Google is taking several big gambles with its upcoming OS, not the least of which is that it will require users to work with all data in the cloud. That will rule out countless applications and utilities that are, in some cases, beloved to users, and there is a good chance that Google’s cloud-only gamble could backfire.

But what if Google adopts an “if you can’t beat them, join them” strategy with its Linux-based operating system, and oversees its shipment on netbooks and tablet devices alongside other OSes? If the idea sounds far-fetched, check out the video below from Mobile World Congress, in which Freescale shows a $199 tablet computer concept that runs Chromium OS (the open-source core of Chrome OS), Linux and Android.

http://www.youtube.com/v/Yr5cGR-uSv4&hl=en_US&fs=1&

If you think about it, a tablet or netbook running the cloud-focused Chrome OS alongside one that caters to local applications could offer a lot of flexibility. And Freescale’s demo shows that very low price points could be achievable for these types of devices.

Linux-based operating systems are already used on many devices in conjunction with OSes such as Microsoft Windows, sometimes through virtualization, and sometimes via lightweight Linux-based platforms such as Splashtop. There are also brand-new operating systems that are designed from the ground up to run alongside other ones, such as Jolicloud.

Google has already witnessed its Android mobile OS being forked into numerous new incarnations, and seen it running as a secondary operating system on some devices. The company has undoubtedly envisioned scenarios in which Chrome OS accompanies other platforms. Remember that in the operating system business, you don’t have to be the top dog to succeed — just ask Apple.

In the end, it won’t even matter whether Google delivers or encourages dual-OS devices based on its new platform. Let’s not forget that Chrome OS is open source and malleable, and is already showing up out in the wild alongside other operating systems–even before it’s launched.

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According to a statement from CA:

“CA estimates that emerging enterprises, which it categorizes as organizations with annual revenues from $300 million to $2 billion, will account for approximately a quarter of the software spending in CA’s market space by 2013.  By leveraging Nimsoft’s market expertise and technology, CA expects to add an entirely new set of customers to its base, which historically has been comprised of large enterprises.”

Chris O’Malley, CA’s executive VP of cloud products and solutions, added that Nimsoft could also help CA focus on “emerging national economies,” and opportunities outside the U.S. In a blog post, Nimsoft CEO Gary Read said he was initially hesitant to open talks with CA, but eventually became convinced that a deal could help scale Nimsoft’s business to keep up with growth in cloud computing. Many of Nimsoft’s customers are smaller companies.

In addition to providing more evidence that M&A activity is on the rise, CA’s Nimsoft purchase is just the latest in a string of cloud-focused acquisitions the company has made, including NetQoS (performance and app monitoring), Oblicore (dashboard monitoring services), Cassatt (automating cloud app scalability) and 3Tera (infrastructure management). CA is clearly diversifying into very diverse kinds of cloud-focused applications and services.

As Derrick Harris has pointed out, the company formerly named Computer Associates wants to be the enterprise watchdog in the cloud, providing end-to-end services and tools to IT departments. Its latest acquisition makes clear that the company also wants to extend that focus to smaller companies, and extend it overseas.

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What does that mean?  Well basically it means to eschew controlled environments, whatever the cost , and to embrace open platforms with all your heart. In practice, here’s what you’ll have to give up:

iPhone and iPad: This first stipulation is a doozy.  Resolve to give up your iPhone, and walk past the iPad display without ponying up.  Why do this?  Well despite Apple’s claims of embracing everyone, the iPhone and iPad are huge walled gardens.  You can’t just load any app -– no, you’re forced to load just those programs that some soulless corporate drone on Infinity Loop deems “appropriate.”

Yes, that means T&A from Sports Illustrated, but not from many other similarly legitimate sources.  Want your iPhone to quack like a duck?  Sorry.  Google Voice, Groovy Sharks — nope, can’t use ‘em, says Apple — and the list just goes on and on.

And the iPad looks to be even worse. Heck you can’t even watch Flash on the darned thing, which tends to obviate much of the most interesting content on the web.  Luckily, there are many other awesome alternatives, including the Motorola Backflip, Nexus One, and other great Android phones.  And expect everyone else’s pad — from the sexy U1 Hybrid from Lenovo to Dell’s new super-small slate — to deliver more functionality.

These pads will deliver an open, anything-goes platform, for less money, probably.  I know it’ll be hard, but this year, vow to embrace an open marketplace of apps, video, web sites and books, rather than a locked down, overpriced, shiny gewgaw.

