g7uk » costs

Data costs threaten social networking sites

GS — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 15:47:24 +0000

Recently I wrote about the closure of free video-hosting services at both AOL and Brightcove. I suggested that no free hosting service can be relied on to be around forever, or even a year from now in the current economic crisis.

Today the Daily Telegraph reports that social networking sites, such as Facebook, face a ‘data cost crisis’, as advertising revenue declines from a position that wasn’t exactly lucrative in the first place.

Research by the consultants Deloitte suggests that the cost of storing electronic data ‘has soared to more than $100m (£68m) a year for larger sites, as users increasingly want to upload memory-hungry photos and videos’.

Caribbean Carnival targeted with policing costs

GS — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 02:49:47 +0000

Since 2004 Manchester has had two Caribbean Carnivals. The one in July that has run for decades is now ignored by Manchester City Council. Go to the Council information centre and they will actually deny that there are two Caribbean Carnivals in Manchester each year.

Bye bye Operation Fundraiser

GS — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 18:38:27 +0000

The Manchester Pride website reports that Operation Fundraiser will be ‘will be hanging up its buckets’ this year.

Guardian, Lonely Planet, Hewlett Packard ‘photographic opportunity’

GS — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 16:40:09 +0000

Fifteen years ago, when I earned part of my living as a freelance photographer, the going rate for a cover shot on one of the small magazines that I worked for was £200. The magazine sold 12,000 copies each month and that payment gave the publisher the right to publish the image one time only.

My photo/video blog kit

GS — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 01:17:50 +0000

I thought I’d write a bit about the kit I use for making videos and blog entries.

Cowboy opticians and cheap spectacles (hooray)

GS — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 13:47:06 +0000

I could write a book about my bad experiences with opticians over the past twenty-five years.

Manchester Pride exaggerates Parade crowd figures by 500%

GS — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 23:37:53 +0000

250,000 do not watch the Parade as the organisers claim. The true figure is ‘tens of thousands’ and here is the proof.

Dealing with email spam

GS — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 07:08:41 +0000

It surprises me the number of friends who tell me that they get 200 spam emails a day or something similar. I get very few.

Questions that Manchester Pride, Marketing Manchester & the Manchester Evening News don’t want to answer

GS — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 13:14:40 +0000

On 18 August 2006 I wrote to Manchester Pride with the following questions. I received a reply from Marketing Manchester, saying that I would get a ‘prompt reply’ just as soon as Pride was over. More than two months later I am still waiting…

Here is my letter:

Greg Palast on ‘The Fear Factory’

GS — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 07:57:25 +0000

I’m going to tell you something which is straight-up heresy: America is not under attack by terrorists. There is no WAR on terror…

Greg Palast on why fear sells better than sex and how The War on Terror is the Weapon of Mass Distraction. Read it here.

Greg Palast’s investigative reports appear on the BBC, in The Guardian and in Harpers. However, research costs money and he ‘ain’t too proud to beg‘.

Work in progress includes:

1. The untold story of the New Orleans flood.
2. Shoplifting your vote: November 2006 fix.
3. The next oil war.
4. [Confidential.]