Open Coffee MeetUp: New Location

Nic Butterworth's Open Coffee MeetUp

I was there when Nic launched the Open Coffee MeetUp. The dude is a minor tech celebrity locally. And the turnout was good. More than 20 people showed. I kept coming a few times. It is not like investors did not show, and plenty of entrepreneurs. But the investors were institutional ones who would be good for round 2, round 3, round 4, kind of. They did not click with my seed money needs. And then I dropped out, kind of. Then I got slightly distracted with things Obama.

Now I am back. I went two weeks back. Noone showed up. So I left at 9:15. I met someone - Hilary Rowland - who I knew had RSVPd and who I met again at the NY Tech MeetUp - that 800 pound gorilla of MeetUps - and she said she did go. I did not see Nic, I did not see her, what was going on?

"We were in the corner in the left," she said.

Hmm.

Ends up I was in the wrong location. Nic started at the Astor Place Starbucks. Now it is a different location, better for me since now I don't have to change trains.

I set my alarm for seven. How about tomatoes for breakfast? Makes you feel cutting edge, healthy eating and all that.

I show up at nine. Only one other person was there before me, someone I had emailed before on the MeetUp system, but did not have a face for.

Facebook Group: New York Open Coffee MeetUp
Prospect Park Pick-Up Soccer
NY Tech Meetup

Nic set it up for a Thursday morning on purpose. Jobholders and entrepreneurs are two different species. He wanted to weed out the former.

Slowly people gathered. Nic did not show, but someone from his vertical video search company did. It was a good size crowd,more than a dozen. You get the intimate talk at the Open Coffee MeetUp that you don't get at the NY Tech MeetUp. That second usually has 500 people in the audience and presentations. Afterwards you interact for a few minutes with the celebrity presenters, like last time I did with the DoubleClick guy who sold it to Google for $1.6 billion. Now, that is some big fish.

Scott had also sold Fotolog for $90 million only a week before. So I needed to congratulate him.

I introduced myself saying I used to come here looking for investors, but I am here now primarily because I consider it a great learning experience to interact with entrepreneurs at various stages of growth.

Someone took the initiative to break the group into two. One for current affairs. I chose to stick with the second.

Lefty said his name was Lefty.

"Is that really your name?"

"When people say Lefty, I respond."

The actual name on his card was even more exotic. Leftonred Atanycorner. Dean is a consultant who helps early stage companies. He told me I had emailed him. Have I?

He said he was not interested but he came to sit near me twice. That is a lead to follow through.

Arnaud recently moved here from France. I could hardly pronounce his name.

This was my third or fourth time meeting Mark. The first two times I met him at Drinking Liberally, Rudy's, near Times Square. He was with The Huffington Post. Then I also saw him last week at the NY Tech MeetUp and waved him hello from a distance. Another person I was surprised to see there was Carlos, one of the top Obama volunteers in the city. His CEO ended up the guy who had sold his company to Google. I am impressed, Carlos.

Mark personally knows Arianna Huffington, of course. Yahoo, Salon ("Slate," he corrected me fast) and The Huffington Post had just hosted the first ever online only presidential debate, mashup, to be specific. We talked about that a little. By the way, Arianna Huffington is a Facebook friend of mine, as is Howard Dean, and Matt Damon, and Hilary Rowland, and Andrew Rasiej, and Greta Van Sustern at Fox News who has written a few times on my Facebook wall.

Yahoo: The First Online Only Debate

After everyone had left, Mark and I kept talking. Ends up he also lives in Brooklyn, "the most residential of the four boroughs," I said. I have been meaning to go to the Drinking Liberally in Brooklyn.

We talked. He gave me some very good advice on my startup. Then we talked soap. Then we walked to Union Square where I took the train to Astoria where I was meeting a former Nepali ambassador to Qatar for lunch. He is flying back to Nepal on Monday. We talked for hours.

The past two years I have met most of the top Nepali politicians here in the city including two former Prime Ministers one of whom said to me, "Thanks for saving me."

Lance I had seen once before. He was back. He was sitting next to me, but he ended up in the Current Affairs group.

Vlad, now that is a Slavic name.

JP has a real interesting startup. It is a social networking site. But it looks like a desktop application. There is the free part, and there is the premium version, so no ads. "Distraction." He is half Chinese, half Hispanic. He speaks Spanish.

Troy is in the mobile space. That is exciting. So much going on in that space.

I got engaged in a mini conversation with him. I could propose Christmas be celebrated in January but that is not going to happen, it is ingrained in the culture; do you think America's lagging behind in the mobile domain is partly cultural, I asked. He said it was more to do with the regulatory framework. The tiger had not been unleashed.

Not my space, though. I empathize with the Homo Sapien that needs the screen and the keyboard to be a certain size.

Frederic.



An Asian young woman who did not have her card with her, but who had a startup "that I can't tell you much about."

Hmm. I should use that line. If I tell you more, I will have to kill you.

Facebook Group: NY Open Coffee MeetUp.

"The IC is going to be like a frying pan, like a rice cooker. It is not the technology of it. It is the business part that is going to be amazing."

The Open Coffee MeetUp is a great Thursday morning thing to do. And the monthly NY Tech MeetUp is where you start the month.

Soccer on Sundays. And you got it all made.

"I live in Little Bangladesh. Prospect Park is the best part of where I live."

