« October 2004 | Main | December 2004 »
November 30, 2004
Sun CTO to go mano a mano with Bill Gates
A good relationship between Sun Microsystems and Microsoft is undoubtedly a good thing, but comparable to Nixon's re-opening of US diplomatic relations with China?
Hope stays alive as "Sun Microsystems Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are poised to flesh out the details of the historic truce they signed earlier this year, ending years of bitter sniping between the two technology giants," reports the San Francisco Chronicle.
Greg Papadopoulos, Sun's chief technology officer, is the man who will go mano a mano with Microsoft chief Bill Gates, "because his boss, Sun Chief Executive Officer Scott McNealy, has publicly ridiculed Gates for years, calling him a convicted monopolist, among other things."
In Silicon Valley, burning bridges means never having to say you're sorry.
Gates and Papadopoulos formed something of a mutual appreciation society back in the 1980s, reports the Chronicle, in full Silicon Valley myth-building mode, when "when Gates gave a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Papadopoulos was then an MIT engineering professor and he had been assigned to welcome Gates." Papadopoulos found Gates "really accessible, sort of down-to-earth."
Links:
Making peace with a rival Sun Microsystems sends a top man to sit down with Microsoft by Benjamin Pimentel, San Francisco Chronicle, 30 November 2004
What's the story? Doug Millison also edits OnlineJournalist.org, "on a need-to-know basis"
| Posted toBloggers should reveal relationships—a proposal for an online media color code
In my “blogging” I try to be as up front as possible. If I have a business relationship with someone I will reveal it. If I mention someone and that person is a friend, I will tell you about it.
I think it should be perfectly fine to color code online content to reveal types of relationships. For example, if you see a name of a person or company and it is green, it denotes a monetary or business relationship. A person’s name in yellow might denote that person is a buddy, a cronie, somebody I’m unlikely to say bad things about. A name in brown might indicate a bit of brown nosing. A name in red might mean a “special” friend (!)
The more information a reader has about the relationships that a reporter/writer/blogger has--the better. Let’s not hide behind impressions of impartiality. I am not impartial. There are certain people I like, there are certain companies I like—I will make that clear. It’s part of what we are developing as our “Up Front” disclosure policy.
Yet in newspapers and news magazines—those relationships between the writer, editor and industry people are hidden. There is great care to maintain an impression of impartiality.
There is a lot that can be done in the online medium that has not yet been tried. A color code for relationships might be an interesting approach to maintaining an honest media during a time of great fragmentation. Blogging is fragmenting the media landscape but it requires trust. Maybe a color code could help in establishing and maintaining a trusted relationship between bloggers and readers.
Overall, we need a new approach to media and PR and I believe we are on the cusp of big changes in these areas. I want to help lubricate the wheels of change. Stay tuned.
Blogger Om and blogging buddies broaden broadband content market
My good buddy Om Malik, his Om-ness, the universal sound of all that is broadband, is set to go live December 1 with TheBroadBandDaily.com.
Om, already dominating the broadband news market with his GigaOm site, is band leader of the new site. About a dozen hand-picked experts in various broadband sectors will be contributing blogs, news, and columns. Interestingly, I hear there will be no advertising. Om believes it taints blogging. Also, some of the content will be available in PDF format for easy offline reading.
PDF formatted content is really taking off and I think it is a great companion to a mobile lifestyle. For example, we are planning to produce an end of the week “Friday Watch” PDF newsletter containing the best of Silicon Valley Watcher that week—plus some fun items. Something to print up and throw into the weekend get-away bag, a chance to catch up on the week in Silicon Valley while in a hot tub in Tahoe.
PS: I tried getting as many “B”s into the headline as I could, but maybe someone can suggest a better one!?
| Posted toShould bloggers refuse advertising to maintain independence?
Should bloggers avoid advertising as much as possible, because that is another potential route to influence their writing?
There are organizational structures within newspapers and magazines that create a separation of “church and state,” the separation between editorial and advertising.
Because bloggers are trying to do everything—write, edit, publish and canvas for advertising—they are in a very tricky position.
For example, early this year, I ran into a blogger who was covering a political event, a speech by a political candidate—yet that person was also hoping to get advertising from the candidate's organization hosting the event!
If companies want to influence key bloggers they can do it very easily. Bloggers should stay away from any attempt at establishing a relationship: offers of access to top executives, free entry into conferences, meals and drinks with company representatives, basically ANY personal contact. The best bloggers can thus “keep it real.”
Professional journalists have to deal with this stuff every day: how to avoid attempts at influence, how to maintain professional relationships, and still produce great stories. In the UK, for example, journalists take great pride in being wined and dined yet writing brutally honest news stories about their host. "Biting the hand that feeds IT" is the motto of The Register, the UK tech news site.
Also, bloggers don't have editors. Journalists come under pressure from the demands of their editors for angles or stories that the reporters know are BS. This means that reporters sometimes/often cannot write the story they would like to write.
(I have a solution for this coming up...watch this space!)
The Register
Controlling access to top executives is widely used to influence media coverage
One of the practices used to influence media coverage is controlling access to a company’s top executives.
For example, a reporter for a large newspaper or magazine needs access to CEOs of important companies. However, before that access is granted, a relationship has to be developed to ensure that a reporter understands their business, their strategy, who their competition is, how they differentiate themselves, etc before they give access to the valuable time of their top executives. This is all perfectly reasonable.
But, this is also where there is opportunity for leverage, where there is potential to influence media coverage to a larger or lesser degree, because reporters need that access. Why? Because editors will scream at them if their competitor got an interview with the head honcho and they did not.
Companies can demand that questions must be submitted in advance, that final drafts of stories be approved by them, that some subjects cannot be mentioned etc. This varies from company to company and larger publications are able to refuse such demands and still get the interview.
I have to say at this point, that in my time at the Financial Times I was never subjected to such demands. But all journalists are aware of this point of leverage, and some have been denied access for good and bad reasons. The good reasons are that they might have been sloppy journalists with little understanding of the company or their sector. The bad reasons are obvious.
The value bloggers have in the media landscape is their vantage as independent commentators. If they are brought into the “system” they will be compromised.
| Posted toNovember 29, 2004
Silicon Valley changes on the horizon
Will Silicon Valley remain a leading force for innovation?
Yes, says Stanford University President, John L. Hennessy, in a Business Week interview published today.
That doesn't mean the Valley won't change, however.
Q: Let's look out a few years. How will the Valley change?A: I think several things will occur. In the aftermath of the bubble a lot more attention will be paid to core technology advantage and the sustainability of an advantage. Will there be a market for this technology? A lot more attention will be paid to both those things.
I think we'll see much more emphasis on whether you think of outsourcing some sort of the R&D function or restructuring it in some way. I think you'll see more emphasis on that, so that what gets done increasingly in the Valley is what would be extremely difficult to do somewhere else, rather than something that could be done somewhere else possibly less expensively.
