A friend of mine started a company to address this exact problem. For $10 a month his service grabs your data from a lot of the online services (with more being constantly added) and backs up to an Amazon S3 account. Granted it's still all out in the cloud but what are the odds that Amazon, Facebook, and Gmail will all fail at the same time?
Agreed that online education will probably never be able to replicate the social education experience of interacting with classmates and instructors. However, if you take the idea behind coworking and extend it to education you might get something that fills in a lot of the gaps and still allows for major disruption in the higher education market.
LinkedIn is another social networking sort of site that has managed to charge for some services. I would venture to guess that 98% of the users are using the free service, but they have managed to find at least some people that see value in the $50 a month pro version.
Of course, I have no idea if LinkedIn is making money.
//As a Canadian, I will say that it rarely takes more than a few hours to see a doctor, but it might take months to get to a specialist or into surgery for anything that isn't life threatening.//
It's no different in the US. I can get into my primary care doc in 24 hours. It takes 2+ months to get an appointment with a specialist if it's not a life threatening emergency. I've talked to several friends in Canada and the doctor access issue is a wash. It's no different than the current state of affairs in the US. There may be many arguments against a Canadian style health system, but access to medical care is not one of them
I am an Iron Maiden fan, and when you consider that the intersection of metal fans and comic book fans might be significant, I can see how this fails the moron in a hurry test. Given the literary influences in his song writing, it's not at all unreasonable to believe that Bruce Dickinson would write a graphic novel, and the logo on the comic book could definitely be be mistaken as related to the band on first glance.
Folk performers (and bands) having been doing this since back when the Internet was still a government research project. 50 people at $20 a head is $1000. Do that 50 times a year plus add in CD sales, tshirts, etc and you are probably in the top 10% of income earners in the music business.
Great job Mike - I couldn't tell you were jet lagged at all! Have you heard from anybody with NiN about this? That would be some pretty cool feedback to get.
CDbaby.com still sells the plastic discs, and there is a lot of great music there. Aimestreet.com is another place to discover new music, although finding the plastic discs might be more problematic for anything you like there.
Oh, and great article Mike. I hope we see Castle and Carnes in the comments here.
"If one million copies fo Dr.Horrible are sold i'll make a new series of Firefly"
I'd buy 3 or 4 if that were the case :)
Really hoping to find the Dr Horrible DVD in my Christmas stocking...
Well at least Facebook is responsive. I got an email reply just this week (8 weeks after the fact) from Google that said they would review the video from the original story, but can't because I already deleted it.
I forwarded to email to you Mike on Monday or Tuesday.
I probably wasn't an isolated case. How many hundreds or thousands of those emails are they sending out per day? How many of Google's users are clueless enough to panic and immediately delete non-infringing content? There are several other videos in the similar vein, in one case something I did for a non-profit and actually posted to the the orgs web site. None of those were flagged. The duplicate copy of the flagged video was not flagged. I have no idea how their software works, but immediately checking every video in the account that was just flagged seems like one of the very first features that would have been coded.
How many millions of blatantly infringing videos exist on Google and YouTube at this very instant? Something isn't working right with Google's efforts to police the sites. They shouldn't even be bothering with unlisted videos. Moving a video from unlisted to public might be a very good reason to check it out. An unlisted video with excessive traffic might be worth checking out. But an unlisted video with zero views seems sort of pointless.
I just checked my video account at Google and the video is suddenly live again. Fear the power of Techdirt :)
Actually, I have no idea when it happened, it could have been over the weekend. Google didn't notify me when they unblocked the video. Clearly, I should make it public and share it with the world now :)
I'm the Chris O'Donnell in the story. Interesting point on the safe harbor issue. I wonder if the record companies are paying Google to police its own properties? Would that give Google safe harbor cover?
BTW, this is Google Video, not YouTube.
I followed the complaint procedures listed on Google but have heard nothing to date.
My employer gave my office to the new VP Marketing and told me to work from home full time. I was already home 4 days a week anyway, but it was nice to make it official!
On the post: Unemployed? Blogging? Don't Put Ads On Your Site Or You Might Lose Your Unemployment Check
On the post: Creative Web Destruction: Sites Go Away
On the post: Next Up For Disruption? College
Add the coworking model to education
On the post: Have Your Say: Should Mike Speak At SXSW?
On the post: What Would Happen If Social Networking Sites Charged
LinkedIn
Of course, I have no idea if LinkedIn is making money.
On the post: Why The Healthcare Industry Doesn't Want Electronic Medical Records
It's no different in the US. I can get into my primary care doc in 24 hours. It takes 2+ months to get an appointment with a specialist if it's not a life threatening emergency. I've talked to several friends in Canada and the doctor access issue is a wash. It's no different than the current state of affairs in the US. There may be many arguments against a Canadian style health system, but access to medical care is not one of them
On the post: New Service Lets You Use 'The Computer Ate My Homework' As An Excuse
On the post: Iron Maiden Torturing Trademark Law?
On the post: My Keynote At Mesh: Growing Communities And Adding True Scarcities
Works fine on Linux
Nice job Mike!
On the post: A Different Model For Touring: House Concerts
On the post: My MidemNet Presentation: Trent Reznor And The Formula For Future Music Business Models
On the post: Dispensing With Some Myths About The Poor Poor Songwriters Decimated By Piracy
Oh, and great article Mike. I hope we see Castle and Carnes in the comments here.
On the post: Dr. Horrible Gives People A Reason To Buy The DVD
On the post: Band Incorporates As A Company And Raises Money, Rather Than Signing With A Label
On the post: Facebook Using DMCA Notices To Takedown Private Videos?
I forwarded to email to you Mike on Monday or Tuesday.
On the post: Google Taking Down Private Videos For Copyright Infringement?
How many millions of blatantly infringing videos exist on Google and YouTube at this very instant? Something isn't working right with Google's efforts to police the sites. They shouldn't even be bothering with unlisted videos. Moving a video from unlisted to public might be a very good reason to check it out. An unlisted video with excessive traffic might be worth checking out. But an unlisted video with zero views seems sort of pointless.
On the post: Google Taking Down Private Videos For Copyright Infringement?
Actually, I have no idea when it happened, it could have been over the weekend. Google didn't notify me when they unblocked the video. Clearly, I should make it public and share it with the world now :)
On the post: Google Taking Down Private Videos For Copyright Infringement?
BTW, this is Google Video, not YouTube.
I followed the complaint procedures listed on Google but have heard nothing to date.
On the post: FBI Apparently Has Nothing Better To Do Than Arrest GNR Album Leaker
This guy was a little late to the game.
On the post: Patent Office Offers Telecommuters Free Home Broadband, Provided They Itemize Porn Consumption
Next >>