Ramblings from the Marginalized

FOLSOM, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Freepath, Inc. (www.freepath.com), creators of tools and communities to enable the sharing of digital content, today announced the close of $1.5 million in Series A funding. The lead investor is Velocity Venture Capital (www.velocityvc.com) with participation from individual members of Strategis Early Ventures (www.sevfund.com), Sacramento Angels (www.sacangels.com) and the Sierra Angels (www.sierraangels.com).

With $1.5 million in Series A financing, Freepath will introduce its tools and community for sharing digital content, add additional senior management and expand business development efforts.

“Freepath is going to change how people show and share the content they create and the digital assets they collect,” said John Stone, a former Apple vice president who is now Freepath’s CEO. “I originally learned about Freepath as a prospective investor and became so excited about the technology and market opportunity that I joined the team.”

“When investing, we look for innovative products that are attacking large markets and management teams with a deep understanding of industry trends – Freepath has both,” said Jack Crawford Jr., General Partner with Velocity Venture Capital. “Freepath has the potential to transform everyday messaging into rich media communications and collaboration. John Stone is a proven leader and innovator, as he demonstrated in the early stages of PowerSchool and in successfully completing the acquisition of the company by Apple.”

John Stone recently joined co-founders John Schultheiss and Lou Douros who are seasoned entrepreneurs that have demonstrated success with software ventures in the consumer media and house of worship markets.

• Nintendo sales figures are in
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• Looking at Stocks: 12-12-2006

There has been talk recently on the Internet about how some in the music industry are considering ditching the RIAA and lobbying for an ISP level tax to pay for music file sharing. Say what you will about the state of music today and file sharing I can honestly say that I am against this idea. further, I would be willing to wager money that the biggest opponent of this idea will likely be Apple.

The biggest profit center for Apple, right now, is centered on iTunes. iTunes is at the center of all that is profitable at Apple.

• iPhone? It syncs up via iTunes and you can even purchase ring tones for your phone via, you guessed it, iTunes. In fact, attempts to allow iPhone owners to create and upload their own ring tones have been met by Apple "adjusting" it's firmware to stop said practice. After all, no one ever creates ring tones from their own original material, right?
• iPod? Unless you are using Linux you are using iTunes to fill your iPod with music. Even if you rip your own CDs or listen to podcasts you are most likely using iTunes to do it. Buy just one song and you are locked in forever. The only way out is to burn those songs to CD and then rip them back in.
• Mac? Who would have bought a Mac (aside from those masochistic long term Mac users) if not for the iPod and iTunes? Many people were introduced to the Cult of Apple by way of the iPod and its flashy "I'm cool and original, just like all of those other people that look and act just like me" advertising campaign?

It's not just Apple either. Even Microsoft (with the Zune) has been trying to launch a music service. I'm sure they will also be against such a plan by the music industry to make music free via a tax on the Internet.

Why a Tax?

The first battle in this war began many years ago when the music industry lobbied for (and won) a tax on blank audio cassettes because it was obvious to them that the only reason people buy blank audio tapes is to pirate music. The same thing happened with blank CDs in the 90's. Lucky for us some enterprising companies began marketing "tax free" blank CDs that were labeled for data use only. Yes, if you look you will still find higher priced blank CDs for music in some stores!

Thinking that the pipe has already been primed for such a widespread indictment of guilt upon the American public it seems the only logical next step for big corporate music. They can say they tried with the RIAA and suing people but it failed. What's $5 a month added on to every American's Internet bill? Or even $1 a month? Think of it as protection money, you pay them and they agree not to send their lawyers after you.

Why this is Wrong

If every time a business was pushed out of the market or forced to live with lower profits the government was called on to enforce their "right to exist" we would still driving cars with buggy whips attached to them. The model of the music industry, as it stands now, has to change.

In the 90's they reaped great profits by selling CDs that cost a dollar to make for over $20 in stores. I believe in Capitalism and the laws of supply and demand. If the market was willing to pay that price that the recording industry deserved every penny they got. However, times have changed. With digital distribution systems in place there is no longer a need to purchase a physical copy of a song. So, what is the industry charging for?

