Tom Mollerus' Weblog

The New York Times is reporting today that Google and Verizon are "near" a deal for "pay tiers on the web", or, as they put it, where Google pays money to Verizon for the privilege of having its content sent faster (or just with higher priority) than other content providers. Verizon, I'm not suprised you would try to pull a trick like this, But Google, I think this deal would violate your corporate motto of "Don't be evil" and would change the Internet for the worse. Letting carriers like Verizon charge both content providers and consumers is unwarrented and greedy.

Google, striking a deal with Verizon would legitimize the concept of content providers paying bandwidth providers for better service, and I think that's a dangerous thing. Why? Because if the rationaly for the quality of content delivery is solely left to the business interests of the carrier, it also legitimizes the complementary idea that content providers who pay less would have their content delivered more slowly. Could an influential, cash-rich business like Google pay so much to carriers that other content owners would be slowed down as a result? Or, what if Verizon had a conflict of interest and abused their control over different speeds to favor a partner or harm a competitor?

Sure, we get it, Verizon. It costs money for carriers to deliver content, and some content like movies, videos, songs, and large files are more expensive for you to deliver. So instead of regulating speed, why don't you charge for volume of traffic-- and put the burden of the charges on the party who decides exactly how much traffic is generated, the consumer?

Oh yeah, I forgot. You already do. That's why I think that charging providers is unwarranted and greedy.

If this deal passes, then wealthy companies like Google get prioritized service at the expense of smaller providers, and Verizon and other carriers get to rake in the cash. The Internet as we know it as a mechanism of free and equal opportunity for businesses and speech is gone. Google, don't strike this deal. Verizon, do the right thing: let consumers choose how much content they want and who they want it from, and charge them accordingly.

If you weren't watching the NBA Finals tonight, you missed this hilarious "Penalty Kick" commercial from Budweiser. Enjoy!

As I was getting out of my car this afternoon, I noticed that the owner of the car next to mine had found a very creative solution for enjoying the music on their iPod while driving. Yes, they mounted their iPod speaker system on a plank and wedged the plank it into their center console. I can't say it strikes me as elegant, but if you don't have any other way of connecting your iPod, at least it works. Hats off to you for hacking a solution, mystery iPod docking station driver.

I only discovered John Gruber's blog Daring Fireball about two years ago, but lately my enthusiasm for his posts has waned. I think that Hank Williams put it perfectly:

...for me, John Gruber has officially jumped the shark. And while his often insightful analysis will still be in my regular rotation, just as I still occasionally watch George Will on the latest incarnation of This Week, it will never be the same. I used to trust John Gruber. Now I will just read him.

I don't think that Gruber has been less logical in his arguments, but I get the feeling that he's posting more selectively these days. Sure, he's still critical of Apple at times, but I feel that he reports on anything negative about Android or positive about Apple. No insult to an enemy of Apple seems to escape his attention.

And if Gruber really wants examples... does he really need to mention this?

There's a lot of discussion going on today about whether Apple should open up the iPhone so that customers can "sideload" apps-- meaning, install them no matter whether they come from the app store, the web, or the customer's own computer. There are questions from both sides of the issue about how such a move would affect Apple.

Some of the reasons that Steve Jobs brings up for keeping the iPhone platform closed are porn, malicious apps and their affect on the platform's reputation, and control over the application development environment. Well, despite Jobs' best efforts there is already porn on the iPhone; and while only Android users can get malicious apps right now, it hasn't affected the reputation of the platform as evidenced by Android phones outselling iPhones in Q1 of this year. Lastly, I think developers would agree that having a choice of development environments suits them just fine.

I think there's one easy answer to the question of how opening the platform would affect Apple: look at Android. It's an "open" platform that has an app store and allows sideloading. So instead of just conjecturing about what would happen to Apple if it opened the iPhone platform, let's look at how the Android platform has fared. Given that sales of Android devices continues to grow, and that entries into the Android app market are surging (do customers really care whether there are 50,000 or 100,000 apps available to their device?), I think it's safe to say that an open platform has served Android quite well-- and it would Apple, too.

