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Highest Rated
Sun, Jul 20 at 01:24 PM
Highest Rated
Om Malik, July 14, 65% 63%
Om Malik, July 13, 73% 69%
Om Malik, July 16, 86% 76%
Allan Leinwand, July 17, 74%
Om Malik, July 15, 64%
Most Comments
Sun, Jul 20 at 01:24 PM
Most Comments
Dameon Welch-Abernathy, July 15, 39 40 comments
Om Malik, July 17, 33 comments
Om Malik, July 16, 28 30 comments
Om Malik, July 14, 28 comments
Allan Leinwand, July 17, 26 comments
iPhone Users: Despite Rumors, AT&T Wi-Fi Not Live
Sun, Jul 20 at 01:24 PM
Om Malik, Friday, July 18, 2008 Comments (12)
The launch of the iPhone 3G can be summed up in one word, and it starts with a “c.” Instead I will go with comedy of errors. Activation delays, long lines, online issues, application roll-out issues — it has been a train wreck that makes Brittany Britney Spears’ saga seem like a quaint Victorian-era romance novel. Today is a perfect example.Earlier today, fellow bloggers, big and small, got into a tizzy when someone got hold of a document saying that AT&T Wi-Fi for iPhone users had arrived. Hallelujah, for who doesn’t want free Wi-Fi to connect their iPhones and iTouch players? Unfortunately, everyone got too excited over nothing - the Wi-Fi is still not available, and the “document” was a mistake. Here is an email from one of their spokespeople in response to my question about the veracity of the news:
We have not made any announcement regarding free Wi-Fi and iPhone. The webpage was posted in error and is being removed. Wi-Fi is a real differentiator for AT&T and it is our intention to make it available to as many customers as possible, but we have no announcement at this time.
Funnily enough, this is not the first time we have seen the rumors break out about AT&T Wi-Fi on the iPhone. Then there was a brief release that quickly got abused, thanks to some system flaws. It’s like the boy who cried wolf. Someday the network will be live, and we won’t even care.
ISPs Have Great Ideas for Broadband Rules
Sun, Jul 20 at 01:24 PM
Stacey Higginbotham, Friday, July 18, 2008 Comments (4)
Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t write a more necessary (and sarcastic) article about U.S. ISPs’ efforts to craft a nationwide broadband policy than the one over at DSL Reports. AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and others have signed onto a plan being pushed by nonprofit group Connected Nation to measure broadband penetration that’s aimed at increasing broadband usage. However, as DSL Reports makes clear, the package is hardly something to cheer about.
As alleged by another not-for-profit organization, Public Knowledge, Connected Nation’s mapping abilities are questionable and much of the group’s efforts go toward selling consumers the services of the larger incumbent carriers. Connected Nation’s ties to AT&T (through BellSouth) set off alarms a few years ago, much the way the embrace of its policies by the ISPs do today. These are the same ISPs currently trying out some very unfriendly consumer tactics, such as tiered broadband and traffic blocking, which makes Connected Nation look like the fox guarding the hen house.
Essentially the ISPs want Connected Nation to take public money and create a map of the U.S. that shows which communities have broadband, and which ones don’t. They want this even though they could just as easily ask the ISPs for that data (after all, some of them have given up a lot more when asked) themselves.
The FCC has let the inmates run the asylum and dictate broadband policy for a long time. Perhaps as broadband becomes more necessary to our entertainment and work, consumers will recognize that these issues are not abstract ones, but rules that affect our ability to get streaming HD content, high-quality medical care in rural areas and other such services that have broader repercussions on our daily lives.
Twinkle, Twinkle…Twitter Star
Sun, Jul 20 at 01:24 PM
Om Malik, Friday, July 18, 2008 Comments (10)
Yesterday evening, at a beachside dinner organized by our investors, True Ventures, I sat at a table full of relatively young entrepreneurs (I’m pretty sure I raised the average age by a few years.) Most of us had iPhones — both old and new — and most were Twitter users.
So it should come as no surprise that we all had an opinion about Twitterrfic, an iPhone client for Twitter. To sum up everyone’s thoughts in one word: horrific. Scrolling through messages should come naturally; it doesn’t. And the UI manages to leave you feeling about as satisfied as a cup of noodles warmed with hot tap water.
But we won’t have to use it anymore, for Twinkle by Gogo Apps, previously a jailbreak app, has just hit the iTunes Apps Store. Its UI is remarkably intuitive and easy to use. As John Gruber writes, “It’s an interesting contrast with Twitterrific — even ignoring cosmetic differences, the two apps take significantly different UI approaches.” I think that’s an understatement.
The best aspect of the service is the ability to find a person using Twinkler near you using the LBS feature of the iPhone — though currently it doesn’t seems to be working. This could turn Twinkle-Twitter into a social experience, a simpler and easier version of other complicated LBS-based, friend finder applications.
