I don’t think many people would be surprised if they are…

It appeared that they weren’t when I wrote about it last week. But this thread at Google finance suggests differently.

Have little faith in the stories that show up on stock discussion boards. Either way, I’ll keep watching and let you know if I was wrong about Ebay’s leadership.

Disclosure: I do not own Ebay stock. I have no financial interest in the company.

[tags]Ebay, Boycott, Censorship[/tags]

Loosely edited notes from SanFran MusicTech Summit 2008.

Labels often seed P2P networks with “leaked” material because they view filesharers as potential promotional partners. Panelist Dave Kostiner says that he’s had first hand experience with this; as a member of Creeper Lagoon and as an attorney. He couldn’t measure if the tactic was a success or failure.

The current copyright system is a mess.

When does exposure hurt revenue? No one knows. It helps to a point and it’s an art to identify the signs of when overexposure becomes a negative factor. Streaming may hurt album sales - very much depends on context, where the artist is, what the artist is doing.

Ted Cohen says the $0.99 price barrier is a joke, not clear why he thinks so, maybe due to a perceived negative impact on “discovery”. Discovery isn’t coming from iTunes as much as from the music discovery engines: imeem, last.fm, pandora, rhapsody, and of course myspace.

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Last Monday I woke up to a large Philharmonic coffee and a high five sandwich from my man Joey at Philz. Took BART to 16th and caught the Fillmore MUNI north, sitting behind a morning girl who danced and sang quietly over the distant tinny sound of her headphones. She was the present. I was on my way to learn about the future… at the SanFran MusicTech Summit.

Made it to Hotel Kabuki and settled in for a day of panel discussions and crackberry thumb mashing. The mashing resulted in a body of notes, presented for your review, nothing fancy… sharing the caffeinated thoughts that arose while surrounded by a crowd of interesting, intelligent people talking about the music business.

Thanks to Brian Zisk and Shoshana Zisk and Cassie Phillipps for producing a great event.

SanFran MusicTech Summit Session Notes:

* Artists, Copyrights, Technology

* Conversation with Claudio Prado

* Streaming: The Future of Radio

* The Paradise of Infinite Storage

* Promoting Music in the New Environment

[tags]sfmusictech[/tags]

Dear Newimproved Plan Resonate Reader,

Experiencing minor technical difficulties from upgrading Wordpress. Stop.

Dear Wordpress PR Minions and Blog Scraper Bots,

Thank you for your wonderful new release including the fabulous fix on xmlrpc.php. I’ve been using wordpress for some time and I can honestly say I’ve never enjoyed xmlrpc.php more.

Unfortunately, during the upgrade process, one of your scripts took the opportunity to revisit the careful formatting used in all of my previous posts. We’ve got a small problem.

This description might not be technically accurate - the problem looks as though the visual post editing engine is designed to replace some special characters with their visual counterparts, by default. As a result, my blockquotes are now all broken.

The database now serves all my previous “<blockquote>”s as “<blockquote>”s.

The < and > symbols have been replaced with their visual counterparts.

Presumably there are some cases where this character replacement during upgrade trick would be great. In my case it’s a real drag… I depend on the handy blockquote feature to puff up all my posts. The solution appears to be to go back through each post, enter code view mode, and replace all instances of < & >!

If you could please forward this message to a volunteer tech support person - whomever is tasked with making my free software fun and blockquote friendly - that would be convenient. I can be reached via the email.

Thanks for your help.

Warm regards,

Jeffrey Osborne

UPDATE: Forgot that I’d made a backup. Theoretically I should be able to import all my old posts with the proper html. Will try it sometime soon and report… Nope, giving up on importing the posts and going through each post manually. Fun… Not too much work. The only negatively affected posts were ones written since a certain date. I’m guessing that was the date of the previous upgrade to 2.3.

[tags]Wordpress 2.3.3[/tags]

Good thoughts in a recent post by Victor Lombardi:

“I’m definitely guilty of what the skeptics of play call “play ethos,” the reflexive, unexamined belief that play is an unmitigated good with a crucial, though vaguely defined, evolutionary function.“

Victor’s post builds around ideas from Robin Marantz Henig’s recent NYT essay.

Unfortunately we can’t appeal to the intrinsic, experiential goodness of playing. We’re forced to intellectualize it for the supposed benefit of those who can’t feel it and the result is perhaps like talking about music or writing about painting.

Sorry if this reads like some kind of pretentious hack at Plato’s Ideal. What I’m trying to get over is that although we can use language and discussion to share perspective and transmit knowledge, ultimately there are defining aspects of certain things that only exist as they’re experienced. Such things defy description - they laugh in the face of academic dissection.

The utility of play might be one of those things.

[tags]Victor Lombardi, Robin Marantz Henig, Play[/tags]

EBay deserves credit for not shutting down this pro-boycott thread in their own forum. EBay is doing the right thing by allowing the thread to stay alive. It must be frustrating for insiders to watch.