Scott 2.0, MeetUp.com 2.0

In The News

Analysts Mull Apple's Interest in Wireless Auction PC World
South Korea nears antitrust decision against Intel InfoWorld
Cisco Appoints Naresh Wadhwa to Lead India and SAARC Operations NDTV.com
Cisco® has appointed Mr. Naresh Wadhwa as President and Country Manager of its India and SAARC region (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation). He will report directly to Mr. Owen Chan, Cisco’s President, Asia Pacific Operations. .... Prior to Cisco, Naresh worked with 3Com Asia Ltd and Wipro Infotech in India. ...... Mr. Wadhwa has a degree in Engineering in Electronics from Mumbai University. ..... the worldwide leader in networking
Teenage Disney star apologizes for posing nude Xinhua "High School Musical" is Walt Disney Company's most successful show over the last two years generating profits to the tune of 1 billion U.S. dollars. ..... the photograph was allegedly taken by Zac Efron, Hudgens's 19-year-old boyfriend, and her co-star on the show. Together, the couple are by far the biggest "tween" stars in America
AMD: Is closing the quad-core deficit enough? ZDNet the launch of AMD’s single-die quad-core milestone processor. ...... Intel’s soon to launch 45nm chip takes the die size down to an even more manageable 107mm squared.
Quick Take: Dell Comes Out of the Storage Closet Motley Fool Storage networks are a reasonably cheap way to keep pace with the digital Everest of data that businesses must track. ..... By choosing to go "mostly" direct, Dell is eschewing services partners who could make the MD3000i a hit. And, worse, it's blowing a ripe opportunity to become a consultative partner to fast-growing small businesses
Dell reports strong storage sales Bizjournals.com
Dell launches storage systems for small businesses Reuters a new computer data-storage system on Monday targeted at small businesses, one of the storage market's fastest-growing segments. .... the devices, which start at about $7,000 and run to $13,000 ..... the growing backup needs of small businesses grappling with ever-increasing amounts of data. ....... iSCSI, an Internet-enabled alternative to other methods for connecting computers to data storage. ..... Small businesses, defined by Dell as employing 20 or fewer people ...... the fastest storage revenue growth of major data-storage vendors in the second quarter, increasing nearly 24 percent to an estimated $405 million ...... HP is the world's biggest PC manufacturer. ..... Dell earns about 85 percent of its revenue from businesses, with consumers accounting for the rest. ..... "What you are starting to see emerge is a bit of a different focus where we are pointing the company into different areas," CEO Dell said. "We're making a number of long-term investments," which include the new storage system.
Painless Drug Injections ABC News
HP Inkjet technology to be used medicinally Monsters and Critics.com
Dell's 'Veso' appliance runs on four-core Opterons and thin VMware Register
VMware's Diane Greene Sees Virtualization Embedded In Servers InformationWeek will soon ship servers with a hypervisor pre-installed, allowing customers to activate virtual machines shortly after turning on the server ........ The simplest way is to add a flash memory device to the motherboard of the server. The device holds a stripped down, 32-megabyte version of ESX Server called ESX Server 3i ..... "Virtualization really does simplify IT" ..... Microsoft's upcoming Windows Server 2008 is due next February, with the Viridian hypervisor to be added within six months. ...... The shift by the hardware makers to embed virtualization illustrates how far virtualization of the data center has come in a year's time. At VMware's annual user group meeting last year in Los Angeles, spokesmen on stage debated when virtualization would cease to be a specialized niche and enter the mainstream. That debate appears to be over with virtualization's adoption by the hardware manufacturers. ....... You can dynamically scale your infrastructure with embedded hypervisors and "drag and drop virtual machines off of network attached storage.... the notion that an embedded hypervisor or any other hypervisor will one day replace the operating system ...... A hypervisor, on the other hand, sits between a virtual machine's operating system and the processors, routing communications between the operating system, the CPUs, and other system resources. ...... can activate disaster recovery if necessary, firing up stored images of failed systems ....... a neutral virtual machine file format called Open Virtualization Format.
New stocks for 'Today's List of Top Growers' CNNMoney.com The new additions have little debt and offer well-above-average growth. ..... The case for replacing Dell is simply that the computer-maker's results have deteriorated, and it's not clear how it can restore rapid growth. Dell's greatest strength has been cost-efficient production of made-to-order PCs. The company has had initial success broadening that business by selling through Wal-Mart and other stores. But managing large inventories will make it harder to maintain profit margins. ...... Corning, the leading maker of optical fiber.
Review: Hewlett-Packard's Blackbird 002 gaming PC San Jose Mercury News
Cisco Continues to Deliver on Data Center 3.0 Vision by ... CNNMoney.com Cisco® (NASDAQ: CSCO) today announced the integration of Cisco VFrame Data Center with VMware Virtual Infrastructure, a key solution for the Cisco vision of next generation data centers, called Data Center 3.0. ...... increased IT agility and flexibility, faster coordinated provisioning of storage and network resources, and improved business continuance. ...... The Cisco vision for Data Center 3.0 entails the real-time, dynamic orchestration of infrastructure services from shared pools of virtualized server, storage and network resources, while optimizing application service levels, efficiency and collaboration. Cisco and its partners are helping organizations to design and build virtualized, self-defending and efficient data center infrastructure for delivering superior application performance and user experience.
Online-Only Forum With Democrats New York Times The sponsors have been looking for ways to keep the forums fresh, which has mostly meant experimenting with the format ....... This is not being broadcast on television but will be available tomorrow on a computer near you. .... He finds lengthy dialogue more revealing and would ideally like to see Lincoln-Douglas-style debates across the country. “Great moments in conversation come as part of a flow,” he said. .... success will be measured not in live ratings after an hour or two on a single evening, she said, but in traffic to all three sites over a period of time, in links, and in seeing how long users stay with the material. Users will have a week in which to vote on whom they think won.
SAP, Oracle agree to reschedule court hearing to Sept 25 Forbes
Sun Expands Alliance With Microsoft The Associated Press is the latest twist in a truce the companies, once bitter rivals, hammered out in 2004, when Sun pocketed $1.95 billion in a settlement payout from Microsoft over antitrust and patent allegations, and both companies vowed to make their products work better together. ........ Microsoft, the world's largest software company, stands to gain from the agreement because of Sun's reach in the server world. Sun is the world's No. 3 server seller with 13 percent of the worldwide market, behind IBM and Hewlett-Packard ....... the momentum surrounding so-called virtualization technology, which allows computers to run more than one operating system, saving hardware and electricity costs while boosting the performance of giant, energy-sapping machines. ........ Sun and Microsoft vowed to make sure their respective operating systems worked well with one another's virtualization technologies, a commitment that could help both companies prosper from the trend toward data center consolidation and urgent efforts by technology managers to reduce energy costs. ........ Sun's attempts to shed its image as that of a quarrelsome startup that in the late 1990s was eager to pick public fights with big rivals. ....... Sun is becoming a more restrained and inclusive company willing to forge alliances ....... the growing open-source movement in hopes that it will sell more hardware and services as more companies and programmers start using Sun's free technologies.
Microsoft Makes an OEM Out of Sun InternetNews.com the warming in relations between the two firms over the past three and a half years.
Wal-Mart touts return to low prices BusinessWeek after disappointing results from last year's push into trendier clothes and merchandise. ...... the world's largest retailer.
Sirius-XM Merger: Costly Static
American Families Now Save $2500 a Year, Thanks to Wal-MartCNNMoney.com up 7.3% from $2,329 in 2004. ...... the continued reduction in prices due to the presence of Wal-Mart and the growth in consumer expenditures over the 2004 to 2006 period translates directly into savings for consumers amounting to $287 billion in 2006. This corresponds to savings of $957 per person or $2,500 per household. ...... http://www.SaveMoneyLiveBetter.com featuring the new ads, customer testimonials about how they've saved money by shopping at Wal-Mart and behind-the-scenes footage http://www.livebetterindex.com or http://www.walmartfacts.com
Wal-Mart rolling out new company slogan Reuters.uk
Wal-Mart Dealt Another Blow in Expansion Plans in Bay Area NewsBlaze
Wal-Mart takes charge tied to German sale Reuters.uk
2 new tropical depressions emerge in Gulf, Atlantic Sun-Sentinel.com
Oil tops $80 a barrel, an all-time high CNNMoney.com
Sun to pre-install Windows on its servers TG Daily
Sun Expands Alliance With Microsoft The Associated Press