I like how one can quickly look at all direct messages in a separate window. In fact, there are numerous little things that I find appealing about this app. For instance, it takes just two clicks to start following someone on the feed. Sending private messages is easy and looking up profiles is even easier. What I don’t like: Not having the ability to quickly see replies.
My Rating on this iPhone app: 4 out of 5.
John Taylor, VP of research with the NVCA, said that there’s no need to sound the alarm on the exit ...
Sun, Jul 20 at 01:24 PM
John Taylor, VP of research with the NVCA, said that there’s no need to sound the alarm on the exit environment just yet. He also noted the fact that IPOs are more difficult to complete than they used to be. Taylor tied the inability to take a company public or sell it to “fears of the macro economy” and a market that’s unwilling to bet on early-stage companies. But he expressed confidence that once investors realize that the overall tech sector is strong and resilient, in part because it has global exposure, “the slowdown in the exit market will stop.” Continue Reading
Chris Albrecht, Friday, July 18, 2008 Comments (7)
There’s a scene in the movie “Dumb and Dumber” in which Jim Carrey asks, “Do you want to hear the most annoying sound in the world?” And then he screeches at the top of his lungs. If that movie was made today you could easily substitute Carrey’s screaming for the notification sound Google Chat makes.
You are feverishly working on deadline, concentrating to craft the perfect sent-
Dunk!…
-ence, when that noise cuts through your mind as your-
Dunk!…
mental train goes careening off its rails.
DUNK!DUNK!DUNK!
Arrrgh. Who is it, and what the @*$ do you want?!
Om’s talked about Gmail sucking, but this is a bigger threat to productivity, since at some point it will drive me insane and I’ll take everyone with me.
Does it have to be such an unpleasant, angry, sound? Especially since it repeats the noise until you switch windows and read the damn message? A jackhammer would be less obnoxious. And the only option in the settings menu is to turn the sound off, which really isn’t helpful when someone is trying to urgently reach you.
Why not a few options, Google? I don’t need the sound of puppies making rainbows or bunny rabbits blowing kisses, but there has to be a less harsh noise than the one you dumped into such an important communication tool for the modern worker. Heck, you could even slip in the biddy-biddy sound from 411-GOOG.
DUNK!
With Exits Barred, VCs Keep Investments Flat
Sun, Jul 20 at 01:24 PM
Stacey Higginbotham, Friday, July 18, 2008 Comments (5)
If you believe the venture capitalists on Friday’s conference call about the latest MoneyTree Survey results, which covers venture investing in the second quarter, now is the best time to contact them with your ideas. Just because the exit environment is brutal doesn’t mean VCs won’t continue to put their time and dollars into seed and early-stage deals, two of them said. And so far the data bears that out. But if the exit environment stays grim, early-stage fundings will drop as well.
Venture capitalists invested $7.39 billion in 990 deals in the second quarter of 2008, according to a report from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association based on data provided by Thomson Reuters. That’s slightly less than the first quarter of 2008, when $7.5 billion was invested in 977 deals, and flat compared to the second quarter of 2007, when VCs placed $7.37 billion into 1,033 deals.
Will Mark Kingdon’s Reign Boost Second Life?
Sun, Jul 20 at 01:24 PM
Wagner James Au, Saturday, July 19, 2008 Comments (7)
Back in April, ex-Organic CEO Mark Kingdon took the helm of Linden Lab, replacing its charismatic founder, Philip Rosedale, at a time when the company was already struggling in an increasingly competitive market. While Linden claims to be profitable, its market share has plateaued, with scalability and usability woes keeping the number of monthly active users around 550,000 since last summer.Is Second Life still relevant in this far more dynamic playing field, which now includes Lively, an offering from the Internet’s biggest player? I posed that question to Kingdon a few days ago in an extended conversation at the company’s spacious San Francisco headquarters. Continue Reading
F|R Crib Sheet: 15 Sites to Cut Your Startup Operating Costs
Sun, Jul 20 at 01:24 PM
Carleen Hawn, Saturday, July 19, 2008 Comments (16)
Clever founders always eke the most out of every buck. But economic conditions being what they are, even the best bootstrappers could use a little extra help. By now you’ve probably heard of web sites like GasPriceWatch.com, GasBuddy and MSNAutos, which help consumers find the cheapest fuel prices at gas pumps in their geographic area. Such “cost-optimization” sites are now proliferating across all sorts of verticals directly relevant to your most basic startup operating expenses. We’ve assembled a list of a few we like that can help you shop for everything from health insurance to web hosting to wireless service plans and more.
If you’ve discovered, or possibly even built, additional tools for cutting commodity costs, please add them to our list via the comments section.
