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Here’s a very interest abstract from Hal Varian’s (Economist-in-Residence at Google) white paper on 14 business models that allow content creators to make money even if the content is distributed free due to the changing economics of content, technologies shaping market forces & changing copyright laws.
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HAL VARIAN: 14 FREE BUSINESS MODELS
I had a great interview today with Google's economist-in-residence Hal Varian on the economics of free. He pointed me to a 2004 paper he wrote on the changing economics of content and copyright in a digital world. It includes 14 business models that allow content creators to make money even if they cannot stop the content from being distributed for free. Here they are:
"Most information is born digital and that digital information is typically very easy to copy and distribute, it is conceivable that copyright laws may become almost impossible to enforce. Are there ways for sellers to support themselves in such an environment? It is worth considering some of the options. Here is a brief list of business models that might work in a world without effective copyright.
Make original cheaper than copy. This is basically the limit pricing model described earlier. If there is a transaction cost for a copy-a direct cost of copying, an inconvenience cost, or the copy is inferior to the original in some way-then the seller can set the price low enough that it is not attractive to copy.
Make copy more expensive than original. The "cost of copying" is partially under the control of the seller, who could use a "digital rights management system," some anticopying technology, or threats of legal action which would increase the cost of copying and, therefore, increase the price that it could charge for its product.
Sell physical complements. When you buy a physical CD you get liner notes, photos, and so on. Perhaps you could get a poster, a membership in a fan club, a lottery ticket, a free T-shirt, as well. These items might not be available to someone who simply downloaded an illicit copy of a song.
Sell information complements. One can give away the product (e.g., Red Hat Linux) and sell support contracts. One can give away a cheap, low-powered version of some software and sell a high-powered version.
Subscriptions. In this case, consumers purchases the information as a bundle over time, with the motivation presumably being convenience and perhaps timeliness of the information delivery. Even if all back issues are (eventually) posted online, the value of timely availability of current issues is sufficient to support production costs.
Sell personalized version. One can sell a highly personalized version of a product so that copies made available to others would not be valuable. Imagine, for example, a personalized newspaper with only the items that you would wish to read. Those with different tastes may not find such a newspaper attractive. Selling works with digital fingerprints (encoding the identity of the purchaser) is an extreme form of this. (Playboy has allegedly put digital fingerprints in online images.)
Advertise yourself. A downloaded song can be an advertisement for a personal appearance. Similarly, an online textbook (particularly if it is inconvenient to use online) can be an advertisement for a physical copy. There are many examples of materials that are freely published on the Internet that are also available in various physical forms for a fee, such as US Government publications (e.g., The 9/11 Commission Report, or the National Academy of Sciences reports.
Advertise other things. Broadcast TV and radio give away content in order to sell advertisements. Similarly, most magazines and newspapers use the per copy price to cover printing and distribution, while editorial costs are covered by advertising. Advertising is particularly valuable when it is closely tied to information about prospective buyers, so personalization can be quite important. In an extreme form, the advertisement can be completely integrated into the content via product placement.
Monitoring. ASCAP monitors the playing of music in public places, collects a flat fee, which it then divvies up among its members. The shares are determined by a statistical algorithm. The Copyright Clearance Center uses a similar system for photocopying-a flat fee based on an initial period of statistical monitoring.
Site licenses. An organization can pay for all of its members to have preferred access to some particular kinds of content. University site licenses to JSTOR content, Elsevier content, or Microsoft software are examples. This is particularly relevant when there are strong network effects from adopting a common standard, such as in the Microsoft example.
Media tax. This a tax on some physical good that is complementary to the information product (i.e., audio tape, video tape, CDs, TVs, hard drives, etc.) The proceeds from this tax are used to compensate producers of content. For example, the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 imposes a media tax of 3 percent of the tape price.
Ransom. Allow potential readers to bid for content. If the sum of the bids is sufficiently high, the information content is provided. Various mechanisms for provision of public goods could be used, such as the celebrated Vickrey-Clarke-Groves mechanism. This could be used in conjunction with the subscription model. For example, Stephen King offered installments of his book The Plant on his web site. At one point he indicated he would continue positing installments if the number of payments received divided by the number of downloads from his site exceeded 75.6 percent. His experiment did not succeed, perhaps due to the poorly chosen incentive scheme.
Pure public provision. Artists and other creators of intellectual property are paid by the state, financed out of general revenues. This is not so different from public universities where research and publication is considered integral to the job.
