Friday, August 27, 2010

Paying For Phone Calls Was Always Ridiculous

This is icon for social networking website. Th...Image via Wikipedia
David Pogue: New York Times: Google Shakes It Up Again With Free Phone Calls: Google .. shook up Web searching and advertising. It shook up free, Web-based e-mail services .... shook up the way companies go public. .... Calls to American and Canadian phone numbers are free ..... Calls to other countries are very cheap ...... If you have a free Google Voice account too, then you can get incoming calls, too. ..... it’s increasingly clear that one day, the Internet, not the outrageous cellphone companies, will connect our calls. The ultimate, of course, would be free calls from a phone, to a phone ...... even closer to the “free calls from a phone, to a phone” ideal. Now it’s free calls “from a computer, to a phone.” .... What if Google released an app like that for Android phones, or the iPhone? .... for the first time in history, make unlimited free phone-to-phone calls.... It would completely change the game .... the Internet-as-phone-company paradise that almost certainly awaits us.
Paying for phone calls was always ridiculous. And it still is. Now that we have computer to phone free calls, Google should go ahead and stop pretending, and I know it already has the technology. Get this ported to the smartphones, and we already have it.

The reason you should not call someone or not talk to them long is because you don't have time, not because you don't have money.

Google Voice Blog: Make And Receive Calls In Gmail

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Sunday, August 22, 2010

I Was In Chicago? Facebook Places Messing Up


I wanted to set the record straight. I have not been in Chicago this past day. I have been happily camped out in New York City. Although there is a check in on my behalf that shows I was in Chicago. I think I just got my personal introduction to Facebook places.

Dennis Crowley, Facebook, And The Location Ecosystem
Facebook Doing Location Is Like Google Doing Social, Almost
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Dennis Crowley, Facebook, And The Location Ecosystem

Image representing Dennis Crowley as depicted ...Image via CrunchBase
TechCrunch: Foursquare’s Crowley: The Giants Are “Generic,” We Are Fun. I Wonder Who He’s Referring To…: Crowley discussed the opportunity for places, outlined his plan for the next iteration of Foursquare and knocked Google for its social awkwardness. .... Crowley’s painting the picture of Facebook as a generic-borderline-boring service, versus Foursquare, the hip, edgy, playful alternative .... Facebook is so huge (500 million large versus Foursquare’s 2.8 million) that its check-in service has to be simple and minimal to accommodate such a huge and diverse group— anything too quirky or outlandish runs the risk of alienating factions. While Foursquare cannot dream to compete with Facebook’s installed base, the startup can certainly differentiate itself by offering a creative, more dynamic product that is less utilitarian and more personality-driven ...... he does believe that Facebook has a major role to play in the location ecosystem. Facebook can aggregate check-ins from different services and introduce new users (millions upon millions of them) to the world of check-ins. Thus, if Facebook stays in its corner, the relationship could be a very symbiotic one for Foursquare, which saw a record number of sign-ups on Thursday. ...... when it comes to creating the most engaging, valuable location experience, Crowley is ready for a fight. ..... We’ve been thinking for awhile, what’s act two for us? And act two is OK let’s take all this information about what people are doing, what people want to do, and let’s build this back into the app in a way that’s manageable for people and easy to share.” ..... Our social graph is more representative of the people that you meet in the real world ..... Facebook is literally everyone I’ve ever shaken hands with at a conference or kissed on the cheek at Easter. Twitter seems to be everyone I am entertained by or I wish to meet some day. Foursquare seems to be everyone I run into on a regular basis.



Not surprisingly, Dennis Crowley is on the spot on Facebook's entry into his space. He is not threatened. He should not be. Instead he seems all set to ride the Facebook wave.

Facebook Doing Location Is Like Google Doing Social, Almost
This Is Not Happening: King Dennis

I might be one of the first to talk publicly in terms of a FourSquare IPO. I am a fan of the company. When FourSquare goes IPO in a few years, New York City will have finally arrived on the tech scene. You don't get credit for other forms of exits, not in my book, not for a city this big and glamorous.

If search is the starting point of your big screen web experience, and I love Google like some people love Apple, then Google is your company. For many people social is that experience.

The thing is FourSquare is not a big screen web company. Location is such an obvious starting point when you are out and about that the simple nugget is a genius idea. I almost feel stupid saying that. Because, I mean, what is so revolutionary about location? There have been places since times immemorial. There are so many places mentioned in the Bible, for example. Jesus was checking in.

You could argue there is only re-invention, there is no invention. Einstein was not the first to ponder about time, but it is like he added a whole new dimension to the world of physics. Suddenly we started thinking about time just like we had been thinking about space.

(Sweet disclaimer: I have never thought of Dennis (@dens) and Naveen (@naveen) as Einsteins. They are both smart guys, but genius is a whole different ballgame.)

Dennis is a born entrepreneur. How do you know that? You just have to look at his hair. The same applies to his Michael Jackson co-founder.

