The impending Age Of Abundance was prophecied in the scriptures thousands of years ago.
Saturday, October 02, 2010
The Leo Apotheker Is Human Drama
Image via CrunchBaseMy favorite TechCrunch writer - Sarah Lacy - has a piece on my favorite character in tech: Larry Ellison. Coincidence? This Leo Apotheker - (please do not ask me to pronounce the dude's last name) - move by HP is all human drama, and n-o-t-h-i-n-g to do with technology.
It is like after Bush 2004 burnt into John Kerry's forearm that he was a Mr. Flip Flop, Kerry duly delivered the line afterwards: "I actually voted for the Iraq War before I voted against it."
Losers have a way of falling into the mousetrap neatly laid out for them.
I mean, duh. What was the HP Board thinking? They are like, okay Larry, hit me baby one more time. HP has been primarily a hardware company. Name one HP software product, quick. You can't. Name one HP enterprise software product. I don't think such a thing exists. And they got Thepo. HP's days as an independent company might be numbered.
This Apothepo guy used to run SAP when SAP was actually competing with Oracle. SAP to this day prides itself in being an all software company. They think Larry going into hardware is a mistake. To Larry's credit he thinks SAP's very existence is a mistake. That is not a fight between equals. Ring the bells, end the fight.
(Video via A Slice Of Grice)
Larry's Antics
Larry Ellison's Personal Life
Larry Ellison's 1995 Network Computer Vision
Hurd: From HP To Oracle
Larry Ellison
Rich People's Kids
Wall Street Journal: Larry Ellison ‘Speechless’ Over New CEO of H-P: Larry Ellison, the outspoken CEO of Oracle, said he is having trouble finding words to describe his reaction to H-P naming former SAP chief Leo Apotheker as its new top man–and then found plenty of them. .... SAP, where Apotheker worked for more than 20 years, is Oracle’s largest competitor for business-application programs, and Ellison seldom misses an opportunity to take pot shots at the company. ..... When Oracle and H-P settled the lawsuit regarding Hurd’s hiring, both companies put out statements lauding the other as a valuable partner.
Friday, October 01, 2010
I Gave In: Facebook: The Movie
Image via WikipediaI was strolling around in Murray Hill, and I happened to walk by the movie theater on 32nd Street and Second Avenue. I walked in, looked around, checked out the movie times. One time slot for The Social Network was sold out. I walked out. Spent some time in the bookstore next door. I had quietly noted down a time slot that might work. It was close to 7PM.
I walked in again about 15 minutes before that. I bought a ticket. I am glad I did.
This actually is a very well made movie. It is a movie. It is a fictionalized version of what happened, but there are too many parallels.
It is good drama. Kevin Spacey is the executive producer. That adds to the weight, I believe.
Facebook has become too big a cultural phenomenon to have been able to avoid a movie like this made. Too many people who will not pick up a book on the topic want to know what happened.
The dramatizations aside, I did not feel Zuck got demonized or anything like that. The lawsuits were but harassments posssible in murky legal environments.
Mark Zuckerberg did not steal the idea from anyone, those guys should never have received any money. Those were bogus lawsuits. He got blackmailed, and the system allowed that.
The best line of the movie is when Zuck says: "You have a part of my attention."
The guy presented as cofounder was not a cofounder. Zuck wrote all that early code.
A big omission in the movie is Zuck's steady girlfriend of so many long years. She is not shown at all.
And of course the movie totally misses out on the engineering behind the phenomenon called Facebook.
But then movies perhaps are supposed to be drama, and hence the total focus on the lawsuits. Lawsuits make for friction make for drama.
Image via Wikipedia The movie is well made, it is not accurate, was not meant to be, although most people will believe most details.
Facebook the company has no big reason to dislike the movie, really. There is much dramatization, not much demonization.
The basic movie ingredients are actually in top form. I can see this movie making a lot of money worldwide.
The Social Network: Before Seeing The Movie
Image via WikipediaI have no plans to go see the movie. I stand in solidarity with Mark Zuckerberg on this one. That is not saying I might never see the movie. At some point I will. This is fiction. This is no documentary. This is not a book. The Facebook story fascinates me. Just like the Google story fascinates me. Just like the Microsoft story fascinates. Larry Ellison fascinates me. If I watch the movie, I think I am going to come out hungry for books on the subject.
