlying deep poverty in the US.
What could be more absurd, well supposedly the show is pretty successful !
The article refers to this article in TIME magazine where Cox says :
What used to mark the end of childhood now seems only an excuse to prolong the whiny, self-centered greediness that gives infantile a bad name.
From the Hughes film “Sixteen Candles” which had it’s ups and downs but was enjoyable, we now get a depressing painting of the US in sixteen shades of greed from MTV !
Greg Stuart from the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) says :
Interactive advertising continues to experience tremendous growth as marketers experience its overall effectiveness in building brands and delivering online and offline sales
In an emarketer article today statistics from the IAB conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) concerning the trends in online advertising from April 2006 are available and it looks good for the online advertising industry ! From 2004 to 2005 there was a 30.3 percent increase in overall online advertising.
As usual emarketer provides further interesting details about how these figures can be further interpreted, showing for example that search ads are the most used vehicle for ads and that CPM remains that predominant model of online advertising.
If this area is of any interest to you I recommend reading this article…
On MSNBC there is also an interesting article that goes in to detail on the effect that online advertising is having and this article also refers to the IAB report conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Merrill Lynch media analyst Lauren Rich Fine estimated spending on Internet ads this year will increase 27 percent, surpassing magazines and the Yellow Pages — both more established media markets
The growth in online advertising is providing enough incentive for companies like Time Warner to provide content previously restricted to AOL subscribers free through ad-supported sites. This is an interesting trend that many online newspapers should be following closely since the sites that require subscription (free or paid) are going to be creating barriers for many visitors, turning them away and thus losing out on advertising revenue !
The online advertising figures are bolstering the general ‘feel’ that there is not only more and more money being spent online in advertising but also that new trends which I have previously discussed are having a bigger impact than expected. The advertising based TV shows available online mean TV networks are beginning to wake up to this reality !
Another Washington Post an article was recently published explaining how TV broadcasters are starting to really feel the pressure and challenge that the web represents for them :
“The question is, do they partner with those new forms of content or those new providers? Or do they sit on their hands and become less and less relevant,” said Jimmy Schaeffler, an analyst with The Carmel Group, a market research firm.
If I can start viewing some great series and documentaries online I will certainly not be unhappy about it and properly explaining that the content is provided to me thanks to the shows sponsors and advertisers will make me pay more attention to them !
I also think it is interesting to refer to the controversial statement from the CEO of France’s TF1 who was widely criticised for claiming that the content they broadcast was mainly to get people in the right condition to be receptive to the adverts that follow !
Here is a translation of what Le Lay said :
TF1’s business is to help Coca-Cola sell its products … what we sell Coca-Cola, is available brain time. For an advert to be efficient, the viewer’s brain has to be available. The aim of our programmes is to make sure that their brain is receptive, that is to say to entertain them, make them feel relaxed to get them ready between two commercials
So Internet is moving back to the initial model rejected by many, whereby free content is financed by advertising ! Or am I just being to cynical ?
It’s been a long time since I had such an unusual and memorable experience and it happened while we were looking at the cathedral in Strasbourg. A guy sitting on a stool started playing an instrument (called a bouzouki) and singing. He is pretty large guy and has several tattoos on each arm. You look at him and expect a real husky voice. To begin with his voice was pretty low and slowly started crescendo. What was astonishing was the power and pitch of his voice. He is labelled as a “Countertenor mezzo-soprano”. For myself and maybe others this means he got to really high notes and was able to hold them at great ease ! I didn’t have anything I could use to record him and although a friend recorded the voice on a phone, the quality isn’t good. To describe the overall style I suppose I would say medieval or Shakespearian, a really beautiful moment and after searching on the Internet I can only tell you that the disc is not yet available on the Internet anywhere. The guy is called Luc Arbogast and from what I understand he also plays with his wife Mélusine who wasn’t there on this occasion. The name that appears on the CD cover is ‘Domus’ and the album is called “Fjall D’Yr Vinur” as you can see here :
Before he started singing there were maybe five or six people in front of the cathedral and when he finished I would guess there were over fifty in a semi-circle around him. He switched from German to French with great ease after singing, talking to people wanting to buy his CD. He has a French father (from Strasbourg) and German mother. If you happened to hear him like I did and missed the opportunity to buy his CD (silly me) you can most probably get one by contacting him at domus.atelier@laposte.net although many say that they have had no responses.
I would love to be able to post twenty or thirty seconds of the song I heard in front of the Notre Dame Cathedral at Strasbourg or a link to such an extract so if you hear of anything (or a place that is selling the CD) please post a comment 
Edit : Well you will see in the comments that there is a great link to an extract of the guy singing : Luc Arbogast singing at Strasbourg thanks to “Pumpkin”. Do take a look and enjoy the extract while you’re waiting to meet the guy in the flesh !