FCC: US doesn't need free wireless broadband Computerworld The FCC once again is siding with big telcos at the expense of consumers. This time around, it killed a plan that would offer free wireless broadband to 95% of the U.S., making use of a piece of the wireless spectrum that's unused. Are you surprised? ...... M2Z networks has been asking the FCC for months to approve an innovative plan that would bring wireless broadband to just about every consumer in the U.S. M2Z wants to use 20MHz of unused spectrum in the 2GHz band to build two nationwide wireless networks -- a free one with 384kbps download speeds, and a for-pay one with 3Mbps speed that would cost between $20 and $30 a month. ........ The deal would work like this: M2Z would offer the free service in exchange for use of the spectrum, which right now lies idle. The company would pay the U.S. 5% of its revenues in return for use of the spectrum. ..... The plan is no pipe dream from a flaky startup. The company is founded and headed by John Muleta, who is the former chief of the FCC's wireless bureau. ..... Because big telcos told them to. The spectrum was used previouly by big telcos for microwave connections, but is no longer needed, so it lays idle. Even though big telcos aren't using the spectrum, they'd like to keep squatting on it, in case they come up with a use for it. So the FCC lets them keep it.
Rev. Jesse Jackson Endorses M2Z Networks' Plan for Free, Family ... Earthtimes.org Rainbow PUSH Coalition (RPC) founder and President Rev. Jesse Jackson, in a September 7 letter to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Kevin Martin, endorsed M2Z Networks' (M2Z) plan to provide free and family-friendly broadband Internet access across the country. Rev. Jackson urged the FCC to work quickly to make this a reality for all Americans...... "The RPC supports M2Z Networks, Inc.'s (M2Z) plan to level the playing field for broadband access in the United States and to help connect millions of underserved Americans," wrote Jackson in the letter, adding "Moreover, we believe that the FCC has a moral obligation to promote justice and equality by extending the critical opportunities of the information age to all Americans.".... "For more than 16 months since we first proposed our plan to the FCC, M2Z has been ready to provide a free and family-friendly broadband Internet service across the country," said M2Z Networks' co-founder and CEO John Muleta. Muleta added, "We have consistently urged swift action to put fallow spectrum to use so that all Americans, not just some Americans, can enjoy the right to full participation in the digital age and fulfillment of the American Dream. This is the FCC's statutory obligation to the American people." ...... Section I of the Communications Act requires the FCC to act to make communications services available to the public at reasonable charges "without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex, a rapid, efficient, nationwide, and world-wide wire and radio communication service with adequate facilities at reasonable charges." Is this vein, Rev. Jackson wrote "It is critical the FCC make it a priority to establish a free nationwide broadband network as the benefits of broadband cannot be reserved only for those members of our society with sufficient disposable income to afford a monthly high-speed connection." ..... Founded in 2005 and headquartered in Menlo Park, Calif., M2Z Networks' goal is to transform the current state of the broadband marketplace by building a high-speed wireless network throughout the United States. In May 2006, the company submitted a license application to the FCC to construct and operate a nationwide broadband wireless network in the 2155-2175 MHz spectrum band. Approval of the initiative, to which the FCC recently has indicated it would extend consideration in a forthcoming rulemaking, would guarantee delivery of free, fast and family-friendly wireless broadband service to at least 95 percent of Americans in a 10 year timeframe. The service will be supported by locally targeted search results and will include a network-level filter to shield children using the service from indecent content. If licensed, M2Z would pay the U.S. Treasury 5 percent of annual gross revenues from its premium subscription services, which could total payments of up to $1 billion over 15 years. The introduction of M2Z's broadband service would generate $18 to $32 billion in direct consumer benefits over the next 15 years according to two uncontested economic studies. M2Z is backed by Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers; Charles River Ventures; and Redpoint Ventures; three of the most successful venture capital firms in Silicon Valley with $5 billon of capital under management. For more information, please visit http://www.m2znetworks.com and http://www.freebroadbandnow.org
Is free nationwide wireless broadband dead? Computerworld "the proper way to allocate this spectrum in the manner that best serves the public interest is to conduct a general rulemaking." ...... He described four different options that the FCC should consider for dealing with the band, including opening it up for unlicensed use, designating it as an "open access model that would combine wholesale broadband access and a Carterfone mandate," using it to create a free nationwide broadband network that would be supported both through advertising revenue and revenue generated from premium service fees, and licensing it through an open auction. ....... he wants to see the band used to create a free wireless network that will be funded by advertising. The idea is to make the Internet more like analog radio and television, where people can tune in for free in exchange for being exposed to advertisements. ...... "A lot of the big carriers want to forestall competition, and the longer they make us wait to deliver our services, the better it is. ... Americans are dying for broadband, and it's not that it's not available; it's just incredibly expensive. We're offering a free service that's being retailed today for $40 to $90 a month." ....... the early days of citizens' band radio, which he described as "a free-for-all that ultimately led to a lot of interesting ideas." However, he noted that the prospects for getting the current FCC to make the 2,155-to-2,175-MHz band unlicensed are grim. ....... "The FCC has long history of wringing its hands in public, and often what they do is most politically expedient thing, which means going to go through the same traditional auction," Jude said. "That seems to be the path of least resistance, and it has a lot of attraction for politicians." ....... "You're either providing Internet access -- and the good, the bad and the ugly that entails -- or you end up becoming a government censor, which has incredibly scary connotations," he said. "Likewise, how advertising works on a free tier is vitally important. Ads should not be intrusive or end up degrading the user experience." ........ "Opening the band up for auction a la the 700-MHz block is probably the worst idea of the lot," Meinrath said. "Let's have an auction that actually generates benefits that people will directly experience."
WiMAX CASE STUDY: Ertach’s WiMAX Experience in Argentina WiMax.com 1998 .... Ertach was awarded licenses of 50 MHz of spectrum in the 3.4-3.7 GHz frequency band for data transmission and value-added services. Today, the company is one of the leading providers of broadband wireless solutions in Argentina and Latin America. ..... In 2003, Ertach launched the “First National Broadband Wireless Network,” an expansion plan that covered 40 new cities in only 12 months. .... “We saw in WiMAX a promising opportunity. We adopted the 802.16-2004 standard and the growth possibilities of the company multiplied” ..... In 2004, Ertach deployed “The First WiMAX Network in Latin America,” providing internet access, data transmission, and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) with the standard 802.16d. “In the short term, WiMAX provided us with many benefits such as the possibility of providing our customers with bandwidth speeds of up to 10 Mbps and QoS that allowed us to strengthen our business and equally compete with the other telcos; in most cases we were able to improve upon their price offerings and quality” .....In late 2006, Ertach was acquired by Telmex for a total of US$22.5 million.... the new wireless strategy of Telmex to compete against Argentinean fixed incumbents (Telefonica and Telecom Argentina). .... Telmex, together with Motorola, is conducting trials of WiMAX in the greater Buenos Aires area as well as in the cities of Cordoba and Mendoza. The company expects initially to target the residential and SME segments. In addition, Telmex and Motorola have 30 active trials in other countries across Latin America..... WiMAX tariff plans start at ARS 245 (US$77.65) for downstream speeds of 256 kbps. ..... Cable and DSL continue to be the most used technologies by Argentina’s mass market, not only because of their lower cost than wireless but also because of their greater availability. ... the launch of “True Mobile Broadband” with technology 802.16e. The company expects to bring its customers a true mobile WiMAX experience by 2008.
Increased Interest in WiMAX Will Impact the Cellular M2M Market Cellular-News the cellular M2M market will be impacted by the growing momentum behind the deployment of WiMAX as a next-generation WWAN communications technology. WiMAX is even more spectrally efficient and cost-effective to operate in carrier networks when compared with W-CDMA and CDMA EV-DO, making WiMAX very suitable for low data rate, low ARPU M2M applications ...... "Sprint and Clearwire are the two most significant service providers deploying WiMAX in the United States. ..... Clearwire - a Craig McCaw startup that has received $600 million in venture backing from Intel and $300 million from Motorola

