Thursday, December 30, 2010
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Business, Power & Democracy - Why Investors Should Welcome Wikileaks
People who spend a lot of time thinking about business often find themselves thinking about two important very unrelated subjects: psychology and economics. At a macro level, over long periods of time, I believe that markets are largely rational and that the principles of free markets drive the best results and growth. But that's over the long run. In the short run, markets can be irrational and results truly bizarre if not actually counterproductive. And, unfortunately, the short-run can last for distressingly long period of time.
Overall, the life span of most companies is amazingly short. Brand names like AT&T may endure, but the AT&T of today has little in common with the AT&T on 10, 20 or 30 years ago. Companies are more likely to collapse or be acquired than manage change effectively.
Democracies, by contrast, seem to endure for a very very long time. There are lots of reasons for this that don't bear upon how business should be conducted, but there may be some very salient ideas. Indeed, the major industrial democracies have track records that far exceed that of any company - they deliver growth and stability through periods of enormous change. Governments that are not democracies, by contrast, don't seem to last nearly as long.
So why are dictatorships and corporations more likely to collapse while democracies tend to reform? Because power corrupts and democracies have the most effective methods for controlling and limiting the corruption that result from abusing power.
First, let's deal with power corrupting people. It's long been suspected but increasingly psychology and experimentation have proven that the corrupting impact of power is immediate, universal, and almost impossible to resist. In ways both big and small, people in power seem unable to control or contain themselves. Once a person gets power, they almost instantly become more selfish, lie more, and believe that their abuses of power are worth forgiving while transgressions by the weak are not. The idea that power corrupts used to be a clever cliché, now it's proven fact.
So, let's assume power corrupts people in ways big and small. That means Presidents, of companies and countries, are, from the day the become powerful, on a painful, slow slide to irrelevance brought on by their own corruption. The more powerful you get, the more corrupt you get. Corruption really just means helping yourself to whatever you want in a way that gives you unfair advantage over other people.
And corruption inevitably leads to impaired judgement. When people don't disagree with you, when everyone likes your ideas, when you always get a raise even when other aren't - you lose track of what works and what doesn't. And once your judgement is impaired, it's only a matter of time before you take your whole organization or country down with you.
People who acquire power in democracies get corrupted as well. But with a difference: they get held accountable. Not quickly, not perfectly, and not always, but frequently enough to make a difference. The balance of power between legislative, executive and judicial branches as well as the strength of a free press all combine to restrain and limit abuses of power and prevent those in power from changing the rules to suit themselves once in power. Data dumps like Wikileaks, messy though they are, help drive accountability when they get plugged into a free press and an independent judiciary.
All that accountability is very inefficient in many ways. It makes democracy slower than dictatorship and it has a high overhead cost. But it works very well over the long run and it responds extremely well to big, existential challenges like wars (the real kind, not the pricing kind).
Governments in modern democracies have already applied quite a few of these ideas to companies. They demand ever increasing levels of disclosure from corporations. And all that disclosure has, in fact, improved corporate governance substantially and brought ever more investors into the market. Beyond that, the bigger the company, the more they could probably benefit from increased levels of transparency and accountability.
Investors could demand it, but boards are usually too timid and insider-ish to provide it. Instead, governments will need to force more and more disclosure. But they are slow too. So count on technology to deliver it instead. Imagine the impact it would have if the expense reports of every top GM executive suddenly were released online. Investors might demand to see more results and less waste. What if the internal memos of Chrysler executives were to be made public? The petty internal politics of positioning and budgets might suddenly look very very stupid and short-sighted in the cold light of day.
Some of these revelations might be very important, others quite trivial. People would say "yes, we pretty much knew this was already happening." But the the full revelation of the truth is quite different from a supposition. Facts made public are different fundamentally from guesses made in the dark, even if they are directionally the same. In short, it's difference between a whisper that a government is corrupt and a brutally honest diplomatic cable. And it's the difference between cocktail party gossip and Wikileaks.
Overall, the life span of most companies is amazingly short. Brand names like AT&T may endure, but the AT&T of today has little in common with the AT&T on 10, 20 or 30 years ago. Companies are more likely to collapse or be acquired than manage change effectively.
Democracies, by contrast, seem to endure for a very very long time. There are lots of reasons for this that don't bear upon how business should be conducted, but there may be some very salient ideas. Indeed, the major industrial democracies have track records that far exceed that of any company - they deliver growth and stability through periods of enormous change. Governments that are not democracies, by contrast, don't seem to last nearly as long.
So why are dictatorships and corporations more likely to collapse while democracies tend to reform? Because power corrupts and democracies have the most effective methods for controlling and limiting the corruption that result from abusing power.
First, let's deal with power corrupting people. It's long been suspected but increasingly psychology and experimentation have proven that the corrupting impact of power is immediate, universal, and almost impossible to resist. In ways both big and small, people in power seem unable to control or contain themselves. Once a person gets power, they almost instantly become more selfish, lie more, and believe that their abuses of power are worth forgiving while transgressions by the weak are not. The idea that power corrupts used to be a clever cliché, now it's proven fact.
So, let's assume power corrupts people in ways big and small. That means Presidents, of companies and countries, are, from the day the become powerful, on a painful, slow slide to irrelevance brought on by their own corruption. The more powerful you get, the more corrupt you get. Corruption really just means helping yourself to whatever you want in a way that gives you unfair advantage over other people.
And corruption inevitably leads to impaired judgement. When people don't disagree with you, when everyone likes your ideas, when you always get a raise even when other aren't - you lose track of what works and what doesn't. And once your judgement is impaired, it's only a matter of time before you take your whole organization or country down with you.
People who acquire power in democracies get corrupted as well. But with a difference: they get held accountable. Not quickly, not perfectly, and not always, but frequently enough to make a difference. The balance of power between legislative, executive and judicial branches as well as the strength of a free press all combine to restrain and limit abuses of power and prevent those in power from changing the rules to suit themselves once in power. Data dumps like Wikileaks, messy though they are, help drive accountability when they get plugged into a free press and an independent judiciary.
All that accountability is very inefficient in many ways. It makes democracy slower than dictatorship and it has a high overhead cost. But it works very well over the long run and it responds extremely well to big, existential challenges like wars (the real kind, not the pricing kind).
Governments in modern democracies have already applied quite a few of these ideas to companies. They demand ever increasing levels of disclosure from corporations. And all that disclosure has, in fact, improved corporate governance substantially and brought ever more investors into the market. Beyond that, the bigger the company, the more they could probably benefit from increased levels of transparency and accountability.
Investors could demand it, but boards are usually too timid and insider-ish to provide it. Instead, governments will need to force more and more disclosure. But they are slow too. So count on technology to deliver it instead. Imagine the impact it would have if the expense reports of every top GM executive suddenly were released online. Investors might demand to see more results and less waste. What if the internal memos of Chrysler executives were to be made public? The petty internal politics of positioning and budgets might suddenly look very very stupid and short-sighted in the cold light of day.
Some of these revelations might be very important, others quite trivial. People would say "yes, we pretty much knew this was already happening." But the the full revelation of the truth is quite different from a supposition. Facts made public are different fundamentally from guesses made in the dark, even if they are directionally the same. In short, it's difference between a whisper that a government is corrupt and a brutally honest diplomatic cable. And it's the difference between cocktail party gossip and Wikileaks.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Monday, December 20, 2010
Can Yahoo Be Fixed?
I think so. The company is going through terrible pain right now - downsizing hurts a lot in Silicon Valley - perhaps more than elsewhere. Engineers and creative people, while they can work well under pressure, don't like the extraordinary stress that comes with layoffs.
Yahoo is certainly in disarray, at least for the moment. That's what a layoff and reorganization does to people - it creates anxiety and stress and fear. Those who lose their jobs are devastated - and that seems true even when didn't necessarily like their jobs - and those who stay have survivor guilt. Either way, nothing productive gets done for a while.
But is Yahoo is some kind of permanent downward spiral? I'm not sure. The site search stats don't seem to point to an imminent tail spin (though this reflects just one of their business areas):
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| Site traffic data from Alexa.com |
But what should Yahoo do to right the ship? The network of companies across the valley provides a continuous stream of innovation for Yahoo to access. And they have been making some very good buying choices - but not doing a great job of post merger integration. As a result, all these amazing properties like Flickr and Delicious are not revitalizing Yahoo, despite a lot of love from their customers.
Since it's Monday morning, let me offer some Monday morning quarterback suggestions:
- Wield That Axe. As much as it sucks, killing products and slashing costs are essential to turn-arounds. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple, he axed many beloved products and made painful cuts.
- Standardized & Streamline Processes. From procurement to hiring, companies in turn-around situations need to free up money for big investments in growth and innovation. That means aggressive process management and cost control.
- Get focused on core businesses. The truth is, I don't really know what Yahoo's core business is, but they should find out.
- Spend big on innovation. Internal and external. Buy companies and build big, exciting projects. That's where the savings goes.
- Integrate. Yahoo is a web conglomerate. Work like one -make the different pieces of Yahoo feel like a real, integrated network, not just a collection of sites.
If I have a crticism of Carol Bartz, it's maybe that she is being too timid. Nobody who does this job is going to get any love.
Friday, December 17, 2010
The Endless Junk-Food Parade
I thought we were living in healthier times. Apparently not. The endless parade of Junk-Food seems to mark the holiday season at my kid's Montessori. Mashmellow covevered gingerbread house? Check. Cupcakes? Check. Cookies? Check.
Try putting a toddler to bed after that much sugar. Heck. Try keeping the toddler away from that much sugar. It's a recipe for tantrums now and then tantrums later. Notwithstanding Google's best efforts, I'm starting to really hate Gingerbread.
