MegaUpload, SOPA, PIPA

Image via CrunchBaseAre they related?

GigaOm: Follow the traffic: What MegaUpload’s downfall did to the web

Arbor Networks said it saw traffic begin to drop fairly sharply in Europe after about 7 p.m. GMT and 2 p.m. EST, when the site was estimated to have been shut down on Thursday. ...... MegaUpload was indeed one of the more popular sites on the web for storing and sharing content. It ranked as .98 percent of the total web traffic in the U.S. and 11.39 of the total web traffic in Brazil. It garnered 1.95 percent of the traffic in Asia-Pacific and a less substantial .86 percent in Europe.

Reuters: Megaupload site wants assets back, to fight charges

The Internet website Megaupload.com, shut down by authorities over allegations that it illegally peddled copyrighted material, is trying to recover its servers and get back online ..... "Megaupload will vigorously defend itself." ..... The company's executives earned more than $175 million from subscription fees and advertising ..... The new website, which is being hosted in the Netherlands, looked similar to the original Megaupload.com website.

CNet: Megaupload assembles worldwide criminal defense

"There are significant issues of due process," Rothken said early this morning. "The government has taken down one of the world's largest storage providers and have done so without giving Megaupload an opportunity to be heard in court." ....... cost the film industry more than $600 million in damages ..... Rothken dismissed the government's attempt to file criminal charges against his clients. "Many of the allegations made are similar to those in the copyright case filed against YouTube and that was a civil case....and YouTube won." ...... Anonymous launched denial-of-service attacks on a number of music and film industry sites as well as the Web site of the Justice Department. ..... lives in a $30 million mansion in New Zealand. ..... DotCom was known for his flamboyant lifestyle and partying. He was certainly not hiding out in New Zealand. He threw a New Year's party and paid for a huge fireworks show over Auckland. ...... "Despite our staff clearly identifying themselves, Mr Dotcom retreated into the house and activated a number of electronic locking mechanisms," Detective Inspector Grant Wormald said in a report from New Zealand news outlet TVNZ. "While police neutralized these locks he then further barricaded himself into a safe room within the house which officers had to cut their way into."

TechCrunch: Anonymous Reacts to Megaupload Takedown With “Largest Attack Ever”

“The government takes down #Megaupload? 15 minutes later #Anonymous takes down government & record label sites. #ExpectUs.” ..... the group claimed responsibility for taking down the Universal Music, RIAA (the record industry’s lobbying arm), MPAA (the movie industry’s lobbying arm), and Department of Justice websites, among others. As of 3pm Pacific, the sites were still down for me ..... The group also claimed that the current attacks were “the largest attack ever by Anonymous,” with 5,635 participants. And it looks like the campaign is ongoing — Anonymous says it’s going after the FBI’s website next: “Get some popcorn… it’s going to be a long lulzy night.”

I Can't Believe I Just Watched This

SOPA Went Down

Image via WikipediaWhat just happened? SOPA went down.

The enormous passion some of the early opponents of SOPA exhibited told me right there and then that SOPA was so going down. And now it is official. SOPA will not make it to the floor of the House. This is victory.

Copyright asks for a new definition. Intellectual property has to be redefined. The nation state itself has to be redefined. There is a guttural feeling among tech innovators that that is the case. And the jinn is out of the bottle. There is no going back.

SOPA Has Egg In The Face
SOPA Is So Going Down

More people consume more news than ever before. But many newspapers have crashed and burned. What is going on? Enormous amounts of music is being created, more than ever before. More books are being written than ever before. If piracy is devaluing intellectual property then there should be this strong signal to authors and music people and creative people in general that they should cease work. But the signal is the exact opposite. What's going on?

Artificial scarcity is being made fun of. Access is being democratized globally. If you have internet access, you are in. Compare that to the pains of getting a visa to the US.

There is so much good news going on. How could such enormous good news be bad news to some people? One person's freedom fighter is another person's terrorist.

As far as I was concerned this was a fight between good and evil. Good won.

Running Meetings: Charging Hard

Image by Getty Images via @daylifeBusiness Insider: How Larry Page Changed Meetings At Google After Taking Over Last Spring

1. Every meeting must have one clear decision maker. If there's no decision maker -- or no decision to be made -- the meeting shouldn't happen.
   
2. No more than 10 people should attend.
   
3. Every person should give input, otherwise they shouldn't be there.
   
4. No decision should ever wait for a meeting. If a meeting absolutely has to happen before a decision should be made, then the meeting should be scheduled immediately.
   

To that I would add another observation. A team should be three people, maximum five people. And then you are moving.

