Archive for June, 2009
Comcast Launches 4G – Evil Now Wireless June 30th, 2009
Comcast is not my favorite company. You know why, if you actually use the internet. But as I am currently typing this post via a Comcast provided internet connection (ie: I pay them, they give me internet), I have to cover this. Comcast is now launching their splendid new 4G network, with the help of Clearwire, and some WiMax love.
Brilliantly called “Comcast High-Speed 2go,” it is about twice as fast as the 3G access you are used to having on your iPhone. Not bad, at an average 4 megabits. It is coming to Portland Or, where I am currently located, today. While I am not shelling out the extra bucks (iPhone 3G tethering is fine for me), someone is.
This is a big deal, if you live in a soon to be supported metro area, have extra money to blow, dislike finding wifi, and want to give Comcast money to continue being assholes. Or: a big deal for seven people. When they actually manage to fling the signal far enough to make wireless actually not feel like “crap-im-out-of-range-fi” I will pay attention.
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Yahoo Still Lost – CEO Explains June 30th, 2009
I know that you probably do not enjoy annual meetings of companies. These meetings for even the hottest company can easily be surpassed on the excitement scale by watching paint dry while blindfolded competitions. Yahoo’s recent annual meeting was nothing of the sort if you read between the lines. Fortunately both Businessweek and the WSJ liveblogged the whole deal a few days ago. After reading and comparing notes from the around the internet, we have the dirty bits for you to read.
Let’s start with search: Yahoo is screwed. Quick, what does BOSS stand for? Yeah, I thought so. That is one of Yahoo’s largest pushes on the search front Carol Bartz (CEO) brought up. Even more, Yahoo will not be working with Google on search, period. Something about the government disliking the move. Or put more carefully: we are not in a position to fight this, and Google is not going to pick a fight with regulators over a deal with us. We are alone, and our search offerings will continue to be third rate.
In regards to the small and unused bits of the Yahoo-verse that waste money, Carol called them “space debris,” and discussed their shutdown. Focus seems to be her game, and she ran the meeting like she was the goddamn boss. Shockingly enough from a CEO, but after the Yang debacle having a real leader feels wonderful.
Lover her of hate her, she is a straight shooter. In regards to the possibility of MSFT deal, she said (paraphrase) “we are not going to tell you until the deal is complete.” Damn, that is hard to argue back to. Not even a hint if she wanted the deal or not, just “shut up, trust me, and I will get back to you.” Carol apparently has a firm grip on how to manage this sort of meeting, once again fixing a Yang problem.
All in all, the Yahoo meeting gave me a single impression: they do not get it. They need to focus on building a core search product that function, and a better advertising vehicle to monetize it. Following, cull the masses of their projects (Carol does get this, but the company will probably hate the change), and focus on two things: reach and profits. Carol seems brilliant so far, but she did not seem to hit a new vision as hard as a critique of the past. Saying “we have an execution problem,” is a good step. But it does little remedy it.
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Green Dam Damned – China Backs Down June 30th, 2009
Here is a small morsel of good news if you are still reeling from the turmoil of the past several weeks: China has pulled back from its “Green Damn Youth Escort” software. You recall Green Damn, it was that buggy trash software that China put out to filter the internet, and control its populace. That Green Dam, not this one.
Of course, China was under intense pressure from literally everyone: the US, the EU, hackers, its population. It is one thing to do as Britain does, and slowly lock down a populace with cameras, searches, and brutal laws, but far another to merely announce that you will control all of their information influx. The Chinese government’s hubris can still surprise, even to this day. If they are playing a hearts and minds campaign, they are failing.
Perhaps they will merely attempt to patch the software, and go at it again, at which point PC manufacturers will have yet another choice: give in? In all honesty, if all the PC manufacturers refused it, the Chinese government would be in trouble. Computers are a vital aspect of the modern economy, and the Chinese powerhouse would not work without them. Now, if the Federal government would create a pool, of say one billion dollars, and use that to repay a portion of lost profits to PC manufacturers, they might make a stand.
China would be immediately pinched. Let me rephrase my intentions: Green Damn sets back the hopes of a more free Chinese society. That is both bad for China, and the world. Green Damn is digital tyranny.
