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By now I think that everyone knows that Grand Theft Auto IV is officially the most successful video game (in it's first week) in the history of the universe.  Really.

 

Here are some figures, from a CNN.com article by GameTap

It's official. Grand Theft Auto IV is a video game blockbuster, with gamers around the world buying up more than 6 million copies of the gritty, urban action title in its first week of sales.

...

Sales of the game generated more than half a billion dollars, the publisher, Take-Two Interactive, said.

 

That's 2% of the entire country.  Grand Theft Auto, as a series, has been the focal point of every anti-video game organization and nut-ball who wants to get them banned.  People like the lovely Jack Thompson wanted to take legal action to prevent sales of the game to minors.  It's obvious that Jackie boy has too much time on his hands, because there are two major things that make such a suit unneccessary: the voluntary rating system and parental responsibility.

More after the jump...

 

Thank you, Reuters for the info -

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Sprint Nextel Corp is considering spinning off or selling its Nextel unit, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, quoting people familiar with the situation.

Well, this would certainly be the easiest way for Sprint to abandon its iDEN network.  It makes sense to sell of the Nextel part of Sprint Nextel as a quick(er) and (relatively) easy way to solve the concerns of trying to merge two incompatible networks.  They could potentially give current iDEN users the option of getting into a CDMA device on the cheap or moving over to the new provider.  Of course, that's if the new owner actually maintains the network for consumers.  If one potential buyer gets his way (which is of course if Sprint decides to sell) the network could become a new haven for public safety organizations.

The report said Cyren Call, a company founded by Nextel founder Morgan O'Brien, is trying to assemble a consortium of investors to acquire Nextel.

Cyren's mission is to provide better communication for the nation's First Responders so that they can better react and communicate.

Bottom line?  My lay opinion is that selling off Nextel would give Sprint much-needed cash as well as the ability to focus solely on improving the CDMA network and building out WiMax without the distraction of trying to figure out how to integrate the iDEN users as well.

Strangely absent from any buyout rumors is SouthernLINC.  SouthernLINC Wireless is a regional iDEN carrier.  In fact, their handsets are identical to Nextel's iDEN handsets.  It would make sense for Sprint to offer them a sweetheart deal to take iDEN off their hands.  Selling to SouthernLINC would be great for customers on both sides:  Nextel customers would notice almost zero change except for the name on their bill and SouthernLINC would leap onto the national stage and become, almost overnight, a major player.  If they could extend their reputation for reliability (they were back up and running only 72 hours post-Katrina) onto the national stage...Verizon's claim to fame would be in serious jeopardy.

Here's the headline from the Wall Street Journal

Deutsche Telekom AG is weighing a bid to acquire Sprint Nextel Corp. that could catapult the German telecommunications giant's wireless arm, T-Mobile USA, to the No. 1 position in the U.S., according to people familiar with the matter.

The downside would be the enormous cluster-fudge of networks.  They'd have GSM, iDEN, CDMA and almost Wi-MAX.

We saw what happened when two companies "merged" (they called it a "merger of equals" but it was more of a buyout) that were running different networks.  We're talking Sprint and Nextel, duh.  There was no real plan for consolidation.  Constant changes of direction haven't helped.  Sprint used to be number 2 in what was the Big 5 (the lineup used to be AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, Nextel and T-Mobile) and Sprint's stock was in the low $20 range and generally on the rise.  Since the merger both sides of Sprint/Nextel have seen literally millions of subscribers and billions of dollars evaporate.

