Apologies to Kahlon for accusing them of not returning my money when it appears they DID credit me for returned memory. I thought I’d checked carefully but apparently not.
Sorry Kahlon
Kahlon was right and I was wrong
Reply
Category Archives: companies
Bionic Woman
Claudia Mitchell lost her arm in a Motorcycle Accident, but the Rehabilitation institute of Chicago has created a prosthetic arm for Claudia that moves, *controlled by her own thoughts*. This is done by implanting the arm nerve endings in her chest wall where she can control them using her mind. Incredible.
So, what happens when we can start to control a computer cursor with our mind and have web browser enabled eyeglasses? Wow, we’d be …. smart.
Google and the little guy
I noted before that Google is mostly ignoring the enterprise market in favor of maintaining their huge share of regular user traffic and targeting small content producers with Adsense and small advertisers with Adwords. In fact I think FAST, rather than Google, is the top contender in enterprise search. As the internet itself becomes the network, I can see Google grinning in meeting rooms as they chart out the competition with Microsoft which is still heavily chained both economically and philosophically to Microsoft Office, big enterprise applications, and big companies in general.
Incredibly, Microsoft seems to ignore (or perhaps they just can’t cope with) forces that Google correctly sees now and on the horizon. These forces include:
* Company sizes will tend to shrink as internet efficiencies allow “mom and pops” to compete globally.
* Small companies, blogs, local companies, and other small “long tail” online entities market share will continue to grow, and may even become the largest share of total online advertising activity. (though I think this could take many years).
* Many USA, and (most?) Indian and Chinese companies often use bootlegged software. No problem for Google who gives it away anyway. MS office at perhaps $479 per lost license? OUCH!
It’s a tough spot for MS because their online revenues are trivial now, so even with the major allocations to the LIVE project it’s not clear that changing course can ever replace the enterprise and office suite revenues for a company built around “old style” computing.
Facebook to open to everybody soon
Hey, just a few days after I took the time to set up a UW Madison Alumni email and forward it to my Google mail and I’m feeling all special and elite because I have a Facebook Account, Forbes reports that Facebook will open up to anybody very soon.
This will be really interesting to watch. Facebook is much, much smaller than Myspace but has a far more “elite” reputation among the college crowd. Will Myspace users move to Facebook? Run multiple accounts? Which service will new users choose?
Facebook turned down huge money recently, wanting a lot more for what they think is the most valuable social network environment. If I had to predict things I’d say they made a mistake turning down that money and opening up to all. They’llsee slower growth than they are expecting, reducing the perceived value of Facebook to less than what was offered.
Kahlon UPDATE – this appears to be my error and I really apologize.
I ranted about Kahlon but it appears they DID return my money and I’m really sorry.
Kahlon – I recommend ’em!
I got a call from Kahlon and they are confident they did credit me….checking into it now but I want to revise this post immediately because it looks like I may have been wrong…
——— earlier post ——-
Kahlon makes memory for computers and generally gets good reviews for quality and price.
Security Certificate Issuer Unknown? Issuer is Microsoft!
This just in from the “Microsoft sure is funny” dept:
I was just asking Microsoft to send my password so I can use some “LIVE” features that absurdly require confusing logins, and suddenly invalid certificates start popping up.
Kind of funny because you’d think Microsoft would, well, know about …. Microsoft:
We are having blogs for Dinner? Again?
Ok I’m getting sort of confused and dizzy trying to decide if I should start a blog at every new place I test or log onto or whatever…. given that this is WEB 2.0 can’t we use the power of integration and collective blogginess?
So many people have their own blogs, especially in the crowd who tends to test new 2.0 applications, that I really like the idea of integrating existing blogs rather than creating brand new ones that’ll just get lost in the digital maelstrom.
But in the meantime I guess I’ll have a FLOCK and VOX and MYSPACE and 360 and Blogger AND this real one.
Web 2.0 – it’s more than just snooty elitism.
Dang. I was going to write about how damn snooty and elitist O’Reilly and Battelle are with their “invitation only” Web 2.0 events. But whenever I read O’Reilly’s blog, and the few times I’ve met him in person, I always come away thinking he’s quite simply the clearest and most innovative fellow who thinks and writes about changes in the internet landscape. John is pretty dang sharp as well.
So, instead of criticizing those guys I’ll note the upcoming non-snooty version of their Web 2.0 events, called the Web 2.0 Expo , to be held in April 2007 at Moscone in San Francisco. Be there or be …. Web 1.0.
Yahoo 360 and the perils of early adoption
I’m was messing around *a little* with Yahoo!’s excellent social networking application “Yahoo 360”, wondering why it’s not more popular and why I’m not spending more time with it. They are of course related, since widespread adoption is going to justify more of a committment from me and until I see that happening I can’t “afford” to spend time building up contacts and 360 groups only to find nobody else is using it. I had a similar experience with LinkedIn which is also very good but seems narrowly focused more on those who are looking for work, hiring people, etc rather than lazy pseudo-tech bums like me who are happy where we are.
I’d like to keep up with Jeff Clavier and the Silicon Valley Search SIG group, but the 360 group is not active at 360…yet. I do think Yahoo’s built a great environment for virtual biz “meetings” and it may spring to life. It’s totally understandable that the SIG is not using this much – they also would need to see a “critical mass” of interest and commitment to become more involved.
In terms of utility Yahoo 360 seems to be in what I’d think would be a sweet spot – somewhere between Myspace’s legions of ranting teenagers and LinkedIn’s almost elitist business formality and (at least for now) narrow focus on technology workers.
I don’t spend much time on any single application – even my own sites which really need the TLC not to mention major overhauling, but to me 360 is really getting close to the right social networking environment if it had widespread adoption.
Death to Brands! Death to Brands?
Although it’s early in the process, I think, and hope, that the concept of “brand” is going away in favor of the concept of utility/efficiency/pragmatism/reason. As mass marketing, and the masses, move to online venues I think the notion of advertising as “branding” is suffering. Online advertising such as pay per click and the increasing importance of marketing to highly targeted niches will make branding more difficult and expensive. Online venues allow you to select a service or product provider far more objectively than before and with the benefit of tons of input from other people. Real commentary is trumping advertising as the information source of choice, and this is a very good thing.
Yet many 2.0 companies don’t seem to get the message yet. I think the Silicon Valley echo chamber makes it hard for many new online efforts to see how they have little chance of becoming more than an online footnote once the angel funding dries up. In fact I think the new “life cycle” for 2.0 companies takes advantage of this ignorance about the death of brands which is why you see so many new companies with great logos, cool schwag, good business plans, attractive booth salespeople, and bright technical teams, and a killer plan to “brand” themselves as the next best thing …..but they have NO REAL BUSINESS.
I haven’t done much research, but I think it’s notable how many of the huge success stories did not seem to start out with big notions of branding their efforts. Google, Yahoo, Myspace, etc etc are not products of clever marketing, rather great ideas that came at the right time.
Joe Duck 