Try putting a toddler to bed after that much sugar. Heck. Try keeping the toddler away from that much sugar. It's a recipe for tantrums now and then tantrums later. Notwithstanding Google's best efforts, I'm starting to really hate Gingerbread.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Product Installation & Set-up, The Cisco Way
Silicon Valley is have a consumer products renaissance. Companies are actually making stuff that people want to buy - like Apple, HP, and Cisco. (A nice change from the time when it seemed like everyone would exit hardware). But sadly, the consumer experience is still not so great - especially when it's Cisco you're talking about.
I bought a new Cisco wireless camera to put in my kid's bedroom. I wanted to check if they were in bed and asleep instead of playing with toys without having to poke my head in the room. My mother was worried that now that both are no longer in cribs, we'd have potential fighting once the door closed. Turns out there's no fighting going on at all. In fact, they're as cute as can be with each other. If my youngest starts crying, the oldest goes over to check on him and sometimes gives him a hug and a kiss.
If only I could give that kind of love to Cisco, who nearly gave me an anuerysm trying to set up the camera. A short summary of the faults:
- Set-up software does not match the manual description
- Set-up software is available for Mac and PC, but only on CD
- Downloadable version only works on the PC
- Camera sound only seems to work if you used the "Thick client" on the PC side
- Web client shows video only, not sound
- Set-up software only available as Wizard. If you have any problems, you must start again from the beginning
I had to run through the software five times on two machines to get the camera working. Now that it's working, it's ok, but not exactly an Apple-class experience.
The whole experience reminds me that Cisco's consumer product strategy seems to have gone badly wrong. Linksys has failed really move beyond routers into audio and video in a successful way and Flip appears to have been purchased just before the entire video camera industry disappeared. And remember the iPhone naming dispute with Apple? Nope. Neither do I.
Cisco's consumer product strategy seems lost. What is the point of selling only commoditized routers and video cameras? How are they really contributing to the surge in video usage by consumers and shaping the demand for increased broadband?
Buying Skype or one of these new video calling apps would have a bigger impact. Or maybe Boxee or Roku. All of those would have a bigger impact, except that they impinge upon the strategic imperatives (closed systems, copyright extremism) of their customers (big cable and big telecom).
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| Cisco's Focus is on B2B, not B2C. Image from Cisco. |
Monday, December 13, 2010
No Cloudbooks for Wikileakers
The assault on Wikileaks and the recent focus on content protection has shown how hard it is to delete digital information once it's out there. The Internet, as a whole, seems more friendly to openness than keeping secrets.
That said, it seems unlikely that serious libertarians will embrace cloud services wholeheartedly just yet. The Google cloudbook sample - CR-48 - is making the rounds of technology journalists and bloggers. It's a neat piece of hardware and the network computer is an idea whose time is coming (again). - but if you're serious about disseminating other people's information or keeping your own private, it's probably not for you.
As COICA and ICE have shown in recent actions against alleged pirates, governments can cut off your Internet and your finding. Having your own PC and the ability to move across network connections and distribute content may be the safest way to keep the flow of information free and open.
Open source encryption (Truecrypt) can protect your data while the next generation of BitTorrent services will make any form of centralized shut-down even harder. Both are designed for use by individuals on their own hardware rather than in vulnerable cloud services. Having your own fully functional hardware gives users more control and that's something that some users are not going to want to give up.
That said, it seems unlikely that serious libertarians will embrace cloud services wholeheartedly just yet. The Google cloudbook sample - CR-48 - is making the rounds of technology journalists and bloggers. It's a neat piece of hardware and the network computer is an idea whose time is coming (again). - but if you're serious about disseminating other people's information or keeping your own private, it's probably not for you.
As COICA and ICE have shown in recent actions against alleged pirates, governments can cut off your Internet and your finding. Having your own PC and the ability to move across network connections and distribute content may be the safest way to keep the flow of information free and open.
Open source encryption (Truecrypt) can protect your data while the next generation of BitTorrent services will make any form of centralized shut-down even harder. Both are designed for use by individuals on their own hardware rather than in vulnerable cloud services. Having your own fully functional hardware gives users more control and that's something that some users are not going to want to give up.
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| Google's Cloudbook sample unit - CR-48. I'm guessing Julian Assange doesn't want one. (Photo Mike Saechang on Flickr CC) |
Friday, December 10, 2010
Android Phones Are The Biggest Bandwidth Hogs
The iPhone ushered in a new era of bandwidth consumption - so why, many people wonder, are Android phones actually bigger bandwidth users? Actually, they're pretty close to iPhone users, on average, but the reason Android may have an edge is the lack of restrictions that Android places on users.
To conserve battery and manage performance, the iPhone restricts your ability to muti-task, and with restrictions on multi-tasking come restrictions on the amount of data you can use. Take away those restrictions and...voila...more data consumed.
As the iPhone has gotten more powerful and Apple has relaxed restrictions on multi-tasking, we can expect to see virtually identical usage profiles across the two platforms.
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| Lots to do...(Picture Flickr CC) |
Wednesday, December 08, 2010
Danger! Mobile Feature Fatigue Ahead?
Are we running out of great new features with which to dazzle smart-phone buyers?
There's only problem: I just hated it. People said they could not hear me and the battery lasted typically no more than 3-4 hours before needing a charge. Power levels dropped by 10% every hour, calls dropped, and the screen was sluggish and unresponsive. At first I thought I got a dud unit, but after consulting with other users and Verizon, it seems that my experience is not ideal but also not exactly unique. The high processor speed and the addition of Bluetooth, WiFi and lots of unfettered multi-tasking is a killer.
Unable to find another phone I liked on Verizon, I started looking around and settled on either the Motorola Defy, the MyTouch 4G or the Nexus S. The Nexus is not yet available and, being American, I need gratification right now. I went to a T-Mobile dealer and tested out the MyTouch4G and the Defy and compared them side-by-side with the Droid 2 Global. My take-aways (in addition to a new Motorola Defy):
- Some level of sluggishness pervades the Android UI on all devices regardless of make, model, manufacturer or CPU speed. I couldn't really tell the difference in usability between the Defy (2.1) and the MyTouch or the Droid 2 - which have faster processors and a newer rev of Android.
- Battery life seems to be the killer app. Reviews and anecdotal testing suggest that some phones do much better than others with battery life despite very similar-seeming specifications.
- Android 2.2 doesn't seem to be noticeably better than 2.1. I found only one issue on the Defy which was the lack of a built-in tethering application, a problem I solved easily enough by rooting the phone and adding wireless tether.
So, after looking at three different phones with radically different prices and features, I selected the cheapest and least powerful one: The Motorola Defy. And after 18 hours with it, I think I'm going to like it. Though T-Mobile doesn't have great coverage in Woodside, it's decent and WiFi calling works nicely in my house.
I found the overall speed of the device comparable to the theoretically much faster Droid 2 Global and I love the ruggedized, water-resistant shell. That makes this phone just perfect for drops, kiddie drool, and bike rides in the rain. And if water-resistance and better battery life can help sell a under-powered phone with a down-rev OS version, what does that mean for the industry as a whole?
Smartphone buyers have been driving huge gains in the mobile and wireless business. They are still a minority of the overall market and so there's lots of raw volume growth left. But smartphone buyers have also been driving very high average selling prices and a very very frequent cycle of upgrades.
The iPhone is a good example: first it re-invented the category, then it re-invented the market for apps, and then it added multi-tasking and video-calling and re-invent mobile gaming. With each of these step changes, early adopters have jumped on board. But what next? Like laptops before them, we may have fewer step changes we can offer consumers to drive a rapid upgrade cycle.
There's still a lot coming on the horizon: LTE and multi-core processors to start with, and while both will drive the earliest adopters into an upgrade cycle, they offer little for ordinary consumers to get excited about. These new features will help enterprises deepen their use of mobile, offering secure virtual machines (announcement) and secure alternatives to giving employees 500GB hard drives.
For consumers, however, the real action is at the low end of the smart-phone market where bargain-priced smartphones that offer all the same major features as premium ones but with a bit less polish and oomph are going to drive explosive growth. LG, for example, missed out big time on the early Android gold rush but they seem to have a blockbuster hit on their hands at the lower end of the market.
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| Underpowered, Down-Rev, but still very good. Image CC Flickr. |
Tuesday, December 07, 2010
Who's Afraid of Stale Content?
Everyone, apparently. The movie industry is running scared of Netflix - even though the movie industry has done everything it can to cripple Netflix. How does that work?
First, let's be clear. Netflix's watch-now content is stale. In the movie industry, about 70-80% of all money is made on a movie in the first 30 days after it's release. That's true both for the box office and for movie rental. Netflix has to wait 28 days for physical DVDs and Blu-Ray and they have to wait up to another 90 days for most digital content, if they get it at all.
That's not the fault of Netflix: the movie studios have engineered the release windows to minimize the risk of channel conflict. First, you watch at the movies, then on a physical DVD or a premium rental, like iTunes for $5, and then lastly on assorted other media from RedBox to Netflix to non-pay-per-view cable. The result: all of Netflix's content is pretty stale the day it arrives.
I think the impact of stale content shows up in Netflix's business results: churn is high and usage is relatively low. Churn is much higher than for cable TV or even for premium cable movie channels. And usage is low - many people do try it out, but few seems to watch over and over again. Americans watch lots of TV. Lots and lots of it. But not too much Netflix. Even people who have Netflix watch-now are probably only watching 1-2 movies a week.
The actual rate of Netflix watch-now viewing is not publicly released, as far as I can tell. Netflix says that a high percentage of total subscribers are using the online service but they have never said what the average rate of usage is for this service - and I think there's a reason for that: it's probably quite low. I've tried to develop costs models and based on that work, it seems like usage is not more than 1-2 full movies a week at the high end and maybe as little as 1-2 movies a month at the low end for online users.
The gap between Netflix usage online and actual TV watching probably comes from several different areas:
First, let's be clear. Netflix's watch-now content is stale. In the movie industry, about 70-80% of all money is made on a movie in the first 30 days after it's release. That's true both for the box office and for movie rental. Netflix has to wait 28 days for physical DVDs and Blu-Ray and they have to wait up to another 90 days for most digital content, if they get it at all.