The Valley's greatest weaknesses are high costs and arrogance, Hennessy correctly observes.
Links:
What's the story? Doug Millison also edits OnlineJournalist.org, "on a need-to-know basis"
| Posted toMeet Mozilla Man
Meet Mozilla Man, the kind of evangelist that every software maker needs.
A story in today's San Jose Mercury News lays bare for all to see the power of committed customers to evangelize - for free! - products that can compete successfully against entrenched competitors supported by high-budget marketing programs.
Microsoft cannot compete successfully with Internet Explorer as long as people like Alexander Vincent are motivated to spread the Firefox gospel. Observes reporter K. Oanh Ha:
....Vincent is a mild-mannered secretary for a Vallejo real estate broker. By night, he's an online crusader protecting users of a new Internet browser from glitches and security bugs. If he were a superhero, you might call him Mozilla Man....Vincent is one of roughly 2,000 volunteer evangelists who see their mission as freeing millions of computer users from the tyranny of Internet Explorer. Mountain View-based Mozilla -- with a paid staff of 12 software developers -- depends on volunteers like Vincent to help write code, fix software bugs and market the browser.
The rest of Ha's story reads like a love letter to the communitarian fervor that drives the Firefox volunteers, and the open source software movement more generally.
Links:
Volunteers spread word of Firefox
by K. Oanh Ha, San Jose Mercury News, 29 November 2004
What's the story? Doug Millison also edits OnlineJournalist.org, "on a need-to-know basis"
| Posted toIntel struggling, says New York Times
The New York Times rakes chip giant Intel over the coals today.
Barely four paragraphs into the story, longtime Silicon Valley observer John Markoff gloomily observes, "For two decades, Intel has been the most sure-footed of Silicon Valley companies. But lately, it seems to have lost its way.
Markoff lets Ashok Kumar, a financial analyst at Raymond James & Associates, drive another nail:
"They have made many wrong decisions and now it's time for soul-searching and structural, not cosmetic, changes."
The rest of Markoff's article focuses on the various challenges incoming Intel CEO, Paul S. Otellini will face.
One bright spot: a transaction Silicon Valley Watcher spotlighted last month: "Clearwire, a digital wireless start-up being led by Craig McCaw, a cellular telephone pioneer. Clearwire hopes to capitalize on the unproven long-range version of the WiFi digital wireless standard called Wi-Max and Mr. Otellini clearly hopes the technology will be a disruptive one."
Links:
The Disco Ball of Failed Hopes and Other Tales From Inside Intel by John Markoff, New York Times, 29 November 2004
Tech Watch: Intel invests in Clearwire by Doug Millison, SiliconValleyWatcher.com, October 25, 2004
What's the story? Doug Millison also edits OnlineJournalist.org, "on a need-to-know basis"
November 24, 2004
Thanksgiving
We're off to enjoy the annual Thanksgiving holiday, and will return on Monday, November 29. Enjoy!
| Posted toNovember 23, 2004
Welcome to Silicon Valley Media Watch
Ten years ago this month, at the Comdex show in Las Vegas (remember Comdex?), I introduced a new magazine, Blaster. Launching Silicon Valley Media Watch a decade later is a fitting memorial to that project.
In 1994, personal computers were going "multimedia" - gaining the ability to present and manipulate photographs and other high-resolution still images, sound and music, digital video.
"Interactivity" was another buzz word that was becoming reality. A dedicated band of programmers and designers had emerged from the disparate domains of videogames, consumer electronics, computer software development, television and radio broadcasting, and cinema. They created and published a broad spectrum of entertainment and educational experiences, publications in every genre, art - vast software landscapes that people could wander through, more or less purposefully, enlivened by multimedia, distributed on CD-ROM. I created and edited a magazine that helped to pull this community together, Morph's Outpost on the Digital Frontier.
In 1994, Compuserve and upstart America Online were the go-to online destinations. The Internet still carried a whiff of rocket science. The Web was just emerging as a viable publishing platform.
All kinds of projects were beginning to seem possible. Books that extended their contents with interactive multimedia CD-ROMs. CD-ROMs that included a built-in browser to connect to a web site and update the contents. And, the Holy Grail: the "information superhighway" where all publishers (newspaper, magazine, book) and broadcasters (TV and radio) and software developers would sell or otherwise distribute their wares to consumers around the world.
The funny thing is, despite the dot-com and larger technology business nose-dive, we're still on track to realize this dream - steadily building, bit by bit, what my old friend Michael Moon calls the "mediasphere."
And, as in 1994, Silicon Valley remains the motor, the bank, the brain at the center of it all. Thus the need for Silicon Valley Media Watch.
As they were then, Silicon Valley's geographical boundaries remain fluid. We'll focus primarily on media coverage of people, companies, tools, and technologies in the the greater San Francisco Bay Area…and we'll trace causes and effects, impacts and influences farther afield as necessary and appropriate.
The way the media depict Silicon Valley has a direct effect on Silicon Valley - influencing customer behavior, market opportunities, and even stock valuations. To see this demonstrated in real-time, watch Apple's share price this week, rising in part because of positive media coverage of the iPod phenomenon.
As Silicon Valley Media Watch ramps up and expands offerings, we'll need help from readers, too. You know better than any journalist, even more, in some important ways, than any industry pundit. Your tips, links, inside information will be reflected in what you read here. We'll respect anonymity if that's what you want
Back to Blaster magazine. It was predicated on the notion that young people would use multimedia-capable computers and a new generation of low-cost software and hardware tools for their own creations - combining text, graphics, photos, and music - that they would share online and via high-capacity disks. We focused on young people - "screenagers" we called them, who had grown up using videogame controllers and computer mice - because we knew they would discover the best way to use the tools and platforms that were just beginning to take shape in the early 1990s.
The blog phenomenon and DVDs are making the Blaster vision a reality for millions of people around the world.
It's worth nothing that the software I'm using for this column, Moveable Type, one of the popular tools at the center of the "blogosphere," was created in Menlo Park, the heart of Silicon Valley.
Thanks for joining us for this ride.
Doug Millison
Editor, Silicon Valley Media Watch
doug@siliconvalleywatcher.com
Links:
In Remembrance Sam Whitmore remembers Comdex, via the ever-interesting The Fullrunner newsletter.
| Posted to Top Stories | Top StoriesReal Journalist or Blogger? You be the judge
I know it's a thin news week, with the Thanksgiving holiday and all, but David Pogue should know better.
In his New York Times Technology section blog today, he answers an Enquiring Mind:
"Seeing that you have now launched a DAILY blog on NYTimes.com, I have to wonder: how do you manage writing a weekly column supplemented by hilarious videos and a separate e-mail column for the Times, plus writing and editing books in the Missing Manual series, plus doing television commentaries, plus being a speaker at tech conferences, plus being a dad, husband, homeowner, and all those other normal things, plus now writing a daily blog as well? I'm not trying to be obsequeous, I'm just flabbergasted. Do you work 18 hours a day or are you just exceptionally well-organized?""
