Peter’s Blog

Apple sizes up Europe’s movie-rental market - International Herald Tribune:

After introducing a new online film rental service for American consumers last week, Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple, said he was “dying” to expand the program to international markets, adding that this would happen later this year.

Such an extreme sacrifice will probably not be necessary; but in trying to establish European versions of the iTunes movie rental service, which allows users to rent films over the Internet and stream them to their computers or televisions, Jobs at times might feel as though he were banging his head against a brick wall.

Apple will have to confront legal and regulatory hurdles, copyright challenges, scheduling conflicts and technological issues that demonstrate that the European media landscape remains a patchwork of several dozen individual countries - not the single “internal market” that the European Commission envisions.

It might be a funny question to ask, but will Apple (and Commission push-back) be the one responsible for creating a true single market in media in the EU?

With rising concerns about carbon dioxide emissions, the first container ship assisted by a giant kite just set sail. However, the real news is that shipping companies are slowing down their boats:

“We’ve saved so much fuel that we added a ship to the route and still saved costs,” said Klaus Heims, press spokesman [for Hapag-Lloyd]. “Why didn’t we do this before?”

Hapag-Lloyd cut their speeds from 23.5 knots to 20 knots and are planning to go down to 16 knots on the Atlantic soon.

I wonder if this will have a subtle and long terms effect on how the global economy works, since ‘just-in-time’ shipping from overseas is so essential to manufacturing these days.

I’m pleased to announce that Lunch 2.0 is coming to the Netherlands: Lunch 2.0.nl is now online!

Back in high school I had a subscription to the Economist. Using it, I created a subscriber’s login to the Economist.com site and was able to read all articles. Even better, after my subscription ended (around 2003, I think), I’ve still been able to login and read subscriber-only article. Until this week. I guess they went through and updated their online subscriber data. Bummer. =)

The Chron has a good piece on the origins of Silicon Valley, and specifically the role of radio.

Several major British advertisers have pulled their advertising from Facebook after being placed next to a British National Party related page. With all the buzz around Facebook, I am surprised that none of the SIlicon Valley blogs I read have picked up on this yet. Given the openness of most social networking sites, it’s not surprising that far right parties and organizations, such as the BNP, can be found on them (along with just about any other organization you can think of). This diversity naturally raises questions for participants, both users and advertisers, of perceived association. For instance, purely hypothetical, how would you feel if you are listed right next to a neo-Nazi in the in Rammstein’s friends list on MySpace? And of course, should companies like Facebook police their sites for organizations like the BNP, which is legal in the UK yet widely loathed there? The Yahoo France Nazi memoribilia case shows that governemnts will act when illegal activity occurs on websites, so social networking companies can’t let their sites be a big free-for-all.

Facebook’s silence (so far) on the issue suggests that advertisers have relatively control of ad placement on the site. My guess is that Facebook is scrambling to come up with a more advertiser-friendly terms of use policy and with a better ad system. However, in general this problem will remain. My guess is we will see the same thing that exists in other forms of media:mainstream, tame sites that are acceptable to the Average Joe and the blue-chip advertisers that are seeking to reach him, and ‘alternative’ sites that are more permissive (sex-related sites are a natural example). The mainstream sites will be expensive to run, as they will need big teams of people to filter out unacceptable content, just as Google has large teams checking AdSense applications. The companies that can best moditor content will win the blue-chip advertisors, while the expense of this will favor the companies that develop the best and most automated monitoring systems.

Tags: technology, business

I just drove by the Valero gas station that I got gas at last night and noticed that the price had gone down by 1 cent since last night. I thought that, since prices are changing quite frequently, why don’t local stations have digital displays? This led me to think about other ways gas stations could harness technology — if any gas station is going to be wired, it should be a Silicon Valley one. In my thinking I’m inspired by what Hugh MacLeod did with South African winemaker Stormhoek. A Gas Station 2.0 should have its own website, where it prominently displays its latest prices (an RSS feed of the price and email alerts are logical complements). Since it is confident about its prices being reasonable, it should link to gas sites so people can see how it compares. The website should also let users create accounts to view their historical spending and mileage. They should be able to enter the relevant data on the website or at the pump. If they’ve created an account and associated a credit card with it, a customer should be able to just enter a username and password and, if they wish, their current mileage. The customer gets billed and their web account shows their fuel efficiency and other interesting stats. Of course, all this data should be tag-able and shareable. Even more powerful would be all stations of the same brand (or even all stations!) were part of the website. Gas stations in the US are franchises, I believe, so I imagine this would be hard to do, but think of the possibilities!

So why should a gas station should go to all this bother, especially when it seems like it’s going to lower its profits, either by giving competitors proprietary data or by enabling customers to minimize the money they spend? The simple fact is that there is not a lot to distinguish gas stations: the prices tend to be quite similar, at least in an immediate area, and the products are the same (yeah, yeah, Techron is supposed to be the greatest thing since sliced bread if you listen to Chevron but how many customers pay attention to the various brand name fuels?). As is so apparent on the web, when the products are essentially the same it is the communities that distinguish businesses. Gas Station 2.0 will have a vibrant web community of drivers sharing tips about mileage, favorite gas station stories (”So this guy in a gorilla suit gets out of the car…”), and mashed-up data. I’m sure that whatever money is lost due to increased price competition and more savvy consumers will be more than made up for by the passionate and loyal customers who will repeatedly go out of their way to use Gas Station 2.0, many of which will probably be new customers thanks to the positive publication the web site generates.

So, if you manage a gas station and happen to read this, I’d love to make your website and make you the hottest gas station in town. Email me at peter@beachheadonline.com! =)