Netizen

Thursday, September 02, 2010

Apple, Google, Music

Reuters: Apple And Google To Clash In Music Space By Christmas: The music industry hopes to benefit from a battle for control of the mobile phone and computer desktop between Apple and Google as both technology giants go head-to-head in a wide range of media and consumer technology areas including online TV and movies, mobile phones, software and even advertising. ...... iTunes Music Store, which accounts for 70 percent of all U.S. digital music sales..... Sales of Android-based phones have rocketed in recent months to 200,000 a day ..... Music executives have long believed having other competing powerful digital music retailers could help expand the market...... Labels have been hoping that the introduction of new cloud-based music services from Apple and Google would be a major boost for winning over consumers who want to be able to access their music libraries, discover new songs and make impulse purchases wherever they have Internet access.

Competition is a good thing. What is remarkable about the Google-Apple rivalry is the two are similar sized companies that are very loved by very many people, and by now they are competing in so many different ares. That is a good thing.

The iPhone met Android. Now I guess it is iTunes' turn to see some competition. What would Google's music service be like? All the music you can consume for a basic monthly fee is my first guess, music that you can transport from device to device using your Google account.

Android phones are doing very well and are about to take over the iPhone in terms of very many numbers. They are selling as many phone as the iPhone by now. This diversity is a good thing.

The real clincher would be if these guys did to movies what they are doing to music. The movie business is so stuck. It's not even funny. It asks to be unhinged.

A New Floor Of 1,000 Page Hits

Last month my tech blog - Netizen - suffered because I was primarily focused on blogging for Reshma 2010 at my Barackface blog. (Reshma Saujani) I have only 20 posts at this blog in August as compared to almost 60 each for the two months before that. On the other hand I have 110 posts at my Barackface blog for August. That might be my best month at any blog ever. In a way I feel very good about that output. On the other hand I consider myself someone wanting to make a full time income as a blogger while blogging not being my primary thing to do.

I hate it when people call me a writer or a journalist. As far as my political blogs go - I got two - my work can more appropriately be described as digital activism. The work is political. You are trying to impact, you are trying to contribute. You are trying to move and shake things.

My best day at this blog has been 3,000 page hits. By now I think a floor of 1,000 page hits for a day is no big deal. It can be done. I worked extra hard yesterday and already things are picking up.

I want the floor at this blog to be 3,000 page hits. I want the ceiling to become the new floor. A few weeks of work might bring that about.

1,000 is a very good number for a day. That is about 10% of what Fred Wilson's blog does.

What Just Happened? 3,000 Page Hits

News: September 2

ReadWriteWeb: Ping: First Look At The iTunes Social Network
Boxee: How Boxee Sees The Apple TV
CNet: Twitter Plans To Record All Links Clicked
VentureBeat: Reddit ‘Excited’ About Chance To Eat Digg’s Lunch
SilverLight: The Future Of Silverlight
TechCrunch: Android Users Can Now Check In To Foursquare By Using Their Voice
ArsTechnica: Plan For Nationwide Free Wireless Broadband Finally Shot Down:For four years the Federal Communications Commission tossed the idea around like a beach ball: a coast-to-coast free wireless service across the low end of the 2GHz "AWS-3" band. The service would pay for itself via advertisements and by selling commercial access to various portions of the license area. The company that proposed the plan, M2Z Networks, would commit to building out the project in a decade, and pay five percent of its annual revenue to the United States Treasury..... the AWS-3 spectrum will continue to lie fallow providing no economic value to American consumers." .... the wireless industry hated the proposal, and is happy about the FCC's announcement.
Business Insider: Yelp's First Daily Deal In San Francisco Gives Groupon A Beating
Wired: Google Testing Full-Featured Google Apps
Business Insider: Early Twitter Employee Alex Payne's Online Bank Startup, BankSimple, Raises A Big Round
WSJ Digits: Twitter Japan Tweeting All the Way to the Bank

CNN: Natalie Portman Generates Oscar Buzz For Racy Role

Washington Post: Departing Obama Adviser Urges More Stimulus
MercuryNews.com: Boxer, Fiorina Clash In Hard-Hitting Debate
Bloomberg: Burger King Agrees To $4 Billion Bid From 3G Capital
Los Angeles Times: Bernanke Says Fed Had To Let Lehman Fail

Aliza Sherman Takes Mike Arrington To Task

When a blogger links to one of my blog posts, I get a Google Alert in my inbox. This morning I have an alert for Aliza Sherman.

