Netizen

Sunday, July 29, 2012

eBay, Come Back

Image representing eBay as depicted in CrunchBase

I have not used eBay in years. I had no idea it needed a comeback. I just read about it in my hometown newspaper.

Behind eBay’s Comeback

EBay, Yahoo and AOL, the dominant Internet triumvirate circa 2004 ..... eBay’s success has big implications for struggling companies like Yahoo and AOL, not to mention more recent sensations that have already lost some luster, like Zynga, Groupon and even Facebook ...... “One of the unique things about the Internet is a company can be a white-hot success and become a global brand and reach global scale in just a few years — that’s the good news,” he told me this week. “But then somebody can turn around and do it to you. There’s constant disruption. One of the first things I had to do here was face reality. EBay was getting disrupted.” ...... So thoroughly has eBay been transformed that he didn’t even mention its traditional auction business ..... Excitement about eBay’s prospects has little to do with its traditional auction business, or even its core e-commerce operations ...... Most of its growth came from mobile retailing and its PayPal online payments division, a business it acquired in 2002 for what now looks like a bargain $1.5 billion. ...... “Mobile is revolutionizing how people shop and pay.” ..... EBay is offering a one-click payment solution. .... Mr. Spitz said he was recently stopped at a traffic light and the sun was bothering his eyes. By the time the light turned green, he had used his phone to order and pay for sunglasses. ...... “We saw the mobile revolution early and we made a big bet across the entire company. We saw that mobile was an important factor for our customers. It was becoming the central control device in their lives. We didn’t worry if it cannibalized our existing business, because we knew it was what our customers wanted.” ..... The smartphone “has blurred the line between e-commerce and off-line retail,” Mr. Donahoe continued. “Four years ago, you had to be in front of a laptop or desktop to shop online. Now you can do it seven days, 24 hours. We’re going to have to drop the ‘e’ from e-commerce.” ...... Amazon continues to invest in its delivery systems and it, too, has an effective mobile app and one-click payment system. ..... EBay and PayPal apps already rank among the top 10 mobile apps .... EBay stresses, without mentioning Amazon by name, that it doesn’t compete with its retail customers. ...... “We spent three years fixing the fundamentals and tried not to worry about what everyone else was saying.” ..... “We’re more technology- and innovation-driven than we’ve ever been. Mobile gave us the opportunity to start with a clean slate from a technology perspective.” Less than two years ago, eBay acquired Critical Path Software, which was helping to develop eBay’s mobile apps. “We thought they were the best, so we bought them and got a couple hundred of the best software developers in the world working exclusively for us,” Mr. Donahoe said. ...... PayPal Here, a new payment system, would allow customers to “check in” in advance at a shop, be greeted by name when they arrive, complete transactions without a mobile device or credit card and get a text message as a receipt. ..... Mr. Donahoe has been chief for just over four years, and has replaced most of eBay’s top management.

Looks like PayPal is doing the trick.

Looks like John Donahoe is a role model for Marissa Mayer. Yahoo also needs a turn around.

Google: Search, Gmail, Android, Chrome, Fiber

Google Fiber is certainly way out there.

Google Fiber Is The Most Disruptive Thing The Company's Done Since Gmail

All Google Fiber customers also get 1TB of free storage. If they buy TV service for an extra $50 a month, Google will throw in a $200 Nexus 7 tablet to be used as a remote control. Google is also giving away -- for free -- a package that offers 5Mbps downstream and 1Mbps upstream. ...... Google was able to get prices so low, in part, because it designed and built all the hardware for the system itself. This is a good reminder that although Google wasn't a consumer electronics company until recently, Google has actually been designing hardware for its data centers for more than a decade. It was this data center efficiency that allowed Gmail to offer way more free storage than competitors back in 2004....... just like Gmail unlocked an enterprise business, Fiber could unlock a whole new business as an ISP and TV provider..... Now, we just need Google to roll out Fiber to the rest of the country.

