Web-Tones

Copyright Wars: Game On!

Link: Big Internet Companies (Except Google) Brought Into Line - Thoughts on News Corp/NBC Online Video Deal. Is it game on in the copyright wars, as this article implies, or simply big media sticking it to Google from a business perspective? No way that there wasn't going to be a huge copyright suit sooner or later. Google bought the suit when they bought YouTube. They did not do this naively. Not with the kind of copyright legal talent at their disposal (see The Patry Copyright Blog ). Probably felt they had a shot at prevailing under the DMCA and setting precedent that would ease any subsequent copyright hurdles. It is a huge bet, but the boys from Google didn't accomplish what they have achieved by being risk averse.

Yeah it's game on, should be interesting.

Corporate Blogging

Link: Corporate blogging [dive into mark]. Now here is a man after my own heart. Former IBM'er now going to work at Google, interesting. I might even want to "dive into Python"-- well, maybe not. My days of writing code are over. Hey, if I was any good at it what on earth would I be doing in law School? But if you are curious about my escapades in "hackerville" you can peruse some of the selected essays from "Silicon Stories" or the whole damn thing for that matter (see right hand column of web-tones).

OK, back to corporate blogging, while Mark's post is quite humorous, I would NOT try this trick at one of the "mega law firms" unless you're a partner and don't much care. Now, if you are flying solo and have balls, then I'd say go for it (dive right in), the rest of us will see if your practice survives before jumping into the water. :)

Mac Lawyers

Link: Home Office Lawyer: Home Office Lawyer in Las Vegas. You gotta love these Mac lawyers, just because they have a better computing experience than the rest of us on a daily basis they feel compelled to rub it in! Must be that left over aggressiveness from law school and what the adversarial system does to you<g>

That notwithstanding, there is definitely one of these "bad boys" in my future. Just have to get through a couple of semesters of law school first, otherwise "the one that must be obeyed" (shamelessly stealing from RIck "Saint" Georges-aka the FutureLawyer) will kill me; and to borrow from Mellencamp "dying to me don't sound like all that much fun."
 

SAP Adopts SaaS Model

Link: Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: SAP CEO calls SaaS "the better model". We are indeed going "back to the future." The Web 2.0 "computing on the cloud" model is really nothing more than mainframes with anywhere, anytime connectivity. For big IT vendors the game changer is how well they manage and scale the datacenter. Guess who does this better than anybody else at the moment? Google of course. While everyone is busy anticipating their next apps move, they are busy developing the real killer app, the always on  24/7 365 datacenter. Scalable on demand--all built on top of a robust LAMP platform--this is the foundation that their entire strategy depends on. This is the hidden real estate that has the most value and that their competition is only now just starting to wake up to!

It is game on but the competition may be down a couple of sets. Think big media can play here? Not a chance. This is the land where tech geeks rule, always have, always will. Build the datacenter and content will follow, like night follows day...

Google Buys Intuit?

Link: Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: Google should buy Intuit. Well not yet, but this is likely to happen for all the reasons that Nick Carr sites, it just makes too much damn sense and too hard to pass up for an emerging monopoly. These are the kind of acquisitions that will significantly leverage everything Google is already good at, with lots of upside and little if any downside for existing Intuit customers.

When this happens the Web 2.0 game will be on for certain. This is the kind of move that signals the real beginning of a new paradigm. We all know that it is coming, this move, or something like it will put the nail in the coffin--should reignite the entire space.

Viacom Loses & You Win

Link: What happens after Google loses? � Scobleizer - Tech Geek Blogger. I am not quite as certain that it is a slam dunk that Viacom wins the lawsuit because of some built in protection from the DMCA for ISP's. However, I am more certain that Viacom loses the war. There are several reasons but Scoble hits on a very important one, there are normative principles at work here and the Internet hordes do not reward this kind of behavior. Viacom may yet steal the ultimate pariah award from SCO, something that is without a doubt an achievement of sorts. Sure good "old fashioned" billion dollar suits are not going away anytime soon but if your current and prospective customers start to vote with their wallets, you may have just bitten off much more than you can chew.

Internet video is not going away. Deal with it.

Why Leadership?

Link: Why Leadership?. My good friend Sal Purpura just launched his leadership blog. Sal is one of the smartest IT executives I know and his blog will provide insightful commentary on leadership in general and IT leadership specifically!