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Bloggers “get” the Web. They get that if your site is interesting and valuable that people can leave freely and they will keep coming back. Stickiness in the sense of preventing people from leaving is a mistake, it just leads to resentment and futile efforts that degrade the user experience. It’s better to link often to relevant sites that will complement the information on your site. People will appreciate it and keep coming back to you as a resource for useful knowledge. They will appreciate the openness and honesty. No site, no matter how large, can contain all that is useful or interesting on the Web and pretending you can is folly. Far better to be good at what you do and retain some focus, when something related comes along just link to it without fear of losing people.

There is an old adage - “If you love someone, set them free, if they come back to you they are yours, if they don’t then they never truly were”. Holding on too tightly just builds resentment - like those companies that won’t stop calling when you cancel an account (I’m looking at you TruGreen), but letting go builds trust, respect, and if you’re lucky, love.

We’re pleased to reveal one of the projects that took up our summer - BoomVote.com. BoomVote is a fun, entertaining take on the classic “rate people” site. In addition to posting your photo and description for free you can send messages to other members, spend hours looking through photos and videos, and win cash and prizes just for using the site. There are some great sponsors already on board who are supporting the site and sponsoring contests for people to win.

The folks running the site are full of great ideas so you’ll see a lot more features and fun contests coming to the site over the next few months. In the meantime sign up and start voting. Get in early and you’re more likely to start winning some cool prizes.

Ignoring the obvious ethical and social issues, DRM leads to an arms race that should never have started. And it is one that the DRM pushers are sure to lose. It costs loads of money to produce a DRM scheme, to try to implement it, to keep it updated when it gets cracked within a few weeks of each update, and then to support all of the customers who simply want to play their movie but can’t because you are “protecting” it.

There is a great discussion over at Ed Felton’s blog about the AACS cracks and updates. Basically it takes tons of time and money to stop movies from playing, inconveniencing paying customers, all because the studios are fixated on the possibility of losing a few sales to people who copy a movie and losing sight of how to get and keep happy customers (hint: treating them like criminals and children is not it).

I won’t buy an overpriced HD player or the overpriced discs not just because of the money, but because the formats are caught up in a stupid arms race that can lead to my player suddenly being remotely disabled (apparently I don’t own the player as much as I thought even if I pay $500 for it) so I can’t play my discs, or having new discs in the “same” format come out that won’t play on my player without a firmware update (because those aren’t a pain to do).

It’s not worth the trouble.

I want to buy a movie and then be able to play it by popping in a disc and pressing Play. That’s it, anything more complicated is too much trouble and justs leaves me in a bad mood instead of happy I saw a cool movie. DRM ruins the fun and fantasy of watching a great movie and replace sit with technological hassles (I have enough of those when I’m working) and a reminder that the people who made the movie think I’m a criminal. It leaves me frustrated and insulted and it’s not worth it.

Hell, I’m still pissed every time I see the annoying FBI warning which amounts to “we’re pretty sure you’re a criminal waiting to copy this film and we’re watching you”. Of course I can’t fast forward past it, I just have to sit and be scolded before I watch my movie.

It’s not worth the trouble.

DRM makes everything more expensive. If we took the loads of money being spent trying to stop movies from being copied we could drastically lower the prices of the players and discs and increase sales to more than make up for the slight loss from a few copied discs.

DRM, it’s a lousy fact of life if you want to get HD content from the studios, but it’s a losing battle. The music distributors have already lost the battle and are giving up as we see iTunes and other music download services moving to a DRM free world. It will make all of our lives easier and happier when the movie studios see the light, abandon the HD disc arms race, and get back to entertaining people first and foremost.

Every story on the front page of Digg.com is the key to cracking HD-DVD’s. This is a great example of trying to treat adults like children and telling them how and where they can play video content they have purchased. DRM is simply bad business and if we continue to see widespread protests like we have tonight, DRM will be a thing of the past.

It is really unfortunate that the Motion Picture industry does not see the value in distributing their films without the restrictions of DRM which is obviously not stopping anyone. All of the major movie download services are dealing with the 800 pound gorilla that is DRM just to get distribution agreements with all of the studios. These services then try to provide a quality experience to their customers but can not truly do so with DRM wrapped around all of the films.

