Amazon terminates Colorado based associates over new taxes
Greetings readers!
Like any Monday morning, I woke up with a feeling of dread about the day and I didn't even have to be awake 5 minutes to know why. When I checked my e-mail this morning, I found that I had received an e-mail from Amazon regarding my affiliate account. As of today, my Amazon affiliate account has been terminated as well as every other Amazon affiliate based in Colorado. Why have our accounts been terminated? The idiots in our state legislature just passed a law for taxing online sales. Our governor can't ride a bike without nearly getting himself killed, how in the world did we think he was smart enough to run the state?! Anyway, below is the full statement I received from Amazon in my e-mail this morning.
Dear Colorado-based Amazon Associate:
We are writing from the Amazon Associates Program to inform you that the Colorado government recently enacted a law to impose sales tax regulations on online retailers. The regulations are burdensome and no other state has similar rules. The new regulations do not require online retailers to collect sales tax. Instead, they are clearly intended to increase the compliance burden to a point where online retailers will be induced to "voluntarily" collect Colorado sales tax -- a course we won't take.
We and many others strongly opposed this legislation, known as HB 10-1193, but it was enacted anyway. Regrettably, as a result of the new law, we have decided to stop advertising through Associates based in Colorado. We plan to continue to sell to Colorado residents, however, and will advertise through other channels, including through Associates based in other states.
There is a right way for Colorado to pursue its revenue goals, but this new law is a wrong way. As we repeatedly communicated to Colorado legislators, including those who sponsored and supported the new law, we are not opposed to collecting sales tax within a constitutionally-permissible system applied even-handedly. The US Supreme Court has defined what would be constitutional, and if Colorado would repeal the current law or follow the constitutional approach to collection, we would welcome the opportunity to reinstate Colorado-based Associates.
You may express your views of Colorado's new law to members of the General Assembly and to Governor Ritter, who signed the bill.
Your Associates account has been closed as of March 8, 2010, and we will no longer pay advertising fees for customers you refer to Amazon.com after that date. Please be assured that all qualifying advertising fees earned prior to March 8, 2010, will be processed and paid in accordance with our regular payment schedule. Based on your account closure date of March 8, any final payments will be paid by May 31, 2010.
We have enjoyed working with you and other Colorado-based participants in the Amazon Associates Program, and wish you all the best in your future.
Best Regards,The Amazon Associates Team
If you live in Colorado, please contact the elected morons that pushed this through and tell them to repeal it!
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Microsoft’s CES Keynote was a major snooze
Greetings Readers!
As I am sure many of you are aware, last night was Microsoft's CES 2010 keynote and if you watched it, you know that the most exciting thing that came out of the keynote was the power failure that delayed it close to 30 minutes (We live blogged it here). As I stated last night, I would give my thoughts, both good and bad right here (Disclosure: I am a Microsoft Student Insider), so here we go.
I was rather surprised at the lack of announcements coming out of the keynote compared to years past. For those hoping for a big announcement regarding the rumored new features behind Ford's Sync, you are out of luck. Those are apparently being saved until Ford's keynote. Hoping for a major announcement about the Zune HD? Nope, nothing here either. Windows 8? Wishful thinking. A portable version of the Xbox? This will remain every gamers fantasy. What was announced? Ballmer really didn't announce much. He gave some lines about Windows 7 being the fastest selling OS of all time and some analyst speculation that PC sales will increase considerably this year but I don't really call those announcements. Steve announced that the HTC HD 2 running Windows Mobile will be coming to T-mobile but I am not sure anybody cares since we are talking Windows Mobile after all and T-mobile doesn't help either. Steve said they would talk more about the future of Windows Mobile at the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona next month. Ballmer did show off some prototype "Slate PCs" that will hopefully combat anything Apple announces later this month. The one he really demonstrated was an HP prototype that was running Windows 7 and the Kindle PC software to demonstrate how good of an e-book reader it could be and it looked to be about the same size as the Kindle 2. Sounds nice and I will definitely buy one, but if you are going to try to compete with Apple, you need to show something that will come out a little sooner rather than some prototype. Wait, you really wanted to know what was announced? Ok.
