EclectEcon

Music Business Conference: reflections

I really enjoyed the four papers presented at today's conference, albeit for varied reasons. They told me things I didn't know (Tschmuck's summary, Liebowitz's demolition of the O-G/S study, O-G's vapid discussion of whether we really need copyright [he didn't really say anything that hadn't been said by Arnold Plant, nearly a century ago], and Gardner's presentation of data about file-sharing). The panel discussion that concluded the conference was weak, though (aside from Richard Mollet of BPI who was clearly more knowledgeable than some of the others). 

In the concluding panel, as I mentioned in the previous posting, the panelists mulled over the possibility of creating copyright collectives to deal with file-sharing. That's not what they said, but that's what they were doing. And Liebowitz has written definitively on the topic. He participated some from the floor, but his main point that gubmnts don't set prices right seemed beyond them for some inexplicable reason. Further, it was just plain shocking to me to learn how many people on both sides of negotiations would rather have the gubmnt set the prices (presumably to reduce their own companies' negotiating costs?). 

Little wonder the western world is on the slippery slope toward increased elitist interventionism.

Now, off to a winery (heuriger) for a post-conference get-together. I hope to be tipsy or worse before the night is over.

Live-Blogging the Music Business Conference: part IV (Big Champagne)

Big Champagne provides data about the music business. Eric Garland, founder, made the last presentation.

People are buying more but spending less. Price per unit is declining. YouTube is now the number one place that people listen to music? Wow!

Only 2% of albums sold 5K copies or more in the UK. The number of new platinum albums has declined over the past four years from 35 to just 12. Also, most digital sales are songs, not albums. [makes sense to me]. 

Holy Cow! My Space and YouTube are REALLY big compared with digital sales; and they are dwarfed by P2P.

 Another problem is that pirates are very efficient at providing music on P2P before it is released. And the search engines help everyone find the sites quickly.

Great evidence that "popular is popular", i.e. the best selling albums are also the ones most downloaded. We cannot use this fact as evidence that file-sharing has no impact on sales.

Live-Blogging the Music Business Conference: part III (Oberholzer-Gee)

Felix Oberholzer-Gee kicks off the afternoon session. He begins with a graph showing the phenomenal growth in P2P that began about the same time album sales declined (cf Liebowitz's first slide).

In contrast to Liebowitz, he asserts that concert revenues are important.

Again, as this morning, O-G points out that Liebowitz's results imply that more than all of the decline in album sales is due to downloading [sounds devastating, but of course it isn't because the sampling effect leads to a positive effect. The net effect is negative]

Summarizes a 2009 study by Hong showing that once control groups are corrected for, then Napster accounted for 20% of the decline in album sales. Still important, but nothing like 250%. 

O-G seems to be backtracking.... he presents a table showing wide confidence intervals for his estimates. Most researchers don't talk about the lower bounds of confidence intervals, and this is refreshing. But it is a cya strategy, too.

Discusses complements even more.... "If you go home tonight and have a good internet connections, thank file-sharers; they are the reason we needed faster internet." Funny. That certainly captures the problems and effects I've experienced when teaching at Herstmonceux.

He shows increased revenues to artists in Sweden over the years 2000-8. What explains that?

O-G presents the data that include iPod sales: He says he does so to show the effect of complementarity. "For everyone else, content is free." and that drives the demand for iPods. 

Sounds to me as if he's saying that indeed file-sharing has had a big impact on music sales.

Says people will produce without intellectual property rights. Examples are garage bands, wikipedia, open-source software. 

Now Liebowitz responds:

  In Sweden the artists were worse off in total if an inflation correction is applied to that result.

  O-G sidesteps and doesn't address that. Typical Liebowitz deals with the data and facts while O-G slides. But very well.

  O-G also caved on data about performing rights issues. 

  Both O-G and Liebowitz have been much more polite this afternoon. But I expect there are two reasons for this: First, Liebowitz cooled off. Second, O-G seems to have completely caved in on everything his conclusion: "therefore we need to get rid of copyright." Huh??

My summary: O-G admits Liebowitz is right, but waves his hand to explain why copyright should be abandoned. Very disappointing and intellectually vacuous.

Live-Blogging the Music Business Conference: part II (Liebowitz)

During the question session after his own presentation, Tschmuck declined to conclude what the effect of file-sharing has been on music sales. Not surprisingly, he called for more research.

-------------------------

Trying to summarize Tschmuck's paper as he presented it didn't work very well. I may try to summarize Liebowitz when he is finished.