Read on to see Superman in action.
This is precisely the kind of navel-gazing that leads Real Journalists to castigate self-indulgent Bloggers - a pitfall even David Pogue, whose work I generally admire, apparently couldn't avoid.
Links:
Pogue's Posts, 23 November 2004
For some real blogger navel-gazing, plus links to some great online journalism, check out OnlineJournalist.org, edited by yours truly, Doug Millison, "on a need-to-know basis."
| Posted to moveNovember 22, 2004
Headline of the Day
Stunned Pundit Agrees with Gates over Passwords
The story's worth reading, too.
I tip my hat to any tech biz journo who can work "Hartmann Schedel, a physician and cartographer who lived in Nuremberg (in what is now Germany) in the late 15th century" into a story about Microsoft.
And admit that Bill Gates is right.
Without gagging.
Scott Granneman, you are The Man!
Links:
Stunned pundit agrees with Gates over passwords by Scott Granneman The Register, 22 November 2004
Doug Millison also edits OnlineJournalist.org, "on a need-to-know basis"
Where are we all going?
The Web, Amazon.com, Google, blogs, RSS…where is it all taking us?
Watch this video from the future (2014, to be precise) for one plausible-sounding prediction, and a warning that cuts deep:
Gotta admit, I like the part where Microsoft fades from view and a new generation of freelance editors takes its place.
Links:
OnlineJournalist.org, edited by Doug Millison, "on a need-to-know basis"
Silicon Valley Media Watch launching this week…we know how the sausage is made
We will be launching Silicon Valley Media Watch (www.SiliconValleyMediaWatch.com) on Tuesday. Don't think of it as a separate web site, think of it as a section of the umbrella brand Silicon Valley Watcher website. All the stories will still be fed through Silicon Valley Watcher. You can get to the Media Watch section directly by typing in the name, too.
Silicon Valley Media Watch will be where we report on the media landscape that surrounds Silicon Valley. We will show how the world looks at Silicon Valley and how Silicon Valley looks at itself. All very narcissistic, but also very compelling, we hope.
This is where we will feature original content, such as interviews with top media industry leaders and thinkers. The first interview will be my recent meeting with the BBC’s Chief Technology Officer and his views on the coming wave of media technology outsourcing.
We plan introduce some interesting editorial features such as watching the Silicon Valley Hack Pack—the top tier journalists covering Silicon Valley and the US technology business. You’ll be able to see at a glance what is being covered by the top business and newspaper publications. And you will see how the international press community covers Silicon Valley, how their coverage differs from that in the US, etc.
One slogan I really wanted to use was: “Silicon Valley Media Watch: We know how the sausage is made.” It doesn’t quite work. But, I think it does convey the value that we provide, we know how the media and PR worlds interact. We want to highlight great reporting, praise great journalism. And at the same time, educate our communities on how things are done, how stories become news stories, and how media and PR work together behind the scenes.
We will sometimes deconstruct a news story or a feature. Color code the various sections of a story to indicate what came from the press release, what part of the story is original content, what is background material, analysis, relationships between people quoted, etc.
We will also chronicle the impact that Silicon Valley technologies and companies are having on the global media sector.
Silicon Valley Media Watch will be edited by Doug Millison, who will be “chief watcher.” Doug is my former business partner. We used to run a high tech news agency called West Coast News, where we supplied leading newspapers and magazine publications around the world with editorial packages consisting of news, columns and features.
Doug has been involved in many media projects and has decades of experience in the media industry. He is also one of the best editors I have ever worked with.
dm0701
| Posted to moveOm and his broadband blogging buddies to launch group blog
My goody buddy Om Malik, star reporter at Business 2.0, is pulling together a group blog on broadband. He has about a dozen experts on broadband and broadband related areas and they will all be contributing to the group Broadband Daily weblog.
Om’s GigaOm site is already the top news site on all things broadband and now with his blogging broadband buddies, Om will command a growing share of the broadband sector information flow. Interestingly, the group blog will not feature any advertising, sponsorship or anything else that might taint the purity of its words.
The group blog should be launching within the next few days…more details promised.
| Posted to moveNovember 19, 2004
Shoulder-rubbing can lead to back-scratching
David Lazarus traces the story of "the politically powerful Carlyle Group, which now enjoys a close relationship with the overseer of nearly $100 billion in Army funds," in today's San Francisco Chronicle.
The Carlyle Group is a secretive investment group which controls companies that profit from US defense spending and war efforts.
Lazarus notes that Francis Harvey, a resident of Los Gatos here in Silicon Valley, "received U.S. Senate approval this week to serve as Army secretary."
He goes on to report that "Harvey, 61, is former chief operating officer for a division of Westinghouse Electric, a leading defense contractor. He also serves on the boards of two Carlyle-affiliated companies, Duratek and Kuhlman Electric. Carlyle appointed Harvey to both positions."
It gets more Halliburtonesque the deeper you go. Writes Lazarus:
The Carlyle Group counts among its leaders and advisers former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci, former Secretary of State James Baker and, until last year, former President George H.W. Bush. In a report released Thursday, the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan government watchdog group, said Carlyle was the ninth-largest U.S. defense contractor between 1998 and 2003. The group said a dozen companies in which Carlyle owned a controlling interest earned more than $9.3 billion in military contracts during this period.
Harvey's appointment - made despite the concerns of legislators who worry that he may show favoritism to defense contractors with whom he has ties - may come as good news to investors in companies that have previously profited from Carlyle's midas touch. These include United Defense Industries, described by Lazarus as a "leading maker of combat vehicles (including the Bradley fighting vehicle), artillery and missile launchers" - a company whose sales mushroomed to a record $2 billion last year.
War means work for all, they say, and not everybody considers war profits to be blood money, I suppose.
Links:
Army chief has many pals by David Lazarus, San Francisco Chronicle, 19 November 2004
The Iron Triangle: Inside the Secret World of the Carlyle Group by Dan Briody (Amazon.com book page)
OnlineJournalist.org, edited by Doug Millison, "on a need-to-know basis"
dk0853
| Posted toNovember 18, 2004
New technology blog at the New York Times
The New York Times has launched a new blog in its Technology news section, offering yet another fine PR opportunity.
David Pogue is the blogger. In his inaugural blog today he explained the technique he uses to get prices for the products he mentions in his weekly New York Times Circuits column and articles, suggesting it to readers as a way to find a best buy online:
I visit Shopping.com (a master database of online vendor prices). I list for you the “Smart Buy” price—as the Web site puts it, “the lowest price from a trusted store.” In other words, the lowest price from a vendor with high customer feedback, one that won’t rip you off with gray-market goods and opened boxes.
As an example in the blog today, Pogue used large-format LCD flat panel television sets. The lucky manufacturer to get free publicity? Samsung.
