Apple Does Hardware In Asia

Image via WikipediaHardware is harder to work on remotely than software. And it is not even remote. With all the communication possibilities of today, I think people can overemphasize the importance of geography. I enjoy a party as much as the next person, but if you think about it, the whole premise behind social networking - hello Facebook, hello Twitter - is that it is the relationship, not the physical proximity.

And so my tech team is in Kathmandu. It is 50 strong. It has been a profitable software shop five years in a row. But it is only now venturing out on its first tech startup. There are other software things you can do to make money, you know? The team has had global clients this entire time.

I became friends with the team leader before I came to America. This is not outsourcing any more than Nepal and India are foreign countries. They are not, not to me. Why can't I tap into my social capital?

Is It About Women?
GroupOn's Legacy: Cute Email?
Kiva Is In Nepal
The Kiva Story

That 10X Return Thing

Image via WikipediaWhen VCs invest in your startup, they want a 10X return. So if they invest a million, they want you to turn that into 10 million dollars.

Why? Because they are greedy bastards? Maybe.

It's a numbers game. Say nine out of all 10 startups fail. That is pretty close to the actual numbers, by the way. So money was lost on nine out of 10 deals. One million turned into zero dollars. That stunt is still a lot of hard work on the part of many people, believe it or not.

But one makes it, and gives a 10X return. So 10 million dollars were invested in 10 different startups. Nine of them went down. One turned that one million into 10 million. That is a break even situation. The VCs started with 10 million dollars, they ended up with 10 million dollars. Where's the game?

Hip Hop Basics: Journey Of Action

Cathy Erway: My Kind Of Chef

(Via Journey Of Action)

Journey of Action - Latin America Kick-Off Party!
Monday, April 25, 2011 from 7:30 PM - 10:00 PM (ET)
New York, NY

Purpose HQ
224 Centre Street
6th Floor
New York, NY 10013

Canal St 4/6/J/Z/N/Q

April Fool?
Journey Of Action: Connecting The Dots: Social Activism: Social Media
Journey Of Action

Brandt Brauer Frick (2)

Brandt Brauer Frick

The Cloud Outage

O'Reilly Community: The AWS Outage: The Cloud's Shining Moment: if your systems failed in the Amazon cloud this week, it wasn't Amazon's fault. You either deemed an outage of this nature an acceptable risk or you failed to design for Amazon's cloud computing model....... two dueling architectural models of cloud computing applications: "design for failure" and traditional. ..... The Amazon model is the "design for failure" model. Under the "design for failure" model, combinations of your software and management tools take responsibility for application availability. The actual infrastructure availability is entirely irrelevant to your application availability. 100% uptime should be achievable even when your cloud provider has a massive, data-center-wide outage. ...... The advantage of the "design for failure" model is that the application developer has total control of their availability with only their data model and volume imposing geographical limitations. The downside of the "design for failure" model is that you must "design for failure" up front. ...... Physical redundancy encompasses all traditional "n+1" concepts: redundant hardware, data center redundancy, the ability to do vMotion or equivalents, and the ability to replicate an entire network topology in the face of massive infrastructural failure. ...... If you had redundancy across availability zones, you would have survived every outage suffered to date in the Amazon cloud. ...... If you had regional redundancy in place, you would have come through the recent outage without any problems except maybe an increased workload for your surviving virtual resources. ...... Cloud redundancy enables you to survive the complete loss of a cloud provider. ....... Being home to the world’s reserve currency confers great advantages on the U.S. economy. Because of it, our government, companies and households can borrow money more easily and cheaply. And because all that demand for dollars artificially raises its value, we can import goods at a cheaper price than other countries. ...... Applications built with "design for failure" in mind ..... will achieve uptimes you can't dream of with other architectures and survive extreme failures in the cloud infrastructure. ...... no humans, no 2am calls, and no outage! ..... Netflix, an AWS customer that kept on going because they had proper "design for failure" .. ? Try doing that in your private IT infrastructure with the complete loss of a data center.