What I'm getting at is that DT/T-mobile seems to have its head on straight.  Other than the change from VoiceSteam to T-Mobile (which was done in the relative infancy of their US debut) they've never suffered an identity crisis (Like AT&T Cingular AT&T) and never had to transition from one network to another (like AT&T from TDMA to GSM or Nextel from TDMA to iDEN or Sprint from GSM to CDMA).  Unless they have a very clear roadmap for what they're going to do with their customers in regards to network there are going to be massive problems with a buyout of Sprint.  I would have to imagine that it would be something along the lines of moving their GSM customers to CDMA (most of their GSM handsets have a CDMA almost-twin).  Next would be either rolling out a nationwide Wi-MAX network for Wi-MAX airacrds and CDMA handsets that connect to Wi-MAX for data or potentially work in a dropping of Wi-MAX entirely and rely on EVDO for its data needs.  Because of the incentives usually offered to switch to the "favored" network, it would seem cheaper to abandon GSM.  However, GSM is more globally accepted and is a cheaper overall network.  I hope that if they merge they stick with CDMA because frankly, I've never been impressed with the call quality I've had when talking to someone with T-Mobile and never been anything but impressed with the call quality I've had with Sprint. 
Also, they'd need to work dropping iDEN into that plan too.

Except for the part where Sprint is saying Wi-MAX and VZE is saying LTE for 4th gen data a Verizon buyout of Sprint would make so much more sense, especially because Wi-MAX is still in a test deployment.

I'll admit, as I usually will, that I don't have any kind of degree in anything.  What I do have is experience.  I experienced the Sprint/Nextel merger first-hand and know how poorly it was handled.  It took them 3 years to decide that they should use the near-billion dollar city-sized campus in Kansas as their HQ (which also allows them to pay relocated employees less in accordance with their policy for reducing pay when transferring to an area with a lower cost of living) instead of the campus in Reston, VA (which is still only partially vacated).  They're just now, also three years later, rolling out handsets that will allow iDEN customers to completely move over to CDMA as opposed to the hybrid units that reduce iDEN traffic but don't really address the need to get rid of the entire network.  Any plan that came out didn't seem like it was that well planned and was then changed before it had a chance to take hold.  I have to assume that if I can see the huge potential for ginormous fail that the brains behind Deutsche Telekom must have as well.

If the buy happens (and it's a really, really, really big "if") it needs to be done with more planning, commitment and follow-through than would be needed in the acquisition of a competitor using the same type of network.  With Sprint's stock $30 away from the top 2 (AT&T and VZW) and DT's better, but not amazing in the upper teens, a poorly handled Sprint acquisition could very well put the new company in dire straights very quickly.  Were that to happen we could very easily see the Big 4 very quickly become the Big 2. 

So here's the roundup, Saturday style, once again.
As usual, here are the stock prices of the Big 4 at last trade on Friday, May 2nd.  Change is vs last trade on the previous Friday.

AT&T - $40.13 + $1.55
Verizon - $39.59 + $2.55
Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile) - $18.11 + $0.21
Sprint - $7.89 - $0.02

VZW and AT&T are still in a dead heat for first in terms of stock price.  Sprint actually climbed into the low $8 range but news that it's June 26th deadline to vacate a big chunk of spectrum (details below) may cause it to leave up to 20 million iDEN users high and dry took it back into the 7's.

As usual, quotes thanks to Yahoo! Finance.

• On Friday a Federal Appeals court shot down Sprint.  There is a chunk of bandwidth that Sprint is currently using for its iDEN operations that is supposed to be vacated for use by emergency services.  Sprint is no where near being ready to vacate that spectrum and has no where to move the network traffic that will be left in limbo.  In theory, Sprint was going to take over the spectrum that is currently being used by those emergency services organizations.  The thing is, they aren't ready either.  Sprint is the one with the June 26th deadline and they could be left scratching their heads, wondering what the heck they're going to do when potentially millions of their iDEN subscribers have no network.
  According to a Wireless Week article from last November, around 20 million iDEN subscribers could be out of luck.  iDEN is the network technology used in Nextel phones and for the walkie talkie functionality in Sprint Nextel's hybrid phones.
  

Details at Yahoo!, by the Associated Press.

The rest of the roundup after the jump...

Capitol Valley interactive at kyte.tv/capitolvalleyinteractive
Capitol Valley content from Alex and Andrew at kyte.tv/capitolvalleymedia

Don't forget to check out the rest of the media center, with links to the Kyte.tv channels, our flickr pools, the dop.io drop and any other cool stuff we might add later.

