Posts have been a bit slow over the past few days. In fact, there have been no posts. Why? A little Netgear WGT624 (v2) router melt down.

The original problem with the router was very mysterious. It seemed to work fine, but I was having intermittent problems connecting to this site (Zoinger.com). Eventually, I couldn’t connect at all. My browser would just time out.

Of course, I thought this was my host’s (1and1) fault. A call to them indicated that this was not the case. Next up, Charter Communications, my cable modem supplier. Nope, they could get to Zoinger.com no problemo, but they did suggest that it might be the router.

WTF? The router. No waaay. However, by this time, about 5-6 hours worth of debugging time, I was getting desperate. I removed the router from my set up and… low and behold, I could get to Zoinger.com.

Indeed, it was the router causing the problem. I searched on Netgear’s “support” site (what a joke), and could find no reference to this issue. I then tried downgrading the firmware to an old version to no avail. Then I found this post on the Netgear forum site. 19 pages of people having a similar problem with no official response from Netgear.

I’ve owned routers from Sonicwall, SMC and Cisco and have never had a problem with any of them. My Netgear router has had problems from day one (it really doesn’t like renewing the dynamic IP address and would hang all the time requiring a reboot).

So how is Netgear router relief spelled? Linksys WRT54G… the damn router I should have purchased in the first place.

P.S. I wish I would have used Skype when I called Netgear’s technical support line. The router has a pretty cool feature to automatically upgrade the firmware. However, during an upgrade in my debugging process the router hung which ended up frying it. Anyway, the tech support person asked me why I would use the feature… implying that you really shouldn’t. OMG, it’s only the first thing you see when you boot into the admin screen, and it is all the time asking you if you want to upgrade when a new firmware version comes out. Classic!

The NYTs has a series of articles on the MGM vs. Grokster peer-to-peer file-sharing case. Oral arguments will be heard tomorrow in the Supreme Court.

A Supreme Court Showdown for File Sharing
File - Sharing Case Worries Indie Artists
When David Steals Goliath’s Music

It’s interesting that some recording companies like V2 Records are taking advantage of peer-to-peer networks to promote their artists. With the decline of MTV (they basically don’t show videos anymore) and mainstream radio (they play the same 40 songs over and over) as promotional outlets, it is nearly impossible for independent labels to gain publicity. As Andy Gershon, president of V2 Records (home to artists such as the White Stripes and Moby), notes:

The cat is so far out of the bag and so far gone that it’s pointless to keep fighting it. I might as well make as many people fans of our music, whether they illegally download it or not.

Regarding peer-to-peer networks Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy adds :

“I look at it as a library. I look at it as our version of the radio,” Tweedy said. “It’s a place where basically we can encourage fans to be fans and not feel like they’re being exploited, which is basically what the whole industry is geared to do.”

Tweedy encourages fans to tape Wilco shows and has distributed tracks over the Internet for free months before releasing them on CDs.

He agrees artists should be compensated, but “you try to encourage people to feel more like a patron of the arts instead of a consumer.”

It will be very interesting to see how the Court will rule on this case.

Today’s NYTs New Economy article, referenced a Goldman Sachs survey of corporate spending. The survey noted that:

Technology looks to be firmly in the cyclical category for now.

The gist of the Times story was that this was too narrow of a view of “technology” (i.e., just corporate spending). The article sited technologies that might not be captured in the survey such as: Medsphere (a start-up that hopes to bring open-source clinical systems to hospitals), Epocrates (a handheld-based drug, disease and diagnostics tool for doctors) and social software such as wikis and Flickr.

Information technology is clearly much more pervasive than a corporate-spending figure would suggest.

Also in the WSJ on Friday was a story about Clear Channel’s plans to start podcasting.

Clear Channel ‘s podcasting initiative will begin by May. The company will allow listeners to download programming such as comedy skits by popular morning show hosts. But music programming, which involves complicated licensing and royalty issues, won’t be included in the podcasts. Podcasting in general is focused mostly on talk-radio formats.

Well, I guess podcasting is finally going mainstream.

The WSJ had ran an article last Friday which gave an overview of the ad market for blogs. In general, they noted that some brands (such as Audi and Sony) where experimenting with running ads on blogs. However, there is a general fear on the advertisers part about how their brands will be perceived, written about and commented on in blogs due to the more chaotic nature of blogs — especially when compared to mainstream media. This is definitely holding back ad revenue. However, there are some success stories.

…Weblogs Inc., which now operates 76 blogs, including its own high-traffic gadget and car titles, Engadget and Autoblog. Weblogs has taken in $925,000 in advertising revenue over the last four months.

Not a bad chunk of change, but still just a fraction of the $9.6 billion 2004 web advertising market.