Need I remind you that terrestrial radio stations in the USA are given free copies of music to play on the air. Why does the recording industry do this? Because they want to advertise their artists in the hopes of selling CDs, and more importantly, tickets to concerts.

In the days of Shakespeare it was common practice for an acting troop to perform and act free to the public in the hopes of getting them to come to the theatre and pay to see the whole performance. Is today's music industry that much different? Do they not want you to hear the music on the radio to entice you to buy the CD or go to the concert?

To be honest, most CDs today are garbage. The one or two good songs get enough airplay to wear them out in a matter of weeks (if not days). That single song I hear on the radio is enough to satisfy my desire to buy the CD. Once a band has been around for a while and amassed a large quantity of songs then, and only then, will I consider coughing up the dough to see them in concert.

What the industry is trying to do here is make everyone pay for the concert ticket whether they want to or not. They want to treat everyone as a criminal even though it is only a small percentage of Internet users who illegally share music online.

Conclusion

I think this whole thing is based on the recording industry realizing that their business model is dead but not being willing to go away quietly or downsize. Musicians (and industry types) look back longingly to the days of Elvis giving away pink Cadillacs and rock stars buying multi-million dollar mansions. Guess what, those days are gone. So what if you only make $250K per year from touring, is that such a low income? Is it about the music or about the money?

I'm not about to start paying a fine tax on my Internet usage just because the recording industry can not adapt and I'm also quite certain that Apple will never stand for this either. If the value of music falls below $0.99 per song what will Apple do? We already know how Apple treats bloggers who try and hype up their own products ahead of Mac World, just how think how they would react to this becoming law!

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CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Appeals Court of Massachusetts has ruled in favor of Basis Technology over online retailer Amazon.com in a complex business lawsuit. In a 24-page decision, a three justice panel sided with Basis Technology on every point of contention. This is now the third time that a Massachusetts court has ruled against Amazon.com in a long-standing dispute pertaining to the establishment of Amazon’s Japan subsidiary and its Japanese e-commerce site, known as Amazon.co.jp.

Basis Technology originally brought suit against Amazon.com seeking compensation for the key management and technology consulting services Basis Technology provided in the development of the on-line retailing giant’s successful Japanese operation. In the midst of trial, the parties reached a settlement agreement. When Amazon later tried to renege on that settlement, the judge upheld the agreement and ruled in favor of Basis Technology. Amazon then appealed.

Amazon.com was an early investor in Basis Technology. As a consequence of the most recent decision, Amazon.com is compelled to relinquish its seat on Basis Technology’s Board of Directors and to relinquish all rights as a preferred shareholder. Basis Technology is also permitted to resume its use of the Amazon.com name and logo in its promotional materials, and will receive additional monetary compensation.

“We’re pleased the court saw things our way,” stated Carl Hoffman, CEO of Basis Technology. “We’re proud of the strategic management and technology consulting services we offer to American firms to drive their businesses in Asia, are happy those services contributed to Amazon.com’s success in Japan, and are now even happier to be compensated properly.”

The wide-ranging services provided by Basis Technology included business plan development, executive recruiting, facilities planning, technology licensing, and software internationalization. Working closely with Amazon.com management in Seattle, the Basis Technology team drove the Japan project to a successful launch on November 1, 2000.

In the words of former Amazon.com CFO Warren Jenson, the business results from Japan were “stunning.” Within one month of launch, Amazon.co.jp had risen to become the #1 online bookseller in Japan, eclipsing established competitors Yahoo!, Bertelsmann, and Kinokuniya. Within one year, Amazon.co.jp had become the #1 online retailer in Japan and Amazon.com’s fastest growing business unit.

Kouichi Matusmoto, a former Amazon employee and author, chronicled the success of Amazon.com’s Japan operation and the leadership role played by Basis Technology in “Amazon’s Secret: How the World’s Largest Internet Retailer Entered Japan”, a book published in January 2005. Amazon Japan recently celebrated its seventh anniversary of operations as Amazon.com’s most successful overseas business operation.