CNN.com had an article today that, while in no way dispensing any new information, is something that could be pretty useful for people who a) are brand new to social networking sites or b) have kids who are on or want to be on one.

"I don't want to have to worry about all the different online scandals and problems," says Brown, an education major at St. Joseph College in Connecticut. She'd like to control her personal information and keep it out of the hands of identity thieves or snooping future employers. "It's just common sense."

It sounds like her info is locked down and airtight. But is it?

Turns out, even the privacy-conscious Sarah Browns of the world freely hand over personal information to perfect strangers. They do so every time they download and install what's known as an "application," one of thousands of mini-programs on a growing number of social networking sites that are designed by third-party developers for anything from games and sports teams to trivia quizzes and virtual gifts.

The rest of the article is here, and if you fall into either of the categories I mentioned, you should totally check it out.

I feel the need, again, to make the point that nothing is free.  Not entirely.  If you want the neat applications and you don't want to pay for them they need to be supported by ads.  The ads are more effective and therefor more profitable if they are targeted based upon assumed interests and patterns of behavior.

So should you be careful?  Sure.  Should you whine and moan because your online activity is being tracked?  No, you should just stay away from sites and applications that do the tracking.

I saw this at mocoNews.net and was blown away.  It's the kind of simple, common sense stuff that gets so easily lost in the bureaucracy and over analyzing of a big corporation.

Guy Talmi is a Senior Marketing Director at Pontis, an Israel-based company that works with wireless and cable operators to help determine the most relevant marketing approaches based on a user's profile, preferences and behavior. Talmi has compiled a list of the top 10 most common marketing mistakes he sees made by the operator.

Here I'll just list the actual top 10, but you can click here to see the explanation of each over at mocoNews.

1.  Operators fail to target the right products to the right customers
2.  Free trial offers fail because of poor follow-up
3.  Introductory offers for new customers alienate existing customers
4.  Non-targeted offers look like spam
5.  Operators address churn too late
6.  Marketing campaigns may fail if not tested before launch
7.  Operators use the wrong medium to market to users
8.  Value the customer
9.  Operators miss marketing opportunities
10.  Success breeds success - if you can recognize it

When you get into the explanations it makes even more sense.
What he says in his summary, praising online retailers like Amazon for marketing based on past searches and purchases, is something that has been a little controversial.

There's growing concern among (mostly older) web surfers and purchasers that companies are keeping too much information about them.  I tend to shoot down these concerns, more vocally when referring to sites that are trying to monetize a free service, because there is a reason behind targeted advertising.  I think that Talmi would agree with me that targeted advertising and marketing, regardless of industry, can help companies save money and hopefully pass those savings onto their customers in the form of more competitively priced goods and services.

First, here's a little bit of the story that ran at CNN.com today

James Karl Buck helped free himself from an Egyptian jail with a one-word blog post from his cell phone.

...

Buck, a graduate student from the University of California-Berkeley, was in Mahalla, Egypt, covering an anti-government protest when he and his translator, Mohammed Maree, were arrested April 10.

On his way to the police station, Buck took out his cell phone and sent a message to his friends and contacts using the micro-blogging site Twitter.

The message only had one word. "Arrested."

After that one-word message was sent out James' followers started Tweeting and blogging about their friend's precarious situation.  One friend even got on the ball and hired a lawyer on James' behalf.  James was freed.

Less than 24 hours after he was arrested.

This is exactly the kind of thing that needs to be given the spotlight, and I'm super excited about seeing it on CNN.com.  It's the sort of thing that can further help to spread awareness of how Twitter can function as more than just a fun tool or even a professional one, both of which are hats it wears quite well.

The only failing I see is that it can only benefit Twitter.  If, as we rant about ad nauseum,  this good press could have benefited the entire social networking/blogging community.  We're always saying that Web 2.0 (And I'm caught playing Buzzword Bingo) companies, and those that are involved in social networking especially, should and need to form an industry organization to keep themselves safe from potential regulation hell.