Think Quarterly: Start-Up Speed

.... we needed to grow and speed up at the same time ..... that holy grail of business speed: The start-up ..... For starters, we noted that every decision-oriented meeting should have a clear decision-maker, and if it didn’t, the meeting shouldn’t happen. Those meetings should ideally consist of no more than 10 people, and everyone who attends should provide input. If someone has no input to give, then perhaps they shouldn’t be there. That’s okay – attending meetings isn’t a badge of honor – but the people who are attending need to get there on time. Most importantly, decisions should never wait for a meeting. If it’s critical that a meeting take place before a decision is made, then that meeting needs to happen right away. ...... “Google+ shipped over 100 new features in the 90 days after launch, while accelerating to over 40 million users. That’s a velocity we’re proud of.” ..... Besides fast decisions, another key hallmark of start-ups is their fast-paced, densely populated offices. We’ve always promoted this approach at Google, organizing around small teams and working in close proximity to one another. Even Eric Schmidt shared his office with an engineer when he first joined the company. ...... we created a ‘bullpen’ in one of the buildings on our main campus, which was specially designed as a place for members of our executive team to work and talk in an informal setting. These execs now set aside a number of hours per week to be there. It’s amazing how fast things can get done – even in a large company – when you put so many key people together and don’t give them an agenda. ....... Creating quarterly OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) has been part of Google’s culture since board member John Doerr introduced the concept in 1999. ...... Team by team, the leaders lay out their objectives and how they’ll measure success. Afterwards, they’re posted for anyone within the company to see. ..... a recent OKR objective for our search team was to improve the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful, which restates and reiterates the company’s mission statement ....... Having these shared goals also has the benefit of helping prevent the formation of silos – always a concern as companies grow. ...... in a permanently accelerating environment, we’re all seeking the best ways to move faster and be smarter. ... Larry’s closing speech at Zeitgeist: “There are no companies that make good slow decisions.”

Larry Page's Challenge

Image via WikipediaLarry Page's challenge is to turn Google first into a company more valuable than Apple, and then perhaps into the most valuable company in the world. And he does not have 10 years. He could not have done it without some hardware muscle, so I have been positive he bought Motorola.

But so far I have been disappointed in Google's fight back on the Android front. Android is Google's number one most promising product right now. But it has been let to pasture. Google has not fought back hard enough to the onslaught on Android from the likes of Microsoft. You don't do that and still end up the most valuable company in the world. The price of Google not fighting back is in the tens of billions of dollars.

Google is king of search. Finally it has found its mojo on the next big thing after search: social. And it is well positioned for the next big thing after social: Big Data. But the biggest trend of all is mobile. And there Google has given ground for no reason despite having a winning product. It's a shame.

Business Insider: How Larry Page Plans To Change Google Forever In 2012
Larry Page Outlines His Plan And Vision For Google

Google Plus Numbers In A Year

Image via WikipediaIf Google Plus has 90 million users now, that was achieved in half a year. So even at that growth rate it should have 270 million users by the end of 2012. But it is most likely the growth will accelerate. Say it ends up with 350 million users by December. Those are rad numbers. I see no fog between 90 million and 500 million. As in, there is no stopping Google Plus from hitting 500 million users. I just don't know how long that will take.

If it can grow to 90 million users in half a year, then it is 270 million users by the end of 2012, and to 450 million users by the end of 2013. But that is saying growth will not accelerate. I am saying it will.

If Google Plus has not hit 500 million users by the summer of 2013, I will be surprised.

TechCrunch: Larry Page Is Super Excited To Announce That Google+ Has 90M Users

"I have some amazing data to share there for the first time: +users are very engaged with our products — over 60% of them engage daily, and over 80% weekly."

Apple: $10 Billion To $400 Billion In 10 Years

Image via CrunchBaseAnd with most of the growth happening once the Great Recession hit.

CNN: At $400 billion, Apple is worth more than Greece

Only Exxon Mobil has a higher valuation, at about $420 billion. PetroChina (PTR) is Apple's closest competitor, at $270 billion, and Microsoft follows at $235 billion. ..... Apple's market cap is higher than the gross domestic product of Greece, Austria, Argentina, or South Africa. ..... Despite its size, Apple is still one of the fastest growing technology companies...... a $15 price cap for e-textbooks

This is a remarkable story. It came from the company inventing one new category after another. There were digital music players before the iPod, but I remember a Time or Newsweek front cover that said: iPod, therefore I am.

The iPhone was the gizmo that really did it for Apple. This was truly a trailblazing product. It shook the landscape.

And now Apple marches into TV and textbooks. TV is a hard nut to crack.

I stay fascinated as to how Apple manages to keep its startup culture. It still acts like one.

Hosanna

Secretive Apple

Image by marcopako  via FlickrApple's ways are so different from Google's and yet they go neck and neck. It is a study in contrasts. No free lunch? Come on.

