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December 29, 2004
Tsunami Help/Aid Agencies, Donations & Volunteers
In light of the recent disaster, we thought our readers might be interested in this comprehensive Wikinews site of links to charitable organizations:
| Posted toDecember 27, 2004
Holiday Watch
I'm off for holiday R & R and will be back in the new year.
Wishing you all the best of the season!
________________________________________________________________________
Free Memory with select Nikon Cameras
| Posted toDecember 26, 2004
Trapped inside a crumbling business model? Exposing print advertisers to online can be disastrous
I recently had a chat with a buddy of mine who publishes one of the best business magazines around, and it’s been doing reasonably well despite the continuing downturn in advertising.
He told me that his publication might close down its web site. Why, I asked? We lose money from advertisers pulling their ads from the magazine, he said. When their online ads get very few clicks, they then decide that the print advertising is also not getting through to the right people. So they pull all their print and online ads.
About $1,000 in poorly performing online advertising can result in pulling out $20,000 of print advertising.
That’s why you will see more and more print publishers doing less and less online—they can’t afford to expose themselves to the online advertising model. That’s why many print publishers are trapped inside a crumbling business model. Print advertising won’t go away, but it won’t stay the same. Big changes are ahead and we will cover them here.
dk0933
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30% Off Designer Opal Jewelry for SVW Readers!
| Posted to Top StoriesYahoo Search Blog: Blogs as a Feedback Tool
Tom and I met with the founders of Voce Communications last Friday, 10 Dec., for an informal lunch meet and greet (see Tom's companion piece). Among the guests were Nancy Evars and Jeremy Zawodny of Yahoo, who worked together to put up the Yahoo Search Blog.
This pairing in itself was interesting to me, as engineers (Jeremy) and marketing types (Nancy) have traditionally been allergic to one another. (I've seen this many times from my former vantage point inside many startups.) So I found it fascinating they have managed to work together to create a succesful blog.
Nancy said the Yahoo Search blog was created as a means of creating a 2-way dialogue with customers regarding internet search.
She stressed that it was not set up to be a PR tool, but as a resource that "influencers" (influential bloggers) would read and contribute to, thus providing valuable feedback to Yahoo from those who matter most. (Which brings up the point that metrics such as hits and unique visitors are not in themselves useful -- it's WHO is hitting on you.)
I asked her whether the blog could become a way of replacing traditional marketing and research. She replied that no, they would not take the place the place of focus groups and other traditional means of doing market research, but instead the blog is viewed as a tool for enhancing marketing efforts. Other Yahoo departments considering new product launches are now consulting with her on how to use blogs to beta test and launch upcoming products.
This is one of the greatest strength of blogs: they provide companies a relatively low cost means of conducting market research and obtaining user information from those who are actually using the technology in question. All companies need to create a genuine dialogue between themselves and their customers, and blogs provide an elegant low cost solution to the age old problem of figuring out what the customer wants.
Links:
cd1007
| Posted to Top StoriesGoogle muzzles the press: a report from inside the Googleplex holiday media party
I'd like to tell you about the party; but it was all off the record! Damn. I picked up so many great stories that it hurts not to write about them.
I think Google made the party off the record because it was Cindy McCaffrey's birthday (head marketing honcho at the big G), and she didn't want us reporting the number of candles on her cake (16).
(Jochen, our photographer, had to surrender all his kit).
It's difficult to see, but there are two "ice" penguins cunningly disguised as waiters. It's obviously a thinly-disguised salute to Linux--and a poke in the eye to Microsoft, which has ambitions in search.
I got there fairly late, as my car was a little challenged by the journey (it's still in the car park). As I walked into the party, I was surprised how relaxed and mellow everyone was. I expected a circus of media people, cameras, the Silicon Valley Hack Pack chasing the boys and Eric around, while Wayne hoped nobody recognized him. It wasn't like that at all. It was very pleasant: there was some live jazz, maybe 50 people were milling around, and it felt very comfortable.
I looked around and I realized that these were pretty much the same people from the year-ago holiday party, which was fun and relaxed too. Sergey and Larry were floating around with no hacks chasing them. I didn't see Eric; but he always heads out a half hour earlier if he can. And pretty much the same Silicon Valley hack pack was there.
David Krane, head comms guy at the Big G came over and said, "I read you all the time, and I share it with my team." (I couldn't keep that one of the record!) That's what I love to hear, and I'll never get tired of hearing it. It is the best feedback we can get. It's not the number of hits that matters, its who's hitting on you that counts, as I remember telling stand-alone journalist Chris Nolan recently.
(She was haranguing me about how many hits I get on my site, and saying that "advertisers will want to know that." Thank you, Chris, you've obviously done your research; but that's not my business model.)
Anyway, I've worked with David and Raymond Nasr for a long time, and not just on Google stories. Raymond, for example, was at Novell with Eric Schmidt, and previously at Apple and Sun. We chatted about the time when Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh (the queen's husband), paid a visit to Novell in San Jose, March, 2000. That was when Pat Mahoney was also working at Novell; these days she is at seed VC firm, Mohr Davidow Ventures. Novell, at the time, was a large contributor to the Duke's charities. I had recently interviewed Eric, and so when the Duke arrived, they rustled together a few Brits and Scots to make him feel at home.
That's how I got to have lunch with Prince Philip; and it wasn't at a table with 200 people, it was at a small round table with six people. Which was great because we could chat. I'd love to tell you what he said about Bill Gates. But I can't: off the record again. I hate to string you up like this.
Back to the Google party . . .I started thinking about what an insane year this has been for the Google team. It kicked off when my colleague at the Financial Times, Richard Waters, broke the story that Google would use an auction system to sell its IPO shares. It would spurn the investment bankers and offer its shares directly to the public. Bold stuff: the investment bankers weren't happy; but so what, kudos to Google!
Then it was non-stop Google stories for months. At the FT in SF, we had an emergency meeting where we pulled together ideas for more than 30 stories. Our editors in London were ravenous; and the best thing to do was to feed them. It's better to feed them stories, rather than allow them too much time to think up great story angles on their own. I wish I could tell you about some of the great story angles that were cooked up down the "U-bend" ---the mahogany row of FT HQ.
