Google still plays it’s don’t be evil jingle at every opportunity. The company has facilitated setting much information free, often a the angst of those who have profited from controlling, not out of benevolence, but to profit. Doing something worthwhile and profiting from it is the highest accomplish for any business and Google deserves kudos for that. The company also has no respect for privacy, except for its own. The company’s own data sets, built from our search and surfing behavior are anything but public. While trade secrets are a company’s right, the will to use them in ways that could be harmful to the public are not.

As Google begins to index public data, and begins to collect data on how we use it, the potential to use that information looms larger. Will that information be used for less than benevolent purposes? Only time will tell.  Power corrupts, and it’s hard to believe that Google can avoid the inevitable.

Last year, we released a public data search feature that enables people to quickly find useful statistics in search. More recently, we expanded this service to include information from the World Bank, such as population data for every region in the world. More and more public agencies, non-profits and other organizations are looking for ways to open up their data and expand global access to this kind of information. We want to help keep that momentum going, so today we’re sharing a snapshot of some of the most popular public data search topics on Google. We’re also launching the Google Public Data Explorer, an experimental visualization tool in Google Labs. (Googleblog)

As indie music artists from all over the globe converge in Austin for this year’s South by Southwest fest, much of the best music can be found online for free download. Indie artists don’t have ad budgets and distribution contracts with big box retailers. Making their music available free is simply the best way to connect with new fans who can’t make it to Austin to see them perform.

Want to sample the gigabytes of free music for yourself? Visit the SXSW music page for MP3’s or the unofficial torrent site for a complete compilation.

Giving a reader free access to something new is often exponentially more effective than expensive media advertising.

If you’ve been to a Sam’s club around meal time, you can;t miss the free samples of food products in almost every aisle. It’s a pretty simple concept. If you get a taste of something you like, you’re very likely to buy more to take home. Books with good library representation always sell more copies than those notilable on loan.

We’ve noted in the past the various stories of individual authors like Paulo Coelho and David Pogue, who showed that free (non-DRM’d) versions of their ebooks helped increase physical book sales. Then, in February, we wrote about some actual research that showed that when unauthorized ebooks get out into the wild, there is a “significant jump in sales” of the physical book. And, now there’s even more evidence to support this. A recent paper by a PhD. candidate noticed that free ebooks tend to increase sales of physical books. In this case, rather than looking at “unauthorized” ebooks, it looks like they focused on authorized free ebook versions. (Techdirt)

Publisher suits have  a hard time dealing with the fact that there are freeloaders in the world.  What these execs don’t seem to understand is that this minority of readers has always existed, and that they will do without rather than pay.  By depriving the avid reader who might pay for something he likes to stop the freeloader, publishers are literally killing their most powerful new marketing tool.

Most of us have browsed that pages of Popular Science at one time or another going back to the time of our great, great grandfathers. The magazine is the most likely precursor and model for the pop-tech blogosphere of today and is still alive and well in both print and online. In a move contrary to that of other periodicals struggling with a print to online transition, Popular Science gets “it”. Freeing its archive will certainly drive more traffic to its site, growing readership and therefore giving it more opportunities to monetize.

We’ve partnered with Google to offer our entire 137-year archive for free browsing. Each issue appears just as it did at its original time of publication, complete with period advertisements. And today we’re excited to announce you can browse the full archive right here on PopSci.com. (Poplar Science)

As any retailer will tell you, the longer you can get people to come in and browse, the more likely it is that they will buy something. I predict that by hanging the come in and browse sign on its site instead of the “keep out” sign of a paywall, that Popular Science will continue to live long and prosper.

Just as we were beginning to think Microsoft had surrendered its evil empire crown to Google,  Ballmer’s posse strikes back.  If you’re a big monopolist and business slows, you use government to protect your position and revenue. After all, buying government protection for a stagnating business is much cheaper than innovating. In the last few months Microsoft has been pushing antitrust against Google. Now one of the company’s execs is proposing a new Internet tax,of which you can bet a large portion will be  earmarked for Microsoft. Rather than accepting responsibility for creating insecure systems and improving them, the Microsofties think we should cover the cost of patching their sloppy work in addition to paying inflated prices for OS software.

A top Microsoft executive on Tuesday suggested a broad Internet tax to help defray the costs associated with computer security breaches and vast Internet attacks, according to reports.

Speaking at a security conference in San Francisco, Microsoft Vice President for Trustworthy Computing Scott Charney pitched the Web usage fee as one way to subsidize efforts to combat emerging cyber threats — a costly venture, he said, but one that had vast community benefits. (The Hill)

FCC chair Julius Genachowski has very big plans for his bloated agency. In one of the biggest power grabs asserted since  DARPA freed the Internet,  the FCC seeks to spend $25 billion under the pretense of providing service to those who have none and to emergency responders.

The national broadband plan that the Federal Communications Commission submits to Congress later this month is now expected to cost up to $25 billion. But since the nation’s lawmakers are looking for ways to reduce the national debt, the FCC is seeking ways to offset the cost through spectrum auctions and other measures.

To have any chance of meeting its goal of providing broadband service to 100 million Americans, the FCC will need to find support for an estimated $9 billion commitment to cover underserved parts of the country, industry observers say. Moreover, the commission wants Congress to spend $12.5 billion to $16 billion over the next 10 years to provide police, firefighters and other emergency workers with wireless Internet access.