That's not the fault of Netflix: the movie studios have engineered the release windows to minimize the risk of channel conflict. First, you watch at the movies, then on a physical DVD or a premium rental, like iTunes for $5, and then lastly on assorted other media from RedBox to Netflix to non-pay-per-view cable. The result: all of Netflix's content is pretty stale the day it arrives.
I think the impact of stale content shows up in Netflix's business results: churn is high and usage is relatively low. Churn is much higher than for cable TV or even for premium cable movie channels. And usage is low - many people do try it out, but few seems to watch over and over again. Americans watch lots of TV. Lots and lots of it. But not too much Netflix. Even people who have Netflix watch-now are probably only watching 1-2 movies a week.
The actual rate of Netflix watch-now viewing is not publicly released, as far as I can tell. Netflix says that a high percentage of total subscribers are using the online service but they have never said what the average rate of usage is for this service - and I think there's a reason for that: it's probably quite low. I've tried to develop costs models and based on that work, it seems like usage is not more than 1-2 full movies a week at the high end and maybe as little as 1-2 movies a month at the low end for online users.
The gap between Netflix usage online and actual TV watching probably comes from several different areas:
- Fresh Content. Cable TV and Hulu have fresher content - especially for TV.
- Ease of Use. Netflix is ubiquitous but the UI leaves a lot to be desired compared to Hulu or iTunes.
- Live Content. Online services don't really offer live content like Football games which are still key for ratings in the world of regular TV.
Despite these problems, Netflix has Hollywood running scared. They run an enormously profitable business and they have the cash to throw around and buy content. Like old cable TV stations, one day they are buying re-runs, the next day they are commissioning original movies and series. Netflix has gotten good at offering up alternatives and managing queues - so at least some users don't notice that the content is stale - they have a large queue of movies and TV shows they're catching up on anyway.
If Hollywood is going to build real competition to Netflix and iTunes, it's going to have to do several things to create real competition. And the longer it waits, the less likely it is that even these strategies will work:
- License content more widely. Amazon and others want to offer subscriptions and rumor has it they will have the ability to do so soon. Good start.
- Improve Participant Economics. Apple has set a benchmark that provides 70% of content revenue to partners. That's great for partners, but it's actually a starvation diet for distributors. No problem if you're Apple - that's not how you make money. For other companies, however, making a profit on a 30% gross margin is quite tough to do when transaction sizes are so small. A $1 transaction can cost about $0.35 to process on PayPal. Even more than pricing and revenue share, studios should embrace more flexible business terms that will allow new providers to experiment with new types of packages.
- Enable Channel Competition. Right now, no matter what you pay, channel conflict is not really permitted - the sequencing of releases is established and unbendable. That's a shame because while nobody is likely to upset the theatre release process, more competition between secondary channels would ultimately be beneficial. With the right amount of money, there's no reason why an HBO can't emerge on the web without any cable infrastructure.
Right now, despite all their problems and shortcomings, Netflix and iTunes are tracking towards very dominant online positions. With just two online leaders, that won't leave a lot of choice and negotiating power in the hands of the major studios.
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| Hollywood, by Loop-Oh |
Monday, December 06, 2010
What's the difference between a Virgin MiFi and a Sprint MiFi?
Same device. Same network. Same company too. The difference: one of them comes with Sprint's pricing: $60/month for mobile broadband and a 5GB limit. The other comes with Virgin's much more generous prepaid plan of $40 per month and no cap at all.
The market says: The Virgin branded one is worth $150 on eBay and the Sprint one is worth about $50. The Sprint one does allow some roaming on Verizon where Sprint lacks coverage, but the market clearly thinks that's not worth much at all.
The market says: The Virgin branded one is worth $150 on eBay and the Sprint one is worth about $50. The Sprint one does allow some roaming on Verizon where Sprint lacks coverage, but the market clearly thinks that's not worth much at all.
Friday, December 03, 2010
Hey Blogger: Why Is A Screen Shot Automatically Rejected?
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| A Screen Shot of my PC file system has been rejected by |
Thursday, December 02, 2010
What's On My Mac?
I love tweaking and tuning my laptop for just the right performance. Here's my collection of favorite applications that get re-installed every time I buy a new Mac:
1. Adium
The instant message application for the Mac. Supports just about everything from Lotus Sametime to Facebook.
2. AppCleaner
Helps get rid of my mistakes. Good, but not perfect, for cleaning up the extra files that apps leave lying around.
3. BreakAway
Yank your headphone cable out of the Mac at the wrong time and you'll be blaring loud music to everyone on the plane or in the coffee shop. With this program, if you pull out the headphones, iTunes is paused.
4. Copernicus & Capture Me
Two excellent screen / window capture programs that enable you to take snapshots of applications and windows.
5. Evernote
I have Evernote on everything. It's my notepad now. Everything goes there.
6. InsomniaX
This application (must be used carefully) can prevent you MacBook from going to sleep when the lid is closed. Useful for downloading your e-mail when dashing between flights. You must be careful to avoid overheating the machine.
7. SoundSource
A nifty pull-down that lets you easily switch between speakers, headphones, and bluetooth headphones for your listening pleasure.
8. ReNicer
Nice and Re-Nice are Unix commands for changing process priorities. ReNicer puts a GUI on top of that and automatically prioritizes what you're working on in a Window over background processes. This improves the usability of the laptop when you're running lots of background applications.
9. Typinator
This program automatically expands simple text and fixes type-ohs in every program you use. Reviewed by Pogue in the New York Times, it's a huge productivity tool.
10. Proximity
This program is a bit tricky, but once I got it to work it's quite neat. It can activate or de-active the screen saver whenever your bluetooth equipped mobile phone comes in range. That means when you walk away from your PC, it can lock automatically, and it can unlock just as easily when you come back. The automation is nice, but setting it up was difficult. Not for the non-technical user.
11. Growl
An excellent, simple, and attractive tool for alerts, Growl displays updates to your programs like new mail or new instant messages discreetly in the upper right of the screen for a few seconds. It integrates across multiple programs too, making it easy to consolidate all those announcements.
12. EarthDesk
My favorite screen background, it shows various views of the earth, with or without clouds and current weather. A neat, living wallpaper that's always changing and endlessly fascinating.
13. KeyReamp4MacBook
A long-winded program title, but perfectly accurate. I don't want to totally remap my keyboard, but the one thing I cannot live without is the "forward delete" key - standard on PCs but not Macs. The delete key on a Mac does what the backspace key on a PC does, but there's no PC delete key. This makes it possible to remap one of the option keys to that function.
More elaborate remappings are possible too, but not ones I bother with.
14. TrueCrypt
TrueCrypt is the benchmark for encrypting files and keeping your personal information private. On the PC, you can do whole disk encryption. Not possible on the Mac, but you can use it to encode specific files and folders if you think it necessary.
I use Apple's secure folders and that seems to be "good enough" for everyday security. I am not sure if it is enough to secure my PC against serious, determined intrusion, but that's not my main concern.
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| So many apps...so little time... |
1. Adium
The instant message application for the Mac. Supports just about everything from Lotus Sametime to Facebook.
2. AppCleaner
Helps get rid of my mistakes. Good, but not perfect, for cleaning up the extra files that apps leave lying around.
3. BreakAway
Yank your headphone cable out of the Mac at the wrong time and you'll be blaring loud music to everyone on the plane or in the coffee shop. With this program, if you pull out the headphones, iTunes is paused.
4. Copernicus & Capture Me
Two excellent screen / window capture programs that enable you to take snapshots of applications and windows.
5. Evernote
I have Evernote on everything. It's my notepad now. Everything goes there.
6. InsomniaX
This application (must be used carefully) can prevent you MacBook from going to sleep when the lid is closed. Useful for downloading your e-mail when dashing between flights. You must be careful to avoid overheating the machine.
7. SoundSource
A nifty pull-down that lets you easily switch between speakers, headphones, and bluetooth headphones for your listening pleasure.
8. ReNicer
Nice and Re-Nice are Unix commands for changing process priorities. ReNicer puts a GUI on top of that and automatically prioritizes what you're working on in a Window over background processes. This improves the usability of the laptop when you're running lots of background applications.
9. Typinator
This program automatically expands simple text and fixes type-ohs in every program you use. Reviewed by Pogue in the New York Times, it's a huge productivity tool.
10. Proximity
This program is a bit tricky, but once I got it to work it's quite neat. It can activate or de-active the screen saver whenever your bluetooth equipped mobile phone comes in range. That means when you walk away from your PC, it can lock automatically, and it can unlock just as easily when you come back. The automation is nice, but setting it up was difficult. Not for the non-technical user.
11. Growl
An excellent, simple, and attractive tool for alerts, Growl displays updates to your programs like new mail or new instant messages discreetly in the upper right of the screen for a few seconds. It integrates across multiple programs too, making it easy to consolidate all those announcements.
12. EarthDesk
My favorite screen background, it shows various views of the earth, with or without clouds and current weather. A neat, living wallpaper that's always changing and endlessly fascinating.
13. KeyReamp4MacBook
A long-winded program title, but perfectly accurate. I don't want to totally remap my keyboard, but the one thing I cannot live without is the "forward delete" key - standard on PCs but not Macs. The delete key on a Mac does what the backspace key on a PC does, but there's no PC delete key. This makes it possible to remap one of the option keys to that function.
More elaborate remappings are possible too, but not ones I bother with.
14. TrueCrypt
TrueCrypt is the benchmark for encrypting files and keeping your personal information private. On the PC, you can do whole disk encryption. Not possible on the Mac, but you can use it to encode specific files and folders if you think it necessary.
I use Apple's secure folders and that seems to be "good enough" for everyday security. I am not sure if it is enough to secure my PC against serious, determined intrusion, but that's not my main concern.