As journalists, we soon tired of writing Google stories; but David, Raymond and the rest of the comms team (not to mention the boys and Eric), were sucked into a global media whirlwind and it's still pretty windy.
So, it was great to kick back, tell some stories, and catch up. I just wish it wasn't all off the record! There is no better way to torture a journalist than to tell him some great stories, and then say it is all off the record! It's pure torture; I should report them to somebody at the UN.
I think this one item should be okay. Especially since it is a little cryptic. Tell me if you can work this one out:
A Google/Yahoo joint venture is due on March 20 and it will bring great joy to the Kranes.
cd1326
December 15, 2004
If you are not publishing to your community, you are not known to your community--send me a guest blog!
For at least a year, I’ve harbored ambitions of becoming a micro-media mogul. So much so, that I even bought the URL: MicroMediaMogul.com. This would give me the option of at some point, using Tom@MicroMediaMogul.com as my email address. I think it would look good on a business card. (I also have ThinkTankThinker.com, which looks great on a business card.)
However, I am not yet a micro-media mogul. I need a lot more content. And so while I try to recruit others to join me in this innovative venture about the business of innovation, in the innovation capital of the world, I have devised a process where I can nearly double my content without increasing my workload by much.
Which is why you will see us repackaging some of our content in various ways, and continuing core themes in future entries, columns, and e-books.
Also, you will see a lot of guest bloggers. Think of these as guest columnists from people you probably already know, and others such as you and your colleagues.
Would you like to blog but can’t find the time to do it?
Those RSS news readers are a vicious way to root out the weedy bloggers. If there haven’t been any new entries on your blog for a while, it’s likely to get deleted from the news reader. So then you lose your audience. Which is why you should send a guest blog to us. And then you can have a life too, because blog blog blogging is extremely time consuming.
Your guest blog doesn’t have to be long, you can keep it under 800 words, or cut it into smaller chunks. The content should be meaty, original and fluid. Shoot from the hip style, one-take journalism! Or use your own compelling style in your voice. This way, you can get your name out into your community. Because these days, if you are not publishing to your community, you are not known by your community.
For software engineers, this has been the case for a couple of years now; you can’t get hired if you are not blogging. And your page rank had better be good too. Jeremy Zawodny, the Yahoo engineer that runs one of the top tech blogs, got his job at Yahoo largely because of his blogging. It is the best and most honest self-promotional tool out there--bar none.
That’s why you should consider becoming a guest blogger for Silicon Valley Watcher. You can directly address your community, and we will feature you on our “watch” sections focused on tech, PR, media, VCs, Angel and many other Silicon Valley communities.
Also, you’ll be reaching an international audience. The Silicon Valley name is a huge global brand that has acquired a mythology that rivals that of Hollywood. The world is very interested in what goes on here, and it wants to listen in on what you and your colleagues are thinking, saying, doing.
So send something to us. Think of it as “letter to the editor” or a column or, better yet, an e-mail. Over at Voce Communications the other day we were chatting about how some of our best writing is often in our emails. Those quick, off-the-cuff, one-take emails are probably your best blogs! Send me an email on any topic. You can also send in news stories, or reports from a conference, or anything you think that will interest your community—you will know best.
In return, we’ll look through your copy to check for clarity and typos. And we might or might not suggest a cut or an edit—but only to make you look even better!
So send something in, and keep sending it in. Then, with your help, I will be well on my way to becoming a micro-media mogul--and I can print it on my business card.
Email:GuestBlog at SiliconValleyWatcher
dk0556
| Posted toOracle + Peoplesoft = ?
Larry Ellison got his way - and what self-respecting billionaire doesn't? - but what are the prospects for Oracle's acquisition of PeopleSoft? Not good, says Silicon Valley's leading newspaper.
San Francisco Chronicle writer Benjamin Pimental telegraphs the sad news in the first sentence of his article on the front page of today's business section: "What do you get when you combine a company run by an Armani-clad executive known for take-no-prisoners tactics with a firm led by a fatherly founder who hands out bagels and lets his workers wear flannel to work?"
Merging employees from the two incompatible cultures is considered the prime challenge:
"They are two different cultures," said Richard Stiller, a Cupertino human resources consultant who has been involved in more than 20 mergers.
Referring to Oracle, he said, "They're the barbarians. It's take no prisoners. A guy like Ellison never lets them relax."On the other hand, he said, PeopleSoft is much like the old Hewlett- Packard Co., whose founders popularized the famed HP Way, which put heavy emphasis on the welfare of employees.
Kinikin said, "I think a lot of those people who wanted to manage by walking around and having bagels every Friday are probably going to leave -- because that's not the Oracle way. The Oracle way is about survival of the fittest."
Economic forces may keep together a workforce that culture might otherwise separate, however. Given the current tight Silicon Valley job market, chances are good that PeopleSoft employees will learn to grin and bear it, assuming that they don't get the ax in the inevitable post-merger layoffs.
Links:
When firms merge, a clash of cultures: Oracle, PeopleSoft managing styles couldn't be more different, by Benjamin Pimentel, San Francisco Chronicle, 15 December 2004
What's the story? Doug Millison also edits OnlineJournalist.org, "on a need-to-know basis"
cd1930
| Posted to Top StoriesDecember 13, 2004
Trend-spotting: citizen advertisers
Citizen journalists, meet your logical corollaries: citizen advertisers.
Apple iPod photo: Homemade ad object
If you don't want to blog the news, you can blog the ads:
School teacher George Masters has the marketing world abuzz with a homemade ad for Apple Computer's iPod that is rapidly "going viral." To some experts, Masters' ad heralds the future of advertising. Homemade ads will play a big part in marketing, just like blogging is shaking up the news. Masters' 60-second animated ad features flying iPods, pulsing hearts and swirling '70s psychedelia. It's set to the beat of "Tiny Machine" by '80s pop band the Darling Buds.
cd1011
Links:
Home-Brew IPod Ad Opens Eyes by Leander Kahney, Wired News, 13 December 2004 (page includes link to Masters' ad)
What's the story? Doug Millison also edits OnlineJournalist.org, "on a need-to-know basis"
New wave mags assume revived tech biz boom
Another sign that a new tech business boom is underway: top-tier press coverage of venerable magazines re-tooling to catch the new wave.