The Unfacebook

I am a huge fan of Facebook. I check in not as much as into my Gmail account, but it is close. I think things will only get better. I love the video clips I can access, the music, I am enamored with its personality tests. One test told me what I have long suspected, that I am "an advocating inventor." Too many people think of me as a politician. I also like the scrabble I saw and added yesterday. There is no time limit. You make your next move the next time you log in. Wow.

Most of my "friends" at Facebook are people I have never met though. I have met a few cool people who do interact, but most are people who okayed the friend request and then were gone.

In the way I use Facebook might be the germ of the Unfacebook.

Facebook is a walled garden. It is designed for you to more efficiently stay in touch with people who you already know. And I am thinking, what a waste.

What if you want to go online with the express intention of meeting people? Real people? People that you otherwise do not know, will not meet?

So you create a site. And it allows users to create an extremely detailed profile of who they are. Like extremely, extremely detailed. By the time you are done, it is a pretty good snapshot of who you are. Not everyone has to completely complete it, of course, and it is just that people will know how much of your profile you have completed.

So you create an account. And you log in. You complete your profile. Then you want to go meet people. How would that work?

People's names and photos will not show up when you do searches. Instead you will have to seek areas of interest, or hobbies. You will have the option to narrow down your geographical area. Maybe you just want people in your city. Or not.

It will not be just interest. It will also be level of interest.

There will be social interests, there will be cultural interests. There will be work related interests. There will be activity interests.

You seek grounds of common interest. And you explore the depth of the interest.

As you get to know each other more, you exercise the option to share a little bit more of your extremely detailed profile.

Detailed personality tests will be kind of mandatory. And there will be automatches based on pesonality type, areas of interest, geography, social choices, etc.

I guess what I am getting at is, you will get the name and the face of the person towards the end and not at the beginning like happens with the current hot social networking sites.

Often times you will meet people and strike a small conversation, and you realize you have run out of steam, there is nothing much to explore, nothing much to talk about anymore, and you move on. You don't bother to know more about the person, let alone learn their name and figure what they look like.

Or you might meet people you do want to share your name and face with early in the process, if you feel like it.



The power of the internet is not the people you already know. The power of the internet is people you can meet and get to know that you never would have if the internet were not there.

This concept can also be extended to group formation.

Groups would self form, grow or dissolve based on shared interest and engagement. And it could be scaled. Maybe there are 1,000 people who want to discuss the raging fires in Greece right now. But that group might have died out in about three weeks.

This will also work great for people who belong to ethnic groups that are small in number and are dispersed.

And of course the whole site should make great use of the rest of the web.

Maybe there should be automatic Google searches and YouTube searches for all areas of interest.

So if my interest is Barack Obama, I would get the top 5 headlines on him when I log in, and the headlines should be top, middle or bottom of the page depending on how much I am into Obama according to the system. Do I talk about him a lot?

The system should make room for degrees of friendship. There should be an entire spectrum.

Best friend is at one end. Block this person from my system should be another. He should never be able to contact me again.

There is the activity partner. There is the acquaintance. There is the colleague. There is the friend. There is the conversation partner, the game partner. There is the lover.

I think this Unfacebook is closer to our social realities and how we go about meeting people when we want to meet people and expand our social horizons.

Somebody could launch this Unfacebook, or like Facebook 2.0 was all the applications, Facebook 3.0 could be this Unfacebook. And if you do adopt this, invite me to sit your Board, fellas.

And after you feel like you have become friends with someone, you of course will have the option to bring them into your walled garden, into the Facebook 2.0 zone, the Facebook of today, the Ununfacebook.








Mark Andreessen, Facebook Fan: Analyzing the Facebook Platform, three weeks in

Money For Yahoo And Money For Google

Yahoo

Yahoo wins on the sticky factor. Yahoo visitors linger around longer. And so the Yahoo properties are better suited for ads that are dedicated to building brand names rather than pay per click text ads. Image ads are the answer for Yahoo. It might even have an edge for video ads. And video ads will be big money.

Yahoo is not anywhere near to beating Google on search. Google's search is an invention. Yahoo should keep at it, but it might be wiser to augment its strengths, and it does have those.

Semel is and has been an old media guy. He had a wonderful career during the pre dot com era. The guy is outstanding. But he did dampen innovation. He just did not "get it."

Jerry Yang might not be an MBA, but he has the instincts of a pioneer. He knows what it means to keep sniffing at the cutting edge.

Yahoo was hot property when Google was a non entity. Yahoo was so big and Google so small, Yahoo actually invested in a startup called Google. Yahoo back then did not foresee the Google potential, or they would not have passed on the opportunity to buy Google. That was years before Google offered text ads that have been minting gobbles of money.

In short, Yahoo is better suited for image and video ads. Google will continue with its edge on text ads.

And Yahoo Mail, that needs a major facelift. Make it easier to fight spam, danggoneit.

Google



Google needs to do two things fast it can.

One, figure out a way to add a two second ad at the end of the video clips on YouTube. It is like when you blog at Google's Blogger, placing text ads on the property is so easy. It should be that easy for users to monetize their original videos. But the ads should not distract. They should not be a 30 second video in the middle. Rather an image ad at the end.