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Quantcast Wants To Find Your Audience For You June 29th, 2009
If you had access to endless servers of data on millions of websites, you might have an insight or two on where the people are that a specific advertiser wants to reach. Quantcast is betting that it can do it, and scale across a variety of sites around the internet. Today in a major press release, the company announced the launch of its “Media Program,” which apparently is “connecting planning and buying to deliver custom addressable audiences.” Quite ambitious.
Startup Quantcast, backed by 25 million in funding was probably looking for a creative way to apply their constant influx of data, and pull some dollars from it. What they have built is quite impressive, if you are not familiar with the Quantcast system, it tracks visitors to individual websites, and further breaks them down by age, gender, etc, giving you a detailed and open view of a websites audience. Advertisers that need reach just a slice of the world are going to be willing to pay top dollar to find their niche, and Quantcast knows where that is.
Insert functional business model here.
Assuming that Quantcast can successfully link websites to advertisers, then we might see a new powerhouse emerge. Information is power, and Quantcast is holding a lot ammunition. It makes you wonder why Compete is tracking such a different data set. Why not meet Quantcast head to head here?
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Pay More, Get Less – Windows 7 In Europe June 29th, 2009
All respect to our brothers and sisters across the pond, but it seems that you are about to be screwed. By now we are all familiar with the odious decision of the EU to block the installation of the Internet Explorer browser inside of the Windows 7 shipping box. Sadly, it seems that Apple is allowed to ship the horrible fantastic Safari browser wherever it pleases. But, now there is word that less for more is even better than less with more.
If you are buying Windows professional for example, take a look at the pricing disaster (via ComputerWorld):
“Windows 7 Professional, the key retail edition for businesses, will sport a price tag of €285, or $400.60, and £189.99, or $313.84, at Saturday’s exchange rate. In other words, EU customers will pay twice the $199.99 U.S. price; U.K. buyers will pay 57% more.”
It doesn’t take a judge to make that seem fair. Of course, MSFT can price Win7 at whatever level they want, it’s their own product, but after our initial positive reactions to the US price structure, this is quite disappointing. Whatever happens, Win7 is going to boost the land of Windows in the world, just as Bing is doing it on the internet. It would just take less time if half of the world was not being screwed at the checkout counter.
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Mobile Email is Not Optional. June 27th, 2009
I am taking a stand here against most people. I hereby declare that if you are “out,” you should still be receiving emails. I don´t give a damn about your delays and errands. At least read my urgent note. I suspect that people will declare me incorrect, send a text they say. I can hear them. Hear me out.
If we are close enough to text, I probably don’t email you in the first place. I’ll send you a damned text. And, emails and texts are vastly different: texts cap out at 160 characters (about little poke past what Twitter allows). Thats a non-starter. I could call, but ringing your phone is an annoyance for us both, and you are probably occupied.
Now, perhaps right now you do not, say, have mobile email. Let’s start with that. What type of phone do you have? Acceptable answers: iPhone, Blackberry, Palm Pre (soon), I’m too broke to have a cell phone. Now the only person that cannot give an acceptable answer is a person with a cell phone that is ghetto.
Get over your crappy clamshell RAZR. Those went of fashion like Columbus.
Alright, but why is mobile email so important? It just hit me walking the terminal of the Denver airport (great place, free wifi), after my flight was delayed for an hour. I had been incommunicado for the two hours before due to the fact that I was in a flying tube at 36,000 feet. We hit dirt, and I popped out my iPhone, received my 27 new messages and scanned through them. Of the 27, six were important enough for me to read, and of those six, three had action items for me.
If my flight had not been delayed, I would not have had the time to pull out my laptop and handle those tasks. But, I would have seen the emails and on the plane started to work on them. This is about speed. You are not moving fast enough. I am you. Not having access to a serious phone (email, browsing, Twitter, etc) means that for 99% of the people you talk you are dead the moment you get up from your chair.
People talk about convergence, and connectivity. Bullshit. Most people just wander out the door and off the map. You are too slow. Get a better damn phone and use it.
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Glam Media – In Your Twitter App Monetizing Your Code? June 26th, 2009
Oh well now! It seems that well funded internet titan [they have raised something to the effect of 125 million dollars, according to TechCrunch], seems to want to work with Twitter. But not in the classic sense, instead they want to aggregate Twitter applications and monetize them. They have been sending out an email to a variety of developers, attempting to drum up business. Developers will probably benefit from this, given the difficulty involved with monetizing a single application. Glam as the connections, if they aggregate the applications for developers, they could have a clean shot to get the hard working Twitter ecosystem developers some deserved cash.