Kindle: Speaking of books, are you thinking of a Kindle?  That’s also a walled garden. Want to buy a book?  You have to go through Amazon. Sure you can load your own stuff onto the Kindle, but only via a few formats, and you even have to pay for that privilege.  Many other types of e-books simply don’t convert well at all.  The Kindle lacks good support for tables and monospaced fonts, has lousy PDF rendering, and worst of all, doesn’t even support the open ePub format.

The lack of ePub means you can’t borrow e-books from your library and read them on the Kindle. It’s as if Jeff Bezos is declaring war on the local library! But even worse, the Kindle is the roach motel of e-books:  Books go in, but they never come out.

Luckily there are other options. f you must have an e-reader today, opt for Sony’s latest touch version.  But if you can wait, do. There were zillions of e-readers on display at CES, and by this fall we should see an explosion of low-cost E Ink-based alternatives that support open standards and a wide variety of off-the-shelf books.

Hulu: And that leads me to Hulu.  Although web-based, Hulu is another walled garden, locking you into its platform.  Want to see it on Boxee?  Sorry.  Oh, well, maybe you can now, but probably not tomorrow.  What about other over the top services?  Not likely.  Hulu is designed for PC viewing only, even though any 15-year-old can easily figure out how to connect a PC to the big screen.  And now Hulu’s been out-gardened by Comedy Central, which is pulling its programs, among them “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report,” viewable only at  ComedyCentral.com –- another walled garden!

NBC’s Olympics coverage was yet another ridiculous approach to walling off viewership and screwing consumers.  And don’t even get me started on TV Everywhere, the misguided attempt to transmogrify the ultimate walled garden –- cable TV –- into a narrowly protected online universe.  It just isn’t going to work, guys.  Instead, embrace open video platforms like YouTube –- which you can embed and watch everywhere — along with Boxee, Roku, Popcorn Hour, Play On and other wide open services and providers (including Revision3, where I work).

Why?  Because these walled gardens are not only expensive, they lock you in to a never-ending merry-go-round of price hikes, poor customer service and reduced choice.  In the end they will turn the Internet into a monolithic series of silos, accessible only to those with the money, influence or power.  The promise of a democratic medium that lets you reach the entire world with your voice, your vision and your creativity will be gone forever, locked behind corporate palaces that will turn us all into nameless, faceless drones.

Well, maybe it won’t be that bad.  But still, I’m staying away from the iPhone, the iPad, the Kindle and Hulu this year.  And you should, too.

Jim Louderback is CEO of Revision3. He was previously vice president of Ziff Davis Media and Editor-in-Chief of PC Magazine and PCMag.com.

The European Commission’s hope for the screen — which is the result of a settlement between it and Microsoft — was that it would preserve healthy competition among web browsers, and promote choices for users. And there are signs that progress is being made toward reaching those goals: Opera Software says downloads of its browser have tripled since the screen’s introduction. Rolf Assev, chief strategy officer for the Norwegian browser maker, told Reuters that the surge in downloads varies from country to country, with particularly strong upticks seen in Belgium, France, Spain, Poland and the UK.

And Mozilla, maker of the popular open source Firefox browser, says some 50,000 downloads of Firefox can be directly traced to the new ballot screen. That’s not a huge number, though, as Mozilla’s CEO John Lilly has confirmed that Firefox typically gets more than half a million downloads a day in Europe.

So the ballot screen seems to be having some effect, but there are also problems with its execution. Most glaringly, as ZDNet has noted, there are 12 browsers listed in the ballot screen, ranging from well-known names such as Firefox to less popular browsers such as K-Meleon, but it only displays five at a time, as seen here:

Six of the seven browser makers whose offerings aren’t displayed on the default ballot screen view have already produced a petition asking the European Commission to deliver a version that shows all 12 browsers at once. There are also complaints being lodged by makers of browsers not found on the ballot screen at all.

Still, despite varying results for increased downloads of alternative browsers, and some problems with its execution, the ballot screen is likely to increase usage of numerous browsers over time. Thus far, it has only reached a minority of European users. One has to wonder if Microsoft may end up being required to offer U.S.-based users of Windows more choice in browsers, too. That’s probably going to be the focus of the next petition from the alternative browser makers, and the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS) has already asked for the ballot screen to be repeated around the world.

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Microsoft’s chief software architect, Ray Ozzie, seen in the picture below, was in the audience for the address, and Ballmer said that a memo from Ozzie about five years ago was the beginning of the cloud-based product and research work that Microsoft is doing. Prior to his stint at Microsoft, Ozzie was best known for his work on Lotus Notes, collaborative online workgroup applications and other early software projects that were precursors to today’s online hosted applications. Ballmer’s speech was less about specific services, such as Azure, than it was about how the cloud is influencing numerous Microsoft projects and products.

