Filed under: Business, World wide web, Features, News, Podcasting, Web services, DLS Interviews

Thanks to the recent BitTorrent debacle, Comcast has been far from Comcastic for many of its customers. Throttling customers for using technologies they deem too data intensive is pretty nasty, and the company has had to acquiesce and change its practices, but what happens when they disconnect your service (and threaten to keep you shut-down for 12-months) for “excessive usage” — yet refuse to issue that threat in writing or tell you what “excessive usage” really means?

Well, that is exactly the situation Dave Winer, tech analyst, pioneer and RSS God, has found himself in. Comcast has restored his service, but still says they will shut him down for up to 12 months if he doesn’t alter his usage patterns. The kicker? They won’t tell him what level he needs to adjust his usage patterns to in order to stay compliant.

Can they do this? Especially without issuing the warning in writing? And what exactly defines, “excessive” in Comcast’s terms? Many of us here at Download Squad use Comcast and we DO love to download, so this issue bothers us both on principle and for practicality. Although Comcast has been more receptive via their @Comcastcares Twitter account than they were via phone, this whole situation makes us very, very uncomfortable.

We spoke to Dave earlier today (the podcast of our conversation is here) and this is what he’d to say:

“I thought it was an outage and they said I had to call a special number and that I had been disconnected as a matter of policy.”

Continue reading Comcast shuts down Winer

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Filed under: Business, Developer

Always dreamed of running a sweatshop, but were worried about the legal ramifications? Sick of paying American workers boatloads of money just because the government states it’s fair? Really, it’s a free country, so you should be able to pay people whatever you feel like, no? Who cares if they need a certain wage to live, no one forced them to take the job. You’re the victim here. But like Superman flying over the horizon in his confusingly bright colored outfit, a hero is coming to save you.

Behold, Offshoring.com, where you can hire cheap, skilled labour for as little as $4 an hour. How is this possible? Because the workers are in the Philippines. You can hire everything from programmers to graphic designers for a fraction of what they cost in the US. According to their website they’re an American company with a headquarters in Atlanta who send people to the Philippines to run offices staffed with skilled Filipino workers. These workers will work whenever you work, Monday-Friday, and speak English. No word in the FAQ as to whether the workers are chained to their computers or not.

And, as an added bonus, you can fire any worker you want for whatever reason AND you don’t even have to do it yourself. You just tell the office and they fire the worker for you. Which, one would assume, involves a huge trap door and some sort of flesh eating monster. God bless capitalism.

[via wired]

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Filed under: Audio, Business, News, Apple

As much as Amazon mp3 would like to be a thorn in the side of iTunes, the data indicates that the service has had little effect on iTunes’ dominance in digital music sales.

According to a new study by The NPD Group, only 10 percent of all purchasers at Amazon mp3 are converts from Apple’s service, while the rest are switching from other services or new to the whole direct-download music scene.

While 10 percent may sound like a lot to us ordinary folks, it wasn’t worth the eyebrow raise of a single analyst.

The bottom line is, if Amazon mp3 sees itself as the David to iTunes’ Goliath, then their work is definitely cut out for them. Amazon currently sits in fourth place in US music sales, with iTunes and Wal-Mart fighting it out for the top spot, and Best Purchase in third.

The troubling statistic for Amazon is that only a tenth of their music sales come from Amazon mp3. The rest come from those archaic compact discs; if you don’t know what we’re talking about, check out your parent’s music collection-maybe they have some laying around.

The question is, my friends, what is keeping Amazon mp3 from biting into sales on iTunes? Is it the poor browsing experience? Is it because Amazon is seen as outside of the iTunes-iPod ecosystem? Are people willing to part with 10 cents more, and put up with DRM, for the sake of iTunes simplicity?

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