Inside the Cloud: 9 Sectors to Watch
Sun, Jul 20 at 01:24 PM
Alistair Croll, Sunday, July 20, 2008 Comments (0)
There’s already a ton of activity taking place in the cloud computing space, so much so that it can be hard to know who to watch. In many cases, it’s too early to pick winners. But there are distinct sectors of the IT industry that are particularly well suited to the on-demand, pay-as-you-go economics of cloud computing.
Here are eight segments — and one company that’s a segment all its own — that we’re tracking closely.
Hosting companies that make the jump: When it comes to reliable managed hosting, Rackspace leads the pack. (Its VMware-based Mosso offering may appeal more to enterprises trying the cloud for the first time.) Clouds like XCalibre’s Flexiscale and Joyent are already there, but don’t have Rackspace’s installed base. Continue Reading
Highest Rated
Fri, Jul 18 at 12:46 PM
Highest Rated
Om Malik, July 14, 67% 65%
Om Malik, July 13, 74% 73%
Om Malik, July 16, 86%
Om Malik, July 15, 67%
Allan Leinwand, July 17, 83%
Most Comments
Fri, Jul 18 at 12:46 PM
Most Comments
Dameon Welch-Abernathy, July 15, 39 comments
Om Malik, July 16, 28 comments
Om Malik, July 14, 28 comments
Om Malik, July 13, 23 26 comments
Om Malik, July 12, 25 comments
The game is still the same, except there were new heroes and new starts. That is the beauty of the game ...
Fri, Jul 18 at 12:46 PM
The game is still the same, except there were new heroes and new starts. That is the beauty of the game I have come to love more dearly than life itself. I think that is the case with my other passion - blogging. Like baseball, the art of blogging remains the same, we just get new players. You see the changes on the Techmeme leaderboard, as new voices emerge, and take their rightful place center stage. We see an emergence of new class of bloggers who are on their way to getting our full attention, playing with some of us old timers (by blogging metrics at least.) Continue Reading
Recent Stories
What Do the All-Star Break & Blogging Have in Common?
Fri, Jul 18 at 12:46 PM
Om Malik, Wednesday, July 16, 2008 Comments (7)
Baseball’s All-Star Break this week proved to be quite special - not because this was the last All-Star game at The Yankee Stadium, the cathedral of baseball and a place where I fell in love with this distant cousin of cricket. No, it was not special because the All-Star game went into the wee-hours of the night and took 15 long innings before the American League took their rightful place in the winners’ circle. No, it was not special because Josh Hamilton put on an awesome display of power and sprayed home-runs during the HR derby.
To me it was special because it was all about young talent, many making their first (and not their last) trip to the All-Star Game. The HR Derby had none of the established hitters vying for the prize - instead it was all young turks. The All Star game was no different - packed with youth, energy and enthusiasm of talents like Justin Morneau, Scott Kazmir, Grady Sizemore and Evan Longoria. David Wright, Dan Haren, Dustin Pedroia, and Joe Mauer. This was a year where the guard changed.
These Ads Are Just About Everywhere
Fri, Jul 18 at 12:46 PM
Om Malik, Thursday, July 17, 2008 Comments (14)
Earlier this week, Delta Airlines announced plans that will turn its boarding passes into advertising opportunities, or billboards, hawking destination-specific businesses and products. An Omaha-based startup, Sojern, is behind this advertising offer, which is going to be adopted by four airlines in addition to Delta: American, Continental, United and US Airways. Given that airlines are in such a desperate position, mostly because of their incompetency, they are ready to try anything, however strange it might seem.
Now there is word that IDT Corp., a calling-card company, is going to start using advertising messages on its pre-paid calling cards. Using technology from in-call advertising startup VoodooVox, IDT will hawk marketing and advertising messages that are matched to a caller’s demographic profile. For instance, if someone was calling the Dominican Republic, an ad for an airline would be piped in while the caller is waiting for his call to connect. IDT sells about 17.5 million pre-paid calling cards every month.
Given the razor-thin margins in the long-distance business, I am not surprised IDT is going down this path, but I wonder if they will use some of the fat CPMs from advertising to offer cheaper or near-free long-distance calls. Now that would be cool, and perhaps something to which an audience — who might get annoyed by ads intruding their calls — would be somewhat receptive.
These two examples make me ask the question: Are we getting so saturated with ads that they will just become meaningless and lose their entire effectiveness?
Memo to Jerry, Steve and Carl: Just Do It!
Fri, Jul 18 at 12:46 PM
Stacey Higginbotham, Thursday, July 17, 2008 Comments (1)
Summer is generally a slower time for news and this summer is no exception. But the kind folks at Microsoft, Yahoo and Carl Icahn’s investment firm are charitably offering up a form of entertainment with their ongoing Let’s Make a Deal saga.
