my web site final project

here it is:
http://kimloop.com/awawa/consumers/index.html

how much my stocks fell

keeping in mind that i can't do math and bought 10x as much stock as i was supposed to...

ATVI

Shares: 1160
Holdings Value: $13,572.00
Price Paid: $15.82
Last Trade: $11.70

Net Loss: $4,779.20 or $26.04%

GOOG

Shares: 145
Holdings Value: $42,479.20
Price Paid: $438.23
Last Trade: $292.96

Net Loss: $21,064.15 or 33.15%

NFLX

Shares: 580
Holdings Value: $13,328.40
Price Paid: $31.18
Last Trade: $22.98

Net Loss: $4,756.00 or 26.30%

Overall

Net Loss: $30,599.35 or 30.61%

I’m really confused how I lost money even on GOOG and other people didn’t…

disabled consumers online

My disclaimer:
This is more or less what the story will contain. However, I don't really decide how to structure things until I finish interviews and sit down to write. Also, my story/paper won't be a story/paper but a small web site because my master's report will be in web site format...

Focus of the story:
How do online businesses (or businesses online) ignore or accommodate disabled consumers?

Structure and/or topics:
Example of specific problem
Define accessibility
Disabled consumers and spending power
Other economic details
Examples of what makes sites accessible
Why people ignore accessibility
Real examples of accessible and inaccessible sites
What inaccessible sites aren't doing and how they could change

Potential sources
Experts
Advocates
Developers
Online business representatives
Economists
Disabled student office

divergent

So I'm a bit off topic mentally because of everything that's going on in my personal life and the world at large this week. But I still wanted to share a couple things:

From Boing Boing, about our former guests: Egyptian bloggers who were harassed and detained in Egypt are harassed and detained in the US

And from the Statesman today: ONLINE INNOVATION: Social media help Austin agents sell homes; Tools like Facebook and Twitter are great fits for real estate industry, some observers say

one customer who buys can be better than 100,000 site visitor who doesn't

I thought this tied interestingly in with a point that I mentioned in my presentation Wednesday. With the advent of the web, people who launch web sites don't need to be seen my millions or billions of people. If their site is visited by just a handful of people (thousands, hundreds or maybe even dozens) who turn around and buy from them (or click the ads, or whatever), they can still be wildly successful.

The Washington Post reposted an article from the technology blog TechCrunch.com entitled "Blogger And Podcaster Media Network Looks To Turn Long Tail Blogging Into A Full-Time Job", which ties into the long tail concept as well as others we've been talking about this semester.

The founder of Blogger and Podcaster Magazine (who and which I personally had never heard of) has started the Blogger and Podcaster Media Network, which will help blogs with smaller audiences become financially lucrative. Enrolled blogs will get packages from communications and public relations service PR NewsWire. There will be an affiliate program and the group will help secure more advanced ads with combined purchasing power.

links from my presentation, as promised

From the Search Engines
Webmaster tips
Google Help › Webmasters/Site owners Help
Yahoo! Search Content Quality Guidelines
Live Search Webmaster Help Center
Ask Web Search
AOL Webmaster.Info

Site submission
Paid Inclusion from Yahoo! Search Marketing
Add your URL to Google

Other tools
Google AdWords > Keyword Tool

What are the hottest keywords?
For September, by category

SEO- What not to do
“Invisible” text
Internal search results on search engines

Interesting phenomena
Google bombing
“Google Hell”

a couple alternate takes

Apologies for not posting earlier. It was a crazy weekend with that web design competition. (We'll find out just how awesome we did in a couple to a few weeks.)

Anyway...

There was a prediction today that newspapers may become primarily for news junkies who don't mind forking out a little cash. The idea was also that they'd be published less frequently and contain more investigative pieces. This would be interesting because it would be a return to many paper's roots, or those of their predecessors.

However, I don't think this is the only possible scenario. I think the somewhat different business model of newsletters and industry oriented publications might be where many newspapers are headed. As Garlock said when he talked to our class last week, very topically focused magazines that are sent to members of various organizations or industries may be where it's at. For example, AARP Magazine is sent to all of the organization's 40+ million members and calls itself the largest circulation magazine in the world.