Marry Blogger to mathematics. Make it possible to put down equations easily. Do calculations. The property will go up in value for that.

In The News

How Yahoo can catch Google San Jose Mercury News Compared with most companies, Yahoo is in good shape. But Yahoo's problem is that it's compared with Google, one of the fastest-growing and most profitable companies in the world. ..... more popular products that keep people on its site longer than any other property on the Web ....... Yahoo shouldn't try to out-Google Google ..... collection of highly popular Web sites and services ..... his company's uncanny ability to identify Internet services that resonate with ordinary Americans ..... Google has been earning 12 cents a search, compared with 8 cents for Yahoo. ..... uses math to figure out which ads are likely to get clicked on by Internet users, and it places them in the most prominent positions ....... Yahoo grew revenue a respectable 22 percent from 2005 to 2006, from $5.3 billion to $6.4 billion. But Google grew 73 percent from $6.1 billion to $10.6 billion. ..... he said Yahoo could still be No. 1 in search. "We need to figure out how to differentiate, and the way the current search game is being defined is not being defined by us." ...... average Internet users spend more than 11 minutes each time they visit Yahoo, compared with less than six minutes for Google and less than four minutes for Microsoft. ..... "They have the strongest reach and engagement on the Internet" ...... Yahoo's data on users could bring success during the next phase of the Internet, which he believes will include highly targeted, individualized advertising. ...... "Just like any other company, Google is going to mature and decline," Rafer said. "What comes after search advertising? You can beat your head against the wall. Or you can plan for the future for when Google is a one-trick pony."
Google's Iowa arrival should bring investment, jobs UI The Daily Iowan (subscription) create 200 jobs ..... an average salary of $50,000 each .... will pay the state an estimated $65 million in property taxes over the next 15 years. ..... combat Iowa's brain drain issue.

Dell Memo

This is nothing less than Michael Dell trying to reinvent his company. It is as if he were launching another startup. Making the Titanic do a 180 degree turn is not easy. And there will be plenty to watch.

If you are going to ditch the idea of direct selling, and if you are going to no longer try to keep inventory low, then that is Dell 2.0.

Dell is now going to be more like the other PC companies. That perhaps should have been coming, because other companies have become more like Dell and have brought the prices down substantially.



There is this synergistic competition going on. PC companies are busy eating into each others' turfs. But the new move is still for Dell to prove.

The real news might be the mention of the four BRIC countries, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and the mention of the phrase "next billion." Those countries have much less in terms of internet penetration, and so ordering computers online is not exactly a concept. And if you are going to stock up stores with your machines, it is not exactly build to sell. The direct way has been to take the order and then build. Now you build and then go sell.

Michael Dell is a legendary entrepreneur. The CEO Rollins before him could not have made a move like this one. This is too unorthodox. He would have felt like he were undoing Dell. Can you imagine a Microsoft that is about to ditch Windows? In the late 90s, some Microsoft engineers actually did suggest to Gates that the browser instead of the operating system should be made the gateway to the computing experience. Gates suggested those engineers quit Microsoft and go join the Peace Corps.

Michael Dell's memorandum to Dell staff:

To: Dell Employees Worldwide

From: Michael & the Executive Leadership Team

Dell Confidential -- For Internal Use Only

One Dell, One Focus -- Simplifying IT for Our Customers

We met as a complete Executive Leadership Team for most of last week to discuss Dell's future. We left the week with a great deal of confidence about our plans for the next generation of Dell customers. Throughout our history we have worked as a team -- as One Dell -- and we have made quality PCs affordable. Now Dell plans to make information technology affordable for millions of customers around the world. We will do this by simplifying IT where others perpetuate complexity and innovating beyond hardware into solutions. This is one of the most exciting periods in our history but it requires all of us to stand together as One Dell to make profound changes and take well thought-out risks.

Here are some of the steps we will take to get there:

• Fix our Core Business to be competitive. The Direct Model has been a revolution, but is not a religion. We will continue to improve our business model, and go beyond it, to give our customers what they need. We will simplify our organization to make it easier to hear customers and respond to them. We've already streamlined our executive leadership structure. We need to streamline our management structure to speed decisions and remove bureaucracy. We're making improvements in pricing, product development and fulfillment, and customer experience. We reorganized the product group to more effectively listen to our customers and develop end-to-end customer solutions. We are now revisiting our entire design process to improve our speed-to-market and focus on what customers truly value. Our new Global Operations organization, led by Mike Cannon, is working to take our supply chain and manufacturing to the next level of efficiency and quality. This group is also partnering with the regions and the product group to pursue new manufacturing and distribution models to address the unique needs of our customers in all markets. More broadly, we plan to eliminate overlaps in our organization and activities to enable us to deliver even more value to our customers. We also need to improve sales productivity. These won't be merely exercises in cost-cutting. We will re-invest those resources in the customer solutions that will build Dell for the future.

• Re-ignite Growth in our Core Business to reach more customers. We are taking some concrete steps to get growth back into our core business. We released the EC280 in March for first-time computer users in China. We will open a new factory in Brazil in May and a new factory in India in July to be closer to those huge customer bases. In June, we'll launch our new Inspiron models with personalized color options and improved mobile broadband. We will launch products and services for small and medium business customers later this summer. And our new Dell Data Center Solutions Division is addressing the unique needs of hyper-scale data centers for customers whose business relies on enterprise computing solutions. We plan to take our improved cost structure to acquire new customers and sell existing customers more products and services. We are accelerating down the path to be a truly global company giving customers around the world the best products, the easiest solutions and most choices.

• Build For the Long term to provide more customer solutions. Ron Garriques' Global Consumer team is re-inventing how we address the evolving needs of our consumers around the world and the unique needs of the next billion consumers in the large and emerging markets of Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC). With strong share position in markets such as Japan, the U.K. and Canada, now we are going to make a mark in the rest of the world. Ron and team are also tackling how Dell's consumer business should evolve in the long term in mature markets. Stay tuned for more here.

We are also embarking on a bold, long term initiative to radically simplify IT for our commercial customers. Simply put, the philosophy comes down to a set of core beliefs:

• Information Technology shouldn't be as complex as it is.

• You should spend less on maintaining I/T and more on innovation.

• Every IT project should not require an army of consultants.

• Computing should have minimal environmental impact.

• Superior information drives efficiency in your IT environment.

We are already taking steps to fulfill this vision, but we have a long way to go. For those of us who have worked for a while in this industry, we know our competitors drive complexity and needless cost into customers' environments. These so-called "service divisions" create a never-ending cycle of activity with unclear return on investment. We intend to break this cycle. We will build different kinds of services and offer key technologies that will help customers escape this complexity trap and unlock the true potential of technology. And, as we re-invent Dell to deliver on this promise for our customers, we will rely on Mark Jarvis, our new chief marketing officer, to ensure we properly position our new systems and solutions capabilities in the global marketplace.