Fortune: The secrets Apple keeps

Undercover meetings! Stealth product developments! The world's most successful company is obsessed with privacy. ..... for a corporation so frequently discussed, Apple is poorly understood. Its products are ubiquitous, but information about the institution is scarce -- which is exactly how Apple wants it ..... The business world keeps nattering on about the importance of corporate transparency, yet the most successful company in the world is beyond opaque. ...... Apple employees know something big is afoot when the carpenters appear in their office building. New walls are quickly erected. Doors are added and new security protocols put into place. Windows that once were transparent are now frosted. Other rooms have no windows at all. They are called lockdown rooms: No information goes in or out without a reason. ...... If it hasn't been disclosed to you, then it's literally none of your business. ...... the link between secrecy and productivity is one way that Apple (AAPL) challenges long-held management truths and the notion of transparency as a corporate virtue. ...... at Apple everything is a secret. .... loose-lips-sink-ships mentality: A T‑shirt for sale in the company store, which is open to the public at 1 Infinite Loop, reads: I VISITED THE APPLE CAMPUS. BUT THAT'S ALL I'M ALLOWED TO SAY. ....... Apple's airy physical surroundings belie its secretive core. ..... Unlike Google's famously and ridiculously named "Googleplex," where a visitor can roam the inner courtyards and slip into an open door as employees come and go, Apple's buildings are airtight. Employees can be spotted on the volleyball courts from time to time. More typically, visitors gaping into the courtyard will see a campus in constant motion. Apple employees scurry from building to building for meetings that start and end on time. ...... "And half the folks can't tell you what they're doing, because it's a secret project that they've gotten hired for." ....... Outside, Apple is revered. Inside, it is cultish ...... "There's only one free lunch at Apple, and it's on your first day" ...... the rationale is that when Apple launches a product, if it's been a secret up until the launch, the amount of press and coverage and buzz that you get is hugely valuable to the company. 'It's worth millions of dollars' ...... Apple's powerful senior vice president of product marketing, has been known to compare an Apple product launch to a blockbuster Hollywood movie opening weekend. ...... Apple fanboys camp out in front of Apple stores in anticipation of new Apple product releases in a way that is reminiscent of the lines that once greeted a new installment in the Lord of the Rings or Star Wars franchises ..... so they don't steal the thunder from existing products. If consumers know exactly what's coming, they may hold off on a purchase for fear it will be superseded by the next generation. .......... announcing products before they are ready gives the competition time to respond, raises customer expectations, and opens a company up to the carping of critics who are bashing an idea rather than an actual product. ...... Unfathomably, HP later "pre-announced" the sale of its PC business, inflicting immeasurable damage on a unit that accounted for nearly a third of its sales. (HP's board fired its CEO, Léo Apotheker, shortly after the announcement about the PC unit.) ....... Valley engineers love to swap stories about their work, but Apple engineers have a reputation for keeping to themselves. ..... "It's best in general not to talk about work." The mentality makes Apple stand out in the tech world. ..... People working on launch events will be given watermarked paper copies of a booklet called Rules of the Road that details every milestone leading up to launch day. In the booklet is a legal statement whose message is clear: If this copy ends up in the wrong hands, the responsible party will be fired. ...... You had to sign extra-special agreements acknowledging that you were working on a super-secret project and you wouldn't talk about it to anyone -- not your wife, not your kids. ...... "He'd say, 'Anything disclosed from this meeting will result not just in termination but in the prosecution to the fullest extent that our lawyers can.' This made me very uncomfortable. You have to watch everything you do. I'd have nightmares." ....... Company lore holds that plainclothes Apple security agents lurk near the bar at BJ's and that employees have been fired for loose talk there. It doesn't matter if the yarn is true or apocryphal. The fact that employees repeat it serves the purpose. ...... the Apple way is to mind one's own business. This has a side benefit that is striking in its simplicity: Employees prevented from butting into one another's affairs will have more time to focus on their own work. Below a certain level, it is difficult to play politics at Apple, because the average employee doesn't have enough information to get into the game. Like a horse fitted with blinders, the Apple employee charges forward to the exclusion of all else. ...... "We have cells, like a terrorist organization ... Everything is on a need‑to‑know basis." ...... Organization charts, typical fare at most big companies, don't exist at Apple. That is information employees don't need and outsiders shouldn't have. ...... the internal Apple Directory. This electronic guide lists each employee's name, group, manager, location, e-mail, and phone number, and might include a photograph. ..... The executive team, a small council of advisers to the CEO, runs the company, assisted by a cadre of fewer than 100 vice presidents. But rank doesn't always confer status at Apple. Everyone is aware of an unwritten caste system. The industrial designers are untouchable, as were, until his death, the cadre of engineers who had worked with Steve Jobs for years, some dating to his first stint at Apple. A small group of engineers carries the title of DEST, distinguished engineer/scientist, technologist. These are individual contributors with clout in the organization but no management responsibilities. ..... In terms of corporate coolness, functions such as sales, human resources, and customer service wouldn't even rate. ..... it isn't uncommon for employees to go places their boss cannot. ...... By and large, Apple is a collaborative and cooperative environment, devoid of overt politicking. The reason for the cooperation, according to former insiders, is the command-and-control structure. ...... Apple's culture may be cooperative, but it isn't usually nice, and it's almost never relaxed. ...... "The fighting can get personal and ugly. There's a mentality that it's okay to shred somebody in the spirit of making the best products." ...... "It's a culture of excellence," this person noted. "You don't want to be the weak link. There is an intense desire to not let the company down." ...... Apple's culture is the polar opposite of Google's, where fliers announcing extracurricular activities -- from ski outings to a high-profile author series -- hang everywhere. At Apple, the iTunes team sponsors the occasional band, and there is a company gym (which isn't free), but by and large Apple people come to work to work. "At meetings, there is no discussion about the lake house where you just spent the weekend," recalled a senior engineer. "You get right down to business." ...... "There is not a culture of recognizing and celebrating success. It's very much about work." Said another: "If you're a die-hard Apple geek, it's magical. It's also a really tough place to work." ..... Apple pays salaries that are competitive with the marketplace -- but no better. A senior director might make an annual salary of $200,000, with bonuses in good years amounting to 50% of the base. Talking about money is frowned upon at Apple. ..... "Sitting in a bar and seeing that 90% of the people there are using devices that your company made -- there is something cool about that, and you can't put a dollar value on it."