I should have, but I did not expect this to happen. Servers are known to go down. Heck, PCs crash. The browser freezes. The cloud went down. In a big way. What's next? Datacenters? I think it did happen once. One Google datacenter went down. Correct me if I am not remembering it right. What if Facebook's datacenter in Oregon went down for an hour?

So the cloud went down. And there has been much talk. The Amazon Web Services is pretty much the cloud that most of us are privy to. And you thought Jeff Bezos was in the business of selling books.

The cloud should not go down. The cloud can not go down. It is like when there is a power cut the generator turns on on its own immediately, and so although there was a power cut, you did not feel it. The cloud needs that mechanism. Otherwise it is not a proper cloud. The cloud is not like the rest of us. The cloud is not supposed to go down.

Jessica Wilson Hearts Mahatma Gandhi

New York Times: 100,000 PayWall Payers

Image by Laughing Squid via FlickrThe New York Times did not get me, but looks like it got 100,000 people and counting. When they erected the paywall I think they had an inkling as to this number. But the numbers are still not adding up for me.

Let's crunch. 100,000 people paying $20 each is two million. Is that per year? Per month? If it is per year, the paywall is a fail whale. If it is per month, the paywall might still be a fail whale, although a smaller one. 20 million can't keep the New York Times afloat.

Glass Half Full Phase

Image via Wikipedia

Fred Wilson: The Word Bubble: There will come a time when the environment we are in will be in the rear view mirror. And entrepreneurs should be crystal clear about that. This is a time to raise money and sock it away for a rainy day. Because it will rain. ...... deals are actually companies and most venture investments are held for five to seven years. I've likened them to marriages over the years. Don't let the lust for the deal lead to a bad marriage that you have to be in for the next decade. ...... we are in the glass is half full part of the cycle. Investors are focusing on the upside and ignoring the downside. That part of the investment cycle lasts for a while and then things change and investors focus on the downside and ignore the upside. Markets are defined by greed and fear. We are in the greed mode right now

I will have to agree. A lot of people sat on a lot of money for about two years. But money does not want to sit still. Money wants to grow. And right now it feels like the basketball that was held at the bottom of the pool was let go. It is not going to end at the surface. It will eventually. But first it will go into the air a little. We are in the air a little phase.

But this is no bubble. I don't see an imminent industry wide collapse. Going out of business also happens in the restaurant business, all the time, but that does not mean the restaurant business is going through a bubble.

War Reporting

Diary (2010) from Tim Hetherington on Vimeo.

(Via Kevin Slavin)

Another One Bites The Dust
Saudis Going Into Bahrain Like Saddam Going Into Kuwait
Ai Weiwei
To Zimbabwe Through Ivory Coast
Obama 2012 Is On
Time For Nonviolent Protests In Libya
A Rwanda Was Prevented

Brandt Brauer Frick

I listened to all music I could find listed here. I am declaring Brandt Brauer Frick the best group in the crowd. And I noted, from following him on Tumblr, Fred Wilson is big on Arcade Fire.

Coachella
YouTube: Coachella

Coachella (5)
Coachella (4)
Coachella (3)
Coachella (2)
Coachella (1)




Fred Wilson, Soraya Darabi: Both Crazy About Music

Coachella (5)

FourSquare Up To 500 Million Valuation?

Be There, Or Be Square: The FourSquare Day Party At Sidebar
FourSquare Day Tomorrow: Rad
A FourSquare Mayor?
FourSquare Has 6000000 Users

I think they were at two million users or less when they got their 100 million valuation. Moving from two to eight million jacks up your valuation by four hundred million dollars, looks like. That is really something.

FourSquare is not mainstream yet, although the tech insiders might not believe that to be the case. It is still early days of Twitter for FourSquare. Eight million is not a lot of people, but the trajectory of moving from two to eight million people is what you have to notice. The movement has happened fast.