Liebowitz began by showing a massive decline in record/album sales since 1999. [I expect Steve Levitt could use instrumental variables to show it's the result of abortion law changes.]

He next listed reasons put forward for this decline and already started belittling the work of O-G/S. 

One VERY telling point was that most O-G/S results cannot be replicated using the same data and the same techniques.

But Liebowitz's main point is that the O-G/S technique of using German school vacation days as an instrument to avoid the simultaneity bias is incorrect and/or meaningless. He further points out that Big Champagne's data contradict those of O-G/S.

Liebowitz couldn't possibly get through all his slides in the time alloted. His conclusion took O-G/S to task for misrepresenting previous studies. It was quite amusing as he presented assertions by O-G/S and showed what the papers actually said. It looks as if O-G/S did some pretty scandalous things.

Wow!

Addendum: O-G is in the audience and was asked to respond. He pretty much avoided all of Liebowitz's critiques. 

But sparks really flew when O-G tried to go off on tangents to cover other materials. Understandably, Liebowitz was upset because it took a bunch of time (and, O-G had notably refused to be on the panel with him). 

I wonder how much time Liebowitz will have to comment on O-G's paper this afternoon....  

Live-Blogging the Music Business Conference: part I

Tschmuck's paper is what he calls a typology: classifying studies by type It is very thorough and my brief summary below doesn't do it justice. He starts by summarizing Liebowitz's theoretical work. The summary seemed adequate.

Next he addresses Bayaan's work, employing game theory concluding that legal methods to fight file-sharing makes people worse off. 

Curien/Moreau are next urging that piracy is better for consumers to offset monopoly power and that artists make money from tours.

Peitz et al: talk about sampling benefits of file sharing. [Liebowitz has his work cut out for him.]

Tschmuck argues that the theoretical models of oligopoly and monopolistic competition need to be improved.

-----------

Next he addressed survey-based studies, beginning again with Liebowitz's work showing that file-sharing led to a decline in music sales.

Boorstein used survey data, too, and criticized Liebowitz's work, but Liebowitz extended the data and Boorstein's results were reversed!

Zentner: file-sharing reduces the probability of sales by as much as 30%. used tonnes of European data. Concludes a likely reduction in sales was actually 7.8%

Chi: says she found a positive, not negative effect, but it was questionable [Tschmuck's tone revealed his skepticism].

Andersen/Frenz found a positive effect, too. 

A Dutch study found that P2P file sharing eroded the profitability of album sales but boosted the profitability of concerts. [seems obvious to me. Note: This is at best a 2nd best result.]

Tschmuck's comments on this section seem reasonable for the most part.

-----------

Survey data of users

Bounie et al: explorers who sample vs. pirates who don't buy. Nothing clear.

Rob and Waldfogel: downloaders buy less but that increases consumer welfare.

Lee: a price study of price elasticities of demand

Leung: found negative impact on music downloads when punishment for illegal file-sharing is more severe.

Huygen et al: again found that file-sharing reduces record sales but said it is more than offset by concerts and merchandise sales. [if so, then record companies and artists should not be fighting file-sharing; the fact that they are makes me skeptical of these approaches]

Oops I missed a couple here.

Hong: says Napster might have led to a 20% drop in sales to young people (a huge segment of the market).

similar results from Peitz et al. 

Empirical studies:

Tanaka found no effect on CD sales in Japan. Used instrumental variables [ugh]. 

Bhattacharjee: concluded file-sharing had no impact on chart survival. [so?]

Blackburn: well-known artists suffer from file-sharing. Less well-known don't. 

O-G/Strumpf: no effect of file-sharing on sales. Used instrumental variables very questionably.

Overall, a reasonable summary with a great list of references. 

Live-Blogging the Vienna Music Business Research Days

I interrupt my travels today to attend a conference in Vienna on the music business, specifically on file-sharing, new technologies, and the adaptation of intellectual property law to these new technologies.

Background: a few years ago, Felix Oberhauzer-Gee et al published an article in the Journal of Political Economy asserting that file-sharing has had no impact on the music business. On the face of it, this conclusion seems worse than implausible. Beyond the implausibility, it turns out that their research had many errors, mistakes, and misrepresentations. These problems were made clear by Stan Liebowitz. Both Oberhauzer-Gee and Liebowitz are here at the conference. This should be fun.

Opening remarks are going on now. The first presentation is by Peter Tshmuck, conference organizer, who will provide a review of literature concerning music file-sharing. How he presents this should also provide some insight into his own views on the O-G - L controversy.

