lorca’s posterous

Buying an $800 couch or television via the tax-free Internet can be nearly $80 cheaper than a purchase made in a high-sales-tax city like San Francisco -- such a deal. But the free ride is costing states and cities billions of dollars a year, and it damages local businesses that find it hard to compete.

The Main Street Fairness Act, introduced this month by Rep. Bill Delahunt (D-Mass.), would end the exemption for big Web retailers like Amazon.com and eBay that fear the change would be a body blow to their business. The Web sales tax issue has been debated and litigated for years, and it is hardly a popular cause, but with state and local governments deeply in debt, the chance to add a massive revenue stream may outweigh the political risks.

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The seven-term Delahunt will not be running for re-election, but it would be unfair to see the timing as opportunistic. Delahunt sponsored a similar bill in 2008. I don't enjoy paying taxes any more than the next guy, but Delahunt was right then and he's right now. The Internet is no longer a baby that needs to be cosseted and protected from the real world, and favoring Internet business over brick-and-mortar ones via a tax exemption is not fair.

The budget hole provides the necessary opening for equal taxation
If you want government services, someone has to pay for them. The amount of money governments are losing due to the exemption is staggering. Uncollected use taxes (a use tax is pretty much the equivalent of a sales tax) for the six-year period ending in 2012 will range from $52 billion to $56 billion nationally, according to a 2009 study by economists at the University of Tennessee. New York City alone will lose at least $390.6 million in 2012; Chicago $229 million, they predict.

That huge black hole hasn't gone unnoticed, and several states (including North Carolina, New York, Colorado, and Rhode Island) are working on a separate track to change the rules. More states are considering similar action. And despite what you may have heard, don't think the 1998 Internet Tax Freedom Act forbids such taxation -- it doesn't. (More on that in a bit.)

On the other side are the big Internet retailers, such as Amazon.com and eBay, which have fought hard to maintain a status quo that gives them a marked advantage over local brick-and-mortar merchants. Amazon.com, the largest and best-known Web retailer, has fought efforts to collect sales tax from customers. The company argues that the crazy quilt of taxing jurisdictions -- there are approximately 8,500 in the United States -- makes doing so impractical.

During the keynote at Google I/O today, Google took a lot (and I do mean a lot) of not-too-subtle shots at Apple. Most of this was related to Android vs. iPhone, but it also delved into something else with the new Google TV platform. At the Q&A following the keynote, someone asked the question: what does this mean for Apple TV?

Google dodged the question a little at first. Their line is that the TV ecosystem is now ready for something like Google TV (that implies that it wasn’t before with devices such as the Apple TV). But they also noted that their idea is different from Apple because they’re trying to do this in a different way. That way, naturally, is the “open” way.

Whereas Apple TV is a device and a piece of software, Google TV is just a platform. Sony TVs will be called something different, for example, but they’ll have Google TV built-in. And this is an important distinction because it allows Google to take what makes current TVs popular — showing TV content — and build on top of it. Apple doesn’t do that with Apple TV. Instead, they created an entirely new way to get content (by download via iTunes).

Users shouldn’t have to choose between TV or the web — they can have both, is the way Google put it.

Google’s Vic Gundotra went further. He called the question about positioning against the Apple TV “eerily similar to the questions we heard about Android.” Gundotra suggested that everyone look at the success they’ve had with Android. Success in an open way, he made sure to emphasize. “We’ll have similar success,” Gundotra said.

So yes, put another way, this is Android vs. iPhone round 2. Or maybe it will be round 3, depending on if Chrome OS netbooks beat Google TV to market. Chrome OS netbooks will compete with the iPad — which Steve Jobs has said is Apple’s solution that’s better than a notebook.

A follow-up question asked if this was really Google telling Jobs “where to stick his OS?” Gundotra tried to dance around the question, but noted the full keynote video will be on YouTube. “I’m sure if he sees it, we’ll hear from him,” he (maybe half) joked.

Gundotra then tried to dampen the cries of war a bit. “We continue to partner with Apple in many areas,” he noted. He said Google TV isn’t directed at Apple only. “Only” being the keyword.

Regardless of what happens, my position is the same: Google entering this space is great news for all consumers. It’s going to force Apple to move the Apple TV beyond a self-stated “hobby” and into a real product. As I (quite eloquently, I think) wrote back in March:

We, as consumers, need a living room arms race between Apple and Google (and Microsoft, TiVo, Roku, Boxee, and the rest) to kick the cable companies’ shitty television user experience to the curb.