This movie is a dramatization. This is Hollywood trying to figure out something it has not been able to figure out. Hollywood has been at war with Silicon Valley. Hollywood has so far not figured out business models that Silicon Valley technologies ask for. But this movie is not Hollywood assaulting the valley. Hollywood is too disorganized to do such a thing. But some organizing takes place at subliminal levels, like when Tea Party white people talk code to rally against Barack Obama's blackness.
At the end of the day, this is just a movie. In the mean time, go read Sree's review.
Sree Srinivasan: Six Things Learned Watching 'The Social Network': I am not a movie critic and, thanks to my 7-year-old twins, I don't get to see a lot of non-animated movies. .... Oscar winner Kevin Spacey is listed as a producer. ..... Parker helps speed up the estrangement between Zuckerberg and Saverin in the movie and also suggests changing the name to just "Facebook." Timberlake is a scene stealer. The pop star appears to had a lot of fun playing a guy out to make lots of money without much regard for morals and rules. .... smartphones confiscated from those attending that screening ...... a lot of people did manage to take phones into the theater, as there were various glowing screens in the darkened theater. A security guard marched up and down the aisles and shined a flashlight on the offenders until they put away their phones.
Redfiff: Aseem Chabbra: How Facebook Came To Be: a curly haired, Jewish American Harvard University undergrad, and a cocky genius Marc Zuckerberg. ..... Harvard authorities caught up with Zuckerberg accusing him of hacking and breaching the university's secure systems and he was placed on probation. ...... Following the probation, as Zuckerberg's name spreads in the hallways and the courtyards at Harvard, he is approached by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss -- twin brothers ...... and their Indian American friend Divya Narendra from Queens, New York .... Zuckerberg stalls the project by sending unsubstantial emails to the three, while developing the prototype of what he eventually called The Facebook. He later drops "The" from the name of the company on advice of his mentor -- Napster co-founder Sean Parker .... Zuckerberg is a programming genius with little business sense. .... intrigues, jealousies and deceptions.
AllThingsD: Kara Swisher: The Facebook Movie: Sorry, Mark–But Critics Like It, They Really Like It! (Plus the Taiwanesed Version!): there is bathroom sex, beatings, peepholes and–say what?–a gay love triangle.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Adoption And Missed Opportunities
Image via WikipediaThe Chromium Blog: WebP, a new image format for the Web: a single component of web pages is consistently responsible for the majority of the latency on pages across the web: images....Images and photos make up about 65% of the bytes transmitted per web page today.The engineering accomplishment might be the easy part. Adoption might be the hard part. There still are people whose ISP is AOL. Most people who use IE use some primitive version.
Slate: The Other Social Network:That spring, Goldberg started instant messaging with Mark Zuckerberg. In March, he met with Zuckerberg and Sean Parker, the Napster co-founder and early Facebook investor, at a Starbucks on 96th Street. According to Goldberg, Parker tried to persuade Zuckerberg to acquire CU Community. Zuckerberg didn't tip his hand, but Goldberg says they kept in touch. In June, he says, Zuckerberg invited him to Palo Alto, Calif., where the Facebook crew had moved to work on the site. Goldberg flew out and stayed with Zuckerberg and pals for two weeks. "I think we went to one Stanford party," he says. There was "no crazy partying or drinking," Goldberg says, despite what The Social Network may suggest...... One factor was that Zuckerberg's site had the financial means to expand. Goldberg says he turned down advertisers, including MTV, and didn't seek out venture capital .... He started writing a food blogThe dude should have joined the Facebook team at the earliest possible date. Capitalism.
In The News
CNet: Google offers JPEG alternative for faster Web
Google Social Web Blog: Google URL Shortener Gets a Website: http://goo.gl
The Official Google Blog: Explore the world with Street View, now on all seven continents: everyone can now see places from all seven continents
AP: IMDb turns 20 with a refreshed, video-full website:the site has 100 million monthly visitors worldwide.
