Geek News and Musings

Remains of the Day: Fixing Facebook Edition [For What It's Worth]

Fix Facebook’s new, much-maligned interface, wave goodbye to Encarta, and enjoy Android tethering while you can in our daily leftovers.

• Three ways to hide the Facebook sidebar with userscripts
  Download Squad rounds up three Greasemonkey scripts that correct the wrongs Facebook users feel the new interface has inflicted. [Download Squad]
• Microsoft to kill Encarta later this year
  Remember the last time you reached for a CD-ROM to look something up? Raise your glass to Microsoft Encarta, which will be officially discontinued later this year. [Ars Technica]
• American to add Wi-Fi service to domestic flights
  American Airlines follows suit with other hip airlines, offering $10-$13 Wi-Fi access on domestic flights. [USA Today]
• Android tethering apps pulled from Market
  Looks like we may have to adjust our iPhone 3.0 vs. Android feature table. [Android Community]
• My painfully poky week with IE 8
  A week with IE8, surprisingly, is not a good time for this tech writer. [CNET]
• Pirate Bay Torrents Spread Via Facebook
  The Pirate Bay integrates with Facebook for some serious torrent sharing. [TorrentFreak]

Book Publishers Misguided Complaints About Scribd
If you’re a bored journalist, it’s easy to create a sensationalistic story about “piracy.” Just find some pre-internet industry that’s dealing with the shift to online content, get a few quotes about how awful “pirates” are, and then find a company to blame for all of it. That seems to be what the Times of London did with its story about publishers freaking out over people uploading books to Scribd. Scribd responded by pointing out numerous factual errors in the original article (specifically the parts that seem to try to place the blame on Scribd, despite it being a third party platform that actually has a pretty advanced anti-infringement system in place). However, this is the quote that struck me:

Peter Cox, a literary agent and editor of the Litopia blog, said: “These people are pirates. We don’t have to give in to this. We can’t afford to make the same mistakes the music industry did.”

Apparently Mr. Cox hasn’t been paying attention. The “music industry” (he means the recording industry) didn’t give in on this. It fought it consistently. And lost pretty much every battle — often making things worse for itself by simply never adjusting to the changing marketplace. So, Cox’s response is to follow their exact mistakes by “fighting” this? That’s exactly the mistake that the music industry made.

Instead, he might want to take a look at what folks like Paulo Coehlo discovered when he “pirated” his own books and saw sales jump. Or what Baen books has done. Or what tons of authors have found after they put their books online for free and combined it with a smart business model. Otherwise, Mr. Cox is making the exact mistake the recording industry made while thinking (incorrectly) that trying to “stop piracy” is somehow a workable solution.

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Confirmed: Facebook Loses CFO Gideon Yu

Facebook is losing its CFO Gideon Yu. The Wall Street Journal broke the news earlier today, and speculated that the reason could be that Facebook might want to make an early bid for an IPO and wants a CFO with public company experience (which is complete nonsense). Yu was previously the CFO of YouTube. At Facebook, he was key to raising money from Microsoft at the famous $15 billion valuation, but as the economy soured he was not able to find as many takers at that same price, despite Facebook’s voracious need for capital to keep up with its growth.

A Facebook spokesperson has confirmed Yu’s departure to us, providing the following statement.

Facebook confirms that CFO Gideon Yu will be leaving the company. Gideon has played an important role in helping us achieve our financial success, building a strong finance team and establishing the core financial operations of our company. We are grateful to Gideon for his contributions to Facebook and what we are trying to accomplish. Despite the poor economic climate, we are pleased that our financial performance is strong and we are well positioned for the next stage of our growth. We have retained Spencer Stuart to lead our search for a new CFO and will be looking for someone with public company experience.

High-level departures are becoming more common at Facebook as it strives to match its managerial talent to its ever-changing needs. Part of Yu’s job was to find capital to keep Facebook’s server farms growing. He was certainly in constant discussions with various investors, even going to Dubai last year looking for deep wallets. But he came home empty-handed.

An early IPO may not necessarily be the best thing for Facebook right now. Its revenues are rumored to be growing faster than many people think, driven by a huge inventory of advertising spots. Even if those ads are sold for pennies apiece, those pennies add up. One insider claims that revenues are on track to exceed $400 million this year. But Facebook would do better to wait until it starts generating substantial profits before testing the IPO waters. Going out too soon may just be a sign that it can’t find funding in the private markets.

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Networks In Motion To Launch First GPS App For BlackBerry App World

In news that seems to indicate that Blackberry’s App World is indeed launching tomorrow, we’ve learned that Networks In Motion (NIM) will be releasing a GPS application for the BlackBerry on Wednesday, which would make it the first (or at least, tied for first) GPS app available on the new storefront.

NIM has built a number of applications and services for its partners, including Verizon Navigator, but this is the first time it has sold an application carrying its label to end-users. The new GPS application takes advantage of technology built by TrafficGuage, which NIM acquired earlier this month. TrafficGuage’s technology will be used to offer users real-time traffic updates on the application. Other features in the app include the ability to locate nearby points of interest (like gas stations) and multiple viewing angles. NIM has not yet released exact pricing, but the application will be available on a subscription basis.

Depending on the application’s pricing and how well it works, NIM’s app could do very well on the BlackBerry application storefront. And while BlackBerry will have GPS for its app store’s launch, it’s worth noting that Apple’s App Store appears to have actually banned turn-by-turn GPS applications (even if developers can get them working) until the iPhone’s 3.0 software is released this summer.

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Google Ventures Opens For Business, Investment Scope Covers Just About Anything.