Aliza Sherman: Too Few Women In Tech? We Aren't Blaming Men: I helped pioneer the Web for women back in the early to mid-90s and founded the first woman-owned Internet company - Cybergrrl, Inc. - and the first organization to help women gain a foothold in the budding Internet and new media industries - Webgrrls International...... I'm a doer. I'm an instigator. I'm an innovator. I'm a leader. I create things, build things, write things. Make things happen...... we are STILL having the EXACT SAME CONVERSATIONS today as we were in 1995 ....... . In 2005, I was selected by NEWSWEEK Magazine as one of the Top 50 People Who Matter Most on the Internet ..... it is still so damn hard for women to get bank loans and venture capital ..... unless you are male and can then be considered a "gray hair" which is actually a great position to be in because regardless of your credentials, your gray hair demonstrates wisdom and seasoning. For women, gray hair signifies old, haggard, sloppy, too lazy to dye your hair, too feminazi to care about hair dye, you name it ....... Male venture capitalists tend to fund male-helmed companies. I've been told by many VC's that they funded a young man because "he reminded me of me when I was his age." ....... " "women own 50% or more of some 10.4 million businesses, about 41% of all privately held companies in the U.S." but only 3% to 5% of those companies receive venture capital funding" ....... You are part of the problem, Michael Arrington ... Not many of you have taken positive actions to make positive changes in the system to create more opportunity for ANYONE who is not white and male. ..... You just don't know how to find them, how to approach them, and how to remove the barriers for their entry even once they receive an invitation from you. You have NO IDEA..... Women get such a paltry number of venture dollars, it isn't even criminal, it is insane how little venture capital we get. And the media is dying to write about women? Open any business magazine, any tech magazine, and count the number of stories about women versus men. ....... You are right, Michael Arrington. You cannot speak intelligently on this matter. But you can help those of us who can and those of us who have ideas or projects that can change the fundamental landscape ....... Oh and while you’re at it please work on race, age, and other biases in TechCrunch and your other enterprises

When Mike Arrington says stop blaming men, this guy is assuming he speaks for men. Worse, he is assuming he is the leader of men. I am a man. Mike Arrington does not speak for me. He is not my leader. He most certainly does not speak for me on gender issues. This guy is out and out a sexist.

Complaining about sexism is not whining. I actually feel not enough women complain enough. Because if they did, things would be better for the next generation of women.

Some define positivity as not bringing up sexism as a topic of conversation. Be thankful for what you already have. Why bother bringing about knee jerk defensive reactions among men? Let things be. Focus on the good things. Smell the roses.

If he wants to help make progress on gender, the first thing Mike Arrington needs to do is stop acting defensive.

Women In Tech: The Debate Rages On
Gender Talks
FoodSpotting Is The Next FourSquare
Mike Arrington Is A Sexist Pig: Say PeeeeG!

Wednesday, September 01, 2010

The Internet Of Things

Top 10 YouTube Videos About Internet of Things

Google Also Answered My Blog Search Prayer

Now I would really, really like to sit on the Board of Google.

My Gmail Prayers Heard: Multiple Inboxes
A Ridiculously Good Blog Search Engine
Google Does Not Need Social Envy

This is still not the blog search engine I asked for, but it is a great start.

There is an information angle to search, and there Google can carve out an easy lead. Google does not need to "get" social. Actually my argument has been that it is not possible for the same company to be extremely good at information and also be extremely good at social. You can either be a chimpanzee or an orangutan. You can't be both. Sorry. It is a DNA thing. Google should stick to what it is good at, and keep blazing ahead with Android and the Chrome OS. Those two are paradigm shift promises.

I never really "got" the iPod, but I can't wait for the Chrome OS netbook. (The iPad Is No Laptop Killer)

ReadWriteWeb: Google Launches Blog Finder For Any Topic: This has the potential to be a wildly useful service. How many of you have had professional or personal reasons to seek a list of the top blogs on a new topic?.... then a new option will appear in the sidebar: search for posts or blog home pages related to your query......pages and pages of clearly topical sources ...... The more closely tied the title of the blog is to your search query, the higher the blog shows up in search results. That's not the best indicator of quality or authority...... Add some ranking, some OPML export, and then we're really talking.

Email Finally Emerges as a Platform: 3 Must-Have Plug-ins & What They Mean
Is A More Insidious Industry-Written Net Neutrality Proposal On The Way?
Crowdsourcing National Challenges With the New Challenge.gov
The Rise of the Anti-Facebooks
Top 10 YouTube Videos About Internet of Things
Orkut Now Encouraging Users to Project Different Personas to Different People

Facebook IPO Promise And The Brain Gain That Brings

You can always expect Mike Arrington to write a snarky little blog post like this one.