What should be done about this? I think the studios should start trusting their most valuable resource - You - the customer.

What do you think? I would really like to hear any comments or suggestions on what should be done regarding DRM.

We’re pleased to announce another new site launch. Mandy & Pandy’s new website is online and taking pre-orders for Mandy & Pandy Say Ni Hao Ma?, the first in a 12 book series. We worked with the books author and illustrator to launch the site as well as creating a complete identity system including business cards, postcards, letterhead, order sheets, and banners, all in time for the Toy Fair 2007 in New York City.

We’re glad to be a part of this project. Mandy & Pandy books teach kids Chinese quickly and easily, rather like Dora the Explorer teaches Spanish. We’re glad to be able to offer not just our web design services but also to help with the marketing, print design, and business processes as the Mandy & Pandy enterprise gets off the ground. Brad and I have been working closely with the author and illustrator to help them deliver their vision to people.

Chris Lin, the author and creator of Mandy & Pandy, will be making appearances at local schools to read Mandy & Pandy to elementary classes. If you’d like him to read at your school in Metro Detroit just contact Chris or contact us and we’ll let him know.

Net Neutrality is the principle that traffic to and from all website should be treated equally by Internet Service Providers (ISPs). They should not be allowed to slow down or speed up traffic based on what it is or whether they were paid a toll by the website operator. Basically, you paid for your connection to the internet and the people who ruin the website paid for their connection. The ISPs want to charge the web site providers an additional charge on top of that.

The effect is that they can extort fees from richer companies and prevent new companies and new services from prospering. They can also use this technique to crush competitors such as when they drop VoIP calls that are from competing companies or slow down video or music downloads that come from a competitors site instead of their preferred service. The effect of this practice (which has already happened and is happening) is to stifle innovation and competition, which hurts consumers and to raise the cost of doing business online to cover the new tolls. This is bad for everyone that isn’t an ISP and frankly it’s not that great for them in the long term as the Internet suffers.

The Internet was developed on the principle of Net Neutrality, it is part of the model that has made it a global success. Allowing a few greedy companies to break that model hurts everyone. Their networks exist in large part thanks to taxpayer subsidies and government granted monopolies and they run through public right-of-ways. It is well within our rights to demand that they act as neutral carriers of data packets and not as the gatekeepers or censors of what is on the Internet.

Visit Save the Internet to learn more and take action.

I haven’t launched into my full rant on the problems with sex offender registries and related legislation, such as failing to adequately distinguish between a 16 year old that got caught having sex with their 15 year old girlfriend or a 13 year old girl being both the perpetrator and victim in the same act and a true violent pedophile. Legislation like this is made so that politicians can brag about fighting child pornography and pedophiles. Everyone hates kiddie porn and pedophiles so they can’t lose. It’s like running for office on my favorite pro-kids, puppies, and apple pie platform - everyone loves children, puppies, and apple pie. Just like the flag burning amendment and anti-gay marriage laws the politicians are pandering to fear and emotion and passing easy laws instead of dealing with tough real problems like Social Security reform, the war in Iraq, or our draconian, labyrinthine tax code.

This law places a ridiculous burden on site operators, particularly since it appears to apply equally to Amazon.com, a 14 year old kid with a Live Journal account, and my Dad’s blogger account. This bill will have little to no effect on child pornography or pedophiles, but has the potential to catch innocent site owners with massive fines that could ruin them, all at the discretion of prosecutors who have every incentive to make a name for themselves fighting kiddie porn and pedophiles and none at all to handle situations like this reasonably.

Anyone running a business whose web site requires registration or an individual with a personal blog or who happens to like free speech and open dialog on the internet should fight this bill that will hurt business and individuals and do nothing to actually protect children. I’m all for protecting children from pedophiles (lock them up and throw away the key) and real child porn is terrible, but the way to handle it through traditional legal channels, not by deputizing everyone with a web site as a government censor, and most of all by teaching parents and children how to be safe and avoid predators both online and offline. There’s a lot to be said for a parent sitting down with a kid at the computer, teaching them how to be safe, and making sure they know where their kids are and who they are with when they leave home.