Tuesday, August 03, 2010

Post Wintel

MUNICH, GERMANY - OCTOBER 07:  Chief Executive...Image by Getty Images via @daylife
The Economist: The End Of Wintel THEY were the Macbeths of information technology (IT): a wicked couple who seized power and abused it in bloody and avaricious ways. ...... the two firms’ supposed love of monopoly profits and dead rivals. ..... increasingly seen as yesterday’s tyrants. Rumours persist that a coup is brewing to oust Steve Ballmer ..... “Intel Architecture”, the set of rules governing how software interacts with the processor it runs on. ..... the Wintel marriage is crumbling. ...... The Wintel marriage is now threatened, oddly enough, by technological progress. Processors grow ever smaller and more powerful; internet and wireless connections keep speeding up. This has created both centripetal and centrifugal forces, which are pushing computing into data centres (huge warehouses full of servers) and onto mobile devices— ...... The shift to mobile computing and data centres (also known as “cloud computing”) has speeded up the “verticalisation” of the IT industry. ...... now firms are becoming more vertically integrated. ...... Apple .. is building a huge data centre ....... Having lost its battle with the European Commission, for instance, Microsoft must now give Windows users in the European Union a choice of which web browser to install. ...... Microsoft has made big bets on cloud computing. It has already built a global network of data centres and developed an operating system in the cloud called Azure. The firm has put many of its own applications online, even Office, albeit with few features. What is more, Microsoft has made peace with the antitrust authorities and even largely embraced open standards. ....... Microsoft’s mobile business is in disarray. ...... in tablet computers, Microsoft is behind, too ..... Paul Otellini .. is pinning his hopes on a new family of processors called Atom. Rather than making these chips ever more powerful, Intel is making them ever cheaper and less power-hungry ....... ARM’s chips guzzle little power and cost much less than Intel’s, because its licensing fees are low and most customers use foundries (contract chipmakers) to make them. .... Intel’s position seems safe as long as Moore’s Law holds ..... Microsoft has yet to deliver a competitive version of Windows for smart-phones and tablets ..... Meego, an open-source operating system for mobile devices. Microsoft, by cuddling up to ARM, will be able to build chips of its own. ..... Oracle, Cisco and IBM will vie for corporate customers; Apple and Google will scramble for individuals (see table). IT, like the world, is becoming multipolar.

Like Bill Gates once said, success is a lousy teacher. But that does not explain it fully, or even a big part of it. This is about the tectonic forces in innovation, in technology. This is ultimately about hurricane size clouds.

The big company of one era does not end up also being the big company of another era. That is the nature of the beast.

Wintel was a PC era marriage. And the PC era has been ending for a while now. You end up facing a classic problem. How do you lose your love for the big revenue sources and go for the little innovative products that might (or might not) become big tomorrow, but if they become big, they will become big by eating into your current big products? No wonder it is almost always some outsider doing that munching and crunching.

As IT fans out into ever larger data centers and ever more powerful mobile devices, we have entered the era of welcome fragmentation. The PC used to be the center of the computing universe. The PC will still be around, but it will be just one creature in the vast tech ecosystem. It will be just one galaxy in the tech universe.

Like is supposed to happen in functional capitalism: the consumer wins.

The Economist
  1. World economy: The rising power of the Chinese worker
  2. Bullfighting in Catalonia: The land of the ban
  3. Turkey and its rebel Kurds: An endless war
  4. Wealth, poverty and compassion: The rich are different from you and me
  5. Climate change: Warming world
  6. Lexington: Arizona, rogue state
  7. Afghanistan: Don't go back
  8. China and the death penalty: High executioners
  9. Unemployment benefits: Read this shirt
  10. America, Afghanistan and Pakistan: Kayani's gambit
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Social, Gaming, Email

Nielsen Wire: What Americans Do Online: Social Media And Games Dominate Activity Americans spend nearly a quarter of their time online on social networking sites and blogs, up from 15.8 percent just a year ago (43 percent increase) ... Americans spend a third their online time (36 percent) communicating and networking across social networks, blogs, personal email and instant messaging. ..... “Despite the almost unlimited nature of what you can do on the web, 40 percent of U.S. online time is spent on just three activities – social networking, playing games and emailing .... Online games overtook personal email to become the second most heavily used activity behind social networks
I like how blogs have been included in the top category of social. I am not surprised. That speaks to my experience. I have said time and again at this blog that Blogger continues to be my social media platform of choice.