Let's face it - Like it or not, a negative story will wash over an entire medium like wildfire.  Did Janet Jackson's nipple focus the ire of over-reacting, zero-responsibility, whack-job, non-parents on CBS and the NFL?  I think that we all know what the answer is there. As I've said about on-topic examples and as was discussed in our interview with Dr. Patrick Moore, it's true that forming an industry organization means working with your competitors.  But it's working with your competitors so that you can be allowed to compete and to keep your own set of rules.

I won't go into much more detail, because I'd basically be reposting old info (more than I have already).

I'll close by giving big ups to Twitter, of which Andrew and I are big old fanboys.  This kind of story is what can help to elevate a technology from "fun" to "professional" to that next level where it can be used for very serious situations.  The same way that text messages and mobile phones in general have, the latter over the past decade and the former over the past 4-5 years.

Twitter, great job!  Social Networking/Web 2.0 execs - Celebrate the good but team up and protect yourselves from the bad.

So here it is, a day late, but in no way short.  It's the Weekly Mobile News Roundup.  Let's jump right in, starting with the price-per-share (PPS) at last trade on Friday, 4/25 for the Big 4, posted highest-to-lowest with the amount of change over last Friday.

AT&T - $38.58 + $1.07
Verizon - $37.04 + $1.01
Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile) - $17.90  -$0.05
Sprint - $7.91 + $1.24

As usual, AT&T and Verizon are pretty much tied for first place, with only $1.54 separating their PPS.  What's interesting is that Sprint gets the fancy highlight action with their leading $1.24/share gain over Friday 4/18.

Quotes from Yahoo! Finance.


More after the jump...

I'll admit that I'm probably the last guy who you'd expect to come out in favor of limiting a consumer's use of their own technology.  Well, I don't know that I am in favor of Skype not getting "Carterfoned" for use on U.S. mobile devices, but I certainly understand it.

Being able to have free, unlimited calling to other Skype-ers and dirt-cheap rates to other phones would rip the bottom out of the mobile phone industry.  Think about how many people would activate data-only plans or just get the cheapest rate plan to maintain an account with their carrier.  Either carriers would lose a ton of money or, more likely, we'd see the price of data-only plans soar to compensate for the loss in calling plan revenue. 

Also, keep in mind that one of the Big 4 is in pretty serious trouble.  I won't name names, but they've seen millions of customers and billions of dollars evaporate in the last 3 years, seen their stock plummet from a respectable low-$20's to about $6.50 and have been entirely unable to find their direction.  If Skype came in on mobiles we could see our Mystery Carrier shut down or get bought out.  We would lose 25% of the Big 4 national carriers and there would be an enormous number of jobs lost.

So if you're gearing up to scream about how stupid I am, I'm way ahead of you.  I get why people want Skype on their mobile and why they think they should be allowed to.  I understand it, I promise.  But at the same time, it's a really tricky situation that K-Mart (the FCC Chairman, not the retailer) is in the middle of.   Sometimes it's easy to say that  the Government  just likes to meddle or that they can't get their heads out of their asses, but this isn't one of those times.

Trying to find a balance between being pro-competition and (no exaggeration) protecting the future of an entire industry in this country - I'm not jealous.

I think that now, the morning after, just about everyone knows that Microsoft debuted Live Mesh last night.  To very briefly sum it up, Mesh let's you sync information and files to multiple devices (Windows-only for now) via the web so that you can have access to your information from any device.

 

Rather than try and break it down myself, here is a link to Robert Scoble's rundown.

Also included are the links that he mentions in his post to even more Live Mesh-y goodness.

 

Here is Robert's write-up on Live Mesh.

Here is the link to Mary Jo Foley's "10 Things You Need to Know About Mesh."

Here is the link to Mesh on TechMeme.

Here is the link to the Mesh Team blog.

A few months ago at Politics Online, I had the opportunity to demo a service called TVEyes. TVEyes is a monitoring architecture for television content. I give them keywords, and they listen and watch for them. If they pop up, I get an alert and a clip, and a transcript.

Why is this cool?

