Peter Calveley (via Boing Boing) reported last week that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has finally struck down Amazon’s overly broad patent for one-click online shopping.
In an earlier post, Calveley described how Amazon had submitted 32 Wikipedia articles as supporting evidence for its patent claim. The discussion becomes hilarious as Calveley mocks the fungible nature of Wikiality, noting that the USPTO had removed Wikipedia from its list of acceptable references in 2006.
Tags:
Amazon,
e-commerce,
law,
patent,
reliability,
research,
Wikipedia
I wrote 6 peer-reviewed articles for the Encyclopedia of Business Ethics and Society, edited by Robert W. Kolb and published in 2007 by Sage Publications.
- Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
- Communication Decency Act (CDA)
- copyright
- electronic surveillance
- public domain
- USA Patriot Act
Cheryl Van Deusen asked me to write a chapter on management information systems for the 7th edition of
Business Policy and Strategy: The Art of Competition, published by Auerbach in 2007.
CIW: Foundations Study Guide was published in 2002 by Sybex. Patrick Lane received the credit as the lead author, although he didn’t work on the book itself. The Sybex editors and I reorganized Patrick’s old ProsoftTraining.com material into 15 new chapters. I then wrote some new sections, revised the existing material, updated the screen shots and examples, and delivered a new chapter every week for 12 weeks. It was quite an adventure! I also wrote the practice exams in the book. Emmett Dulaney stepped in to rewrite the e-commerce and HTML chapters.
Tags:
Amazon,
book,
writing
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The New York Times ran an interesting story today about ad blocking software for web browsers.
I’ve used variations of ad blocking over the last few years, in an effort to speed up my Internet browsing. After all, every ad on a web page takes time to download. Some ads use Flash or Java to provide animation, and those ads can take additional time for a browser to download, process and present.
AdBlock Plus, which is discussed in the Times, is one of the easier tools to use, but it only works in Firefox, my favorite web browser.
Updated 8 September 2007: AdBlock Plus supports several third-party lists of domain names – see this page for details. Subscribing to a list such as EasyList or EasyElement is a quick way to set up a comprehensive ad blocking system in Firefox.
There are other tools available for Internet Explorer, but I won’t discuss them here.
In the past, I’ve used a more comprehensive approach that blocks ads from appearing on a computer or a network. This method uses a hosts file, as described in this Lifehacker post and in this page, to block well-known ad servers, based on their domain names. This isn’t a good idea unless you own your computer and you understand what you’re doing. I wouldn’t do this on a corporate or public computer.
Updated 8 September 2007: Yoyo.org has a page with detailed information about ad blocking at the router and computer level.
It’s also possible to do this with an OpenDNS account. Just add the domains that the router or your computer should block. I mentioned OpenDNS on July 13.
Ad blocking is easy to do
For both the hosts and DNS methods, the strategy is simple. I’m trying to stop my router or computer from looking up the ad servers, thus blocking the ads themselves. Usually I’ll see a blank space or a 404 (file not found) message in place of the ad. In the example below, OpenDNS has blocked an ad server before my browser could open the ad.
Some of my readers may have noticed that I do include Google Ads on this web site. The Google Ads are located at the bottom of each page, and Google tries to select appropriate ads based on my site’s content.
Last week, I also added some dynamic ads from Amazon.com that show prices for my courses’ textbooks. Here’s an example.
I’m hosting these ads to see how the systems work before I include ads on some of my customers’ web sites. I do receive a small amount of cash if anyone clicks on the ads, somewhere between 5¢ and US$1, so this really isn’t a revenue stream for me.
Updated 8 September 2007: To my chagrin, I noticed that the default settings in AdBlock Plus will block my Amazon ads. It’s easy to fix this by deactivating or removing the entry for rcm.amazon.com.
But ad blocking can affect the revenue streams of some web sites, especially if a significant number of users are blocking ads. A few small web sites are throwing the baby out with the bathwater by blocking Firefox users, usually redirecting them to whyfirefoxisblocked.com, based on the ridiculous assumption that every Firefox user has also installed and is using AdBlock.
This kind of filtering by a web server isn’t an invasion of privacy. It’s trivial work for a web server to determine the kind of browser that a user is running, because the browser itself includes that information whenever it requests a file from a web server.
Blocking Firefox is not an option for larger web sites
While Internet Explorer still holds the most market share, a significant number of users, including myself, usually use Firefox for their web browsing. No sane advertiser wants to block users who are smart enough to install and run an alternative browser, as smart users might have more disposable income or more influence on their company spending.
There are some ways to circumvent ad blocking. Most ads come from third-party web servers. Webmasters can choose to server the ads themselves. Anyone who wants to see the site will have to see the ads, because these users won’t want to block the web site itself.
As the Times mentions, Microsoft itself is caught in the middle of this problem. Microsoft doesn’t include ad blocking software in Internet Explorer, but the company hasn’t prevented users from loading that software, either. But Microsoft also has a significant revenue stream from ads that its MSN sells.
Tags:
advertising,
Amazon,
cloud,
DNS,
Firefox,
Google,
Internet,
Internet-Explorer,
Microsoft,
opendns,
privacy,
revenue,
server,
value-chain
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One of the nice things about this summer is that I’ve had more time to read. Here’s a sample:
When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth by Cory Doctorow. In this short story, a sysad faces the ultimate outage. Available for free as PDF, HTML and a podcast at his web site, or buy the the Locus award winning compilation from Amazon.
Companies should learn how to play “tag”
Everything is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger. A mind-bending book about the modern Web, with serious implications for competitive strategy. This may become an optional reading for IS 7010 in the fall. I was pleased to learn that my tagging strategies can work better than traditional knowledge management techniques! Weinberger’s discussion of Wikipedia is balanced and interesting. Can companies satisfy new key success factors by letting users sort data as they see fit? See these interviews at Boing Boing, read chapter 1 for free at the book’s website, or buy the book at Amazon.
The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. A 1991 steampunk classic by two excellent writers. In 1855 England, a new ruling class has taken power with the help of mechanical computers. But watch out for those pesky Luddites! Buy the book at Amazon.
Tags:
Amazon,
authority,
book,
competitive-advantage,
computer,
hardware,
Internet,
key-success-factors,
ksf,
mashup,
network,
podcast,
social,
steampunk,
strategy,
value-chain,
Wikipedia
According to BusinessWeek, Amazon.com is revisiting an earlier plan to purchase Netflix. Amazon Unbox has failed to attract download customers with its limited library of Windows Media-based videos, so buying an established atom-based service like Netflix makes sense. Amazon’s model is based on selling and shipping physical objects. By link their customer preferences engine to the Netflix customer database, Amazon could move merchandise.
Customers want their rental DVDs ASAP
Blockbuster’s recent Total Access ad campaign points out a growing weakness in the Netflix business model: customers are now accustomed to renting movies in Internet time - even if that means driving to the local Blockbuster to swap a DVD.
It’s a nice twist, as a few years ago Blockbuster was losing market share to Netflix. Given the pathetic DRM that is baked into purchased video downloads, most e-consumers will choose the DVD over a software media player.
Regardless of the outcome, Amazon, Blockbuster and Netflix each need to counter iTunes’ dominant position in the US video download market. iTunes users seem comfortable with that delivery method.
Tags:
Amazon,
Apple,
businessweek,
business_model,
DRM,
e-commerce,
iPod,
iTunes,
market-share,
mobile,
strategy,
USA,
video,
windows_media