SOPA Has Egg In The Face

Image by Getty Images via @daylifeSOPA Is So Going Down

Google: Don't Censor The Web
Mark Zuckerberg: The Internet Is The Most Powerful Tool
Search Engine Land: Google Slows Web Crawlers To Help Blackouts Sites
TechCrunch: In Face Of Protests, Congressmen Begin To Abandon SOPA Ship
TechCrunch: Reddit’s Alexis Ohanian On SOPA: “The Fight Isn’t Over”
GigaOm: Taking SOPA/PIPA to the streets: Protests on for SF, NYC

My favorite has to be this one:

TechCrunch: In Face Of Protests, Congressmen Begin To Abandon SOPA Ship

The tide began to turn this weekend when a hearing scheduled for today was canceled and the White House pushed back on some of the more controversial portions ..... Already, a couple of co-sponsors of the bill are pulling their support. Representative Ben Quayle (R-Ariz.) is no longer a co-sponsor, and Representative Lee Terry (R-Neb.) is also planning to remove his name from the co-sponsor list, according to Politico. One Congressman, Representative Justin Amash (R-Mich.) is even joining the protest movement.

Related articles

• All Adwords are now anti-SOPA (news.ycombinator.com)
• Stop SOPA And PIPA (neilperkin.typepad.com)
• Reddit's Alexis Ohanian On SOPA: "The Fight Isn't Over" (techcrunch.com)
• Microsoft opposes SOPA 'as currently drafted' (zdnet.com)
• Yes, Google Will Protest SOPA on its Homepage (techcrunch.com)
• Say NO to SOPA & PIPA! (jeenus.wordpress.com)
• Wikipedia Is Doing a Blackout to Protest Against SOPA/PIPA (dailyblogtips.com)
• This Is the Internet After SOPA [PICS] (mashable.com)
• The Wikipedia Blackout Begins in SOPA Protest (mobilemarketingwatch.com)
• The SOPA blackout (nevillehobson.com)

Social Media Week: Registration Now Open

Social Media Week Is Upon Us

I was able to get into all except one event I wanted to get into.

Monday, February 13th

3:00pm - 5:00pm Big Data and Bigger Conversations: Measuring Your Brand's Social Performance
6:30pm - 9:00pm Meet The Afropolitans: Digital Media + Culture In Africa

Tuesday, February 14th

9:00am - 11:30am The Classroom of The Future: How Social Media Can Better Our Education System
10:00am - 11:00am Global Brand Management: Best Practices in a Social World

Wednesday, February 15th

9:00am - 12:00pm Keynote: Dave Gray & The Connected Company: An Inventory of the Possible
12:00pm - 2:00pm Keynote: Scott Belsky, CEO of Behance, followed by GOOD Panel: Beyond Crowdsourcing: Using The Community To Report
2:15pm - 3:30pm Creating Community Around Your Blog
3:00pm - 4:00pm Building Community: Combining Real World Experiences with Online Social Networks
8:00pm - 1:00am Social Media Mania! A networking party hosted by DaniWeb

Thursday, February 16th

12:00pm - 2:00pm Keynote: Jeremy Heimans, CEO of Purpose, followed by Weapons of Choice: The Design of Insurgency
6:00pm - 11:00pm New Business Models to Convert Human Intent into Tangible Action (followed by free after party)
6:00pm - 11:00pm Obliterati

I was not able to get into this one.

Friday, February 17th

12:00pm - 2:00pm Keynote: Alec Ross, Office of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, followed by Team Obama Talks Digital Vision: Strategies and Tools for 2012 and Beyond

I think I might sign up for a few more. Let's start with the parties.

