Rational rants

Microsoft builds $300M cathedral to Bill Gates, hires Jerry Seinfeld as Pope

Mitch Ratcliffe — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 20:47:26 +0000

I’m just having a little fun…. I don’t get the Seinfeld commercial. They are selling Bill, not Windows. What’s with that? Bill retired in July. This just in from Adweek’s commercials critic, Barbara Lippert: The Future. Delicious” is the sign-off, but I am permanently grossed out by the vision of Gates’ ass wink. Also, why would they [...]

Should political postings stay or go? A survey.

Mitch Ratcliffe — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 00:26:57 +0000

I’ve been blogging for ZD Net for several years, writing for ZD publications for almost 20 years. I’ve always found readers to be intelligent and thoughtful, which is why I continue to do this while doing other things as “work.” My posting, A virus in your genes, think about that, yesterday elicited an interesting range [...]

A virus in our genes, think about that….

Mitch Ratcliffe — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 16:10:27 +0000

Really fascinating news: Virus is passed from parent to child in the DNA. Researchers found that roseola, an infection that everyone apparently gets but only 20 percent of children develop the characteristic rash that gives it its name, is actually in our DNA. It co-evolved into us, which raises some very interesting today in particular. They [...]

Attention Craig Newmark: Citizens aren’t customers

Mitch Ratcliffe — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 22:12:56 +0000

Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, has offered a thoughtful but misguided palliative at CNN to the shortcomings of the age of networked democracy. … if you know how Americans use the Net to talk, you can easily stay in touch with real people. Speaking as a customer service rep, that’s the real deal. I agree wholeheartedly that [...]

eBooks volume 3: What is the right price for a device that holds 100s of books?

Mitch Ratcliffe — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 01:11:20 +0000

Over the past couple weeks, I’ve been conducting polls about ebooks as I think about doing some publishing. The overwhelming response to the polls has been that there is not a sufficiently broad selection of books available in e-formats, regardless of what format, whether for Amazon’s Kindle, the Sony Reader or in open formats, such [...]

eBooks, volume 2: What’s the bridge document that would drive ebook reader adoption?

Mitch Ratcliffe — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 23:00:42 +0000

Last week, I ran a poll about the number of ebooks people purchased each month. The results suggest that most people don’t buy ebooks, but get them from various free sources, such as Project Gutenberg, Biblomania and O’Reilly Open Books. Fifty-nine percent of respondents said they bought no books during the month. However, the buyers more [...]

Cerf’s call for simple pricing: Net Neutrality all over again

Mitch Ratcliffe — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 19:04:12 +0000

Vint Cerf, one of the co-inventors of the underlying technology that makes the Web work, now Google’s Internet evangelist, has issued a call for throughput-based pricing by ISPs. This in response to the Comcast ruling by the FCC, which ordered the cable carrier to stop interfering with certain kinds of traffic, including P2P application data. [...]

Kindle, Sony and eBook readers: How many a month?

Mitch Ratcliffe — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 22:31:46 +0000

I’m doing a bit of research on the question of ebooks and the appropriate formats to use in publishing some research and archival content I have. Do you have an Amazon Kindle, Sony Portable Reader or another favorite eBook format (Please add your comments on devices and formats in TalkBack)? If so, how many titles [...]

TeachStreet: Starting something big in lots of little places

Mitch Ratcliffe — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 15:20:34 +0000

TeachStreet’s launch of a Portland, Oregon, version of its teacher-student connection services has a lot to teach us about the evolution of Web services. The service, which lets students search for local teachers and teachers to offer classes to local and national student audiences, is where education is going: Toward increasingly customized one-on-one learning. The [...]

Google goes investing

Mitch Ratcliffe — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 23:28:42 +0000

The news that Google is close to launching its own venture capital fund may raise a lot of hopes, but the history of corporate investment isn’t fantastic and comes with a heavy price for portfolio companies that win a corporate sweepstakes. It also tells a lot about Google’s own sense of its ability to innovate [...]

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