links for 2007-08-12

• Debunking 5 Business Myths about Second Life
  James Au at GigaOm decrypts five "probably bogus claims": SL is huge, or small; nobody visits corporate SL sites; most revenue comes from real-world advertisers; sabotage and protests; and SL as a sex haven.
  (tags: secondlife virtualworlds metaverse)
• Building big, starting small
  Ethan Zuckerman develops for the Boston Globe his recent post on "incremental infrastructure", a radical new way for poor countries in Africa and elsewhere to get the phones, power, and roads they need.
  (tags: development infrastructure Africa)
• Gibson's novel first "released" as short summaries and quotes
  William Gibson's "Spook Country" was released last week in the US. The Node blog has published quotes and short chapter summaries for weeks adding (and letting people add) comments pictures videos links. Is this the hypertext fiction format of the future?
  (tags: books storytelling WilliamGibson spookcountry)
• Most (by far) IT projects in Europe aren't delivered on time
  Ignore the article, look at the table: only 44% of IT projects in Sweden are on time, ahead of Switzerland (24%), Czech Rep (20), Germany (19), Denmark (16), UK (11), Finland (8), France (6) etc Causes? Outsourcing, changing priorities, poor coordination.
  (tags: europe software)
• Clichés are always tired, increasingly they are also wrong
  Funny and interesting piece in the Economist about the way linguistic clichés are being untethered from their origins. Cameras never lie? Tell Photoshop. It's not rocket science? Indeed, space tourism is taking off. Etc.
• Zonkeys Are Pretty Much My Favorite Animal
  A zhorse was born recently in Germany, from a horse and a zebra. Hybrid creatures like pizzlies, blynxes, ligers and bonanzees are beautiful and cool, and they're forcing evolutionary scientists to rethink the web of life. (Outside magazine)
  (tags: hybrid)
• Catalyze and Curate Conversations
  Chris Anderson, author of the "Long Tail" book, on how to apply the LT strategy to a magazine (he edits "Wired"). His short answer: "Catalyze and Curate Conversations."
  (tags: journalism magazines)
• Why you should read Bjorn Lomborg's new book (but not follow his advice)
  "Wired" editor Chris Anderson got an advance copy of Bjorn Lomborg's new book "Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming".
  (tags: climatechange environment books)
• Now Google Wants Your Money
  Google announced a plan that will allow users to pay for GB of extra storage for Gmail, Picasa and in the future for GoogleDocs and other applications. Forbes: "the shift is a sign that the trend toward ad-subsidized online services has its limits."
  (tags: google)

Comments

[Rav Gera]

On the Google point - I'm baffled why Forbes are portraying this as such a shift. Picasa already charges for additional storage, Flickr has many paying "pro" users, and even with unlimited storage Yahoo Mail still offers a premium "plus" version. The problem is simply getting people to take the services up - look at the NYTimes' rumoured abandonment of paid content. Free ad-supported services are a sign of the failure of paid services to break through beyond a limited proportion of power-users. Google no doubt realises this.