The latest installment is a letter to shareholders from Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang that accuses Microsoft of flip-flopping, creating confusion and generally not wanting to make a deal. The letter also also reiterates Yahoo’s desire to sell the entire company at $33 per share — or if that’s not interesting, just the search assets.
Let me tell you, Yahoo, playing hard to get is smart, but this letter is no way to get the guy of your dreams. In fact, rumor has it Microsoft is seeing AOL now, and everyone knows AOL hasn’t always made the best choice in relationships.
This stuff may play well in Silicon Valley, but outside of it the world is not watching. While Kara Swisher dutifully calls her sources and provides us with the ins and outs of the wheeling and dealing, the audience outside the tech world is yawning. This started back in February (2007 if you believe the original offer from Microsoft). Let’s finish this, so the world can really focus on the banking crisis or high gas prices.
.
Comcast on the Defensive
Fri, Jul 18 at 12:46 PM
Stacey Higginbotham, Thursday, July 17, 2008 Comments (0)
Two weeks before the Federal Communication Commission meets to decide whether or not to issue an enforcement order against Comcast for throttling peer-to-peer traffic, not-for-profit group Free Press has accused the ISP of throttling P2P traffic not only when the network is congested, but whenever that traffic reaches a predefined level. Sort of like a golf club that allows a certain number of women in to keep the activists at bay, but no one beyond that number, even if the links are empty.
Free Press also said Comcast’s most recent network upgrades were a sham, with the cable company upgrading modems, but nothing in the core network. The interest group filed its statements with the FCC in response to filings Comcast made defending itself against the enforcement action. As Comcast spokeswoman Sena Fitzmaurice noted to me, the company has consistently admitted that it “manages traffic” (although it denies blocking it altogether). She also said that the ISP has a threshold beyond which it manages P2P traffic, but that 90 percent of the P2P traffic is unaffected by that management. Continue Reading
Elemental Technologies, a startup focused on faster transcoding, has raised $7.1 million from General Catalyst Partners and Voyager Capital. The company’s software uses the graphics processor rather than the CPU inside a computer to handle the work of ripping a DVD or video file to another format. It’s one of several startups using Nvidia’s GPUs for tasks once allocated to the CPU, and bolstering the idea that GPUs might be better suited than the CPU to some tasks, such as scientific computing or video transcoding. To read more check out our coverage on NewTeeVee.AMD Has Gone From Scrappy to Sad
Fri, Jul 18 at 12:46 PM
Stacey Higginbotham, Thursday, July 17, 2008 Comments (0)
Confession: Back when AMD was pitching its Opteron chipset, I convinced my husband to buy shares in the company on the belief that its plans to build a backwards compatible 64-bit processor was so obviously better than Intel’s efforts with Itanium that the market would eventually see it. The market did, and AMD shares went up a bit, but we soon sold them after my company changed its policy regarding stock ownership.I say this so you guys know that I once believed in AMD. I live in Austin, where the company at one time employed more workers than in its Sunnyvale headquarters. Where Hector Ruiz, who stepped down today from the president and CEO position, lives. But I look at the sad wreck that was once a scrappy upstart irritating Intel and I don’t know what to say. I can start with the facts. Continue Reading
Why Silicon Valley Should Be Worried
Fri, Jul 18 at 12:46 PM
Om Malik, Thursday, July 17, 2008 Comments (15)
The news coming out of advertising-focused companies is not good. And that means Silicon Valley is in for a long-overdue reality check, one that should worry one and all.
Most Comments
Wed, Jul 16 at 12:43 PM
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Om Malik, July 10, 46 48 comments
Om Malik, July 14, 26 comments
Om Malik, July 12, 24 comments
Om Malik, July 13, 23 comments
Om Malik, July 9, 20 comments
Real World of Warcraft: Is Offline Part of the Plan?
Wed, Jul 16 at 12:43 PM
Alistair Croll, Monday, July 14, 2008 Comments (6)
Dense games are fun games. Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) game developers give solo players things to do, but for a game to really succeed players need people to play with. If player density isn’t high enough, you have to condense things, as once-great FPS/MMO Planetside did earlier this year.
Blizzard’s World of Warcraft is a juggernaut with 10 million players scattered across hundreds of servers — 226 copies of Azeroth in the U.S. alone — and a relatively low churn rate. Those players make for a good game few others can match: Hang out in the online city of Shattrath, or at the mouth of an instance, and you’ll soon find others with whom to raid.
Could Blizzard be looking to move all that action into the real world?