TechCrunch: Google Making Extraordinary Counteroffers To Stop Flow Of Employees To Facebook: Out of control growth in users and revenue and a nearly certain IPO run in the near future. That’s when employee growth expands at the greatest rate for a company as it grows from hundreds to thousands and then tens of thousands of employees..... Facebook is quietly telling people, never in writing, that there’s no reason their stock won’t hit $100 billion in total valuation over the next couple of years. No guarantees, yadda yadda, but hey if you get 1/10 of 1%, that’s $100 million in stock. Now it’s a party

I think Facebook is waiting for the recession to truly be over before it goes for an IPO. Otherwise it is ready. It has been ready for an IPO for a while.

The IPO gold rush can be heady stuff. There is at least one obvious, big billionaire waiting in the wings, one they made a movie about. But Facebook is big enough that there will be a whole new crowd of super rich people.

And to think I once proposed a rapid fire Twitter IPO to end the recession. (Twitter Should Go For A Netscape-Like IPO)

Facebook Doing Location Is Like Google Doing Social, Almost

TechCrunch

Google Making Extraordinary Counteroffers To Stop Flow Of Employees To Facebook
Gmail’s Permanent Failure: Only Humans Can Build Software For Humans
Reddit Cofounder Alexis Ohanian To Join Y Combinator
Apple Announces The New iPod Touch: Dual Cameras, Retina Screen

Dead Web?

I have been reading this phrase for a while now, the web is dead. I have not bothered to click so far. That phrase makes no sense. The web will never be dead, like never, never, never. But the phrase seems to be making the rounds just like the women in tech meme, and I just came across a post by Al Wenger on the topic off my blogroll. I decided to click on it to see what all the fuss was about.

Al Wenger: Another Take on the Web Is Dead: Limits to Decentralization: Much has been made of the potential shift of attention from the totally open web to more proprietary platforms on mobile devices...... Almost all the knowledge that is on Wikipedia also exists on the web at large distributed across millions of sites.....Small merchants could set up their own web sites rather easily these days and sell directly. So what is it that Amazon adds?

The iPhone revolution has create new space, and that news space has added to the ecosystem of information consumption, but that new space is nowhere even remotely close to taking over the old, wide web. China has not overtaken America. Chill, people.

Amazon and Wikipedia are not examples of a closed web. They are two flagships instead that the open web boasts of.

iPhone apps are fine but so is table tennis as a game. Does not beat soccer, though. (World Cup: Spain Deserved To Win)

Marc Andreessen: Good Ambition, Bad Ambition
Ben Horowitz: The Right Kind Of Ambition

Brad Burnham: Internet Architecture And Innovation: the architecture of the internet is changing - that the economic interests of the internet access providers are not the same as the interests of the applications developers or end users, that there is not enough competition in the local loop to provide market discipline, so without intervention, innovation on the Internet will suffer. .... protecting the original design principles of the Internet is the most efficient regulatory regime

Mark Cuban Says Put Your Cash Under The Mattress

This has got to be one of the best Mark Cuban blog posts I ever came across. For a risk taking maven to put together such sane advice, we must really be going through some tough times as a people.

Mark Cuban: The Best Investment Advice You Will Ever Get

I Share Mark Cuban's Passion On The FCC Broadband Plan
Free Is The Future: Picking A Fight With Mark Cuban

Here's my summary of his three points.

Credit cards are no good. Pay them off.
When in doubt, stick with the cash, don't invest.
Spending 15% less is a better return than any on the stock market.

Women In Tech: The Debate Rages On

This women in tech debate has really taken off, and I am glad.

Here's the guy who introduced me to Twitter, JP Rangaswami.

Women are underrepresented in a number of dimensions in the tech world, and this is noticeable in conference line-ups and in start-up founder lists. .... Take The Indus Entrepreneurs, TiE in short..... TiE was created to ensure that people of South Asian extraction were given the funding opportunities they were otherwise being denied. There was general acceptance of the engineering excellence of such people, but for some reason question marks were raised about their ability to run companies. Which meant that the “engineers” never got funded when they went forward with business plans..... We need to make sure that we eradicate prejudices that go along the lines of: Women don’t code. Founders must code. So women can’t found startups…..Systemic problems often need systemic solutions

I am glad he mentions the organization TiE, and draws the connection between gender and some of the challenges faced by brown people. And the thing he says about it being just fine for women entrepreneurs to not be coders, that is a theme a ran with when I blogged about a panel discussion here in New York City during Internet Week. (Women In Tech-Media Event At JP Morgan: Internet Week) I just had an email from the panel host Neha Chauhan yesterday saying she is working to launch her own startup in October.

And finally JP touches upon a theme I touched upon in a post I put out this past hour, (Gender Talks) that some of the biggest solutions are perhaps political.