Local News. CNN. Cable news. International news. C-SPAN. I don't have time for them all. But, I can have time with TVEyes.I can scan the news and see what's going on. Sadly, I haven't had time to check my account as often as I'd like due to certain changes in my routine, but whenever I do, I can get an up-to-date pulse on broadcast media that is better than any blog search.

TVEyes has been gracious to act as a "Facilitator-Sponsor" for Capitol Valley and provide us with access to their service. Within the next few days, you'll see a badge appear on the site. I don't accept advertising, but I am proud to display their logo as a company that allows me to provide better service to you, my reader.

Thanks, guys.

First - the straight facts from Reuters

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Online auctioneer eBay Inc said on Tuesday it had sued Craigslist, alleging the Craigslist board of directors had diluted eBay's 28.4 percent stake in the online classifieds site.

Sadly, for the observers, the suit was filed under seal.  eBay says that it's to protect certain Craigslist confidentiality requirements. 

Now I'm even more curious to find out what exactly it is that Craigslist did to dilute eBay's minority stake in the online classifieds giant. 

The last time Craigslist was sued, they were found not guilty.  However, that lawsuit was filed on the basis of user-generated content that was simply posted on Craigs.  This suit brought on by eBay is attacking Craigslist (and Founder Craig Newmark and Chief Exec Jim Buckmaster) directly for their actions.

As much as I want to jump right up and defend Craigslist (the site is responsible for me finding my TV, my computer, my car and my current day job) it wouldn't seem prudent without any details on the table.

We'll let you know as soon as details become available.

George Takei turned 71 yesterday, April 20th. Happy birthday, Mr. Sulu!

Right now, across the river from me in Virginia, there is a conference on the future of Internet 2 taking place.

I'm not there. I'm not covering it, and I don't plan to. Why?

It's all academic. Seriously. There is no serious use of Internet2 technology going on that affects the general public, aka those who don't have tenured professorships or use scientific applications, in any meaningful way.

Internet2 has been languishing for years as a backwater of pocket-protector academia with all the problems and strings attached that kept the general Internet out of the public eye until the 1990s, but the difference is the stakeholders seem to like it that way. They enjoy their high-speed videoconferencing and authentication and feeling of superiority that they get from being on the "academic research" Internet2 "next generaiton" network when the real next generation is IPv6, and that the physical reach of Internet2 is only to a few college campuses. I can't get Internet2 to my home, and neither can you.

They're spending 4 days talking about something only they care about, thinking it will benefit the public when in reality it's just a huge financial sinkhole.

Even smart people get obsessed over stupid things that don't matter.

Here's a public policy question: why does DARPA still fund something that hasn't even gotten a single real use for real people or the defense of the nation? Who cares that people can have high-speed videoconferencing because there aren't P2P applications on Internet2?

That's because THERE ARE NO REAL PEOPLE ON IT. ONLY GREYBEARD ACADEMICS DREAMING OF A NEXT GENERATION THAT PASSED THEM BY.

Internet2 is DOA. Instead we've got DOCSIS 3.0, FIOS, 700mHz as a 3rd pipe and 3G, and sooner or later IPv6 will take off.

Give up and put that Internet2 government waste towards rural broadband, where people who need it could use it.

This is exactly the kind of thing that I like to point out any time someone says that Web 2.0 technologies aren't good for anything more than fun.  Tom Hadfield, who at 17 sold soccer.net to ESPN for a cool $40 Million, is designing a site that will do more "...than putting up soccer scores."

 

Tom has been instrumental in founding www.MalariaEngage.org, a site designed to spread awareness of malaria in Africa and raise money to fight and prevent its spread.  I'm not going to get into the details of MalariaEngage.  Reuters, where I found the article, does a way better job than I would anyway.

