Rev2.org

As the world moves into the future and we along with it, technology continues to become a bigger and bigger part of our lives.  For many of us, technology is literally with us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  We carry our iPhones, iPods, smart phones, tablets; we have DVD, DVR, desktops, laptops, our cars are connected, our houses are filled with WiFi, and we RSVP our children’s play dates using Facebook apps…

Yet most of us know little about how all this technology works.  Let alone how to make it do stuff for us that might not have been what was intended.  In today’s world, learning how to hack can actually get us further in life than earning an MBA.

So why not learn to code?

It’s not nearly as difficult as people might think.  We seem to think of programming as some kind of complex mathematical thing that only pale-faced, geeky types can learn.  The reality is that only certain types of coding are that way.  Most of it, like the stuff used to make websites look cool, to make blogs do fun stuff, or make nifty little apps for your phone, isn’t that geeky.  You just need to know how it works and the basics of coding to do fun things.

Most programmers and developers actually learn to code on their own – for many, the programming classes they took in college were more like refresher courses.  A few really good coders I know actually tested through all of their programming classes because they already knew it.

If you want to learn to code this year, make a New Year’s resolution, then head over to Code Year and get started!  More than 20,000 people have signed up already and it’s totally free.  There’s nothing to lose!

Major porn companies have banded together to sue ICANN over the new adult top level domain (TLD) .XXX.  The suit is an anti-monopoly claim against the non-profit that oversees most of the well-known TLDs (com, net, org, etc).

The major companies behind the suit are Luxemburg-based Manwin and Digital Playground, which together own many of the Web’s most well-known porn hubs.  They contend that ICANN is price gouging on the .XXX domain and want an injunction to stop the TLD and require its re-opening with competition and “reasonable price constraints.”

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court of California on November 16 and accuses ICANN and its registry company ICM Registry of engaging in “monopolistic conduct, price gouging, and anti-competitive and unfair practices.”

This might seem frivolous, except that it’s very serious and could have long-lasting implications on the domain system as we know it.  The crux of the suit alleges that ICM (a for profit contracted by ICANN) used coercive tactics and promises of millions of dollars in fees if it were made the sole registrar of .XXX.

If Manwin and Digital Playground were to win this suit, it would fundamentally change a lot of how we use and interact with domain registrations and use.  Currently, there are a handful of TLD registrars in the world, each more or less operating regionally.  They pay ICANN a small fee for every domain registered through them and ICANN acts as the world’s “central hub” for domain registries.

When ICANN approved the dot XXX TLD earlier this year, a lot of buzz around its implementation was heard.  Early registrations were opened with companies paying many thousands of dollars in fees to secure their brands on the domain.  Including many who traditionally would not be associated with porn: like colleges and universities.

At $300 per registration, that’s not insignificant, considering that most have many names and variants to protect.  CraigAgranoff.xxx is one thing, but Craig-Agranoff.xxx, CraigAg.xxx, AgranoffCraig.xxx, Agranoff-Craig.xxx, and then several each for all of my owned properties (brands) could potentially ad up to tens of thousands in fees.  A university, for instance, might have their own name (and 3-4 variants), thier football team, their basketball team, their volleyball teams, their sports teams collectively, their various departments, and even famous backers or names of buildings on campus.

Securing these means securing your brand.  Not doing so could mean costly lawsuits later (either to fight misuse of it or to fight potential litigation for your not protecting someone from it).  Most businesses and apparently universities have opted to pay now instead of later.

But for the adult industry, that was not as clear cut.  ICM did not allow some of the domains to be sold in this relatively open pre-market, instead reserving them to auction to the highest bidder.  Despite the fact that the .com/net/etc equivalents may be clear brands owned by others.

These auctions are quite lucrative.  “Gay.XXX” auctioned for $500,000 and many others are going for $200,000 and up.

Another blow to ICM is their requirement that legal rights and claims against them be waived as a condition of registering with them.  This doesn’t look good for them in court.

ICANN should take this lawsuit seriously.  Not only does it have potential to change how domain registrations are made, but it could have long term ramifications for how new TLDs are introduced and the way that they’re handled.

We’ve all seen the courtroom dramas where the lawyer representing the side of good presents the critical evidence, out of the blue, and cinches the case for the client.  In those shows, convincing the jury always hinges on one crucial bit of evidence that is suddenly presented, at the very last moment, to swing the judgment.

In real life, of course, that rarely happens.  But trial attorneys do spend a lot of time setting up and presenting evidence to juries in order to convince them that their side of the story is correct.  This often takes hours of preparation – beyond just the finding of the evidence itself.

Well.. now there’s an app for that.