Shefaly Yogendra: “Women in tech”: What Gives?:

Super Angels

Brad Feld: Serious Questions For Super Angels: As individual angel investors made more and more investments, they became super angels. One day a super angel woke up and thought to himself, “Gosh, I could do a lot more investments if I had a fund.” .... Now the micro-VC is a mini-VC. Does this keep scaling, or does the mini-VC succumb to the same challenges that $200 million funds ran into when they turned into $1 billion funds? ..... There’s a renewed focus and interest in early-stage investing going on in the United States

Some of the best bloggers in tech are VCs. I have often wondered as to why the top tech entrepreneurs are not also avid bloggers. It would make sense to avidly blog while you are trying to build a company. But there really are no entrepreneur versions of the top VC blogs. I wish it were otherwise. I felt this while reading this post by Brad Feld, quoted above.

The venture capital worlds has been seeing some major churn. And it is so much fun watching the drama unfold through the various VC blogs. It is gripping. It is like watching a good movie. There is high drama. It is capitalism in action. Blogging has brought forth much transparency to VC action, and that is a good thing.

Early stage investing is seeing some major fermentation. That will impact the VC world in that investing, even at mega scales, will become more hands on. VCs will have to get more involved.

Gender Talks

The Daily Beast: Leah Culver: Is There a Gender Divide in Startups?: The situation for women in technology isn't ideal. When I show up to tech events, I worry about looking out of place. For every job I apply for and don't get, I wonder if I just didn't fit the interviewer's mental picture of the perfect candidate. When I'm invited to speak at a conference, I doubt that I'm qualified. When most of my coworkers are men, I can't help but wonder why..... we need to criticize less. Blaming other members of the community (especially men) provokes a knee-jerk defense and doesn't help solve the problem. Instead we need to congratulate more women on their accomplishments and praise those who helped them along the way...... I could keep writing about the lack of women in tech, but starting a new company sounds like a lot more fun

Wall Street Journal Blogs: Venture Capital Dispatch: Shira Ovide: Addressing The Lack Of Women Leading Tech Start-Ups: a dearth of women in top positions at emerging tech firms...... Y Combinator has had just 14 female founders among the 208 firms it has funded. ...... in start-up land, where the good idea is supposed to trump social status and everything else, the lack of women in positions of authority stands out...... some techie women are – in true start-up fashion – attacking the problem with meetups, money and social networking ...... Ms. Ziv said she tries to encourage women to integrate more forcefully into male-dominated tech events such as the New York Tech Meetup....... Mr. Wilson, who said 3% of investment pitches he fields are from women, said he has become more attentive about the challenges of women tech entrepreneurs

FoodSpotting Is The Next FourSquare
Mike Arrington Is A Sexist Pig: Say PeeeeG!
Tech, Women, Diversity

Gender in tech is one of those topics where I feel like progress is being made simply when people are willing to talk about it. You will come across defensive men, sure. You will come across women who have internalized the wrong order. And there are people who are simply not interested in the topic any more than they are interested in calculus or robotics.

What's interesting to me with this debate is that the startup world is supposed to be meritocratic and the gender ratio is not that much better in the startup world either. That seems to surprise a lot of people, but not me. Gravity is in effect in Nevada, but it is also in effect in California. That is how I feel.

Men and women could create microcosms of progressive realities. Major social changes will hopefully take place. But they will not take place on their own. I personally see a clear politics, policy angle to this.

A lot of people make the mistake of thinking coding might be a specialized skill, but politics is just common sense. Politics is also a specialized skill. (September 14 Will Birth The New Woman)

I just hope we can keep the topic current, and keep making steady progress. This is not a men versus women thing. Sexism is not good for men either.

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

My Gmail Prayers Heard: Multiple Inboxes

Image via CrunchBasePeople kept saying, but you can already do that. You can set up filters and all. To that I said, Geocities allowed for a lot of what Blogger allows for, but you needed a Blogger to come along. Simplification gets in the crowds. Your average user wants multiple inboxes, not complex filters that you have to keep tweaking like you were some kind of a software programmer.

Real Time Search: Where Google Can "Get" Social
Reimagining The Inbox The Simple Way

And now we have it. It is here. Multiple inboxes are here in Gmail. This is my idea of Google "getting" social. Before this the inbox had become scary to many people. Now the inbox is back with a vengeance. Email is the original social application.

The Official Gmail Blog: Email Overload? Try Priority Inbox

At this rate I am going to be sitting on the Google Board some day. I'd love to.

Pages

Thursday, September 02, 2010

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Wednesday, September 01, 2010

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

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