Embeddable Maps from YouTube

It warms my heart to see functionality that once was reserved for Big Guys, like AOL, get spread out to everyone. Case in point: Used to be the only place you see embeddable maps was at large sites that had done licensing deals with MapQuest et al. Now, Google is making it possible for anyone to have embeddable maps.

This is great, but read the TOS. By using this, you are bound by Google's overall TOS, including I imagine its use of any

data your create through using this feature. And you are bound by some interesting Navteq policies (that's the data provider), which are, well, read the fine print. In short: Don't mess with them. They are particularly irritated by any hacking with regard to automobiles, thank you very much.

And don't even think about using this in a commercial manner. Er, but, what is commercial these days? I guess we'll see.

The strategy is clear. Local is a huge business play for any search driven company. And the more distribution you get, the better. Smart, eh?

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:32 AM
• Permalink
• Comments (2)

DRM Lessons

Ken gives us a good one, in this early (Aug 12) piece on the lesson of Google shutting down video purchases.

See, after Google takes its video store down, its Internet-based DRM system will no longer function. This means that customers who have built video collections with Google Video offerings will find that their purchases no longer work. This is one of the major flaws in any DRM system based on secrets and centralized authorities: when these DRM data warehouses shut down, the DRM stops working, and consumers are left with useless junk.

• Posted by John Battelle at 5:21 AM
• Permalink
• Comments (2)

Commodity Computing

Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz has a very nice post about not only his company's new, ultra fast chip, but two radical shifts to his company's business model. It's very well done.

So when we announce (via this webcast) the fastest microprocessor the industry's ever seen (the benchmarks are staggering) - and say we're entering the "commodity microprocessor market," what does it really mean? It means we're no longer limiting ourselves to serving an internal market, inside Sun. Instead, we're opening ourselves up to the broadest market possible - where the opportunity's largest.

Despite having what's arguably the single biggest competitive advantage our systems business has ever had, we've separated out our microelectronics business - and told them to win on the open market, as well. ....

....To add fuel to the fire, the blueprints for our UltraSPARC T2 (I personally like the moniker, "Niagara 2" - named after Niagara Falls, btw, and the great volumes of water that pass over them), the core design files and test suites, will be available to the open source community, via its most popular license: the GPL. Making Niagara 2 the only commodity silicon whose core designs are available to the open source community - whose strength, and market power, only grows by the day.

These are all huge changes to our business. Driven by a simple philosophy: the open market is bigger than any internal one. But ultimately, why now? A simple reason: because customers building infrastructure for the internet have been asking us to do so.

• Posted by John Battelle at 6:09 AM
• Permalink
• Comments (8)

Dear Washington: Let Us Buy DoubleClick

Google's policy blog points out that everyone's buying ad-related companies, implying that it's time to move on and approve the DoubleClick deal.

• Posted by John Battelle at 5:23 AM
• Permalink
• Comments (0)

Oh Lord. Helmet Cams

Tim shows us what's up in the UK.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:02 PM
• Permalink
• Comments (1)