ResearchGate: A Facebook For Scientists

Image via CrunchBaseNew York Times: Cracking Open the Scientific Process

For centuries, this is how science has operated — through research done in private, then submitted to science and medical journals to be reviewed by peers and published for the benefit of other researchers and the public at large. But to many scientists, the longevity of that process is nothing to celebrate. ....... It is an ideal system for sharing knowledge, said the quantum physicist Michael Nielsen, only “if you’re stuck with 17th-century technology.” ......... science can accomplish much more, much faster, in an environment of friction-free collaboration over the Internet ....... Open-access archives and journals like arXiv and the Public Library of Science (PLoS) have sprung up in recent years. GalaxyZoo, a citizen-science site, has classified millions of objects in space, discovering characteristics that have led to a raft of scientific papers........... On the collaborative blog MathOverflow, mathematicians earn reputation points for contributing to solutions; in another math experiment dubbed the Polymath Project, mathematicians commenting on the Fields medalist Timothy Gower’s blog in 2009 found a new proof for a particularly complicated theorem in just six weeks......... And a social networking site called ResearchGate — where scientists can answer one another’s questions, share papers and find collaborators — is rapidly gaining popularity........ the sixth annual ScienceOnline conference ...... Indeed, he said, scientists who attend the conference should not be seen as competing with one another. “Lindsay Lohan is our competitor,” he continued. “We have to get her off the screen and get science there instead.” ....... Ijad Madisch, 31, the Harvard-trained virologist and computer scientist behind ResearchGate, the social networking site for scientists. ....... has attracted several million dollars in venture capital from some of the original investors of Twitter, eBay and Facebook. ...... The Web site is a sort of mash-up of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, with profile pages, comments, groups, job listings, and “like” and “follow” buttons ...... Only scientists are invited to pose and answer questions — a rule that should not be hard to enforce, with discussion threads about topics like polymerase chain reactions that only a scientist could love. ...... Scientists populate their ResearchGate profiles with their real names, professional details and publications — data that the site uses to suggest connections with other members. Users can create public or private discussion groups, and share papers and lecture materials. ResearchGate is also developing a “reputation score” to reward members for online contributions. ........ ResearchGate offers a simple yet effective end run around restrictive journal access with its “self-archiving repository.” Since most journals allow scientists to link to their submitted papers on their own Web sites, Dr. Madisch encourages his users to do so on their ResearchGate profiles. In addition to housing 350,000 papers (and counting), the platform provides a way to search 40 million abstracts and papers from other science databases. ........ find new collaborators, get expert advice and read journal articles ....... Now he spends up to two hours a day, five days a week, on the site. ...... Changing the status quo — opening data, papers, research ideas and partial solutions to anyone and everyone — is still far more idea than reality. As the established journals argue, they provide a critical service that does not come cheap. ....... (Like other media organizations, Science has responded to the decline in advertising revenue by enhancing its Web offerings, and most of its growth comes from online subscriptions.) ..... Scott Aaronson, a quantum computing theorist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has refused to conduct peer review for or submit papers to commercial journals. “I got tired of giving free labor,” he said, to “these very rich for-profit companies.” ....... Journals seem noticeably less important than 10 years ago ....... “trillions” are spent each year on global scientific research. Investors are betting that a successful site catering to scientists could shave at least a sliver off that enormous pie. ....... wait.. until younger scientists weaned on social media and open-source collaboration start running their own labs.

Looks like it is not only movies, music and newspapers that are in trouble.

This makes me happy.

Scott Aaronson: Review of The Access Principle by John Willinsky

But who on Earth could possibly be so paralyzed by indecision, so averse to change, so immune to common sense? I've got it: academics! ...... One would think such a request would anger everyone: conservatives and libertarians because of the unpaid labor, liberals because of the beneficiaries of that labor. ...... But the first step is for a critical mass of us to acknowledge that we are being had. ...... Today, many journal articles are online, but are accessible only from schools, companies, and research centers that have bought exorbitantly-priced "institutional subscriptions" to services like Elsevier's ScienceDirect. I've always been amazed by the arrogance of the view that this represents an acceptable solution to the problem of circulating research. Even if the subscriptions cost a reasonable amount (they don't), and even if the researchers who were "entitled" to them could easily access them away from their workplaces (they can't), who are we to say that a precocious high-school student, or a struggling researcher in Belarus or Ghana, has no legitimate use for our work? ..... Granted, it might not be feasible for every elementary school on Earth to stock journals containing articles about the Tribonacci sequence. The point is that today, in the Internet age, they shouldn't have to. And yet, even as I write, much of the serious content on the Internet remains sequestered behind pointless, artificial walls -- walls that serve the interests of neither the readers nor the authors, but only of the wall-builders themselves. ...... When will we in academia get our act together enough to make the world's scholarly output readable, for free, by anyone with a web browser?

Early In: Welcome Pando Daily

Sarah Lacy: Why I Started Pando Daily

Big Data + Smartphone = New Generation Smartphone

Image via WikipediaFighting the next mobile war
Arduino is a building block for the world to come
The next, next big thing
Google I/O 2011: The Accessory Development Kit is a big deal
Why Google Choosing Arduino Matters
Parallel programming, Arduino and the good kind of trouble

There is very little actual talking on the phone done these days. Mostly people are interacting with apps. The next generation smartphone will constantly interact with the external environment.