Once You Go SSD, You Can't Go Back
I traded in my MacBook Pro last month for the new MacBook Air. My initial device had some problems but one free replacement later, I know I will not be able to go back. This MacBook air has a slightly slower processor than my MacBook pro did, but that doesn't matter. Once you use an SSD-equipped laptop, you can't go back.
For office work, the speed simply cannot be beaten. So much of what you do depends on loading and unloading files or searching for information. All of those are pretty much instantaneous with an SSD. As is booting up and resuming from sleep.
In the airport and on the go, this thing is amazing too. In the past, opening the laptop for a quick e-mail check could be a maddening exercise in frustration. Standing near the gate and hoping to get your e-mail in 3 minutes before departure - all too often those moments were ruined by the interminable wait to resume. Even if the resume worked well, you might find your whole PC slowed to a crawl for no discernible reason for a few minutes.
Virtual memory is another revolution. On a hard drive, it's painfully slow. With an SSD, it's almost unnoticeable. I used to see my MacBook slow to a crawl when using my VMWare PC instance. All that swapping and hard drive activity caused paralysis on other applications. Not even noticeable with an SSD - the swapping is so fast.
Now it's true that SSDs are pricey, and I had to settle for half the size of storage that I had before. But even then, I still have a lot. The entirety of my business files: thousands of documents and powerpoints: just 17 GB. With discipline, I could probably have worked comfortably with the lowest end MacBook Air out there, with just 64GB of storage. With most media on my iPhone and back-up in the cloud, it's do-able.
A power gaming machine this is not, but for everyday use, I think I will never be able to go back to a regular hard drive on any machine. Forget any kind of benchmark test that looks at CPU performance. Even when I've loaded all my crapware and other stuff on the laptop, boot-up to usability still happens in under 30 seconds. Resume is under 5 seconds.
For office work, the speed simply cannot be beaten. So much of what you do depends on loading and unloading files or searching for information. All of those are pretty much instantaneous with an SSD. As is booting up and resuming from sleep.
In the airport and on the go, this thing is amazing too. In the past, opening the laptop for a quick e-mail check could be a maddening exercise in frustration. Standing near the gate and hoping to get your e-mail in 3 minutes before departure - all too often those moments were ruined by the interminable wait to resume. Even if the resume worked well, you might find your whole PC slowed to a crawl for no discernible reason for a few minutes.
Virtual memory is another revolution. On a hard drive, it's painfully slow. With an SSD, it's almost unnoticeable. I used to see my MacBook slow to a crawl when using my VMWare PC instance. All that swapping and hard drive activity caused paralysis on other applications. Not even noticeable with an SSD - the swapping is so fast.
Now it's true that SSDs are pricey, and I had to settle for half the size of storage that I had before. But even then, I still have a lot. The entirety of my business files: thousands of documents and powerpoints: just 17 GB. With discipline, I could probably have worked comfortably with the lowest end MacBook Air out there, with just 64GB of storage. With most media on my iPhone and back-up in the cloud, it's do-able.
A power gaming machine this is not, but for everyday use, I think I will never be able to go back to a regular hard drive on any machine. Forget any kind of benchmark test that looks at CPU performance. Even when I've loaded all my crapware and other stuff on the laptop, boot-up to usability still happens in under 30 seconds. Resume is under 5 seconds.
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| Sayonara. Flickr CC Mac Users |
Wednesday, December 01, 2010
Battery-Back Up TV: Toshiba Delivers, Long Overdue
I used to live in Nigeria. The national power company was then known as NEPA (Nigerian Electric Power Authority) or, more honestly (Never Enough Power Anywhere). Everyone who was anyone had a back-up generator for their home.
But people who are not "anyone" - e.g. most people who live in emerging markets - back-up generators are an unobtainable luxury. And while TV remains the most essential form of entertainment for people, power cuts can make ruin a good evening.
Toshiba has released a perfect solution: a battery backed-up TV that can run for 2 hours. Targeted at emerging markets, it could be a big hit. The product is called PowerTV. Unfortunately, it doesn't look to me like something that may be fully executed. All the TVs look like they are pretty large and sporting state-of-the-art LED displays. Nice, but probably out of reach for the people who suffer most from regular power failures.
This is perhaps a typically Japanese failing: a promising idea ruined by over-engineering. Having worked so long in Japan, I have seen it time and again: an unwillingness to sacrifice performance for affordability. Too bad, because it's a great idea. But not to worry: I'm sure Vestel or someone in China or India will have an affordable version of this out soon.
But people who are not "anyone" - e.g. most people who live in emerging markets - back-up generators are an unobtainable luxury. And while TV remains the most essential form of entertainment for people, power cuts can make ruin a good evening.
Toshiba has released a perfect solution: a battery backed-up TV that can run for 2 hours. Targeted at emerging markets, it could be a big hit. The product is called PowerTV. Unfortunately, it doesn't look to me like something that may be fully executed. All the TVs look like they are pretty large and sporting state-of-the-art LED displays. Nice, but probably out of reach for the people who suffer most from regular power failures.
This is perhaps a typically Japanese failing: a promising idea ruined by over-engineering. Having worked so long in Japan, I have seen it time and again: an unwillingness to sacrifice performance for affordability. Too bad, because it's a great idea. But not to worry: I'm sure Vestel or someone in China or India will have an affordable version of this out soon.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Laptops Get Crazy Cheap
Want a 15" laptop with a 2gh dual core CPU with 4GB of ram, a 500GB hard drive, a DVD burner and WiFi? That'll be $499. And it will weigh no more than about 4.5 pounds - typical for a mid-size business notebook.
Now, it's a Dell notebook here. It doesn't include some useful options like Bluetooth (I use Blueetooth a lot on my laptop, but I don't know a single other person who does) and because it's a Dell it's going to be among the ugliest little machines that money can buy. Also missing: lots of higher quality, performance optimized components that contribute a lot to speed and performance.
But let's be honest: WHO CARES? For $499, this is a laptop any small business can afford and most parents would feel comfortable giving to their kids. And, unless you're using Photoshop or are an extreme gamer, it's going to be more than adequate for just about everything you can think of. Very impressive.
Even at the higher end of the market, prices seem to be plunging to new lows. The lack of a compelling reason to buy a high performance PC has made it hard to keep average selling prices up. What's interesting here is that at the top end of the market, PC prices are getting pretty low too. A top-of-the-line Lenovo X201 with an SSD is just $1700. It was only a couple of years ago that SSD-based laptop was over $3,000.
And here's something else interesting: Apple is smoking the competition at the high end. Apple's SSD-based MacBook Air laptops are hundreds of dollars cheaper than their competition. The same spec on an SSD from Apple is $300-500 less than Lenovo PCs. The price differential is not so evident on the MacBook Pro, which is still priced comparably to other high end PCs from Lenovo.
Apple's share of the PC market is inching up - now 20% of the US retail - and as companies buy fewer and fewer laptops and expecting employees to bring their own, that aggressive pricing could help bring their share up further. Also to look out for: Samsung, which as the leading maker of SSD chips, could leverage that to be aggressive themselves.
Now, it's a Dell notebook here. It doesn't include some useful options like Bluetooth (I use Blueetooth a lot on my laptop, but I don't know a single other person who does) and because it's a Dell it's going to be among the ugliest little machines that money can buy. Also missing: lots of higher quality, performance optimized components that contribute a lot to speed and performance.
But let's be honest: WHO CARES? For $499, this is a laptop any small business can afford and most parents would feel comfortable giving to their kids. And, unless you're using Photoshop or are an extreme gamer, it's going to be more than adequate for just about everything you can think of. Very impressive.
Even at the higher end of the market, prices seem to be plunging to new lows. The lack of a compelling reason to buy a high performance PC has made it hard to keep average selling prices up. What's interesting here is that at the top end of the market, PC prices are getting pretty low too. A top-of-the-line Lenovo X201 with an SSD is just $1700. It was only a couple of years ago that SSD-based laptop was over $3,000.
And here's something else interesting: Apple is smoking the competition at the high end. Apple's SSD-based MacBook Air laptops are hundreds of dollars cheaper than their competition. The same spec on an SSD from Apple is $300-500 less than Lenovo PCs. The price differential is not so evident on the MacBook Pro, which is still priced comparably to other high end PCs from Lenovo.
Apple's share of the PC market is inching up - now 20% of the US retail - and as companies buy fewer and fewer laptops and expecting employees to bring their own, that aggressive pricing could help bring their share up further. Also to look out for: Samsung, which as the leading maker of SSD chips, could leverage that to be aggressive themselves.
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| Not beautiful, but amazing value. Flickr CC |
Monday, November 29, 2010
Hey Amazon, I want to SCHEDULE my deliveries
Ah Black Friday. My Japanese AuPair hit the stores starting at about 7am. She was out all day. She was out, in fact, from 7am to 7pm. And she didn't buy anything. She just wanted to see the consumption frenzy on the biggest shopping day of the year anywhere. She came home amused but empty handed. I guess she wasn't willing to put an elbow into that Wal-Mart opening crowd for the really great deals.
I myself bought nothing. Nothing at all on Black Friday. I buy about 99% of all Christmas Gifts on Amazon. The prices are excellent (not always the absolute lowest) and they're free of sales tax and come with free fast shipping.
There's one catch: I don't want my gifts sitting around from December 1 to 25. I wouldn't have the self-control not to open them and neither do most of my friends & family. I want them to arrive on/around December 21-23. The problem is, you can't "schedule" the deliveries on Amazon.com.
So Amazon: here's my request: let people schedule gift deliveries with a 3-4 day window before the selected event. Then I would do more shopping on Black Friday or Cyber Monday or whatever. More money from me. I know you want it.
I myself bought nothing. Nothing at all on Black Friday. I buy about 99% of all Christmas Gifts on Amazon. The prices are excellent (not always the absolute lowest) and they're free of sales tax and come with free fast shipping.
