Author: Ken McGuire

Well, he might not do it directly, but Microsoft – as part of their ever growing Live series – are launching a free service for parents allowing them control everything their child does online, from what they can see to who they can email, IM, chat to etc. Standing tall in the shadow of Netnanny and CyberPatrol or any other guardian software, Microsoft are planning to release it towards the end of this year as Windows Live pulls out of beta.

The company aims to simplify the process by allowing a parent, or administrator, to monitor every family member’s Web activities within Windows Live. The service is only available for certain versions of Windows XP Service Pack 2 and will be compatible with the upcoming Windows Vista operating system

Bill is already offering similar services on a subscriber basis through MSN but looks set to drop the asking price. Just out of interest, does anyone actually use any net monitoring software? It was never an issue with our house growing up, mind you, it wasn’t exactly the most available at the time in comparison to today’s market (the software that is). Interesting to see if people are still using it….

“She is 52 years old, married, grew up in the Kansas City suburbs and now lives in Virginia, in a new three-bedroom house…”

The ‘She’ in question is also one of 2,653 CIA employees who were found, by searching the internet. The Chicago Tribune broke the story, with all the details here via BBC. You gotta be impressed by what people can access by searching the web…!

I think exploring revenue streams behind a website or online service is always interesting, particularly in the startup stages of a development. There’s the likes of contextual advertising, affiliate advertising, premium content, ebooks…..

With ebooks in mind, 37Signals seem to be onto a winner with their latest book. They’ve just launched their latest electronic download at a princely sum of US$19. How many did they sell on the first day? A grand total of 1750 – thats only the first day.

Now people…. $19 x 1750 = $33,250 – thats a whole lot of cash for a book you’re publishing and releasing yourself.

Kottke.org takes a short, interesting look at it… I guess good content with a strong audience really pays off on the web!

If you were a spammer (i.e. one who sends out spam emails), would you pay to make sure they get delivered? If you knew that it could cost you between .25 and 1 cent to make sure your email filled with viagra and all the rest makes it to the inbox of a user, would you pay?

Not sure how this works out with end-user junk mail filters, but AOL is still pressing ahead with plans to charge, per email, for email delivery according to BBC.

AOL said the plan would reduce the amount of junk mail that people received because spammers were unlikely to pay the high fees required to get their messages to users.

Those that did not pay would have their e-mail treated as normal and risk it getting stuck in junk filters and marked as spam. Yahoo is also planning a similar service.

If the email is that important, there’s still no proof that the recipient ACTUALLY received it, or read it for that matter. Of course, if you’re a non-profit organistation then you won’t have to pay for the service. What I want to know is, would you genuinely pay for such a service? Whether you were a spam mailer or a regular email user. I can’t see it actually stamping out spam email, but is it worth going to such lengths? If you were determined to flood the internet with promises of certain extensions to your body and mind, would the thought of .25 cent per mail be enough to shut you down?

According to the BBC, the ISPA in the UK (Internet Service Providers Association) has awarded the UK’s EU Presidency the prestigious award of “Villian Of The Year” for its part in driving home the European data retention laws which are due to come into effect this year.

Under the ruling, ISPs and telecoms will have to store customers phone and internet data in order to help the fight against terrorism. Although the content of the data (calls, emails etc.) won’t be recorded, their records will be, which means a huge cost to service providers who have to store this type of data.

We’ve already seen all the hype surrounding the Bush administration in the US seeking search records from Google recently. Fair play to Google for taking a stand and refusing to hand over their records, but how long before people’s privacy online is blown wide open, especially with call and internet records now possibly being held for up to two years at a time?

When your business relies heavily on a decent broadband connection (by decent, I’m using Eircom’s 3mb business line, though the upstream isn’t huge), its a pure pain in the ass when you have to spend the first part of your morning (about 40 minutes) waiting on hold before speaking to someone.

Actually, I never got to speak to anyone, it just kept going on and on. All I needed to know was if there was a line fault in the area. You contact an ISP I used to work for on tech support and the IVR system kicks in telling you theres a fault in your area to save you waiting on hold and yesterday I was informed they even send you text messages and keep you updated during the day!

So the broadband went.

We waited.

And waited.

By lunchtime I had to go home to send off print orders for jobs, check the mail and return to the office. Nothing by the afternoon.

So I resorted to dialup (56k – we pulled out the dual ISDN back in the summer to make way for BB) – borrowed a laptop (as I now refuse to install modems into any machines I build), found a length of spare phone cable I had and dialed in. 15 minutes to check my email, download a 250kb PDF and return to my office. The killer was, there was an error in the PDF so I had to ring to arrange another one to be sent as waiting on mail was going to be a joke – and fair play, they sent another one immediately, so I waited a further ten minutes (seen as the pages were cached it was running a little quicker) and got my updated PDF – which I then faxed away…. who the hell sends a fax any more?

Bottom line is, I have no idea how any Irish business could rely on dialup for their internet access and not make the move over to broadband. That and I can’t fathom the fact that one of the country’s leading ISP has to take more than 40 minutes to answer a tech support call to tell me whether or not it can be fixed or when the service goes live. Especially when every 3 minutes they tell you how important your call is!

Damn John for kicking my ass in Call of Duty for the last hour of the day!