Related articles

• Fighting the next mobile war (radar.oreilly.com)
• imabonehead: Google chooses Arduino as a development platform for Android | Your Electronics Open Source (dev.emcelettronica.com)
• New in the Maker Shed: Arduino Wireless Proto Shield (makezine.com)
• The Making of the Arduino (wired.com)
• Chrome books should come with Arduino 1.0 installed and come with an Arduino (adafruit.com)
• Getting physical with Android, NFC and the ADK (radar.oreilly.com)
• Annoy Your Cat With This Arduino-Based RC Car Controlled With an iPad (pcworld.com)
• ARM-ed To the Teeth, Arduino Hardware Grows Up (wired.com)
• Arduino Hack Lets You Control TV, Annoy Others (pcworld.com)

Engaging Mark Cuban

mcubanMark Cuban

The TV Business Keeps Getting Stronger !: Back in my http://t.co/xUGnYr65 days we had a saying that… http://t.co/GpEgc0tS

Jan 15FavoriteRetweetReply

in reply to @mcuban↑

@paramendra
Paramendra Bhagat@mcuban You just told me the people who added smarts to the phone will have a much tougher time doing it to TV.
Jan 15 via webFavoriteRetweetReply

paramendraParamendra Bhagat

@mcuban You just told me the people who added smarts to the phone will have a much tougher time doing it to TV.

Jan 16FavoriteRetweetReply

mcubanMark Cuban

@paramendra no. its not about features. Its about the business side and consumer path of least resistance

Jan 16FavoriteRetweetReply

in reply to @mcuban↑

@paramendra
Paramendra Bhagat@mcuban Gigabit broadband will take care of bottlenecks you point out http://t.co/39cK5kom Your observations have great short term value.
Jan 16 via webFavoriteRetweetReply

Mark Cuban, Television, And The Internet

Image via WikipediaThis was in the late 1990s. Bill Gates was trying hard to marry television to the internet. He called it WebTV. He failed. This was before broadband became mainstream. And still broadband is not there yet. I think gigabit broadband is where TV and the Internet become one.

This was in the late 1990s. Larry Ellison was after something he called the network computer. You would not have much of anything on the desktop. The network would have all the software you would need. Steve Jobs told him the technology just did not exist to support that. The richness possible on the desktop was leaps and bounds ahead of the richness on the browser. Again, this was before broadband, way before HTML5.

5G + HTML5 = Magic

Two titans were not seeing it straight. Positive spin would say they were futurists ahead of their times.

Mark Cuban Replies To My Tweet
Mark Cuban: Contrarian On The TV Business

The conventional wisdom in the industry is that we are almost there. We nailed the phone. Now TV is next. And we are almost there. Even Steve Jobs says so much in his biography. I finally cracked it, he declares.

Not so fast, says Mark Cuban. By personality Mark Cuban is someone you can expect to take a contrarian stand. As he does now. He makes some good points.

Mark Cuban: The TV Business Keeps Getting Stronger!

This is how I summarized his blog post earlier today in another blog post.

(1) TV shows are high quality stuff. Not just anyone can produce them. People like them.
(2) Video is content king. People like consuming content in video format. Much faster broadband might stand a chance but not the broadband we know. The Internet pipes just are not there yet.
(3) Ease of use is supreme. People want to be able to just turn on and watch. No browse and click.

I think all these points are valid. But by the time we hit universal gigabit broadband all three points will have fallen by the wayside.

(1) There's plenty of great quality music on the web. In fact, all the great music is there.
(2) Faster broadband will mainstream video. Video is already big on the web.
(3) People who design smartphones are better positioned than the cable TV people when it comes to simplifying the video consumption experience. I mean, we could get rid of the remote. Voice control, gesture control. There might even be mind reading.

Mark Cuban though makes a solid point that the TV people are not standing still. They are working hard to ease the complexity from another angle.

It is true that for the masses there are times when you just want to sit back and watch.

Mark Cuban Replies To My Tweet

Tweet 1
Tweet 2
Tweet 3

Mark Cuban: Contrarian On The TV Business

Big Data

Image via CrunchBaseBig Data: Big News
Facebook And Big Data

After reading this you appreciate your Facebook stream just a little more.

O'Reilly Radar: What is big data?

