NFC payment systems, like Google Wallet, remind me of the CueCat.
Launched in 1999, the CueCat was a little plastic cat (really) that let you scan proprietary barcodes on magazine advertisements or other printed material. Scanning a “cue” launched launched an advertiser’s webpage. Despite $185 million invested , the CueCat was a spectacular failure.
In hindsight, the CueCat’s fate is hardly surprising. But at the time the potential benefits for incumbent companies overshadowed the fact that no one would ever want to use a CueCat. Rather than examining the CueCat’s use case (and realizing it’s absurd), investors focused on the possible outcome: that magazine advertisements and other businesses based on printed material would not only survive the rise of the internet, but thrive by using the web to provide data regarding audience engagement (a brass ring for advertisers if there ever was one). The billion dollar print industry would be saved and everything would remain the same for the media incumbents.
Of course none of this came to fruition. No one used the CueCat1 and Digital Convergence, the company behind the system, folded.
NFC payment systems remind me of the CueCat because they provide very few benefits for users but promise their investors protection from digital disruption. The allure of such protection is sufficient to spur investment, PR, and partnerships. Media companies backed the CueCat in an effort to preserve print and now financial transaction companies are funding NFC systems in an attempt to save point of sale systems and the counters they reside upon.
So, so good. How many other shops will use Kickstarter to fund passion projects this year and at what point will Double Fine eschew publishers for every game they make?
“The fundamental story of digital media is the commodification of distribution.” — Content and businesses supported by profitable distribution systems are not long for this world.
More than anything, this feels like the nail in the coffin: Kodak will stop making cameras and will focus instead on brand licensing.
Eastman Kodak Co, the bankrupt inventor of the hand-held camera, plans to stop making digital cameras, pocket video cameras and digital picture frames in the first half of 2012 in a bid to cut costs.
…
The company, which generates three-quarters of its revenue from digital, plans to instead focus on seeking licensees to expand its brand licensing program. It plans to continue to offer online and retail photo printing, and desktop printers.
(Via NYT)
From Distributed Files to Distributed Websites -
The Pirate Bay recently switched from hosted torrent files to magnet links. This change greatly reduced the size of the site, making it possible for the site to fit on a free USB key:
“I did a complete snapshot of ALL the Pirate Bay torrents, in case somebody wants to close it or something similarly crazy,” he told TorrentFreak.
Using this script, “allisfine” managed to copy the title, id, file size, seeds, leechers and magnet links of 1,643,194 torrents. Comments were not copied to keep the files as small as possible, and the end result is a full copy of all magnet links on The Pirate Bay in a 90 megabytes file, 164 megabytes unzipped.
The magic of BitTorrent was that it distributed files across a network of computers, rather than a single server. This redundancy made sharing faster, more robust, and helped creating a feeling of anonymity (BT is easy to track, but there are so many sources it’s easy to get lost in the crowd).
An easily downloadable Pirate Bay is the beginning of the next step, distributing the website itself. Within a year, I bet there will be a version of the Pirate Bay that uses a BitTorrent like hosting mechanism, where there’s not a single server but thousands of distributed hosts. As I understand it, such a system, without a URL, would have been immune to SOPA as it was written.
Double Fine Just Used Kickstarter to Fund their Next Game -
Their goal was $400,000. They’re at $532,459 in less than 24 hours. Why this matters:
Keeping the scale of the project this small accomplishes two things. First and foremost, Double Fine gets to make the game they want to make, promote it in whatever manner they deem appropriate, and release the finished product on their own terms. Secondly, since they’re only accountable to themselves, there’s an unprecedented opportunity to show the public what game development of this caliber looks like from the inside. Not the sanitized commercials-posing-as-interviews that marketing teams only value for their ability to boost sales, but an honest, in-depth insight into a modern art form that will both entertain and educate gamers and non-gamers alike.
Over a six-to-eight month period, a small team under Tim Schafer’s supervision will develop Double Fine’s next game, a classic point-and-click adventure. Where it goes from there will unfold in real time for all the backers to see.
Funded.
A Wall Street Journal post from two years ago shows a list of apps that gather your data and what you do with them. Angry Birds not only collects your contacts — it transfers them to third parties.
Remember when magazine publishers were in heavy negotiations with Apple to access subscriber data for purchases made through the App Store?
They should have just flipped through the API docs…
I asked Nick Kam (who unlike myself actually understands law) to take a quick look at the virtual currency class-action lawsuit filed against Google. Here’s his take (emphasis mine):
Upon a cursory review of Google’s Notice of Removal to Federal Court which contains a summary of the Complaint filed in Santa Clara Superior Court, it seems the Plaintiffs’ central claim is one of unjust enrichment. They didn’t get the benefit of the bargain with Google through their purchase of gold from the in-game store or from the secondary market, which they claim Google and Slide, Inc. promoted or at least encouraged. Said another way: Google got something for nothing and the Plaintiffs want their money back.
But there’s more. If you look at item three in paragraph five, the Plaintiffs want the game to stay online: they seek “an injunction barring Defendants ‘from terminating the SPP gaming application as announced in September, 2011.” Not only do Plaintiffs want their money back, they also want to keep playing SuperPoke! Pets. Presumably they’ll turn around and buy more gold once the game’s back online.
It’s important to note that Plaintiffs’ first claim of relief sought is preventing Google from enforcing the Terms of Use of SPP. I’d be willing to wager there’s something in there that says: “This gold has no real world value and we can shut the game off whenever we want.”
You’d have to review the Complaint to see all of their causes of action to try and recoup their virtual-bucks for a better idea of how this is going to shake out.
Pinterest is essentially a well designed interface for Amazon wish lists. How do you think Jeff Bezos feels right now and how large of an offer do you think Amazon has made?
In 2011 Google acquired social games maker Slide for approximately $200 million. Only a few months later, as part of their 2011 spring cleaning, Google decided to shut down all but one of Slide’s existing games including SuperPoke! Pets. Player outrage was impressive following Google’s announcement, and today we learn that it was not empty: a class action lawsuit against Google has been filed.
The suit focuses on the matter of virtual currency which was purchased with the expectation that it’s value would hold. I Programmer quickly sums up the complaint:
Although the lead plaintiff,Christalee Abreu, says she spent more than a thousand dollars on virtual gold, the class action represents thousands of people across the who purchased gold and/or subscribed to a $4.95/month VIP subscription with the total “amount in controversy” exceeding $5,000,000 - a sum that is credible given that there were at least 7,000,000 users of the SPP site just before Slide sold out to Google.
Not versed in law, I cannot evaluate the claims Abreu makes but it is interesting to consider the long-term contracts that virtual currency might imply. When an app or service goes under is their an obligation to refund the currency? Should virtual currency be treated as bonds or debt? I imagine these products receive similar treatment to gift cards, but what happens if a Facebook currency catches on as a standard? At what point does the currency graduate from gift card to currency?