As far as REAL announcements go, there are a couple fairly minor announcements. Bing is now going to be the default home page and search engine for all HP computers. Excited yet? They also demonstrated what a Cable Card and a pc in your tv could do and said that with it, you can record 4 HD channels simultaneously which was probably the most impressive thing from they keynote. They talked a bit about Media Room and some partnership with AT&T's U-verse that I still don't understand and finally they had a couple interesting Xbox announcements. Besides all of the interesting number like units sold and games sold, Robby Bach announced that Project Natal will ship as an attachment to existing Xbox 360 systems in time for Christmas 2010. No price although I would expect that around E3. There was also no demo which was kind of disappointing. They also teased a new Halo game only to have it turn out to be a trailer for Halo Reach which was announced back at E3. I was rather disappointed but the audience seemed to love it since they could see the trailer and everybody watching the stream could not. The big Xbox 360 announcement was Game Room.
What is Game Room? Game Room seems to be a virtual space similar to the PS3's Home where you can run around a giant arcade as your avatar and buy and play old arcade games that look like the arcade units you would spend tons of quarters on in years gone by. Over 1000 games are planned for the next year that will be released in weekly batches that you will have to purchase. The coolest part is that this will be not only for the Xbox 360 but for PCs too! How much are these games going to cost you ask? If you want to play an arcade game on both platforms, you will be paying 400 Microsoft points aka $5. To get it on one platform, it is 240 points or $3. If you really want the old school experience, you can pay 40 points or $.50 and get two quarters worth of playing time on the old machines. The games can be played with other people, in 1080p and there are cross-platform leaderboards and achievements. This is coming in the Spring update to Xbox Live. Personally, I am really looking forward to this because lately I have had the urge to start buying old arcade machines and turning my basement into a small arcade but now I will be able to do it virtually instead of having to completely redo the basement. This was the only real announcement with any cool factor to it other than the HD recording. If you would like to see the demo that the people watching the live stream couldn't watch, you can check it out here.
That was pretty much about it. It was a very boring keynote and ended kind of out of nowhere. It certainly doesn't make me super excited about Microsoft this year but hopefully that will change. What did you think about the Microsoft CES 2010 keynote? Good? Bad? Boring? Exciting? Let us know!
Google is getting ready to take Street View indoors
Greetings Readers!
The other night, I was catching up on some recent episodes of KenRadio that I had fallen behind on and picked up a nugget that nobody seems to have noticed. What is that nugget you ask? Apparently Google is getting ready to take Street View indoors with "Inside View".
According to Andy Abramson, author of the popular blog VoIP Watch, Google is working on an unannounced addition to Street View that will give users the ability to check out the inside of public buildings or publicly accessible buildings. What kinds of places? Abramson says they are going into buildings like a hotel lobby, restaurants, libraries, clubs, bowling alleys, pizza parlors and various other places that people go. Abramson says the Google team working on this new product came into his hotel, the Intercontinental San Francisco, and began shooting 360° panoramic photos of the hotel lobby which was when he found out about this new product which he called "Inside View."
To me, this sounds like a bit of a censoring nightmare for Google, having to censor the faces of everybody in these public places so they don't get sued, but I really like the concept. I would love to be able to know what a place looks like before I go there. I tend to book all of my hotel stays online but I am never able to see a picture of the lobby or anything to get a feel for how nice a hotel is which would often make a big difference in where I stay. It will be interesting just how far this gets taken and what kinds of places the cameras get to go. This feature has a ton of potential and many possibilities for what it can be used for. I can't wait for Google to announce it. I wonder when that will be...
If you want to hear it from Andy Abramson himself, go to the 19 minute mark on Thursday, December 3, 2009's edition of KenRadio.
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Dark times ahead for Bittorrent
Its hard to find any good news in the Bittorrent community these days. Between the sale of The Pirate Bay to the court ordered mass deletion of torrents on Mininova, it seems that nothing can go right for the popular P2P community.
