Much of the technology hype these days surrounds reinventing television. Apple has long been suspected of designing a unique television experience. Samsung and other hardware makers have already launched so-called smart TVs. The goal of smart TVs is admirable – to improve the television watching user experience, something technology companies like Apple excel at. But unfortunately, these smart TVs are not yet better experiences. The may have Netflix and other apps built in, but often they are just portals to select web services with even fewer options. What’s more unfortunate is improving the television experience is simple and obvious, yet is no where closer to being implemented. That’s because the television companies do not want a better experience.

Consider Aereo, a technology start-up attempting to compromise copyright law with useful television viewing service over the internet. Aereo will install an antenna for every subscribing user and stream them broadcast television for a monthly fee.  Their argument is it is legal to freely access broadcast television with an antenna, they just change the location of the antenna. So far the courts have upheld Aereo’s claim, which has led News Corp. COO Chase Carey threatens he may pull all Fox channels to cable. Aereo’s incredibly inefficient and costly process of offering consumers a useful product is met with legal attacks and innovation crushing tactics by the television companies.

What does this better experience look like? Well, simply, on-demand television. Let us watch the shows we want when we want to watch them. The whole concept of a TV schedule is archaic in the age of YouTube and Netflix. Rumors claim both Apple and Google have lobbied television companies to allow there shows to appear on new TV platforms, but for TV companies, the money is just too significant under the current regime for them to risk changing it.

Because television companies refuse to move toward an on-demand type model, the television experience remains sub-optimal. Television requires following someone else’s schedule (or using expensive DVR equipment), paying extremely high cable fees for channels you don’t want, and not being able to view content across multiple devices. We have wi-fi and 4g data, but never few ways to watch television over them.

Incumbent companies are able to block innovation and new business opportunities in order to protect their own profits; profits that partially result from using free, public airwaves.  Copyright and intellectual property are supposed to be encouraging innovation, yet time and time again we see the established companies using their entrenched positions to limit consumer choice and prevent innovation.  So consumers continue to over pay for flawed products, not what capitalism and competition are supposed to be about.

Big data appears as the solution to all our business problems, able to reveal what customers want, how to increase profits, and cut costs all by doing some fancy math. Of course, big data is more complicated than that, but amid all the zeal for collecting and analyzing big data, we’re forgetting the small data many companies already collect but don’t know how to take advantage of.  Almost every company, from doctor’s offices to web developers have some data they have already collected that can be used to improve some aspect of their business.

Data appears in many forms, not just sales numbers and conversion rates.  Anyone with a website already has mountains of data they can collect with free tools like Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools. Google Analytics provides free web traffic information with many robust custom reporting tools, along with simple statistics of how many people visit each page, for how long, and how they got to your site. Even with low web traffic, looking at how people are finding your website (from Google searches or social media) can inform your marketing efforts.  Google Webmaster Tools, a little less well known, can be even more valuable than Google Analytics because it provides extensive information about how your website appears within Google searches.  Webmaster Tools tells you how high your site appears on search terms and which terms send people to your site. Because of privacy settings, Google Analytics isn’t able to give you this much information.

Beyond your website, it’s important to find the different ways you interact with clients and staff and mine these for informative data.  At a doctor’s office I consulted with, we found that patients were leaving after completing their treatment, but coming back weeks or months later for different services.  We asked a few of these patients why they returned and they said they didn’t know these services were offered before.  Often these were services they were looking for but didn’t think to ask about.  The doctor began introducing related services to patients earlier and adding additional brochures which increased the quality of care for patients and increased revenue with a minor cost and time investment.  With web development, I keep track of the number and frequency of emails with clients, during and after a project.  I use this to gauge how well I am explaining progress or issues with clients and have refined many ways I speak about web development to non-web developers.  I also assess my own efficiency after completing projects with the number of subsequent emails and whether I need to update my technical documentation or training practices.

Small data can provide small insights (and big ones) that are still beneficial, especially relative to the time and cost with finding them.  Every company has accounting records, emails, costs, sales, and other data rich with information about how well you are running your business. While all data will tell a story, not every story has to be interesting. Know where you have data and know how to understand it can be enough to open new opportunities to improve yourself work and business.

Some consumer insights might seem obvious in hindsight, but it’s nevertheless very easy to get caught in the way we do business. This is why surveying customers to glean insights is so valuable, either to confirm you’re on the right track or to discover new business opportunities you’re customers are craving for.