There's one catch: I don't want my gifts sitting around from December 1 to 25. I wouldn't have the self-control not to open them and neither do most of my friends & family. I want them to arrive on/around December 21-23. The problem is, you can't "schedule" the deliveries on Amazon.com.
So Amazon: here's my request: let people schedule gift deliveries with a 3-4 day window before the selected event. Then I would do more shopping on Black Friday or Cyber Monday or whatever. More money from me. I know you want it.
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| Just enough room for my holiday shopping. Flickr (cc) |
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Amazing article about the stupidity of managed investment funds.
Bookmark: http://ping.fm/xYgU7
You can find more of prbrody's bookmarks at
- http://ping.fm/AdsjH
Bookmark: http://ping.fm/xYgU7
You can find more of prbrody's bookmarks at
- http://ping.fm/AdsjH
Why being polite is actually really important in the workplace.
Bookmark: http://ping.fm/w7WDu
You can find more of prbrody's bookmarks at
- http://ping.fm/nbpyN
Bookmark: http://ping.fm/w7WDu
You can find more of prbrody's bookmarks at
- http://ping.fm/nbpyN
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
California May Be Ungovernable, But At Least We're Not PIGS
According to the Economist, while California may be ungovernable, we're still considered less likely to default than Europe's PIGS. There are so many ways we've become like Italy, why not make government solvency one more?
Really the markets are being too hard on the PIGS, I think, and perhaps they assume a certain implicit guarantee on California from the US federal government?
Really the markets are being too hard on the PIGS, I think, and perhaps they assume a certain implicit guarantee on California from the US federal government?
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| From The Economist (Link) |
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
More Evidence of Convergence In The Living Room
I think Google TV will ultimately be successful, despite all the content blocking that is going on right now - but the more tactical evidence of convergence happening is showing up in the video game business where the XBOX seems to be opening up a fairly large lead on the competition.
There are three consoles out there that matter: XBOX, PlayStation, and Wii. The Wii has the least CPU power of all of them, but it has been successful because of Nintendo's quirky and innovative approach to gaming. With the rise of Kinect and Sony's Wii-alike wireless paddles, the bigger console makers have taken some of the differentiation that existed away from Nintendo.
What's left? Differentiation in media content. The XBOX stands far and away ahead of any other console in terms of connectivity and media content. This year, Wii sales have been in decline (link) and the XBOX has been ascendent even before the launch of Kinect. Given the differences between the consoles, that seems to point to a take-off in media convergence more than a change in the gaming market.
There are three consoles out there that matter: XBOX, PlayStation, and Wii. The Wii has the least CPU power of all of them, but it has been successful because of Nintendo's quirky and innovative approach to gaming. With the rise of Kinect and Sony's Wii-alike wireless paddles, the bigger console makers have taken some of the differentiation that existed away from Nintendo.
What's left? Differentiation in media content. The XBOX stands far and away ahead of any other console in terms of connectivity and media content. This year, Wii sales have been in decline (link) and the XBOX has been ascendent even before the launch of Kinect. Given the differences between the consoles, that seems to point to a take-off in media convergence more than a change in the gaming market.
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| Wii Sales History - From Gamasutra |
Monday, November 22, 2010
What I'd Put In The Galaxy Tab 2.0
Samsung is off to a great start with the Galaxy tab. They matched Apple's initial sales figures for the iPad, 600,000 units in the first month. Since Samsung didn’t' have a "launch day" like Apple did, it's perhaps a reasonable comparison. Obviously, there's a long way to go, but it will be good for Samsung to get out in front on the Android side of the equation.
There's no reason to believe that Android tablets can't take the same role as Android phones have in assuming a quick march to market leadership. As Google continues to tighten up standards for the devices, it could reduce worries of fragmentation while increasing the addressable market size for developers.
The first edition of the Galaxy tab is very good. I've handled it and it's polished even if Android itself isn't fully ready for primetime on the tablet. That will improve in 2011 and at that time it will good for Samsung to release a new edition. In that spirit, here was my thinking about what would make me switch from my iPad to an Android tablet:
There's no reason to believe that Android tablets can't take the same role as Android phones have in assuming a quick march to market leadership. As Google continues to tighten up standards for the devices, it could reduce worries of fragmentation while increasing the addressable market size for developers.
The first edition of the Galaxy tab is very good. I've handled it and it's polished even if Android itself isn't fully ready for primetime on the tablet. That will improve in 2011 and at that time it will good for Samsung to release a new edition. In that spirit, here was my thinking about what would make me switch from my iPad to an Android tablet:
- Embrace Handwriting. I use my iPad to take notes and there are some remarkably good solutions for the iPad that use software to detect palms. The gold standard would be a digitizer tablet, something that I think is essential for mark-up in an education environment.
- Enable Mice. Some people are going to want to turn their tablets into very very mini PCs - complete with wireless keyboards and touchpads or mice. Let them.
- Go Unlocked. Enable people to be a fully capable unlocked version of the device that they can use on any network.
Beyond my own needs, I think there are two additional models/form-factors that Samsung must consider:
- Large screen. For text-book users, that is going to be a must. I'm not sure that dual-screen readers will take off, but I am sure that education users need a larger format.
- Ruggedized version. From age 2 when they drool on things to age 17 when they sit on them and shove them in their backpacks without protection, kids are hard on their technology. I would love to give my kids an iPad or an iPod touch someday, but I fear the consequences of giving a child such a delicate and expensive item.
Tablets are only going to get better. Competition is good for the industry and Samsung knows how to make a market very very competitive.
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| Samsung off to a great start. Link |
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Windows Phone 7 Rockets Out Of The Gate With 2000 Apps
Windows Phone 7 is the slickest new mobile phone operating system to come to market since the iPhone. And as I wrote last month, it's got quite a few legs up on the iPhone. But what matters to buyers today are apps. And to my surprise, Windows Phone 7 has them in spades.
Data from retailers shows the phones are not flying off the shelves, but the seem to be doing ok. (Anecdotal sales reports here and conflicting data on shortages here) And with 2,000 apps to get the user started, it's a pretty good selection. Developers need another mobile platform like they need a hole in the head, but there's no arguing with the huge investment Microsoft has made and the impressive start.
Who might lose on this? I'm thinking HP (Palm) developers could feel squeezed out as could Symbian developers, who are probably giving up anyway. In the future, Android and iPhone are platforms that will definitely survive. 12 months ago you could have been certain that RIM would survive too, but that looks less like a certainty today (though still likely).
For developers, that leaves Palm, Windows, and Symbian as the "runners up". Unlike HP or Nokia, Microsoft, at least, has shown they are prepared to bribe developers to make apps if necessary. And with 50 million+ XBOX users, games, which are the top apps for most platforms, could keep developers and users engaged.
All so much speculation. If I had an unlimited personal budget, I'd buy an Android Tablet and a Windows Phone 7 as well. But I don't. So I'm sticking with the iPhone for the moment. But just for the moment.
Data from retailers shows the phones are not flying off the shelves, but the seem to be doing ok. (Anecdotal sales reports here and conflicting data on shortages here) And with 2,000 apps to get the user started, it's a pretty good selection. Developers need another mobile platform like they need a hole in the head, but there's no arguing with the huge investment Microsoft has made and the impressive start.
Who might lose on this? I'm thinking HP (Palm) developers could feel squeezed out as could Symbian developers, who are probably giving up anyway. In the future, Android and iPhone are platforms that will definitely survive. 12 months ago you could have been certain that RIM would survive too, but that looks less like a certainty today (though still likely).
For developers, that leaves Palm, Windows, and Symbian as the "runners up". Unlike HP or Nokia, Microsoft, at least, has shown they are prepared to bribe developers to make apps if necessary. And with 50 million+ XBOX users, games, which are the top apps for most platforms, could keep developers and users engaged.
All so much speculation. If I had an unlimited personal budget, I'd buy an Android Tablet and a Windows Phone 7 as well. But I don't. So I'm sticking with the iPhone for the moment. But just for the moment.
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| Windows Phone 7 Screen Shot - From Microsoft |
Mozy's mac update is out, but too late to save my business. The old version just sucked.
Bookmark: http://ping.fm/xtoeH
You can find more of prbrody's bookmarks at
- http://ping.fm/KKcpp
Bookmark: http://ping.fm/xtoeH
You can find more of prbrody's bookmarks at
- http://ping.fm/KKcpp
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Will All Those Different Data Plans Hurt Samsung's Galaxy Tab?
The Samsung Galaxy tablet is starting to be sold widely - every major US wireless carrier is going to be selling the device. And every one is selling it at a different price and with a different priced data plan. For example, on T-Mobile, it's $399 on contract and $599 without.
That means the T-Mobile contract subsidy is $200 over 24 months, about $9/month. T-Mobile's data plans are exactly the same - the same price whether your are on contract or not (so not much of an incentive to be contract-free) and the same price regardless of the device you use. Of all the major carriers this is probably the fairest deal.
ATT is offering 2GB for $25 on the data plan. Sprint will be offering the same amount of data for $29 or 5GB for $60. Verizon has the worst plan: $20 for just 1 GB. Even worse: It's not clear, from the data I've been reading, that when you pay full price at these networks that the tablet will be unlocked for your use on any network.
All those different plans and prices and structures? Could be quite confusing to consumers. The total subsidy is relatively smaller than most phones (the iPhone, which is close to $700 at retail goes for $199) and the data plans are far most costly, it seems, on average than phone plans for the same amount of data, or less. The iPad's unsubsidized approach keeps pricing simple, but at the cost of a higher price.
What should the wireless carriers be doing? Upping the subsidy I think. The $399 subsidized price might not be low enough to make buying the Galaxy tab over the iPad a no-brainer. While the carriers are pushing the Table and the iPad, the better value is a WiFi device with MiFi device (preferably from Virgin).
That means the T-Mobile contract subsidy is $200 over 24 months, about $9/month. T-Mobile's data plans are exactly the same - the same price whether your are on contract or not (so not much of an incentive to be contract-free) and the same price regardless of the device you use. Of all the major carriers this is probably the fairest deal.