We won't hesitate to use our company's assets to build or buy the capabilities and technologies we need to deliver on our initiatives. Our transformation will take time to accomplish. We need your help to identify how we can become more efficient and effective for our customers across all areas of our business. We want you to take action with your team and bring your ideas forward. On June 20, we'll launch the internal version of IdeaStorm called "Inside IdeaStorm" for employees so that you can tell us where you think we have opportunities to improve as a company and how we can streamline our work to eliminate low value activities. We will listen and we will respond.

This is a defining moment in our history and in our relationships with our customers. Just as we re-invented the way consumers and organizations buy hardware, we are going to re-invent the way the world gets access to IT. We are excited about what we will achieve for our customers as we make information technology more affordable for them and what that will enable them to do.

The future looks great for Dell and we are up to the challenges that we'll face on our journey -- challenges that will test, teach and ultimately strengthen us as a company and as a team -- as One Dell.

Thank you for transforming Dell with the customer in mind every day. Be sure to let us know your thoughts on this on One Dell Way.

In The News

Dell Losing Its Religion, But The Devil Is In The Details iT News The last time Dell entered the retail space, it was a move made out of "panic" that bombed because the company strayed from its core strength: so explained Dell in his book, Direct From Dell, which he wrote eight years ago as a guide to good business strategy. ....... Dell's three Golden Rules, "Never sell indirect." (The other two Dell Golden Rules are "disdain inventory" and "always listen to the customer.") ..... To make its way into the retail channel or commercial reseller channel this time, the company may need to re-think its second golden rule of disdaining inventory. As of last 3 November, Dell reported that it had five days of inventory. ...... To make a go of an indirect sales strategy, Dell may need to ensure that its pipeline has enough PCs, notebooks, peripherals and parts in stock so channel partners can keep their customers happy. To build that inventory may take an investment so large it could eat into the company's already-declining profits. ..... the difference between Dell and other companies is that while all companies make mistakes, Dell never makes the same mistake twice
HP on the rise Austin American-Statesman (subscription)
Hewlett-Packard comes back fighting Financial Times (subscription)
Strictly PC – the new king of IT Times Online Hewlett-Packard – the archetypal Silicon Valley company that recently overtook IBM to become the world’s biggest-selling technology company. ..... HP employs more than 150,000 people in 179 countries, and last year generated $94 billion (£47 billion) from selling computers, printers, cameras, consul-tancy, IT services and much else besides. ....... One of the central themes of Tough Choices is HP’s “dysfunc-tional” board, and the infighting among directors that went on for years before Fiorina’s sacking in February 2005......... HP – famously founded in a Palo Alto garage ...... the board was made up of people who were individually very good. As a group they struggled ....... HP has more than doubled in value, its shares rising from about $20 to $42. ...... HP almost doubled its operating profits last year, to $6.6 billion. ...... the $30-billion-a-year PC business. ..... Dell has stumbled, exposing the limitations of its direct-selling model ........ continuing fall in computer prices, which causes more damage to the manufacturers of cheaper, unbranded PCs. ...... HP invests about $4 billion in research and development. An old joke has it that most of the group’s investment in innovation is in creating expensive new printer cartridges ........ the continuing increase in the number of documents and photos people are printing, increasingly from the internet. ...... Hurd has spent more than $5 billion on acquisitions, the biggest of which was last year’s $4.5 billion purchase of Mercury Interactive, a company that sells quality-assurance and monitoring software. ....... The company estimates its technology is used by 1 billion people and claims it is addressing markets worth a total of $1,100 billion. ...... He tends to talk in broad generalisations. “We’ve got to develop innovative products,” he said at one point, “products that are well-designed and strongly featured, and get them to market with speed at the right price.”

Entrepreneurs: Spikes

There are some entrepreneurs who end up super duper rich. There are many who end up doing quite well. There are numerous whose businesses do not see the light of day. These spikes are necessary. Entrepreneurs are indispensable to the market system. And markets are fundamental to democracy. No market, no democracy.

Over the long run, it is a progression for society at large. Society overall gets richer and richer over time, unless you are Zimbabwe under Mugabe. That genius has actually managed to create an ever shrinking economy. (Wash Mugabe Away With A Revolution)

It is for the democratic process to decide on the rules of the game. But within those rules, entrepreneurs are free, the best ones end up looking reckless. Much creativity is involved. Much risk taking is involved. Often much is at stake. But in the end, it is about creation. It is a progression.



In a well-oiled, functioning political system, the politicians are background noise to the entrepreneurs. There is strategic lobbying, sure. If you are leading the pack in your industry, maybe you know things. And the public servants need to hear. But other than that, the world of business is a galaxy all its own.

Entrepreneurs are almost a different species. The entrepreneur's worldview is different than that of the jobholder. Early stage entrepreneurship can also have some interesting stories to it.

A few hours back I registered my company: JyotiConnect Inc. I want to be a Spike. Godspeed.

In The News

HP and Dell slug it out in Second Life Brisbane Times
Book Review - Bill & Dave: How Hewlett and Packard Built the ... Blogcritics.org How Hewlett and Packard Built the World's Greatest Company ...... founders' innovation in both new products and new ways of doing business created an environment in which customers wanted only HP products, employees reciprocated the loyalty HP showed to them, and future Silicon Valley generations tried -- and usually failed -- to follow in their footsteps. ......... for almost 50 years they partnered at the top of the organization they founded ...... the family atmosphere that came to be known as "the HP Way." ...... a roughly 10-page document that lays out a blueprint for entrepreneurial success. ....... meeting at Stanford, where Dave Packard was the tall, gregarious, can't-miss golden boy sports star and Bill Hewlett was a short, dyslexic, somewhat reserved sort still getting over his father's untimely death ...... shared interest in electronics ..... Hewlett and Packard baked HP instrument panels in Packard's oven and randomly priced their first product in such a way that it was impossible to make a profit ....... worked hard throughout HP's ascendancy to create a family atmosphere, and this is perhaps their greatest legacy ........ handing out bonus checks to employees based on Hewlett-Packard performance and having Friday "beer busts" to let off steam ...... flex time ..... avoiding mass layoffs by sacrificing revenue in favor of employees keeping their jobs ...... from that garage partnership to an incorporated small business to corporate behemoth so smoothly, always with an eye on profits, sentimental toward their employees but never sentimental toward products that no longer make the cut.
Hack-a-Mac - security vulnerability found in Apple's Safari heise Security
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Taiwan market: HP aiming for 20% growth in business notebooks this ... DigiTimes
Round Two: Intel's Fortunes Rise, and AMD's Fall IT Jungle
Cisco to give lift to Telstra Australian IT
SAP Selects Cisco TelePresence System for Virtual Meeting Experience Web Services Journal
Google Is Riding On The Marratech Express Internet Financial News
Google Buys Video Conferencing Software IDM.net.au
Google rises at Yahoo's expense ZDNet
Yahoo, Slate and Huffington Post to Host First Online Presidential ... Wired News
Microsoft gaming labelled a "disastrous endeavour" Inquirer
IBM Powerizes Linux on Intel apps Register
Face Off: Business Objects vs. Oracle (and Microsoft) Intelligent Enterprise
The New Dotcom Bang: Will Sun Microsystems Shine Again? Seeking Alpha
Wal-Mart Learns Lessons with Organic Foods Reuters.uk
Helen Walton, widow of Wal-Mart founder, dies at 87 Houston Chronicle
Charlie Rose To Host First Online Presidential Debates Search Engine Watch
LA Times to cut up to 150 employees as print revenue declines San Jose Mercury News
Report: Chinese WiMAX Market Will Grow Seven-Fold Between 2009 RF Globalnet (press release)
London Goes Wireless Government Technology
The Future of Wireless Broadband - 3G, 4G, WiMAX.. Who Knows WiMax.com