Another similar example, but one that is subscription oriented, are the handful of political newsletters here in town. They are pretty small operations but are relatively costly to receive as publications go. But subscribers get dozens of articles and other short news alert blurbs each day on the very targeted topic that they're interested in. Some of these publications let non-subscribers receive headlines for free but all other content is strictly controlled and certainly not easily available on the web.

Houston, being an oil and energy center, hosts many similar publications for those industries.

cobWeb covered crystal ball (or how computer/internet related predictions don't work well) and more!

Somehow I fixated on this part of the article "Online Salvation" article:

Predictions about where the Internet is headed are, of course, hazardous. A dozen or so years after it began to become a fixture in American life, the Internet is still in a formative stage, subject to periodic earthquakes and lightning strikes. Google didn't exist a decade ago. Five years ago, no one had heard of MySpace. Facebook is just four years old, and YouTube is not quite three. Washington Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. compares the current state of the Internet to television in the age of "Howdy Doody."

I don't really get that last line. Maybe it's a generational thing? Too far before my time? Does this mean the internet is still young?

Anyway, I was reminded of the now infamous quote from a tech company worker about how eventually there might be a market for a dozen or so computers in the world. Today, of course, there are billions. (Apologies for not finding the quote and quoting it verbatim.)

I basically live on the web. (I know a web developer whose business cards, rather than having a physical address, say "I come from the internet.") I like keeping up with the latest gadgets, newest sites, etc. It is also interesting to hear what people predict. But somehow I never place too much emphasis on or faith in it. Odds are they won't pan out. It's like Howdy Doody trying to envision MTV.

In a December 2006 blog entry, for example, an expert on ZDNet predicted:

Vista is going to raise the bar for experiences across the board. When Vista goes out to regular consumers in January it's going to set a new level for what they expect their applications to be. The subtleties of the UI and overall focus on a better experience is going to affect how those consumers see the web. When you think about the kind of applications that will be built for Vista using Windows Presentation Foundation, an even higher level if rich interactivity and media integration is going to be expected by Joe user.

In retrospect, this prediction was very off target. It's almost funny. Vista is hated by many, even techies. I've heard many a story about people forcibly jury rigging new laptops to work with older operating systems.

Need more of a fix? Check out Imagining the Internet Prediction Database for ideas that will make us giggle in a few years.

--

From later on in the same AJR piece:

These dynamics could change, perhaps as stronger news sources emerge on the Web and weaker ones disappear. But even if the newspaper industry continued to lose about 8 percent of its print ad revenue a year and online revenue continued to grow at 20 percent a year – the pace of the first half of 2007 – it would take more than a decade for online revenue to catch up to print.

Journalists, or indeed anyone with an interest in journalism, had better pray that doesn't happen. Because online revenue is still relatively small and will remain so even at its current pace, this scenario implies years of financial decline for the newspaper industry. Even a 5 percent decline in print revenue year after year might look something like Armageddon. Newspapers were already cutting their staffs before this year's advertising downturns. A sustained frost of similar intensity would likely lead to even more devastating slashing. The cuts could take on their own vicious momentum, with each one prompting a few more readers to drop their subscriptions, which would prompt still more cuts. Some daily papers would undoubtedly fold.

I had issues with this assertion. The implication seems to me that the only real form of journalism is the newspaper industry. This seems like a very closed minded worldview. Yes, industries change. Newspapers in the States have undoubtedly changed significantly during their tenure.

If the author was concerned about some untouchable form of high journalism, why isn't he concerned about the fact that many newspapers have been getting lazy because they have had a virtual monopoly on their print market?

Competition with other forms of media is a good thing. It helps keep newspapers on target and give readers/buyers/etc what they want. In a one newspaper per town era, the internet has also helped locals have multiple news sources.

auto-confirm@amazon.com Your Order with Amazon.com 8:58 pm... aka OMG this post is long. apologies.

Okay, yes. I went and bought the book from Amazon before I came here to post this. I bought it with my Amazon Prime account, so it'll get here in two days. Delivered to my front door.