ATT is offering 2GB for $25 on the data plan. Sprint will be offering the same amount of data for $29 or 5GB for $60. Verizon has the worst plan: $20 for just 1 GB. Even worse: It's not clear, from the data I've been reading, that when you pay full price at these networks that the tablet will be unlocked for your use on any network.
All those different plans and prices and structures? Could be quite confusing to consumers. The total subsidy is relatively smaller than most phones (the iPhone, which is close to $700 at retail goes for $199) and the data plans are far most costly, it seems, on average than phone plans for the same amount of data, or less. The iPad's unsubsidized approach keeps pricing simple, but at the cost of a higher price.
What should the wireless carriers be doing? Upping the subsidy I think. The $399 subsidized price might not be low enough to make buying the Galaxy tab over the iPad a no-brainer. While the carriers are pushing the Table and the iPad, the better value is a WiFi device with MiFi device (preferably from Virgin).
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Hulu Keeps Adding Commercials - Where Is The End Point?
A 22 minute television show on broadcast has about 8 minutes of commercials. An hour-long TV program will have 16 minutes of commercials. And very very few people want to watch all those ads. Right now, Hulu is running between 4 to 6 commercials for an full length program.
In the past, they used to be reliably 30 seconds or less - and just one of them. Now, we're seeing more and more commercials, up to two back-to-back 30 second commercials or one full minute ad. The total is about 1/3 of the comparable advertising to on-air, but the trend is not encouraging.
There is one possibility of a silver lining: perhaps there will be fewer commercials on cable in the future. Today, cable subscribers pay (heftily) for TV that is loaded with ads. They may lose their tolerance for all those commercials. And the result could a better cable TV experience. But let's not get our hopes up.
In the past, they used to be reliably 30 seconds or less - and just one of them. Now, we're seeing more and more commercials, up to two back-to-back 30 second commercials or one full minute ad. The total is about 1/3 of the comparable advertising to on-air, but the trend is not encouraging.
There is one possibility of a silver lining: perhaps there will be fewer commercials on cable in the future. Today, cable subscribers pay (heftily) for TV that is loaded with ads. They may lose their tolerance for all those commercials. And the result could a better cable TV experience. But let's not get our hopes up.
Monday, November 15, 2010
But How Do You Fix Cognitive Errors?
NPR has a great article on cognitive bias (actual, a segment from Talk Of The Nation). People, when confronted with facts that don't fit their worldview, tend to find ways to discount them and not change their mind.
That much is easy to understand, but from there - what do you do?
That much is easy to understand, but from there - what do you do?
- How do you know if a piece of evidence is big enough to change your views or just a small data point?
- How do you know if you are rationalizing away evidence or performing a reasoned assessment of new information?
Sometimes the facts are well know and well argued (yes, global warming is real) but sometimes it's not so clear cut. It still matters to get the answer right - for example when investing - but in those cases there may be far less evidence to sift through.
I don't have any answers, but here's a link to the NPR podcast:
Flash
Flash
Thursday, November 11, 2010
My prediction: 2011's Hottest New Over Top TV Company: The BBC
I wish I had gotten to go to NewTeeVee, the GigaOM conference taking place this week. Sadly, I was in New York for another meeting. A couple of days of total immersion in the land of the cord-cutters would have been a lot of fun.
Right now, the big fighting is about how to get content that was created for movie theaters and televisions on the interwebs. There are no real technical obstacles to doing this. It's all about the law, specifically copyright. Content development is financed by selling the rights to that content. Right now, the vast majority of that content is bought companies that make their core profits outside the Internet. That won't always be true.
At the start of the cable era, cable television was just an antenna for broadcast stations to improve signal quality. Then people starting make dedicated cable stations. They spent their first 20 years buying reruns of network shows and foreign documentaries (thank you, BBC). Eventually, they started financing their own TV shows. And when that happened, they started to see their ratings take off. Now the top rated cable shows routinely unseat broadcast television.
The same is going to happen on the web. Custom web shows are in their infancy. They are still sporadic and of hugely varying quality. There is no standard distribution mechanism. All those things are slowly changing. Big name stars are starting to appear in these shows and distribution services are growing stronger. Creating a channel on Hulu, the XBOX, or Roku gives companies instant access to millions of viewers. Some platforms like XBOX are true global platforms.
And that global nature could make this loop of the history reel very different. Cable television companies, like their broadcast antecedents, were geographically limited. They fit nicely into the TV licensing model on national and regional terms. The web doesn't have to do that. On the Internet, you can build a brand new TV channel and aggregate viewers from across the planet - creating a new generation of global media giants.
Content that is created for the Internet doesn't have to come with the huge web of licensing restrictions. It can be created on day one for a truly global audience. And as a result, new Internet giants could quickly eclipse traditional TV networks that are busy trying to optimize a national or regional model. As was recently pointed out, the XBOX live network has more users than Comcast.
And the first of these new global mega media giants? I think it might be the BBC. Long an exporter of quality programming and the operator of a global satellite and radio network, the BBC's iPlayer is the UK's Hulu before Hulu. Pushing the iPlayer out globally could allow that organization to aggregate the largest global audience of any broadcaster.
Right now, the big fighting is about how to get content that was created for movie theaters and televisions on the interwebs. There are no real technical obstacles to doing this. It's all about the law, specifically copyright. Content development is financed by selling the rights to that content. Right now, the vast majority of that content is bought companies that make their core profits outside the Internet. That won't always be true.
At the start of the cable era, cable television was just an antenna for broadcast stations to improve signal quality. Then people starting make dedicated cable stations. They spent their first 20 years buying reruns of network shows and foreign documentaries (thank you, BBC). Eventually, they started financing their own TV shows. And when that happened, they started to see their ratings take off. Now the top rated cable shows routinely unseat broadcast television.
The same is going to happen on the web. Custom web shows are in their infancy. They are still sporadic and of hugely varying quality. There is no standard distribution mechanism. All those things are slowly changing. Big name stars are starting to appear in these shows and distribution services are growing stronger. Creating a channel on Hulu, the XBOX, or Roku gives companies instant access to millions of viewers. Some platforms like XBOX are true global platforms.
And that global nature could make this loop of the history reel very different. Cable television companies, like their broadcast antecedents, were geographically limited. They fit nicely into the TV licensing model on national and regional terms. The web doesn't have to do that. On the Internet, you can build a brand new TV channel and aggregate viewers from across the planet - creating a new generation of global media giants.
Content that is created for the Internet doesn't have to come with the huge web of licensing restrictions. It can be created on day one for a truly global audience. And as a result, new Internet giants could quickly eclipse traditional TV networks that are busy trying to optimize a national or regional model. As was recently pointed out, the XBOX live network has more users than Comcast.
And the first of these new global mega media giants? I think it might be the BBC. Long an exporter of quality programming and the operator of a global satellite and radio network, the BBC's iPlayer is the UK's Hulu before Hulu. Pushing the iPlayer out globally could allow that organization to aggregate the largest global audience of any broadcaster.
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| Stodgy New Media Revolutionary? Photo from Redvers |
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Ouch! Giz slams the new Galaxy Tab. I liked it when I had a few mins to play, but they sure did not.
Bookmark: http://ping.fm/npL7T
You can find more of prbrody's bookmarks at
- http://ping.fm/mBOX7
Bookmark: http://ping.fm/npL7T
You can find more of prbrody's bookmarks at
- http://ping.fm/mBOX7
Tuesday, November 09, 2010
Comparing Actual Time to Perceived Time - Your Last Cold
Actual Time:
Day 1: Feeling bad
Day 2: Feeling awful, wishing you could skip work but don't
Day 3: Feeling a bit better
Days 4-12: Lingering cough, post-nasal drip (technical name for lots of snot)
Days 13-14: Back to normal
Perception of Time When You Have A Cold:
Week 1: Feeling awful, crushed by devastating ilness
Week 2: Slow painful recovery
Week 3: Coughing continuously, hacking up at least one lung
Week 4: Still coughing
Month 2: Coughing at night only, getting no sleep
Month 3: Starting to wonder: do I have a cold, or is this lung cancer?
Month 4: Seriously thinking about making a doctor appointment
Month 5: Obtained cough medicine from pharmacy, actually starting to sleep
Month 6: All better
Month 7: Doctor appointment cancelled.
Day 1: Feeling bad
Day 2: Feeling awful, wishing you could skip work but don't
Day 3: Feeling a bit better
Days 4-12: Lingering cough, post-nasal drip (technical name for lots of snot)
Days 13-14: Back to normal
Perception of Time When You Have A Cold:
Week 1: Feeling awful, crushed by devastating ilness
Week 2: Slow painful recovery
Week 3: Coughing continuously, hacking up at least one lung
Week 4: Still coughing
Month 2: Coughing at night only, getting no sleep
Month 3: Starting to wonder: do I have a cold, or is this lung cancer?
Month 4: Seriously thinking about making a doctor appointment
Month 5: Obtained cough medicine from pharmacy, actually starting to sleep
Month 6: All better
Month 7: Doctor appointment cancelled.
 |
| Tissues - (Fancy Japanese ones that teach manners on the label) - photo by Matsuyuki |
Monday, November 08, 2010
Two New Web Sites / Services I Like
Two useful new items on my MacBook:
1. Click To Flash
Click To Flash keeps all Adobe Flash elements from activating until you click them. Brilliant saver of CPU and battery, not to mention reducing the visual clutter on a lot of screens.
2. uQuery: The App Store Search Engine
Searching the Apple App store on iTunes is an abomination. A nightmare of cluttered UI, horrendous performance. It's impossible to search quickly and separate the garbage (of which there is a lot) from the good stuff. uQuery does that. It's not perfect, but it's the best way I've seen so far to search the app store.