What Ten Books Would You Save in a Fire?My Answer: None.

I came across this question the other day while reading this (likely via Craig Newmark). I thought about the question for a few minutes, and then I realized my answer is "none".

Not that I want the contents of books to disappear. Even I am not so much of an unlettered person that I would wish for that.

Rather, it's that I don't read books as books much anymore. I read books on the internet, I read books on my iPhone, but I don't often read hard copy books. And the ones I read as hard copy are generally (like most textbooks) so unimportant to me in the grand scheme of things that I wouldn't really miss them anyway (in part because they were sent to me by publishers at no charge). 

And in another 5-10 years I will hold this view even more strongly. I really doubt there will be many, if any, books in the homes of most of us or even in most libraries that are not available electronically.

This realization makes several things more interesting.

• First, censorship and control of the internet will be increasingly important. I hope people will continue to work for maintaining freedom of expression via the internet.
• Book burnings will be a thing of the past, if they aren't already. 

Ms. Eclectic and I both use our iPhones to read books electronically. They are very light and portable and are capable of carrying tonnes of books. I see little or no reason to buy books when the electronic versions are so much more convenient. And increasingly educators will be moving in this same direction.

If there were a fire, I would grab my laptop and iPhone long before I would think about saving my hardbound copies of Balzac or Shakespeare or Ayn Rand.

More Reflections on the Use and Misuse of PowerPoint

I detest most power-point presentations, but I understand they have a role if well-done in some settings. Of the three power-point presentations I have ever made, here are the details:

1. a presentation at a corporate convention about the state of the economy. I was told I must use power-point for the presentation. It was my first experience with doing up the slides for one. My slides were mostly graphs or condensed tables (large fonts, lots of open space, small amounts of info on each slide) which I then discussed or explained.
2. a presentation for a local organization about the financial crisis. Again, very few points per slide, mostly talking points.
3. I then used that presentation about the financial crisis as the basis for one of my intro econ lectures last year.

I especially don't like power point in the classroom. It has the same drawbacks as fancy prepared overheads that we still see in some settings and that were so prevalent back in the 1980s: students don't know whether to copy down what is on the slide or to listen to the prof. And if the prof does little more than read the slides AND make them available online, students might as well take the course online; there is no reason to attend the lecture. 

I do make my lecture notes available online. However, these are cryptic notes and are certainly not substitutes for either the textbook or the lectures. 

I can readily imagine that some well-prepared powerpoint slides with animation, etc., could help explain some of the concepts better than I do on a chalkboard or using blank transparencies to write my notes on an overhead projector. But these slides need careful development to provide positive learning experiences rather than merely being dazzling displays of graphic design.

What I cannot imagine, though, is giving classes using only overhead slides or powerpoint slides provided by a textbook publisher. When I read this [h/t Craig Newmark], I was flabbergasted. Are there really professors who prepare so poorly and who are so poorly informed that they cannot do any better than read off slides prepared by someone else? Or is it just that they are trained and expected to give such horrible lectures?

The Full Popular Science Archive Is Available On-Line

I used to read Popsci now and then as a teen. I don't know that I'd have much interest in this now, but some of you might.

Hella: a VERY Large Number

In casual conversation, people often say, "That's a hella lot" .... I guess.... But now many folks are hoping to formalize the term. Kilo, mega, giga, tera, .... , hella.  From the Daily Mail (h/t MA),

A campaign to name the number 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 'hella' is attracting strong support from scientists.

An online petition started in California - where the word 'hella' is slang for 'many' - is calling for the word to become an internationally recognised prefix, joining the likes of mega, kilo and giga.

The word would apply to figures with 27 zeros after the first digit.

The Scunthorpe Problem

What do each of the following have in common?

• Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire, England
• Penistone, South Yorkshire
• Lightwater, Surrey

The answer is here [h/t JJ]

What the iPad-2 Should Become (assuming iPad-1 Survives the iEdsel Phase)

Following up on my previous postings on this topic, here's what I was hoping the iPad would be:

• Mac Air guts: power, reliability, speed, lightness
• twist-top tablet screen so you can use a real keyboard or use it as a tablet (I think some of the Fuji Lifebooks had this feature). This feature would also allow users to carry it with less concern about potential damage to the screen. Having to type on the screen is not at all convenient or comfortable.
• Touch screen to take advantage of all the wonderful possibilities.