Bear Stearns: An Investment Bank

Web 5.0: Face Time

JB Hunt Transport Services, Inc. to Participate in the 2007 Bear ... Business Wire (press release), CA
Bear Stearns names European prime brokerage and equity finance heads HedgeWeek, UK
Wabash National Corporation to Present at Bear Stearns Global ... SYS-CON Media, NJ
United States: Ponzi Scheme Transfers By Hedgefund To Broker ... Mondaq News Alerts (subcription), UK
Bear Stearns Companies Inc. Is Taking Out The Highs Of The Day Trading Markets, CA
'07 downturn to sink deeper than expected: Firm Today's Trucking News


Forex - Pound dips below 2 usd after mixed UK retail sales data UPDATE Forbes, NY
Fitch Rates Bear Stearns Commercial Mortgage Securities Trust 2007 ... Business Wire (press release), CA
UPDATE 2-Triarc to sell money manager for about $300 mln Reuters
Earnings rally and firmer crude lift energy stocks MarketWatch
NetEase.com Up on Bear Stearns Upgrade Forbes, NY
Chasing Value: Bear Stearns - cheap and growing Blogging Stocks
Celadon Group to Participate in Bear Stearns Conference. Bear ... dBusinessNews Indianapolis (press release), IN
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Bear Stearns Merchant Banking Acquires Universal Hospital Services ... Trading Markets, CA
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RH Donnelley up on takeover speculation BusinessWeek
Bear Stearns & Co. Starts Clearwire Corp. At Peer Perform Trading Markets, CA
Bear Stearns affiliate to buy Universal Hospital Reuters
Bear Stearns Capital Trust III Announces Cash Distribution American Digital Networks (press release), MD

Bear Stearns
Bear Stearns - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia one of the largest global investment banks and securities trading and brokerage firms in the world. The main business areas, based on 2006 net revenue contribution are: capital markets (equities, fixed income, investment banking; just under 80%), wealth management (under 10%) and global clearing services (12%). The company was founded in 1923 and serves corporations, institutions, governments and individuals. It is one of the few investment banks that has stayed independent and not merged with any other bank throughout its history. The company's business includes corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, institutional equities and fixed income sales, trading and research, private client services, derivatives, foreign exchange and futures sales and trading, asset management and custody services. Through Bear, Stearns Securities Corp., it offers global clearing services to broker dealers, prime broker clients and other professional traders, including securities lending. Bear Stearns is also known for one of the most widely read market intelligence pieces on the street, known as the "Early Look at the Market - Bear Stearns Morning View." ..... In 2005-2007, Bear Stearns was recognized as the “Most Admired” securities firm in Fortune’s “America’s Most Admired Companies” survey, and second overall in the security firm section. The annual survey is a prestigious ranking of employee talent, quality of management and business innovation. This marks the second time in the past three years that Bear Stearns has achieved this top distinction.
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$14.8 Million Bonus at Bear Stearns - New York Times Bear Stearns gave its chief executive, James E. Cayne, a bonus of stock valued at about $14.8 million after the firm reported its fifth consecutive year of record profit. ..... Mr. Cayne's total pay package, when considered as a portion of the company's total earnings, has typically exceeded that of other chief executives at Wall Street's biggest brokerage firms. Last year, for example, he was paid $30.3 million when Bear Stearns made $1.5 billion. Merrill Lynch's chief executive, E. Stanley O'Neal, got $35.4 million when his company earned $5.1 billion. Fiscal 2006 profit at Bear Stearns surged 40 percent to a record of $2.1 billion. ... Shares of Bear Stearns have almost tripled in the last five years, the best performance among the big brokerage firms.
Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc.: Lit. Rel. No. 18109 / April 28, 2003
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Google May Be Close To Developing iTunes Competitor - Forbes.com
Bear Stearns Introduces ``BearCast(TM)'' Podcasting Technology ...
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blog | nano: Bear Stearns Says NanoBubble Yet to be Blown
China's Richest Man Teams Up With Bear Stearns - Forbes.com Not content to sit by while the fortune he made from building China’s largest electronics retailer is eroded by low interest rates and rising inflation, China’s richest man, Wong Kwong Yu, is busily investing his money. ....... he announced that he is teaming up with Bear Stearns (nyse: BSC - news - people ) to form a private equity fund focused on China’s retail sector. .... Wong’s Eagle Investment Group and Bear Stearns’ private equity arm will each kick in $250 million to invest in local retailers who may have the potential to go national. ..... Wong has ample capital and investment experience at his disposal, having almost doubled his personal fortune in 2006 to $2.3 billion.
Bear Stearns ordered to repay hedge fund $125.1 million ...
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Bear Stearns sends back-office work to Boston - Daily Business ... Mellon will administer $2.5 billion in client fund assets; among services that Mellon will provide to Bear Stearns are account opening and maintenance, transaction support, custodian reconciliation, and investor reporting.
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Web 5.0: Face Time

We are still mostly Web 1.0. And Web 2.0 has been the in thing. I imagined a Web 3.0: A Web 3.0 Manifesto. Web 3.0 is when the web becomes a utility. How often do you get excited about electricity? I have left Web 4.0 to mean things I can't imagine, let alone deliver. And I am thinking Web 5.0 is going to be face time.

Already social networking is all the rage online. The web is about people. But the technology is still largely clumsy. It will get better. But what if it keeps getting better and better until it is at its absolutely best and there is little room for improvement. At that point you realize that all along what you had really been looking for was face time. Even screen time was about face time.