MIT Technology Review will become bigger (moving from 56 to 72 pages per month, and from 10 to 12 issues a year) and "more serious," reports the New York Times in today's puff piece. Designer Roger Black is reworking the magazine's look-and-feel.
The Times notes that the magazine will face renewed competition from another '90s tech boom holdover, Red Herring, and a new challenger, Tech Confidential, from the publishers of The Daily Deal.
cd1004
Links:
M.I.T. Technology Review Adopts More Serious Tone by Victoria Shannon, New York Times, 13 December 2004
What's the story? Doug Millison also edits OnlineJournalist.org, "on a need-to-know basis"
Links:
M.I.T. Technology Review Adopts More Serious Tone by Victoria Shannon, New York Times, 13 December 2004
What's the story? Doug Millison also edits OnlineJournalist.org, "on a need-to-know basis"
| Posted toPriming the pump… some thoughts on Dan Gillmor leaving the San Jose Merc
In an exclusive interview with OhmyNews founders, Dan Gillmor says he is starting a venture to publish an online citizens' newspaper along the lines of the South Korean citizens newspaper OhmyNews.
And it seems that Dan might be leaving the tech beat too. In the interview, he hasn't said much about tech, or continuing to cover tech.
Dan Gillmor: Leaving the San Jose Mercury News
I'm not sure if that's a good idea. If I can remember the do's and don'ts of Personal Brand Building for Journalists 101, you use your employers brand to build a personal brand associated with a specific expertise / viewpoint / industry. Then you have a better chance of monetizing it later.
I would advise Dan not to give up coverage of the tech beat unless he has exemplary skills as an editor because a citizens newspaper means working with thousands of very enthusiastic amateur journalists. And that means lots, and lots of editing, coaching, and teaching. There is no such thing as "free" content.
Also, why is Dan playing with us? Consider the following:
December 9, 3.59 pm: Dan's decision to launch an online venture is announced first by fellow Merc Silicon Beat bloggers. (This is classic two-bites at the cherry launch strategy: give a pre-brief and exclusive to one publication in advance of the launch.)
December 9 at 7.41pm: Dan announces his departure on his own blog and says the following:
"My colleagues Matt Marshall and Mike Bazeley beat me (and everyone else) to the punch on posting about my departure -- here's their own blog entry. Seems in keeping with the blog world that they got it first."
My good buddy Om Malik on GigaOm points out that Mr. Gillmor is not the first top-tier journalist to leave his job for the blogging world. Some chap called Tom Foremski apparently did it first.
What's next for Dan Gillmor? The OhmyNews interview.
More priming of the pump by Dan at pjnet.org:
July 25, 2004 Gillmor: An OhMyNews Could Have USA Success
June 25, 2004: Media Guerilla (aka Mike Manuel) from Voce Communications runs the results of an informal poll asking which leading tech journalists would leave for the blogging world first:
"Dan received about 60% of the votes, followed by brother Steve Gillmor at eWeek with 22%. Surprisingly, Tom Foremski (despite recent speculation) only garnered 11% of the votes. Neither Jon Udell at InfoWorld or Hiawatha Bray at the Boston Globe received any votes."
cd1958
| Posted to Top StoriesWill Yahoo's top engineers reveal secret technology projects?
I hit it big on Friday: I got a very decent-sized mention on Jeremy Zawodny’s blog, in an entry titled Tom Foremski on Google and Yahoo Culture.
Jeremy, an engineer at Yahoo, is a big, big name in the blogosphere and is a natural journalist. He has been one of the leading advocates within Yahoo for corporate blogging, and for Yahoo's adoption of blogging related technologies such as RSS. He also works in the Yahoo Search division, which makes him even more interesting.
On Friday, I had written a piece about Google, saying it was run from top to bottom by engineers---there is not a single media executive in sight. Yet isn't Google a media company? Yahoo is run by seasoned media executives throughout its ranks.
This brought out some interesting information about Yahoo's culture from Jeremy. He remembers that he and others at Yahoo had gone through a long period of internal debate on whether they worked for a tech company or a media company. Although Yahoo is clearly a media company, Jeremy says it is also a technology company.
"In simple terms, you don't get to be the biggest Internet Media Company without also being one hell of a Technology Company.
So in my mind, Yahoo is both. No, the engineers are not front and center, but that doesn't mean they aren't dreaming up and building some really cool stuff. I only wish I could talk about some of the projects we've got in the works."
He ends with an invitation:
"Tom, if you think the engineers have been kicked aside, you need to come visit Yahoo. I'd be glad to introduce you to some of the smartest engineers in this industry."
Jeremy, I'll take you up on on that!
By the way, this reminds me of the first time I met Jerry Yang. Yahoo had just received their first $1m in VC funding. We were in a small run-down office space, with old plastic chairs and tables. The Yahoo server was in the other room. It was a great interview, and I've always liked Mr Yang's straightforward manner and his humble nature.
cd1939
| Posted toDecember 12, 2004
Help find a missing friend - Daniel Clune
It's not often one has to request this kind of help ...
Soon after Meetup.com launched, members of Bookcrossing.com, a fledgling web community where book lovers "set books free," started having Meetups in their towns to trade books and chat. And since, a wonderful community has flourished on --and off-- line. (Over 4,500 Bookcrossing Meetups to date!)
It was a real shocker to learn a few weeks ago that Daniel Clune, the head programmer at Bookcrossing.com, disappeared on November 6th in Sandpoint, Idaho.
Daniel Clune: Missing since November 6, 2004.