Click on the image below to see Pumpkin’s video
Addition : I just came across this video of Luc in the church of Savigny, again a wonderful experience :
While I was in Strasbourg for a few days (first time there, helping with a friend’s removal) I was taken out to discover the Flammekuche at the Flam’s. There was a really great atmosphere and great service so if you’re looking for a place to try out the Flammekuche, the Flam’s is a good address.
We visited the Notre Dame Cathedral in Strasbourg which is very impressive and certainly worth seeing.
Up until now I had seen only chaos in the design of MySpace pages, thinking that MySpace was a trend setter for several things but also with the distinct impression that I was back in 1994 when quite a few of the first web sites/pages looked like all the myspace pages I have seen so far. Well some of the first pages I designed most probably looked that bad.
However today I came across (sorry a ‘friend‘ pointed me to) Jenny Beck’s myspace page. Well first of all the page looks really nice, very professional and regardless of some weird comments posted by other users, well I’m impressed.
But being impressed doesn’t stop there with Jenny. She not only has a really nice page, she designed herself, she also writes songs and the song called ‘Somebody’ is really nice. You can listen to it as well if you visit her myspace page. So Jenny is like a star that shines out in the myspace universe
And before you leave to check it out have a look at the video a bit further down the page about the 2006 Women In Music Festival in Birmingham, very interesting…
You might find the experience interesting enough to go and vote for Jenny like I did on the Makato web site (didn’t have time to check out what Makato is all about but was convinced that Jenny has talent)…
In an article posted on Oilman’s blog there is a story about a guy looking for a girl he met in an airport, I posted a note about it yesterday. I also came across a comment by IrishWonder on the same post :
Am I being too cynical or is it a cool case of linkbait?
This was the first time I had heard about linkbait and so looked it up and found out that it is basically a technique for creating a story/content to wheel in links from interesting sites. Getting interesting sites to willingly do so would depend upon the content being special/interesting. Some people seem to think the term linkbait is not a good term since it isn’t always about tricking people into linking to your site.
Anyway, curious as I am, I did a few searches on the name “Kevin Amoros”, initially I thought that it wasn’t a very French first or last name. Also having done some English teaching, I was surprised at how the structure of the sentences were pretty complex with some simple English mistakes as if they were added afterwards. First of all some school photos come up on a French site called trombi.com. Then I came across an interesting thread on a forum and this part of the thread is why it came up in Google :
domain: pleinphare.com
created: 04-Oct-2002
last-changed: 17-Dec-2003
registration-expiration: 04-Oct-2004
nserver: ns19.schlund.de
nserver: ns20.schlund.de
registrant-firstname: Kevin
registrant-lastname: Amoros
registrant-street1: 112 rue Felix Faure
registrant-pcode: 92700
registrant-city: Colombes
registrant-ccode: FR
registrant-phone: +33.662703455
registrant-email: kevinamoros@wanadoo.fr
admin-c-firstname: Kevin
admin-c-lastname: Amoros
admin-c-street1: 112 rue Felix Faure
admin-c-pcode: 92700
admin-c-city: Colombes
admin-c-ccode: FR
admin-c-phone: +33.662703455
admin-c-email: kevinamoros@wanadoo.fr
It refers to a domain name used in a scam with a special phone number you would call and get charged extra. The idea from this thread and another of the site labelled as “400 Euros in three clicks” in this post was that each time you brought a friend to sign up you would get 1 Euro. They would guarantee you for 20 friends who in turn would bring 20 friends so 20 x 20 = 400 Euros. The small type : you have to ring 3 telephone ‘AlloPass’ numbers that have a high charge rate… The second thread above explains how the site stopped responding after a few weeks with no way to follow up after having being billed on the numbers…
So far no way of knowing whether this guy is the same one !? Well yes, because the email is the same one used on the guys ad page, which I’m not going to link to (kevinamoros@wanadoo.fr) and a ‘whois’ query on the domain name that was used for the scam (404 error on pleinphare.com) reveals that the registrar company (schlund) is the same as the one for the current web site. Kevin seems to have his habits. This doesn’t actually indicate whether he actively participated in this scam though.
So could it be he heard the song by James Blunt called ‘You’re Beautiful’ and thought that’s a nice story I know how I could use that, replace subway with airport, same sad ending…
IrishWonder may well be correct in his first idea that this is a linkbait scam (not as bad a scam as the one described above). Has Kevin just been pretty unlucky and got mixed up with the wrong people ! On face value you wouldn’t think the sub domain which is pretty long is interesting from a search engine perspective and I doubt the aim was to have an impact on the main domain !?
PS : I’ve just been going through my email and today’s Robert Clough searchengine.com newsletter is talking about this, obviously Clough talks about it from a Search Engine Advertising perspective !
A new article at emarketer, based on the latest Technorati report illustrates how the blogosphere is now at over 35 million blogs. The average rate at which new blogs are created each day means that a new blog is created nearly every second of the day ! In August 2003 there were 0.5 million blogs being tracked by Technorati and now there are 35.3 million.
Another interesting fact is that Technorati statistics indicate that nearly 4 million bloggers update their blogs weekly, if not more, at the moment…
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