Normally, I wouldn't bother to click on a Microsoft banner ad, but after seeing the banners for "Pancake Dad", my interest was piqued enough to click through. This guy is pretty funny. Well done, Microsoft ad team (wow, hell must be frozen over or something). Take a look.

There's a well-written article in the NY Times with a very interesting perspective on how Apple's iPad and iPhone are like gated communities (closed-off, safer, more predictable) while the rest of the web is like a city (open, noisier, more varied, less safe). The author also astutely compares purchased apps to bottled water: "an inventive and proprietary new way of decanting, packaging and pricing something that could once be had free."

This topic also reminds me of the Cathedral vs. the Bazaar.

The Magnolia Hotel is my favorite in Denver. It easily has more age, flair, and character than the other chain hotels I've stayed in. The elevators don't always run so fast, but they handle it with humor-- a plaque in each of them reads "Our elevators are old, sometimes slow, occasionally fast, and often creaky."

Oh, and the staff hold the doors open for you when you enter or leave. You won't find that behavior at the Residence Inn.

Alright, so the news is that Microsoft is going to bring Office online-- for free. So you'd think that Microsoft, with all of its experience in writing productivity software, would run the table on other online office apps like Google Docs or Zoho, right? I'd agree-- if Office were to be as easy to use and as accessible as these competitors. But read what John Fortt had to say about why he thinks that Office online will be a good thing for Microsoft instead of cannibalizing the existing sales of paid Office software:

Office Web Applications will work better if you actually purchase Office 2010. Users with the latest Office software will be able to more easily share documents and keep each other's changes in sync. Add in the fact that the paid version of Office will come with a brilliant feature that lets Office buyers broadcast their PowerPoint presentations over the web (like Cisco's WebEx), and the Microsoft's online giveaway looks less like an oops, and more like an upsell.

The factors he just listed seem to me to be the exact reasons why Microsoft won't succeed in the online productivity app space. Heck, I've got the latest version of Office on my laptop, but I still prefer to use Google Apps because it doesn't have any tie-ins to desktop software. I don't want my or my colleagues' editing capabilities to be crippled just because some of us don't have the latest version of Office or don't have Office at all.

And as for the certainly brilliant feature that lets paid Office users broadcast their Powerpoint presentations over the web... how long before some competitor (*cough* Google) manages to do the exact same thing, for free?

Microsoft is doing the right thing, here, certainly, of reading the writing on the wall that the days of expensive, installed productivity software are numbered. But I don't feel that they're going to be preventing any loss of market share, here. They're just delaying the inevitable.

Today while shopping in Minneapolis' IDS Center, I stopped at an ATM machine to get cash. Since there were no machines available from my own bank, I used another's. Of course, I had no choice but to accept the $2.00 fee that the other bank charged me, and I'm sure that I'll face another fee from my own bank. Now, banks have said that they'll keep charging these fees as long as people tolerate them, and so far the market seems willing to bear the cost. You can try to use a machine from the same network that your bank uses, but I don't think too many people are savvy enough to look at their card's network provider, not to mention to that of the ATM machine. I'm willing to pay the fee for the sake of convenience access to money, but I sure wish the fees were lower.

So I found myself thinking just how the banks would know whether or not "the market" was tolerating their costs. How would they ever know whether potential customers were avoiding their cash machines? Sure, they could tell if their month-by-month percentage of out-of-network transactions decreased, but it occurred to me that an even stronger indication that the cost was too much would be if the customer cancelled their transaction at the point when they were told that they would be charged the extra $2.00 fee, in addition to fees from their own bank. That would be a clear sign to the banks that their fees were no longer so tolerable.

So here's my idea: whenever you're forced to use an out-of-network bank machine because you're not close to one of your own bank's machines, cancel the transaction where you see the screen about the extra fee. Then either start the transaction over to get your money, or, better yet, move to another nearby machine. You will still be paying the extra fee, true, but for the cost of a few seconds you'll be sending the banks anonymous feedback that could save us all some money in the future.