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Why Am I Giving You Directions to the Bar at the Top of the Hancock at 7 a.m.?

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All You Have to Do Is Ask

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I’m a believer in Permission Marketing. I’m with Seth — it’s not hard to ask. As a customer, I find it easier on everyone when I ask my question. As a service provider, I like asking what people think and how they do things. As a teacher and a person, I get jazzed when people ask me to help.

One thing I don’t ask for is directions online — I’ve had MapQuest take me to the wrong side of too many towns too many times.

Yahoo Maps, well, Yahoo! invaded my computer by loading their toolbar on my machine without including me in that decision.Sorry, I like to think for myself. I didn’t include them in my decision to delete it.

I get my directions from websites or people who know the way.

Until today . . . when I read the TechCrunch review of AskCity, and played, yeah played, with their maps.

It’s so cool!
[Read more…]

Net Neutrality 11-30-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.

No Slam Dunk for Net Neutrality (with apologies to George Tenet)

What isn’t yet known is who will chair the pivotal Telecommunications and Internet Subcommittee. If it’s Ed Markey (D-Mass.), then you have a strong Bell opponent, strong Net Neutrality proponent and some momentum. But, Markey has a lot of options. He could try for the chairmanship of the full Resources Committee, and he also has seniority on the Homeland Security committee.

Depending on what Markey does, the Telecom Subcommittee could be led by Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.). Boucher, like Markey, is a strong Net Neutrality proponent. But unlike Markey and very much like Dingell, Boucher tends to favor the Bell companies on many other issues.

[ . . . ]

With some positive Net Neutrality leadership in place, then the question becomes, what would be in any overall telecom legislation, and there the picture gets lots more murky. Let’s start with video franchising. This is the concept behind the Bells’ push for a bill this year. They want to get into the cable business, providing TV programming over their fast networks, and they don’t want to negotiate with 30,000 local authorities to get permission as the real cable providers had to do. So the Bells pushed the bill that gave them, and cable, a free pass nationally to enter cable business, pushing aside objections from local governments.

[ . . . ]

Remember, the Bells still have a lot of friends and a lot of votes in Congress, whether on Net Neutrality or not. There are many legislators of both parties, on the relevant committees or not, who will vote the Bell line regardless. Net Neutrality isn’t a slam dunk. The key will be how much the Bells will be willing to deal. They didn’t feel the need in the last session of Congress. Now, with the leadership against them, they may have a different calculus, of trying to get the best bill they can.

By now, the Bells have realized how important Net Neutrality is to a great many people and organizations, ranging from large companies like Google and Yahoo, to public interest groups like Public Knowledge (my day-job employer), something they probably didn’t count on this year. If they try in good faith to negotiate a reasonable Net Neutrality provision next year, the Bells could gain some of their goals despite themselves.

Want to know what you can do?
MA Bell Monopoly Versus the Free Internet — Tell the FCC Net Neutrality Is Not Negotiable

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 11-06-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.

Battle over ‘net neutrality’ arrives in Canada

. . . “Right now, the internet is almost a perfect, universal democracy,” says Pippa Lawson, the executive director of the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Law Clinic.

“The smallest bloggers can be accessed as easily and as quickly as the websites of major corporations.”

There’s clear incentive there for those who have the economic interests to discriminate. That’s why it’s necessary to ensure that there’s a level playing field and you have to do that legislatively.”

Lawson said Canadian companies want exactly what American companies want — to control the web and make a lot of money doing so.

“There’s a big push in Canada right now to allow those sorts of discriminatory practices,” Lawson said.

“The companies that own the pipes of the internet — the telecom companies — haven’t liked sitting back and watching big content providers like Google and Yahoo make billions of dollars. They want a piece of the pie, and they want to be able to favour their own content or the content of the corporations that would pay them big money.”

Want to know what you can do?
MA Bell Monopoly Versus the Free Internet — Tell the FCC Net Neutrality Is Not Negotiable

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 8-18-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.

Comcast Wants To Be Yahoo

AdAge reports on Comcast’s ambitions to become a Yahoo-type portal. The cable giant is beginning to add more online sales people, hoping to capture a piece of the online advertising pot of gold. It is also opening up its Internet pages to its non-broadband subscribers, which quickly doubles its potential user base. In theory at least! Paid Content has a good wrap up of the story, and some pithy observations.

Now with around 10 million broadband subscribers, it is hard to blame Comcast for having portal ambitions. Just as an aside, isn’t portal a throwback of a vertically integrated Internet 1.0 era? How quaint! How old fashioned! Still, I wonder the wisdom of this move, especially since the company is fighting the triple play battle with politically more savvy phone companies. Shouldn’t that be the focus? I think this is yet another example of “google envy.”

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–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 8-13-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.

It’s Our Net — A New Site Announced by Six Apart

. . . . Scientific American published a pretty fair editorial on the topic, which reaches a clear conclusion:

A system for prioritizing data traffic might well be necessary someday, yet one might hope that it would be based on the needs of the transmissions rather than the deal making and caprices of the cable owners. Moreover, personal blogs and other Web pages are increasingly patchworks of media components from various sources. Tiered service would stultify that trend.

That seems like a reasonable analysis, so the natural next step for any Internet-related cause is to get a good website going to help with advocacy. Enter It’s Our Net, supported by everyone from Adobe to Yahoo, and sponsored by Amazon, eBay, Google, InterActiveCorp, Microsoft, and Yahoo! . It’s a simple, effective site combining the latest news, information about how the proposed change would affect the web, and tools to contact your elected officials. . . .

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 8-7-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.

Online Advocacy: Same As It Ever Was?

The net neutrality fight has many parallels to anti-Communications Decency Act battle that raged beginning in 1995. Online activists were emboldened by free-speech issues and teamed with established companies to fight the legislation. The activists lost the fight in Congress and with President Clinton who signed the bill, but generated enough momentum and support that they rallied considerable resources to their side to win in the Supreme Court, which struck down the law.

The activists…

  • Got sites like Yahoo! to go black for a day (Black Thursday)
  • Organized online petitions that got more than 100,000 signatures
  • Drove direct constituent communications to members of Congress

    • If we can learn from recent history, the CDA battle taught us that the Web can quickly bring people together to marshal forces for a common cause, but that if the driving issue goes away, so do many of the participants. You need a pressing, immediate battle to really rally the troops. . . .

    –ME “Liz” Strauss

    Related
    NET NEUTRALITY PAGE