1. Click To Flash
Click To Flash keeps all Adobe Flash elements from activating until you click them. Brilliant saver of CPU and battery, not to mention reducing the visual clutter on a lot of screens.
 |
| Click To Flash removes Flash from web sites. |
2. uQuery: The App Store Search Engine
Searching the Apple App store on iTunes is an abomination. A nightmare of cluttered UI, horrendous performance. It's impossible to search quickly and separate the garbage (of which there is a lot) from the good stuff. uQuery does that. It's not perfect, but it's the best way I've seen so far to search the app store.
 |
Going On A Flash Diet
Apple's war on Adobe Flash is partly a clash of business empires and also a clash of philosophy and style. Flash is clunky but flexible, and widely adopted. However, it lacks the elegance and efficiency that characterize Apple's products. HTML5 offers many benefits, but it still cannot quite match Adobe Flash. Still, it was a revelation to me that you can add 2 hours to your MacBook air battery life by ditching flash - at least according to some.
As an executive in an online video start-up, I'm intimately familiar with the benefits and drawbacks of Flash. Right now, we cannot dump Flash because HTML5 does not adequately support encrypted video - something that is needed to thwart potential pirates. Apple has implemented encryption on the Mac platform, but not universally. That major studios and content providers still consider HTML5 insufficiently secure can be seen in YouTube. While many videos are now available in H.264, not all of them are. Many still show up as blanks when you try to watch them.
Given the news of the added battery life, I decided to give it a shot. I downloaded ClickToFlash, a safari extension that blocks Flash from loading until you click on the box where it sits. The results: amazing. I can't attest to the full battery life impact because I didn't do a scientific test, but it certainly seems to work.
More than just battery life, however, going on a Flash-diet improved my MacBook performance all around. Web pages showed up with a fraction of the ads filled in, reducing visual clutter. And they loaded much faster as well. My CPU load was also visibly lower as well. I tend to leave my browser open all the time these days, and with Flash ads everywhere, that drains battery and performance continuously.
So, ClickToFlash is my new favorite extension. I highly recommend it.
 |
| Gizmodo without Flash - Cleaner, Simpler |
Friday, November 05, 2010
What if your browser was an airline?
I've been combing through my system logs. MBA crashes are all preceded by a string of Google Chrome error messages. Whether they really cause the crash or not is hard to tell. I know that I haven't had a single crash since I stopped using Chrome. Maximum uptime now is up from 30 minutes to 14 hours. Let's hope this trend continues.
Thursday, November 04, 2010
Very cool insight and analysis on Climate Change - refutes so many brain-dead skeptics.
Bookmark: http://ping.fm/4ncM2
You can find more of prbrody's bookmarks at
- http://ping.fm/8eS5m
Bookmark: http://ping.fm/4ncM2
You can find more of prbrody's bookmarks at
- http://ping.fm/8eS5m
If Your New MacBook Air Was An Airline
There's an old joke about what if your operating system was an airline. The windows version is usually told like this:
Unfortunately, that is an accurate description of my new MacBook Air. Sleek, powerful, and prone to random crashes. About 12 so far, pretty consistent with the performance problems that other people are reporting to Apple. (Link).
Hopefully, this will be resolved soon. In the meantime, I'm saving frequently.
The terminal is pretty and colorful, with friendly stewards, easy baggage check and boarding, and a smooth takeoff. After about 10 minutes in the air, the plane explodes with no warning whatsoever.
Unfortunately, that is an accurate description of my new MacBook Air. Sleek, powerful, and prone to random crashes. About 12 so far, pretty consistent with the performance problems that other people are reporting to Apple. (Link).
Hopefully, this will be resolved soon. In the meantime, I'm saving frequently.
 |
| Well, Not Really Your PC |
Wednesday, November 03, 2010
Whitman, Fiorina Fail, Does That Mean Voters Don't Like Silicon Valley
I was relieved to see that both of them failed in their bids for power, but I don't think it means that voters don't like CEOs or that they don't like Silicon Valley technologists. To start with, both ran as Republicans. In fact, Silicon Valley trends towards the socially-liberally, economically-conservative democratic type. Republican hostility to immigrants, gays, and science doesn't play well in a region where all three are fairy important parts fo the economy.
The second issue for both candidates is that while they were CEOs, they were not considered universally successful. Fiorina had vision, but was ultimately fired by the HP board (who on their own might be considered a pretty bad board) and Whitman presided over eBay's decline from visionary marketplace into nickel-and-dime profit-machine (at the expense of millions of small business owners).
Certainly, in my neighborhood in Woodside, you couldn't see a single lawn sign for either candidate, and I consider Woodside a pretty good barometer of how the valley feels about politics. Other initiatives that were strongly backed by Silicon Valley did get through - including elimination of the super-majority for budgets and the failure of the Texas-oil-backed initiative to suspend California's clean air rules.
The second issue for both candidates is that while they were CEOs, they were not considered universally successful. Fiorina had vision, but was ultimately fired by the HP board (who on their own might be considered a pretty bad board) and Whitman presided over eBay's decline from visionary marketplace into nickel-and-dime profit-machine (at the expense of millions of small business owners).
Certainly, in my neighborhood in Woodside, you couldn't see a single lawn sign for either candidate, and I consider Woodside a pretty good barometer of how the valley feels about politics. Other initiatives that were strongly backed by Silicon Valley did get through - including elimination of the super-majority for budgets and the failure of the Texas-oil-backed initiative to suspend California's clean air rules.
 |
| Photo from Flickr cc. Author |
Tuesday, November 02, 2010
Amazing graphic shows how 3 companies dominate beverage industry - but is that a sign of low competition or high?
Bookmark: http://ping.fm/oEhih
You can find more of prbrody's bookmarks at
- http://ping.fm/GhUZo
Bookmark: http://ping.fm/oEhih
You can find more of prbrody's bookmarks at
- http://ping.fm/GhUZo
Monday, November 01, 2010
Over the top networks are now bigger than some cable companies.
Bookmark: http://ping.fm/lrq23
You can find more of prbrody's bookmarks at
- http://ping.fm/6dmsH
Bookmark: http://ping.fm/lrq23
You can find more of prbrody's bookmarks at
- http://ping.fm/6dmsH
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
So, How Long WIll It Take For Hollywood's Legacy Leaders To Fail?
I've been having an e-mail debate with a friend of mine over the last couple of days over the eventual transformation of the video content business. He thinks that the transition will take a long time and the result will a complex mesh of existing a new players.
I am not so sure. It's true, I do want to see the new players triumph (I've got a vested interest), but judging by other examples in industrial history, it seems like incumbents generally do not survive technological transitions. The changing nature of the S&P 500 is itself a testament to the speed with which companies can turn over.
In the moment, it can seem like big companies can last forever. But they can disappear in a flash - much faster than most people imagine is possible. And people forget the losers very quickly. Ask a person in New York for directions for the Pan Am tower and you'll see just how quickly memories fade.
I think a typical pattern of industry transformation looks like this:
(I loved this book on failure)
Stages 1-3 can last for decades, but once stage 4 arrives, companies that have survived for decades can disappear in a year or two.
This pattern keeps getting repeated in industries that are subjected to intense technological change. The New Yorker has an excellent recent article on the failure of Blockbuster and, more generally, the failure of traditional "Category Killers" to make the transition online despite analyst expectations that they would do so. (Link)
One reason, I think, that whole industries that seem so strong can collapse nearly overnight is the typical structure of US companies. Shareholder-capitalism demands that companies return cash and profits to investors and use debt as a tax-efficient financing tool While individually controlled companies like Apple or Microsoft can amass billions in cash, shareholder-driven companies like IBM tend to disperse it quickly and keep little on hand.
This works great as long as "conventional wisdom" supports the continued viability of the industry, credit and capital continue to be available even if key players have significant weaknesses. Once investor and creditor sentiment turns, however, the slightest weakness can be fatal. Covenants in loans mean they can be called in quickly and fickle markets and suddenly deny credit to troubled companies. One day you can roll over your loans, a week later, you can't.
There are lots of industries that have suddenly failed or been rapidly and radically transformed in bouts of intense creative destruction. You could write a whole PhD in economics on the decline of industries (which I might enjoy if I had the time) Here is my take on a few:
1. US Electronics Companies
Throughout the 1970s, companies from Japan like Sony gained share at the expense of traditional US electronics companies. Japan's electronics companies were better at manufacturing and miniaturization than their US counterparts, not to mention quality. Despite numerous efforts to "fix" the industry, it largely folded in the 1980s.
Critics recognized the troubles of the US electronics companies in the early 1980s and in less than a decade, most of the were gone.
Time from global leadership to irrelevance: 1950-1985: 35 years.
2. US Automotive Industry
Critics of the US automotive industry were already taking on the industry in the early 1970s, but it wasn't until 2009 that the industry folded. The enormous barriers to entry and special government favors for the US auto makers kept them in business for 40 years after they lost their competitive edge.
Had you asked any smart industry analyst in 2005 if GM could be Bankrupt in 2009, they would laughed at you. (In researching this, I found to my amazement that while there was virtually no discussion of the risk of bankruptcy for GM in 2006, this was one call that S&P actually got right - they cut GM's credit rating to junk in May 2006)
Time from global leadership to irrelevance: 1950 to 2010: 60 years.
3. Japan's Electronics Industry
Japan's reign at the top of the global electronics has been short and bitter. In the 1980s, Sony was the world's most desirable electronics brand. The PlayStation 2, introduced in 2000, may be recognized as Sony's high water mark and final hit product. The company has been in decline for more than a decade, along with the rest of Japan's electronics industry.
Thanks to unlimited loans from Japan's government, the Japanese industry will never go bankrupt in the spectacular fashion of the US automotive industry, but it has already faded from relevance in the global market.
Time from global leadership to failure: 1985 to 2005. 20 years.
So where is Hollywood in this equation? The traditional players in Hollywood peaked in 1999. Before the internet had made file sharing rampant, while people were still buying DVDs and VHS tapes of their favorite movies and renting them at Blockbuster and paying late fees. Before you could subscribe to Netflix.