Please consider this plea from a Bookcrosser:
"His family is devastated and the community dumbfounded. A young, healthy man, Daniel, 29, is known for his reliability... a stand up guy. Not the sort to take off on a flight of fancy. No one believes that his disappearance is voluntary. Something happened to Daniel Clune, and his family and friends need to know just what that something is. Please consider featuring the story of Daniel's disappearance. The key to finding him is out there somewhere, but has not yet been found. Exposure is badly needed."
Some links:
http://finddanny.com/
http://www.bookcrossing.com/forum/5/1441038/22/subj_PLEASE-HELP
http://bookcrossing.meetup.com/
Maybe you can help spread the word?
Thank you.
-Myles (and the Meetup team)
myles weissleder
vp, communications
http://www.meetup.com
415-332-3205
http://press.meetup.com
cd1930
| Posted to Top StoriesDecember 11, 2004
Stuff you didn't know about Google---a report from the Googleplex Xmas party
The Google media Christmas party is coming up next Thursday, which should be interesting. I'm not expecting much in terms of Google news items now that it's a public company, but there should be plenty of gossip to pick up from the assembled hacks [Brit. slang for journalists].
At the Xmas party last year, I met Wayne Rosing, VP of Engineering. Mr Rosing is the key to understanding Google: he is the one that built up the bulk of the Google engineering culture. He is a veteran of Apple Computer and Sun Microsystems, and was brought out of semi-retirement by Eric Schmidt, himself a top dog engineer, a former long-time CTO at Sun Microsystems.
Googleplex in Mountain View: Xmas with Larry, Sergey and Wayne Rosing is coming up
I arrived about half-way into the Xmas party. I was in the heart of the Googleplex, which is a familiar place because it was part of a campus built by Silicon Graphics (SGI). (SGI was once the toast of Wall Street and its shares climbed to a huge valuation on huge sales of its graphics workstations to Hollywood movie studios.) Back to the party: the Silicon Valley hack pack was following Sergey and Larry and Eric around, trying to look nonchalant while doing it. Jochen Siegle (from Der Spiegel---the top German magazine) and I happened on Mr. Rosing, who was unrecognized and thus ignored by the celebrity seeking hacks.
Mr. Rosing was happy to chat about a lot of things; and what he said gave me some insight into Google and its culture.
Interesting facts:
Did you know that Google stores a copy of every web page, except images, that it finds while spidering the web? "We put the data on tape and store it," Mr Rosing said. What will you do with it? "We don't know."
. . .
Did you really believe that Google does ALL its magic with just cheap PC servers and algorithms running on Linux? Google's data centers include a lot of the same equipment and software found in traditional IT data centers. For example, Google has a supercomputer based on hundreds of Intel's advanced 64-bit Itanium microprocessors. There are also a lot commercial IT solutions within Google, but vendors are not allowed to talk about it.
. . .
Google does cooperate with law enforcement requests for information on searches. Mr Rosing would not say how often that has occurred.
. . .
Engineers work in teams but he does not control or set their projects. There is no management of the engineers.
. . .
I asked Mr Rosing why Google News doesn't use a few full-time editors to clear out duplicated stories and clean up sometimes poorly aggregated pages. He looked at me as if I was crazy. Why would Google want to use people? Google News is an engineering solution, he said. It's true: Google News was set up as a side project by its top engineer. It's a decent news site and very popular; but it could be a lot better.
The trouble with applying an engineering solution to news aggregation is that you need to know what the answer should look like. Why not use a trained professional? A news editor, or let's call them a "media engineer." Maybe that would make it easier to understand value creation within Google.
The conversation with Mr Rosing was striking because it revealed how Google sees itself. It sees itself as a hard-core engineer culture that has virtually no managerial controls, and yet can toss out beta projects such as Google News for many years to come. That's fine, but Google is a media company isn't it? But no one seems to have told them that.
Google publishes pages of content and sells ads on those pages. That's a very traditional newspaper or magazine business model, except that Google uses machines to harvest and publish the content instead of using editors, reporters, copy editors, etc. Advertising is also harvested by machines, running a simple auction system between advertisers. And the distribution channel is the global computer network of the internet. It's a very efficient business process; but it is a media business process.
.
Yahoo, for example, clearly thinks of itself as a media company. It is full of media professionals, such as John Marcom from the FT, appointed senior VP of international operations in June last year. Terry Semel, the chief executive, is one of the media industry's top executives (he still lives in SoCal). Take a look at his profile:
Formerly: President, Theatrical Distribution divisions, CBS, and then Walt Disney; 24 years with Warner Bros. in positions including Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer.
Yahoo kicked the engineers aside quite some time ago. Co-founders Jerry Yang (does he still carry the title of "chief yahoo" on his business card?) and David Filo probably still do engineering type stuff; but the business is handled by people who know how to run a large media company.
Yet at Google, there are NO media professionals! They've done well so far, no one would disagree; but can computer engineers grow a media business? This could be Google's Achilles' heel.
cd1930
| Posted to Media Watch | Top StoriesDecember 10, 2004
Cybercops: Software industry takes p2p pirates more seriously
By Jochen Siegle for SiliconValleyWatcher.com
The media has gone wild with stories about internet copyright infringements for years now. Illegal file sharing of music and video files on peer-to-peer networks kept reporters (including me, I admit) busy writing thousands of stories on this issue as well as on how the entertainment industry has been blaming the p2p revolution for their gigantic downturn.
Mark Ishikawa: Big brother is watching and tracking software pirates
But how about all the other industries affected by global mass cyber theft via KaZaa/FastTrack, eDonkey, Gnutella, et cetera? Not much has been written about other digital content producers, for example artists, photographers, web-designers, porn directors or other creative (or not so creative) content heads, protecting their intellectual property on file-sharing networks and fighting p2p pirates. Not even the software industry’s challenge to stop the piracy of their products has been a significant media theme. The reason why: They software companies just didn't care much.
While the entertainment industry has sued thousands of peer-to-peer users since last year, hiring web-tracking companies as cybercops to pursue virtual pirates all over the world and to take down millions of illegaly distributed files, the multi-billion dollar software industry more or less just watched from the sideline.
