Archive for May, 2009
TechCrunch50 About To Get More Expensive – Buy Your Ticket Now May 31st, 2009
If you are planning on heading to the TechCrunch50, (I am, so come and party with me), the time to buy your ticket is right now. If you wait until tomorrow to purchase your ticket, the cost is going to rise by 500 dollars. Here is the cost structure:
- $995 – Special Recession Buster – through May 31 (limited to 500 tickets; 50% off early-bird rates)
- $1,495 – Extra Early Bird – June 1 through June 30
- $1,995 – Early Bird – July 1 through July 31
- $2,995 – Regular Admission – August 1 forward (based on availability)
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Google Squeezing Every Dollar – Ads In Reccomendations May 30th, 2009
A quick note from the trenches: Google is going to monetize the hell out of its preforming properties. This allows them to build Wave and still have the stock price that they are so accustomed to maintaining. Take a look at this:
Google is brilliant: this ad placement is beautiful. It actually is a pre-search that brings me what I (probably) want before I even have to search for it. The time savings is measurable, Google pads the bank account, and the advertiser gets an even more premier place to push their products.
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Chrome On Linux – Displays Google.com, Does Little Else May 28th, 2009
Chrome is the best browser on the Windows platform. Faster, lighter, and prettier than that ponderous FireFox, the terrible Internet Explorer, and the horrific Safari, it has been my browser of choice almost since its very first day in the public eye. The other major platforms have been awaiting the Chrome love for some time now, Linux especially. Anyone who knows the Linux community, would know that nothing burns their collective backsides like Windows having something that they cannot have. Their good news: the Linux build of Chrome will now turn on and semi-function.
OF course, I say that not to knock the project. Us lazy Windows users are quite accustomed to having the newest-fastest-greatest software just appear on the horizon and drop into our startup folders. Linux users have to go out and build their own damn software on the occasion, and I respect them greatly for it. As they are constructing Chrome from a vague idea and a webkit backing, not ending up with Safari is a feat in and of itself.
How far along is Team Linux? Well, farther than I had been expecting. As Ben Goodger put it, developing a single application for the seemingly endless Linux builds and distro’s can be a bit of a “clusterfuck,” trying to get one app to work over so many many many many different versions. Imagine trying to design one after market car door handle for every version of the Camry ever made, ever. It is a challenge.
But, the project forges on, according to Ars the Linux browser can now “ I was able to load pages, open new tabs and windows, use the browser’s full-page zoom, download files, view and manage history, and run the Incognito privacy mode.” This is actually a pretty fair explanation of the earlier Windows Chrome builds, so we have a solid start. Keep going Team Linux, all the best in your pursuits. Excuse, I am going off to alpha test the latest Chrome build for Windows, send me an email when you get there in a year of two, we can trade notes.
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Chrome On Linux – Now Will Display Google.com, Does Little Else May 28th, 2009
Chrome is the best browser on the Windows platform. Faster, lighter, and prettier than that ponderous FireFox, the terrible Internet Explorer, and the horrific Safari, it has been my browser of choice almost since its very first day in the public eye. The other major platforms have been awaiting the Chrome love for some time now, Linux especially. Anyone who knows the Linux community, would know that nothing burns their collective backsides like Windows having something that they cannot have. Their good news: the Linux build of Chrome will now turn on and semi-function.
OF course, I say that not to knock the project. Us lazy Windows users are quite accustomed to having the newest-fastest-greatest software just appear on the horizon and drop into our startup folders. Linux users have to go out and build their own damn software on the occasion, and I respect them greatly for it. As they are constructing Chrome from a vague idea and a webkit backing, not ending up with Safari is a feat in and of itself.
How far along is Team Linux? Well, farther than I had been expecting. As Ben Goodger put it, developing a single application for the seemingly endless Linux builds and distro’s can be a bit of a “clusterfuck,” trying to get one app to work over so many many many many different versions. Imagine trying to design one after market car door handle for every version of the Camry ever made, ever. It is a challenge.
But, the project forges on, according to Ars the Linux browser can now “ I was able to load pages, open new tabs and windows, use the browser’s full-page zoom, download files, view and manage history, and run the Incognito privacy mode.” This is actually a pretty fair explanation of the earlier Windows Chrome builds, so we have a solid start. Keep going Team Linux, all the best in your pursuits. Excuse, I am going off to alpha test the latest Chrome build for Windows, send me an email when you get there in a year of two, we can trade notes.
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Zune HD – My iPhone Will Never Play Music Again May 27th, 2009
As a long and public defender of the Zune faith, I love a little brand encouragement like a mac fanboy love a spec bump on the Macbook line. The Zune, friends, is back. Not only just back, but screaming hot and wonderful in every way. Please, take a look at this and explain to me how you will not buy one the very moment that it comes out:
If you require for some odd reason, the technical specifications to this masterpiece, they can be found here. Happy countdown!
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Microsoft Plans Ad Attack For Search – Waste May 25th, 2009
What would you do with eighty million dollars? Improve your product, or advertise what you have? But, suppose that you already hose capital into your product, what then? What if no matter your efforts your product was always third rate? Well, Microsoft decided that instead of taking those 80,000,000 dollars and investing them into their search platform, they would launch an advertising campaign. Really?
I am a Windows advocate (often it seems the only one, but that is a different story), and have long been a self branded mild Microsoft fanboy. This time, I feel let down. Eighty million is a mind popping sum, and they are wasting it. Even if it does raise Microsoft’s search market share, it does little to address the problems that Microsoft has in search, namely that their search engine is not as good as the competition. Snazzy ads will not convince me that Google search is inferior to Live search.