How My Grandfather Became Mayor The First Time


In The News

New York Times: Roommates Who Click:theirs was a match made on URoomSurf.com, a Web site that does for dormitory life what eHarmony and Match.com have long done for romance .... “My sister woke up her first night of college and drunk people were poking her, asking where her roommate was.... “The ones who choose their own roommate tend to stay together

BBC: Swedish Rape Warrant For Wikileaks' Assange Cancelled: Mr Assange, said the appearance of the allegations "at this moment is deeply disturbing"..... The current whereabouts of Mr Assange, a 39-year-old Australian, are unclear.... there were two separate allegations against Mr Assange, one of rape and the other of molestation

New York Times: Facebook Feels Unfriendly Toward Film It Inspired: the filmmakers, who portray Facebook as founded on a series of betrayals, then fueled by the unappeasable craving of almost everyone for “friends” — the Facebook term for those who connect on its online pages — that they will never really have..... “It’s crazy because all of a sudden Mark becomes this person who created Facebook to get girls or to gain power,” said Chris Hughes, a Facebook co-founder who left in 2007 to join the Obama presidential campaign. “That’s not what was going on. It was a little more boring and quotidian than that.” .... “it’s a sign of Facebook’s impact that we’re the subject of a movie — even one that’s fiction.” .... Ben Mezrich’s book, “The Accidental Billionaires,” and on the legal protection provided to free speech .... “The Social Network” appears to be mostly about emptiness.... much of the film, including many of the details of Mr. Zuckerberg’s personal life, are made up and “horrifically unfair.”

TechCrunch: Facebook Kept Thousands Of Check-Ins On Lockdown For Months. Impressive
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Saturday, August 21, 2010

Esther Dyson On The Future Of Search

Esther's been a member of our board for some t...Image via WikipediaProject Syndicate: Esther Dyson: The Future Of Internet Search
You don't get what you actually want to finish your task; you get a list of pages that might lead you to it. ..... search is getting interesting again. ..... Larry Page’s innovative ranking of Web pages not just by their content, but also by the quantity and quality of other pages that link to them ...... To “map” travel properly, the software needs to understand such things as time zones, flight duration, layovers, and the like, along with concepts such as coach or first class, deluxe and standard rooms, double vs. single, and so on. That is why there is a whole separate vertical market for travel ..... For a long time Google didn’t need to do much to remain the leader in Internet search ..... Medstory has a deep understanding of health care, including the relationships between diseases and treatments, drugs and symptoms, and side effects. Powerset, a tool for creating and defining such relationships in any sphere of interest, is broader but less deep. ..... around that time, Bill Gates uttered one of the smartest things he has ever said: “The future of search is verbs.” ..... They want to book a flight, reserve a table, buy a product, cure a hangover, take a class, fix a leak, resolve an argument, or occasionally find a person ..... Most resellers, a little nervous about Bing’s tool that sends users to book directly with airlines and hotels, are even more concerned about what Google might be up to. ..... last month, Google acquired Metaweb and its user-generated database Freebase. .....Most things don’t exist in isolation. They have complex relationships to other things, and by representing that information using verbs – for example, “the company that Google acquired” vs. “the company that Google competes with” – we can represent the world more accurately.
Here is Esther Dyson getting excited about Google's recent acquisition of Metaweb. Esther is the most famous person I have had the chance to meet at the NY Tech MeetUp. I find her tremendously exciting as a person. She is one of those visionary types. And she is such a simple, approachable person.

Google's Metaweb Acquisition
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Wednesday, August 18, 2010

The Web Not Yet Ready For The Video Format

LAS VEGAS - JANUARY 07:  An image of football ...Image by Getty Images via @daylife
Los Angeles Times: Google TV Plan Is Causing Jitters In Hollywood: Many worry that Silicon Valley will upend the entertainment industry just like the Internet ravaged the music and newspaper industries. .... Google revolutionized the way people access information. Now it wants to transform how people get entertainment. .... enabling viewers to watch TV shows and movies unshackled from the broadcast networks or cable channels on which they air ....entertainment industry executives fear Google TV will encourage consumers to ditch their $70 monthly cable and satellite subscriptions in favor of watching video free via the Internet. ... Google doesn't yet know how it will make money on Google TV ....for the movie studios and television networks to use the limitless storage capacity of the Web to make their libraries of programs available whenever someone wants to watch .... Google touted the software as presenting a new opportunity to make more money from TV shows distributed online.... In demonstrations with network executives, Google TV confused one network's shows for a rival's. On another occasion, it listed the several ways a popular prime-time show could be watched online and on TV — except on the network's own website.

It's not just business models that seem to be struggling. The very first bottleneck is speed. Even with broadband it takes several seconds to load a static webpage. That is too slow. We need speeds that are 100X, perhaps 1000X.

There has been immense downward pressure on the prices of hardware and software. Software has become free for the most part. Hardware prices have come down drastically. But the ISP busines is so archaic, there the prices have been sticky. Capitalism is dysfunctional in the ISP business. Speeds don't go up, prices stay where they are. That is some major dysfunction.

I urge my president to please look into this.

Hulu Still Struggling With Business Model
Saavn's Great Business Model For Movies

In The News

1Up: Google Shows The Future Of Browser Games
TechCrunch: Chrome Web Store Slated For October Launch, Google Taking A Mere 5% Cut Of Revenue:developers now have a strong incentive to develop and promote the web versions of their applications over their native counterparts
TechCrunch: Confirmed: Facebook Rolling Out A New Slimmer, Sexier Like Button


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