It looks like that’s gonna change.
One of the biggest players in providing these web-tracking and monitoring services to the entertainment moguls is Los Gatos based BayTSP, an internet security firm founded by Mark Ishikawa, curiously enough, a 39-year-old ex-hacker who was busted as a teenager for hacking into the Livermore National Laboratory’s server. So far, BayTSP has recruited its main client base from the entertainment industry. Specific companies served is unknown, since Ishikawa is not permitted to release any names. "At least three of the five leading music labels and two of the seven top movie studios," Ishikawa says with a bright smile.
Now it seems the four-year-old company has extended its highly confidential business heavily into serving software companies. For the last couple of years, BayTSP released monthly statistics for the top pirated movies on peer-to-peer networks. This week, the Silicon Valley venture for the first time published additional stats for top pirated software titles on the leading p2p services, FastTrack and eDonkey. According to BayTSP spokesperson Jim Graham, the firm has compiled test data for pirated software apps for the last five months.
The top pirated software application in November 2004 was Norton Antivirus 2005 with almost 41,000 copies available for download on the mentioned p2p networks. Other top ten titles include Adobe’s Photoshop and MS Office 2003, as well as the Nero 6 CD and DVD burning software. Novell’s SUSE Linux 9.0 ranked #10. "Surprisingly, people are not just sharing Windows applications through p2p services," Graham says. Only three applications from Redmond made the cyber underground's most-wanted software list.
However, even more interesting than these statistics are indications that the software industry is starting to take the p2p-phenomena more seriously. "These companies are definitely watching the p2p space much more closely these days," says Graham. His boss Ishikawa confirms that BayTSP is currently working with leading software companies but he is again not allowed to name clients. "Much like the entertainment industry, they are very low key about it," nncryption expert Ishikawa says.
Another interesting angle from the latest online tracking data: The most prominent peer-to-peer service, KaZaa, has been overtaken by eDonkey. The eDonkey network now counts a daily average of more then 2.8 million users compared with Fast Track's 2.43 million users. One of the main reasons for the climbing numbers: The media industry has succesfully flooded the former number one file-sharing service KaZaa with millions of fake audio and video files, so-called "spoofs." Interdiction specialists such as Overpeer, MediaDefender or MediaSentry do that job for the entertainment giants.
It seems like it is the software industry's turn now to use these companies' effective tactics. On the other hand, it has to be a combined effort for all players involved -- interdiction experts, entertainment companies, software firms or other intellectual property owners -- to figure out a way to stop the increasing popularity of eDonkey.
dk0545
| Posted toDecember 09, 2004
Armchair quarterback
Oracle chief Larry Ellison showed his true Silicon Valley tycoon colors yesterday, talking "as if his acrimonious 18-month bid to acquire competitor PeopleSoft was a done deal" and delivering " the kind of tongue-lashing to the 49ers' owners, Denise DeBartolo York and her husband, John York, that he usually reserves for tech rivals," according to the San Jose Mercury News.
Oracle-CEO and founder Larry Ellison: San Francisco 49ers the next take-over?
Ellison's comments are premature in both cases. Oracle has not completed a take-over of PeopleSoft and faces new legal challenges due to the "poison-pill" defense that PeopleSoft has mounted.
Ellison doesn't own the San Francisco 49ers football team, either, although rumors have suggested that he has been interested in purchasing the team.
Links:
Ellison talks about Oracle's plans for PeopleSoft, then blasts 49ers, by John Boudreau, San Jose Mercury News, 9 December 2004
What's the story? Doug Millison also edits OnlineJournalist.org, "on a need-to-know basis"
December 08, 2004
The story so far
Pardon me for tooting our own horn here, but after a few short weeks of publication, Silicon Valley Watcher is a hit - and we'd like to invite you to help us in the effort to make it the location on the Web for insight into the world's leading site for technology business innovation. After all, nobody knows Silicon Valley the way you do.
Hundreds of people - interesting, involved, busy, like you in other words - now visit Silicon Valley Watcher every day (and the number is increasing) and we'd like to give you all more of what you're learning to enjoy here.
We know that you know about business deals in the works, new projects, personnel moves, new products and services in the pipeline, research breakthroughs, future trends. If you have a success story to share, please do - and if you've got a cautionary tale, that's valuable, too.
We'll keep it confidential and anonymous if that's necessary.
If you'd like to make your editorial contribution public, that's fine, too. We'll give you a byline or otherwise give you credit for what you pass along.
Maybe you've got information or subject-matter expertise that you'd like to share, but you don't consider yourself a writer. We'll assign a writer or editor to work with you to create an article, column, interview, or case study.
Adding comments to specific articles is a good way to participate, too. These articles are offered as a springboard for further discussion. We're developing ways to spotlight comments and discussions as they develop, too.
It's a citizen journalist world all of a sudden here on the Web, so let's join forces, tell our stories and share insight and information that we can all use to make our Silicon Valley days more profitable . . . and more enjoyable.
Please don't hesitate to contact me by email if you've got an idea for an article or a suggestion to make Silicon Valley Watcher better.
Thanks,
Doug Millison
Managing Editor, Silicon Valley Watcher
doug at siliconvalleywatcher dot com
December 07, 2004
Chris Nolan, stand-alone journalist and blogger reveals the secrets to looking prosperous and youthful
by Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Media Watch
I recently ran into Chris Nolan, who writes the popular political "blog" site Politics from Left to Right at ChrisNolan.com. Chris was looking fabulous, she looked wealthy, relaxed, and ten years younger.
What could be going on? How can Chris looks so good, look so prosperous and relaxed? Isn’t she a stand-alone journalist, a blogger? That means she makes hardly any money, doesn’t it?
I asked her, have you discovered the blogger’s El Dorado, what is your secret? I’m running around all day trying to chase down stories and I’m bleary eyed from staying up most of the night researching and blogging and trying to make a living. I look ten years older not ten years younger.