One of the centerpieces of the address was a demonstration of the new mapping features available through Microsoft’s Bing search engine, which are quite advanced. You can experiment with them by clicking on “Map Apps” here. The demonstration included zooming from aerial photo views of Washington state through combined photo-based and 3D-based virtual tours of specific neighborhoods. Ballmer punctuated the mapping demonstration with references to how coming advances in machine learning will make the cloud much smarter than it is today. “We’ve got to open this idea of learning done in the cloud up to people with innovative ideas, including many  scientists,” Ballmer said.

Ballmer’s address also included extensive demonstrations of how Xbox Live will integrate with cloud-based applications and services. The demonstrations included streaming TV applications from around the world, and Ballmer said that the Xbox Live-based cloud experience will become richer when Microsoft ships the upcoming Project Natal, a camera that can recognize gestures and lets users communicate online via gestures.

Ballmer made numerous references to software and hardware problems that must be solved before cloud computing can advance in truly meaningful ways. “There are latencey problems,” he said, “and many software problems.” On the hardware side, he said that server technology is in the middle of a renaissance where it is driving cloud advancements and the cloud is, in turn, changing servers. He said that cloud-based “scale issues” will continue to change how servers and software for them are built for years to come.

He also said that “the cloud wants smarter devices,” and that everything from sensors to VoIP technology have to rapidly advance in order to keep up with demand for cloud applications. “Five years from now, the cloud will mean that phones don’t look like they do now,” he noted.

While he was adamant that tech platforms need to improve before cloud computing realizes its full promise, Ballmer said that it is already ushering in “a new class of creators” and new kinds of responsibilities, notably privacy-centric ones. Microsoft is involved with various research projects in these areas, and the company has a blog post up describing these efforts.

Elliott Associates’ offer of $5.75 per share in cash is well above Novell’s closing per-share price of $4.75, and caused Novell’s shares to rise above $6 in after-hours trading.  According to its offer letter:

“Based on our detailed review of the Company’s publicly available information and our substantial knowledge of the software industry, we are pleased to submit this proposal to acquire all of the shares of common stock of Novell for a cash price of $5.75 per share.  This price represents a premium of 49% over the Company’s current enterprise value and 77% over the Company’s 90-day volume-weighted average enterprise value.”

It continues:

“Over the past several years, the Company has attempted to diversify away from its legacy division with a series of acquisitions and changes in strategic focus that have largely been unsuccessful.  As a result, we believe the Company’s stock has meaningfully underperformed all relevant indices and peers.”

While the offer from Elliott Associates may seem high at first glance given Novell’s recent troubles, it’s worth remembering that the company has nearly $1 billion in cash, and reported $220 million of revenues in its most recent quarter. Novell has close to $1 billion in annual revenues.

OStatic has noted that the large cash positions that both Red Hat and Novell sit on have made them prime acquisition targets among the few large, publicly traded U.S. companies focused on open source software (although rises in Red Hat’s stock price have made it less attractive). Sun Microsystems, which was also focused on open source, is no longer an independent company following Oracle’s acquisition.

If Novell accepts the new offer, it, too, will no longer be an independent company, but the offer will no doubt be carefully considered. Novell has had trouble growing its Linux business, for which it is heavily dependent on its partnership with Microsoft for deals, and saw its stock pummeled during the recession.  Novell officials have yet to comment on the offer, but as OStatic notes, a shakeup could be coming.

Image courtesy of Flickr user Oswaldo.

As Computerworld reports, Charney equated his proposal for better “social solutions” to the malware problem with existing models in place in the health care system:

“I actually think the health care model…might be an interesting way to think about the problem. With medical diseases, there are education programs, but there are also social programs to inspect people and quarantine the sick. This model could work to fight computer viruses too.”

Charney proposed that “general taxation” could foot the bill for fighting malware, and discussed inroads being made battling it at the Internet Service Provider (ISP) level. In particular, ISPs have been having increasing success at shutting down some botnets, which produce large quantities of globally spread malware and spam. Just recently, Microsoft was successful in shutting down the Waledac botnet, which it did by filing a legal injunction that resulted in a restraining order allowing the shutdown of over 200 allegedly nefarious Internet domains.