Links:
David Pogue's blog at the New York Times
Circuits, at the New York Times
OnlineJournalist.org, edited by Doug Millison, "on a need-to-know basis"
| Posted toGoogle eases access to research information
Google announced Google Scholar, a new service that promises access to a wide spectrum of research and other scholarly publications.
Says the Silicon Valley-based search engine giant:
Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web.
Just the sort of information that might fuel the next hot Silicon Valley start-up, in other words, or lead an employer to a consultant who might provide the necessary expertise to flesh out a new product, service, or business venture.
Given that the Web was created to share exactly this sort of information among researchers and scholars, it's good to see this tool emerge. I hope Google follows through and makes it as useful as it promises to be.
Links:
OnlineJournalist.org, edited by Doug Millison "on a need-to-know basis"
| Posted toNovember 17, 2004
Bandwagon news
The New York Times sees signs of a Silicon Valley revival after the dot-com and tech bubbles bust, in a "series of "Charlie Rose" TV interviews whose theme seemed to be that the region is once again buzzworthy."
Gary Rivlin quotes Google CEO, Eric E. Schmidt, in the story:
"We stopped doing this after the burst of the bubble," Mr. Schmidt said after the Rose segment, with stage makeup still coating his face. "It feels good to be up here again, talking about the Valley. We don't do as much of this as we should do."
Schmidt, observes Rivlin, "seemed ebullient to be once again out in public, praising technology and crowing about the continued potential of Silicon Valley."
This is precisely the premise of Silicon Valley Watcher, of course.
In addition to Schmidt, Rose interviews CEOs of Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Yahoo, and Genentech.
Rivlin adds that "Other good omens in the Valley include the rebound of the technology-laden Nasdaq stock index, which is near a four-year high, and the fact that California voters have just approved a ballot measure that will pump $3 billion into stem-cell research."
Add in a renewed wave of Internet-TV-Hollywood convergence fever, widely reported elsewhere in the business press in recent weeks, and it's beginning to feel like the early 1990s information superhighway buzz.
Links:
Silicon Valley Aims to Refresh Its Image, by Gary Rivlin, New York Times, 17 November 2004
OnlineJournalist.org, edited by Doug Millison "on a need-to-know basis"
| Posted toThe Webtainment hype is back
Sorry, my fellow colleagues and friends at the Mercury News, but why the heck would you headline a topic like “Yahoo going Hollywood” on Monday’s front page? Sure, you could have used that space for something really important (maybe Fallujah, the uncertain future of the middle east, Iran’s nuclear program or even Cheney’s mysterious cold?); but that’s not what I’m complaining about.
What bothers me is that you fill this prominent spot with old news and very emotional news. I know that you know better, much better. Silicon Valley going Hollywood (and vice versa) is a sore topic: too many heavily-backed ventures in both fields have failed terribly.
And even Yahoo has been there, done that. Remember Yahoo Platinum or Yahoo Finance Vision? The Santa Clara web pioneer failed like all the other hyped online entertainment projects back in the dotcom heydays. The Mercury News mentions Warner’s Entertaindom, the youth-oriented (and, as I well recall, super-arrogant to deal with) Digital Entertainment Network (DEN) as well as Pop.com and Z.com. There are so many others that would be worth mentioning, often presenting great content, promising marketing ideas, but technically no business models.
And if you read the Mercury’s story carefully, you’ll realize that not much has changed since then (ok, besides the fact that 20 percent of U.S. households have broadband internet access now): the digital entertainment scene in cyberspace is still an exciting field with lots of creativity and interesting cross-promotional concepts for traditional media. No doubt, the industry has potential but a there are still no real business models behind today’s main players, which are: Yahoo (hello again!) and surprise, surprise, Amazon.com. But who really cares?
I admit I was once also very excited about the web entertainment. Projects like Atomfilms, The New Venue, Macromedia’s Shockwave.com, StanLee.net or my all-time favorite Icebox.com (remember Mr. Wong?) really fascinated me. It was even one of my favorite topics to write about in 1999 and early 2000; and I was stupid enough to quote people like Roger Ebert, who predicted in early 2000, “There will be blood in the streets of Hollywood.” I headlined a one-page story for the back then mega-hyped German weekly “Net-Business” with that quote. Ouch. The paper actually failed soon after.
A bit of old news worth remembering today is the fact that Bill Gates’ pal Paul Allen invested 50 Million Dollar in Pop.com in 2000. Yes, that’s 50 Million. For those of you who don’t even remember what Pop.com was, it was nothing because it never went online. It was just the digital daydream of a bunch of Hollywood moguls like Steven Spielberg or Jeffrey Katzenberg to cash in with original content for the web –– and from the web community. After they realized that it is way too expensive to create original content on a big scale and basically impossible to commercialize, they shifted to a low-budget strategy and asked young web geeks to submit their video or animation projects. Not even the low-budget version of Pop.com ever launched. Perhaps Spielberg and his millionaire friends were to embarrassed to use the name “Pop.com,” but some months later they launched a project called Countingdown.com which adopted the “submit your own stuff” amateur approach. I think nobody in the Valley or Hollywood ever noticed that the site exists.
Exactly two years ago actor Kevin Spacey announced the start of a similar project called Triggerstreet.com during Comdex (BTW: the site is partnering with Yahoo and Budweiser). Everybody at the press conference at that show (a very, very slow one) was quite surprised. I was the first, but hardly the last, to ask Spacey about the business model for the site. Naturally, he wasn’t surprised at the question and replied: “There is no business model.” At least he was honest.
P.S. Mr. Allen, just in case you read this. And I’m pretty sure you read SiliconValleyWatcher.com. Please contact me since the online entertainment hype is on again to discuss how we can spend another couple of millions on fun stuff on the web.
| Posted toNovember 15, 2004
Mike Tarsala tech stock newsletter project launching soon…
Mike Tarsala, well known in Silicon Valley from when he used to work the tech beat at CBS Marketwatch, is close to launching a newsletter project.
Mike left CBS Marketwatch in June and moved to Chicago to take up a job at Briefing.com. His newsletter will focus on tech stocks, and will build on Mike’s long experience in covering the tech sector. His coverage will feature smaller tech companies that are often overlooked by Wall Street. I’ve been promised more details closer to the newsletter launch.
I’ve always admired Mike -- he is a pugnacious and determined business reporter, and I wish him great happiness and prosperity from his new venture. And I hope Mike enjoys his first Chicago winter—I hear they only last until May.
| Posted toJoe Fay to take over at The Register as the UK tech news site mulls western expansion
It’s official: Joe Fay, the US editor of Computerwire, will take over as editor of The Register, the pithy, cynical, and often witty online tech news site based in the UK. He will start in mid-February. It signals quite a few changes ahead for the news site.