 

The article reminds me of three major things -

 

• Social Networking Sites are About More Than Just Fun

Facebook and MySpace are primarily, nowadays at least, regarded as "fun."  They're a new way to keep in touch, but not always respected as being as innovative in how we keep in touch as they really are.  There are also sites liked LinkedIn that allow you to form professional bonds.  Hadfield's new project is a very logical step in that progression.  We've seen a similar usage shift in other technologies.  Look at text messaging - In its earliest incarnation it was very much a "fun" feature that was usually used by kids.  Then it expanded to notify people of sports scores and stock quotes.  Now the FCC has announced its plan for a nationwide SMS (text message) alert system to let citizens know about things like terrorist threats.  It's the same evolution - from fun to professional to public service/safety.  Tom Hadfield is helping to do the same for social networking.  Big, big ups to Tom, and I hope that MalariaEngage.org is a huge success.

 

• Stress the Positive

Sometimes, the "positive" may seem to be "business as usual."  Like MySpace helping two people get back in touch after years and years.  To an employee at MySpace it might seem like it's no big deal, but to skeptics...it's something that could turn their head and make them think "Hey, MySpace actually helped these people do more than share photos of a frat party."  So, if social networking sites like MalariaEngage promote their successes and how they're helping it will help remind people that for every Megan Meirs that there are literally millions of people using social networks uneventfully and that there are even social networking sites that help people.  As for the latter, why does MariaEngage care about MySpace?  Well, if they would...

 

• Form an Industry Organization

As was stated by Dr. Patrick Moore in our interview with him last month, members of any industry organization are competitors.  The reason for the formation of the organization is so that these competitors can band together against common foes (like potentially restrictive legislation) so that they can focus on competing with each other to eventually drive down prices and improve the quality of their products. With a Social Networking/Media organization in place a lobbying firm could handle things in Washington ans watch out for the entire organization so that the individual members can focus on business rather than worrying about how to handle a bill that might shut them down.  Heck, I can even take us out of the realm of the serious and into comic book territory.  Sometimes the hero and the villain team up against something that would destroy the entire planet.  That way, thanks to their team-up, they survive so that they can go about competing against each other.

 

I'm sorry to sound like a broken record, especially on the last point, but it's true.  Do you think that the tobacco industry would wield the power that it does if R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris lobbied Congress individually?  I doubt it. 

 

Ranting aside, I'm really excited to see social networking make the leap leap that text messaging has just started to make.  Moving from nice to mainstream to public service is a surefire way to help ensure the longevity of a technology.

 

Here is the full article about MalariaEngage, at the Reuters.

You know now that Capitol Valley has 2 channels over at Kyte.tv.  Kyte.tv is an online Television network where users produce content for their own channel(s).  Because there's so much that you can do, I'm not going to go in to too much detail - if I did this would be the longest post in the history of capitolvalley.net.

The Basics
You start out by creating an account - just the standard stuff like picking out a user name and password, entering an email address, etc.  Once you have your account you're free to roam around and check out everyone else's channels.  If a channel isn't password protected you can produce content for that channel (don't worry, I'll explain that in a bit).  If the channel is protected, well, you'll need the password.

Create a Channel
On your account home screen there's a handy-dandy link labeled "Create a new channel."  Next you need to pick out a name for your channel.  Provided the name you picked is available you'll proceed to the channel display screen.  Here you can tweak how the channel name is displayed and you can upload an image to use as a logo for your channel.  Next screen,  you get a little more nitty-gritty.  This is where you can decide whether or not your channel is password-protected, if submissions will be moderated and if the chat will be open to anyone.  Did I fail to mention chat?  Your channel has a built-in chatroom.  How cool is that?  People can let you know what they think as they see your content and you, or anyone else, can respond to them.  So, incredibly cool.  I can't express how in love I am with the built-in chat feature.

More about Kyte after the jump...

You might have noticed a new badge over on the right.  The Capitol Valley Media Center is officially up!  For now it's a little sparse, but it does contain both of our Kyte.tv channels. 

The first is the official Capitol Valley Channel.  For now it's dominated by Andrew's (fantastic) coverage of the various events he's covered and participated in.