Clearly, Microsoft is getting more creative in battling the spread of malware, but let’s not forget that there is self-interest in such creativity, because Microsoft’s own Windows operating system and other tools are the largest targets in the worlds of botnets and malware baddies. As OStatic notes, “Few are likely to be impressed or take seriously a suggestion that a general taxation should be used to fix a problem that Microsoft is more than partly responsible for, especially when the company reaps staggering profits on its Windows licenses in the first place.”  If general taxation is implemented to pay for the costs of fighting malware, do Linux users have to pay the same tax as Windows users?

Charney did suggest numerous creative strategies to fight malware going beyond general taxation, including public education programs and public service announcements. But these suggestions, too, raise questions as to who is going to pay the bills at the end of the day. Hopefully, taxpayers at large won’t get stuck with them.

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As Cloud Computing Goes International, Whose Laws Matter?

Image courtesy of Jacreative on Flickr.

As I look through many of today’s biggest tech headlines, and popular interpretations of them, I’m struck by how unpredictable people are at both leveling criticism against and showering praise on tech companies that command extreme global market power. Antitrust concerns, for example, are seen as a “mark of Google’s success.” And Adobe Flash apparently doesn’t need a kick in the pants or a challenge from competing and possibly better technologies; instead, it has worked beautifully for over 15 years. And just look at the flame war I incited in a recent post on Apple, when I suggested that it is increasingly pursuing closed policies, with the iPad shaping up to be the company’s most closed product ever.

In a post today titled “Is Monogamy Good for Technology?” Matt Asay describes the conundrums he is facing as he takes on his new job as COO of Canonical, which, of course, requires him to use Ubuntu Linux. A longtime user of all things Apple, Asay notes that Apple COO Tim Cook has recently suggested “that the magic of Apple is its seamless interoperability with other Apple technology.” Certainly, I have heard many Apple users praise the company’s products for working so well together, even as critics argue that closed technology is the byproduct of that phenomenon. Google, meanwhile, draws much praise for open policies, but has also made clear that its attitude toward openness isn’t entirely altruistic.

It’s worth noting that big commercial technology companies throw their weight around the world in increasingly anti-open, and dangerous, ways. As OStatic notes today, the powerful International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) has just produced a 498-page report for the office of the U.S. Trade Representative arguing that government mandates to use open-source software must be “carefully monitored.”

The IIPA report recommends that numerous entire countries be placed on international watchlists because their governments favor such software, which it characterizes as a threat to innovation. A closer look at the report, though, shows that its recommendations are made in conjunction with the Business Software Alliance, which counts among its members Microsoft, Adobe, Symantec, IBM and many other large commercial software providers.

I’m in agreement with Asay that “no vendor dominates innovation once and for all.” While it is true that the most powerful technology companies have helped establish standardized ways for things to work together, it’s also true that closed policies and total market dominance must be questioned — always.

Innovation all around the world depends on countries, governments, companies and users finding harmonious ways to work together. Just ask the Chinese science community, which has made clear that without Google’s technology, its research efforts will suffer enormously. Now, more than ever, there needs to be a healthy and open global ecosystem for technology innovation, and the most dominant technology companies bear great responsibility for protecting it.

Image courtesy of Flickr user Mark Strozier.

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ZScaler’s data largely lines up with reports from analysts and others in most technology categories it tracks. Its survey numbers show that search engines remain “a three-horse race,” as seen here, with Google leading at 57 percent, well ahead of Yahoo, with 18 percent of the search engine market. Microsoft’s Bing comes in at third with 10 percent, while Disney’s Go.com search engine, which is powered by Yahoo, is actually in fourth place, but has only 1.22 percent of the market, according to the survey.

A whopping three quarters of the huge and growing volumes of traffic on the web aimed at social networks are headed for Facebook, according to ZScaler’s numbers. MySpace still commands 15 percent of traffic to top social networking sites, but we’ve written about the dark clouds hovering over it.

Among the top file-sharing and torrenting sites around the globe, there are some surprises in the ZScaler data, as seen below. Si@mBIT, a Thai web hosting provider that specializes in serving torrents, led with 37.49 percent of all file-sharing traffic online in the fourth quarter. The third-largest domain, tb.in.th., is also controlled by Si@mBIT, and commanded about 13 percent of file-sharing traffic.  Without a doubt, non-U.S. sites dominate the file-sharing scene.

In addition to becoming the most trusted brand in America, Amazon is the top shopping site online, according to ZScaler’s data. However, there is healthy competition among shopping sites. ShopLocal.com is right behind Amazon in this survey’s results, and Macy’s and Shop.com are very competitive too.