Big data is data that exceeds the processing capacity of conventional database systems. The data is too big, moves too fast, or doesn't fit the strictures of your database architectures. ..... cost-effective approaches have emerged to tame the volume, velocity and variability of massive data. Within this data lie valuable patterns and information ...... Today's commodity hardware, cloud architectures and open source software bring big data processing into the reach of the less well-resourced. ...... analytical use, and enabling new products ...... Being able to process every item of data in reasonable time removes the troublesome need for sampling ...... by combining a large number of signals from a user's actions and those of their friends, Facebook has been able to craft a highly personalized user experience and create a new kind of advertising business. It's no coincidence that the lion's share of ideas and tools underpinning big data have emerged from Google, Yahoo, Amazon and Facebook. ....... The emergence of big data into the enterprise brings with it a necessary counterpart: agility. Successfully exploiting the value in big data requires experimentation and exploration. ........ Input data to big data systems could be chatter from social networks, web server logs, traffic flow sensors, satellite imagery, broadcast audio streams, banking transactions, MP3s of rock music, the content of web pages, scans of government documents, GPS trails, telemetry from automobiles, financial market data, the list goes on. ....... the three Vs of volume, velocity and variety are commonly used to characterize different aspects of big data. ........ Having more data beats out having better models ...... If you could run that forecast taking into account 300 factors rather than 6, could you predict demand better? ......... Many companies already have large amounts of archived data, perhaps in the form of logs, but not the capacity to process it. ...... data warehouses or databases such as Greenplum — and Apache Hadoop-based solutions ...... Apache Hadoop.. places no conditions on the structure of the data it can process. ...... First developed and released as open source by Yahoo, it implements the MapReduce approach pioneered by Google in compiling its search indexes. Hadoop's MapReduce involves distributing a dataset among multiple servers and operating on the data: the "map" stage. The partial results are then recombined: the "reduce" stage. ......... Hadoop is not itself a database or data warehouse solution, but can act as an analytical adjunct to one. ....... A MySQL database stores the core data. This is then reflected into Hadoop, where computations occur, such as creating recommendations for you based on your friends' interests. Facebook then transfers the results back into MySQL, for use in pages served to users. ............ the increasing rate at which data flows into an organization — has followed a similar pattern to that of volume. Problems previously restricted to segments of industry are now presenting themselves in a much broader setting. Specialized companies such as financial traders have long turned systems that cope with fast moving data to their advantage. Now it's our turn. ......... Online retailers are able to compile large histories of customers' every click and interaction: not just the final sales. Those who are able to quickly utilize that information, by recommending additional purchases, for instance, gain competitive advantage. The smartphone era increases again the rate of data inflow, as consumers carry with them a streaming source of geolocated imagery and audio data. ......... The importance lies in the speed of the feedback loop, taking data from input through to decision. ........ you wouldn't cross the road if all you had was a five-minute old snapshot of traffic location. ......... "streaming data," or "complex event processing." ...... when the input data are too fast to store in their entirety: in order to keep storage requirements practical some level of analysis must occur as the data streams in. ........ At the extreme end of the scale, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN generates so much data that scientists must discard the overwhelming majority of it — hoping hard they've not thrown away anything useful. The second reason to consider streaming is where the application mandates immediate response to the data. Thanks to the rise of mobile applications and online gaming this is an increasingly common situation. ........ The velocity of a system's outputs can matter too. The tighter the feedback loop, the greater the competitive advantage. ....... Rarely does data present itself in a form perfectly ordered and ready for processing. A common theme in big data systems is that the source data is diverse, and doesn't fall into neat relational structures. It could be text from social networks, image data, a raw feed directly from a sensor source. None of these things come ready for integration into an application. .......... the reality of data is messy. Different browsers send different data, users withhold information, they may be using differing software versions or vendors to communicate with you. And you can bet that if part of the process involves a human, there will be error and inconsistency. ....... Is this city London, England, or London, Texas? By the time your business logic gets to it, you don't want to be guessing. ...... a principle of big data: when you can, keep everything. There may well be useful signals in the bits you throw away. ....... documents encoded as XML are most versatile when stored in a dedicated XML store such as MarkLogic. Social network relations are graphs by nature, and graph databases such as Neo4J make operations on them simpler and more efficient. ....... a disadvantage of the relational database is the static nature of its schemas. In an agile, exploratory environment, the results of computations will evolve with the detection and extraction of more signals. Semi-structured NoSQL databases meet this need for flexibility: they provide enough structure to organize data, but do not require the exact schema of the data before storing it. ........ three forms: software-only, as an appliance or cloud-based. ...... IT is undergoing an inversion of priorities: it's the program that needs to move, not the data. .... Financial trading systems crowd into data centers to get the fastest connection to source data, because that millisecond difference in processing time equates to competitive advantage. ...... 80% of the effort involved in dealing with data is cleaning it up in the first place ...... data science, a discipline that combines math, programming and scientific instinct. ...... The art and practice of visualizing data is becoming ever more important in bridging the human-computer gap to mediate analytical insight in a meaningful way. ...... advice to businesses starting out with big data: first, decide what problem you want to solve.

Facebook And Big Data

Image via WikipediaBig Data: Big News

ReadWriteWeb: Why Facebook's Data Sharing Matters

Facebook has cut a deal with political website Politico that allows the independent site machine-access to Facebook users' messages, both public and private, when a Republican Presidential candidate is mentioned by name. The data is being collected and analyzed for sentiment by Facebook's data team, then delivered to Politico to serve as the basis of data-driven political analysis and journalism. ..... Facebook could be the biggest, most dynamic census of human opinion and interaction in history. ....... Back in the middle of the last century, when US Census data and housing mortgage loan data were both made available for computer analysis and cross referencing for the first time, early data scientists were able to prove a pattern of racial discrimination by banks against people of color who wanted to buy houses in certain neighborhoods. The data illuminated the problem and made it undeniable, thus leading to legislation to prohibit such discrimination...... the relationship between data and knowledge generally in the emerging data-rich world....... David Weinberger .. "It's not simply that there are too many brickfacts [datapoints] and not enough edifice-theories. Rather, the creation of data galaxies has led us to science that sometimes is too rich and complex for reduction into theories. As science has gotten too big to know, we've adopted different ideas about what it means to know at all." ...... The world's largest social network, rich with far more signal than any of us could wrap our heads around, could help illuminate emergent qualities of the human experience that are only visible on the network level.