Peter Kirwan, in the excellent newsletter, Fullrun, reports:
[Fay] will replace long-term [The Register] shareholder and editor Drew Cullen, who, in his own words, is stepping aside to do 'more owning and less managing."Says Cullen: "I intend to be very much hands-off in terms of editorial. I'll be working on a couple of commercial projects."
I’ve known about the move for some time but was unable to discuss it until now. I think it shows that The Register is growing up and wants to be taken more seriously. A lot of the pleasure that comes from reading The Register is its attitude, including the cheap puns and cheap shots it makes at the IT industry. “Biting the hand that feeds IT” is its motto and it is a lot of fun to do that--it’s even better if you can back it up with some meaty stories. That’s what Joe can bring to The Register—tighten things up (look out Orlowski . . .I’m kidding of course . . .)
Also, The Register has been thinking about a westward move for some time. Joe would bring some credibility to a US push, and he can make it palatable for US audiences. The edges are sometimes too harsh and mean for US readers, and there is way too much UK-insider related humor.
The Register: http://www.theregister.co.uk/
Fullrun newsletter (subscription required.)
Tools For Tech Marcoms Pros || www.fullrun.com
| Posted toTales of the Blog
Tom publicly applauded my efforts to launch a 3-column website last week, and I truly appreciate the recognition. I wish I could say the result of the new design was entirely a problem of working out the 3-column coding structure, which apparently has been the holy grail of CSS design work, but the new site design also involved a lot of other customizations that involved tweaking Moveable Type tags.
Moveable Type (MT) is a powerful server-side publishing tool, but once you get beyond the basics, the user needs to be prepared to more than dabble in CSS, Perl, PHP, etc.
I have been working with HTML since about 1993, designing and maintaining a vanity page, my own company's website, and friends' pages. And I've done a bit of CSS design, mostly for my resume. However, customizing MT demanded a level of knowledge I was not prepared for.
It's a crying shame that CSS, designed to be so simple and approachable to nonprogrammers, has turned into such a cabalist's affair! --Todd Fahrner
I was sooo relieved to have found that quote at the top of Eric Meyer's web site. (Meyer is the reigning guru of CSS.) And the more I cruised support forums (which have proven to be a godsend), the more I realized there were many people who were ranting about MT. For example, DWB left this on the MT Support Forum:
I am the most technical/computer literate person at my place of employment of 60+ people. . .I believe I am more technical/internet savvy than 98-99% of the population. . .Given that I am not going to learn HTML, CSS, scripts, etc., and that I refuse to have a generic blog on my site, have I truly gotten in over my head? Was this just an adventure I didn't research enough? Does it truly have to be this hard?
Wow! Did he hit a nerve! Fact is, the user who wants to customize a blog not only needs to bone up on their CSS, but also needs to become familiar with MT tag usage (MT is written in Perl), and then how to use said tags within the context of HTML.
Yes, you can RTFM, but speaking as an ex-tech writer, the documentation isn't exactly user-friendly. Installation itself can be a grueling process to anyone not familiar with CGI scripting (MT will do the install for $40, but I *had* to learn it myself!) Our server host support forum was fantastic in helping me install MT, and I picked up some great tips along the way re: MT, MySQL, etc., from them.
Don't get me wrong -- none of what I'm writing here is meant to criticize the functionality of Moveable Type. I researched many different blogging tools before we began work on Silicon Valley Watcher.com. I concluded that MT was the best tool. However, clearly it was written for web programmers. As the blogosphere continues to mushroom, more and more frustrated newbies will be using it and wanting to customize their blogs. The Moveable Type folks merely need to put some concerted effort into its user interface and documentation. Because it is a damn powerful tool, (mostly) fun to learn, and changing the landscape of on-line journalism.
| Posted toNovember 11, 2004
Where are the hot new Silicon Valley ideas?
Silicon Valley is in the doldrums, according to Sarah Lacy of Business Week.
Lacy reports on the seventh annual "Top 10 Technology Trends" event hosted by the Churchill Club on November 9.
Looking for fire, or at least sparks, Lacy came away disappointed and sounding chilly.
"While it may be a stretch to say the Churchill Club panel typifies the Valley's doldrums, it sure doesn't say much when even the big thinkers aren't thinking terribly big," she reports.
The trends announced by a panel of experts (the usual suspects) sound less than cutting-edge. Lacy notes that several of them are already well under way:
1. Web services will evolve and create new businesses2. Patients will demand online medical records
3. Corporate computing won't see big changes for at least five years
4. The next big tech innovation will come out of China
5. Blogging and other online content will force traditional media to change
6. California will lead the world in embryonic stem-cell research
7. Text messaging will become more pervasive
8. New consumer technologies will appeal to more than just young hipsters
9. Every consumer-electronic product you own is about to become obsolete
10. Utility computing will keep tech spending strong
Links:
Silicon Valley of the Doldrums by Sarah Lacy Business Week, 11 November 2004
Affiliate Link:
OnlineJournalist.org, edited by Doug Millison "on a need-to-know basis"
| Posted toWhat does Google think of the Microsoft search engine?
Detail of news.google.com home page on 10 & early 11 November 2004:
The Gates photo next to the headline about Microsoft going after Google's market pretty much says it all. For a closer look, click on "continues" below.
When Google announced the news.google.com site, the company boasted that the page was assembled without human intervention.
What's Bill Gates doing with that finger?
But, this particularly unflattering photo of Bill Gates appearing next to the headline about Microsoft competing with Google seems to betray the judgment of a human editor, if not that of a marketing executive. (Only after clicking on the thumbnail photo at news.google.com does the photo become large enough to clearly see the actual location of Gates' finger.)
Including the headline "Google search tops 8 billion pages" seems a tad suspect, too. It certainly supports the notion highlighted in so many news stories today, that Microsoft has a tough fight ahead if it wants to displace Google.
Links:
Affiliate Link:
OnlineJournalist.org, edited by Doug Millison "on a need-to-know basis"
| Posted toNovember 10, 2004
Microsoft's search & kicking butt
I've got a bone to pick with Bill Gates, or at least an observation to make, in response to a quote attributed to him in today's Good Morning Silicon Valley email newsletter.
The newsletter, published by the San Jose Mercury News and bylined John Paczkowski, is well-written and generally a fun, informative read.
In today's issue, Paczkowski recalls, "Speaking at The World Economic Forum in January, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said he regretted not investing more in search technology over the past few years. 'Google kicked our butts,' he said."
It's probably impolite to point out just how far Microsoft has lagged behind the technology leaders, almost since the company's earliest days, when Gates bought up a pre-existing operting system and turned it into MS-DOS.
By the time Gates had used family connections to approach IBM and seal the fortune-making deal of a lifetime, to put DOS on the IBM PC, Apple was already working on the Mac and a graphical user interface, which Microsoft later ripped off for Windows.
Microsoft has always been more interested in market share than technology leadership, and it has played fast and loose to win, to the point of stretching or even breaking the law in some cases.