Instead, I would invest the money into Live Image Search, which is in fact a very promising product, and the UI of their standard web search. You could do both with eighty million dollars. Hell, they could build a whole new damn search engine for that amount of money. Big companies get their calibration broken sometimes, Microsoft has, as the saying goes, “forgotten the value of a dollar.”
Can someone remind them that smoke and mirrors oft a broken product sells, as long as the ad dollars keep rolling in. But after they loose this block of cash, what then? Their search capabilities are going to be the same: not good enough. Come on MSFT, build a better mousetrap and then tell the world about it. You are doing this backwards.
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Twitter: Screw Revenue, TV Time! May 25th, 2009
Through all the over discussed history of Twitter, I have always tried to give Twitter the benefit of the doubt. I would think “Well, I have no clue why they are doing this, but I am sure that I am missing something would make it make sense.” No more. Twitter is going after television. No, you read that correctly, Twitter is headed Hollywood.
Spare me your groans, I have uttered enough of my own to cover us all. Twitter, apparently not growing fast enough, wants to reach out and, well, I am not sure really. They claim to want to “bring the immediacey of Twitter to life on TV.” (source). Really, what a waste of time, money, and such a powerful brand. Instead of building their core product and business, Twitter is off on a goose chase.
Hey Twitter, you already cannot handle the users you have. So, instead of doing this, why not buy some more servers?
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Nielsen Shows You Their Ignorance – Report May 22nd, 2009
Find out more about:alex, nielsen, p2p, priacy, video
We all have something called a “BS meter.” It is what starts ringing when you hear something that you know is malarkey. Mine went off today in response to a report that was published by Nielsen about video consumption. The important numbers can be found here. I’ll summarize the findings: only 1% of all watched video is online. Now, gut reaction, does that sound right? Or course not! Let’s take a look.
Most of the report (the full PDF is here), is filled with tidbits on television viewing, which is at an all time high of 153 hours a month average. I never watch TV, so I cannot comment on that, but it seems consistent with what I have heard a dozen times. Whatever. The internet numbers are what we need to focus on. That one percent breaks down into 131 million people watching three hours of video a month. Sounds innocuous enough, until you begin to question where they received their data from. Do you think that they have any data for pirated content? I bet not, and that alone makes the statistic bogus.
In 2004, P2P accounted for an astounding 60% of total internet traffic. That number was on a positive incline, but 60% is sufficient. Now, assuredly not all of that data was video; software and music piracy are a big deal, so sayeth the labels. But we do have some data to work with. Let’s look at the numbers. According to TorrentFreak, in a one week period (May 11-17), the latest episode of Lost was downloaded 1.72 million times. A Lost episode will run you a fair 40 minutes, or 66% of an hour. So, we have 1.72 X 0.66, or 1.13 million hours of video consumption using the internet. [Here we need to make a distinction: video consumed on a computer via P2P should be counted as "internet" traffic, as it is internet-based and consumed on a computer. Apple TV's et al are not discussed here.] So, over a one month period (4 weeks, about) that is another 4.5 million hours of video consumed online. If there were 131 million people watching 3 hours a month online, that is 393 million hours total. That means Lost’s numbers alone adds 1% to the total amount of online video consumed. Now add in every other TV show that is pirated, such as the remaining nine of the top ten, which comse to over 20 million hours in a month, and all of the Hollywood movies that are pirated. It’s pretty clear to see that Nielsen’s numbers are at best misleading.
This is not to say that the TV does not reign supreme, just that the internet is not getting its due. Pirates are a force unto themselves, and we need to respect their clout. And Nielsen, really? Pack up the typewriter and get online once in a while.
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Free WiFi Fleetwide? I Have A New Airline May 20th, 2009
Find out more about:alex, internet, southwest, virgin america, wifi
I hate to say this, but Southwest, we have to part ways. We had great times flying the Portland-SFO route. Sometimes you would even give me three chairs to lie on and two drinks. But, that only goes so far for a tech guy. You know what I really wanted (no, not cellphones on airlines, that would cause much annoyance induced homicide), in air WiFi. And you know what, Virgin is giving it to me. Forget any theoretical price differential, I can email on the way to Chicago, or New York.
No more being trapped with nothing to do. No more flipping open your laptop, firing up Chrome, and then almost bursting into tears. The internet has returned. However, while I am celebrating over here at my desk, I have one last teensy itty little request: electrical outlets. I mean, why not? Wait, what is that that you say? Virgin has plugs, and internet? Someone call the Church, I am going to marry this airline.
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Surprise, Twitter Too Smart For Ads May 19th, 2009
Find out more about:alex, twitter monetization
By now you have heard that Twitter will not be pursuing advertisements as their business model. Grab the Reuters story, here. Once again, there was much ado over nothing. Was anyone really thinking that Twitter would be so foolish as to pull a MySpace and plaster their product with banner ads? Besides, most Twitter interaction is through third party clients, advertisements would not help there. But that is where Twitter claims that the gold is.
I agree, actually I have agreed for the past half year or so, that tools were the revenue system for Twitter. It is strange to not monetize your main product, but hell Twitter is strange enough. Let me tell you the way that I see this going: to begin with the API system on Twitter is broken. There is money in fixing things that are broken, especially with a userbase that has such a dedicated user base that Twitter has. Do this, charge for extended API access. Let 3rd party tools mark it up a little bit. Monetize third party development and Twitter in one fell swoop.
Twitter, listen, let your power users do more. Reward the people that build things like Tweetdeck. Do not charge your casual users. How is this not perfect?
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