I am Rob Lippincott. Well, at least as much like Rob Lippincott as a graduate student who has never had a real full time job, barring internships and summer jobs, can be. I'm an editor of two graduate publications. I have two side companies with a single partner. I intern for a group downtown. (I'll go into a little more detail about that later.) My only sister is getting married in a month and two days. My grandmother's health is in such a state that I have lots of family emergencies. Oh yeah, and I take more than the full load of graduate classes every semester. I'm a busy lady. And that's why I use Amazon Prime.

Who has the time to drive to a bookstore and purchase a book? I'd rather pay more to get it delivered to me. (In this case, you get free 2 day shipping on any purchase for $80/year.) I usually don't have time to look at anything more quickly than 2 business days later anyway. I've also tried an organic grocery delivery service here in town. They were pricey and I don't really care if food is organic or not. But I needed one less thing on my to do list. Ultimately, I stopped using them because their UI was too high maintenance after they went through a redesign. I started getting deliveries that I hadn't thought I'd ordered and I canceled the service. The reps when I sent them frantic emails were not very understanding or accommodating. I guess they had too many people competing for their attention too.

--

I recently had a conversation with the big boss at my internship. My internship, I should mention, without using actual names that will pop up in searches, is for the state office of a national organization for older people.

Anyway, the state boss, while not the most technologically inclined person, also likes to play devil's advocate. I had long conversation, in which he lamented having to deal with 100+ emails a day that actually required some type of action or response. He also often had to respond to staff members' queries after hours. How, he asked, is this manageable? How is this reasonable?

Ever the technological optimist, I argued that an equilibrium point would be reached in the next 10 or 20 years. Otherwise, execs and managers would have to begin to be compensated accordingly; if they're spending more hours working, they should be paid for it.

My direct boss, I think, sees some generational differences. He recognizes that I don't feel obligated to respond to every single email if it doesn't warrant it or to people who I'm not responsible or beholden to.

In this way, I think many people in my generation-- or perhaps just uber geeky/dorky (I know there's a difference to some people, but I can't keep them straight) techie people like me-- are a little more savvy in managing info flow in this way. While many people at the organization that I'm interning for have hundreds or even thousands of emails (unread or not) in their inboxes, I use mine as a to do list. I intentionally keep my work outlook and my student/personal/student organizational/freelance gmail inboxes under 20 emails. I quickly address issues that need to be address and funnel emails into some sort of filing system away from the inbox.

Is this the wave of the future? How do y'all operating?

Should managers and execs be given trainings on managing information and incoming calls/emails/etc and work flow?

money and the web

Being on the Internet is not quite like being in love (though some would argue about that) - but it brings with it the same sheen of pricelessness. On the Internet, through much of its past, the bulk of its present and the best of its foreseeable future, prices often don't matter at all. People don't seem to want to pay - or charge - for the most popular goods and services that breed on the Internet. Not only is information usually free on the Net, it even wants to be free, so they say.

I found it really interesting to read this blurb, from 1998, with the ongoing net neutrality debate in mind. Soon, we may pay for internet access like we pay for cable TV, which would be drastically different from the picture of the internet that the author conceived of 10 years ago.

I recently found a couple short videos about the net neutrality issue, which I find entertaining even if they're admittedly perhaps not unbiased. They are entirely put together by Lauren Weinstein, who has been involved with the internet since ARPANET.
Network Neutrality in 30 Seconds - Part 1
Network Neutrality in 30 Seconds - Part 2

economist audience thoughts

Reading the article, I wondered if having Semel lead Yahoo hurt the company in some irreparable way. Yes, Semel learned a lot from his daughters and others who taught him about the internet and new media. But are competing companies doing better because or in part because they're led by techier people?

The talk about the Long Tail reminds me of something I've heard about musicians in the new media economy. I don't recall where I heard it first, apologies. Anyway, the statement was that, to make a living, all a band needs today is 1000 "true fans." These people are die hards and go to any show in their area. They buy the CDs and shirts and really enjoy the music. Today, with the advent of the internet, bands can more easily find these true fans and communicate with them more directly, ensuring that they get more of the proceeds of their own works.

As the article was talking about how companies like Google are very different from traditional media companies, especially in that they don't create content, I was reminded of a few videos on this subject. They're kinda old but I'm not sure if y'all've seen them so I'm including links here:

EPIC 2014
EPIC 2015 (an updated version

There is another that I have in mind too. I'll have to try to find it back. But those two are probably more on target for our purposes.