The big news is search is no longer king. That begs the question, will social as we know it still be king in 2015? I doubt that. These titles are not known to last. There is always another hit movie. Social will stay big, but at some point it is going to recede into the background like search. Search used to be king. Who is the next king? You have to ask. (This Is Not Happening: King Dennis)

Or maybe search was never king, it was email. Email is social. If the next king will also be in the social space, that has to confirm our suspicions that the internet is primarily a communication tool. The internet is one big telephone. The internet is one big telephone more than one big library. But the trick is to be able to blur that line and claim it is one big telephone.

November 2005: Email, Search, News

Google keeps trying and keeps failing at social. Social is not in Google's DNA. But info is. Where Google could really shine is at social search. Give me a ridiculously good blog search engine. Give me ridiculously good Twitter search results. Google could do well in social, if it brought search to the table. Google's challenge is to blur the line between the telephone and the library and make claim the internet is one big library. That is tough to do.


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Saturday, July 31, 2010

YouTube: 15 Minutes Are Much Better

YouTubeImage via Wikipedia
Five minutes were too short. My video sharing platform of choice was Google Video where I have uploaded tons of hour long videos. Then Google went ahead and bought YouTube and basically shut down Google Video. I don't think I have uploaded any new videos online since then.

But now I might take a second look. Five minutes felt like just enough time for teaser videos. 15 minutes are much better. 15 minutes might actually be better than 60 minutes.

Video-sharing website YouTube increases video upload limit to 15 minutes
YouTube now supports 15 minutes of fame San Francisco Chronicle
YouTube Gives Users 15 Minutes of Upload Time Tehran Times
YouTube wants your 15 minutes of fame CNN
YouTube Gives Users Their 15 Minutes of Fame New York Times (blog) As of Thursday, you can subject your friends and family to 50 percent more of your baby making that cute cooing noise or your dog doing that funny dance..... is increasing the limit to 15 minutes — the improvement requested most often by YouTube users ..... in June, a federal judge threw out Viacom’s $1 billion copyright infringement suit against YouTube, ruling that the site was not responsible for the behavior of its users.
YouTube bumps video limit to 15 minutes CNET (blog)

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Friday, July 30, 2010

Digital Dumbo 18: The Dumbo Loft

Image of Reshma Saujani from Facebook

I was at Digital Dumbo last night. It is a go to event. Yesterday was special. They had a job fair. There was a large crowd. Beer was free. Water you had to get from the vending machine for 50 cents, which I did.

I so love this venue. I wish they had the event the same place every month. The Dumbo Loft is a great space.

I was wearing a Reshma 2010 shirt (Phone Calls, Dress Code) - Reshma For Congress - and that attracted a few political types, including a Clinton 92 veteran who now lives on the Upper East Side. He had not heard of her yet.

"How many people are running?" he asked.

"Two. Her and Maloney."

"Then you are winning," he said.

You just started a small fire on the Upper East Side, he added. I guess he is now a strong supporter. Maloney declared she was going to run for the US Senate, he said. That's right when she loses this race. She said she was too good to keep representing the people in this district.

Nobody I met had heard of Reshma before.

But I also talked plenty of tech, and blogging, and jobs. Made some new contacts.

"Great event," I said to Kaitlin, (@kaitvillanova) the key organizer. I believe Andrew Zarick is currently in Spain. The first time I was at the Dumbo Loft, I was like, this is such a healthy male female ration for a tech event. This time too there were a lot of women there. I guess Kaitlin might be responsible.