There are quite a few other interesting data points in the ZScaler report, which is available online.

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On the iPhone, Gowalla uses built-in Skyhook location data by default. While working on an app for Android, though, developers claim they noticed big performance differences compared to the app on the iPhone

“Location-aware social networking apps cannot succeed without reliable positioning results,” Kate Imbach, vice president of marketing at Skyhook Wireless, said in a statement announcing the deal acquisition. “Gowalla’s disappointment with Android location is a common frustration that can only be resolved by integrating Skyhook.”

Gowalla’s Android app is currently in beta and will be widely released to the public in March. Skyhook also offers a publicly available SDK for Android developers, available here.

Meanwhile, in Austin last night, Stacey caught up with Ted Morgan, CEO of Skyhook  and Josh Williams, CEO of Gowalla, from Skyhook for a chat about check-in and location features in social networking apps. See their thoughts in the video below.

Whether it’s buying a keyword for a buck, and making $1.02 on each visit, or buying a shopping link for a quarter and making a product sale for a few pennies more of profit, whole online ecosystems have sprung up to optimize and monetize pay-per-click and the search engine- and display-based arbitrage models. Video, though, has yet to find a profitable niche based on arbitrage.

It’s not for lack of trying, though.  The online video landscape is littered with companies that tried to buy their way to big audiences, yet failed.

Take Veoh, for example.  I was assured by someone on the inside that the company routinely spent big bucks to drive viewers to its videos, yet couldn’t recoup the investment with advertising or product placement.  I’ve had the opportunity to look at the books of a few other failing companies in the space, and seen a similar story. Big quarterly marketing spends lead to big show views – right up until the money runs out.  Turn that spigot off, and the traffic disappears too.

The problem with using pay-per-click or display to drive viewership is that the economics are still out of whack. Take YouTube, for example.  YouTube has a form of pay-per click advertising that you can use to drive viewers to your videos.  Unfortunately, you have to spend at least a penny per click, which works out to ten dollars for every thousand views.  In practice, I’ve found that you need to spend more like five cents to get any meaningful action – and that means you’ll need to make at least a $50 CPM on any overlays or pre-rolls you might run.  That’s not likely to happen very often, given the CPM (cost per thousand impressions) pricing of most video advertising.

In fact, it looks like bottom-of-the-barrel CPC (cost-per-click) marketers have already flooded the platform anyway, driving the price of viewership campaigns through the roof.  For example, head over to YouTube and search on Olympic Skier “Julia Mancuso”. I just initiated a paid campaign there to try and drive views to our new Digg Dialogg interview with the sexy star.  I’m bidding .05 – or a $50 CPM, which is more than what I’ll bring in with any pre-rolls or overlays that I’m likely to serve.

Yet I’m consistently outbid for ad placement by Visa, a video featuring “The Hottest Girls of the Winter Games 2010”, and, inexplicably, a video helping you repair drywall as well as one hawking a gadget that’s guaranteed to cure bad breath.

We’ve tried a wide range of other arbitrage-style viewership promotions, from Facebook widgets to SEM, but none deliver profit.  And we’ve taken a pass on many, many more, priced at well over $100 per thousand views.

However, there’s a new, sneaky arbitrage model making the rounds, one that seems to deliver real results.  It involves buying up a wide range of super-cheap  300 x h250 display ads – typically for well under a dollar CPM – and then auto-playing pre-rolls and other video into that ad unit.  This actually seems to work, in many cases, because the auto-play video can be hard for users to find, and shut off, before enough of the pre-roll is served to constitute a view.

It’s annoying, but lucrative.  Video ad networks routinely deliver remnant pre-rolls for $5 CPMs, and even after ad serving costs, revshare and the inventory payout to the serving web site, you can generate enough real money to eke out a profit.

But in the end it’s duplicitous and ineffective.  Web sites serving these auto-play video ads are delivering a terrible experience to their site visitors.  Advertisers paying for these impressions are being misled as well, as most of them are unasked for, and angrily terminated by the waylaid web surfer.  And now the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) is getting involved to try to curtail – or at least pull the curtain back – on this shady practice.  Back in December the industry trade group issued an updated set of guidelines requiring web sites to disclose details on auto-play video when it happens.  And this is just the “first part of a broader auto-play initiative by the IAB’s Digital Video Committee”.

Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but I believe the IAB will move to outlaw, or seriously curtail autoplay video ads when they are viewed out of context.  Because even though I’m all for figuring out a successful video arbitrage scheme, it’s simply not right when built on underhanded, sneaky and deceitful tactics.

