Also in the digest: UGC pays | Houston's wireless | Google buys Adscape | MySpace Japan | More Cuba & the internet | How not to name your company
An initiative being drafted by the German government could force European businesses to radically overhaul their digital product offerings, reports the FT. One consequence of the "charter for consumer sovereignty in the digital world" would be that Apple has to unlock the copyright protection that stops songs from iTunes being played on rival devices.
Delay in publishing the proposals is leading to speculation that the German government could be backing away from the idea, but France and Norway have already introduced similar proposals.
Another UGC payout model
Spymac is a content sharing site that pays users for the material they contribute. We'll see lots more of these. This week Spymac announced it paid out a total $50,000 to contributors last month: the more they post, the more they earn. Some lucky German chap called "Jafeth" has scored the biggest pay-out of $5,000, and a Chinese contributor got a cheque for $1,300.
Meanwhile, GigaOm reports that Google has shifted its "best product manager" over to YouTube to try and work out exactly how to make money from all those user videos - while not seeming to make money out of the copyright-infringing ones, no doubt.
Houston, we have a wireless network
Earthlink, the US internet service provider, will be rolling out a 600-square-mile wireless network in Houston, Texas, according to Information Week. Earthlink won the tender from the city authorities, and the new network will become one of the largest in the US serving a population of two million.
Earthlink already runs a similar network in Philadelphia and New Orleans, and is also in negotiations over deals in San Francisco and Pasadena. The Houston service will not be free, but low-income residents will have access for a reduced rate of $10 a month or less.
Google buys games ad firm
Google plans to expand its advertising network further with the acquisition of Adscape, the in-game ad firm, for £11.8m. This is a sector predicted to grow five-fold by 2010, reports eConsultancy, up from a £51m market now.
MySpace in trouble in Japan?
MySpace will struggle to make in-roads in Japan's social net market, reports AP. The market is already highly developed, with Mixi already claiming an eight-million strong share. Ko Orita, a consultant on US-Japanese online media partnerships, said MySpace can compete if it has a strong mobile strategy, but Mixi is reported to be considering moving into the Korean market where it would go head-to-head with Murdoch's social net baby.
More on Cuba and the internet
Following Wednesday's Digital Digest, Val Prieto, the Cuban-American blogger that I met at the WeMedia conference last week, told me about his experience of internet restrictions in Cuba.
He told me that few Cubans can afford to use internet cafes: "The average Cuban would probably have to spend his entire monthly salary for a one or two hour internet session, and when you only make about $10 a month, you tend to try to spend it feeding your family."
"The US Interests Section allows Cubans use of computers and internet as well, and many do use them, but most are afraid of government reprisals if seen communicating with the outside world, especially from the USIS [the government agency formerly know as United States Immigration Service]."
Prieto said the government carries out search-and-destroy missions for satellite dishes and some phone connections, and computer sales are also banned. Most web services are based in the capital Havana, or at a relaying station in Camaguey, central Cuba. Preito claims that the government monitors emails, though the main web users are government employees, or people working in education and to the health service.
Information from journalists inside Cuba is usually passed to him through a third party, sometimes in Europe, and they also sometimes use basic code. Using text messages is becoming harder because of more restrictions. But most news and information is still passed on via phone, though calls can be monitored too, he claims.
"The best way for a regime such as Castro's to maintain power is to control and limit the information available to the people. Obviously, you can't find a better vehicle for the free exchange of information than the internet. Thus the internet is the Cuban government's natural enemy."
The government is working with Venezuelan authorities on a new communications cable that could be finished in two years, AP reported today. This would increase Cuba's web and telephony capacity by around a thousand times, as current networks are satellite-based.
Granma, the Cuban government's official newspaper, also covered the communications conference in Havana. It reported that 15,000 students have been trained in computer science at high education level and 38,000 at technical level and said networks are being developed across public health, science and culture.
Communications minister Ramiro Valdés claimed that both Google and Microsoft collaborate with the US intelligence agencies.
How not to name your company
Tom Coates linked to this terrifying Vitamin piece on how to name your company. If ever there was a piece of marketing that attempted to murder the creative process, this is it! Michael MrDermott starts off by saying that PayPal, QuickBooks and BestBuy are examples of good names. Alarm bells ring.
"Establish a 'Naming Team' - three to four people who are responsible for meeting regularly until they have found your name. Expect it to take eight to ten sessions of one hour each. That is about 30-40 hours of your organization's time. It will be painful. It will be worth it."
Whatever happened to inspiration? I'd rather try the sleep on it/ go for a run strategies that came up in that idea-creation evening I went to last year. Or maybe reading some great books. Anything but "structured brainstorming".
But each to their own, I suppose.