Mike Arrington And I: Close

Did not realize we were this close.

Mike Arrington Liked My Comment
Mike Arrington's Big Day

Lil Buck And Yo-Yo Ma

(Via @lankybutmacho)

Guns Of Brooklyn: Peaceout

The Wire: 100 Greatest Quotes

(Via Chris Dixon)

Excited About Internet Week

Image via WikipediaLast year I missed out on Internet Week. I checked out a few panels weeks later on online video, but it is not the same thing. I missed because, well, World Cup Soccer was in full rage. And the two don't even compare. It is Jupiter and oranges.

Brazil 2014
World Cup: Spain Deserved To Win

This year I am showing up but until today I was a little confused. I kept clicking on the schedule button, and what showed up was not enticing. There were these long hour events, no panels. And I was thinking, maybe this is not for me after all.

And then today I found the right link: panels. I promptly created an account and voted. I basically went down the list, and every time I recognized a name, I voted for that panel. Social?

Teamwork

Fast Company: What LeBron James And The Miami Heat Teach Us About Teamwork: What LeBron and company are attempting to do applies to any organization that's serious about winning. ...... their mutual sacrifice is a resounding vote for teamwork. Teamwork among superstars ....... Which tech company, when given the chance, doesn't raid the talent pool, stocking up on the world's best execs and engineers in the hopes of racing past the competition? Late last year, Mark Zuckerberg personally persuaded Lars Rasmussen, the cocreator of Google Maps, to join a host of elite ex-colleagues at Facebook. ....... For the most-sought-after talent, company loyalty has given way to a desire for a big, bold short-term project -- developing a breakthrough product, pursuing a new market, expanding into China ...... more and more people work from remote locations, and effective team building becomes an essential priority ...... how to define your role without subverting the group dynamic. ...... how to get a group of disparate personalities to gel and excel before they move on to the next gig ...... Like Wade, James now meets regularly with reporters. ..... the team's leaders have done what stars need to do when they merge: show a willingness to sacrifice. ...... New hires perform better when they bring a former colleague with them ...... Nothing brings a team together like a common enemy. ...... Sequestered 600 miles from Miami, in military environs, the players ate together, practiced twice a day, and toured the firing range as a group. They wore matching black T-shirts that read Heat Troops. ...... The real bonding didn't occur until the Heat Troops began to shed blood on the battlefield -- to lose, and lose badly. ....... "You need those adverse moments. When it's raw, when you don't get along, that's when there's the most opportunity for growth." ...... "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;/For he today that sheds his blood with me/Shall be my brother." ...... On their way to the team bus, Wade teases James about not packing winter clothes. James laughs. It's obvious these guys get along. But camaraderie doesn't necessarily translate to seamless collaboration. ....... To achieve the proper balance, it's crucial to map out a strategy. Acquiring a player of James's caliber, says Groysberg, "is like acquiring a company. You need a whole integration plan." ....... game-long selflessness ..... The rich, wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald, "are different from you and me." So are superstars. ...... coaching in this league is about managing personalities ..... "All players want to be coached. They want to have discipline. They want structure. But some players get to that conclusion differently than others." ...... There is no more fragile commodity than the credibility of a team leader. ..... Everyone remembers the six NBA titles the Chicago Bulls won with Jordan, Pippen, and a cast of feisty specialists that included three-point marksman Kerr and rebounding fiend Dennis Rodman. What we tend to forget is how long it took to put all those pieces together. The Bulls didn't win a championship its first year with Jordan and Pippen. Or its second. Or even its third. ...... Chemistry takes time. The most successful superstar teams embrace shared leadership ...... They need time to crystallize. They need consistency, the same people butting heads, compromising, collaborating, day after day. ....... Chemistry isn't something you create and then ignore, like a mark on a growth chart. It's a reflection of the bonds between team members, and those bonds are fragile and needy. They're constantly changing, strengthened and fractured by the various personalities as well as the wins and losses. .......... The biggest obstacle to getting there is the blame game. Will the players resist second-guessing one another ..... True brothers, like the young soldiers in E Company who stormed the beaches of Normandy in World War II, don't point fingers. They believe in their mission and fight hard to cover one another's back. This is what any team aspires to: passion, unity, an absolute conviction that you can achieve whatever you want as a group. ....... In the face of unmet expectations and endless questions, bonds crack, friendships sour, and sacrifices, financial and otherwise, become burdensome. Guys move on. Heck, even über-successful teams struggle to keep it together. Look at what happened to the Beatles.