Bonobos, a menswear website, sought to make a better dress shirt.  Using a Qualtrics survey, the company found exactly what customers wanted: slimmer-fitting shirts for work.

Bonobos responded by making a $98 slim button-down shirt and sold almost half the stock in the first week.

They are now using survey’s to make better sweaters and jeans.

Having purchased a great many ill-fitted dress shirts, this observation seems apparent to me. Yet without a company asking for my feedback, and including a mechanism to respond to it, my concerns go unheard.  Having a company willing to hear customer feedback and be willing to act on that feedback can lead to valuable business opportunities and competitive advantages, simply by asking basic and obvious questions to truly understand what your customers want.  Relying on intuition and assumptions alone is not enough.

So speak to your customers. Ask for their insights. And don’t just listen. Respond. Don’t give customer’s an excuse not to give you their money.

Broadband speeds have lagged in the United States, offering slower speeds for higher prices compared to most first world countries.  The U.S. ranks 9th for speed and 21st for price. Broadband providers have claimed people are using too much bandwidth, leading to data caps, reduced speeds, and other limitations.

Time Warner Cable, one of the first companies to test data caps on customers, has miraculously increased speeds and cut prices for a least one customer.  Consumerist reports a Kansas City customer received an email increasing his broadband speed 50% and lowering his monthly bill by 30 percent.  While its great to see a company lowering prices and providing more functionality, the reasoning behind it reveals ulterior motives.  Specifically, Google launched its own fiber optic internet service in Kansas City, offering 1 gigabit of speed (compared to a national average of 6.6 megabits) for a slightly higher monthly rate and offering free 5 megabit internet (which is the standard paid version from most broadband providers).

I and others have argued the dismal state of U.S. broadband is due to a lack of competition. In most markets, consumers have at most two choices for their internet service. Even in major cities, customers are locked into one option (like myself) where if we are unhappy with our speed and price, we have no option to switch.  Once a competitor enters the space, in this case Google, Time Warner finds it now has to compete for customers. No longer can it offer poor service for a high price simply because it has a monopoly on customers.  Claims of data congestion or over usage seem much weaker. 

There is speculation on whether Google intends to roll out its fiber service nationally, as that would be extremely expensive. Others suspect Google is simply showing up broadband providers, forcing them to improve their service (and show its technologically feasible and affordable to do so).  I lean more to the latter opinion.  Google favors a world where people use the internet more and faster.  Further, Google wants to be able to offer more services using the internet, and faster speeds make that a possibilities – showing more ads along the way.  As consumers, even if we may be wary of Google controlling more of our internet experience, we should be happy to see someone challenging the incumbent players who have so limited our internet experience thus far.  Competition improves services and lowers prices. Hopefully we’ll see more of this.

Patent lawsuits have become the norm in almost every business, from technology start-ups to retail. Patent trolls, or non-practicing entities, makes tons of money by suing dozens of companies over often overly broad or extremely obvious patents.  Many companies settle these suits because of how expensive a drawn out lawsuit can be.

Online retailer Newegg took a stand, stating in 2007 to never settle with patent trolls.  This strategy has been deemed a success.

Soverain Software, a company without any products, happens to own patents cover basic functionality of online shopping carts (5,715,314, 5,909,492 and7,272,639), which they purchased from another company. They decided to sue a range of companies from Nordstrom’s to RadioShack.  Many settled. Some faced million dollar verdicts and ongoing royalty payments. Newegg, even after losing in district court (in East Texas, a common venue for patent trolls), appealed and has managed to invalidate these patents, meaning Soverain cannot sue more companies and cannot even collect on payments from other judgments in their favor. 

Newegg is so impressive because of their unwillingness to settle.  Newegg noticed that settling with one, only invited more to sue.  By showing themselves willing to fight back, especially if they can win, might deter other trolls.

Sadly, Newegg’s strategy, while successful this instance, isn’t enough to stop this strangle on innovation.  Start-ups and small companies do not have the legal team or money to burn to endure a drawn out lawsuit, which is often why especially small companies settle.  Newegg claims they still receive threats over patent lawsuits, including four companies claiming ownership over some part of the search box.  Until Congress and the courts can return some fairness to the system, innovation will be stifled and money will be wasted on lawyers and trolls.