Prizes, awards and commissions. Wealthy individuals, businesses or countries could commission works. The patronage system achieved some notable results in Europe for several centuries. The National Science Foundation or the National Endowment for the Humanities are examples of modern day state agencies that fund creative works using prizelike systems."
Source: http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2008/09/hal-varian-14-f.html
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Xpaper eases digitizing of paper documents
Review: Xpaper eases digitizing of paper documents
By DIRK LAMMERS, Associated Press Writer
Promises of the paperless office have been circulating ever since the first IBM clones started showing up on desks in the early 1980s. Yet we're still tied to printed documents and there's no sign that's going to change.
With that in mind, the Xpaper PDF digital writing system from Talario Inc. ($400 for use with Windows XP, $450 for Vista) is designed to improve a computer's relationship with the paper document.
Here's how it works.
Typically, real-estate agents, salespeople, contractors, doctors or lawyers might sign a paper document and then scan it to put a digital version in a computer. That is slow. With the Xpaper system, you can simply print out a document and use the digital pen to sign the sheet. When you dock the pen with a computer, the image of the signature joins the document, which is ready to be saved, faxed or e-mailed to anyone needing a copy.
When Xpaper first debuted more than two years ago it had a limitation found in other digital pens: It required specially encoded paper. Having to keep track of the sheets' code numbers and load them properly into a printer tray proved cumbersome. This new, more efficient version allows users to produce encoded copies of any document with their own printers and scribble in a signature, initials or other handwritten notes using an included Logitech pen that's part digital, part ballpoint.
Each page printed as an Xpaper consists of a precisely printed pattern of dots that act like a GPS coordinate system. No two pages are alike, so the electronic pen's sensor instantly recognizes which page it's writing on and its exact location on that page.
The software package includes 150 digital ink credits; you're docked one credit for each Xpaper page that's written on and loaded into a computer. Additional digital ink credits, which pay for the encoding technology that Talario licenses from Swedish company Anoto, can be bought online for 10 cents per page. A credit is deducted only after a document is written on and the pen is docked, so a 12-page contract could be printed with the Xpaper pattern but only the signed page would cost a dime.
Setup involves some CD software installation and plugging the pen's docking cradle into the computer's USB port, which begins charging the device. (Talario recommends a Bluetooth wireless version for Vista because of issues with drivers, the programs that connect devices to an operating system.)
When I first looked at this product in 2006, I was amazed at how well it worked and thought it could transform paper-intensive offices in real estate, financial services, medicine and law firms. Now that Talario has eliminated the need for loading special paper, more offices should give this innovative product a try.
___
On the Net:
http://www.talario.com/
Source: http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20081001/ap_on_hi_te/tec_tech_test_xpaper
By DIRK LAMMERS, Associated Press Writer
Promises of the paperless office have been circulating ever since the first IBM clones started showing up on desks in the early 1980s. Yet we're still tied to printed documents and there's no sign that's going to change.
With that in mind, the Xpaper PDF digital writing system from Talario Inc. ($400 for use with Windows XP, $450 for Vista) is designed to improve a computer's relationship with the paper document.
Here's how it works.
Typically, real-estate agents, salespeople, contractors, doctors or lawyers might sign a paper document and then scan it to put a digital version in a computer. That is slow. With the Xpaper system, you can simply print out a document and use the digital pen to sign the sheet. When you dock the pen with a computer, the image of the signature joins the document, which is ready to be saved, faxed or e-mailed to anyone needing a copy.
When Xpaper first debuted more than two years ago it had a limitation found in other digital pens: It required specially encoded paper. Having to keep track of the sheets' code numbers and load them properly into a printer tray proved cumbersome. This new, more efficient version allows users to produce encoded copies of any document with their own printers and scribble in a signature, initials or other handwritten notes using an included Logitech pen that's part digital, part ballpoint.
Each page printed as an Xpaper consists of a precisely printed pattern of dots that act like a GPS coordinate system. No two pages are alike, so the electronic pen's sensor instantly recognizes which page it's writing on and its exact location on that page.
The software package includes 150 digital ink credits; you're docked one credit for each Xpaper page that's written on and loaded into a computer. Additional digital ink credits, which pay for the encoding technology that Talario licenses from Swedish company Anoto, can be bought online for 10 cents per page. A credit is deducted only after a document is written on and the pen is docked, so a 12-page contract could be printed with the Xpaper pattern but only the signed page would cost a dime.
