Mission Creek

from latimes.com

This is an interesting, if not troubling use of technology….

LOS ANGELES — Some of the country’s most notorious street gangs have gotten Web-savvy, showcasing illegal exploits, making threats, and honoring killed and jailed members on digital turf.

Crips, Bloods, MS-13, 18th Street and others have staked claims on various corners of cyberspace. “Web bangers” are posting potentially incriminating photos of members holding guns, messages taunting other gangs and boasts of illegal exploits on personal Web sites and social networking sites.

“I’m just being real and I ain’t got nothing to hide,” said Kristopher “Kasper” Flowers, 30, a professed member of the 18th Street gang with facial tattoos of “18″ and “666.” The main 18th Street gang Web site has a link to “Kaspers World.”

Gangs once only roamed the streets of big cities but now can be found in 2,500 U.S. communities, according to the FBI. Police departments suddenly faced with the unwelcome arrivals are looking for help anywhere they can get it, including the gangs’ own easy-to-find Web sites…

full story here

Every now and then a site comes across my screen that holds my attention not for what is it, but for what it represents. Gasbuddy.com is a site that is very relevant given today’s outrageous gasoline prices. But why I find the site interesting is it is at the crux of the “last mile” or internet convergence.

I am co-opting a telecom term here for what I think may be the most interesting area in internet marketing, the ability of the internet to convert the leverage of the online information into a use that is very local, habitual, and decidedly offline.

What I see is a site who is addressing something as low tech as filling up a tank of gas, and then attempting to leverage a community of users (in this case, that community is huge, just about anyone who has a car), to create a value proposition that the visitor can translate into literal real world savings. Now this is easy when the value proposition centers around is a commodity which can be shipped (ala Amazon, Overstock, etc). But here is a company that is creating a value proposition which is based on an additional behavioral action of the website visitor. To further complicate matter, getting gas is usually an activity that is based on location, habit, and routine. The value proposition that the site if offering has to be great enough to overcome these natural tendencies.

But I also think this is a case study for the larger question that powerhouses like Google are trying to answer, how do we translate the online experience into one which effects local offline habits. Will gas prices be a key that start more and more users to integrate the online experience into their offline world, I don’t know. Maybe that depends how high gas prices go……

 from computerworld.com

There has been a great deal about Google and its plans for its datacenters and the “dark fiber” it has been acquiring, here is at least the offical ‘party’ line:

Google Inc., typically tight-lipped about the technology behind its data centers, builds its own servers to save money and because standard products don’t meet its needs, the company’s senior vice president of operations said today.

Hardware makers invest heavily in researching and developing reliable products, a feature that most businesses value. But Google doesn’t  need very reliable servers because it has written its software to compensate for hardware outages, said Urs Holzle, speaking at Google’s European headquarters in Dublin.

Instead of buying commercial servers at a price that increases with reliability, Google builds less-reliable servers at a cheaper cost knowing that its software will work around any outages. “For us, that’s the right solution,” Holzle said.

Another reason that Google builds its own servers is equally simple: it can save costs on power consumption…

full story here

from nytimes.com

I think this is an interesting statement of our times, where a company is willing to cut profits to compete with free services…..

Should AOL sacrifice its cash cow in hopes of finding a prosperous future?

…

Traditionally, when companies have profitable but shrinking businesses, like AOL’s access service, they try to milk as much money as they can from them without investing new cash. Indeed, that is what Mr. Miller has tried to do for the last several years.

Mr. Miller will defend his unusually draconian plan by arguing that trying to wring every last dime from its dial-up subscribers is preventing AOL from being as aggressive as it can in competing with Yahoo, Microsoft and Google on the Web, according to AOL executives involved in developing the proposal. With such powerful and fast-moving rivals, he wants to hasten the pain to speed the recovery.

This plan will require the board to accept lower profits at first until the advertising revenue grows further, the AOL executives said, although they declined to say how much profits would fall and at what rate…

full story here

from infoworld.com

I think that this is an interesting showdown.  Personally, my libertarian innervoice feels the net should be on a first come first serve basis, and if you are going to be a provider of access, then you should maintain a netrual position on the traffic that travels accross your network….

As the U.S. Congress argues the pros and cons of network neutrality, many companies doing business on the Internet say their very futures may be at stake.

Net neutrality supporters want new laws prohibiting Internet providers from blocking or degrading traffic from their competitors’ networks. If providers are allowed to give preferential treatment to some Web traffic, businesses using competing tools will find themselves in the slow lane, said Dave Greves, owner of Denver-based Faction Media, an advertising agency that focuses on online campaigns.

Greves’ 20-employee company uses Web analytics packages, an ad server product, a hosted e-mail service, and even Google for business-to-business advertising. Without Net neutrality rules, a broadband provider could block Google in favor of its own, or a partner’s, search engine, Greves said.

“Of course, it’s all speculation, but it could radically change the way we operate,” Greves said. “It would put us effectively back in startup mode.”

Determining the full effects of Net neutrality can be difficult, however, in part because the concept is hard to define precisely. Most of the debate has taken place inside the Washington Beltway, where lawmakers and outsiders have proposed several different versions…

full story here