In other words, I would see it as a potential replacement for my laptop, not as just an over-grown, snazzy version of the iTouch.

iPad Trademark Problems? How about iEdsel?

It has quickly emerged that many products already exist with the name iPad, including bra pads and shoulder pads:

[T]here is an iPad made just for Victoria and her secrets. A small Canadian company called Coconut Grove Pads Inc. has been making a line of polyurethane bra inserts and shoulder pads registered as the iPad, since 2007.

.... There also may be a more serious issue. Japanese computer company Fujitsu Ltd. also markets a device called the iPad. The handheld device is made for retail stores to help them manage inventory, do checkouts on the spot and communicate with co-workers. The Fujitsu iPad has been in use since 2002. The company applied for a trademark on the name in 2003, according to U.S. Patent and Trademark Office records. The trademark was never granted to Fujitsu, however, and a fight is now brewing as Apple considers whether to file an objection with the agency to claim its right to the name.

I haven't seen an iPad (of any type, insert or electronic). But based on what I have read, I don't think I would want one of Apple's. It is not as convenient to use as an older-style tablet PC and it is too big to carry in my pocket. In other words, it would be yet another gizmo to carry around, and it wouldn't fit in my pocket.

My reaction: why bother? and judging from the slight downward trend in the price of Apple's stock since news of the product began coming out over a month ago, maybe analysts share my perception.

It might be another example of a glitzy product that some people will rush out to buy but others will rationally avoid. If that happens, Apple can rename it the iEdsel. Or maybe iBetaMax.

Should You Buy a Kindle?

Last May, Ironman at Political Calculations asked this question and, after going through numerous calculations, concluded

Going with our hypothetical example, it very much pays for our college student to buy the Kindle DX, assuming that they're able to also get the textbooks they will need for their classes in the Kindle format, since we obtain a positive value for the Cumulative Net Present Value Adjusted for Early Salvage. If that value had come out to be negative, then either our college student would need to really crank up their reading of non-textbooks while in school or would really have to place a much higher "warm fuzzy" on owning their own Kindle DX.

I saved a link to that posting for several reasons.

1. I don't know how Kindles work, never having seen one in person (see below), but I never learned as much from my textbooks if I didn't write in them... argue with the author, write questions, try out ideas, etc. I'm not keen on electronic texts of any sort if this feature is lacking. What I am trying to say is that students should consider more than just the comparative net present value of the options when deciding whether to buy a Kindle, and the value of the learning experience is one of those additional things deserving consideration.
2. Despite Amazon's launch of the international version of Kindles, we still are unable to buy them in Canada. Apparently, this situation has arisen because Amazon is still negotiating with cellular phone services about who will provide the download services to the Kindle. We might have considered buying Kindles at one point, but we can't in Canada (and buying one in the US makes no sense unless we load it up with things to read while we're are visiting there).
3. I read novels on my iPhone using Stanza. So does Ms. Eclectic. There are tonnes of novels available, many at very low prices, and an iPhone is much easier to carry around than either hard copies or maybe even a Kindle. I have about 20 novels on my phone now plus some scripts for plays, in addition to all the other apps that are so much fun. And it is all in one neat package, along with tonnes of music.

We are both thrilled with the convenience and the readability of novels on our iPhones. So now that we have become accustomed to reading on our iPhones, I doubt if we will even consider Kindles when they finally do work out their cellphone agreements.

Shopping Is No Problem When You Live in a Small Town

We buy lots of things over the internet. We have amazing choices available, and the postage charges are often not extreme in comparison with our driving costs. So living in a small town in a rural area rarely poses a problem for us...... until the internet connection goes down:

Apologies to my Students

No, it's not for the exams or for the f-bombs I sprinkle throughout the lectures.

This apology is for the fact that I have not been able to update the course websites for the past two days. The course websites had been hosted by Bluewater Cable which was sold last summer to East-Link Cable. On Tuesday, they made a number of changes, several of which had some serious side effects, including intermittent telephone service, intermittent internet service, lost telephone messages, and most seriously for this posting: something which makes it impossible for me to gain access to the websites via FTP.

Allegedly, they have been working on this problem for over 24 hours but still haven't solved it. I'm skeptical. And pretty upset about their (lack of) service.

Fortunately they do not have a complete monopoly here. We have telephone options, satellite television and server options, etc. Changing would be a pain, so they can "exploit" us to some extent by providing unreliable service. But not much.