There’s a problem here. The FCC has never been effective at delivering on its  promises. From the horribly mis-managed USF that was already supposed to delivery service where it did not exist to insuring a competitive access market, the agency spends large and fails miserably. Even if the FCC could change its stripes and actually deliver on its promises, bloated bureaucracy insures that only a small fraction of funds raised will actually provide service. Then there’s the funds. Where will they come from? Answer: you and me. Look for an effort to extend what services will have USF fees added and for new spectrum auctions. Big auctions insure that only the deepest pockets of the telcos will control wireless, keeping prices very high. Adding so much new authority to the FCC isn’t just a bad idea. It could end US broadband leadership forever.

The days of insane salaries and the self serving illusion of objective reporting have ended, at least at ABC.  News as a time slotted sound byte presentation that has become increasingly biased simply can’t compete with the always on, many viewpoint web. ABC  is the first to implode, but it won’t be the last. Even the 24 hour cable networks face extinction as cable continues to lose ground to on demand and largely free TVoIP.

ABC News President David Westin confirmed in an interview Friday that the network’s ranks of bureau correspondents, which currently number several dozen, would be cut in half and be replaced with “digital” journalists who would be expected to shoot and edit their own stories.

“We will have as many total journalists as we do now,” he said.

Although the network will keep a minimal staff presence in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami and Boston, it will shut down its bricks-and-mortar bureaus there and ask its remaining employees to work from the local affiliates. The Washington bureau will remain open, but its size will be substantially reduced.  (LA TImes)

Is it over for network news? Probably not. I can see a future for it as pure entertainment. The 5 o’clock reports are already near the bottom of the slippery slope into tabloid journalism.  The shift this represents is profound. Control of information concentrated too much power in the hands of the few. The ability of the mainstream media to form the public agenda and opinion was incredibly powerful. Two recent examples are the perpetuation of the global warming myth and swinging a presidential election. It’s pretty certain that so few people will not have so much power over the rest of America in the years ahead. Look for increased efforts on the part of the old media elite to control the net. Unfortunately for them, it’s too late. People prefer to make up their own minds instead of being told what to think.

An army of approximately 2 million temp census takers are fanning out across the nation to collect data, including internet access information.  With a growing clueless class that thinks their vote is simply a way to get the rest of us to pay for things, I worry about how that data will be collected and used. The problem with the insisting that someone else will always pay assumes that the rest of the population is even more blissfully empty headed than the clueless.

The current federal administration’s stated goal is to connect 100% of Americans. Considering the fact that around 20% of the population does not want service enough to pay for it, it’s an easy guess where we are going. Is it really such a good idea to task the feds with providing access? We are already lagging behind the rest of the developed world and one more drag on broadband capital will not improve things. Is getting the government to force your neighbor to pay for your access really any different than stealing their Wifi?

While the big carriers continue to scale back fiber deployment,  the smaller independent telcos are pushing speeds higher over new fiber networks. How can this be done without the massive economies of  scale? It’s never been cheaper, and costs continue to decline. Consider the case of a rural telco with 9000 subscribers delivering 60/30 MBPS connections. That’s something we can only dream about here in AT&T’s Dallas-Fort Worth DSL ghetto.

At the end of 2009, Canby had brought Fiber to the Home-based services to about 1,000 homes-a major milestone given the fact that the ILEC has only 11, 000 access lines and 9,000 customers.

Since it pulled out its higher speed fiber products out of National Exchange Carrier Association (NECA) it has been able to offer a number of speed tiers under its Fiber Optic Zone (FOZ) brand, including on the high end a 60/30 Mbps service in addition to a 40/20 Mbps and 20/10 Mbps service tier. Alternatively, other telephone cooperatives are restricted to offering 3-5 Mbps broadband services.  Keith Galitz, Canby Telcom’s President, said that as it rolls out its GPON-based fiber network, its biggest challenge is keeping apace of bandwidth demand. “It was only a year and a half ago that we introduced 10 Mbps on our fiber network,” Galitz explained. “That’s how fast this thing is moving where the demand is there.” (Fierce Telecom)

I believe the small telco is the model for a better broadband future. With large protected territories, and laws written to squash competition, the large telcos and cable operators have no incentive to offer more bandwidth at a fair price. It’s not from lack of capital. It’s how the capital is used. The smaller independents tend to stay focused on their home markets instead of investing in acquisitions, wireless and pay TV.  They also tend to employ locals and are more responsive to local market needs. I’m not suggesting that we divide cities into a patchwork of small monopolies, but rather open the infrastructure to allow for small providers to enter urban markets as competitors.

Right now, finding open access Wifi may be easier in the UK than it is here on  the other side of the pond.  From businesses like the famous Wimpy to educational institutions public places often offer a public connection.

Unfortunately, it appears that American politicians aren’t the only ones who have been bought by the telecom and entertainment industries. A new law proposed for the UK would end public Wifi to “protect copyrighted material”.

The U.K. government will not exempt universities, libraries, and small businesses providing open Wi-Fi services from its Digital Economy Bill copyright crackdown, according to official advice released earlier this week.

This would leave many organizations open to the same penalties for copyright infringement as individual subscribers, potentially including disconnection from the Internet, leading legal experts to say it will become impossible for small businesses and the like to offer Wi-Fi access. (Cnet)

Anyone who has actually used a shared public Wifi connection knows that the idea of downloading a movie from it is laughable, and and uploading one impossible. I think that this is more about forcing people to pay for access away from home than protecting copyright.