If you can go to only two tech events each month, those would be the NY Tech MeetUp and Digital Dumbo.

I also have to give a shoutout to DigitalFlashNYC. NY Tech MeetUp is 10 bucks, Digital Dumbo is free with free beer on top of that. DigitalFlashNYC is also paid. Sara and Laura run DigitalFlashNYC, got to meet them again last night. I went to their Popular Science event a while back and it was just great. The talk was great. I met some great people including one potential business partner I had been trying to track other ways, and he just showed up there on his own. I met another dude who seriously considered investing in a venture of mine. You pay for a DigitalFlashNYC event but the drinks are free.

How Many Bottles of Beer Does it Take to Host An Event
Social media firms looking to hire
Crain's New York: Social media-focused ad firms look to hire
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Thursday, July 29, 2010

Disney's Playdom Purchase

The current logo of Disney Channel.Image via Wikipedia
Disney just expanded in the entertainment space: it went ahead and bought Zynga competitor Playdom. This for some reason reminds me of Yahoo's attempt to buy FourSquare months back, although the parallels end fast. Yahoo is a scatterbrained company, it occupies all sorts of spaces. Disney is more focused on entertainment. And Yahoo did not go ahead and buy a FourSquare competitor instead. I think it was for a lack of a capacity to digest.

An Offer To FourSquare

This purchase is of interest to me because I just blogged about Zynga a few days back: Zynga: The Google Of Games?

I have a feeling Mark Pincus' profile at the New York Times a few days back where he says in no uncertain terms that social gaming is a big, new, fundamental space online might have hastened efforts on Disney's part to make this move.

Is this like Google buying Android? Or is this more like one of those Barry Diller purchases? Time will tell. This might be somewhere in between.





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Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Zoho

Image representing Zoho as depicted in CrunchBaseImage via CrunchBase


Zoho is an upstart, but it is an upstart with major advantages. How about a laser focus and a great slew of products? And I admire their decision to not sell out to Salesforce.com.

What is holding it back is its not wanting to take venture capital money, and have no obvious ambitions to go IPO at some point. Those are mistakes. You can stay small and private and cozy and beautiful, or you can go big. I think Zoho should aim to go big. Zoho has to have IPO ambitions.

Microsoft is a giant but its major revenue sources are so foreign to what Zoho does that you could argue Microsoft is almost in a different industry altogether. Google is more in the cloud, but search is that company's strength and weakness. It is a good thing Zoho products integrate seamlessly with Google office apps. That way you get the advantages of Google being big and Zoho being nimble and superior.

Zoho's competition is not with Microsoft or even Google, but itself. It has to have IPO ambitions. That lack of ambition was not something given to it by either Google or Microsoft but itself.