Netflix’s stock has soared this week on news of excellent earnings and growing subscribers.  More significant is the release of Netflix’s new original series “House of Cards.” The $100 million prestige soaked series, from Academy Award winners David Fincher and Kevin Spacey, launches its full 12 episode season in all markets on February 12th. Also important, “House of Cards” will be available on every platform Netflix supports.  Any Netflix subscriber can watch every episode of the season by Saturday morning.

Compared to legacy media models, this is revolutionary, while at the same time, so simple and obvious about how consumers want to consume media.

Between time-shifting DVRs and online piracy, viewers already have pretty significant control over their viewing experience. International viewers still have to choose between piracy or waiting months to watch foreign shows. American “Downton Abbey” fans waited for almost six months for season 3, even needing to avoid major plot spoilers because of the long delay. Legacy television continues relying on windows and restrictions, something consumers are less willing to accept.

Netflix’s model has long been about enablement.  “House of Cards” screenwriter Beau Willimon explained Netflix considered several ways to release the episodes:

Should we do a traditional [one episode per week]? Should we do it in chunks, like four episodes, then five episodes, then four episodes? And we eventually arrived at [offering] 13 all at once because that speaks to what Netflix has to offer that really no other network does. Its subscribers watch content when they want to watch it, how they want to watch it, in what chunks they want to watch it. And so it puts the decision in their hands.

Let consumers choose how they watch their shows. It’s a revolutionary idea. Remove restrictions and enable users.  It’s empowering and value-enhancing.  These sound like great ways to build a business.

Pandora Radio entertains 60 million users a month with doubling revenue, yet this success is marred by oppressive royalty fees that make its growth a financial burden.

Pandora pays royalty rates for music played based on overall revenue, not profits, and pays higher rates than terrestrial radio stations.  Pandora is lobbying Congress to lower its rates so that it can stay in business.  Some in Congress believe terrestrial radio should instead pay the same higher rates that Pandora and internet streaming companies currently pay.

Artists and labels are fighting back against any decrease in the rates paid.  They claim the rates per stream are already fractions of a cent providing them with little income.

Laura Balance, co-founder of Merge Records, representing Arcade Fire and Spoon, told the Huffington Post "[Rates] should be higher. It doesn’t make me feel badly for [Pandora] at all that they should be paying out half of their revenue or more to artists – that is entirely how their revenue is generated."

But this is, of course, not true. Pandora generates revenue by providing a service that adds value to consumers. Not simply a radio station, Pandora creates custom playlists for listeners based on their interests, and adapts the playlist based on what the listener likes and dislikes.  The result is listeners might discover new music they never knew about. 

Music labels still seem to believe their content is the sole value generated by any music related technology company.  There’s a reason music labels have spend the past half century illegally paying radio stations to play their artists – because the radio stations have influence over their audience and are valuable promotional resources for artists.  Pandora, through all its algorithms, software interfaces, and community building, offers incredible value to consumers and back to music labels.   Music labels should consider what happens if their demands put Pandora and other streaming services out of business. Do they expect consumers will just start buying the music they tell them to? Or will consumers move to more piracy and music sources that provide no revenue.  Eventually, I hope, music labels will start recognizing the value they gain from embracing new music services rather than trying to drain them out of existence. Music labels might discover they are on the loosing side of that regime.

Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) has proposed legislation that restricts any new regulations or laws governing the internet. The legislation states: “After 90 days of passage of this Act no Department or Agency of the United States shall publish new rules or regulations, or finalize or otherwise enforce or give lawful effect to draft rules or regulations affecting the Internet until a period of at least 2 years from the enactment of this legislation has elapsed.”

Issa proposed the law on Reddit to a skeptical audience pointing out the congressman’s support for the Cyber Intelligence and Sharing Act.  This may be part of a Republican effort to court young voters protective of the internet, free expression, and the expansion of copyright regimes (like the released and rescinded policy paper by the Republican Study Committee on copyright reform).

But free market economics should not need regulations to prevent regulations.  Congress is certainly capable of proposing (and passing) terrible laws but they can also pass good laws. Just because some regulations are bad does not mean all regulations are bad.

The DMCA, a terrible law that is a massive infringement of the first amendment and is regularly used to restrict speech, has somehow managed to included the beneficial safe harbor provisions that have allowed many internet companies to survive copyright holder pressures to stifle innovation.  If the safe harbors hadn’t been explicitly written, it’s not apparent that the courts would have protected third-party companies from copyright lawsuits, putting into jeopardy all search engines and social media websites from YouTube to Facebook.