How iPhone Could Resurrect Wireless Chip Makers
Wed, Jul 16 at 12:43 PM
Stacey Higginbotham, Monday, July 14, 2008 Comments (0)
The iPhones have been unboxedandtorn down, so now it’s the Wall Street watchers’ turn to tally up who won and who lost among the companies that provide chips for the envy-inducing device. The big winner is Infineon with four chips, including GPS and 3G radio. Little-known chip firm TriQuint also won, with three power amplifiers inside the phone. Wi-Fi was once again provided by Marvell, but Broadcom scored low, with only a touchscreen controller and no GPS (which we had been expecting).Most impressive was that the phone contains 19 high-value chips. For silicon vendors the iPhone represents an opportunity to push high-margin chips reserved for high-end smartphones into the average cell phone. Readers of this blog may take a BlackBerry or Nokia N95 for granted, but middle America or even Europe doesn’t always see the point. But if housewives and teens clamor for iPhones, chip makers will cheer.
That’s because the iPhone, in addition to making wireless broadband consumption more accessible to people, will drive smartphone adoption. And smartphones can contain up to six times the amount of silicon found in an entry-level phone. Despite TI not having a large presence in the iPhone, Bill Krenik, CTO of Texas Instruments’ wireless division (the second-largest wireless chip company behind Qualcomm), says the adoption of the iPhone is a good thing for chip makers everywhere.
The iPhone Line Book Club
Wed, Jul 16 at 12:43 PM
Craig Rubens, Tuesday, July 15, 2008 Comments (7)
While there are plenty of iPhone line-standers poking at a variety of digital devices to pass the hours, a number of iWaiters are working on their summer reading lists with some books. You remember books, right? Square-ish things made of dead trees with words (often written by dead people) in them?
Steve Jobs doesn’t seem to have much faith in books. He told the NYTimes earlier this year: “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”
Looking at the lines forming in front of Apple stores everywhere, it seems many of Jobs’s own customers are still bibliophiles. A quick poll of the Monday lunch-hour line at Apple’s flagship San Francisco store yielded a diversity of titles:
“The Pillars of the Earth” - Ken Follet
“You Can’t Win” - Jack Black
“Ulysses” - James Joyce
“The Conquest of Bread” - Peter Kropotkin
“Richistan: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich” - Robert Frank
“Snow Blind” - Robert Sabbag
“Dérive à Partir de Marx et Freud” - J. F. Lyotard
One booking-toting iPhone customer told me: “Books might be dead, but reading isn’t.”
What do you think? What reading material did you bring to the iPhone line?
Sprint Bets Big on Super-fast Broadband
Wed, Jul 16 at 12:43 PM
Stacey Higginbotham, Tuesday, July 15, 2008 Comments (6)
On the Internet, you can never be too fast or carry too much data, which is why Sprint is crowing about its plan to convert its core network to deliver data at 40 Gbps using the 40 Gigabit Ethernet technologies. The carrier will use Cisco and Ciena gear to deliver 40 Gig E Gbps over its existing fiber network worldwide. To help put the speeds in context, a 40 Gig E backbone will be able to carry 3.2 terabits of data per second. That’s a lot of cloud services or HD video via iTunes, but Internet consumers are demanding it. And with the speed which new services, including video and 3G wireless, are growing, we need the speed.
Sprint has long been eager to experiment with new technologies, building out the first fiber network back in the 80s and 90s. In 1999 –well before convergence was all the rage — it launched a converged voice and data service built on a packet-based network dubbed “ION.” However, those experiments have not always translated directly into dollars. Sprint spent more than $2 billion on ION before killing it three years after its launch.
More recently, Sprint has bet on WiMAX, but its beleaguered Xohm network has been plagued by delays. Sprint has had to turn to rival Clearwire in order to bring the 4G service nationwide. So I applaud Sprint for investing in 40 GigE faster broadband and only hope it can find some return.
(We will update the story after talking to Cisco and Sprint.)
Inside The Twitter-Summize Deal
Wed, Jul 16 at 12:43 PM
Om Malik, Tuesday, July 15, 2008 Comments (7)
Twitter has confirmed that it is buying Summize and rolling it into the San Francisco-based company’s main offering. After the rumors of the deal were reported by Josh Chandler last week, I was able to confirm that the deal was done and would be announced on time. So right on time, the two companies made a joint announcement.
As indicated in the post, I promised to get some more financial details on the acquisition. Peter Kafka pegs the price at $15 million in stock and cash, though I am much more confident on the information from my sources, who say Twitter gave away north of 10 percent of the company to acquire Summize. My sources peg Twitter’s value at around $80 million. If you remember, I had reported about $15 million in new funding earlier this summer. As part of the deal, Summize employees are going to join Twitter, though CEO Jay Virdy is going to leave and do something else.
We’re excited to announce that Twitter has acquired Summize—an extraordinary search tool and an amazing group of engineers. All five Summize engineers will move to San Francisco, CA and take jobs at Twitter, Inc. This is an important step forward in the evolution of Twitter as a service and as a company.