Did I Get An Email From Hilary Mason?

Maybe. Maybe not.



The Shortest Email Address On My Contact List

Cathy Erway: My Kind Of Chef

Cathy Erway was featured on the FoodSpotting blog a few days ago. No, the FoodSpotting blog is not on my blogroll, not yet, although now I am thinking why not, but I must have pressed the like button enough times that the FoodSpotting Facebook page is often in my Facebook stream. So there was Cathy Erway.

FoodSpotting's Dish As Starting Point
Twitter ---> Instagram ---> FoodSpotting

I remember exchanging a tweet or two with her over a year back. I was amazed to find her. The eating in concept is revolutionary, if you think about it.

Wunderlist: Great Productivity App

Wunderlist

(Via Joe Lazarus)

Swiss Machine

Watch full screen.
(Via David Lifson)

Water Changes Everything

Happy World Water Day
Bottled Water: Liquid Gold
Sunshine, Water, Rest, Air, Exercise, Diet



(Via Aspen Steib)

Kristina Hoke

This was when I was roaming the political circles of this city. I was the only Nepali in America doing full time work for Nepal's democracy movement. And I got some juice out of going to political events in the city. One organization on my list was Manhattan Young Democrats. Kristina Hoke was running the show.

MYD, High Tech, High Touch
Terry McAuliffe: E=mc^2
Martha Outed Kenton And Women With Issues
The First Major Revolution Of The 21st Century Happened In Nepal

She was razor sharp smart. She was out there. She was friendly. She was a doctor. She had sound political instincts. There are Young Democrats chapters all over the country. Under her leadership the Manhattan chapter got recognized the top chapter.

Way To Go Christina

Mindfood And Business Models

Image via CrunchBaseYour Local Library On Kindle

Fred Wilson just put out a post on the music business.

music listening is going to move into the cloud and that the dominant model will be streaming via free ad supported Internet Radio and paid subscription services.

The internet as a technology is best suited for the creation, distribution, and consumption of mindfood: books, movies, music. But we have to get rid of out of date business models first.

For all our emphasis on techies, I think what we need more of is business innovators. We need MBA dropouts who will offer us better business models.

