Pointless Rants

CNET has an article wondering if the era of free downloads is over. It makes sense to me. So far most web businesses have been based on popularity. The more hits a page receives, the more they can charge for advertising on that site. Pretty much all web activity is funded by advertising dollars. Now, with the economy in such rough shape, businesses may be rethinking their budgets, perhaps choosing to spend less on web advertising. The end effect: providing free content is no longer a viable strategy for generating revenue. Suddenly software has a price again.From my experience with the App Store, I expect that we’ll see a lot of “lite” versions offered for free while the full software costs a small amount. We’ll see.