Round 2. Fight.

[photo: 20th Century Fox]

CrunchBase Information

Apple TV

Google

Apple

Information provided by CrunchBase

Filed under: Software, Freeware

Freeware find: Smith Micro Photo A.K.A. bulk file renamer

by Steven Sande (RSS feed) on Feb 23rd 2010 at 6:00PM

While I'm saving my pennies for a new 27" i7 iMac, I'm finding that "free is good." Software development house Smith Micro made my day this morning when I received an email telling me about their free Photo A.K.A. application for Mac (site registration required).

The app is a single-tasker -- it is a bulk file renamer, much like Dare to be Creative's Renamer (US$29). Like its more expensive competitor, you can rename any batch of files, not just photos. While I don't think that the user interface for Photo A.K.A. is as well-designed as Renamer, the former application does have several features that can't be found in the latter.

For example, Photo A.K.A. can rename files, stuff them into an archive file, and then email the information to someone. There's also a handy built-in function to directly upload your renamed photos to Flickr or Picasa.

But wait, there's more! Photo A.K.A. can also burn your renamed files to a CD or DVD, or create a disk image file containing the files. It can also do batch resizing of photo files, display the renamed images as a slide show, and even batch print the files. Finally, there's a sandbox mode for trying your renaming scheme without actually renaming the files.

While Photo A.K.A. might not fulfill all of your file renaming requirements, it is free, and it has many features you may find useful.

Tags: file renamer, FileRenamer, free, freeware, photo a.k.a., PhotoA.k.a., renamer, smith micro, SmithMicro

Cool little freeware app. note that SmithMicro's Shopping Cart will try to sneak in a paid option for "extended delivery" be sure and remove that if you don't need it...

USB to Micro USB Sync Blocker Cable Will Spare You Embarrassment

Ever plugged your gadget into someone else's computer for a quick charge and helplessly watched as your data started to sync? It's an annoyance and wastes time, but with the Sync Blocker cable it's optional.

The Sync Blocker cable is a USB to Micro USB cable with a small switch that allows you to choose whether you want to sync data or just charge your gadget. It goes for ten bucks which is about equal to regular cables which force syncing. [USB Fever via CrunchGear]

Google’s Chrome browser is quickly gaining market share, with one estimate putting it at about 5 percent of total usage, while Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is seeing a drop in overall share. But among TechCrunch readers Chrome is already beating every browser except for Firefox.

A look at our Google Analytics numbers for the past 30 days shows that 20 percent of TechCrunch visitors are using the Chrome browser. Just on TechCrunch, we’ve seen Chrome’s share almost double since October. Firefox is still the most popular browser among readers, with 38.6 percent share, and Safari is a close third with 19.5 percent. Internet Explorer comes in fourth with 17.3 percent.

TechCrunch readers are definitely early adopters, but if your Web surfing habits are an early indicator of how average users will browse the Web, Chrome could be in for some major market share gains. On the other hand, if it’s just a geek thing Chrome’s share might stay around 5 percent for the general population.

So which one is it: are one fifth of TechCrunch readers simply attracted to anything shiny and new, or are you the vanguard showing everyone else the way forward? That’s what I thought.

CrunchBase Information

Google Chrome

Information provided by CrunchBase

Count me amongst them. I use Chrome for most things these days.

Comic from the great NatalieDee

The Grube talks about an Apple-less MacWorld and how it will be a pretty sad show without the regular one-ring circus that is the Steve Jobs keynote but that it won’t be absolutely horrible, with smaller companies actually getting some attention this time. My thinking? Nah. Big trade shows are going down and here are a few reasons why:

The Economy Who can spend a few thousand on airfare, hotels, and coference tickets? Not many small companies right now and big companies that might not care too much about conferences like MacWorld or even the Game Developer Conference or CES are loathe to send employees who will probably just get a nice steak dinner and lounge around watching pay-per-view instead of attending workshops. There’s a reason “going to a conference” has always intimated something untoward in movies and TV. What else do you do at a conference besides look for coffee and wish you were home?
Us and You Blogs and other news sources – Twooter, Booz, and Facetwoot included – give everyone a methodology for sharing interesting information. In the past, information sharing was one to many. Now it can be one to one. A Chinese company doesn’t have to wing its way to Las Vegas to show off its resistors.
The Next Generation These kids these days. You think they want to wander around a big hall full of men and women dressed in suits? No! They want cosplay and cartoons and video games. Birds of a feather conferences like PAX and ComicCon are different animals entirely and should be the next model for conferences like MacWorld: small, focused events in multiple cities, some events online. Tech conferences are like science fairs and with the crackdown on booth babes, they’re not even fun anymore.
Networking and Sales are Online The guys from Best Buy and Wal-Mart don’t need to go to CES. They get stuff shown to them all the time. The guys at B&H Camera don’t need to go to CES. They, too, have a set inventory and most of their hottest gear is announced regularly online. Sure, you need face-time sometimes but that face time can be done more efficiently and with less hassle.