Silicon Alley

Image via Wikipedia

New York Times: Manhattan’s Tech Start-Ups Settle in the Flatiron District and Chelsea: a decade after the dot-com crash stopped the rapid growth of the city’s booming Internet sector, a high-tech corridor has developed in the Flatiron district and neighboring Chelsea. ...... “Within five years, you’re going to have a true Silicon Alley. Every company that’s a tech start-up will be here.” ..... The older, small office buildings in the Flatiron district have attracted start-ups, while large companies like Google and IAC/InterActiveCorp have found homes in Chelsea. ..... It is no accident, for example, that General Assembly, a new educational institute, meeting place and co-working environment devoted to technology entrepreneurs, was established at 902 Broadway, at East 20th Street, in the middle of the Flatiron district. ...... a lot of young companies, a lot of designers and artists, and a lot of venture capitalists working in that neighborhood ..... “There’s a pretty exciting start-up scene now that there wasn’t in 2003 ..... the loftlike space that the Flatiron district offers, in relatively small footprints ...... a lot of buildings with high ceilings and natural light, overlooking Madison Square Park ..... “You get the amenities of a Midtown building but the flexibility of a loft in Brooklyn,” Mr. Kirven said. “Obviously without the Midtown rents, either.” ..... Prices are substantially lower than in Midtown and other prime office neighborhoods. ..... The Kaufman Organization has also helped Paperless Post, Break Media and Zemoga find space in the neighborhood. ...... “A lot of landlords are looking at 10-year leases,” Mr. Dunn said. “As a start-up, there’s no way to do that. Even a three-year lease was a scary thought.” ...... Union Square Ventures, First Round Capital and IA Ventures, have offices nearby. ...... If start-ups look to Flatiron for its small spaces, larger tech companies are choosing Chelsea for its sprawling floors. ....... “There’s a psychological barrier to going to a different floor to talk to somebody,” Mr. Nevill-Manning said. “Having 800 people on a single floor means we’re much more productive and much more creative as a result.” ....... public amenities ..... Hudson River Park, the High Line, Chelsea Piers and the concourse of Chelsea Market. ..... “From a recruiting point of view, a lot of those connections get made virtually,” Mr. Nevill-Manning said. “They know where to find us online.”

Google Earth Builder

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Bringing 100% web to the world of Google Earth and Google Maps: At Google we’re committed to opening up our cloud infrastructure so that others can benefit from our enormous computational power. Today I’m going to share some exciting details on our plans to make our cloud technology available for processing and serving geospatial data...... Google Earth and Google Maps have given people the ability to easily view rich geographic information from desktop or mobile devices. Google Earth helps us understand the effects of climate change on our ecosystem, Street View provides a panorama of our neighborhoods ...... Constant Innovation: just refresh the browser for the latest features ..... shapefiles of demographic data, spreadsheets of worldwide customer locations and files of your recently acquired imagery for a new development ..... Google Earth has more than 700 million downloads. We hope that more people can use Google Earth Builder to make better location-related decisions within business and government

The day Google Earth first came out, I downloaded it and had an amazing, amazing day roaming the Himalayas and vast expanses of Russia. It was a mind blowing experience. I was like wow.

Google Earth: A House Is A House Is A House

Your Local Library On Kindle

Cover via Amazon9 To 5 Mac: You'll be able to borrow Kindle books from 11,000 libraries, says Amazon

ReadWriteWeb: Check Out Library Books on Your Kindle: the announcement from Amazon this morning that it is launching a Lending Library "later this year" that will let Kindle owners check out books from their local library..... participation of over 11,000 libraries in the U.S. ..... the ability to actually make margin notes in your library books. You'll be able to take notes, store them privately - in other words, the next library patron won't see them - and then access them again should you check the book out again or purchase it in the future

This is huge. This kind of made my day. Does this mean all of the New York Public Library will be available on Kindle? That is pretty awesome.

Nihal Mehta: No Sellout

Local Response: Monetizing On "Their" Behalf

Local Response: Monetizing On "Their" Behalf

Image via CrunchBaseNihal Mehta: Being Mysterious About Local Response

My response is based on this TechCrunch post. Looks like in one sweep Nihal Mehta is about to monetize on behalf of all players in the local space. It is quite an audacious move.