What do you think?  Have you figured out an honest video arbitrage system that works?  Do you believe in auto-play at all times?  Post your thoughts in the comments.

Jim Louderback is CEO of Revision3. He was previously vice president of Ziff Davis Media and Editor-in-Chief of PC Magazine and PCMag.com.

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Amazon has been in the crosshairs of the traditional publishing industry for some time now, with regard to numerous issues. Its standard $9.99-per-title charge for e-books is the same kind of clear and present threat to existing business models in the publishing industry that the music industry faced as low-priced music became available on ubiquitous digital players. The music industry continues to reel from the effects of that revolution, and instead of reaching for workable digital business strategies, aims laterally for questionable solutions such as slapping a performance tax on radio stations.

I got into a discussion on a videocast yesterday with Dan Goodin, one of the best writers over at The Register, about the equally seismic shifts we’re seeing in book distribution and the publishing industry. He made the point that with the low pricing models for digital books, and more devices for reading them, the ultimate effect may be that the quality of written content suffers. Authors, in addition to publishers, stand to have their livelihoods threatened under the new e-book regime, he noted:

“Do we want to live in a world where content providers can’t support themselves? That is exactly where we are moving with the Kindle and the iPad because people suddenly want books for $9.99. I’ve got news: It takes about a year to write a book, you have to travel extensively, you have to do a lot of fact-checking. What Amazon and Apple are trying to do is significantly decrease the amount of money that publishers, and specifically authors, can make.”

“The quality of books and other types of published material is going to significantly deteriorate,” he added. He’s not the first person to allege that the sweeping changes in the publishing industry threaten quality content. Warren Buffett, for example, has predicted that with newspapers dying and reporters losing their jobs, widespread dishonesty will ensue.

I’m inclined to agree — up to a point — with both of them, and I say that as a book author who has always worked in the publishing industry. However, it also seems clear that new publishing models will arise amidst the carnage. For example, Mathew recently noted that some authors are signing exclusive Kindle deals with Amazon. One popular author, Stephen Covey, has struck a deal with Amazon where he gets about 50 percent of the revenues from his Kindle-delivered books, far above the royalty deals that most authors get. Perhaps the very providers of digital content and distribution devices will end up being the ones to make the publishing industry work again.

Let’s not forget that we’re seeing exciting new kinds of devices arrive for reading. I suspect that devices such as the iPad will be both a blessing and a curse for the publishing industry, creating short-term chaos but also long-term promise.  Om has noted that the instant he laid his hands on the iPad, he had visions of exciting new content types that will surely take shape for it. Apple may also introduce higher pricing models for content on the iPad than we’ve seen from Amazon for the Kindle. For a visual tour of how the iPad might be a promising trend for publishing, I recommend watching the video below of Wired Magazine’s concept app for the iPad, which looks quite slick.

The ubiquitous availability of e-books may also usher in more reading, and it’s a fact that readers of e-books buy more books. As a BlackBerry user, I already like the free Kindle for BlackBerry app, and I can see myself using it to read on the train when I might otherwise busy myself with other things. One way or another, quality content will make its way to interested readers on digital platforms, and new types of rewards for authors will arrive, too. In the meantime, though, anyone who writes better prepare for a bumpy — though never boring — ride.

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EPIC in its complaint (PDF) charges that Google has contradicted its own privacy policy, engaged in unfair and deceptive trade practices, failed to give up to 37 million Gmail users “meaningful control over personal information,” and may have violated federal wiretap laws.

Buzz has been scrutinized heavily due to privacy concerns in recent days, leading Google to make numerous changes to the service. EPIC’s opposition to Buzz isn’t its first disagreement with Google’s practices regarding the cloud. In March of 2009, EPIC urged the FTC to investigate Google’s cloud policies, and warned that the company had failed to safeguard the privacy and security of users.

Among specific requests that EPIC is making to the FTC, it is asking for it to compel Google to:

• Make Google Buzz a fully opt-in service for Gmail users;
• Cease using Gmail users’ private address book contacts to compile social networking lists;
• Give Google Buzz users more control over their information by allowing them to accept or reject followers from the outset.

Notably, EPIC’s complaint also quotes numerous bloggers who have written about the privacy issues surrounding Buzz, as well as a Yahoo Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University, who wrote:

I am extremely concerned about hundreds of activists in authoritarian countries who would neveer want to reveal a list of their interlocutors to the outside world…many of their contacts are other activists…and democracy promoters.

