One of the many astute observations made by the street philosopher and urban griot, Bonty Killa, in his seminal work on the moral decay urban centers, Caan Believe Mi Eye, was his observation that “everybody wan go heaven but no body wan dead.” This is a perfect metaphor for the corporate relationship to innovation. All companies want the heavenly rewards that result from successful innovation but few are willing to allow legacy systems, processes, hierarchies, thinking and models to die so that they can get there.
Corporate Innovation Process Told Through gapingvoid Cartoons
September 29, 2006
2 Comments | 
Broadband, Conjecture, Entertainment, Foolishness, GapingVoid.com, Hugh MacLeod, Humor, Innovation, tech humor | 
Permalink
Posted by changesgood
Microsoft Drops Price of Zune, Will Anyone Care?
September 28, 2006Today Microsoft announced that they will be releasing the Zune Player on Nov. 14th and dropping the price to $249.99. This after Microsoft was thrown into a tizzy when Apple announced that its next generation iPod would retail for $249 and speculation started to swirl about what the final price of the Zune would have to be in order for it move off shelves. The original price of the ZUNE ($284), was leaked by WalMart and many laughed at the viability of the Zune making headway against the iPod at this price point.
Now that Microsoft was put a date and a price on its player all thats left is to cross its fingers and hope someone cares. The official Microsoft press release is here. My unofficial interpretation of a few lines from the press release follows.
4 Comments | Conjecture, Digital Music, Fun with PR, Humor, iPod, Microsoft, Zune | Permalink
Posted by changesgood
Man Bites Dog, Limewire Sues RIAA, Bush Tell Truth
September 26, 2006
Only one of the statements in the headline is true and its not the one with Dogs or pathological liars. The Register and TechDirt are running a stories on the Recording Industry Ass. of America (RIAA) getting sued by the innocent and hardworking software developers at Limewire. Yes thats right, that Limewire. The one with all the great music and software uploaded and distributed by your fellow Americans and yours to plunder without payment to anyone.
Leave a Comment » | Digital Music, Groups Opposing the RIAA, LimeWire, p2p, RIAA, RIAA and Record Labels | Permalink
Posted by changesgood
Myspace is in Vouge, Facebook is in Play but Orkut is the One to Watch
September 23, 2006
Corey Ward, an e-Entrepreneur, was ranting and raving about the possibility of Orkut overtaking Myspace as the reining social network. After reading his post and doing a bit of digging of my own I think he may be onto something, its just not what he thinks. Corey points out that Orkut’s Alexa ranking is looking pretty good relative to flat Myspace ranking. While this is a very interesting observation (good catch Corey) its not the whole story.
20 Comments | Google, orkut, orkut marketing, Research, trend, TrendSpotting, Web Stats | Permalink
Posted by changesgood
Napster:If we cant give away the product, we’ll off-load the whole thing
September 20, 2006On Monday Napster issued a press release, which got great pick-up, stating that it was gonna try to parlay the scant $97 million it has in the bank, the mirage of increasing traffic and a brand which is still incredibly popular with geriatric investment bankers, into a windfall for senoir management and a modest return for investors. In the press release company CEO, Chris Gorong, who owns about 700k shares of the companies stock, which at todays close ($4.01) is worth about $2.8 million, said that his company intends to “thoughtfully examine potential combinations that may further enhance Napster’s unique strategic and brand position in the center of digital media.” In other words, they’re gonna pretend they’re still relevant, collect as many offers as they can and sell while big media companies are in an acquisitive mood. Dump it fella’s, sell for as much as you can.
1 Comment | Digital Music, Fun with PR, Music Musings, Napster, Technology & Entertainment | Permalink
Posted by changesgood
Overstock.com Clearance Dept. Ready for Zune
September 18, 2006I really wanted to title this post “Zune everyone will get the Urge for an iPod”, but thought better of it. What good would it do to make fun of the two companies I’d most like to work for in the future, if for no other reason then to get a bit of what their smoking. The real question though is how to best sum up last weeks buzz about Microsoft’s hurried announcement of the Zune player, in response to Apple’s more interesting iTV/iPod announcements? Dare I joke about the dorky name? Have I the tech chops to suggest that another DRM crippled player isnt what the music industry needs. Should I play it straight, parrot the pundits and shill the Zune’s main selling point, limited Wifi sharing (3 tracks in 3 days and then poof its gone)? In the midst of all this musing it struck me, the real story here isnt that the Zune player is gonna take down Apple’s iTunes/iPod combo. The real story is that the Zune player could be the final nail in the coffin of the MusicGremlin. Never heard of it? Exactly!
