That was a tweet on August 16 by Ryan Saver, Twitter's platform leader. It was in response to the kerfuffle that emerged regarding Twitter's proposed changes to its API. I saw the discussion and debate emerge on various tech blogs and it was hard to know what to make of it. Marco Arment, who runs …
AT&T arbitrarily restricts communication on FaceTime
The latest version of Apple's iOS operating system will allow its FaceTime function (it is not an app on the iPhone but is built in) over cellular. For the last two years it has been wireless only (although Aaron Sorkin's researchers appeared to have missed that in a recent version of The Newsroom). Of course, …
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Could textbooks be the key to the digital education revolution?
With all of the discussion of changes in online education, the focus has been on lectures and classrooms. Of course, another chunk of learning that flows from the efforts of academics is the humble textbook. To date, digital textbooks have been attractive mainly because they can lighten the load in backpacks more than any other …
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Anti-piracy regulation and competing with free
In a New York Times op-ed earlier this month, Nick Bilton used the metaphor of “Whac-A-Mole” to suggest that the creative industries are hopelessly naïve in their efforts to regulate online piracy. The editorial, “Internet Pirates Will Always Win”, argues that anti-piracy regulation is a lot like Whac-A-Mole: hitting one target only causes two or …
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Can changing the unit of the account save publishing?
That is precisely the claim in a new report, The Economics of Online Advertising, released by ComScore CEO Magid Abraham today. Here is a summary of his claim: The very interesting thing about the online ad market is that it’s the only market where the accounting mechanism that you use will radically change the economic …
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The Next 36 Mobile App Presentations
Tomorrow the second cohort of The Next 36 will graduate. The Next 36 is a program that selects 36 keen and bright undergraduates from all over Canada, puts them in teams and gives them a big chunk of money each (from $20K - $50K) to develop a mobile app. In the process they receive business …
Is SPAM a public policy problem?
Justin Rao and David Reiley have a new paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives on "The Economics of Spam." It is a very interesting read; especially for the historical overview of the phenomenon. I had the opportunity to discuss the paper at the NBER Summer Institute and so I thought I'd record my thoughts …
Does the clothesline paradox apply to IT?
Does the clothesline paradox apply to information technology? There is a relationship between the clothesline paradox and digital dark matter, but there is also a subtle and important difference. It is important to keep those differences straight. It makes a difference to several contemporary policy debates. That will take some explaining. There are some terms …
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One gig broadband in Chattanooga
For those of you with an interest in frontier infrastructure, check out this article from Stacey Higginbotham at Gigaom. She wanted to see what *really* high speed fiber looks like in practice, so she went to Chattanooga, which has been running an experiment at the frontier. This quote will give you a feel for the …
PopVox – building a Civic Profile online
Last week I was teaching “IDEA week” to my mid-career Sloan Fellow executive students. IDEA (innovation-driven entrepreneurial advantage;-)) is a week when we usually explore how innovation provides entrepreneurs with the advantage they need to really build a business that has competitive advantage and can compete with large established firms – either in new markets or …
Digitopoly 