A big tech conference is a hassle. Things are changing on that front, but I doubt we’ll see a MacWorld in the next decade. Thoughts?

Virtualization environments have been hot commodities for the Mac user ever since Apple started using Intel processors in its computers. Even before Intel arrived, emulation software was available that allowed Mac users to run Windows and Linux.

But emulation was slow, using an abstraction layer to translate x86 programming code to the code used by the PowerPC architecture of earlier Macs. This abstraction layer not only had to translate for CPU type, but also all of the hardware components. In essence, the abstraction layer had to create software equivalents of video cards, hard drives, serial ports, etc. The result was an emulation environment that could run Windows or Linux, but was severely restricted in both performance and the operating systems that could be used.

With the advent of Apple’s decision to use Intel processors, the entire need for emulation was swept away. In its place came the ability to run other OSes directly on an Intel Mac. In fact, if you want to run Windows directly on a Mac as an option at bootup, you can use Boot Camp, an application that Apple provides as a handy way to install Windows in a multi-boot environment.

But many users need a way to run the Mac OS and a second OS simultaneously. Parallels, and later VMWare and Sun, brought this capability to the Mac with virtualization technology. Virtualization is similar in concept to emulation, but because Intel-based Macs use the same hardware as standard PCs, there’s no need to create a hardware abstraction layer in software. Instead, the Windows or Linux software can run directly on the hardware, producing speeds that can be nearly as fast as if the guest OS was running natively on a PC.

And that’s the question our benchmarks tests seek to answer. Do the three major players in virtualization on the Mac - Parallels Desktop for Mac, VMWare Fusion, and Sun VirtualBox - live up to the promise of near-native performance?

We say ‘near native’ because all virtualization environments have some overhead that can’t be avoided. Since the virtual environment is running at the same time as the native OS (OS X), there has to be sharing of hardware resources. In addition, OS X has to provide some services to the virtualization environment, such as windowing and core services. The combination of these services and resource sharing tends to limit how well the virtualized OS can run.

To answer the question, we are going to perform benchmark tests to see how well the three major virtualization environments fare running Windows.

Developer David Kocher has introduced an update to his Mac FTP client, Cyberduck 3.3. The new version has been rebuilt using the Rococoa framework, in order to provide both Snow Leopard and 64-bit support. Other changes include a new application icon, restored PowerPC support, and an Octal input field for permissions.

Content distribution configurations have been added for Rackspace Cloud Files, and Amazon CloudFront. Several bugfixes meanwhile target SOCKS proxy support, excessive Growl notifications, and icons for downloaded files. The v3.3 update can be downloaded from within Cyberduck, or else the official program website; Mac OS X 10.5 is required. Although the software is free, donations are encouraged.

Whilst I have other FTP clients, I keep coming back to this one. (FREE/Mac)

Starting next week, Verizon will double the early-termination fee for smartphones. That is, if you get a BlackBerry, Android or similar phone from Verizon, and you decide to switch phones before your two-year contract is up, you’ll be socked with a $350 penalty (it used to be $175).

This fee drops slowly over time ($10 a month), but after two years, it’s still $110. If the premise of the early-termination fee is to help Verizon recoup its original cost of the phone (see my analysis here http://bit.ly/pOkXz), shouldn’t the fee go down to zero at the end of your contract?

This move doesn’t help Verizon’s reputation for steep pricing and aggressive gouging.

What bothers me more, though, is another bit of greedy nastiness that readers both inside and outside Verizon have noticed.

Here’s one example, from a Verizon customer:

“David, I read your posts about how the cell carriers are eating up our airtime with those 15-second ‘To page this person, press 5′ instructions, but I think Verizon has a bigger scam going on: charging for bogus data downloads.

“Virtually every bill I get has a couple of erroneous data charges at $1.99 each—yet we download no data.