So where are we 10 years later: I think we're somewhere around stage 3 or 4 of the failure cycle. Hype for online media has faded and many experts think it looks like traditional distributors are going to have a strong role in both online and traditional distribution. Like Blockbuster, they're trying to have their cake and eat it too.
The Economist recently announced that old media firms are "firmly in control of internet video." Perhaps there's no surer sign of impending transformation that authoritative pronunciations to the contrary.
But the online component is taking off at an exceptional rate. Netflix has achieved or is close to achieving critical mass along with Hulu and YouTube. 56 million Americans have ditched live TV, of which 22 million don't even bother with a DVR - they skip TV altogether or watch it purely online.
And the traditional TV networks, what are their real assets:
I am not so sure. It's true, I do want to see the new players triumph (I've got a vested interest), but judging by other examples in industrial history, it seems like incumbents generally do not survive technological transitions. The changing nature of the S&P 500 is itself a testament to the speed with which companies can turn over.
In the moment, it can seem like big companies can last forever. But they can disappear in a flash - much faster than most people imagine is possible. And people forget the losers very quickly. Ask a person in New York for directions for the Pan Am tower and you'll see just how quickly memories fade.
I think a typical pattern of industry transformation looks like this:
- New companies enter market with new technology, lots of hype, and low revenues
- Hype dissipates and incumbents make half-hearted efforts to ape new technology
- Industry "experts" announce existing technology will dominante for a long time, think incumbents can dominate both new and old technologies
- New entrants reach critical mass, start rapid market share transition
- Incumbents see their "new" products are too weak to compete, plunge suddenly to irrelevance
(I loved this book on failure)
Stages 1-3 can last for decades, but once stage 4 arrives, companies that have survived for decades can disappear in a year or two.
This pattern keeps getting repeated in industries that are subjected to intense technological change. The New Yorker has an excellent recent article on the failure of Blockbuster and, more generally, the failure of traditional "Category Killers" to make the transition online despite analyst expectations that they would do so. (Link)
One reason, I think, that whole industries that seem so strong can collapse nearly overnight is the typical structure of US companies. Shareholder-capitalism demands that companies return cash and profits to investors and use debt as a tax-efficient financing tool While individually controlled companies like Apple or Microsoft can amass billions in cash, shareholder-driven companies like IBM tend to disperse it quickly and keep little on hand.
This works great as long as "conventional wisdom" supports the continued viability of the industry, credit and capital continue to be available even if key players have significant weaknesses. Once investor and creditor sentiment turns, however, the slightest weakness can be fatal. Covenants in loans mean they can be called in quickly and fickle markets and suddenly deny credit to troubled companies. One day you can roll over your loans, a week later, you can't.
There are lots of industries that have suddenly failed or been rapidly and radically transformed in bouts of intense creative destruction. You could write a whole PhD in economics on the decline of industries (which I might enjoy if I had the time) Here is my take on a few:
1. US Electronics Companies
Throughout the 1970s, companies from Japan like Sony gained share at the expense of traditional US electronics companies. Japan's electronics companies were better at manufacturing and miniaturization than their US counterparts, not to mention quality. Despite numerous efforts to "fix" the industry, it largely folded in the 1980s.
Critics recognized the troubles of the US electronics companies in the early 1980s and in less than a decade, most of the were gone.
Time from global leadership to irrelevance: 1950-1985: 35 years.
 |
| Before the Fall & Lucky To Survive. Time Magazine (also lucky to survive) |
2. US Automotive Industry
Critics of the US automotive industry were already taking on the industry in the early 1970s, but it wasn't until 2009 that the industry folded. The enormous barriers to entry and special government favors for the US auto makers kept them in business for 40 years after they lost their competitive edge.
Had you asked any smart industry analyst in 2005 if GM could be Bankrupt in 2009, they would laughed at you. (In researching this, I found to my amazement that while there was virtually no discussion of the risk of bankruptcy for GM in 2006, this was one call that S&P actually got right - they cut GM's credit rating to junk in May 2006)
Time from global leadership to irrelevance: 1950 to 2010: 60 years.
3. Japan's Electronics Industry
Japan's reign at the top of the global electronics has been short and bitter. In the 1980s, Sony was the world's most desirable electronics brand. The PlayStation 2, introduced in 2000, may be recognized as Sony's high water mark and final hit product. The company has been in decline for more than a decade, along with the rest of Japan's electronics industry.
Thanks to unlimited loans from Japan's government, the Japanese industry will never go bankrupt in the spectacular fashion of the US automotive industry, but it has already faded from relevance in the global market.
Time from global leadership to failure: 1985 to 2005. 20 years.
So where is Hollywood in this equation? The traditional players in Hollywood peaked in 1999. Before the internet had made file sharing rampant, while people were still buying DVDs and VHS tapes of their favorite movies and renting them at Blockbuster and paying late fees. Before you could subscribe to Netflix.
So where are we 10 years later: I think we're somewhere around stage 3 or 4 of the failure cycle. Hype for online media has faded and many experts think it looks like traditional distributors are going to have a strong role in both online and traditional distribution. Like Blockbuster, they're trying to have their cake and eat it too.
The Economist recently announced that old media firms are "firmly in control of internet video." Perhaps there's no surer sign of impending transformation that authoritative pronunciations to the contrary.
 |
| Wishful Thinking. |
But the online component is taking off at an exceptional rate. Netflix has achieved or is close to achieving critical mass along with Hulu and YouTube. 56 million Americans have ditched live TV, of which 22 million don't even bother with a DVR - they skip TV altogether or watch it purely online.
And the traditional TV networks, what are their real assets:
- Broadcast television stations
- Brands
- Program rights for current and past TV shows
- Cable television stations and brands
- Advertising relationships and sales forces
Every single one of those assets is far less valuable than many people believe today. Take broadcast TV stations. In a country where more than 80% of the population has cable TV, not necessarily an essential asset. And the truth is that the networks themselves do not actually make most of their TV shows. The production companies sell to the highest bidder.
And the network brands and advertising relationships? They are utterly worthless. What does NBC stand for? When you think NBC do you think of a specific product? Of course not! Their legacy as providers of lowest-common-denominator entertainment mean that high end product (30 Rock) is jammed together with low-end reality TV. The brands do not stand for anything at all and the advertising relationships are equally worthless. Google will do a better and cheaper job of selling your airtime and content in the very near future.
Some people think the implosion of the traditional video distribution industry can't happen for two key reasons: that the cable companies threatened by the transformation control the IP pipe into the home and that the size of video content will send the cost of broadband soaring to unreasonable levels.
I think both scenarios are unlikely. Take blocking the IP pipe into the home. It's true today in the US that cable companies dominate the IP delivery pipe. They dominate but they are not the sole provider. And while they have great power, there are several checks on that power. To start with, they are selling broadband as a service. Enraging your customer base is not good for business. (well, let's be honest, cable companies have been doing that for years anyway). More importantly, cable companies are regulated monopolies subject to control by the FCC and municipal authorities that grant those monopolies. They do not generally smile upon the strangulation of new industries.
The leaves a second option: surging broadband prices or costly bandwidth caps. History also makes this seem unlikely. Every few years people announce that the internet is about to break. Amazingly, it's still working. People used to think that streaming music was going to do the internet in. Bob Metcalfe, the inventor of the Ethernet, forecast the internet would collapse in 1996. Oops. In fact, despite demand surging from email to web pages with pictures to music and now, finally, video, the internet has not collapsed. Broadband has never been cheaper. Why would 20 years of technological progress stop now?
So, yes, I guess this is a long-winded way of saying I think the end is nigh. You won't seem on the corner of Hollywood and Vine with my sign, but I will be watching with eager anticipation. And that failure will be good for America. Because the happy ending, at least in America, is that every wave of corporate destruction is followed by one of re-birth. Even as GM dies, California is churning the first wave of new auto startups in decades. And after the whole US electronics industry collapsed, Intel, Cisco, and Apple rose from the ashes. Before Hollywood can have a happy ending, it needs a crisis. Every good script writer knows that.
Companies are not people. They're organizations for making money - regardless of the consequences.
Bookmark: http://ping.fm/5iOhM
You can find more of prbrody's bookmarks at
- http://ping.fm/h3wKK
Bookmark: http://ping.fm/5iOhM
You can find more of prbrody's bookmarks at
- http://ping.fm/h3wKK
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
The flood of cheap tablets is starting. This one seems like good deal for the home at $99, I'd let my kids use it.
Bookmark: http://ping.fm/Ragn9
You can find more of prbrody's bookmarks at
- http://ping.fm/wKRue
Bookmark: http://ping.fm/Ragn9
You can find more of prbrody's bookmarks at
- http://ping.fm/wKRue
Monday, October 25, 2010
More total Big Picture awesomeness. 15 investing rules to live by.
Bookmark: http://ping.fm/S2eNk
You can find more of prbrody's bookmarks at
- http://ping.fm/yNvDv
Bookmark: http://ping.fm/S2eNk
You can find more of prbrody's bookmarks at
- http://ping.fm/yNvDv
On The Internet, Nobody Knows You're A TV
There is something ridiculous going on in the IPTV space: the silly differentiation between using the internet on a TV and the internet on your PC. Hulu blocks users who visit their site from "TV" browsers. I, for one, just hooked my PC to my TV and was done with it. There are already about a million people hooking up their PCs to TVs and that number is going to keep growing.
Sure, a Roku is $59, but a net-top is about $150. You can save the difference in monthly fees alone in about a year just from the value being created, and that differentiation is only going to get smaller and smaller. In the meantime, I hope more and more people will start finding work-arounds. It's not hard to pretend to be a browser that you're not on the internet.
And, most importantly, I hope Google will take the gloves off. The company should help users spoof standard PC browsers and get their IPTV and be done with this silliness.
 |
| Time for Google to take the gloves off. Picture creative commons Templeton Photo |
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