The second, and I think more exiting, is Capitol Valley Interactive (CVi).  This is the channel that anyone can upload content to.  Be it a really cool picture or a video telling us how awesome (or craptacular) we are, that's where you can share it.  Just go to http://www.kyte.tv/capitolvalleyinteractive and click on "produce."  If I could figure it out from there, you will too.  And probably in half the time.

The Media Center has only been live for a couple of hours and we'll be adding new content to it soon (like later on on Monday, maybe? ::hint::).

So take a look and don't be afraid to upload your own Tech/Policy content to CVi.

Here we have, courtesy of the Capitol Valley Kyte.tv channel, Andrew's slides from his presentation at podcamp.  Very well-done and insightful.

First, apologies for the name change.  Last week was the inaugural edition of this feature and, well, there's tweaking to be done.  Sorry.

Big, big things happened in the wireless world this past week.  It seems like every week is bigger than the last lately.  I'm convinced that next week we'll be announcing the invention of a phone that will sing your baby to sleep while pouring you the perfect G&T and lighting your cigar.  Maybe not, but wouldn't that be a kick-ass phone?  Don'tcha think?

Anyway, just like last week, here's the week-ending stock prices of the big 4.  These are the prices of last trade on Friday 4/18, listed highest-to-lowest, with their change from last Friday.

AT&T - $37.51 + $0.21
Verizon - $36.03 + $0.47
Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile) - $17.95 + $0.38
Sprint - $6.67 + $0.20

Stock Quotes from Yahoo! Finance.

Big ups to Verizon for the biggest gain from Friday to Friday.  Also, notice that stock leader (and Big Dog of the Big 4) AT&T and Sprint (Number 3 in the Big 4) had almost identical gains since last Friday.  Too bad that Sprint is still over $30 behind per share.

The rest of the roundup, after the jump...

The Dutch are gearing up to lift their ban on Segway scooters.  I didn't think that a government would need to ban them.  Between their high price and how goofy you look riding one I thought that they pretty much banend themselves.

 

The Dutch will, however, be reequiring that you are over 16 years old and have insurance for your Segway before you can ride.  No word yet on whether or not you'll need license plates.  That last sentence was not a joke.  Seriously.

 

In other Segway news, remember when Bush fell off of one?  As in, he fell off of what was suppsoed to be un-fall-offable?  Good times.

More on the Dutch at Reuters.

Louis Grey has this fantastic piece up on the sad reality, that bloggers shouldn't expect ad revenue to take in the cash.

t's routinely shocking to me that so many bloggers think they should try and make a profit from their Web site.

Urged on by the success of mega blog networks like TechCrunch and spurred forward by stories from ProBlogger, or corner cases likeDooce.com, Daily Kos and others, an inordinate amount of people are hoisting ads on their blogs, from Google AdSense, from AdBrite orFederated Media, in the hope of turning their daily rantings into big dollars that could possibly change their life. It's no surprise that blogging for many has the shiny look of a "get rich quick" scheme, when actuality is far different.

Their hopes are misguided, and for most, a serious reality adjustment is needed.

Anyone notice the lack of ads? I'll probably have one badge replaced with one soon, because someone is doing me a real favour with their service and I want to give them credit. However, I don't expect to make money through this site. At least via ads. If someone thinks my content is good enough that they'll help me keep it running (as a friend has done by providing a service), I will happily accept help. On the other hand, I won't go begging for clicks. And neither should you.

Great story at Reuters, filling us in on the details of a study by The Internet Watch Foundation regarding the pervasiveness of online child abuse, primarily child pornography.

Here are some key excerpts

Its researchers found about 3,000 sites, with more than three-quarters run as commercial operations, typically by criminal gangs trying to make money out of the images.
...
Computer networks in Russia and the United States host the most child abuse images, although many other countries are involved, a watchdog spokeswoman said.
...
Since 2003, less than one percent of child abuse content has been hosted on UK computers, down from 18 percent in 1997, the report says. Sites hosted in Britain are closed within hours.

Additionally, Chief Executive Peter Robbins had this to say

"A coordinated global attack on these Web sites could get these horrific images removed from the Web...."