Congratulations eBay for allowing the community to continue using that thread. The decision to support dissenting opinion reflects well on the confidence, values and vision of your leadership team.

One excerpt from the 234+ page pro-boycott discussion thread:

“Even as I sit here looking at my unsold items, I’m still kind of happy I’m contributing to the boycott. Even if it’s only in a small way. While they might not be as popular as eBay I’ve found a lot great sites. The one I’m moving my listings to right now let me import my ebay feedback score to their site so that I don’t lose my good ratings! They even transfered all of my unsold item listings from eBay over to their site!”

Things are looking up for eBay’s competitors, meanwhile eBay share price is approaching a three year low. The boycott could easily lead to multiple compression, if investors decide to reassess eBay’s 112.33 P/E ratio based on a forward P/E ratio of 27.37.

Question: Why the discrepancy between yahoo finance and google finance’s data for eBay’s P/E ratio? Doesn’t their data come from the same source?

Today is a big day for our friends at the EFF. Please learn if there’s anything you can do to help.

Some of the more innovative and free things you can do:

1.) Use goodsearch. Before you search, make a selection in the “who do you goodsearch for” field. Select Electronic Frontier Foundation. That creates a file on your computer that will remember your choice. From then on every goodsearch you make will raise funds for the EFF.

2.) Get married. Find a special (preferably single) friend and plan a wedding party. Register with the I Do Foundation. Convince all your family and friends to donate to EFF via the I Do Foundation. (I definitely don’t understand this one but the EFF people do so what the hell.) Alternately, it seems like you could skip the whole wedding concept and announce to your friends and family that it would make you happy if they donate to the EFF directly.

3.) Sell your crap on eBay and direct the proceeds to EFF with the help of MissionFish. You know you have too much crap. EFF is registered with MissionFish. This means you can select EFF to receive any percentage of the proceeds from your sale. This might make it more convenient for you to donate to EFF. Again, you might stick with Craigslist and donate directly to EFF, OR keep your crap and donate directly to EFF. Any one of those options seems viable.

4.) Blog about the EFF… ha! It won’t accomplish anything but you’re a blogger so you’re plenty used to that.

[tags]EFF, Goodsearch, I Do Foundation, MissionFish[/tags]

In 1977, Amory Lovins published Soft Energy Paths, in which he wrote:

“Some analysts still predict economic calamity if the United States does not continue to consume twice the combined energy total for Africa, the rest of North and South America, and Asia except Japan. But what have more careful studies taught us about the scope for doing better with the energy we have? Since we can’t keep the bathtub filled because the hot water keeps running out, do we really (as Malcolm MacEwen asks) need a bigger water heater, or could we do better with a cheap, low technology plug?”

McKinsey Global Institute has released a study on reducing greenhouse gas emissions in which they pay particular attention to the concept of “energy productivity”. Richard Stuebi at Cleantech Blog has shared some thoughts on the issue.

It’s curious and a little obvious to see these ideas finally catching on. Lovins and many other policy experts at the time were at least 30 years ahead of the policy curve. It’s a clear illustration of how even in today’s world of technocratic experts, science and economics can take several decades (or more) to influence political will.

[tags]Amory Lovins, Soft Energy Paths, Energy Productivity, McKinsey Global Institute[/tags]

The consumers have new cause for concern; prospective tv outages on the horizon as broadcasters proceed with their campaign of planned obsolescence. Government coupons are coming, but critics complain those $40 coupons might be too little too late or too much too soon or just right but not right for quite long enough.

As Dibya Sarkar reports, if the consumers aren’t properly prepared, millions of them could find themselves dangerously fixated by commercial-and-content-free programming:

“If consumers don’t get a converter box when the country’s broadcasters complete the digital transition Feb. 18, 2009, they may wind up staring at a blank screen.”

I hate to sound cynical, but I can’t imagine how consumers will avoid this potential programming disaster without immediate and prolonged government intervention. Kidding.

MSFT: Here’s an offer you can’t refuse.

FLICKR: Wait! B-b-b-but, wait! What!?

YHOO: Hmm… Well no, actually we do refuse.

MSFT: Unfortunate.

MSFT: Then we fight! For the future!!

YHOO: (This could get ugly - you guys better go home)

SFGATE: MSFT is hinting at something.

SEATTLE-PI: YHOO appears modest, coy, desperate, isolated, etc.

YHOO: Hey, a new message in myspace.

LOEWS: Ballmer, you lack financial acumen.

FOREMSKI: YHOO, you lack ethical stature.

GATES: We’re too cool to haggle. Original offer stands.

MSFT: X-box Press Release 1… X-Box Press Release 2… X-Box Press Release 3…

GOOG: Huh. Weird. Yeah, so me and my buddies are sending robots to the moon.

Stay tuned!