Arthur Francis Tyde III

A recent article by Dow Jones caught my eye regarding the proposed merger of XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio.

"Meanwhile, the Consumer Coalition for Competition in Satellite Radio (C3SR) has presented the FCC with confidential data that it says must be explored in a hearing. "A thorough examination of these issues is likely to lead to the discovery of additional evidence of violations of the Commission's rules and antitrust laws," a June 4 letter to FCC said."

Is this news? Confidential data? Please - this is crap! C3SR certainly doesn't represent anyone I know with a satellite receiver.

"C3SR was formed by law student and lobbyist Chris Reale. According to Shepard, the group represents subscribers opposed to the merger, but it has no official membership. Its sole purpose is to stop the merger of the two satellite companies."

The chimpstering continues - "If you go to switch services between XM and Sirius, you have to replace your entire receiver," said Julian Shepard, a lawyer with Williams Mullen who represents C3SR." Sharp as a tack these lawyers are...

The same argument could be made that someone needs to be sued so you can use the same box as both a Cable Modem or DSL modem. Again - this is crap, radios are cheap, and the whole compatibility issue hasn't stopped the FCC from phasing out analog TV.

So a law student with a lot of time on his hands is generating trouble for this merger. While I may not have a fancy name for a bogus organization, I have a lot of friends who have both XM and Sirius radios. Everyone I know personally supports the merger. The reason we support it is we all had to make the hard choice between one service and the other. I would like to have both.

I choose Sirius because I wanted access to NPR, which is not offered on XM. However, there are other programs on XM that I would like access to. The common theme amongst all the people I know with satellite radio is that the competition between Sirius and XM has not been a good thing as it has created a situation whereby one has to give up one set of offerings for access to another. We all would rather have one strong satellite radio system with 500 channels then two weak systems with 200 channels each.

One last point - no one I have spoken with seems to care about the competition issue. Between the Internet, cable, portable media, on the air broadcasts, and satellite there are so many media options that no single delivery channel represents a monopoly. If the markets can only support one healthy player, then please - don't let uninformed PR seekers kill the deal.

Back in November, some local friends of mine started a social networking site called Gizter. It seemed like a good idea, but is it actually possible to make any money from the act of social networking?

Seems that the answer is yes. While I won't be paying the rent with my Gizter proceeds, it's interesting to note that cross posting my usual blog stuff to Gizter generated enough activity in the first couple of months to make the payout non-trivial. The bonus payments generally relate to the amount of activity on the site generated by your page.

Here are my payout details...

Gizter Money Dashboard
Payout Period Earn Bonus Total
First Cycle 9/14/07-11/08/07 13.27 50.00 63.27
Second Cycle 11/09/07-12/10/07 2.55 10.00 12.55
Third Cycle 12/11/07-1/14/08 1.10 0.00 1.10
Fourth Cycle 1/15/08-2/15/08 1.24 0.00 1.24
Fifth Cycle 2/16/08-3/31/08 0.60 0.00 0.60

Amount paid to date (0.00)
Total earnings due: $78.76

As you can see, I was pretty enthusiastic at the beginning. I posted frequently and visited lots of other member pages. As the holidays ended I got busy and spent less and less time on the site. I also dropped the ball in term of inviting friends. At the time, it was tough to figure out. That has been simplified; so if you want to join me online; click on this link.

http://www.gizter.com/fox/file/splash/splash.php?id=1086&user=aftyde

In any event; the guys at Gizter are quite dedicated to covering the gadgets and gizmos space, as the membership has increased I am now occasionally discovering new toys on the site. At this moment, Gizter is more valuable to me as a site to discover new gadgets. While there is still a lot to be desired in terms of filtering the junk out of the site, Gizter has the potential to actually become a very interesting and useful place. For comparables, I think of places like Toms Hardware Guide with a more evolved social networking scene. Additionally, a section of Gizter tailored to mobile phone browsers would be an excellent addition to the site. Other interesting and world aware additions might include a section on UPS (uninterpretable power supply) technologies, solar and wind power solutions, voltage and line power filtering and other items of interest to those of us attempting to maintain infrastructures in fragile third world economies.

Lastly, and perhaps coincidentally; just two days after I started composing this blog posting a paypal transaction for exactly $78.76 hit my bank account. To me this is a big deal. Not so much getting paid, or the amount; but the fact that the Gizter team set about to accomplish a non-trivial task and has lived up to it's promise to both users, advertisers, and their investors. While most sites that promise revenue to contributors have all sorts of fine print ways to avoid paying, the people at Gizter have proven to be men of their word. Kudos to the Gizter team!