Chris was happy to share her secret and here it is:
“The Chanel counter at Macy’s,” she said. “They’ll fix you right up.”
I hope they do men.
By the way, keep an eye on ChrisNolan.com, there is some interesting stuff happening that I cannot talk about--just yet.
| Posted toNew editor-in-chief at BusinessWeek
Stephen J. Adler, deputy managing editor of The Wall Street Journal and editorial director of its online edition, replaces outgoing BusinessWeek Editor in Chief, Stephen Shepard, effective April 1, 2005.
Links:
BusinessWeek Taps Wall Street Journal For New Editor, MediaDailyNews, 7 December 2004
What's the story? Doug Millison also edits OnlineJournalist.org, "on a need-to-know basis"
December 06, 2004
Can H-P survive?
Hewlett-Packard gets the cover of this week's BusinessWeek.
Bottom line: "Hewlett-Packard still needs to prove it can execute its broad strategy. If not, pressure will build to break up this Silicon Valley icon."
Possible solutions?
BusinessWeek has interviewed more than 100 people, including past and present HP employees, investors, customers, partners, and competitors, to explore the issues and potential solutions. Suggestions abound. Some call for Fiorina to hire an operations ace to manage the company's far-flung divisions and get them working in sync. Others call for the company's PC division to retreat from its global network of retail distributors and to ape Dell's super-efficient direct-sales model. And many opine that HP should gobble up software and tech-services companies to better compete against IBM. The risk? If the company adds to its portfolio without first tackling the operational issues, the already daunting complexity could multiply. "Carly has to prove she can execute and it just hasn't happened yet," says a former HP vice-president who left earlier this year. That view is widely shared by many others interviewed by BusinessWeek.
Links:
Carly's Challenge, BusinessWeek, 13 December 2004.
What's the story? Doug Millison also edits OnlineJournalist.org, "on a need-to-know basis"
The emperor still has no clothes
Microsoft's consumer electronics offerings continue to take hits from influential columnists.
Last week, Walter Mossberg slammed the Portable Media Center, a Microsoft design implemented by Samsung, Creative Labs and iRiver, in the Wall Street Journal.
Today, Mike Langberg focuses on the shortcomings of Microsoft's new MSN TV 2 Internet & Media Player in Silicon Valley's hometown newspaper, the San Jose Mercury News.
The new Microsoft system, Langberg observes, "tries to do two things at once, almost always a recipe for disaster in personal technology."
"The $199 box, introduced in October as an update to the fading WebTV line, wants to offer simplified computer-free Internet access to techno-phobes as well as fancy home networking to discriminating ultra-geeks," Langberg writes.
"MSN TV 2 makes it easy to find digital photos, video and music on your PC's hard drive for playback through a TV, as well as delivering of streaming Internet audio and video," he notes, but "broadband users won't want MSN TV 2 for much else, because Web browsing, e-mail and instant messaging would be so much faster on a PC."
His devastating conclusion (and one that you'd think the marketing specialists at Microsoft would have hit upon): "There's no reason, in other words, to pay $10 a month to Microsoft for the privilege of accessing your own media files."
Links:
'Broadband enthusiasts' likely to turn up their noses at MSN TV 2 by Mike Langberg, San Jose Mercury News, 6 December 2004
Mossberg goes for the PMC jugular by Doug Millison, Silicon Valley Media Watch, 2 December 2004
What's the story? Doug Millison also edits OnlineJournalist.org, "on a need-to-know basis"
December 03, 2004
Fanning's back
Front page news in the San Francisco Chronicle's Business section today is Napster founder Shawn Fanning's new venture, Snocap, in a story based on one of Fanning's first public interviews (Business Week and many other publications have the story today, too, so that claim seems a bit weak) since Napster wound up in bankruptcy proceedings.
The Chronicle frames the story as Fanning's effort to get back into the good graces of the record industry after alientating them with Napster:
As founder of Napster Inc., Shawn Fanning achieved rock-star status among fans of Internet file sharing, but he also became public enemy No. 1 with the record industry.Today, Fanning officially takes the wraps off a new technology venture that is working with the biggest record labels to find profits in the online music phenomenon he ignited.
Fanning's new business model?
Snocap has created a database platform to be licensed by record companies, individual musicians or other copyright holders to manage the sale and distribution of their work. The technology is designed to let copyright holders set prices or other terms of distribution.Universal has agreed to register its entire catalog of songs with Snocap. How those songs will be sold online is unclear, but Fanning is using Snocap's database as the first step in what he hopes will be the creation of a single worldwide clearinghouse for online music distribution, whether through a Napster-style file-sharing network or an online service like iTunes Music Store.
Business Week describes how it works:
Here's how Snocap's technology works: A file-sharing service that wants to participate in the Snocap scheme creates a software program that must be downloaded before an individual can be part of that file-sharing network. Typically, these programs will simply be variations of peer-to-peer technology already available, such as Gnutella or KaZaA.When the user finds a file on another user's computer within that network, the newly downloaded software will check with Snocap's database to see if that file is registered. If it's not, the software won't allow the file to be transferred over the network. If it is, the file can be shared and paid for. Snocap will log the transaction, get paid by the service per transaction, and in turn pay the label the licensing fee it's owed for the transaction.
Snocap won't set the terms for the sale or the file-sharing rules. That's up to the content owners and music services. Depending on those agreements, a file might have to include copyright protection, or it could be shared multiple times before a payment is requested, or it could be available through a subscription service.
Does Fanning still have the Midas touch?
The Chronicle reports that "Snocap will announce it has received $10 million in a round of financing led by Bay Area venture capital firms WaldenVC and Morgenthaler."
Links:
Banking on Snocap: After alienating music industry, Napster founder tries to help it by Benny Evangelista, San Francisco Chronicle, 3 December 2004
Shawn Fanning's New Tune: Snocap, by Heather Green, Business Week, 3 December 2004
What's the story? Doug Millison also edits OnlineJournalist.org, "on a need-to-know basis"
| Posted toHow to lose a blog reader's trust
Bloggers gained a lot of respect during the run-up to the Presidential election for their work in exposing spin and propaganda in the mainstream press coverage, even though some took hits for spreading rumors and misinformation. Now comes news suggesting that as blogs become vehicles for public relations and marketing messages, they may have trouble maintaining reader confidence and trust.