As I outlined in my posts last Monday and yesterday, I think it is a super-smart move by Twitter, and if the company plays its cards right, it’s going to pay dividends in the long run. What they have given away is chump change compared to the potential. As I wrote last week: Continue Reading
In Technology Era, Rogue IT Threatens Governments
Wed, Jul 16 at 12:43 PM
Stacey Higginbotham, Tuesday, July 15, 2008 Comments (1)
Today an employee of the San Francisco Department of Technology awaits his arraignment while information technology workers try valiantly to gain access to the new network of computers that keep the city humming.
Terry Childs, a disgruntled city employee gave himself sole access to the city’s new fiber wide area network, and wouldn’t divulge his password to police even after being threatened with arrest. City officials and other IT administrators are still locked out, and are worried that Childs ordered the destruction of documents on the network as detailed in the San Francisco Chronicle web site.
Childs is being charged with a variety of felonies for tampering with the network, but until he’s appeased or people figure out a way in, the city is stymied. This situation reminds me of the one that developed between Robotics Parking and the city of Hoboken, N.J. in 2006. The city’s parking authority built a robotic parking garage, but when the provider increased the annual license fees for the software operating the robotic garage by 20 percent, the city refused to pay.
So the garage stopped working, trapping the cars of whomever happened to be parked there that day. The cars were eventually returned, but a judge ruled that Hoboken either had to pay the fee or get a new company and software in order to operate the garage.
The point? The city’s network problem is a nice reminder of how the knowledge of a few key people has the potential to grind a city’s (or any entities’) operations to a halt if not properly managed. And as technology influences more and more aspects of municipal life, government officials might find themselves more often at the mercy of technology purveyors.
How Realistic Is BT’s Fiber Broadband Plan?
Wed, Jul 16 at 12:43 PM
Om Malik, Tuesday, July 15, 2008 Comments (7)
Unless you’re using Enron math, BT’s new plan to connect 10 million homes — roughly 40 percent of the United Kingdom — with fiber networks at a cost of £1.5 billion doesn’t quite add up. At today’s conversion rate, that’s about $3 billion — or $300 to wire up each of these proposed 10 million homes.
BT hopes this will help it stave off competition from rivals who have started to use their new backbones and the latest technology to eat into its broadband business. Cable operator Virgin, for example, plans to use DOCSIS 3.0 to compete with BT. The incumbent has been reticent about upscaling its infrastructure over concerns that it would spend billions and then be forced to share with upstarts, the way it does now. By comparison, the new plan is closely tied to regulatory concessions and includes some sort of investment protection from Ofcom, the British regulator.
The Guardian writes:
Under the current regulatory regime, BT must allow rival service providers to use its network on the same terms as its own retail arm. There would be a huge outcry if that “equivalence” was lost, following the battles between BT, its rivals and the regulators at the start of this decade when Broadband Britain was just an ambition.
Nevertheless, BT’s announcement is full of more holes than a wheel of Swiss cheese. Lets look at the deal from a distance: 10 million homes for $3 billion. In comparison, Verizon is spending about $22 billion to fiber up some 18 million homes. That’s a cost improvement of 9x, which means BT’s plan just doesn’t make sense, even if you take into account that somehow it will get massive sops from Chinese equipment maker Huawei. Continue Reading
Is There Money in Voice APIs?
Wed, Jul 16 at 12:43 PM
Dameon Welch-Abernathy, Tuesday, July 15, 2008 Comments (10)
The promise of APIs is that they make it easy to integrate different services — even those provided by different vendors — into a single application. But is simply providing an API to your telephony infrastructure enough to prompt the world to beat a path to your door? Don’t count on it.
Highest Rated
Mon, Jul 14 at 05:58 AM
Highest Rated
Om Malik, July 10, 53%
Om Malik, July 7, 53%
Om Malik, July 7, 58%
Stacey Higginbotham, July 8, 56%
Stacey Higginbotham, July 8, 58%
Is Facebook Down?
Mon, Jul 14 at 05:58 AM
Om Malik, Friday, July 11, 2008 Comments (9)
The best thing that’s happened to Facebook: Apple’s MobileMe outage, the iPhone launch and iPhone activation problems across the board. Why? Because no one seems to be reporting on them being out for most of the morning. I just tried to get in; no luck. There is no update on their blog, either. I got a few responses to my question about Facebook’s status on Twitter, so this is not just a problem for me. Are you having Facebook problems as well?Update: A Facebook spokeswoman emailed us back. “We did experience some issues with the site for a short time this morning, but it was never completely down. It was stabilized as of 10:10 a.m.” They are still investigating the root cause.
OMG, Women Buy Electronics!