Update: I just spent a half hour on the phone with their tech support and received exactly the same final response that I received 24 hours ago: everything is set up properly and it should work but it doesn't, so we'll have to get back to you. This annoyed me for three reasons:

1. They play crappy C&W music while I'm on hold. How about some Haydn string quartets for once, eh?
2. They have now known about this problem for 24 hours and done nothing about it.
3. They seem to be VERY busy trying to deal many problems that arose during the changeover/integration of the systems. They should not have attempted this change if they weren't ready for it; and clearly they weren't ready for it.

"Plugged in, not charging"

Note to self: When you discover this message on your laptop, take the battery out and put it back in.

Doing so has started the charging process both times I have tried it. I forgot that was what I did the first time, and using Google to search for a solution led to lots of useless suggestions.

Ease of Use: Why Some Products Succeed.

This is SO Right! 

From the Business Pundit, H/t Craig Newmark:

My Use of the iPhone in the Classroom

I used the clock feature because I had forgotten to bring a wristwatch and the clock on the wall wasn't working.

I was not checking the scores and plays of a baseball game via Sportacular.

Honest. I wasn't.

It Happened Again: Bogus Excuses Outed on Facebook

This morning I received a very polite e-mail from a student explaining that he would have to miss my class this afternoon because he has to be in Toronto for an important meeting at 4pm.

Then on Facebook I see that he's going to a bachelor party.

Update: His response on Facebook, when asked about it:

...[I]ts all about diminishing marginal returns. Put your class on the X axis, and Toronto party on the Y axis. Both are considered good goods.Lets also assume that "[the student]" likes a diverse basket of goods, and that one unit of Palmer's class is equal to the cost of one unit of bachelor party (for simplicity). Being a rational maximizer, I will want to maximize my utility, within my budget constraints. The next unit of Toronto party gives me more marginal utility than the next Palmer's class. So as such, rationally I will choose to go to Toronto.

Does he really think my classes generate the same marginal utility per unit as bachelor parties? I'm not sure I can accept that as a simplifying assumption. And of course the rational maximizing equilibrium should be to equate MU/hour or MU/penny, whichever is the relevant constraint.

USB Safely-Remove Programme:no charge for the next day or so

Jack sent me the link to this page, where you can download a little programme that is considerably clearer than the basic Windows programme for safely working with your USB drivers. No charge for the next day or so.

I've installed and worked with it just a bit. He's right: it does seem much clearer than the basic Windows utility.

Adobe Flash Vulnerability

Adobe Flash apparently has a security hole that won't be fixed for several days yet. [h/t PlaceboMan]

Adobe Flash contains a vulnerability that may allow a remote, unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code on a vulnerable system. Adobe Flash Player, Reader, Acrobat, and other products that include Flash support are affected.

 Here's the U.S. gubmnt site describing problem and what to do about it.

When Was the Last Time You Sent Something in the Mail?

Ms. Eclectic mails things to her family on a regular basis, but I honestly cannot remember the last time I sent anything via the Postal Service. I pay bills on-line, I correspond on-line, and I place orders for things on-line. I think the last time I actually sent something via the post was when I sent souvenirs to my family from England last spring.

Lots of other people are like me, I guess. As a result of these technological changes, we send less mail, and we especially use fewer postal drop boxes*. Here is a set of graphs that make this point (from yesterday's WaPo):

*In our town, there is one mail drop box. It is at the post office. But we all go there nearly every day anyway to pick up our mail. We have no home mail delivery in our small town, and never have had it.

Changing Times

Two years ago during a final exam I was administering, I surreptitiously checked the e-mail on my laptop once while the grad TAs kept watch to try to minimize cheating.

Yesterday, we all had iPhones, Blackberries, and iTouches and we were all checking our e-mail and favourite sites throughout the exam we were administering.

"The times, they are a-changin'..."

Didn't stop us from catching some flagrant cheating, though.

So how do you construct a meaningful price index with all this new technology? It seems to me the best technique would be to use a rolling market basket instead of using market baskets that change only infrequently.

Has Facebook Peaked?

When I first joined Facebook about a year and a half ago (thanks to Jason's forming a group to support my joining), I was the only person from both my high school and my college graduation classes who was listed in Facebook.

Now there are over 40 people (out of a graduation class of 574) from my high school class who are Facebook members (I fondly remember many of them). There are also now 30 Facebook members from my class at Carleton College (a couple of whom might actually remember who I am).

With all us old folks rushing to join Facebook, is that a sign of its imminent demise?

Snopes: some background and history

An appropriate posting for April Fool's Day....

