The Cloud Has Us All In...

Ever heard of Dropship ? It’s an open-source project that “enables arbitrary, anonymous transfers of files between Dropbox accounts.” Dropbox hopes you haven’t; they tried to squelch it this week, and even accidentally reported that it was subject to a DMCA takedown notice, with predictably futile results. I’m mostly sympathetic: I’m a huge fan of their service, Dropship was a clear violation of their terms, and for obvious reasons they don’t want to turn into an anonymous peer-to-peer file-sharing service. Unfortunately, they accidentally built a system which enabled just that. How about Sony’s PlayStation Network? Of course you have. It was so thoroughly hacked this week that Sony had to shut it down indefinitely . Did you also know that Sony’s PS3 firmware is effectively wide open, because they made a hilariously stupid security mistake ? Did you know that that’s probably how PSN got hacked , and that it raised the spectre of the hacker(s) taking over every connected PlayStation 3 in the world and turning them into by far the biggest botnet in history? That probably wasn’t what Sony had in mind, but they accidentally built a system which enabled just that. How about the new Google Docs Android app? Came out this week, and it’s pretty great. Among its many features is the ability to take a picture of an image with text and have that text automatically OCRed and turned into a document. Can’t wait ’til they integrate Google Translate into that, too, and recapitulate last year’s hot app World Lens . But I bet book publishers are pretty unhappy. Not long ago, if you wanted to scan a book you had to actually build a scanner , or buy a copy and turn every page. Now would-be book pirates can just crowdsource 10 people to go to bookstores and take 20 pictures each, et voila: 400 scanned pages in Google Docs. Easier book piracy probably isn’t what Google had in mind, but they accidentally built a system which enables just that. This was also the week that people who keep remotely controllable Internet-enabled camera/microphone/GPSes on them at all times expressed outraged surprise when they learned their privacy is at risk. The panopticon probably isn’t what the mobile industry had in mind, but they accidentally built a system which enables just that. What do these all have in common? The unexpected results of connecting client devices to the cloud. (Yeah, I don’t really like the term either, but it’s better than the alternatives.) People talk about “moving to the cloud,” as if we haven’t already. The heavy lifting may happen on the server farms ( when they’re up ) but every connected computer, phone, and game console already serves as a computing cloud’s eye, ear, and tentacle. Emergent properties . Unintended consequences. Get used to ‘em. My favourite Douglas Adams books are the Dirk Gently novels, in which the protagonist makes use of “the fundamental interconnectedness of all things” to solve crimes in hilariously unexpected ways. Now we’re literally building that interconnectedness into (nearly) all things . So we shouldn’t be too surprised to find ourselves moving into a Dirk Gently future, in which off-kilter left-field ricochet consequences happen at an ever-increasing rate. You can bet that those cited above are just the beginning — and that there’s a lot of money to be made in seeing them before they happen. Photo credit : Aspex Design, Flickr

Gillmor Gang 4.30.11 (T...

The Gillmor Gang — Kevin Marks, Danny Sullivan, JP Rangaswami, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor — christened the new Gang studio with a surprise welcome to Kevin Marks. It turns out he’s joining salesforce.com on Monday, following JP (six months), JT (7 years), and me, who is celebrating my one year anniversary. Kevin has been a forceful champion of open standards at Apple, Technorati, Google, BT (Ribbit), the Gillmor Gang, and now salesforce.com. Before, and once the festivities were out of the way, we got back to Gang business, namely the continued aftermath of the phone location recording crisis. With free lunch debunked, we tackled the Amazon outage and its impact on the Cloud. You can decide for yourselves, but the consensus is that such challenges will be remembered fondly as a validation of the moment, as with the Gmail outage of several years ago, when the Cloud passed from inflection point to basic services. The velocity of business in the iPad age, where CEOs can see deeply into their companies in realtime, demands a level of interactive services and an iterative feedback loop not possible with the previous generation of software. And that lead to a debate about iPhone video calls and what Danny is looking for in a flying car. CrunchBase Information Steve Gillmor JP Rangaswami John Taschek Danny Sullivan Kevin Marks Information provided by CrunchBase

Hyundai Real Life “Like...

