Whether at the casino or the race track, the house always wins. That’s the way it has always been, too, with Internet advertising. Nearly all Internet ad dollars are spent in two ways: 1) buying ads from advertising networks whether that network is Google or Yahoo or even IDGTechNet, which sells space on this rag, or; 2) buying search terms — the right to have your ad shown every time someone searches on the word hermaphrodite, for example. Network profit in those transactions comes from arbitrage — buying low and selling high. But what if there was a more efficient way to buy and sell Internet ads? As of this morning it looks like there […]
What the heck is a Clickochet?
How urban legends are born
Those who are impatient for more technology coverage and are bothered that I actually have a life can look forward to a big column coming this evening. For the rest of you here’s something wonderful and funny that happened last night.
That’s my wife, the young and lovely Mary Alyce, in one of her less flattering photos. She shot it late last night with the camera in her phone.
Mary Alyce’s parents have been living with us the last three months as her father’s health fails after 20+ years with Parkinson’s Disease. I became America’s highest-paid home health aide. Earlier this week he moved into hospice and almost immediately into a coma from which he is not […]
Til death do us part: Sony and the credit card companies
Remember, after the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan, those stories about wallets filled with money being found and turned-in to the authorities, still stuffed with cash? That’s one positive aspect of Japanese culture, but does it also make them too trusting? Sony’s loss of first 77 million customer records and now another 24.6 million suggests that may be the case. A society with low crime rates and comic book criminals screams of unsophistication, which was confirmed for me this week when I heard from a reader who is a payment system auditor. He looks inside Japanese institutions and often doesn’t like what he sees.
“For whatever reason (low crime […]
Sony may be clueless in PSN hack
Sony’s huge PlayStation Network (PSN) has been down for a week now following the theft of ID and credit card data on some or all of the gaming and video entertainment network’s 77 million customer accounts. Readers have been asking for comment but I stay out of these things unless I have something new to contribute. That something finally comes a week into the crisis as gamers begin to wonder why the network is still not back in operation and speculate on what this all means to Sony? It’s a huge loss of face, if course, but beyond that the damage to Sony is minimal. And the upside for PSN members, […]
Better late than never…
BBC Radio 4 called this weekend hoping I would be willing to be interviewed in the middle of the night for their celebration of what they were calling “the 50th anniversary of the microchip,” which I came to understand meant the planar process that made possible the first integrated circuit.
But this is the 52nd anniversary. The BBC is running two years late.
I broke it to them gently.
If you are interested in those events of 52 years ago, here is a presentation all about it from the Computer History Museum back in 2009. This is a long video at 1:42 but be sure to look for Gordon Moore’s Powerpoint presentation, which runs about 20 […]