“The ferocity of Amazon’s legal defense in this case highlights the importance of international markets to the world of e-commerce,” continued Hoffman. “Amazon’s strong financial performance in recent years is due in large part to their success in Japan. Rather than continuing to litigate, we hope that in the future Amazon will direct its resources toward replicating this success in the fast-growing markets of China, India, Korea, and Taiwan.”

• Amazon.com Completes Acquisition of Audible
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I am currently working on two web projects. One of them is a website for a co-worker's upcoming high school reunion and the other involves my local Girl Scout troop.

The reunion site will be up in a few days, just in time for their first meeting. I'll be writing articles based on its creation over the next few days.

The Girl Scout site is interesting. Last year I created a site for the Clatter Valley Day Camp and because the initials CVDC were not available with an applicable extension I went long form on the name. I still feel the domain is too long but, what can you do?

Today I got lucky. My town has a two word name and I managed to snag the four letter dot net domain name for my local Girl Scout troop. Yeah, I was pretty happy about that!

I'll be taking our existing site and creating a multi-troop site out of it via subdomains. This way each troop can have their own site off of the main site using their troop number as the subdomain. This also allows me to experiment with the multi-user version of WordPress, among other things.

What, who did I use to register my domain? Why GoDaddy of course!

As for hosting I'll be using my own server for this job until things get finalized, then it will move to the server the Girl Scouts currently use for their existing site.

• Change your domain the right way
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• Are you dedicated?

This article is the third in a series of articles written to help you get online. This article does not require you to read any other article in the series (nor must they be read in order).

Now that you have some web space and some software you want to install how do you get it on the web? Some hosting companies do offer one-button installs for common web applications but even with that you will find yourself wanting to upload other files. for short runs you can use a web-based upload page but when you need to upload more than five files you need a dedicated FTP client.

What is FTP?

FTP or File Transfer Protocol is a very important tool in every webmaster's toolkit. There are many options for FTP clients but the one I use most is Filezilla. Why do I like it so much?

• Easy to use
• Supports FTP, FTP over SSL/TLS (FTPS) and SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP)
• Cross-platform. Runs on Windows, Linux, *BSD, OSX and more
• Available in many languages
• Supports resume and transfer of large files >4GB
• Powerful Site Manager and transfer queue
• Drag & drop support
• Configurable Speed limits
• Filename filters
• Network configuration wizard

Now, you could be a masochist and use a console ftp client but why do that to yourself?

Permissions

Remember when you were a kid and you had to ask your parents for permission to stay out late or eat some junk food? Every file you have on your server has its own set of permissions. These permissions are stored in an octal format consisting of three digits.

As with console based ftp there is also a console based way to change a file's permissions: chmod. Filezilla has this functionality built-in and you need only right click on a file (or a group of files) to change their permissions.

Each of the three octal digits represents one of the following groups: Owner, Group and Public. Because each octal digit contains three bits each bit represents one of the following permissions: Read, Write and Execute.

Example 1: textfile.html -rwxrwxrwx (777) - This file is readable, writable and executable by everyone.
Example 2: otherfile.html -r--r--r-- (444) -- This file is readable by everyone and that is it.
Example 3: configfile.php -rw-r--r-- (644) -- This file is readable by everyone and writable only by the owner.

File permissions are very important and you need to be careful when making changes. Hackers and crackers can make short work of your site if they gain the ability to modify the files on your server due to the permissions set on your file. Usee 644 for most of your files and 777 only when you know the directory is secure or otherwise unable to allow a hacker to take control of your server.

Recommendations

For domain registration I suggest you use GoDaddy. I use them myself and have been very satisfied with them and their support staff. I have called them for account support (not a toll free number) and I talked to someone who spoke perfect English and lives in the USA. Many companies outsource their support call center to areas where English is not the native tongue. Notice I said the number was not toll free? Yeah, you pay for the call but it is worth it.