That face time is what Web 5.0 will be about. And I am talking about face time as technology, almost. As in there will be a scientific approach to it. Assault is illegal right now. Racist comments will be put in the same category as assault in a Web 5.0 world.

In a Web 5.0 world, we will have achieved levels of mental and emotional health that we have achieved today in terms of physical health, in terms of what we know. We will have found a cure for depression and suicide the way we have found cures for polio. Happiness can be imagined as something always-on, like always-on broadband, because sources of unhappiness can be so precisely pinpointed.

It is ridiculous to me to watch people really really struggle with some of their painful past experiences. All they have to do is to relive it, be able to articulate it, and the pain goes away, the puss comes out, and the wound is soon gone.



That Web 5.0 imagination has implications for business practices in a Web 2.0, Web 3.0 world. It is possible to try and create Web 5.0 style group dynamics in a corporation of today. Such a corporation can be invented. That corporation would be 100% meritocratic, and it would be the workplace of the post-ISMs individual. That corporation would think in terms of pure work that is delightful to those who participate in it.

Levels of that Web 5.0 style face time can be achieved in loving relationships today. That perhaps has always been possible.

A Web 3.0 Manifesto
DL21C Events: High Class Acts

In The News

Yahoo's Next Search: A New CEO? BusinessWeek Panama's patina has officially worn off. .....attributed the decline to the phaseout of Microsoft's search ad business and rising costs of driving traffic to Yahoo sites. ..... "The writing is on the wall," wrote Jackson Securities analyst Brian Bolan, speculating that CFO Decker could soon take the helm. "Another quarter with a bottom-line miss will be the last one for Semel." ...... Yahoo expected double-digit improvements in the amount of money it generates per search by the second half of the year. .... Google garnered more than 64% of searches in March. It had slightly more than 58% of searches for the same month last year. ... Yahoo's search share dipped slightly from 22.3% in March, 2006, to 21.3% this year...... Google's brand name and constant innovations in search have proven difficult for competitors to overcome. ...... Yang boasted that Yahoo was the Internet's largest display advertising network
Sprint: Say Bon Voyage to Vonage Vonage, now locked in a patent dispute with Verizon ..... Sprint, which also alleges patent infringement by Vonage. ...... its customer base of 2.2 million is expected to shrink at a rate of more than 27% a year ...... Sprint Nextel has been trying to transform itself into a wireless-only company. ...... In 2006, Sprint spun off its local calling business into a company now called Embarq (EQ). Today, 85% of Sprint sales come from wireless services....... in 2010, 44 million Americans will use Web-calling services, up from 10.3 million last year.
The Marshal of MySpace
BlackBerry service being restored
Google: The Ad Dominator? Google already controls about two-thirds of the roughly $7.7 billion expected to be spent on online search advertising this year ..... the $3.75 billion market for online display advertising—the multimedia ads found in a fixed spot on a Web page ....... "FOG"—"Fear of Google."
Executives Remain Wary of Web 2.0 Instead, they're putting their resources behind technologies that enable automation and networking ..... Web services, including software that enables systems to communicate with each other ...... Collective intelligence, which attempts to tap the wisdom of crowds to make decisions ..... Peer-to-peer networking, a technique for efficiently sharing music, video, or text files ..... social networking .. MySpace and Facebook .... RSS .... podcasts .... wikis ..... blogs .... mash-ups ..... in a knowledge economy where companies remain hierarchical in structure, knowledge is power ..... people with heavy knowledge tend to keep that for themselves ...... companies serious about embracing these collaborative technologies will need to find a new incentive system for employees. ...... Baby boomers, who still make up the majority of the workforce, are used to picking up the phone.
iPhone: Harder to Build than Apple Thought The cell phone "contains the most sophisticated software ever shipped on a mobile device"
Toshiba's Flashy New Look at Chips The plunge in global chip prices over the past year is enough to make any semiconductor executive nervous. .... He's betting that laptop PC makers will shift to a hybrid of hard disk drives and flash memory. .... consumers are likely to snap up the next-generation HD-DVD recorders and players, further fueling chip demand. ..... The demand for nuclear reactors in China, India, and even the U.S. seems real and lasting....... hoping for a resurgence in demand later this year, due to Apple's iPhone.......
The High-Tech Home of Tomorrow "There is no doubt that the way we live will be different in the future," Gates said at the time. "The advances in PC technology and low-cost communications are bringing a revolution."
VCs Aim to Out-Angel the Angels Khosla investments range from $100,000 to $25 million, in areas including Internet technology and clean energy.
The End of a 1,400-Year-Old Business Kongo Gumi's case suggests that it's a good idea to operate in a stable industry. ..... cited the company's flexibility in selecting leaders as a key factor in its longevity ...... the practice of sons-in-law taking the family name when they joined the family firm. ...... mingle elements of conservatism and flexibility ...... switched temporarily to crafting coffins during World War II. ..... Despite its incredible history, it was a set of ordinary circumstances that brought Kongo Gumi down at last. ...... during the 1980s bubble economy in Japan, the company borrowed heavily to invest in real estate ...... social changes in Japan brought about declining contributions to temples ....... in 2006, the end arrived. The company's borrowings had ballooned to $343 million and it was no longer possible to service the debt. ....... evolve as business conditions require, but don't get carried away with temporary enthusiasms and sacrifice financial stability for what looks like an opportunity
The 10 Worst Corporate Practices
The World's Most Livable Cities
Asia's Most Livable Cities
The Coming Virtual Web more realistic, interactive, and social ..... Neal Stephenson published Snow Crash in 1992 ..... The metaverse, as Stephenson called it, was essentially the Internet. .... the popular online role-playing game World of Warcraft, which is revolutionizing online games with sophisticated graphics and complex team strategy. ..... There, Entropia Universe, and Second Life ..... online games and virtual economies. ..... virtual worlds are inherently social settings. "You go up to an avatar and you know there's a real person on the other end" ...... social activity dominates what people want to do online. ...... the 3D Internet ..... many people don't even have personal computers that can handle the often heavy processing demands of virtual worlds. The amount of data required by 3D environments also can tax even high-speed Internet connections. ...... 3D excels for a number of applications, such as medical scans, architecture, and chemical modeling, most information is best accessed and analyzed in more mundane, 2D fashion. ....... Dozens of universities are conducting classes and other activities inside Second Life. At Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., for instance, some freshmen are taking the English 104 composition course partly inside the world, writing about field trips they take inside Second Life. A sign of how compelling the notion is: The first class drew 300 applicants for 18 slots. ........ inject real-world richness into online business negotiations and collaboration ...... people are more influential when they look directly at their counterpart ..... PCs need the benefit of a few more rounds of graphics-chip improvements, as well as faster broadband speeds.