I had the chance to meet Bill Gates back in the early '90s, when I was the US West Coast Correspondent for Japanese megacorp Softbank. Together with a handful of reporters, I spent a couple of hours sequestered with Gates at a barbecue on the Microsoft campus in Redmond, in the context of a press and analyst dog-and-pony show.
"Rumpled professor" is the kindest descriptor I can apply to his personal appearance; he's cleaned up very nicely since he got married.
But he hasn't changed the macho approach to business that was immediately obvious on that occasion. That evening he was going on, and on, and on, about Apple and how they were going to, yes, kick Apple's butt in the then-current litigation over Microsoft's appropriation of Apple's graphical user interface intellectual property.
Steve Ballmer talks the same way, I also learned when I met him that weekend. Based on Ballmer's recent comments about Apple iPod users being thieves, he doesn't seem to have changed his ways in the interval.
Paczkowski notes that Microsoft has invested some $100 million in its search engine technology, with the hope of catching up with and overtaking Google.
But I'm wondering if Gates's violent metaphor betrays an obsession with physically beating a competitor that, in this case at least, may have gotten in the way of actually building a better solution for customers. That, as everybody knows, is the way a company can actually win new customers and keep them loyal.
Paczkowski: "Matching wits with Google is no easy task though, and it remains to be seen whether Redmond's offering will be competitive with Google's. Certainly, the preview version of the engine is unimpressive. 'From what I've seen, the technology is still pretty unremarkable," SearchEngineWatch.com Editor Danny Sullivan told PC World. [Microsoft hasn't] been savvy in terms of search optimization.' "
But that won't stop Microsoft, I'm sure, from trying to kick some Google butt in return for the butt-kicking Gates perceives he's received.
Now I'll reveal - if you regular readers haven't figured it out already - that I'm a Mac partisan and have been ever since I first used a Mac not long after it came on the market.
The first time I met Steve Jobs was at the grand Next, Inc. launch back in 1988. His famous "reality distortion field" was vibrating at a particularly high level that day, with a huge crowd of reporters from all over the world treating him like a rock star.
I don't want to get too hung up on personal hygiene in my comparison of these two personal computer industry giants, but suffice to say that when I got up close to Jobs, it was obvious that he had recently washed his hair. And his spectacles were free of fingerprinted smudge.
But, what I really like about Jobs is that his motivation has always been to create the best possible technical solution, with cutting edge industrial design.
He invested $7 million of his own money in Next - $7 million in 1985 dollars. (Successful Silicon Valley entrepreneurs say, "Never, never, never invest your own money." Of course, some of the most astonishing success stories have resulted when entrepreneurs have ignored this advice. Including, I'd argue, Jobs' investment in Next. As I've written here before, the Next system is today's multimedia, Web-ready personal computer at an affordable price point thanks to manufacturing advances in the past 16 years.)
Obviously Jobs has made compromises along the way. It is clear, however, that his ambition has never been to dominate the market and "crush" all possible competitors, with buggy software that's always at least a couple of years behind the best.
A metrosexual approach to personal computer design, in other words. Or, to use a more topical metaphor: the "blue state" of personal computers, compared to Microsoft's swaggering macho "red state."
Links:
No results found for: "Linux." Did you mean: "Windows" by John Paczkowski, Good Morning Silicon Valley, 10 November 2004
Next Computer, Wikipedia article
Affiliate link:
OnlineJournalist.org, edited by Doug Millison, "on a need-to-know basis"
| Posted toMicrosoft search engine announcement confusion
by Doug Millison for SiliconValleyWatcher.com
Just what is Microsoft going to announce tomorrow regarding Sandbox, its long-awaited Google- and Yahoo!-killing search engine? I've read eight stories about it this morning and still don't know for sure.
In the New York Times, John Markoff cites an anonymous source who received advance briefing from Microsoft, and says the software giant "is planning to introduce its long-awaited Internet search engine on Thursday."
Markoff reports that "Word of the introduction of the service, which will compete with Google and Yahoo, was leaked on Tuesday after the company began phoning reporters offering briefings for Wednesday."
Markoff missed one detail that Scarlet Pruitt of the IDG News Service includes in her InfoWorld story today: "The new search engine will go live on the company's MSN Web site, a representative for the company said."
Business Week's Ben Elgin is fuzzy on the timing of the announcement, reporting that "After more than a year of quiet work, Microsoft is expected to launch a test version of its first Internet search engine later this week."
Over at Eweek, Matt Hicks adds more detail, explaining that Microsoft will launch a "public beta" of the search engine, and goes on to say, "The beta will expand on MSN's technology preview of its new search engine that has been available through the MSN Sandbox site. MSN launched a second preview last month with a Web index of about 5 billion documents after conducting a smaller two-month test earlier in the summer."
Hicks notes what many of the stories include: that the new Microsoft search engine will eventually replace the Yahoo! technology used at MSN.com, and predicts the search engine pioneer will get the boot about a year from now.
Meanwhile, in the Wall Street Journal, Robert A. Guth's story does not cite a source, says Microsoft "will open to the public its service for searching the Internet" tomorrow, then seems to contradict himself when he writes that "Microsoft, which has been testing the service on a limited basis since June, has said it will start the public version of the service by year-end." I guess it all depends on what the meaning of "public" is.
SearchEngineWatch.com cuts through the Microsoft pre-announcement briefing hype (which it appears not to have received first hand) to ask, "What's the source of these rumors? MSN is briefing members of the press about the launch, and the news is leaking out. But exact details other than a release is planned are sparse."
Back in Silicon Valley, the San Francisco Chronicle did not publish a story on this subject today, while the San Jose Mercury News offers a bare-bones Associated Press wire service version which reports that Microsoft "will offer consumers a preview of its technology for searching the Internet, beginning Thursday."
Two things seem certain:
1. Microsoft has been successful in placing news stories about Thursday's announcement.
2. The varying details, or lack thereof, of the various stories paint a confusing picture reminiscent of the message that emerges from the end of a long line of children playing "Telephone."
Pity the poor investors who are trying to figure out whether to buy or short search engine company shares today.
Maybe this will help. At Scripting News, Dave Winer says: "Lots of rumors floating around about Microsoft's new supposed Google-killing search engine. Google stock is down as a result of the buzz, maybe. As you may know, I own 100 shares, bought just after the IPO at $100. I also was briefed on a new Microsoft service about a month ago. I can't talk about it now. I'm not selling my Google stock."