TechCrunch: Buzzd Rebrands As Local Response; Debuts Social Customer Management Tool For Businesses: combine the element of the check-in he found intriguing with Buzzd and advertising and marketing elements ..... he calls “a culmination of everything he’s done,” of this is Local Response, a new web-based tool that allows local businesses to respond to the “check-in” on social media sites with marketing campaigns to promote transactions. ...... LocalResponse aggregates real-­‐time social media check-­‐ins from Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Gowalla, Instagram and dozens of other services to provide a simple interface for local businesses to directly respond to their most influential and valuable customers. What’s compelling about the platform compared to competitors is that it analyzes massive amounts of data in addition to check-ins from the Twitter firehose, photo sharing sites and more to find other forms of check-ins. These could be posting a picture on Instagram of a dish from a restaurant or Tweeting that you are visiting a particular bar. ...... explicitly (i.e. check-ins on Foursquare) and implicitly (by analyzing natural language on Facebook, Twitter, etc.; e.g. “I’m headed to ShakeShack”). Mehta says most check-ins are actual implicit and many social media platforms catered to helping businesses track check-ins miss this key data. ...... Not only does Local Response track all of this data but it allows businesses to respond to these Tweets and messages with a marketing campaign, coupon or advertisement. ...... So Shake Shack could send a Tweet back to someone who had just snapped a photo of a burger with a link to a 10 percent off coupon on the next visit. ...... Local Response has actually creates a number of canned responses which businesses can automatically send. ..... For the past six months, LocalResponse has been running a private beta, with over 2,000 campaigns for local businesses in New York City. The links in the Tweets and messages sent by these local businesses to consumers who “checked-in” to their establishment are averaging a 60 percent click-­‐through rate and 15-­‐20 percent redemption rates. That’s high and impressive. ...... Mehta says that the platform is so highly-focused in its data collection, that it can send highly targeted Tweets to consumers who are interested in the promotions or campaigns. For example he says that Local Response will run two to three hundred search terms across its data for a particular business. Also, the aim of Local Response is not to overwhelm consumers’ stream with advertisements. Users will never receive more than one message in 7 days ...... a platform for brands and agencies is in the works. ...... closed a $1.5 million in funding this past December from Verizon Ventures, Charles River Ventures, and Metamorphic. ...... plans to raise a new, larger round of funding this Summer ..... For now, Local Response is free for businesses. Eventually the startup plans to go the freemium route and will also charge for the brand-focused application. And Local Response is launching with half a million businesses that are already pre-indexed (with search terms). All they have to do is type in the business name, and they can get started using the platform.

A second natural move might be to partner up with the willing players to help them monetize their particular services for cuts, like Google ads help you monetize your particular media site. Because Local Response is not going to have access to the detailed data that those individual services might have.

English Patient

The English Patient
I Must Really Like Movies

Indian Invasion Comedy

Way To Go Christina

Christina Cacioppo Fan Club, sign here.
Christina Cacioppo, pride of Columbus, Ohio.

Is It About Women?

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

Mark Birch

Pink Floyd: Money

The Possible Anatomy Of A Dumplings Crawl
My Secret Sauce

Is It About Women?

70% of the recipients of micro loans end up being women. Because the vast majority of the world's poor are women. It is not because they don't work. Women do all the work at home and much of the work on the farms in all those poor countries. So why are they the bulk of the poor? Sexism pure and simple.

I have said my corporate team is going to be majority female. If the vast majority of your customers are going to be women, it only makes sense to have a team that is majority women.

So is it about women for me? Am I some kind of a raging feminist?

No. Yes and no.

Patti Smith: Dancing Barefoot

(Via Soraya Darabi)

Goldfrapp: Believer

(Via Soraya Darabi)

Pink Floyd: Money

(Via Mark Birch)

Brooklyn Loves Bollywood

Bollywood Loves Brooklyn
Bollybrook

I was just on the phone with Anne Marsen. She is the woman in the video.


Bachna Ae Haseeno (BollyBrook Remix) from Anne Marsen on Vimeo.

She was a friend of a friend of Nick Gray who happened to be in Mumbai. So one day Nick calls and talks about his idea for the music video. Would she do it?

My Non Personhood Of 2009, 2010

2009 and 2010 have been my years of roaming the tech circles of this city and avid tech blogging. I have done so as a non person. Tech felt safer than politics.

I have roamed. I have done so as a window shopper. I have not had the option to participate. It's called being in an immigration mess. For the rest it might have been the Great Recession, for me it was the Great Immigration Humiliation.