The Mikkelsons run Snopes, the first place I check when I suspect an e-mail might be a hoax. Here is an informative story about them, the beginnings of Snopes, and how they look into stories that might be hoaxes.

btw, I detest April Fool's Day. How did we ever formalize a practice whereby we get our jollies at the expense of others?

Addendum: I have to admit, though, that I really enjoy spoofs like the posting just below this one.

Is E-mail Dying?

I love e-mail. In fact for most purposes I prefer it to using the telephone. My correspondent and I can exchange information, and if one of us is unavailable, the information is still exchanged efficiently.

I was stunned, then, to read that John Dvorak is predicting the death of e-mail [h/t to RA]:

E-mail, once the most effective way to communicate with your tech-savvy associates, has become useless for too many people. Has anyone else noticed this phenomenon? It's essentially dead. So now what are we supposed to do? Phone?

Most of you reading this column will understand what I'm saying— those who don't understand have either already given up on e-mail or never found it very functional in the first place.

Here are the issues that have made e-mail useless for me [note from EE: these are my summaries of his somewhat cryptic subtitles].

1. Too many people keep changing their addresses.
2. Spam
3. Some people never check their e-mail
4. Dead e-mail boxes that aren't canceled
5. People who try out e-mail but don't follow up
6. Ineffective spam filters
7. the drift toward using instant messaging or social networks
8. lack of reliable receipt assurances, and
9. black holes: people who claim they read all the e-mail they receive, but you have no way of knowing this for sure.

I really do not think I should call Dvorak an idiot; he is a celebrity among computer writers. But I really doubt if he's right on this. I do not consider IM or social networks or the telephone to be good substitutes for e-mail, so despite the problems associated with e-mail, I don't see anything better out there right now. But of course that is not to say something better won't come along. Maybe in the future we'll make more use of voice-to-text SMS text messaging. That might replace e-mail. But I'm not sure about even that.

Animator vs. Animationby Alan Becker

This site has been around for awhile. I have seen links to it before, but if you haven't seen it, it's worth a visit.

 From Jack,

Just click on the link below, click on play, turn on sound if you have it,
then leave the mouse alone,
do not touch your mouse until it says: The End.
Sit back and enjoy a piece of creative brilliance.
We wonder who had time to do this.

Here is the link

User Profile Services: Service Failed to Log On

I have used computers for about 45 years [Fortran I, anyone?]. I have used personal computers for over 25 years. And yet I feel so frigg'n ignorant sometimes.

The other day I decided to restart my computer because the back-up programme was acting up. When I tried the restart, I received the on-screen message, "User Profile Service: Service failed to log on." [yes, it's Vista; I really regret not having specified that I wanted XP as a retrofit when I bought this computer].

So I disconnected things, and tried again. It logged me off again. And again. And again. Finally, I held the power button down to get a forced power-off,  and I restarted the computer in "safe mode". But I had no clue what to do. Nor did I have any clue what might have caused the problem. And the windows help seemed to want me to do all sorts of horrible and strange things (fortunately I kept looking for a solution I could understand).

Finally, I used my iPhone to search the web and found a tutorial that walked me through a step-by-step process to edit the user profile in the registry. Somehow my old profile (the one I wanted to use) had been given a .bak extension and the profile the computer was trying to use wasn't working. After changing the extensions on the file names, everything was back to normal and working fine.

I'm not sure, but I suspect that having my iPhone connected to the computer might have buggered things up when I tried to restart the computer. I now make sure it is disconnected when I do a restart.

Here's the link to the forum that had the walk-through, in case it happens to you.

"Free" Telephone Information from Google: 1-800-g00g411

No charge. Just call, follow the voice instructions, and it connects you [h/t to Judith]:

From Judith's message:

This is something you may want to use.

I still remember when the telephone company charged me $1.50 to get a phone number from information!

Leave it up to Google to come up with something like this.

Here's a number worth putting in your cell phone, or your home phone speed dial: 1-800-goog411. This is an awesome service from Google, and it's free -- great when you are on the road. Don't waste your money on information calls and don't waste your time manually dialing the number. I am driving along in my car and I need to call the golf course and I don't know the number. I hit the speed dial for information that I have programmed. The voice at the other end says, 'City & State.' I say, ' Garland, Texas.' He says, 'Business, Name or Type of Service.' I say,' Firewheel Golf Course.' He says, 'Connecting' and Firewheel answers the phone. How great is that? This is nationwide and it is absolutely free!