Well it seems that Renault wasn’t the only brand pushing Facebook “Likes” via RFID at the 2011 AutoRAI Motorshow in Amsterdam this year, with Hyundai deploying a very similar social engagement strategy, linking Facebook accounts to RFID “Like” cards for visitors of their stand. I wonder if that was a little embarrassing for both agencies Related Digital Buzz Posts: Renault Pushes Facebook “Likes” via RFID Nokia Push Burton: Real Life Gaming Brand Bowl 2011: Social Rankings in Real Time

Linden Lab Is About To ...

Linden Lab begins beta testing of a new inventory and delivery system for Marketplace. ...

An Update To My Ethics ...

I’ve been in Las Vegas for most of the month and so have been out of the loop on some of the major stories rocking the world of technology and media. Stories like the startling news that, having made a sack-load of money from the sale of TechCrunch to AOL, Mike is going to begin investing in start-ups again . Like most jealous little fucks with a WordPress login uncompromising guardians of media impartiality , I was shocked – shocked – at the news, but unlike most of those guardians, I was reassured by the honesty of his disclosure. I also laughed at HuffPost’s official statement that – well – Mike is special and that everyone should stop whining. “Michael Arrington operates from a unique position. He was an investor in technology companies and start-ups before he started TechCrunch, and his extensive knowledge of, and involvement with Silicon Valley is one of the very things that has made TechCrunch a must-read site. TechCrunch is committed to transparency.” Indeed we are. And so, prompted by Mike’s ethical pivot, I’ve decided it’s time to update my own code of conduct, the previous version of which can be found here . After all, in the two years since I last updated the document, I’ve quit drinking , received another book advance and – yeah – made some cash from my own TechCrunch shares. The drinking thing alone has left me with more spare cash that I know what to do with. Here then, for the record, are the relevant changes to my core ethics now that I am sickeningly rich… “Principle One: I am a whore.” In the previous version of my ethics statement, I explained that the quality of my work is directly related to how much I’m paid…. “Look at the cover of my book . See the word Whore? It’s in red. That’s because I am a whore; a hussy; a slut-for-hire; a man of scarlet letters. I write newspaper columns because people pay me to do so. I write books for the same reason. The more I get paid, the better I write…” …Now that I am dripping with wealth, that is no longer the case. Henceforth, the quality of my work will be related only to whether I can be bothered to get out of bed in the morning. (Today was a sleepy day) “Principle Four: What are friends for?” Previously, I made clear that I would generally write mean things about my enemies and nice things about my friends… “If you’re my friend I will write nice things about you; if you’re not I probably won’t.” …Now that I have more money than I know what to do with, however, I no longer feel any loyalty towards my friends; I can always buy new ones. As for my enemies – I don’t need to write about them to get revenge; I can simply pay to have them killed. In terms of my day-to-day interactions with PR professionals, I previously adopted a non-discrimination policy…. “When trying to hook up with your PR girl at your party, how attractive she is will play almost no part in my decision making. That would smack of discrimination.” …That policy is no longer in operation. “Bribery: If you buy me a Happy Meal as a bribe, I will refuse to accept the free toy. See also, Kinder Surprise eggs.” A couple of simple text changes to the above. For “Kinder Surprise eggs”, now read “Fabergé Eggs”. For “Happy Meal”, read “Happy Ending”. And finally, an all important note on stocks. In the previous iteration of my ethics statement, I made clear that I try to avoid owning stocks as all of my investments very quickly turn to shit. This is still the case, except now I deliberately invest my vast wealth in things specifically in the hope that my involvement will lead to their downfall. Recent investments include $5,000 for 60% of ZDNet’s Tom Foremski’s sense of proportion and a little over $3.50 for a controlling stake in the editorial integrity Forbes.com. Both investments are performing nicely.