With groups like the RIAA, MPAA, IFPI, BRIEN and countless others constantly harassing every bittorrent site they can find until they shut down, it is no surprise that the P2P scene is seeing some dark days. I'm not saying this is the beginning of the end for bittorrent, but I do think that the actions of the past two months are going to change the community forever.
I predict that with the court ordered mass deletion of torrents on Mininova and the sale of The Pirate Bay (which will immediately be run straight into the ground), this is the end of massive torrent sites. Numerous large trackers have been shut down over the past couple of years but these two are by far the biggest. Generally speaking, the larger the torrent site, the bigger the target is on their back and the greater desire that the groups mentioned above have to shut them down. I think in the future that the biggest torrent sites you will see are near that of the tracker Demonoid.
I believe that in the near future, we will see a number of new, smaller, torrent sites pop up to fill the void left by the larger trackers. When I use bittorrent, I find that the more niche tracker I can find, the better the experience tends to be and I think that this is the trend that is about to get a big boost in the coming months. Arguably, what made sites like Mininova and The Pirate Bay great is their wide range of files, but that has also caused problems in that instead of having just one industry group after you, you have groups after you from a number of industries. It is much easier to stay alive if you only have a few people chasing you rather than a mob of them. The more niche that sites can be, the better experience users will have as well because it will be much easier to find what they are looking for with more seeds and less irrelevant stuff to sift through.
In the end, I think that the current events in the bittorrent community will work out for the best but it is going to be a tough road to get there and things will be much different than they have been in the past. Here is to hoping that the mafia groups don't win!
Amazon’s VOD success depends on distribution deals
Greetings Readers!
The streaming video market has become rather crowded in the last couple of years with services like Hulu and YouTube, but the video service with the most potential is Amazon's VOD service.
Amazon's VOD (Video On Demand) service has been around for a while and has a huge library of tv shows and movies including some of the newest releases yet it has never gained much traction in a world dominated by Netflix. If Amazon hopes to really compete in this market, it needs to do more than advertise its service (which it doesn't do a very good job at anyway). Amazon needs to through its weight behind the service and make sure that everybody is aware of it and it is accessible as possible. How can they make it accessible? Amazon needs more distribution deals with hardware manufactures.
Amazon currently has deals which allow its service to be accessed on Roku boxes, Panasonic Blu-ray players, TiVo DVRs and Sony Bravia TVs, but they have to do much better than that. Amazon needs to push for a deal with every TV manufacture instead of just Sony and their Bravia line. With many people upgrading to new and better TVs after the DTV transition to take advantage of the new HD content, there is a huge opportunity for Amazon if they work to put themselves on all internet connected TVs. Same thing with Blu-ray players, Blu-ray is starting to gain traction and Amazon needs to do its best to get on more than just Panasonic players if it wants to get in on the ground floor before the mass exodus from DVD to Blu-ray begins. As far as TiVo goes, that is a great move for them but they should also work towards being on the DVRs offered by cable and satellite providers.
Amazon has the huge opportunity to grab a huge chunk of the streaming video market if they are willing to do what is necessary to put their service in front of as many people as possible. They have started moving in this direction, but so as Netflix and others, so if they want to put themselves in a dominant position, they must act now!
Finally, I think they need to go mobile with their video on demand service. Apps for the iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile and such should be coming too. Many people like to watch videos on their phones, so if you have a way to stream videos to a phone, even if it is over wifi, you are ahead of the competition.
The competition in this space is in its very early stages and Amazon is on the position of either being left behind or taking the lead. The potential for profit is there, will they strike before its too late?
Wifi is everywhere but I can’t get online
Like many geeks, one of my favorite hobbies is to go war driving. For years, I occasionally drive around town and even other towns just to see where and how many wi-fi signals I can get, but it isn't as entertaining as useful as it used to be.
There are two main things I enjoy about looking for wifi, seeing all of the strange and unique names that people set as their SSID and finding open wifi networks so that should the need for one ever arise, I know where I can find one. While I still enjoy the first, the latter has become much harder.