Consider this, from a story by Joe Mandese today in MediaDaily News:
The murky world of blog-related marketing got a bit murkier on Thursday with the launch of NewsBluntly.com, a blog created to influence a highly influential market niche - television news producers - and in the process, find a new, clandestine way of peddling messages from big corporate marketers such as General Motors, Motorola, and Yahoo!, to consumers.
Mandese goes on to report that the blog offers links to video news releases and other footage that can be used to produce news shows, but "does not disclose the fact that marketers are paying to place them into TV newscasts."
Mandese's article is worth reading. Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing.
Many bloggers have gained a reputation for straight talk and authentic, from-the-trenches insights. As Silicon Valley marketing and public relations specialists seek to benefit from this and look to blogs as a way to influence key decision-makers and customers, they may want to consider the risk they run of alienating an audience that discovers, after the fact, they are being manipulated in this fashion.
The key is - and this is a fundamental point we've been trying to make in Silicon Valley Watch and Silicon Valley Media Watch - full and complete disclosure, up front. If they have all the facts, readers are intelligent enough to judge the value of information they get from a blog. If they deem it valuable, they will act on it, thus achieving the marketer's objective.
What's at stake? Mandese quotes a PR executive who fears the results of NewsBluntly.com's lack of transparency:
"For 18 years, we have worked very diligently to ensure that the entire PR industry and the video and audio providers within it, endorse full and complete disclosure. So a blog that does not clearly disclose its sources, violates so many of the tenants we've worked to create," says Laurence Moskowitz, chairman, president and CEO of Medialink, a leading provider of VNRs for corporate marketers."If they have indeed created a blog whose purpose it is to distribute corporate B-roll and it does not identify it as such, that troubles us significantly," he adds. "It's in contravention of the unspoken trust that exists between us and broadcasters. We believe in identifying ourselves as the agent, but also we insist on full disclosure by our clients that they are the ones paying for this. Anything that contravenes that is discomforting to say the least."
Links:
Marketers Use Journalism Blog To Infiltrate TV News by Joe Mandese, MediaDaily News, 3 December 2004
What's the story? Doug Millison also edits OnlineJournalist.org, "on a need-to-know basis"
| Posted toDecember 02, 2004
Ebay founder gets BW star treatment
Ebay founder, Pierre M. Omidyar is the subject of an extremely flattering Business Week profile in the magazine's "The Great Innovators" series.
I had a chance to meet Omidyar at a new web site showcase back in the mid-1990s when Ebay still had a simple all-text interface but was already making money. Everybody who saw it pronounced it a killer business opportunity. Omidyar came across as a very good guy, too.
Nearly a decade later, Business Week heaps on the praise:
Today, eBay Inc. (EBAY ), as it's now known, has catapulted from its early days as the place to trade Beanie Babies to become the Web's most powerful corporate enterprise in its own right, worth more than $70 billion. So far this year, more than a billion items have been listed for sale on eBay, from antique doilies to 2005 Hummers (GM ). Were eBay a country, its expected gross sales of $34 billion this year would rank as the 59th largest gross domestic product in the world, just behind Kuwait. "It is an economy of its own," says economist W. Brian Arthur of the Santa Fe Institute.That's largely thanks to Omidyar's original insight: The Web's real power lies in its ability to connect people instantly around the world, so buyers and sellers alike can share near-perfect information about prices, products, and each other. By putting in place a few key rules, such as a feedback system in which buyers and sellers rate each other, Omidyar sparked a vibrant community that numbers 125 million members worldwide. To a remarkable degree, those millions govern themselves. It was they, not eBay managers, who decided to start selling cars and car parts several years ago. That's now a $10 billion-plus business. "The best ideas and the best feedback come from our community of users," says eBay Chief Executive Officer Margaret C. Whitman.
Links:
Pierre M. Omidyar: The Web For The People Business Week, 6 December 2004
What's the story? Doug Millison also edits OnlineJournalist.org, "on a need-to-know basis"
| Posted toThe best way to market a new product?
It's word of mouth. Researchers have proved it with statistical physics.
Silicon Valley marketers may want to study the report, recently published in the journal Physical Review Letters and summarized in a recent University of California, Berkeley press release.
The researchers "used a statistical physics model for complex systems to analyze the dynamics of commercial success for 138 books on Amazon.com's Top 50 list between 2002 and 2004 and to quantify consumer behavior."
UCB continues:
They found that these books were characterized by two types of sales peaks: Some books reached their peak abruptly, then experienced decreasing sales, while others reached the top rankings after a longer time on the market, then saw gradually falling sales. Their model symmetrically and exactly matched the rates of sales growth and decline for 84 percent of the bestsellers examined.Thomas Gilbert, a Ph.D. student in finance at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business, analyzed the Amazon.com bestseller database, which included thousands of books with popularity rankings updated hourly with the infusion of sales data. He used a generic network model that predicts the two kinds of peaks and he tested it against Amazon.com's database.
"It's quite amazing that in those 138 cases, this matching works so well," said Gilbert, who has a master's degree in physics. "The model doesn't just indicate that book sales are going to decay faster or slower, it gives us an exact slope. This is quite phenomenal because we're talking about a human system: It is human beings talking and buying books and talking some more."
This "econophysics" model has been applied to forecast earthquake aftershocks, stock market crashes and epidemics, Gilbert said, but this use is a first for consumer behavior with respect to such a simple and ordinary product -- books. The model focuses on two types of "shocks" that cause a significant outcome: exogenous shocks that strike like a hammer blow and quickly subside, and endogenous shocks that build slowly and retain more of their strength longer.
