Kellogg Insight's Editor, Tim De Chant, and I sat down to discuss tiered pricing for broadband. It was a pretty interesting conversation, and Tim distilled it into a blog post. If you are curious to see the original post and other posts by Tim, see his blog, Expertly Wrapped. With Tim's permission, here is a …
What does the average surfer know about Creative Commons?
What do you know about Creative Commons, the legal frameworks that support many web-based activities, such as Wikipedia, Flickr, or YouTube? You probably do not know too much, if you are like most people. Most users do not know the legal details behind the web – and that is a fact, as you will see …
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The Secret Life of Wally Madhavani
Author’s note: I began writing columns for IEEE Micro in April of 1995. This is the 100th column. To mark this milestone this column offers a parody of James Thurber’s 1939 story, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” In the original story Thurber described Mitty’s shopping trip with his wife in Waterbury, Connecticut. What would …
A dumb compromise to save the ACS and Economic Census
Last week I commented in this space about the Tea Party's desire to make a symbolic cut in government by eliminating the American Community Survey and the Economic Census at the US Census. This would change economic statistics in the US, upending a system that has been in place since the end of World War …
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Do not cut the American Community Survey: an editorial.
The House Republicans recently voted to remove funding from the US Census. According to news reports, this action was motivated by a mix of Tea-Party symbolism and the legacy of a long-standing fight with the Census. This post will present a short editorial. While I have sympathy for part of the motivation for this action …
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Free Podcasts
Some folk like to read blogs. Some folk like to listen to podcasts. Why not give everyone the option to do what they prefer? Now it is possible to read or listen to many of the essays that appear in my IEEE Micro Economics column (and appear here in digitopoly). The IEEE deserves credit for …
A Big Payoff
Google and Apple are two of the most profitable companies on the globe today. They seem to share little in common except that achievement. They took very different paths to the stratosphere. Google, after all, is less than a decade and a half old, a child of the web with a successful approach to advertising, …
The Craigslist Killer and Online Privacy
Let's discuss the Craigslist killer, online privacy, and police procedures. Why has this old case from 2009 gotten new attention? The murder itself was rather gruesome and unusual, and the events grabbed considerable attention at the time, especially in the Boston area where they took place. However, it all happened several years ago. Why remember …
Encyclopedia Britannica folds its hand with class
Encyclopedia Britannica recently announced that it will cease publication of its books. This kicked up a range of sentimental reactions from those who grew up with the books. I would prefer to accentuate the positive: we are watching the end of a rather civilized economic transformation. This transformation is notable for the degree of civility …
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The Range of Linus' Law
After more than a decade of successful growth, Wikipedia continues to defy easy characterization. It receives more than 400 million viewers per month. Close to four million articles grace its web pages in English alone. Volunteers built the entire corpus of text. This experience suggests that Wikipedia has done something right, but begs the question: …
Digitopoly 