If Google can figure out a way to use snooping technology to serve well targeted ads it could make internet access ad supported, and it could take top speeds to all corners of the world. It would not be limited by Fiber. Heck, it could use satellite technology as necessary.

This is the single most important thing Google could do. At globally universal broadband, Google surpasses the nation state in power. It also becomes a trillion dollar company in the process.

That "5Mbps downstream and 1Mbps upstream" free deal is a big deal.

At 1 GB, YouTube has no more disadvantages to traditional TV. Video ads fetch more.

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Soccer Secrets

PageRank Algorithm Reveals Soccer Teams' Strategies

Many readers will have watched the final of the Euro 2012 soccer championships on Sunday in which Spain demolished a tired Italian team by 4 goals to nil. The result, Spain's third major championship in a row, confirms the team as the best in the world and one of the greatest in history. ...... Spain's famous strategy of accurate quick-fire passing, known as the tiki-taka style. ..... a quantifiable representation of a team's style, identifies key individuals and highlights potential weaknesses. ..... think of each player as a node in a network and each pass as an edge that connects nodes. ..... the Spanish team pass more often..... image captures 417 passes by the Spanish team versus 266 for the Netherlands. ..... That the goal keeper was the Netherland's best connected player itself speaks volumes. ..... Players with a high betweenness centrality are crucial for keeping the momentum of the game going ..... the famous PageRank algorithm which measure's a player's popularity, as judged by the number of passes he receives from other popular players. ..... adding another node to represent the opponents goal and would record the number of shots .... measure the accuracy of passes .... The defensive strength of a team could also be incorporated in the model by tracking passing interceptions and recovered balls .... a way of collecting and analysing the data in real time to produce a network-based analysis of a game as it happens ..... In terms of data analysis, football has always lagged behind more statistically-friendly games such as American football, baseball and cricket, because it lacks the long pauses during which data can be gathered and analysed. That looks set to change.

The Moon Does Not Have Water

Full Moon view from earth In Belgium (Hamois). Français : Pleine Lune vue de la Terre en Belgique à Hamois. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

But it has energy.

Moon has enough helium-3 to power Earth for five millenniums

25 tons of helium-3 per year will more than suffice to meet mankind’s energy needs....... On Earth, helium-3 is measured in grams, while its reserves on the Moon are estimated at 500,000 tons.

Helium-3 - Wikipedia Hydrogen-1 and helium-3 are the only stable nuclides in existence that contain more protons than they have neutrons.... a light, non-radioactive isotope of helium with two protons and one neutron .... sought for use in nuclear fusion research ..... The abundance of helium-3 is thought to be greater on the Moon (embedded in the upper layer of regolith by the solar wind over billions of years ..... The helion, the nucleus of a helium-3 atom, consists of two protons but only one neutron, in contrast with two neutrons in common helium ..... Its hypothetical existence was first proposed in 1934 ..... Helium-3 is proposed as a second-generation fuel for nuclear fusion in hypothetical fusion power plants, but such plants are still very early in their development -- especially since the first generation has not entered service anywhere, yet.

Helium-3 is a very rare gas with the potential to fuel clean nuclear fusion power plants. However, one of the problems is that the nearest supply of helium-3 is on the Moon.

Lunar Helium-3 as an Energy Source - The Artemis Project

Jun 27, 1999 .... The total supply in the U.S. strategic reserves of helium is about 29 kg ..... In their 1988 paper, Kulcinski, et al. (see ref note below), estimate a total of 1,100,000 metric tonnes of He3 have been deposited by the solar wind in the lunar regolith. Since the regolith has been stirred up by collisions with meteorites, we'll probably find He3 down to depths of several meters. ..... The highest concentrations are in the lunar maria; about half the He3 is deposited in the 20% of the lunar surface covered by the maria...... To extract He3 from the lunar soil, we heat the dust to about 600 degrees C....... We get most of the other volatiles out at the same time, so we'll be heating up the rocks anyway. (To get the oxgyen out, we'll turn up the furnace to about 900 deg C