Revenue Sharing + File Swapping + New Artists + DRM = Weed

I first spotted Weed a long time ago when a former collegaue and I were looking into starting a business in the digital music arena. Although we ultimately decided to follow other pursuits, Weed is very similar to the concept that we had been toying with.

Basically, Weed allows an artist to sell their music online, protected by DRM (Digital Rights Management), via a p2p like interface. The distinction is that after being allowed to listen to a downloaded song three times, the user must pay for the song. The interesting catch is that once they have bought the mp3, they may in turn be a distributor for the song and collect some of the revenues from the person who downloads it from them for purchase.

Althoguh this service is mostly targeted at up and coming musicians, I think that it could conceivably be a business model applicable to a larger pool of artists. Keep up the good work and good luck!

Snap Search

Snap is a new search service that has come out of Bill Gross' Idealab. The interesting part of the service is the transparency of the company revenues and cost. They seem to be picking up steam in terms of number of queries, but the daily revenues seem to be unable to consistently break the $100 mark. It will be interesting to see how this changes over time.

Findory

Findory is a pretty cool news service which tracks the news articles you click on and updates the ones shown based on your preferences. I have only tried it a little, but it seems to already be pointing me in the direction of some relevant articles. Check it out.

New therapy improves breast cancer treatment

An article on MSNBC caught my attention because of the interesting application of particle physics on breakthrough medicine.

My brother works with particle accelerators (previously at CERN and now at FERMI lab) and we have frequently discussed the value of pure science vs. applied science. His research is focused on the search for the Higgs particle using particle accelerators and we occassionaly discuss the cost and benefis of pure science research.

I am glad to see that we are seeing viable applications that have been derived from what has traditionally been pure science research. Hopefully this will cause more money to be pumped into this type of research for additional benefits in the future.

BuzzMachine... by Jeff Jarvis

Jeff Jarvis slams the FCC for slamming fox with a huge fine due to the complaints of... three people. Read more at BuzzMachine: Jeff writes, "It's like a scene out of an old French Foreign Legion movie in which the tiny band of soldiers put helmets on sticks over the wall of the fort to make the stupid enemy think that they are facing not a handful but hundreds. Well, the FCC is that stupid enemy -- and so are we. We swallow the notion that the 'moral values' army huge and is winning elections and ruling America and demanding radical change in our own culture. Wake up: It's three people with empty helmets sticking up over the wall thanks to email and Xerox."

Skype Stats

Kevin Werbach points to some great stats regarding the use of Skype. It's amazing to think that a simple piece of software has helped to provide almost 2.4 billion minutes of voice time. Although I joined Skype this past summer, I finally had a chance to try it this past weekend when a few of my friends decided to give it a shot. Read more of the stats here.

Blumberg: Gmail - I Don't Get It, Part II

Great post from Matt Blumberg over at OnlyOnce related to the data his company is seeing related to email switching and the relevance of Gmail. According to the numbers, the numbers of people switching to Gmail is on the rise, but is still not nearly the number of rivals hotmail and yahoo, and perhaps most importantly, the number of people who stick with Gmail is lower than many had predicted. Matt surmises that this points to people trying out Gmail to see what all the buzz is about, but not necessarily sticking with it for the long hall. Worth a read.

How close will this election be?

No doubt that any reader of this will see it after the elections are complete. Despite this, I thought the dynamic map available through Electoral-Vote.com tells the story best. It is a day by day estimate of the distribution of the electoral votes. As you will see, the lead changes many times during the course of the campaign and really brings home the point that the winner of the election is incredibly challenging to predict. Check out the 2004 Electoral Vote Animation.

How close will this election be?

No doubt that any reader of this will see it after the elections are complete. Despite this, I thought the dynamic map available through Electoral-Vote.com tells the story best. It is a day by day estimate of the distribution of the electoral votes. As you will see, the lead changes many times during the course of the campaign and really brings home the point that the winner of the election is incredibly challenging to predict. Check out the 2004 Electoral Vote Animation.