Links:
At Last, a Microsoft Search Tool by John Markoff, New York Times
Microsoft to launch new search engine technology by Scarlet Pruitt, IDG News Service
Google, Meet Microsoft by Ben Elgin, Business Week
MSN Search Beta Set to Launch by Matt Hicks, Eweek
MSN Search Technology To Debut (Again) This Week, SearchEngineWatch.com
Microsoft Is Set to Unveil Its Internet Search Service by Robert A. Guth, Wall Street Journal
Microsoft previews search tool by the Associated Press, in the San Jose Mercury News
Sandbox, Microsoft's site, link from the Eweek story.
| Posted toNovember 09, 2004
UPDATE: Who are the spammers?
by Doug Millison for SiliconValleyWatcher.com
They're a varied lot, but in one way they're all the same: they want to get rich without working hard.
"They're lazy entrepreneurs," observes freelance writer Brian McWilliams. "They're people who want to make money fast, but they don't want to work hard at it."
McWilliams' new book, Spam Kings: The Real Story Behind the High-Rolling Hucksters Pushing Porn, Pills and @*#?% Enlargements, is the object of an article in today's San Francisco Chronicle by Carrie Kirby.
Kirby focuses on one of the colorful characters McWilliams features: "Davis Hawke, was a failed leader in the white supremacist movement, a competitive chess player, and -- thanks to his thriving e-mail marketing business -- a wealthy man."
Hawke makes "$600,000 a month selling penis-enlargement pills through a network of affiliates," Kirby reports. "But on March 10, he was hit with one of the first lawsuits under the new Can-Spam Act. America Online is seeking $10 million from Hawke -- if it can find him."
(Note to self - idea for next book: Spam Customers: The Real Story Behind People who Send Money to Complete Strangers For Penis Enlargement Pills & Get Rich Quick Schemes)
Links:
New book looks at spammers: Junk e-mailers span social spectrum, but all want quick riches by Carrie Kirby, San Francisco Chronicle, 8 November 2004
Spam Kings: The Real Story behind the High-Rolling Hucksters Pushing Porn, Pills, and %*@)# Enlargements Amazon.com page for the book
Affiliate link:
OnlineJournalist.org, edited by Doug Millison "on a need-to-know basis"
| Posted toThe Persuaders
by Doug Millison for SiliconValleyWatcher.com
Check out PBS tonight for an intriguing new documentary by Doug Rushkoff called The Persuaders
I met Doug Rushkoff through contacts in the San Francisco rave community back in the early '90s and had the opportunity to invite him to write a regular column for a short-lived publication I conceived and edited, Blaster, the first lifestyle magazine for "screenagers" (people who grow up using a computer mouse and videogame joystick). He went on to New York University, fame and glory, and is back with the new PBS documentary
From the PBS description of the program:
FRONTLINE takes an in-depth look at the multibillion-dollar "persuasion industries" of advertising and public relations and how marketers have developed new ways of integrating their messages deeper into the fabric of our lives. Through sophisticated market research methods to better understand consumers, and by turning to the little-understood techniques of public relations to make sure their messages come from sources we trust, marketers are crafting messages that resonate with an increasingly cynical public. In this documentary essay, correspondent Douglas Rushkoff (correspondent for FRONTLINE's "The Merchants of Cool") also explores how the culture of marketing has come to shape the way Americans understand the world and themselves and how the techniques of the persuasion industries have migrated to politics, shaping the way our leaders formulate policy, influence public opinion, make decisions, and stay in power.
Rushkoff's subject reminds me of Vance Packard's The Hidden Persuaders, a 1957 book that had a big impact on me when I discovered it as a budding malcontent in the 1960s.
Considering the way that Bush and the Christian Right have hypnotized tens of millions of Americans, Rushkoff's documentary sounds like required viewing.
Links:
The Persuaders, PBS site for the documentary
Rushkoff.com Doug Rushkoff's site. Here's his blog.
The Hidden Persuader, Salon.com essay on Packard's book and career.
Vance Packard–Pop Sociologist of Marketing Scams and Much More brief overview of Packard's career.
Affiliate link:
OnlineJournalist.org, edited by Doug Millison "on a need-to-know basis"
| Posted toNovember 04, 2004
Media Watch: Election streams auger well for online video
by Doug Millison for SiliconValleyWatcher.com
The Tube can't claim all of the live video action in the Presidential election and its aftermath. At-work viewers tuned into online video streams in large numbers, demonstrating an online advertising market of vast potential.
Tobi Elkin reports that MSNBC.com provided 82,000 individual streams at the beginning of John Kerry's concession speech yesterday morning and 81,000 streams for Bush's victory speech later in the day, observing that " this isn't the total number of streams, nor does it include people who will watch it later online."
MSNBC.com says it served a total of 250,000 streams on Election Day. Online video viewers also participated in the site's several blogs, MSNBC.com says.
The at-work-during-the-day online audience promises to be a profitable one for news sites and their sponsors.
Dean Wright, MSNBC.com editor-in-chief and vice president told Elkins that he views "the at-work audience as our primetime audience. For a lot of people, that's the only way they're going to be able to see [events] live in real-time."
Whether or not the at-work audience evaporates as bosses continue to use Big Brother techniques to monitor employee Internet usage and enforce work discipline is an unanswered question.
Links:
Election Streams by Tobi Elkin, MediaPost, 4 November 2004
Affiliate Link:
OnlineJournalist.org, edited by Doug Millison "on a need-to-know basis"
November 03, 2004
Media Watch: Marketing lessons from the election
by Doug Millison for SiliconValleyWatcher.com
While half of US voters digest their disappointment in the results, a silver lining may be found from studying the election as a real-time seminar in online marketing techniques.
Writing before the results of yesterday's election, for publication today, Cory Treffiletti writes:
This election is a prime example of how a reaction was generated via multiple messages in multiple forms of media to effectively surround the audience and elicit a response. MoveOn.org and MeetUp.com probably drove more Americans to vote than any of the primary news networks.Jon Stewart probably reached more 18- to 34-year-old males than either of the candidates would have directly. Bruce Springsteen probably raised more awareness of some of the specific issues than any rock star has ever done in the past. If you examine these efforts uniquely, you miss the point that this was a well orchestrated marketing effort on behalf of the teams for both candidates.
Links:
The Election As An Example Of Marketing by Cory Treffiletti, MediaPost, 3 November 2004
Affiliate link:
OnlineJournalist.org, edited by Doug Millison: "on a need to know basis"
| Posted toMedia Watch: A new kind of entrepreneur?
by Doug Millison for SiliconValleyWatcher.com
Is a new kind of entrepreneur taking over in Silicon Valley?
In an essay called "The New Entrepreneur, " William Reichert of Garage Technology Ventures argues yes:
The entrepreneurs starting companies today are not like the ones we saw, and now ridicule, in the late 90s. But they are also not like the ones we saw in the 80s and early 90s. We are not going back to an earlier breed of entrepreneur. If you are an investor looking for the kind of entrepreneur who built companies in the "good old days," you are making a mistake. The innovators who are creating companies today represent a new breed of entrepreneur, a species that can trace its lineage back through each of the species that went before, but which is very different nonetheless.....The New Entrepreneurs are more battle scarred, less innocent, more realistic, less delusional, more bootstrap oriented, less dependent on traditional venture capital, more operational, and less IPO focused. They are less naive and have more business discipline and savvy. This business savvy comes not from getting an M.B.A., but rather from living through the last 10 years and trying to launch new businesses during the dramatic rollercoaster we experienced. The entrepreneurs we see today are, frankly, more capable than they were in the 80s and 90s—and they have to be.