For hosting you could use GoDaddy but that would break my cardinal rule on keeping the two separate. The other thing is that I have never liked their website control panel. I have administered some sites in the past hosted through GoDaddy and I was never happy doing it. Instead I recommend going with ImHosted.com Web Hosting. They will register the domain for you when you sign up and they have some great plans in place. They also have some 'one-click' install tools in their control panel to get you up and running fast.

• Camp: The Open House
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• If Digg is sold, what happens to Diggnation?

This article is the second in a series of articles written to help you get online. This article does not require you to read any other article in the series (nor must they be read in order).

Now that you have an idea and a place to host your idea the next step in getting yourself some web real estate is deciding what to put there.

You could break out a text editor and start writing some basic HTML pages or even use some sort of WYSIWYG HTML editor but those things require a lot of work and today there are easier ways to do these things.

HTML is for ...

Back in the day everyone built their site using HTML. The only variance was when a site decided to end their file names with .html instead of .htm. In the modern web world no one creates basic HTML pages anymore, most people use PHP or another scripting language to have their server generate the HTML pages sent to the reader's browser. Writing your own web site using PHP can be a very rewarding experience but odds are you can find an Open Source solution that will meet your needs and save you a lot of time coding.

What is Open Source?

Open Source is something new that is also quite old. In the early days of computing people eagerly shared their source code among their peers. Granted most of those peers wore pocket protectors and would laugh at the old "pie are squared" joke but the point is that they would share code because they wanted to show off their coding skills and they hoped that others would improve upon what they wrote. The idea of proprietary code did not come until later when people began to figure out that they could sell software to non-business customers.

Today Open Source is alive and well with the most popular Open Source package Linux. Many web servers run on Linux. I know you don't care much about that at this point so I will instead take this time to point out three Open Source solutions that you can use to help you get your website up and running fast.

Blogging

Blogging is the hottest thing these days. Everyone has a blog. This site is a blog! Now, i could sit down for a few months and write my own blogging software but why would I? it would be a waste of my time when the very useful (and free) WordPress software already exists.

Yes, there are other blogging software platforms but Wordpress is the best. It is also very widely used and has a ton of plugins that are easy to use.

When I first began my blogging career I used something other than WordPress and I paid the price. Every other blogger I knew and spoke with was using WordPress. when I had a problem I had no one to turn to as all they would say is, "I can't help you, I use WordPress."

WordPress is very easy to install (some hosting companies have a script that will install it for you), very customizable and best of all, 100% free. Yes, you need not spend a single red cent to use the software. Getting a custom skin designed and some plugins do cost money but those are optional things you can worry about later.

Once you upload the software to your server it is a simple matter of following the very simple install instructions and you will be blogging in minutes.

Content Management

For those who want to use their web space for something that is more than a blog I recommend looking into the multitude of content management solutions out there, one of the most popular is PHP-Nuke. Like WordPress it is free and customizable.

PHP-Nuke may be a little Web 1999 for some people but I have found it still holds up well over time. For those who want something a little more current you can feel free to look into drupal or mambo. These two software packages are also free but are of a level where you need a dedicated and knowledgeable person on staff to help you out.

Forums

A lot of people also like to run forums for discussion. There are a few free ones out there, the best of which is PHPBB. This Open Source forum software is very easy to setup and easy to skin. I have used it in the past but I have taken the next step and licensed some higher end forum software.

One Size Does Not Fit All

As good as Open Source software is it is not always a solution for everything. Sometimes you have to write the code for your own site because it does something special or unique. Some Open Source software is easy to modify to make it fit while others are written in such a way that only the truly tech savy can manipulate them.

If you would like to try out some pieces of Open Source software to see if something may be a good fit for you I highly suggest you take a look at OpenSourceCMS. They have a ton of software on there and they all have live demos that you can use to see if they are be right for you.

Stay tuned for the next article in the series, Get on the Web Part 3: FTP

• HMTK is up for Ransom!
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SAN MATEO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Wikia, Inc. the leading provider of community resources for building and organizing free information on every topic, today announced that co-founder Jimmy Wales’ project to create a new search platform founded on open-source search protocols and human collaboration is now open to contributions from everyone.