I was done raising 100K for my IC startup - that was the stated goal - months before the 2008 primaries were over, but I decided to be with Barack just a few more months. The primary was the only real contest. November was a no contest, it was so obvious to me. I had been his first full time volunteer in the city. I was in before he announced he was in.

But my political enemies came after me. The day the primaries ended, I disappeared. They had me disappear. The establishment picked that precise day lest I missed the message.

One day early in 2009, in March perhaps, maybe April, I went to see someone at Columbus Circle. We had met online, we had met, and we were going to meet again. I had two dollars in my pocket. That is all the money I had. I did not have any money back home. I did not have a bank account, let alone money in a bank account. I did not have a credit card. And I could not have walked back home. I would not have known the way. I did not have a phone. I did not have a metro card.

I remember thinking, if I lost those two dollars, I could not get back home.

Just Became A Cofounder
Sean Parker, Billionaire, Was Really Poor Once
Permanent War

Bollywood Loves Brooklyn

Bachna Ae Haseeno (BollyBrook Remix) from Anne Marsen on Vimeo.

SMS Power

This is really, really powerful to me. This is a small example. But this has huge implications.

If you still doubt GroupMe's potential, just watch this video.

SMS Powered Garage Door

Coachella (4)

The Possible Anatomy Of A Dumplings Crawl

Limit the number to 10. Only 10 people allowed. If there are more than 10 people, they can still go for a crawl, but it is going to have to be crawl number two.

Do it in Chinatown. That is a central location. People from all over the city can hope to participate. If it is going to be more than one group on the same day, coordinate such that no one restaurant is visited twice by all groups combined.

What A Party

Be There, Or Be Square: The FourSquare Day Party At Sidebar

Permanent War

You’re lucky that I ain’t the president
Cause I’ll push the f*#king button and get it over with
F&$k all that waiting and procrastinating
And all that goddamn negotiating
—Bushwick Bill, Fuck a War

Adding Intelligence To The Biggest Screen: TV

Image via WikipediaApple added intelligence to the smallest screen: the phone. The iPhone happened. If you can move from the PC screen to the small screen, you should be able to move in the other direction as well. The TV screen is what you meet when you go in the other direction. It is not if but when. And Chris Dixon just posted a great blog post on the topic. Go read.

Chris Dixon: Apple And The TV Industry: the reasoning analysts used to predict the failure of the iPhone before its launch in 2007..... Why do you think they call it a Crackberry? Because the lumpy design and confusing interface of the device is causing people to break into cars? No, it’s because people are addicted to it. ...... What Apple ended up doing, however, was creating a phone that was so incredibly desirable to consumers that it completely restructured the industry, causing a massive shift of power away from the carriers. ..... the last thing the cable operators want is for internet-delivered programming that bypasses their cable channels to become widespread – they see that as the fast track to become a dumb pipe ..... let’s imagine Apple develops a TV that is as groundbreaking as the iPhone was. The biggest problem “smart TVs” have today is that they need clunky IR transmitters to control set top boxes because the cable operators won’t willingly interoperate. So a new Apple TV would have to drum up such incredible consumer demand that the operators would feel compelled to support it. This does indeed seem harder in the TV than in the mobile industry. At least in the US you had 4 nationwide mobile operators at the time of the iPhone launch. In TV, consumers normally have at most two real choices for traditional cable programming – cable and satellite – and two real choices for two-way internet – cable and DSL/FIOS...... Perhaps Apple won’t enter the market due to its structure. But that didn’t stop them in mobile phones where the structure was similarly difficult. The mistake analysts made about the iPhone was to assume the current industry structure would be sustained after Apple’s entry. I’d be wary of making the same assumption about the TV industry.

Great To Meet Craig Newmark

Tweet from Craig
Another tweet from Craig
Tweet to Craig

When you meet Craig Newmark, the guy never forgets.
Be There, Or Be Square: The FourSquare Day Party At Sidebar