Glam Media is a giant in the world, with offices scattered in major cities, and millions upon millions of viewers to their content. In fact, their corporate site 111 million monthly uniques. With the weight of their publisher clout with advertising companies cannot pull this off, who can?
Update – TechCrunch has a copy of the letter that developers are getting. Our tippers apparently cannot cut and paste.
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Apple Price Cuts Enough? Computer Market Remains Awkward June 26th, 2009
Personal computer sales are supposed to fall 6% this year, and grow by 10.3% in 2010. Not rosy, but an improvement from the previous analyst musings. Much of the reduction in losses this year, and the projected climb in sales comes from the netbook and broader subnotebook markets, with strong offerings from Asus still capturing the eyes of budget conscious consumers. The report this information comes from, found here, is centered on PC’s, discussing heavily the Windows 7 push, etc. How does this affect Apple?
Think that we are above the echo chamber?
Apple focuses its products on the upper level of the market, their cheapest laptop still costing $999. Yes, in fact, even the cheapest box that Apple will ship with you that has OSX on it will cost you 600. And that’s a desktop. With no monitor. Cheap PC makers will ship you more, for less. Point: Apple users have always been less price sensitive, being generally, more demanding computing users.
If computer shipping growth is going to be more and more focused on the lower end, cheaper, do-less-with-less netbook market, where does that put Apple? Apple surely has noticed the move across the PC market to cheaper computers, as we all noted in their recent WWDC updates. But if Apple never does release the oft-rumored Apple netbook, will that place them at a serious disadvantage? If consumers do not find it in them to move back up the computer food chain, at least a single notch, from sub to full notebooks, it would seem that Apple has a long road to finding growth again in their Mac line.
Surely, the Apple-devotees will continue to purchase their beloved Macs, as I will continue to expand my collection of PC’s, but if Apple wants to expand market share, they will either have to expand their product line, or cut their prices again.
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Surprise! $10 For 3.0 Too Much For iPod Touch June 25th, 2009
A shocking revelation came out today, thanks to personal friends and general stand up crew AppleInsider: people with an iPod Touch do not want to fork out three Mocha’s, or $10 just to get 3.0 on their iPod’s. Shocking, as I said. iPhone’s of course have been upgrading like rabbits, to prevent the new iPhone 3GS team from gloating much over the iPhone 3G crowd. [Note to the 3GS userbase: we 3G'ers outnumber you. Look down on us and see what happens.]
Not to steal their thunder of buzz, you should read their post (it has pie charts), but how can this even be remotely surprising to anyone? First: most people with iPod Touch’s use them mostly for music listening. How much did that change in 3.0? Not $10 dollars worth. AI reports that a mere 1% of Touch users have upgraded, I’m surprised it’s that high. But now this poses a conundrum, now iPhones and iPod Touches are running on distinct platforms, making App development even more fun for developers. Not only do we tech people now get to brave the App store, but we also have to make sure our Apps run on OS 2 and 3. Insult to injury.
Make it free, Apple! I never got why you charged for it anyway, it struck me as a money-grubbing dick move. So get over yourself, and get everyone to 3.0. For the first time, the iPhone is living up to its promise.
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Day Traders Watching Your Tweets – Idiots June 25th, 2009
Now, anyone who trades in the financial markets is desperate to find even the slightest edge over his or her competitors. Even the shortest gap where you know something, and no one else does, could be potentially half a goldmine. And, now it is being told that Hedge Fund denizens are using Twitter to collect even faster information. StreamBase, a maker of software, monitors Tweets for real time price sensitive data to analyze and hand to traders. This is going to be comical.
Can you name a less reliable service than Gmail Twitter? Now, imagine using Twitter to place bets of over $1,000,000! I can imagine the day traders, frantically refreshing Search.Twitter.com trying to figure out why it is 3 hours behind real time, and why they lost the GDP of a small nation. Perhaps there will even be lawsuits over the tagline of Twitter search: “See Whats Happening – Right Now.”
Final thought: if you are going to be trading with Twitter data, what stops me from the gaming the hell out of what you read? I would wager that these Hedge Fund people are not your average Silicon Valley types. I bet they would not get the difference between a spammer and a real person on Twitter, half of the time. So I can farm 100 accounts, and spread bad information, and then profit from the stock swings. Bad plan everyone.
Tip: services such as Twitter should be played for entertainment only, not for investment purposes.
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