Over the past couple of years, I have noticed a couple of dramatic shifts when it comes to wifi. When I first started war driving, I noticed that very few people had wifi despite the fact that laptop sales were on the rise. Not long after that, wifi started to become a bit more common to the point that for a good portion of the town, I could detect at least one hotspot. Slowly more started to pop up but I would estimate that only around 20% had any sort of encryption or protection on them at all. Once in a while I would see some WEP encryption or at least a changed SSID but nothing that would keep even the newest of hackers out. Over the past year or so, I have seen a major shift. Not only has the number of wifi hotspots increased dramatically, but the percentage of encrypted access points has jumped to closer to 90%. I find this to be both a good and bad thing.
For years, I have been a proponent of locking down wifi networks mainly with WPA encryption mainly for security purposes, but it seems that my effort has come back to bite me. While stuff like this does help keep the harmful hackers at bay, it hurts those that desperately need wifi but have no ill intent. There have been a number of times in the recent past that I have spent a considerable amount of time searching for an open wifi network or at least a starbucks because I need to get on the internet to find a place on Google maps or to get a bit of information from my email. If I could find open wifi hotspots as much as I can find closed ones, I often wouldn't be forced to drive all over just to get online.
I believe that this could actually lead to more illegal activities than it will stop. Certainly it is harder to get into networks (assuming you use WPA since WEP is useless), but considering the vast majority of encrypted networks that I find are using WEP, cracking into the network for internet access almost becomes an option. I am certainly not recommending this practice since it is illegal (not that that has ever stopped me before, something that the podcast listeners will understand), but I certainly sympathize with those that are forced to do it because they need something and can't find an open access point. I believe that you should be able to get online anywhere at anytime and for a number of reasons, that is not possible anymore.
What do I propose to solve this problem? Businesses should put open wifi in all of their locations for customer convenience. I'm not saying that this should be mandated or that companies should risk the security of their network for a couple of customers, but I do think it is a big benefit for customers. I think that this message applies mainly to restaurants, coffee shops and pretty much everybody that serves some sort of food. Personally, if I find a restaurant with free wifi, I am far more likely to eat there than someplace else because then I can take my laptop or at least my iPod Touch in and get something accomplished while I am waiting for my order. If I am in a jam, need internet access and don't have time to go in, I will still sit in the parking lot and use the wifi, but I always make sure to go back at a later time and go in and purchase something. Providing free wifi will get my business almost every time. The cost of providing free wifi to customers is very little, and for nearly all businesses is likely to pay off, especially when you have customers that would like to get work done while they are at your establishment. I completely believe this will pay for itself many times over, so if you own a business, install wifi for the sake of your customers!
Free wifi for everybody!
Why ‘Live Twittering’ is a Horrible Idea
Greetings Readers!
I have another rant again today. Hopefully I will have some more upbeat things to write about after this but today's topic really irritated me this morning so after gathering my thoughts, I decided that I should address the idea of "live twittering" here.
'Live Twittering' is likely a new term to most people as thankfully it hasn't really caught on at this point. Live Twittering is much like live blogging except it takes place on Twitter. It can also take place on other micro-blogging services but since Twitter is the biggest, I will be talking about it today. Live blogging and live Twittering are similar in that they are a live reporting of something as it happens. Whether its a tv show or a press event, it is relaying information in near real time primarily for those who cant experience the event themselves or wish to share the experience with others.
Although similar, there is one major difference that I see to be a major problem. Live blogging is attended by people who specifically seek to be apart of the live blog whereas with live Twittering, followers don't really have a choice without completely unfollowing the person. Often times, live blogs contain material that people consider to be spoilers but that is something that is acknowledged and accepted by those who intentionally go and read or participate in the live blog. This presents a major issue for live Twittering. When live Twittering something such as a TV show (for example, the Battlestar Galactica finale), the live tweeter's followers will be inundated with information they either don't care about or don't want to know because they are unable to watch at that time and don't want to have the episode spoiled for them before they get a chance to watch. Live twittering essentially takes away that choice for the user and leaves them with the only real option of unfollowing you either permanently or temporarily until they know you have stopped.