4 Comments | Apple, Device, Digital Music, Gadgets, iPod, iPod/iTunes, Microsoft, Zune | Permalink
Posted by changesgood
Want less Rape? Produce more Porn!
September 16, 2006Generally speaking, academics are a not the most exciting bunch of writters known to man. Sure they know a lot more then most people but they are so bad at expressing it that it takes about 20 years for anyone to figure out what they’re saying. So I was both shocked an amazed when, nestled between articles with wordy titles like; Is There a Correlation between Scholarly Productivity, Scholarly Influence and Teaching Effectiveness in American Law Schools? An Empirical Study and The Digital Learning Challenge: Obstacles to Educational Uses of Copyrighted Material in the Digital Age, was a paper simply entitled Porn Up, Rape Down. Not exactly what I envisioned on a scholarly site like SSRN. The paper was written by Anthony D’Amato, a law professor at Northwestern University and consigliere to dons the world over. It basically puts forth the idea that rise in access to porn has actually contributed to a reduction in the incidence of rape. It’s an interesting theory from a guy who was who on the Presidential Commission on Obscenity and Pornography (link is work quesionable) started by LBJ and whose report was presented to and squased by Nixon. He basically highlights stats that suggest that as access to porn grew especially over the net, rape declinced. Its a good read and even better its only 6 pages. Needless to say theres lots of buzz about this article and there is a good rebuttal here.
2 Comments | Anti-social behaviour, Research, Research Summary, social ideas | Permalink
Posted by changesgood
New Technology Beats Airport Security
September 13, 2006 This past weekend I was traveling for a conference and was feeling rather impish. Perhaps inspired by the fear mongering rhetoric of the junior president, I decided to test out some security defeating technology I got a number of years back. I wanted to pit this rather old school technology against the terrorist predicting computers, ultra-sensitive bomb sniffers, and bleeding edge x-ray machines. Could I defeat the heightened security measures of the most powerful nation on the planet using technology that was created at the start of Gen X? Could I outsmart screeners, sniffers, marshals, scanners and fear itself, using little more then my brain, some aluminum foil, duck-tape and a paperclip?
Read the rest of this entry »
2 Comments | Anti-social behaviour, Entertainment, Foolishness, Humor, tech humor | Permalink
Posted by changesgood
The Buzz about Netvibes
September 11, 2006
I was looking through the traffic stats on the site a couple of weeks ago when I noticed something interesting. It seems that more then 2/3 of you, my readers, never actually visit the site. This discovery was a bit of a shock. Who knew that the reason most of you visited this site wasnt for my thoughtful graphic selections (ie random stuff I find with Google images) and arduously designed webpages (default theme #31). The vast majority of you are reading this right now are probably doing it via an RSS reader. Even more surprising is the choice of RSS reader that most to you use to access the witty prose, biting commentary and BGO’s (Blinding Glimpse of the Obvious) that I provide on a fairly random and inconsistent basis. The RSS reader of choice of my amazingly advanced audience is from a little known and recently funded company called Netvibes.
3 Comments | Broadband, Innovation, mp3, MP3tunes, Tech Musings, Web 2.0 | Permalink
Posted by changesgood
Pandora Thinks I’m Gay…
September 1, 2006I’ve got a decent size music collection. According to my MP3tunes stats I could listen to music continuously for 6 weeks straight and not hear the same song twice (dare i say my drives are well endowed). Depending on my mood, the phase of the moon and amount of sugar in my system, I could listen to everything from Alison Krauss to Zero 7. So why does Pandora insist to be calling me gay? Not even a manly gay figure like Rock Hudson or Big Gay Al, but a chanting, new-agey, lesbian.
4 Comments | Foolishness, Humor, Pandora, tech humor, Technology & Entertainment, Web 2.0 | Permalink
Posted by changesgood
Change Is Good 