Adventures in Capitalism: Did Peter Thiel Make The Single Best Investment In History?:In 2005, Peter Thiel paid $500,000 for a 10% stake in Facebook..... his stake is worth between $2-3 billion. That's a 6,000x return on his capital in 5 years.
The Next Web: Square using social media stats for credit checks and fraud prevention:the number of Yelp reviews a business has or the number of Twitter followers a business has.... Square, which wants to be “PayPal for the real world”
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Internet 10 Years From Now
Like they say, freedom is not free. Liberty asks for eternal vigilance.
YouTube: Internet Society
(Source: Internet Society: Future Internet Scenarios)
YouTube: Internet Society
(Source: Internet Society: Future Internet Scenarios)
Future Of Display Advertising
The Official Google Blog: What does the future of display advertising look like?: “Display 2015: Smart and Sexy.” ...... Display advertising really is at the heart of what we’re doing at Google these days. 99 percent of our top 1,000 clients are now running campaigns on the Google Display Network. And last year, they increased their spending on display advertising by over 75 percent. .... in five years, there will be five metrics that advertisers commonly regard as more important than the click ... Watch
Google probably feels "stuck" with its traditional revenue source, the ads that show up with search results, the spartan text ads. Unless it goes into mobile, into display, its market value is not going to compete with Apple. This new push for display ads is Google's idea of an iPad. It is a new thing to do. But it is not like Google is going into display ads, something it so avoided when starting out. Google's display ads will be a new, interactive, social kind. Google intends to reinvent display advertising on the web.
With this push Google is looking for its next big growth. This is no one trick pony.
In The News
Wall Street Journal: Digits: Google Wants to Make Online Display Ads ‘Sexy’: “On television, [networks] generally made more money by showing more ads,” said Shishir Mehrotra, a YouTube executive. “Online video will reverse that trend.” .... display advertising would be one of his company’s next $10 billion-plus businesses.
New York Times Backs News-Aggregation Software Company: Ongo describes itself as providing “computer and telecommunications software for use in aggregating and viewing news and syndication feeds.” ..... News Corp., which owns the Wall Street Journal, has been talking to media companies about creating a cable TV-type business for news, allowing consumers to set up one bill to access digital content from multiple media companies.
New York Time: Bits: By the Numbers: Apple, Microsoft, Dell, H.P.: $49.53 billion — That’s the gap separating Apple and Microsoft .... on the back of strong iPhone sales and rising interest in the iPad. ..... $52.47 billion — That’s the gap between Apple’s value and that of Exxon Mobil ... Dell .. can claim more patents than Apple
Amazon Introduces Kindle for the Web: lets digital book buyers read books on the Web and also offers the ability to embed book samples on blogs or other Web sites, similar to the function offered with video clips on YouTube.
New York Times: Media Decoder: Google Predicts More Social, and Profitable, Display Ads: a Web where the ads are more social, mobile and real-time — and a lot more profitable..... cellphone screens would be the No. 1 screen for viewing the Web by 2015..... “Static banner ads will become a thing of the past.” ..... a “meta media phenomenon.” .... Display advertising will grow to be a $50 billion market. .... companies would have more time to focus on the creative aspects of their marketing campaigns. “The technology should just work”
Gizmodo: The Plans For Steve Jobs' New House: more of a small, private retreat than any towering glass-and-steel tech chapel or totem of wealth. ..... Jobs intends to populate the 6 acres with an assortment of indigenous flora; a simple three-car garage; a modest 5 bedroom home with plenty of windows and decks; a network of lighted stone walkways; and even a private vegetable garden. Everything is neat, tight, pragmatic, and in its place. ..... No chauffeur's cottage, no cook's cottage, and no tennis courts. In fact, when compared something like Larry Ellison's $70 million feudal Japan themed estate located right up the road, Jobs' new digs seem downright monkish—if not Buffettian..... almost Zen ..... At a time when architect and design firms are just starting to apply to Apple's design principles to the building of homes (clean, tight, nothing unnecessary), Steve Jobs has gone and designed the iPhone of houses. ..... the home was clearly built for a man (there's a distinct lack of a woman's touch here) who likes privacy, a natural setting, and working. Especially working...... a person whose life if very internal. He does not want what is going on outside to interfere with what is going on inside
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LA Times: Google envisions bright future for online display advertising
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