Its clear that the major difference is user choice. The user can choose whether or not to be apart of their live blog, but the choice becomes much more difficult when you force the experience on them by live Twittering. I have even had people threaten to unfollow me if I took that choice away from them, which is why I only do a live blog. It all comes down to choice, something that should never be taken away from your potential audience.
New Twitter Etiquette (part 2) Rule: Thou shalt not live Twitter!
If you want to see how I handle this issue, you are invited to watch and participate in my Battlestar Galactica live blog tonight on Pcnerd37.com. I will be Twittering out the exact link when I go live (So follow me!). The show starts at 10pm EST but I typically get things going around 9:30pm EST.
Programming Note: I put up two Global Geek News Podcasts this week so check them out. Wesley is busy with SXSW so I will likely do a solo show over the weekend and put it up as soon as its ready.
Follow me on Twitter & Friendfeed!
-Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray
Why trivia contests should not be on Twitter
Greetings Readers!
I wanted to address what I find to be a growing problem on Twitter, trivia contests.
For quite a while now, I have noticed various people on Twitter such as @microsoft_cares and @rahulsood among others give away some great prizes by running trivia contests on Twitter. I see several problems with this. Before I get going on my disagreements with it, I have won prizes via Twitter in the past, so if you believe that I am mad because I don't win, you would be very wrong.
The first issue I have with this is fairness. While everybody certainly has a chance at winning, thanks to a slow (assuming its even up which is another complaint) Twitter web interface, people often wont be able to see the question at the same time and thus create a disadvantage for some users. This problem is even more evident today when Twitter was slow and up and down much of the day after a power failure. Contests such as this should be held in a way that problems such as slow website or api limit or whatever can't effect somebody's chances to win the contest. Contests like this can be won or lost in less than a second, so it should be based on a less time restricting manner.
My next issue with doing trivia contests on Twitter is that it is really a thinly-veiled attempt to up your follower count. Trying to up your follower account with such a cheap tatic is sad. I believe a followers count should be deserved, not bought. If you don't have as many followers as you like or believe you deserve, you should do something so that more people will find you worth following. You should target a group of people that you think should follow you and go after them. For example, if you want to target people that love food, most of the content you post should be to things like recipies and restaurant reviews. If you people interested in cars to follow you, you should post a lot of stuff about cars. You should also follow these people. If they see you post about stuff they are interested in, they are likely to follow you back which is what you are after. Contests are a shotgun blast to get anybody you can when you should really be targeting a group of people who you can bring value to and who can bring value to you!
Now I'm not saying running contests on Twitter is a bad thing, but doing them the way I see most often is. Contests should be used to promote you and what you do to the maximum degree. Giving things away is a great way to earn brand awareness and a fan or two of a product, but the way many contests are currently done, they only have a fraction of the impact that they could have. If you want to get the most out of the contests, have people who want to win something do something for you. Have them submit something to your website or comment on your blog or something. If they are willing to google something to try to win whatever you are trying to give away, they will certainly be willing to do something actually useful to you for the prize. Sending people to your website or blog or whatever can do a much better job at educating people on what you do and what your product is than just having them answer some random trivia question and cross their fingers that they will get something. Hitting follow is not an action worthy of a prize either (I'm talking to you people that give away stuff when you hit so many thousands of followers).
Finally, if you still insist on doing a Twitter triva contest, at least make sure that the trivia question is related to you instead of just some random fact. Have your followers learn about your history or other products so that they can become aware of what you have to offer instead of asking something that can be easily found in a quick Google search. Give yourself the maximum possible exposure with a contest, don't just give stuff away for the heck of it.
Anyway, enough of me ranting. This is my advice for running contests on Twitter. Take it or leave it. If you have any questions or want me to expand on this, respond in the comments.
-Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray
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