Google may well have an international problem on its hands with Buzz, and other privacy groups are entering the fray. Canada’s Office of the Privacy Commissioner is investigating the service, and The Electronic Frontier Foundation has leveled criticism against Buzz.

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China Mobile’s TD-LTE network is being put in place to serve the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, a showcase for global technology achievements, that kicks off May 1st and for which 70 million visitors are expected. According to Alcatel-Lucent, the TD-LTE peak rates were achieved by using a single 20-MHz spectrum band, carrying both the upstream and downstream traffic. TD-LTE uses half the spectrum of FDD-LTE (frequency division duplex) networks. You can find more on Alcatel-Lucent’s LTE projects here, including its involvement with a trial LTE-connected car.

Alcatel-Lucent’s LTE trials are also spreading out globally. The company said today that, in conjunction with Orange, the first phase of an LTE mobile broadband technology trial is underway with a live network in France. It’s expected to serve many types of multimedia mobile applications, including VoIP calls with streaming video. Alain Maloberti, group VP for networks, architecture and design for France Telecom-Orange, was quoted as saying that so far, “the user experience and the quality are very good inside the buildings as well as on the move.” Alcatel-Lucent also has LTE testing underway in Latin America.

Meanwile, Verizon CTO Dick Lynch confirmed that it’s on track with its LTE network rollout, which is in fourth-phase testing and due in 25-30 U.S. cities this year, potentially reaching 100 million people. Verizon expects to deliver 5-12Mbps downstream and 2-5Mbps upstream. Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent are building out the network, part of a partnership between Verizon and Vodafone.

As varying standards for LTE take shape, and some regions get it while others don’t, the fourth-generation wireless technology should produce much competition, and is likely to challenge the dominion of fixed broadband services. In households and for many business users, LTE wireless broadband could begin to supplant fixed broadband, potentially causing millions of users to switch. In the U.S., as we’ve noted before, it definitely looks like Verizon’s service will reach the most people this year, and the company’s announcements at Mobile World Congress back that up.

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4G: State of the Union

The market research firm company found that only 8 percent of U.S. households are thinking of abandoning their paid multichannel services.  Why is that good news?  Well it’s down from the previous year’s survey, which showed that 11 percent were considering “cutting the cord.”  Even better, according to Parks, only a very small amount, perhaps a half percent -– which translates into 350,000 homes — have actually followed through on their intent. You could practically hear the sigh of relief — cable is saved!

I have three problems with this giddy response: math, measurement and morbidity. Let’s get the math out of the way first. Parks surveyed 2,100 of what it calls “broadband households” -– those with access to high-speed networking at home -– to come up with its results. Modern statistical theory holds that a random group of that size can comfortably be extrapolated across an entire population, albeit with one caveat: Depending on the population surveyed, there’s what is known as a “confidence interval,” or what you and I would call a “fudge factor.”

Such padding extends up and down on either side of the actual number. In this case, the confidence interval is 2 percent, which translates into a 4 percent swing centered around the 8 percent number reported in the results. In practice, it means that based on the 2,100 people that the folks at Parks talked to, they are pretty darn sure that the actual population of people considering switching is no smaller than 6 percent of U.S. and Canadian homes with broadband, and no larger than 10 percent.

In last year’s survey, Parks talked to a few more people, but with the same confidence interval. Which means Parks is pretty darn sure that the actual population of people looking to cut the cord last year was between 9 and 13 percent.

Some of you have figured out where I’m going by now.  If this year, the number lies between 6 percent and 10 percent, and last year it lay between 9 percent and 13 percent, isn’t is possible that, perhaps, there’s been no actual change from year to year?  It could, in fact, have been 8 percent, and 8 percent year-over-year.  Or maybe it was 8 percent last year, and it’s up to 9 percent this year.  Or perhaps 13 percent were considering changing last year, and only 6 percent are mulling it over now.

Any of the preceding interpretations would be correct, based upon the statistical validity of the survey.  However, John Barrett, director of research at Parks Associates, insisted to me that there is a “significant difference, but not a substantive difference” between the two surveys.  Or, in layman’s terms, it’s a lot closer to a single household feeling better about cable than a million. Barrett added that in his opinion “the number hasn’t changed that much itself.”

Which brings me to measurement, as in measured audience. The question in this survey was only posed to broadband households that also subscribe to cable or satellite TV.  It ignored everyone who didn’t subscribe –- which was between 10 and 20 percent of the entire sample size.  And media habits, like other addictions, are hard to change. If you’ve got cable now, you’ll probably still have cable 10 years from now.