This kind of moratorium just punts all questions about net neutrality, copyright reform, and cyber security out two years.  In fact, it bars Congress from reacting at all, possibly preventing DMCA reform or banning packet inspections (which is my favored way of instating de facto net neutrality since ISPs would not be allow to know what kind of traffic you are transmitting).  Further, if there is enough support to pass a moratorium on internet regulations, than there should be enough support to just not pass these laws in the first place.

Banning new regulation only serves to avoid debating what regulations are or aren’t needed.  It fails to solve a problem and could birth unintended consequences that may be more detrimental.  If the goal is to do nothing, than just do nothing. Congress has proven itself effective at that.

Statistician Nate Silver has been under criticism for partisan bias because his model evaluating the presidential election has heavily favored Obama since it launched this summer. This criticism comes from a misunderstanding of statistics, both how they are calculated and what they mean.

As most polls show, this is a very close election.  The popular vote will likely be between 1-2 percentage points. The closest swing states also may be decided by only 1-2 percentage points. Nate Silver’s model understands this and seeks to explain this with more depth than any pollster or pundit.

A single poll, for example may show Obama and Romney tied with a margin of error of plus or minus three points. This means, based on the sample population polled, there is a 95 percent chance that the true poll result is within three percentage points. There is a 95 percent chance, known as the confidence interval, that the true result should have showed Romney up three points and Obama down 3 points.  There is also a five percent chance the actual result is outside of that 3 percent margin of error.

This is where poll aggregators like Real Clear Politics and Cook Political Report offer more insight. By simply averaging polls, the margin of error is reduced and the confidence interval increases. More polls means a larger sample size means a lower chance the sample population isn’t reflective of the full population.

Nate Silver takes his analysis a step further, by incorporating economic data, fundraising, incumbent status, and other, in his opinion, indicators of electoral success.  While his model is in many ways, an opinion, it’s a very transparent one that allows others to test and verify his analysis.

Silver’s success came, in part, from correctly predicating 48 out of 50 states in 2008. But this mistakes Silver’s predictions and even his claims for success.  He is providing odds, similar to odds makers for betting.  When he says a state has a 51 percent chance of going for Obama and 49 percent chance for Romney, that means 51 out of 100 times, Obama will win that state.  When Silver claims Obama has an 80 percent chance of winning this election, he’s still saying Romney has a 20 percent chance of winning. If Romney did win the election, that wouldn’t disprove Silver’s model.  Since we can’t hold the election 25,001 times (as Silver does in his simulations), we can’t know for certain how accurate his model is.

Upsets happen, in politics, sports, and any situations with odds; because we expect the unexpected to happen occasionally.  Thankfully we have tons of data related to presidential politics, from prior elections and thousands of polls for the current one.  That’s why a model like Silver has created is believable, because it is based strictly at looking at prior and current data to make the best possible prediction. When unexpected outcomes happen, that only serves to improve the model.

Many in the media would probably love to vilify Silver if Romney were to win.  Even if Silver fails to predict every state properly, that’s not his goal. He’s simply showing what the data shows – what is the more likely outcome.  Unexpected things do happen, but you likely won’t expect them.

Helping people discover great places to visit and eat has grown into a popular business. Websites and apps enjoy promoting the “Best of” a specific location. Village Voice holds trademarks on “Best of San Francisco”, “Best of Seattle", and several other best of cities and has chosen to sue competitor Yelp for using Best of language on its website.

Last year, the Village Voice sued Time Out New York for using “Best of NYC”. Time Out counter-sued claiming “Best of” is generic and should not be able to be trademarked. In April 2012, Village Voice and Time Out reached an undisclosed settlement (registration required).

More and more we are seeing companies and individuals bullying others from using basic language and ideas, both of which defenders of intellectual property will claim can’t be limited by intellectual property.  “Best of” is completely generic and has been used in books and magazines for decades. Village Voice, in fact, only registered its trademark “Best of NYC” in 2007.  This is a trademark that should never have been approved.  And Time Out not fighting the case just goes to show how easy it is to bully even sizeable companies with frivolous IP lawsuits. It will almost always be cheaper to settle than to fight in court.  Even if Time Out or Yelp were willing to fight to get the trademark invalidated, its unlikely they could recoup legal fees.  Why spend millions just to prevent the company from suing another competitor? If Yelp decides to settle, that just leaves Village Voice armed to sue more magazines, books, and websites. The “Best of” the web, all vulnerable to a company scared of some competition.