Setup involves some CD software installation and plugging the pen's docking cradle into the computer's USB port, which begins charging the device. (Talario recommends a Bluetooth wireless version for Vista because of issues with drivers, the programs that connect devices to an operating system.)
When I first looked at this product in 2006, I was amazed at how well it worked and thought it could transform paper-intensive offices in real estate, financial services, medicine and law firms. Now that Talario has eliminated the need for loading special paper, more offices should give this innovative product a try.
___
On the Net:
http://www.talario.com/
Source: http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20081001/ap_on_hi_te/tec_tech_test_xpaper
Virtualization leads Gartner's top 10 strategic technologies for 2009
Virtualization leads Gartner's top 10 strategic technologies for 2009
List ranks virtualization as No. 1 because of its capability to disrupt the data center market
Patrick Thibodeau
October 14, 2008 (Computerworld) ORLANDO -- Gartner Inc. has ranked virtualization as the No. 1 strategic technology for next year, not for its "tremendously obvious" ability to virtualize servers, but for its increasing capability to virtualize just about everything else in a data center.
Much of what's on this annual list, released at the Gartner Symposium ITxpo here, is familiar from last year. But Gartner has tweaked the rankings as it looked at the progress of these technologies, and weighed its client and research feedback. The technologies on the list have the "potential to be disruptive to your environment or market in some way," said Gartner analyst David Cearley.
Here's Gartner's list for 2009:
1. Virtualization. (Ranked No. 5 last year.) In forecasting the impact of the economy on IT spending, Gartner put virtualization near the top of must-have technologies. But to make the strategic technology list, it had to have other characteristics as well, namely a Swiss Army Knife-like capability to be applied beyond servers.
Gartner analyst Carl Claunch said that in storage, for instance, virtualization allows users to "to combine different kinds and generations of storage technology." That gives them the freedom to mix and match storage technologies based on competitive bids, he said.
2. Cloud computing. (New to the list.) If there was a technology hype list, cloud computing would have been the top choice, said Cearley. He got some audience chuckles with this line: "You can't swing a dead cat without hitting somebody that's talking about cloud computing these days."
But Gartner sees cloud computing as having a massive game-changing role, not only as the platform for software as a service, but as a computing and storage infrastructure provider, as well as a platform for information and business processes.
3. Computing fabrics. (No. 8 last year.) Server technology is evolving to a point where you buy the physical resource you need, whether that is memory, I/O or processor, and fashion them together to create resource pools. A computing fabric "combines those [resources] as you need them," said Claunch. IT shops will, potentially, be able to dispense with their separate pools of small, medium and large servers under this model. Blade servers have some of this capability -- the ability to move memory and processor capability -- but it's limited to what's inside the chassis, he said.
4. Web-oriented architecture. (New but similar to "the Web platform" -- No. 7 last year.) Gartner talked last year about how the Web will be the model for services delivery. This year, it discussed in terms of an architectural approach, how Web models will influence service-oriented architectures. The architecture, as the name implies, uses Web standards, identifiers, formats and protocols.
5. Enterprise mashups. (No. 6 last year.) Mashups, a fun word, are becoming a serious enterprise tool, allowing users to use public APIs to combine various services and capabilities quickly. The content aggregation tools give business users the flexibility to combine data inside and outside the enterprise.
6. Specialized systems. (New to the list.) A Cisco router is an obvious example, but there are specialized appliances for Java, data warehousing and other processes. It's an approach that could lead to some cost savings, and "could be wide open" as an emerging trend, said Claunch.
7. Social software and social networking. (No. 10 last year.) The tools offer "the ability to work across the organization in dynamic fashion," said Claunch.
8. Unified communications. (No. 2 last year.) Gartner said that over the next five year, "the number of different communications vendors companies may be reduced by at least 50%," thanks to unified communications.
9. Business intelligence. (New.) This is hardly new to enterprises, but increases in computing power is giving companies the means to expand business intelligence capabilities, such as applying BI analytics directly into business processes.
10. Green IT. (No. 1 last year.) Already a strategic technology that will not melt away, Green IT has not diminished in importance. For IT, green is everything, and that includes anything that can help cut the energy bill and reduce fuel use.
One attendee, John Layok, vice president of applications for an insurance company he asked to not be named, said all 10 technologies in Gartner's list were "right on," especially business intelligence. It's both hard work and an easy concept, and moving analytics into a business process is "exactly where we need to go."