Update: The second one I couldn't remember is: Prometeus

rss ads

The Business Week article mentioned RSS feeds as a factor which decreases the number of page views on blogs and other sites. This skews visitor stats and thus ad rates and the like.

However, RSS has also had a couple other impacts on the online advertising world.

Many RSS feeds actually include ads at the end of each entry. This seems like an important detail that the Business Week article neglected altogether. Furthermore, experts have also noted some interesting distinctions about RSS users vs normal site visitors.

RSS feeds can either consist of the full content of articles or just teasers for articles. Some groups even just use RSS to list headlines, neglecting any body text at all. (I would argue that these people are using the technology improperly but that's really outside the scope of this discussion.) Anyway, at least one RSS expert declared use of teaser text as a kind of ad. These "ads" serve to drive readers to the site to read the full article.

final stocks

symbol shares price/share total cost
atvi 1160 $15.82 $18,351.20
goog 145 $438.23 $63,543.35
nflx 580 $31.18 $18,084.40

$99,978.95

EDIT: Eeek! I can't do math.
Revised:

symbol shares price/share total cost
atvi 116 $15.82 $1,835.12
goog 14.5 $438.23 $6,354.33 <-- can i have a half share on account of the fact that i can't do math?
nflx 58 $31.18 $1,808.44

$9,997.90

my stocks

I'd like Google (GOOG), Activision Blizzard (ATVI), and Netflix (NFLX).

If any of these aren't appropriate for our purposes, please let me know.

Google, a small web search company that you might've heard of, has recently been pursuing an advertising partnership with Yahoo. They recently bought a Korean blogging company, TNC, and have added "follower" features to their current web-based blogging software. One news columnist says that this kind of community creation put Google "On a Collision Course with MySpace and Facebook." Google is also about to release the much anticipated Android phone.

Activision Blizzard is set to release the second World of Warcraft expansion in November. The company releases Guitar Hero World Tour in late October. Barron's recently predicted that game "Game Sales May Power Up After Slump."

Netflix has recently secured permission to run applications on the Yahoo site. Goldman Sachs Asset Management, an institutional investor, just doubled its stake in the company.

iTunes and iPods

As I was reading HMF this weekend, I kept thinking of iTunes and iPods and the market dominance that they've had. At the start of the year, iTunes sold about 80% of legally downloaded music according to Wired magazine. iPods, meanwhile, accounted for about 70% of mp3 players sold by units and 84% when measured in dollar volume according to Fortune magazine. Clearly they have huge market shares which are relatively close to being monopolistic. They blow the concentration ratio measures out of the water.

In section 7.2.1.1 of the HMF reading, we learn that if the sum of the percent market shares of the 4 largest companies are greater than 50% (CR4 >/= 50%) or the sum of the percent market shares of the 8 largest companies are greater than 50% (CR8 >/= 75%), then the market is considered highly concentrated. According to the Wired and Fortune numbers, then, even if iTunes and iPods were divided up between 8 different companies, they would still compose a highly concentrated market. (This is untrue, of course, for the unit sales of iPods, however, the fact that even this number is close to making this statement true in part proves my point.) the Hirschman-Herfindhal Index can't be applied to this case because I don't have the market shares for all competing companies readily available.

There have been some questions, as mentioned in the Wired article, of whether iTunes will lose market share as other services are able to offer more Digital Rights Management free files, songs, music and albums. So far, Apple says that iTunes market share has only gone up since the release of more DRM free songs by other services, but I find it interesting that the New York Times article doesn't include any specifics; Perhaps Apple didn't go into substantive details?

Also, I wonder exactly how these markets would be characterized? Are mp3 players and digital music monopolies or oligarchies? (Or maybe neither?) There is really only one firm to speak much of in each market but in reality there are a relatively large number of not so well known firms as well. Also, there are barriers to entry in that it's hard to break into Apple's market share and well known state. Which is it? (Apologies if the text addressed this question at some point, my eyes started glazing over at the game theory section. I haven't had good experiences with game theory.)

riaa

Section 5.4.4 Returns to Scale in Media Goods talks about the increase in sharing and downloading files.