TrialPad is an iPad application that allows attorneys to present evidence of all kinds (video, audio, documentary, etc.) on one native app.  It can be sent through the court’s projector, televisions, etc. and without the need for a dedicated audio/visual tech that can be distracting for the jury.

In fact, in one trial, Attorney James Moncus, III won a $37 million case by using this app to present his evidence.  In that trial, Moncus had 911 phone recordings, receipts, documents from medical experts, video and more.  All of it was shown via this app and his iPad.

The app itself is relatively simple to use, though with anything this complex, there will be a learning curve.  It’s not steep, however.  Once you master the idea that you can be doing things on the screen that aren’t being shown on the monitors it’s attached to (such as bringing up the next doc and making highlights), setting up your evidence in sequence becomes easy.

It’s a very cool app with a very niche market of users who will no doubt find its price tag cheap compared to the time, money, and effort it can save.

GroupMe just celebrated its first year as a startup and now, as a birthday present, the company is getting a buyout from Skype.   Officially, the purchase price wasn’t disclosed, but $50 and $85 million have been reported as the “insider’s” number for the deal.

Skype itself is being purchased by Microsoft, but that deal hasn’t completed yet.  According to TechCrunch, the deal comes right after GroupMe closed another round of financing to the tune of $850,000.  Skype CEO Tony Bates, TC says, reports that he was in talks with GroupMe at about the same time Microsoft approached them about acquisition, so the two have been running in parallel.

Skype will likely keep GroupMe as a stand-alone brand, but integrate it with the Skype service.  The addition of the cell phone grouping for text messaging service might be a great addition to the instant message, video conferencing, etc. giant.

Naysayers, however, like Om Malik at GigaOm, don’t think it’s enough.  Why?  Because Skype is integrated with Facebook and will likely be purchased by Microsoft.  None of those companies offer interactive communication, only traditional back-and-forth amongst those who are already acquainted.

Google, on the other hand, has opened up a whole new field with their inclusion of Hangouts in Google+.  This allows masses of people to get together at the same time, so long as they’re loosely connected, and chat ad hoc.  Something Skype and Facebook aren’t capable of.

So why would Skype pay a reported $85M for GroupMe?  Well, the service is definitely unique and is not something anyone else is offering.  Mobile phones are the future of connecting and some believe that SMS messaging could take the place of email for many of our communiques.

Major newspapers like the New York Time and others have been struggling to figure out where they fit in today’s instant information society.  The old paradigm of printing news and delivering it on dead trees to people’s doorsteps is melting away and the once-giants in the industry are paddling upstream to try to preserve it.

The recent addition of a paywall to the paper’s website is proof that the management behind this news behemoth just can’t seem to understand how the Internet functions.  Many people, including myself, have stopped reading the NYT altogether and have barely missed it.  The sad truth is that many (often better, more timely) news outlets are out there and publishing online.

Some reporters at the Big Paper outlets, though, do seem to get it.  Recently, conflicts in places like Libya, disasters in Japan and Haiti, and others have shown that people with access to the Internet via their phones can do some amazing on-the-spot, real-time reporting.

The latest example is NYT reporter Brian Stelter, who was in Joplin, Missouri to witness the aftermath of a tornado touching down there.  He did it via Twitter, since he had no access to the Internet or the voice call system on his phone.  He did, however, have access to text messaging and used that to send messages to Twitter as well as post photos on his Tumblr account.

None of that happened officially through the NYT.

Of course, Twitter is no replacement for real news reporting, but this example shows that blogs, online-only news outlets, and more can produce reporting that rivals or even surpasses what is done at outlets like the NYT and their ilk.

Some old timers in the print industry have realized this and are moving away from on-the-spot news reporting and into commentary and other arenas where timeliness is no longer a factor.  The NYT, however, seems to have missed that memo and continues to struggle along as a paper-based dinosaur that just won’t acknowledge its own extinction.

One of the technologies and apps that is poised to really become disruptive in the mobile-meets-retail arena is Square.  This is a payment service that combines a small $10 card reader with an iPhone app that allows you to turn your iPhone into a point-of-sale machine.

Now, Apple is going to feature the startup’s technology in their stores.  After the huge coup they got when Steve Jobs showed it off in conjunction with the iPad 2, this is huge news and a gigantic marketing opportunity for the company.

The sale price for the little device is probably losing them money at $9.99 (minus Apple’s cut) and the app is free, so you have to ask where their income comes from.

It’s in the back-end.  Using the device goes through Square’s card processing service (similar to PayPal, but made for point of sale) at 2.75% a pop.  The company is already processing about $1 million a day, so that’s not too shabby.

Square was co-founded by Jack Dorsey of Twitter fame and has finished another round of funding ($27.5 million).  Between that, their huge income potential, and this new boost from Apple, the startup is definitely poised to go big time in short order.