Google Porn?

Should the RMX allow porn? Check out Pornotube too. Seems like the time has come.

Google Porn?

People watching Google Video closely noticed a change this week in the upload area – the restrictions on uploading “pornographic or obscene” material is now just a restriction on “obscene” material. They’ve also added a “mature and adult” category to the genres and removed (I believe) a box on the initial uploading page that must be checked where the uploader certifies that the “video is not pornographic or obscene material”.

This may or may not mean Google is allowing, or preparing to allow, porn. Videos containing nudity are clearly available on the site, and many were uploaded months ago (for example, is this porn?). But nothing hardcore seems to be on the site.

Also, the box requiring uploaders to certify that content is not pornographic is still in certain areas, such as the “edit video” area of the site. And the terms and conditions still prohibit pornographic material.

See our profile of Pornotube, a porn specific YouTube competitor, as well.

(Via TechCrunch.)

The Coming Open Ad Market

Fred Wilson covers RMX Direct launch in “A VC”. He’s not certain that networks will jump on board, but I think he misses the fact that Right Media already has 50 networks in 5 continents using their technology. The big question is: which of the Big 4 networks (ValueClick, Advertising.com, YPN, AdSense) participate, and which try to attack? Sounds like Tribal is of the “attack” mindset based on the comments on the TechCrunch piece, but since they’re not Big 4, it really doesn’t matter.

The Coming Open Ad Market

I believe that ad networks are going to dominate online advertsing in the long run and posted my thoughts on why I think this a couple months ago. If you take those thoughts to the next level, then a system to optimize ad networks for the publisher is the next logical step.

We will see if RMX Direct gets traction. There are some issues they will have to solve. First, is it simple to deploy? I’ll let you know the answer to that shortly. Second, will third party ad networks agree to work with them? There is some discussion about that subject in the comments to the techcrunch post. And third, and most importantly, will RMX Direct filter out spam, viruses, and unattractive ads from my blog. They have something called MediaGuard which purports to do this. If it works well, they have solved a big issue with an open ad marketplace.

(Via A VC.)

RMX Direct: alternative ad networks battle for your blog

RMX Direct hits TechCrunch…

RMX Direct: alternative ad networks battle for your blog

New York based RightMedia has launched a beta version of a new advertising system that lets website publishers participate in multiple ad networks and automatically display ads from whichever network will pay the highest price per impression for their ad space in real time bidding. The service, called RMX Direct, also has a filtering system to prevent malware distribution through ads and enforces publisher criteria.

(Via TechCrunch.)

DSL vs Cable Modem

Any conclusive preference here? I have cable now and it goes down about 2-3 times a month. Grrr. DSL seems to be about the same price – more reliable?

Israel Seeks Hint of Victory – New York Times

Anybody with a history background know of cases where an organized state has successfully dealt with terrorism without a massive purge, war, or other incredibly non-ideal phase? Seems like the US and Israel are both mired in awful situations, much as Britain, Spain, Phillipines, and so many other countries have been.

Is the concept of a nation-state obsolete?

Israel Seeks Hint of Victory – New York Times

(Via NYT.)

Linking people to blogs

I belong to a number of Princeton alumni email lists. Which is all fine and well, except, it’s kind of hard to get any detail about people. So I was thinking, why don’t people just link to their blogs? But the whole signature thing is awkward.

Wouldn’t it make sense to have a centralized index of blogs by email address? Then we could write an Outlook plugin to put an icon by the sender’s name to go to their blog. Not rocket science, and would be quite nice. Does it exist?

Information central

At first I read this and thought… that’s crazy.

But then i thought about it and realized that I do click on Wikipedia links on search results when I see them. I trust the source.

So why not build a new plugin for my Firefox search box that first searches Wikipedia, then a few other trusted sites… then asks Google if it can’t find anything? It’s not a bad idea.

Information central

And could it be that Wikipedia will end up being Google’s most formidable competitor? After all, if Google simply points you to Wikipedia, why bother with the middleman?

(Via Rough Type: Nicholas Carr’s Blog.)

PostBubble – The importance of management

Nice article about some of the intangibles of hiring management. As we expand the executive team at Right Media, these are as important as specific skills and capabilities.

The importance of management

There is certainly a lot to talk about when it comes to what a good management team looks like, what it brings to a company, and why it’s critical to success however here are a few key fundamentals that management brings which can help sink or float companies…

(Via PostBubble.)

Happy crashing

I think it was better when people stuck to cow tipping. I know, that’s inhumane, but I’m not a cow.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Frenchmen arrested for bringing ‘happy crashing’ to Spanish roadsIn a variant of “happy slapping” – when people beat someone up and capture what they are doing on phone cameras – albeit one with a kamikaze aspect to it, four French pranksters in Benidorm have been risking their lives to provoke traffic accidents while one of their number films the mayhem.

(Via Gibson Blog.)

JavaScript benchmarks

Not sure I buy the actual templating idea, but the benchmarks are interesting.

JavaScript templating system – Display HTML blazingly fastAJAX applications are everywhere, and one of the key issues is the speed of rendering HTML. Using innerHTML is not recommended, but DOM can be slow. This JS template system lets you render HTML much faster than standard DOM, while keeping its flexibility.

(Via digg.)