Mon, Jul 14 at 05:58 AM
Stacey Higginbotham, Friday, July 11, 2008 Comments (6) (5)
I’m always insulted by the assumption that woman who care about the features (other than color) on their mobile phones or how much memory their hard drives have are geeks. Maybe they simply recognize — much the same way as those with a Y chromosome — that an electronic device has a job to do, and then educate themselves about what a device needs in order to do that job. Of course if those women are also writing code or modding their PC for fun, then I’m going to offer them membership to the geekerati.
But marketers and the media still can’t buy into the idea of women as intelligent consumers of electronics unless they’re buying for a kitchen or utility room. The latest culprit is the Wall Street Journal, which ran a story this week with the title “The New Gadget Geeks.” With an air of discovery, it points out that women are likely to buy the iPhone, and trots out tired stats that prove women buy household electronics.
Please. Women hold jobs, listen to music, watch TV, build web pages and talk on the phone. It’s insulting to women to say they can’t recognize features that are important to them in a gadget, and diminishes geek credibility to allow women who can do little more than distinguish between an MP3 player and mobile phone into the nerdette club. Besides, everyone knows it’s your love of science fiction that makes you a true geek, right?
Early YouTube Engineer Tells All
Mon, Jul 14 at 05:58 AM
Liz Gannes, Friday, July 11, 2008 Comments (12)
When we recently heard about the history of YouTube’s growth strategy from CEO Chad Hurley’s point of view, he described it as “hanging onto a rocket.” But an engineer’s take is always going to be a bit less rose-colored and a bit more about the terrifying situations you brained your way out of. So we were particularly interested to tune in to a talk at YouTube’s developer conference Thursday by Cuong Do, an early software engineer who’s now manager of the site’s Core Product Engineering group.
Tour the Homes of the Future (Jet Packs Not Included)
Mon, Jul 14 at 05:58 AM
Chris Albrecht, Friday, July 11, 2008 Comments (5)
When I told my colleague Stacey that I was going on a tour of Netgear’s home of the future setup, she asked if I would grab her a jet pack. Much to her (and my) disappointment neither Netgear nor HP’s “house of tomorrow”-type setups included personal flying transportation. What they did offer, however, was a glimpse into the future of home entertainment.
Brian Burch, HP’s director of marketing for connected entertainment, took me on a tour of the HP Smart Home, an actual 2,000-square-foot, fully functional house built on the company’s HQ. It’s pretty cool, and packed with gadgets like the MediaSmart TV and Connect, control display for home functions and a teched-out kid’s room that would bring a smile to even the most angst-ridden teenager. Here’s a video walk-through of the house (or as I called it “Cribs: HP”).
F|R: The 9 Signs of a One-hit Wonder
Mon, Jul 14 at 05:58 AM
Larry Chiang, Saturday, July 12, 2008 Comments (4)
Many entrepreneurs fear being a flash-in-the-pan success — achieving an exit once, but never again. (Some might call this being lucky rather than good.) But while the allure of success inspires us to do great things, achieving it can have an ugly aftereffect: complacency. Vigilance, my friends, is the only path to serial-founder bliss. Here, in descending order, I offer nine leading indicators that you’re headed for one-hit wonderdom.
9. You went and got all tricked out.
I mean with your next business, not your fashion sense. But remember how you got your first hit — with a kindergarten-level UI that any neophyte could comprehend. Sure your friends called you Forrest Gump and sneered that you were lucky; that’s their problem. Trying to prove to your friends that you’re really, truly smart isn’t good business. Delivering a simple, usable concept that solves problems and makes money is. Continue Reading
Is Gphone For Real? Or Not?
Mon, Jul 14 at 05:58 AM
Om Malik, Saturday, July 12, 2008 Comments (17)
Updated, see last paragraph: For a long time there were quite a few rumors about Google making a Gphone, its own hardware device. In the end it came out with Android, a software platform that it is promoting in partnership with 50 odd companies. The platform is still under development, so to speak, as Mountain View-based search company works with partners to iron out the kinks. As we reported earlier, it has hit some speed bumps.
Android, however, shifted attention away from the possibility of Google making its own hardware. Looks like that plan to make Google-branded phone hasn’t been dropped entirely, according to The Hollywood Reporter. One of their reporters is attending Allen & Company’s Sun Valley Retreat for media barons and he attended an impromptu press conference held by Google co-founders Larry Page & Sergey Brin along with CEO Eric Schmidt. Continue Reading
Israel 2008: One Conference, Few Friends, Many Startups & Some Observations
Mon, Jul 14 at 05:58 AM
Om Malik, Sunday, July 13, 2008 Comments (1)
Just like that it has been six months since I had a life changing experience, and perhaps that is why I was comfortable flying out to Tel-Aviv to attend Yaron Orenstein’s TWS 2008 conference, meet with tons of start-up and get together with friends. The journey, not the visit to Israel, turned out to be quite arduous, mostly because of the modern air industry’s inability to observe punctuality and show a degree of respect for their customers. (Of course, if you follow my Twitter feed, then you are up on the news.)
