Russel Beattie ranted about the lack of vision in Silicon Valley, re the coming explosion of mobile phones joining the internet. He reckons that there'll be another 1.5 billion or so coming on line soon, and many will be in the 3rd world, where they can afford mobiles but not laptops. Think also of all those teenagers who are glued to their mobiles. And the penetration of mobiles compared to computers.
In the US there is such a disjointed mobile network that they are far behind Europe, which is in turn far behind Japan. This from two years ago: "The first thing that strikes a visitor to Japan now is that the number of people looking at their phones exceeds the number who are talking on them. Phones are to be seen flipped open and in use everywhere- on subways, while walking, in lines, while walking, in bars and restaurants..."

A commenter on Russell's site, who works as a tech in a software company in Helsinki pointed out where the money is and isn't: VAS (Value Added Services) is not selling particularly well in Europe and get this the States are THE growth area for VAS. For the folks at home, VAS is the acronymn the telecom industry uses for non-voice (data) services.You heard me right, the States are where the action is. Europe is quiet as a mouse. Who woulda thunk it?

And..."As a rule of thumb selling content services to mobile operators is an excellent way to go out of business. Death by revenue split. The mobile carriers will hang you out to dry my friend.
So where's the money at? Infrastructure software, baby. As long as you have the resources to weather a 6 month to 1 year sales cycle (!) you just might make it."

1772 Also posted to: Home page . At: 10:49:03 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Mobile tsunami brings opportunities — if you're looking

A developer writes: In Google's latest implementation of Atom, they are creating Atom entry elements w/ no namespace. Any client who is expecting to find the entry w/in the Atom namespace will be surpised to find this obvious problem.

From this post it seems that typePad are also doing what the fuck they like.

Why? I thought they'd play nice together, at least for a while, till Atom had matured, but suspected business reasons to rip them apart, after all they're letting other apps and developers live off their hard work. I suspect that this sloppiness is just that, sloppiness.

I use the metaWeblog API which uses RSS 2.0 as its base. Simple, and been around for over two years. With XML-RPC, I've been whacking folders of images into Manila sites with no bother whatsoever. Why on earth would someone want to re invent the wheel, and create something that isn't compatible with other wagons nor circular. Oh, never mind, I'll let them get on with their complexity, I'm happy in my little world, where I know what's there and how to get it.

I'm also lucky that I can work both sides of the fence, being a Manila hoster, as well as someone wanting to get at the API, so it's easy for me to extend the metaWeblog API.

1771 Also posted to: Home page . At: 8:38:33 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: iBLOGthere4iM: Atom is too Complex

""Web search is a incredible business," he continued. "(But) If you want to find things that are local...it's terrible today. If you want to find things that are of particular interest to you, it is quite terrible today."

Microsoft is going to go after Google, big time.

I wonder if they or Google will crack the local problem? My take would be that there aren't enough 'local' sites here in Shropshire, UK. Those that are, aren't marked, as mine with geoURLs in their meta tags. Personally, I think if there were more, local, blog suppliers, then this problem would go away, more sites, with geo meta tags would make searching much easier, and this would bring advertisers to the big search engines. However, it gives smaller, more tightly focused local search engines space to compete.

It's a big world out there, and sometimes I just want to know what's happening in my street. That type of info can only come from local news producers (bloggers).

1766 Also posted to: Home page . At: 2:12:32 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: John Battelle's Searchblog: Gates at D: MSFT Will Wear White Hat In Search

British Telecom has taken the unprecedented step of blocking all illegal child pornography websites in a crackdown on abuse online. The decision by Britain's largest high-speed internet provider will lead to the first mass censorship of the web attempted in a Western democracy.

Excellent news. I just hope they can keep up with them changing their IPs. For sure, it'll be an arms race. [Update:] The Register has more tech details.

And what about IRC? I understand, from TV shows here in the UK, that's where the next level of paedophiles orperate. This level that BT have blocked, is just for casual browsers, I'd guess, though what they see is abhorrent and may serve to change a casual browser into a collector (from there into a 'rea life' paedo). So, it's a good thing, to make it very difficult to see such stuff.

Recently the police here in the UK brought out satellite tagging and lie detectors for paedos. This is all good to see.

1765 Also posted to: Home page , sexblogs . At: 1:56:07 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: BT puts block on child porn sites