"With digital downloading from the Internet available, or becoming available, for all these goods, the marginal cost of additional copies is fast approaching zero. This has resulted in a huge piracy problem for recorded music and is becoming an issue with movies. To counter this, the RIAA has instituted legal action targeting the makers, and very recently users, of share-swapping software."

First, I had some issues with the way the text approached this. When talking about the advent of VCRs, there was little discussion of the legal implications of how people were using them. People were recording TV shows and sharing them with others. Did not this threaten the entertainment industry at the time? Did the industry not try to put a stop to it? Please tell me if I'm inaccurate in this, it was a little bit before my real cultural awareness set it.

Anyway, those issues not withstanding, I did think this was an interesting view of the phenomenon of file sharing. I guess it was kinda implicit or understood but I never really thought of file sharing from quite this economic perspective. The reason it's so easy to share files is because of the very very low marginal cost.

HMF Chapter 4

Early in the chapter (section 4.1), the book says: "Just as the scale on the thermometer is arbitrary (there are two common scales, Fahrenheit and Celsius), so is the scale for measuring utility." This gave me pause. I get that with both temperature and utils, you just kinda gotta pick unites and stick with them, but the comparison doesn't extend much beyond there for me. For temperature, the 0 point is more random. Yes, Celsius using the freezing point of water but this isn't practical for all applications of temperature measurement. Whereas, with utils a negative/positive distinction would be more critical. You can't really set that randomly. Though, I wonder, can you even have negative utils?

Later in the same section, the authors talk about how diminishing marginal utilities have less of an effect on children watching children's movies. while this makes sense when you spend any time thinking about it, I was left wondering what other examples of this there were. What other groups/activities are less quickly impacted by diminishing marginal utility? Any thoughts?

Section 4.6 talks about demand when there is a access fee but no charge for usage. I am the worst about this. I'm subscribed to Netflix but when I get swept up in grad school work I often go months at a time before cycling fully through my 3 DVD at a time plan. I'll be very interested when we talk about flat-fee pricing further.

Section 3.8 discusses how media and arts are unlike other goods because they can be addicting or habit forming. For example, if you really get into the plot and characters of a show, you're more likely to keep watching and find out what happens. I wonder what effect Tivo, streaming video from network web sites and illegal downloading of programs has had on this. It seems likely that the increased supply (discussed earlier) has led to more people consuming these goods. But it would be interesting to find detailed studies one way or the other.

misc thoughts from week 1 readings

Overdue, but here are some thoughts.

Section 3.3.1 of the HMF reading discusses substitute goods. For example, it mentions different brands of televisions. While not the same product exactly, they perform essentially the same function, almost identically in fact. However, I was wondering in our current world of synchronicity if the ability to distinguish between substitute good was declining. Many cell phones today come with cameras, mp3 players, and advanced web browsing built in. So they are in some ways substitute products for digital cameras, portable mp3 players, and perhaps even computers or laptops on some level. However, cell phones might not take as high quality pictures, play music as well, or display web pages quite properly. So can they be considered substitutes after all? Do people buy cell phones for these features or are they just added bonuses on a product they'd already have bought? I'm not sure about the answers to these questions but I think they're probably worth considering.

Section 3.6.2 touches upon how "the internet is a new information technology that offers many opportunities to increase the supply of information based entertainment or cultural products." It mentions how Amazon has brought "consumers more books at lower prices" and how iTunes is having a similar effect on music distribution. Another site that could be listed in this section in an updated version of the book is Hulu.com. It was founded about a year and a half ago by NBC Universal and News Corp but claims to "operate independently." The site is effecting the distribution of TV shows and movies in a way similar to what Amazon did for books and iTunes did for music. With or without creating an account, users can watch pretty good quality streaming video for free with some commercial breaks, which are shorter and sometimes fewer than if you'd watched the show on TV. In this way, the site is on a different model than the pay-for-content sites previously mentioned. However, it is still a good example of existing media adapting new business models and the change in media supply as a result of technology.

Kim's Web Sites

Apologies for not posting on readings by last night. (I hopped on a plane immediately after class on Wednesday and was out of cell and internet range until yesterday when I spent all day traveling again.)

Anyway, here are my web sites:

ZDNet
Gizmodo
Wired
(Though this was already listed by another student so maybe BoingBoing instead.)