Since coming home, I have been struggling with a jet-lag and some other issues that prevented me from writing my recap of the Israel 2008 trip. For past two weeks I struggled with the urge to smoke - for heat triggered some memories of sitting on sidewalk cafes, drinking espressos and smoking with friends, watching life just take a lazy stroll. Fighting to stay the course and not smoke took all my energies - so now you know the reason for my sporadic appearances on the blog, and not replying to your emails.Perhaps that is why the foggy weekend was a welcome opportunity to write about my visit. (The photo gallery of the trip is embedded at the bottom of the post.)
New iPhone Will Jumpstart Demand for Wireless Broadband
Mon, Jul 14 at 05:58 AM
Om Malik, Sunday, July 13, 2008 Comments (6)
The introduction of the new iPhone 3G is going to jump start the 3G wireless broadband and is going to spawn a new ecosystem, much like how rise of wired broadband gave us Napster, Skype & YouTube. From that perspective, July 11 will go down as a red letter day for 3G wireless. Continue Reading the story.
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Inside the Cloud: 9 Sectors to Watch
Alistair Croll, Sunday, July 20, 2008 Comments (0)
There’s already a ton of activity taking place in the cloud computing space, so much so that it can be hard to know who to watch. In many cases, it’s too early to pick winners. But there are distinct sectors of the IT industry that are particularly well suited to the on-demand, pay-as-you-go economics of cloud computing.Here are eight segments — and one company that’s a segment all its own — that we’re tracking closely.
Hosting companies that make the jump: When it comes to reliable managed hosting, Rackspace leads the pack. (Its VMware-based Mosso offering may appeal more to enterprises trying the cloud for the first time.) Clouds like XCalibre’s Flexiscale and Joyent are already there, but don’t have Rackspace’s installed base. Continue Reading
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Carleen Hawn, Saturday, July 19, 2008 Comments (16)
[image: costcut.gif?w=241&h=300] Clever founders always eke the most out of every buck. But economic conditions being what they are, even the best bootstrappers could use a little extra help.By now you’ve probably heard of web sites like GasPriceWatch.com, GasBuddy and MSNAutos, which help consumers find the cheapest fuel prices at gas pumps in their geographic area. Such “cost-optimization” sites are now proliferating across all sorts of verticals directly relevant to your most basic startup operating expenses. We’ve assembled a list of a few we like that can help you shop for everything from health insurance to web hosting to wireless service plans and more.
If you’ve discovered, or possibly even built, additional tools for cutting commodity costs, please add them to our list via the comments section. Continue Reading
Will Mark Kingdon’s Reign Boost Second Life?
Wagner James Au, Saturday, July 19, 2008 Comments (7)
[image: mark-kingdon-and-m-linden.jpg?w=300&h=173]Back in April, ex-Organic CEO Mark Kingdon took the helm of Linden Lab, replacing its charismatic founder, Philip Rosedale, at a time when the company was already struggling in an increasingly competitive market. While Linden claims to be profitable, its market share has plateaued, with scalability and usability woes keeping the number of monthly active users around 550,000 since last summer.Is Second Life still relevant in this far more dynamic playing field, which now includes Lively, an offering from the Internet’s biggest player? I posed that question to Kingdon a few days ago in an extended conversation at the company’s spacious San Francisco headquarters. Continue Reading
With Exits Barred, VCs Keep Investments Flat
Stacey Higginbotham, Friday, July 18, 2008 Comments (5)
If you believe the venture capitalists on Friday’s conference call about the latest MoneyTree Survey results, which covers venture investing in the second quarter, now is the best time to contact them with your ideas. Just because the exit environment is brutal doesn’t mean VCs won’t continue to put their time and dollars into seed and early-stage deals, two of them said. And so far the data bears that out. But if the exit environment stays grim, early-stage fundings will drop as well.Venture capitalists invested $7.39 billion in 990 deals in the second quarter of 2008, according to a report from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association based on data provided by Thomson Reuters. That’s slightly less than the first quarter of 2008, when $7.5 billion was invested in 977 deals, and flat compared to the second quarter of 2007, when VCs placed $7.37 billion into 1,033 deals.
John Taylor, VP of research with the NVCA, said that there’s no need to sound the alarm on the exit environment just yet. He also noted the fact that IPOs are more difficult to complete than they used to be. Taylor tied the inability to take a company public or sell it to “fears of the macro economy” and a market that’s unwilling to bet on early-stage companies. But he expressed confidence that once investors realize that the overall tech sector is strong and resilient, in part because it has global exposure, “the slowdown in the exit market will stop.” Continue Reading
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