Books that enjoyed a spike in sales from an exogenous shock (a great review in a top-tier publication, for example) saw sales decline quickly, while books that get good word-of-mouth recommendations enjoy the longer lasting endogenous stimulation:
"The endogenous shock," said Gilbert, "clearly says that if you manage to convince a small handful of people or small book clubs here or there, the likelihood of really penetrating the network of buyers and selling a lot is higher."For a book characterized by exogenous shock, Gilbert said, publishers could opt to re-launch the book when sales start to decay, spending more money on an ad and "pushing the network" again. "This gives them a way of quantifying this very precisely, timing the market and timing it very well," he said.
There's got to be at least one Silicon Valley marketer who can figure out how to apply statistical physics to measure the results of product or service roll-outs. And, if somebody out there already has, please let me know.
Links:
Researchers use physics to analyze dynamics of bestsellers
What's the story? Doug Millison also edits OnlineJournalist.org, "on a need-to-know basis"
| Posted toMossberg goes for the PMC jugular
Influential tech writer Walter Mossberg slams the Portable Media Center, a Microsoft design implemented by Samsung, Creative Labs and iRiver, in today's Wall Street Journal.
Readers won't have to search for Mossberg's hard truth, which comes in paragraph two of his Personal Technology column:
It's too early to know which of those fates awaits the latest premature tech device: the handheld, hard-disk-based video player. But one thing is certain. It's not ready for prime time yet.
After describing some details of his experience with the Samsung and Creative Labs versions, Mossberg makes the kind of statement almost unheard of in the business press about a potential advertiser's products:
Based on my tests, I can't recommend either player for mainstream, nontechie users. This is not so much because of the design of the players themselves. It's because there's so little video content available to play on them, and Microsoft's software does a poor job of transferring commercial content to the players.
Mossberg's conclusion is equally blunt, pointing non-geek readers to an alternative if they must put some sort of expensive consumer electronics gadget underneath the Christmas tree this year:
So unless you're a techie or a hopeless gadget freak, stay away from the Portable Media Centers for now. If you want a portable video device, you're better off buying a portable DVD player. They can be bought for half the price or less, come with larger screens, and are able to draw from an almost unlimited selection of content.
Links:
Portable Media Center Is the Wrong Choice For Nontechie Users by Walter Mossberg, Wall Street Journal
What's the story? Doug Millison also edits OnlineJournalist.org, "on a need-to-know basis"
In a Digidesign groove with Booker T.
Digidesign and Pyramind are basking in the kind of press coverage glow that money just can't buy…or can it?
The company, based in Daly City, California, saw its Pro Tools music software product featured in the popular Datebook section of the San Francisco Chronicle today.
The hook that took this story out of the business section? Soul music icon Booker T. Jones - of "Green Onions" fame, a song that continues to receive global air time along with the rest of Jones' catchy catalog - is taking a course in how to use Pro Tools.
Come to think of it, this is the kind of coverage you can buy: getting this sort of endorsement from an artist of Jones' stature can't be free. At the very least, even if Digidesign hasn't paid Jones a fee or given him a special discount in exchange for the endorsement, somebody had to put in time and effort (an equation which equals $) to get the story to the attention of Chronicle and senior music critic Joel Selvin. Or, Digidesign may have worked with somebody else to place the story.
Considering the highly favorable description of Pyramind pasted into the story, the San Francisco-based training company that offers the course Jones is taking, I'd be willing to gamble my next latte that Pyramind was Selvin's source and the engine driving this particular puff piece:
Pyramind is one several schools in the Bay Area offering certification on Pro Tools, which was invented by the Daly City company Digidesign. Gordon and Donner folded their South of Market production business into an existing Folsom Street studio and slowly began to convert their part of the operation to a training facility. Gordon even took entrepreneur classes at a business school around the corner. They still do business as a recording studio, but Donner said the school now accounts for as much as 80 percent of their business.With state universities and colleges perennially strapped for cash, only private schools like Pyramind can afford the latest equipment or find the instructors up to speed on the gear. In fact, Jones originally enrolled in the Pro Tools classes at Pyramind through the extension program at San Francisco State University, which had an arrangement with the studio. He plans to take his next level of training at a more intensive program offered by San Jose's Future Rhythm, six days of eight-hour classes at a private training facility with ties to Foothill College.
That's not to say it's not an interesting article, despite the PR flavor. Jones happens to be a personal favorite, so it's fun reading about him for that reason alone. Selvin's story has a powerful Baby Boomer back-to-school, yes-you-can-teach-an-old-dog-new-tricks appeal, too.
Links:
Digidesign corporate site
It's back to school for soul great Booker T. Jones by Joel Selvin, San Francisco Chronicle, 2 December 2004
Pyramind corporate site
Booker T The MGs - Green Onions (Get Shorty Soundtrack) (polyphonic) ringtones
What's the story? Doug Millison also edits OnlineJournalist.org, "on a need-to-know basis"
December 01, 2004
FT studies demand for "early retirement" & "voluntary redundancy"
The Financial Times needs to trim its staff by about 40 as a £2m cost-saving move, reports Fullrunner, a UK-based newsletter.
In a letter to staff last week, editor Andrew Gowers "wrote to staff at the Financial Times asking whether they would be interested in taking early retirement or voluntary redundancy."
Any editorial redundancies "will come on top of the departure of 15% of the newspaper's 600 commercial staff last year," says Fullrunner, which reports that FT will lose about £12m this year.
The newsletter says the cost of implementing "a fabulously complex content management system" called Methode (which "staffers at the paper have taken to calling it 'My Toad'") is adding budget pressure.
Fullrunner also passes along this item about Gowers:
In the same week that the FT tested staff attitudes to voluntary redundancies, Spin Bunny reported that Andrew Gowers unwisely left his tie-clip microphone switched on as he walked backstage after giving a presentation in Paris recently. Gowers answered his mobile -- only for the assembled front-of-house throng to hear him dismiss the event as the "usual load of bollocks and a waste of time".
Links:
Full Run Ltd. free trial subscription available
What's the story? Doug Millison also edits OnlineJournalist.org, "on a need-to-know basis"
