I notice Google Mail is now giving me 50 invites to pass around.
Last week I was down to two.
I’ve got two accounts running, and have been noodling how to open up all 50 of the invites and stitch together 50 free (albeit very disconnected) gigabytes of online storage using a Gmail virtual drive extension.
Having read that a 1 gigabyte drive cost $3,000 ten years ago, what is 50 gigs worth? What does this say about the cost of server space?
Om Malik on Broadband ? Consumer Reluctance on VoIP%u2026 So Far
Om posted about a Forrester report slagging consumer uptake of VoIP and sought some comments on why. So, in the interests of incestuous cross-linking, here’s a link to my comment.
Full disclosure: I signed on for Verizon DSL in December to try to cut my cable modem charges (Comcast, maybe $40+ a month to DSL at $29.95) but the damn setup box is sitting under my desk, nagging at me to rip out the cable modem, replace it with the DSL box, call up Comcast and cancel, etc. etc.
Yet I can’t bring myself to do it. Call it broadband inertia but I just don’t feel like hosing my connection (pessimism springs eternal when you provide tech support for a family of completely disinterested PC users who feel compelled to junk up every computer they touch with spyware, viruses, Weatherbugs, Lycos search dogs, etc. etc.).
COAST – the consortium of anti-spyware developers – has fallen apart according to E-Week. What did COAST in? Some members say it was the proposed granting of membership to some spyware companies, , such as 180Solutions, saying that opening the standards-setting group to include the very targets it was trying to thwart would turn the consortium into a farce, lending a marketing blessing to the enermy.
Others said the revenue motivation of some members had slowed progress.
Standard-setting bodies are a tactical dance between the members — often competitors — who must strike a balance between their economic interests and the greater good of the standard. One McKinsey partner, when advising a client who had several options during the frothy hey-day of B-2-B consortia (join an b-2-b group created by a competitor, create its own or join one created by a startup), told the client to accept membership in all of them for the simple, evil reason that if the client ever wanted to insure the failure of a consortia, the best place to work its will was within the consortia, as a member.
In this case, the unique twist on this failed standard is not a dispute over the technical architecture or other fine point, but on the strange position of debating whether to permit the membership of a company the standard was trying to thwart. Hypothetically like NATO falling apart over the issue of letting the USSR join in 1960. The ulterior motive of a 180solutions — which Spyware guru Ben Edelman has blasted for having one of the most befuckticated installation routines of all — and other spyware/ad technology scum is to cloak themselves in the respectability of a consortium like your local meth lab joining MADD.