Gartner's 2008 list
1. Green IT2. Unified communications3. Business process management4. Metadata management5. Virtualization6. Mashups7. The Web platform8. Computing fabric 9. Real World Web10. Social software
Source: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=Knowledge+Center&articleId=9117182&taxonomyId=1&pageNumber=1
List ranks virtualization as No. 1 because of its capability to disrupt the data center market
Patrick Thibodeau
October 14, 2008 (Computerworld) ORLANDO -- Gartner Inc. has ranked virtualization as the No. 1 strategic technology for next year, not for its "tremendously obvious" ability to virtualize servers, but for its increasing capability to virtualize just about everything else in a data center.
Much of what's on this annual list, released at the Gartner Symposium ITxpo here, is familiar from last year. But Gartner has tweaked the rankings as it looked at the progress of these technologies, and weighed its client and research feedback. The technologies on the list have the "potential to be disruptive to your environment or market in some way," said Gartner analyst David Cearley.
Here's Gartner's list for 2009:
1. Virtualization. (Ranked No. 5 last year.) In forecasting the impact of the economy on IT spending, Gartner put virtualization near the top of must-have technologies. But to make the strategic technology list, it had to have other characteristics as well, namely a Swiss Army Knife-like capability to be applied beyond servers.
Gartner analyst Carl Claunch said that in storage, for instance, virtualization allows users to "to combine different kinds and generations of storage technology." That gives them the freedom to mix and match storage technologies based on competitive bids, he said.
2. Cloud computing. (New to the list.) If there was a technology hype list, cloud computing would have been the top choice, said Cearley. He got some audience chuckles with this line: "You can't swing a dead cat without hitting somebody that's talking about cloud computing these days."
But Gartner sees cloud computing as having a massive game-changing role, not only as the platform for software as a service, but as a computing and storage infrastructure provider, as well as a platform for information and business processes.
3. Computing fabrics. (No. 8 last year.) Server technology is evolving to a point where you buy the physical resource you need, whether that is memory, I/O or processor, and fashion them together to create resource pools. A computing fabric "combines those [resources] as you need them," said Claunch. IT shops will, potentially, be able to dispense with their separate pools of small, medium and large servers under this model. Blade servers have some of this capability -- the ability to move memory and processor capability -- but it's limited to what's inside the chassis, he said.
4. Web-oriented architecture. (New but similar to "the Web platform" -- No. 7 last year.) Gartner talked last year about how the Web will be the model for services delivery. This year, it discussed in terms of an architectural approach, how Web models will influence service-oriented architectures. The architecture, as the name implies, uses Web standards, identifiers, formats and protocols.
5. Enterprise mashups. (No. 6 last year.) Mashups, a fun word, are becoming a serious enterprise tool, allowing users to use public APIs to combine various services and capabilities quickly. The content aggregation tools give business users the flexibility to combine data inside and outside the enterprise.
6. Specialized systems. (New to the list.) A Cisco router is an obvious example, but there are specialized appliances for Java, data warehousing and other processes. It's an approach that could lead to some cost savings, and "could be wide open" as an emerging trend, said Claunch.
7. Social software and social networking. (No. 10 last year.) The tools offer "the ability to work across the organization in dynamic fashion," said Claunch.
8. Unified communications. (No. 2 last year.) Gartner said that over the next five year, "the number of different communications vendors companies may be reduced by at least 50%," thanks to unified communications.
9. Business intelligence. (New.) This is hardly new to enterprises, but increases in computing power is giving companies the means to expand business intelligence capabilities, such as applying BI analytics directly into business processes.
10. Green IT. (No. 1 last year.) Already a strategic technology that will not melt away, Green IT has not diminished in importance. For IT, green is everything, and that includes anything that can help cut the energy bill and reduce fuel use.
One attendee, John Layok, vice president of applications for an insurance company he asked to not be named, said all 10 technologies in Gartner's list were "right on," especially business intelligence. It's both hard work and an easy concept, and moving analytics into a business process is "exactly where we need to go."
Gartner's 2008 list
1. Green IT2. Unified communications3. Business process management4. Metadata management5. Virtualization6. Mashups7. The Web platform8. Computing fabric 9. Real World Web10. Social software
Source: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=Knowledge+Center&articleId=9117182&taxonomyId=1&pageNumber=1
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