Wall Street Journal: Blogs: Digits: QandA: Upstart Takes on Google, Microsoft in the Cloud
Competing against industry giants can be a brutal ordeal. Just ask RC Cola, which took on Coke and Pepsi. ..... For Zoho, a small company that competes with Google and Microsoft in the market for Web-based software, the strategy for surviving alongside huge rivals has been to target gaps in their products. Zoho now offers nearly 30 free and fee-based tools in the cloud: from wikis, word processing and spreadsheets to customer-relationship management, invoicing, and project management. ..... Zoho’s 3 million registered users ..... A small percentage pay subscription fees, enabling Zoho to quietly build a profitable niche, without PR or advertising. ...... founded in 1996 ..... headquarters in Chennai, India, and Pleasanton, Calif., now has 1,100 employees, nearly 1,000 of whom work in India...... has long refused to take venture capital funding and has rejected numerous acquisition offers. ...... founder and CEO, Sridhar Vembu ..... Google’s product suite is limited to Mail & Office suite, while Zoho has a much broader product suite targeted at small and mid-sized businesses. We integrate well with everyone, including with Google Apps. ....... Microsoft has formidable technology resources, but faces the economic challenge of transitioning their business model to the cloud ....... earn the trust of consumers through actual daily execution, not just talk ..... why we focus on small and mid-sized companies first, because they tend to have fewer inhibitions about trying something new. ....... we have stated a preference to be independent and private, so that we can keep our vibrant engineering and customer-support focused culture. We tend not to spend a lot of money in sales and marketing. This allows us to invest in engineering, and come up with interesting new products. ....... Google’s philosophy is to offer a minimalist interface, while Zoho provides a much richer suite in terms of depth of functionality, breadth of applications and richness of the interface. We believe business users want and need a lot more than what Google offers. At the same time, recognizing the immense reach Google has, Zoho has chosen to partner with them, so that customers can mix and match Google Apps with various apps from Zoho. ..... Over the next three years, you will see cloud offerings really mature in terms of features and functions, and become feature rich, overtaking desktop offerings in many areas. As feature parity is reached, market adoption will explode. Just as mobile phones overtook wired phones in terms of features, functions and of course usage over the past 10 years, cloud software will overtake installed software over the next 10. The reason in both cases is the sheer speed of technology evolution. .....Financial investors necessarily need exit or liquidity, while our focus is to stay in business for the long haul. We prefer to sacrifice near-term growth in favor of keeping our company healthy and vibrant for the long term, which is not something an exit-focused investor would like to see.

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News: July 27

Zoho's Raju VegesnaImage by Thomas Hawk via Flickr
Digits

Q&A: WikiLeaks and the Future of Whistleblowing
Smartphone Help for Typhoon Alerts
Going for Cheap: India's $35 Computer
Hong Kong Goes 'Crazy' as iPad Launches
AT&T on Its Network, iPad Usage and the End of Unlimited Data
Baidu Advances on China Mobile Search
Digits Live Show: Welcome to the Age of WikiLeaks
Q&A: Upstart Takes on Google, Microsoft in the Cloud
App Watch: A Photo Tour of Your Favorite Foods
New TV Tech Could Be Boon for Venture-Backed Chip Companies
If You Tweet, Japan Will Come
Tech Tweets of the Week: Facebook, Flipboard and Phones
Ten Things We Learned From Tech Earnings Season

Bits

What We’re Reading: Technology Obsession
Meet Google’s Space Commander
Ask.com Reverts to Its Q.& A. Origins
Citi Discovers Security Flaw in iPhone Application
Bringing Data Mining Into the Mainstream
What’s for Sale on the Bug Market?
Part I: Answers to Questions About Internet Privacy
What We’re Reading: Femme Fatales
Dell’s Trouble Kicking the Intel Habit
What’s Behind the White iPhone 4 Delays?
Microsoft Grabs Hold of ARM
Diane Sawyer Interviews Mark Zuckerberg
What We’re Reading: Flipboard
Apple’s Web Browser Allows Sites to Collect Personal Information

TechCrunch

Apple’s Magic Trackpad Signals The End Of The Mouse Era
Not Only Is Google Places Going After Yelp, They're Doing So With Yelp's Content
Apple's Innovative New... Battery Charger?
37signals Buys Campfire iPhone App Ember
Dude-Centric Video Network Break Media Moves Into 3D Programming
Stieg Larsson Is The First Author To Reach One Million Books Sold On The Amazon Kindle Store
Yahoo: comScore Underreported Our U.S. Page Views By 1 Billion Last June
Apple On The Defensive: Jailbreaking Your iPhone May Be legal But It’ll Still Void Your Warranty
Apple Outs A 27-inch, 16:9 Cinema Display
Voilà! Apple’s Magic Trackpad Appears. Multi-Touch On Any Mac For $69
LearnVest Launches Financial Bootcamp Programs To Keep Women Fiscally Fit
Yahoo Japan To Use Google Search (And Not Bing) In The Future
Seesmic Web Adds Desktop App-Like Abilities, Facebook And LinkedIn Support
Listiki Offers A Smart Way Of Gathering Opinion Through Crowdsourced Lists
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