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

Scala, Ruby On Rails

The Scala Programming Language 
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Digital Signage | Scala 
Scala - Wikipedia 
Scala Blog 
Scala Forum 

May 2010: One Programming Language 
October 2010: Al Wenger Wants To Learn Scala 

Web Ruby on Rails Ruby on Rails: Download Ruby on Rails Guides Ruby on Rails - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Ruby on Rails Documentation Top 12 Ruby on Rails Tutorials Ruby on rails: up and running - Google Books Result Ruby on Rails Tutorials - Tutorialized Dribbble: Dan Cederholm and Rich Thornett | the Ruby on Rails Podcast rails's rails at master - GitHub Ruby on Rails Tutorial Tutorial Ruby on Rails Guides: Getting Started with Rails Ruby on Rails Tutorial: Learn Rails by Example | by Michael Hartl Ruby on Rails: the Ultimate Beginner's Tutorial Ruby on Rails programming tutorials2 - Meshplex Ruby on Rails Tutorial

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America And India: Parallels

Image via WikipediaIn India they had Anna Hazare. Well, they still have him. America has had the Occupy movement. Similar stuff. In India they are going after sites like - guess - Facebook and Google. First it was for disrespecting Sonia Gandhi. Now they are saying it is about porn and hate speech. In America you have SOPA.

The oldest and the largest democracies have more than one thing in common. My favorite would be Hollywood and Bollywood.

Related articles

• 'Objectionable' Content on Facebook, Google: Is India's Ban Plan Political? [SLIDESHOW] (ibtimes.com)
• The lessons to be learned from India's unsung protests (discussn.wordpress.com)
• Gandhi and Hazare (prophet666.com)
• Prohibition: India's and America's shared lessons in fight against alcohol (csmonitor.com)
• Major websites face prosecution in India (mysanantonio.com)
• Major websites face prosecution in India (seattlepi.com)
• Google, Facebook face charges over content in India (ctv.ca)
• Anna Hazare: A victory of social media (techmediapolitics.wordpress.com)

Of Free Speech And Arranged Marriages

Image via WikipediaTimes Of India: Government nod to prosecute Google, Facebook, Yahoo
Wall Street Journal: Google, Facebook Fight Indian Censorship Demands

The place I showed up in America was Kentucky, of all places. At that point I could not have told you the cultural differences between Kentucky and California. Within a year I was up to speed. Experiencing racist demonization can do that to you.

In Kentucky I found massive consternation about the idea of arranged marriages. There were people who thought it was flat out wrong. There were those who accepted it as a cultural difference. The idea made me uncomfortable even before I came to America, but it did not take me long to realize marriages in America are not that not arranged either. Like Time magazine once said, you might fall in love with the stranger you spotted across the room, but it is society that decides what room you were in. That part was fixed. It was arranged. Only a narrow band of people cross the racial, cultural lines in matters of romance. That is not in the individual domain, that is in the collective domain.

That is not a defense of arranged marriages. I hope the practice fades away over time. More and more people pick their own mates. And I hope interracial marriages end up the norm not the exception in America.

And so you have this free speech debate in India. Like Fred Wilson would say, I am a free speech bigot. Some people in power in India are saying free speech is okay as long as you don't disrespect Sonia Gandhi. I don't buy that. But I do happen to respect Sonia Gandhi.

Plenty Still Broken In The World

Image via WikipediaPaul Graham has a new blog post out. The guy has a beautiful writing style. And he tackles the most amazing topics.

Paul Graham: Schlep Blindness

Schlep was originally a Yiddish word but has passed into general use in the US. It means a tedious, unpleasant task. ....... Most hackers who start startups wish they could do it by just writing some clever software, putting it on a server somewhere, and watching the money roll in—without ever having to talk to users, or negotiate with other companies, or deal with other people's broken code. Maybe that's possible, but I haven't seen it. ...... schleps are not merely inevitable, but pretty much what business consists of. A company is defined by the schleps it will undertake. And schleps should be dealt with the same way you'd deal with a cold swimming pool: just jump in. ....... The most dangerous thing about our dislike of schleps is that much of it is unconscious. Your unconscious won't even let you see ideas that involve painful schleps. That's schlep blindness. ....... For over a decade, every hacker who'd ever had to process payments online knew how painful the experience was. .... Because schlep blindness prevented people from even considering the idea of fixing payments. ....... Though the idea of fixing payments was right there in plain sight, they never saw it, because their unconscious mind shrank from the complications involved. You'd have to make deals with banks. How do you do that? ...... That scariness makes ambitious ideas doubly valuable. In addition to their intrinsic value, they're like undervalued stocks in the sense that there's less demand for them among founders. If you pick an ambitious idea, you'll have less competition, because everyone else will have been frightened off by the challenges involved. (This is also true of starting a startup generally.) ...... there's plenty still broken in the world, if you know how to see it.

I have said a few times being an entrepreneur is like being gay. I have a suspicion people are born or not born an entrepreneur, because there are so few of them. And by some estimates 1% of the population is born gay. I think that is also the share of entrepreneurs in the broader population.

In this blog post Paul Graham establishes the 1% within that 1%. Most entrepreneurs stay away from the big ideas, the big problems that need to be tackled.

I read the blog post twice.

Google? Pirate?

So Barack Obama thinks SOPA is not worth the paper it is printed on, and Rupert Murdoch, @therealshitmydadsays, thinks Google is a pirate.

That's interesting thinking. Obviously Murdoch wants his newspapers to be online but behind paywalls and not accessible through search engines. If you are paying, you obviously know the name and the domain name. Show up and read. You found me when you paid for the subscription.

I don't know where to begin. I mean, a search engine is a good thing, right? Or am I missing something here? Do we want to go back to the good old days of the Yahoo directory?

Murdoch seems to think the internet was designed to save him the costs on paper. ("Why can't you just read the paper on your computer?") Everything else should remain the same.