The Wikia Search project officially launched in alpha form earlier today following a brief private testing period. In addition to executing basic search queries, users can also do traditional social networking activities, such as creating a personal profile, adding friends, sharing photos and managing privacy settings. Anyone is able to discuss and rank search results, write and edit Mini Articles and more.

“Today marks a significant, albeit initial step in our project to build a search engine,” said Jimmy Wales, co-founder and chairman, Wikia, Inc. “For the better part of the past year we’ve been working in the background to get to the stage we’re at today — an open-to-everyone alpha. We expect Wikia Search to be like fine wine in that it will get better and better as time goes by and more and more people contribute. I’ve said before that Internet search must be more open and transparent and today marks a major milestone in our mission to make it just that.”

Search Infrastructure Open to All

The infrastructure delivering this alpha is also fully open, meaning that anyone — from home hobbyists, to entrepreneurs, to small startups can leverage the technology to build their own search engine. The open infrastructure includes a community organized compute cluster, open access to indexes, downloads of compressed crawl and index data, all built entirely on open source technologies including Grub, Nutch, Hadoop, hBase, and Foowi.

In November 2007 more than 2,400 CPUs were donated to the Internet Systems Consortium (http://www.isc.org/), a nonprofit 501(c)(3) public benefit corporation dedicated to supporting the infrastructure of the universal connected self-organizing Internet, for use to build a completely open general search index. Wikia has worked closely with the ISC to help organize and deploy the resources using various open source technologies. The cluster will be community organized and provide open access to all resources it produces including the resulting indexes and compressed crawl data.

“We believe that a completely open foundation must drive the future of search, following the same principles as the Internet and Web that it builds upon,” said Jeremie Miller, founder of Jabber and Wikia Search Architect. “Search is becoming one of the most powerful tools humankind has ever created — only transparency and open participation will protect these tools from abuse.”

The tools enable every searcher to share and participate in simple and familiar ways. The Wikia Search community is devoted to both transparency and privacy — meaning every ranking decision is open to the public and absolutely nothing is automatically stored about any user’s executed search queries in order to protect privacy.

Later this morning, Wikia will host a conference call for anyone in interested in learning more about the project. Details are as follows:

• What: Wikia Search Debrief
• When: Monday, January 7, 2008 @ 9:00 am Pacific Time
• Dial-in: 1-866-463-5401
• Participant Code: 919779
• Who: Wikia co-founder Jimmy Wales, CEO Gil Penchina and Wikia Search Architect Jeremie Miller

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After fielding a number of questions on this subject from friends and family I have decided to sit down and write a series of articles on this subject. This is not a series about blogging but blogging will be discussed. I will attempt to answer as many questions as possible in each installment. Sit back and read part 1: Domains and Hosting.

Where To Begin

The very first thing you need to do when looking into getting a website is to ask yourself why. Why do you want a website?

Do you want a little personal space? Perhaps you are running a project for school which will require multiple people to work on. Do you want to add an online store to your home based business? Are you a budding photographer who wants to put their photographs online?

There are many reasons for going online and each one has its own series of answers, not all of which require you to get a website of your own. There are many free sites you can get for sharing photographs (flickr) or blogging (Wordpress) and so on. For purposes of this discussion we are going to assume that you do not want to use a free service but instead want your own space online.

Domain Name

Other than your content the domain name you pick is the single most important thing you need to think about. The domain should be as short as possible while still being descriptive enough for people to associate it with you and your content.

Take HMTK dot com for example. I have had this domain since June of 2002. I picked it out because HMCG dot com was already taken. Why would I do that you wonder? Because HMTK stands for HackMaster Tool Kit, a software package I wrote years ago. It was originally to be titled HackMaster Character Generator but some people wrote the HarnMaster Character Generator before me and took the name. I no longer maintain that software but I still have the domain and four letter domains are quite valuable these days.

Some domains are valuable not because of what they stand for but because of how they are written. The most well known example of this has to be del.icio.us, a very popular bookmarking site. In fact, all of the good three syllable words ending in us have already been registered. Well, the last two syllables have been registered as the first syllable is nothing more than a subdomain of the domain.