Google machine-reads all your Gmail emails. That is how it serves ads against them. I don't think that is a breach of privacy. I can imagine Facebook similarly machine-reading your private Facebook messages and updates. As long as individuals are not identified, that collective data is fair game. It has the potential to do tremendous good.

This also tells me Google is not the only major tech company trying to get on the Big Data train. Facebook is also well-positioned.

Curiously Yahoo's new CEO also has said he will take Yahoo into the Big Data domain. He got the vocabulary right. I hope he can deliver. Yahoo also sits on some pretty Big Data.

Mark Cuban: Contrarian On The TV Business

Image via WikipediaI love following the VCs I follow in the blogosphere, but I wish my list was more tilted towards entrepreneurs. The problem is the top entrepreneurs don't blog. Mark Cuban is an exception. He does blog. And the guy sure is opinionated.

I think Mark Cuban just told me the people who added smarts to the phone are going to have a much harder time doing the same to TV. I don't think his stand is definitive. But his stand does give me a glimpse into the complexity of the landscape. Mark Cuban of Broadcast.com fame. I remember when they got bought by Yahoo. I was doing some preliminary work on a dot com that went on to do really well, for two years.

Mark Cuban: The TV Business Keeps Getting Stronger!

We had a policy that we never tried to create hits. That we were always going to go wide and create a reason for people to start watching video online. 17 years later. Yep, its been 17 years since we started Broadcast.com (as audionet.com first), Youtube and others are still doing the exact same thing. ...... Good for them ! Except they are making one huge fundamental mistake, they are trying to create hits. They don’t like the idea that beyond a steady stream of 1 hit wonders they haven’t been able to create a sustainable roadmap to content success. In other words, they have no idea how to drive an audience to specific content. Their hits come out of nowhere. ...... viewing for cable networks has skyrocketed and the amount of traditional tv watched has continued to increase. ..... used to be that only movie companies got output deals ..... Today, TV shows are getting output deals and generating lots of revenue across all the different platforms that show TV shows. Its not just syndication,but those online distributors want to make sure they get the best shows and they are committing up front to buy those shows. An output deal. Found money. ...... The TV business isn’t dead. It really isn’t even morphing. Sure people will watch video online. They will watch it on phones. They will download it. But the videos that online distributors pay the most for will be those that have done the best on traditional TV. Which in turn means more money for the production of shows. ...... Online video is to TV today like DVDs were to Movies in the past. A great revenue source that correlated to the movie’s boxoffice. ...... having to hit the internet button on the remote, or even worse, the input button on the remote will not be the path of least resistance for watching tv. Believe it or not, it will be far too much hassle for most people when compared to just turning on and watching TV the old fashioned way. And on top of that, distributors like Dish, Directv, Charter, Comcast, etc are working hard to improve their guide experiences which will be faster and easier than their online counterparts....... last but not least, MOCA, DLNA and good old fashioned wi fi is always going to be a hassle. No one has perfect wi fi at their apartment or house. It always screws up.

(1) TV shows are high quality stuff. Not just anyone can produce them. People like them.
(2) Video is content king. People like consuming content in video format. Much faster broadband might stand a chance but not the broadband we know. The Internet pipes just are not there yet.
(3) Ease of use is supreme. People want to be able to just turn on and watch. No browse and click.

Robert Scoble And The Windows Phone

Image via WikipediaBusiness Insider: Here's Why Robert Scoble And The Rest Of The Pundits Are Wrong: Windows Phone Will Be A Success

Robert Scoble, for example, dismisses any study that predicts the success of Windows Phone and its eventual triumph over iOS in market share. "It is missing 450,000 apps" is Scoble’s primary argument. That and, "None of my friends are talking about it." ..... the majority of the tech press is already rooting for Windows Phone, especially after CES..... Windows Phone has 50,000 compared to iOS’ 500,000 and Android’s 400,000...... Windows Phone Marketplace was the fastest growing app store with over 400% growth. ...... the development tools/environment of Windows Phone is easier and more efficient than Android by leaps and bounds...... Nokia is busy selling a million devices a day in places people have never even heard of the iPhone ..... Oh, and that very same model of selling mobile phones in volume at a small margin? Yeah, Nokia and Microsoft are bringing that model to the U.S market now...... no one makes a phone like Nokia does. The Lumia 900 and its siblings just set the bar for mobile hardware extremely high. Good luck, Samsung....... the most unique UI of any mobile OS since the first iPhone was introduced. The live tiles give you quick access to your information, and the whole Metro UI just works....... We like to think of this tech and mobile industry as a “Game over” situation with Android and iOS as the clear winners but the truth is, this space is in its diapers and what the market looks like now will in no way resemble the mobile market of 2015

Robert Scoble: What +Hillel Fuld doesn't know about Windows Phone and its chances in the market

I had dinner with Skype's CEO on Thursday night. He told me that Skype won't support the current version of Windows Phone. This gets to the heart of my "apps matter."

I happen to think the Windows Phone has a shot at emerging the third player in the smartphone space. But it might take longer than Microsoft thinks. We will likely have a better picture by the end of the year.

Microsoft Finally Cracked The Phone

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