Reichert says the new entrepreneurial teams have broader, and deeper experience in all core competency areas, include more women and multinational talent, reflect a better understanding of global markets, and "embody deeper science."
The new entrepreneur doesn't necessarily live in Silicon Valley, either. "Today, the infrastructure for starting a company and making an investment in Southern California is as robust as it is in Silicon Valley," writes Reichert. "The same story applies in Seattle, Salt Lake City, and Phoenix, and increasingly in Cambridge, Singapore, Shanghai, and elsewhere in the world."
Links:
The New Entrepreneur by William Reichert, 3 November 2004
Affiliate link:
OnlineJournalist.org, edited by Doug Millison: "on a need to know basis"
| Posted toMedia Watch: Blog turnout high, results mixed
by Doug Millison for SiliconValleyWatcher.com
Blogs starred in the election night drama, but reviews of their performance are mixed.
Internet traffic and a variety of web hosting woes - sure to spark any number of conspiracy theories - resulted in sluggish access to popular political blogs, including The Daily Kos (which received some five million visitors yesterday), Talking Points Memo, Eschaton, and others.
Given the high profile blogs have gained in disseminating campaign news, and rumors, their adherence - or not - to journalistic standards drew fire.
As John Horn writes in the Los Angeles Times:
As they have in the past, television networks and newspaper websites refrained from reporting early exit poll results, but the Internet adheres to little such restraint. Hours after the first polls opened on the East Coast, the Internet bustled with preliminary voter surveys, sparking an angry online debate among the wi-fi wonks over their posting and their significance.The attribution for (and authenticity of) these numbers was murky. National Review postings credited data to "Bushies," "Republican pollster types" and "a friend working for the campaign in Ohio." Numbers put up on Wonkette (www.wonkette.com) were attributed to "a little birdie" who, it was noted, is "not exactly trustworthy in all cases." Some people argued the numbers were based on the earliest waves of exit polling failing to reflect new numbers that surfaced through the day. No matter how shaky, many blogs didn't hesitate posting the figures.
Conclusion: Bloggers have some work to do if they want to be taken seriously as an alternative to professional journalists.
Links:
Exit Polls Bog Down the Blogs by John Horn, Los Angeles Times, 3 November 2004
The Daily Kos
Talking Points Memo
Eschaton
Wonkette
Affiliate link:
OnlineJournalist.org, edited by Doug Millison: "on a need to know basis"
| Posted toNovember 02, 2004
Book Watch: The Father of Silicon Valley
by Doug Millison for SiliconValleyWatcher.com
That's what they call Fred Terman, subject of a new biography, Building a Discipline, a University, and Silicon Valley, by historian C. Stewart Gillmor, published by Stanford University Press.
From the publisher's description:
Fred Terman was an outstanding American engineer, teacher, entrepreneur, and manager. Terman was also deeply devoted to his students, to engineering, and to Stanford University. This biography focuses on the weave of personality and place across time—it examines Terman as a Stanford faculty child growing up at an ambitious little regional university; as a young electrical engineering professor in the heady 1920s and the doldrums of the Depression; as an engineering manager and educator in the midst of large-scale wartime research projects and the postwar rise of Big Science and Big Engineering; as a university administrator on the razor’s edge of great expectations and fragile budgets; and, finally, as a senior statesman of engineering education. The first doctoral student of Vannevar Bush at M.I.T., Terman was himself a prodigious teacher and adviser to many, including William Hewlett and David Packard. Terman was widely hailed as the magnet that drew talent together into what became known as Silicon Valley.Throughout his life, Fred Terman was constant in his belief that quality could be quantified, and he was adamant that a university’s success must, in the end, be measured by the success of its students. Fred Terman’s formula for success, both in life and for his university, was fairly simple: hard work and persistence, systematic dedication to clearly articulated goals, accountability, and not settling for mediocre work in yourself or in others.
At 672 pages, the book promises lots of page-turning enjoyment, but the price - $70 for the hardcover - may prompt some readers to wait for a less expensive paperback edition.
Terman's best-known students, as Therese Poletti reveals in her article about the new book, were David Packard and William Hewlitt. "He gave them a list of 25 potential customers, including a sound engineer at the Walt Disney Studios, which became HP's first customer," writes Poletti.
Links:
Fred Terman at Stanford: Building a Discipline, a University, and Silicon Valley by C. Stewart Gillmor, Amazon.com page
The Father of Silicon Valley by Therese Poletti, San Jose Mercury News, 1 November 2004
Affiliate link:
OnlineJournalist.org, edited by Doug Millison: "on a need to know basis"
| Posted toNovember 01, 2004
Media Watch: Trip's new trip
by Doug Millison for SiliconValleyWatcher.com
Old Silicon Valley entrepreneurs never die, and they don't fade away, either. Trip Hawkins is back with a new game company.
Matthew Yi sketches the Hawkins saga in "Game veteran taking a new trip: Entrepreneur's latest startup offers video entertainment for cell phones" in today's San Francisco Chronicle.
Hawkins new company is called Digital Chocolate. Like his previous ventures, it's a game company, but this time the platform is the digital media-enabled mobile phone.
Hawkins boasts to Yi that he can "easily sell a million copies", at $5 each, to the nearly 200 million mobile phone users in the U.S.
That's the kind of bold talk expected of a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. Whether Digital Chocolate can avoid joining Hawkins' earlier venture, 3DO, in the Silicon Valley dinosaur graveyard is another story entirely.
After founding Electronic Arts, Hawkins became a player in the early 1990's interactive multimedia swirl with 3DO, an ill-fated effort to compete with Nintendo and Sega in the videogame console business by selling games on CD-ROMs. 3DO bit the bankruptcy bullet in 2003.
Inexplicably, Yi's story fails to mention the deal announced last week between Digital Chocolate and Cingular Wireless. Hawkins new company will supply games for Cingular customers beginning in January 2005 with a basketball simulation called NCAA Hoops 2005.
Also missing from Yi's story, but included in last week's announcement: "Digital Chocolate is backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Sequoia Capital, Sutter Hill Ventures, as well as angel investors, including Bob Pittman, former COO of AOL/Time-Warner and founder of MTV."
Links:
Game veteran taking a new trip: Entrepreneur's latest startup offers video entertainment for cell phones by Matthew Yi, San Francisco Chronicle, 1 November 2004
Digital Chocolate and Cingular Wireless Join Forces to Bring Next Generation of Mobile Entertainment Applications to Consumers, press release distributed by Businesswire
| Posted to