“Here’s how it works. They configure the phones to have multiple easily hit keystrokes to launch ‘Get it now’ or ‘Mobile Web’—usually a single key like an arrow key. Often we have no idea what key we hit, but up pops one of these screens. The instant you call the function, they charge you the data fee. We cancel these unintended requests as fast as we can hit the End key, but it doesn’t matter; they’ve told me that ANY data–even one kilobyte–is billed as 1MB. The damage is done.

“Imagine: if my one account has 1 to 3 bogus $1.99 charges per month for data that I don’t download, how much are they making from their 87 million other customers? Not a bad scheme. All by simply writing your billing algorithm to bill a full MB when even a few bits have moved.”

As it turns out, my correspondent is quite correct. My last couple of Verizon phones did indeed have non-reprogrammable, dedicated keys for those ridiculously overpriced “Get it now”-type services that I would never use in a million years.

At about the same time, I got a note from a reader who says he actually works at Verizon, and he’s annoyed enough about the practice to blow the whistle:

“The phone is designed in such a way that you can almost never avoid getting $1.99 charge on the bill. Around the OK button on a typical flip phone are the up, down, left, right arrows. If you open the flip and accidentally press the up arrow key, you see that the phone starts to connect to the web. So you hit END right away. Well, too late. You will be charged $1.99 for that 0.02 kilobytes of data. NOT COOL. I’ve had phones for years, and I sometimes do that mistake to this day, as I’m sure you have. Legal, yes; ethical, NO.

“Every month, the 87 million customers will accidentally hit that key a few times a month! That’s over $300 million per month in data revenue off a simple mistake!

“Our marketing, billing, and technical departments are all aware of this. But they have failed to do anything about it—and why? Because if you get 87 million customers to pay $1.99, why stop this revenue? Customer Service might credit you if you call and complain, but this practice is just not right.

“Now, you can ask to have this feature blocked. But even then, if you one of those buttons by accident, your phone transmits data; you get a message that you cannot use the service because it’s blocked–BUT you just used 0.06 kilobytes of data to get that message, so you are now charged $1.99 again!

“They have started training us reps that too many data blocks are being put on accounts now; they’re actually making us take classes called Alternatives to Data Blocks. They do not want all the blocks, because 40% of Verizon’s revenue now comes from data use. I just know there are millions of people out there that don’t even notice this $1.99 on the bill.”

Well.

Look, it’s very simple.

The more Verizon gouges, the worse it looks. Every single day, I get e-mail from people saying they’re switching at the first opportunity, or would if they could. In time, the only people who will stay with Verizon are people who have no coverage with any other carrier.

Every company’s dream, right? A base of miserable customers who stick with you only because they have no choice.

I realize that it’s a business, that Verizon exists to make money. But the part I don’t get is, why doesn’t Verizon calculate the business cost of making customers unhappy? Surely some accountant can show that customer anger over these fees and dirty button tricks translate into negative corporate image, and therefore lost business.

Why wouldn’t it be a hugely profitable move to start pitching yourself as the GOOD cell company, the one that actually LIKES its customers?

Here are four baby steps: (1) Let us bypass the 15 seconds of pointless voice mail instructions (Verizon is the only carrier who never responded to my campaign; see http://bit.ly/nIgE2).

(2) Make your early-termination fee reflect your actual cost, rather than being a profit center in its own right.

(3) If a data connection is obviously an error—under 10 seconds, say—don’t bill for it.

(4) And for heaven’s sake, quit imposing your own profit-center buttons on our cellphone designs. If we want to go online for $2 a megabyte, we’ll find a way.

(UPDATE: A reader notes that his AT&T phone has exactly the same buttons and he gets charged exactly the same $2 for an accidental press. The $350 termination fee is a Verizon-only element, but the $2 accidental-data charges may actually be industry-wide. Readers: Can you confirm that it’s the same deal on Sprint and T-Mobile?)

You don’t need me to tell you that it’s really hard to save money at Costco. And, I’m not talking about saving money on the price-per-pound for ground beef, or the cheaper price-per-ounce of Jiffy Peanut Butter.

On those things yes, you’re saving money compared to buying at the grocery store.

What I’m talking about is the Ralph Lauren swimsuits. The super massaging leather easy chair and ottoman. The flat screen tvs. The Gucci handbags, and the expansive DVD section.

There is a big reason why Costco stocks these things instead of just food. And, it’s because we buy them. Big time.