It's pretty clear, from the numbers, that what The IWF is doing works.  Their innovative partnership with the government (in their home of the UK), police and ISPs has allowed them to nearly eradicate  child abuse content from their neck of the Internet woods.  If other countries adopted similar practices the amount of content could, and probably would, go down significantly.  The problem is that offenders would still have the ability to jump to a hosting company or ISP in a different country, wait to get shut down there, and then move again.  And again.  And again.  See where I'm going?  With international cooperation the number of potential (unintentional) safe harbors for distributors of this content would nearly disappear.  Obviously there are concerns that different countries have different views on what is or isn't obscene, but I think that it's pretty internationally agreed upon that child abuse and pornography are absolutely intolerable.

Last month Andrew covered a talk at Google's DC offices, centered around Jonathan Zittrain's book The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It.

Vint Cerf also spoke, specifically about how to stop and prevent abuse on and of the internet.  He also noted that because of the borderless nature of the internet that local and even national sanctions and laws aren't effective.  He says that international-level agreements and treaties are what it will take to effectively remove abusive content from the internet.

The Internet is wide open, allowing anyone with a connection to produce and distribute content (like what you're reading right now).  That openness brings along with it the potential for abuse.  Unless international standards for what constitutes abusive content or behavior, information sharing and prosecution can be agreed upon it would be very easy to see the Internet become like Television and radio, where a few corporations under strict strict strict FCC guidelines decide what content we get to see.

Vint Cerf and The IWF are on the right track.  Now they just need more people to listen.

It's really hard to follow an audio feed when you don't know who is talking. Tech Policy Central may have someone there.

Reuters has a story about how two major consumer groups want to have a "Do Not Track" list created by the FTC.  The list would let you tell the Web at large not to track your information for advertising purposes.

Two consumer groups asked the Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday to create a "do not track list" that would allow computer users to bar advertisers from collecting information about them.

The Consumer Federation of America and the Consumers Union also urged the FTC to bar collection of health information and other sensitive data by companies that do business on the Internet unless a consumer consents.

The call echoed those of other privacy advocates who filed statements with the FTC on Internet companies' use of "behavioral advertising." That is the practice of tracking a computer user's activities online, including Web searches and sites visited, to target advertisements to the individual consumer.

Time just picked up on the laser graffiti movement.  The guys at Graffiti Research Lab (GRL) have devised a totally awesome system by which they use a laser to tag, well, just about anything they want.  The graffiti is non-permanent and doesn't damage the surface being tagged.

 

Back in early January Bre Pettis (still making Weekend Project videos for Make Magazine at the time) talked to and got a demo from GRL Vienna crew.

Very cool, guys.

 

Link to the article at Time.

Link to Bre Pettis' blog post about GRL Vienna.

Don't own your name? Someone else does? Check out Shashi Bellamkonda from Network Solutions tipped me off to this cool tool that NetSol just introduced:

One of the best ways of keeping track of domain names that are expiring that relate to your name is the Keyword Alerts by Network Solutions. This is a free service and you can sign up by creating an account. You get an email everyday for the domains that are expiring for the keywords you specified.
For people who use RSS feeds and find that very convenient Network Solutions introduced a RSS feed for expired domains. Ades Blog has great review on using this RSS feed for expired domains

Just as its wise to setup a Google alert for your name, I think you should use both these services to keep track of domains that contain your name or your company name that maybe expiring.

Representatives Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Chris Cannon (R-UT) introduced the  "Cell Tax Fairness Act," which is CTIA's latest baby.  Basically, the act calls for a five-year hiatus on raising or introducing new mobile phone taxes.  These taxes are much higher than the average taxes on good and services and have grown at a rate of four times the rates of other sales taxes.  CTIA goes on to contend that having an industry that is growing and changing burdened by excessive taxes will stifle innovation.

But here's the entire CTIA press release, right from CTIA

WASHINGTON, DC - On Tax Day, CTIA-The Wireless Association® and its member companies are urging Congress to pass legislation requiring a five-year hiatus on new di