Well if you use Gmail like maybe half the planet does, then 150k is small potatoes %wise. Of course till you are one of those 150k, right?
This is the soft underbelly of SAAS that nobody likes to talk about. Just throw enough servers and load balancers and call it a day. Well not so quick. Like even the best SAAS providers should be archiving as part of their service suite. Oh you might have to pay an extra fee, but if you don’t. Heh, well don’t cry in your beer. Just write your RIF notice and have it done with.
Anyhow, have not heard the cause from Google as yet. We’ll update when we hear something.
HT: Lifehacker
Home recording has been around since the earliest days of broadcasting. In fact, it is the almost always the home recordist who can be thanked for preserving archives of programming and events for future generations. As technology has continues to simplify the process of recording, both big music and broadcasters have cried foul. The new service DAR.fm is likely to make big media scream louder than ever.
DAR.fm is a personal recorder which records radio stations and shows to be played back at the convenience of the listener. Similar to how a DVR (digital video recorder) works with television DAR is a DVR for your radio. DAR can be scheduled to record radio shows or stations which interest you. Once recorded you may listen to the material from a PC, laptop, smart phone, internet radio or other device. (DAR.fm)
DAR.fm founder, Michael Robertson is intimately familiar with big music’s legal maneuverings. As founder of MP3.com, he deal with constant attacks form the RIAA and big labels. Not only is the service likely to run afoul of big music, it will certainly ruffle the feathers of AM radio talkers. Many talk radio hosts enjoy a lucrative business selling subscriptions to access show archives. (more…)
In recent years, we’ve seen the telcos and cable guys money up so called watchdog lobbying groups and use them as proxies to push the duopoly agenda. With the broadband stimulus fund spent, and very little new rural broadband to show for it, we’re going to be hearing the drum beat to pour more money into the federal abyss. While I can’t verify its origin today, a new tax proposed by Washington DC based lobbying group feels very much like a duopoly supported initiative.
Mark Cooper, director of research for the Consumer Federation of America (CFA), says Netflix should have to pay into the Universal Service Fund.
“The Internet is not an infant industry anymore. It can certainly bear the burden of making sure that wires and the communications mediums are there,” Cooper said. (The Hill)
Let’s see, the government should levy new taxes on consumers to create yet another source of revenue for the USF? We’ve tried enlarging that slush fund more than once and an the results have been dismal. For those who are not familiar with it, the Universal Service Fund is a long standing nightmarish boondoggle that should be put out of its misery altogether.
Subsidized monopolies build slowly at exponentially higher cost thanks to bureaucratic micro management and agenda driven priorities. The bureaucracy consumes much of the funding internally and always funds unrelated and marginally relevant projects. The ongoing costs remain high and require a permanent subsidy because the business was never modeled to make a profit without them. We need a better way.
Entrepreneurs build new networks more quickly. Competition evolves in even the smallest of markets when freed from the heavy hand of regulation and crony capitalism. How about opening the right of ways, wireless frequency licensing and make risk capital more available. Next, remove existing regulations from the incumbent providers and enforce anti trust when they misbehave. Of course, none of these ideas require collecting more money or granting new authority to the feds. Real consumer watchdog orgs should earn an honest living by making sure the feds stay out of our broadband, content and wallets.
Competition is the true innovation engine. We need more of it everywhere.
Credit Netflix with pioneering the premium content streaming business. Being the originator does not grant an exclusive concession in a truly free market – a truth lost on government regulated businesses like broadband, cable TV and telephone service. Unlike businesses that are regulated to “protect” the public, upstarts like Amazon and Redbox have free to invade that Netflix’ turf. We haven’t even heard that Netflix needs protection to “have a return on it’s humongous investment”. Rather than crying foul to would be regulators, it has fought back by acquiring more content from the until now elusive CBS.
So every new content deal is a good thing for any given company on the playing field. That said, here’s a new Netflix
deal that might not do huge numbers, but could be a boon for fans: the company has signed a new two-year non-exclusive deal with CBS to stream the company’s library content, including The Twilight Zone, Twin Peaks and the various incarnations of Star Trek. (Slashfilm)
I think that this is only the beginning of the content acquisition wars to come as long as the market remains open and unregulated. We should be grateful Washington hasn’t gotten its hooks into the streaming delivery business yet. Trust me on this, we need to keep it out. If we can do that, we’ll see many more competitors, more choice, and falling prices. There’s also a lesson here that could be applied in broadband, telecom, and even other places like energy. While regulation always benefits the overseers and their chosen cronies, it rarely benefits the consumer.
Lets keep the feds away from our streams and we may actually getting what we want at a price we’re happy with for a change. That is the kind of change most of us have actually been hoping for.
Best Buy is closing down its mainline China stores. From GizChina –
The U.S electronics giant Best Buy has announced today that they will close all 9 of its stores on the Chinese mainland.
A press release issued by the company stated that all current operations will be merged in to its sister company, Five Star Appliance Company, based in Nanjing.
Must be hard trying to sell name brand stuff when half of the electronic market there is knock offs.
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