Netizen

Monday, January 19, 2015

This is an icon for social networking website. This is part of Open Icon Library's webpage icon package. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I remember being very excited about Google Wave, and it petered out. Google Glass I was not excited about. I mean, I wanted it, but on other people's noses. I just want a smartphone with three times more battery juice. Make that five. Bitcoin seems to be having a hard time. But I will not compare it to Google Wave, certainly not to Google Glass.

It is like the Internet went out of fashion in the late 1990s. But it came roaring back a few years later. I think the current slump in the Bitcoin concept is like that. And I hope the slump is not that deep, and it does not last as long. I hope people steer out of the slump fast. Because the basic concept is nothing short of revolutionary. It is sound.

Price Slump Tests Bitcoin’s Self-Correcting Economics

A Bitcoin is currently worth just over $200, down about one-third from where it began January. It peaked at more than $1,000 late in 2013. ..... Andresen says he wouldn’t be concerned even if half of miners suddenly gave up. “The result would just be one month where the average transaction took 20 minutes to confirm instead of 10 minutes,” he says. “For Bitcoin users that would be a minor nuisance not a major disaster.” ...... “The system is self-tuning and self-optimizing

Thursday, January 08, 2015

Are Google's Best Days Behind It?

Wi-Fi Signal logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I love Google like some people love Apple. I have also said before Google is going to be the first trillion dollar company in history. But to get there they need fundamental businesses.

The driverless car could be one such business. Not an almost driverless car, but a completely driverless car. If they can do that, they will have added something as fundamental as search to their hat. And that would be big business.

Another part is connectivity, the business of taking more people online. I was yelling years ago that Twitter should make it possible for people to search through all tweets. I have been yelling that Google should be in a big hurry to take more people online, take all people online. Because Google is better positioned than anyone else to make money off of that. And Google has been moving oh so slowly there. They should be able to say, we are taking all seven billion plus people online, and here, we are willing to spend 50 billion dollars to that end. But no, they have been dragging their feet on this.

And it's not just people in poor countries. Right here in America they are not moving fast enough on Gigabit broadband, and on getting into the TV spectrum of taking WiFi to the masses. People using free or supercheap WiFi is good for Google. But they are moving so slow.

Some of the top stories today ask this question: Are Google's best days behind it? I don't think so, but Google needs to make some moves fast.