The long awaited Google venture capital fund, Google Ventures, is now open for business. The Fund is led by managing partners Bill Maris and Rich Miner.

The fund’s FAQ says they’ll invest in just about any type of startup (”consumer Internet, software, hardware, clean-tech, bio-tech, health care and others”) and they’re willing to invest just about any amount you might need (”from seed funding to tens of millions of dollars, depending on the stage of the opportunity and the company’s need for capital”). It’s not exactly what you’d call a tight investment focus, but hey, it’s not like they need to worry about keeping limited partners happy so they can raise the next fund.

They’re also happy to invest along side other venture firms and strategic partners. No other commercial arrangement, such as a partnership, is required (so no, you don’t have to build your service on App Engine).

This is, Google says, their primary engine for venture-style investments going forward.

The FAQs also say the fund will be actively involved with investments (”We believe that our active involvement will help to create value, so we look to work with management teams to maximize the impact of our investment and their technology or innovation”). That may be somewhat over-ambitious, depending on how many investments they actually make. There are only two partners after all.

Is this a good investor for your startup? The cache of having Google behind you is great for marketing. But if you think you have the next new Google-killer search idea, you may want to bake it a while before showing the technology to these guys.

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British Goverment Wants To Know Who Your Facebook Friends Are
Law enforcement and security bodies around the world are on a massive push to expand data-retention laws, trying to force ISPs and lots of other companies to track and store data on their customers’ behavior in the name of public safety, crime prevention and investigation. While in some places, like Germany, there’s been some pushback, other places, like the UK are moving full speed ahead. Earlier this year, rules went into place forcing ISPs to keep records on all their users’ email, and now, the government wants to maintain a database of social networking site users’ contacts. As if that’s not bad enough, the BBC says it’s part of a plan to keep a central database of “of all phone calls, e-mails and websites visited.” As a spokesperson for a privacy group notes, it’s fine for law enforcement to monitor the online activity of criminal suspects, but keeping tabs on an entire country’s communications in a government database would, in effect, consider the entire British population suspects, and undermine some fairly fundamental freedoms of its society — and not to mention it’s probably illegal, like an estimated 25 percent of all British government databases. What’s particularly galling about these sorts of plans isn’t just that they’re anathema to the idea of freedom, but that if they’re put into place, they really won’t do any good. Law-enforcement types act as if having this data will be a magic bullet, but simply increasing the volume of retained data — then having to mine through it — will only make their jobs more difficult.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Why Didn’t The NY Times Properly Forward IHT Links?
At times, the tech geeks at the NY Times show that they understand what it takes to be a modern online newspaper. At other times… it makes you wonder. Valleywag notes that when the New York Times shut down the International Herald Tribune, which reprinted many nytimes.com stories at their IHT.com website, the NYT pointed every IHT link to a single landing page, rather than properly forwarding them to the proper stories at the NY Times — effectively breaking tons of useful links online (including plenty right here on Techdirt). For a company that was just among those complaining that Google didn’t rank its stories high enough, perhaps the powers that be at the NY Times should take a look at its own policies before whining to Google.

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Star Wars considered as an episode of Dallas

Bonnie sez, “After watching this fan-made Dallas-style intro of Star Wars, I’m beginning to wonder if J.R. and Darth Vader were one in the same.”

Star Wars / Dallas opening (Thanks, Bonnie)

Verizon, Too, Turns To Subsidized Netbooks
We’ve wondered before why mobile operators say they hate the subsidies they pay to discount handset prices, but then expand their use of them to include laptops and netbooks. The trend looks like it’s here to stay, as Verizon Wireless has now confirmed it will start selling 3G-equipped netbooks by the end of June, so now, in addition to tying yourself into a 2-year contract where you’re paying back the cost of your cell phone, you’ll soon be able to tie yourself into a long-term data-service contract to pay back the price of a laptop, too. Of course, once that contract’s up, the device will still be locked to the operator from which you bought it, making it difficult (or impossible) to take your business elsewhere. Meanwhile, business is flowing the other direction, too: Dell is reportedly looking to set up a virtual operator in Japan, selling its customers network access on another operator’s mobile network to use with their mobile-equipped laptops. It’s an interesting contrast in models, because it’s unlikely Dell will subsidize the hardware like the operators. Part of the issue with handset subsidies is that consumers are used to paying the lower subsidized prices, and so any change that raises prices will be met with disdain. But people aren’t used to the benefit of subsidies for their PCs, so may be more open to paying a higher upfront cost for the hardware if it means they don’t have to sign a long-term contract with a high monthly service charge.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Lala Gets A Fresh Coat Of Paint, Still Rocks

Tonight music-streaming service Lala will be rolling out a number of improvements to its homepage and integrated music player. While the site has had a clean feel since its relaunch last October, it has also been a bit spartan - users had to navigate to various links to find their playlists and songs, and while it looked good it wasn’t as functional as it could have been.

The redesign builds on the site’s persistent music player, which sits at the top of the browser window no matter where on Lala’s site they go. Users can now view a pulldown-menu with a list of songs, and there’s a similar pull down menu for playlists.

Another new addition is the ‘Mix’ button, which allows users to generate a list of similar songs to the one they’re current playing (it is similar to the Genius feature found on iTunes). The feature is great for exploring new songs, allowing users to get exposure to a variety of music they haven’t heard while still retaining control over what they’d like to hear next (radio services like Pandora, while great for discovery, can still be frustrating because they only allow users to skip a limited number of songs).

All in all, it’s a more usable interface, and it also looks much slicker. Other additions to the site include a revamped user profile page and improvements to artist homepages. These are all great, but we’re still itching for the day we’ll get to use Lala’s upcoming iPhone app.

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