Domains and Subdomains

A domain is what you register, a subdomain is something you add to your domain name afterwards. In all domain names the www that comes first is a subdomain. If you leave it off most modern browsers will assume you are looking for the www subdomain and send you there.

There are differing viewpoints on when to use a subdomain and when to use a subdirectory but the one thing you need to keep in mind is that a subdomain does not have to be on the same server as your main (www) domain while a subdirectory does. I use a mixture of the two myself and I will cover this in more detail in the future.

Picking Your Domain Name

With all that out of the way you should be at the point where you are deciding on a domain name to use for your site. I can not stress enough how important it is not to check to see if your domain is already registered or not. There are some nefarious persons out there who setup servers that watch for domain lookups and report back on failed requests. These people then register the domain (they can register it for free for a few days to 'taste' it) in hopes of scoring some easy money. Then, when you go to register it, you find it has already been taken.

What I suggest you do is make a list of five to ten potential domain names and only check them when you are ready to buy. That way if all of them are already taken you can go back and try again. If one of them is not taken you can register it right away with no fear of a domain squatter sniffing it out and grabbing it out from under you.

How To Register

When it comes to registering your domain there are two options.

• Option 1: Register the domain on its own.
• Option 2: Register the domain when you buy your hosting package.

There are good and bad bits about both of those options and personally I choose to register my domains with a different company than the one I get my hosting from. I find that it costs a little more to do it this way but it gives you far more freedom and control.

When you register the domain on its own it is not tied to the company who provides your hosting. The reason this can be a good thing is that if your hosting company drops you for a TOS violation your domain name is not affected and you can quickly bring your site back up via another host. By having your domain in the same hands as your hosting you can easily lose both and clearly the domain is far more valuable than the hosting.

When you register the domain with your hosting provider you often save money as they will waive the domain registration fee. What this means in real terms is that the domain registration fee is built-in to the hosting price. in other words, you are already paying for the registration!

For your first site I recommend having your hosting company register the domain name for you. Yes, I know what I said above but, what I did not point out is that many website burn out within the first six months and stop maintaining their site. After you have been online for a year is the time to move your domain names to a registrar who does not provide hosting services to you.

Hosting

There are a ton of hosting companies out there. There also multiple levels of hosting:

• Shared Hosting - Your site is on a server with a bunch of other sites. Some servers have a small number of sites on them while others may have hundreds. This sort of hosting is cheap but often subject to certain restrictions about bandwidth usage and CPU usage.

  This level of service is good enough for most websites and a great place to start.
  
  

• Dedicated Hosting - You have the entire server all to yourself. Bandwidth restrictions are in place but the server is yours with no one else on it.

  This level of service is the best you can get but you may need to go with a managed dedicated server if you do not know how to maintain a server. Expect to pay a lot for this.

There are some graduations within those above two groups but the important thing to note is that one type of service is all yours while the other is not. For your first site it is best to go with shared hosting. Why spend a couple of thousand dollars for a dedicated server if paying $5 a month will suit you just as well?

Recommendations

For domain registration I suggest you use GoDaddy. I use them myself and have been very satisfied with them and their support staff. I have called them for account support (not a toll free number) and I talked to someone who spoke perfect English and lives in the USA. Many companies outsource their support call center to areas where English is not the native tongue. Notice I said the number was not toll free? Yeah, you pay for the call but it is worth it.

For hosting you could use GoDaddy but that would break my cardinal rule on keeping the two separate. The other thing is that I have never liked their website control panel. I have administered some sites in the past hosted through GoDaddy and I was never happy doing it. Instead I recommend going with ImHosted.com Web Hosting. They will register the domain for you when you sign up and they have some great plans in place. They also have some 'one-click' install tools in their control panel to get you up and running fast.

Stay tuned for the next article in the series, Get on the Web Part 2: Open Source Solutions

• Data problems at Digg?
• Are you dedicated?
• Get on the Web Part 3: FTP
• Just picked up another domain name
• Working on a new website