This is especially relevant when it comes to demographic currently getting out of school and setting up their first households –- the 18- to 24-year-olds, who haven’t had a chance to get addicted to multichannel TV services. And since if they don’t subscribe already they probably never will, they’ll likely never even show up on a “cutting the cord” survey. Indeed, Method VP John Gilles calls this cohort “Cable’s Lost Generation.” “For at least the past five years, the young male demographic has virtually dropped off the map of television,” he notes.

The issue isn’t existing customers dropping off; it’s existing customers dying off that should be of concern.  That’s because new customers just aren’t taking their place.

Which leads me to morbidity. This is exactly what happened to magazines over the last 20 years. Whether it’s Readers Digest, TV Guide or PC Magazine, each of these storied titles used to have viewers aged 16 to 60. Then it was 26 to 60.  And then 36 to 60.  In other words, the audience aged to the point where it just wasn’t economical to keep putting the product out.  I should know, because I was there during the salad days of PC Publishing, and darn near turned the lights off at PC Magazine in 2007.

And that’s the cliff that the multichannel industry is staring at today. Its best and brightest can wrap themselves in giddy surveys that show only (only!) 8 percent of their audience is considering leaving.  But the broader problem is that their customers are dying.  And no new ones are there to take their place.

Jim Louderback is CEO of Revision3. He was previously vice president of Ziff Davis Media and Editor-in-Chief of PC Magazine and PCMag.com.

The concern centered around the following statement: “If your app uses location-based information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user’s location, your app will be returned to you by the App Store Review Team.” There have also been reports that applications may be required to ask for user permission to integrate location-based advertising, although I haven’t seen a direct reference from Apple to that effect.

It’s worth noting that the Core Location API features (which I imagine are based on technology being developed by Placebase, which Apple bought last summer) touted in Apple’s tip don’t seem to have been released yet, and that the last material change to location features seem came back in May 2009, in conjunction with an iPhone OS update.

3 Interpretations

But what should we take the developer tip to mean? I see a few possible interpretations:

User Protection — Maybe Apple is merely trying to help users by stopping massive LBS ad spam and potential problems with location-based tracking issues. After all, the company has so far done a good job of balancing user control of location info with a developer-friendly wrapper. Currently, when an app that wants your location tries to access it, the user needs to give permission by way of a pop-up dialog box. After a few times, the pop-ups stop and the app gets continued access to location data. So perhaps Apple wants to keep its users’ best interests at heart.

Commercial — The idea here is that location-based advertising on the iPhone isn’t dead, rather it’s going to become a walled garden or a short-fenced one, with, presumably, Apple/Quattro taking a significant cut of the revenues. While every ad network takes some portion of sales, Apple would not have the normal competitive pressures in setting this revenue share percentage. Possibly you could use other ad systems, but would then have to pay for access to Apple’s core location APIs.

Such an approach could benefit developers as well, as it would immediately create critical mass for location-based advertising on the iPhone (which barely exists today). Apple might even allow new ad networks to participate in campaigns, as long as users receive some location benefit. Alternately, it could disallow all other ad networks –- which would not sit well with Google, Microsoft or anyone else trying to get broad advertising reach across mobile customers.

Irrational — I’ve seen numerous examples of this interpretation, with headlines including:

Location-Based Advertising Dead on the iPhone? — Technorati

Apple tells devs that location-based advertising is a no-no -– Ars technica

Apple Bans Location-based iPhone Ads -– InformationWeek

Apple vows to reject location apps geared for mobile advertising –- Fierce Mobile Content

But let’s face it: Apple is about as likely to kill location-based advertising on the iPhone as Microsoft is to start giving Windows away for free.

Some Conclusions Can Be Drawn, But Questions Remain

As its acquisition of Quattro at the start of year (and its interest in AdMob, before it was snapped up by Google) made clear, Apple is serious about mobile advertising. It’s also serious about its users. And it recognizes the impact location-based activities (in a variety of types) are going to have on mobile services, sooner than later.

Some questions remain, however, the most important of which is: Would a walled garden ad network on the iPhone be in Apple’s best interest? On one hand, it could serve to alienate a variety of people in the industry. But it would undoubtedly bring a huge boost in business to Quattro and give Apple enough critical mass to come out with industry-changing location-based ad products and a thriving network.

What did you think was implied by Apple’s Core Location tip to developers? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

Rahul Sonnad is the founder of Geodelic Systems.

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