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October 29, 2004
Friday Watch: Military intelligence in action---happy 35th birthday to the internet!
The internet grew out of work on the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) funded by the U.S. Department of Defense. A key goal of ARPANET was to create a communications network that could survive a nuclear war.
If parts of the network were to be disabled due to nuclear blasts, messages could be automatically routed around damaged parts of the network to reach their destination. This continues to be a key capability of the internet, routing data packets across a variety of intermediate networks, to their destination.
It’s lucky that the DoD decided not to use the technology. Surviving a nuclear blast is one thing (cockroaches can do it)--surviving the script kiddies who send out worms and viruses is a lot more difficult.
Posted by Tom Foremski at 04:44 PM | Comments (0)
Friday Watch: "What you say on the Internet can affect your real life"
by Doug Millison for SiliconValleyWatcher.com
A blogger's nightmare come true: criticize the President, get the third degree from the Secret Service.
From the blogger's report on the frightening late-night knock at the door and subsequent interrogation:
A couple of weeks ago, following the last presidential debate, I said some rather inflammatory things about George W. Bush in a public post in my LJ, done in a satirical style. We laughed, we ranted, we all said some things. I thought it was a fairly harmless (and rather obvious) attempt at humor in the face of annoyance, and while a couple of people were offended, as is typical behavior from me, I saw something shiny and forgot about it, thinking that the whole thing was over and done and nothing else would come of what I said.I was wrong.
At 9:45 last night, the Secret Service showed up on my mother's front door to talk to me about what I said about the President, as what I said could apparently be misconstrued as a threat to his life. After about ten minutes of talking to me and my family, they quickly came to the conclusion that I was not a threat to national security (mostly because we are the least threatening people in the entire world) and told me that they would not recommend that any further action be taken with my case. However, I do now have a file with the FBI that includes my photograph, my e-mail address, and the location of my LJ. This will follow me around for the rest of my life, regardless of the fact that the Secret Service knows that I am not a threat.
Chilling.
Links:
a word to the wise, Live Journal blog entry from the target of the Secret Service investigation
Posted by Doug Millison at 01:53 PM | Comments (0)
Friday Watch: X-Ray specs
by Doug Millison for SiliconValleyWatcher.com
At the back of the comic books I enjoyed as a boy, the two advertisements that intrigued me the most were the one for a body-building course that would make me the object of admiration for a bevy of beach beauties, and the "X-Ray" spectacles that promised to let me see through my admirers' bikinis.
I never did bulk up like the Muscle Beach boys, but now it seems the school-boy dream of X-Ray spectacles has come true:
A third party developer in Tokyo, Yamada Denshi, has developed an add-on to Vodafone handsets, intended to be used as a night filter to allow Big Red's customers to take pictures with their phones in the dark.Unfortunately, the night vision camera has an unexpected side effect - in the right circumstances, it allows users to see a lot more than they bargained for. As well as taking snaps in the dark, the Yamada Denshi infrared filter sees through people's clothes.
When attached to a high-end camera, the device can give the effect of seeing through some garments – it depends on how easily infrared can penetrate the fabric in question - and is reportedly particularly effective on dark bikinis.
Answering your next question, the device only works with one kind of Vodaphone handset available only in Japan.
Vodaphone is, incredibly, insisting that they would never put on the market a telephone with the ability to view other people naked.
I expect they'll come to a different, more profit-minded judgement, after the discovery percolates for awhile in Vodaphone's new product development and marketing organizations.
Link:
Peeping Tom filter lets phones see through bikinis by Jo Best, Silicon.com, October 25 2004
Posted by Doug Millison at 10:27 AM | Comments (1)
Friday Watch: Technology moves fast but some publishers type slowly
Our good buddy Tom Abate at the SF Chronicle used to cover the tech beat in the early to mid-1990s before switching to biotech. And there was a wonderful billboard, in a very prominent position on highway 101—not far from Oracle’s Emerald City--celebrating Tom's talents.
It proclaimed in massive letters:
“Technology moves fast---Tom Abate types faster.”
It seems tech isn’t moving very fast these days. The publisher of the financial newspaper, The Daily Deal, and the magazine The Deal, recently announced it was launching Tech Confidential. A 32-page preview of the magazine has been produced with the press release saying:
"Tech Confidential is bound with the centerfold of The Deal’s November 1 issue…In 2005, Tech Confidential will be published every other month starting in May."
I can’t wait.
Tony Perkins, publisher of online magazine AlwaysON (and former publisher of the Red Herring), is also in no hurry to chase down the tech tortoise. He is launching a quarterly print magazine this winter:
"The AlwaysOn magazine will be a regularly-scheduled briefing on innovation in technology and media. The first issue will include breakout interviews with Bill Gates, Michael Powell, Jonathan Schwartz, Stratton Sclavos, and other top industry luminaries."
I can’t wait.
Posted by Tom Foremski at 03:53 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Friday Watch: San Francisco flacks flocking south of Market
Much of San Francisco’s PR community seems to be moving to offices down by the SBC ballpark. Bite PR are celebrating the opening of their new office there soon. Outcast Communications are in the middle of moving to that area. And I recently heard that Sterling Communications is moving there too.
And it is not because Cnet’s News.com is near by—it’s simply because the rents are dirt-cheap. “We can get great office space for under $2 per square foot, compared to $30 or more elsewhere,” says Elke Heiss, vice president at Sterling Communications. “Also, it has easy access for our clients coming up from the valley, and cheap $6 all day parking.” She adds.
With so many other PR companies already in that neighborhood—it’s reader suggestion time! In the early 1990’s with the CDROM and multimedia “revolution” we had an area of San Francisco called “Multimedia Gulch.”
Maybe it could be called the “Flack District” ala the Garment District.
Or how about “Spin City?”
Your votes and suggestions please.
Posted by Tom Foremski at 02:49 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Friday Watch: Earliest citation of Geek Beacon
I’m trying to get this term into WordSpy (see below) and into common usage:
Geek Beacon, the use of a bright display on a Treo or mobile phone to hail a taxi, or signal to others at night.And it works! I was using my Geek Beacon just the other evening and a taxi pulled up within seconds. The driver said that about six months ago he had picked up a guy that had been waving a device that flashed “taxi” using LED lights. This guy was from Chicago and was planning to market the devices for about $50 a piece.
That’s too bad. The Geek Beacon comes as a free standard feature on many “smart” phones such as my Treo 600.
Earliest citation: SiliconValleyWatcher.
Posted by Tom Foremski at 02:34 AM | Comments (0)
Friday Watch: the earliest citation of the term “screenager.”
I was ego-surfing again, testing out a few of the newer search engines and I came across this blast from the past on a site called WordSpy, which tracks words and their origins.
"screenager (SCREE.nay.jur) n. A young person who has grown up with, and is therefore entirely comfortable with, a world of screens, particularly televisions, computers, ATMs, cell phones, and so on."As an example of its use, it quotes a December 2002 article by Michael Snider using the term screenager.
The earliest citation of the word is in 1994 by guess who, quoting guess who:
"Meanwhile, new magazines are rapidly being launched to target the home market. Oakland-based Blast Publishing Inc. is preparing to launch a major national magazine called Blast, which, according to Publisher Doug Millison, will be a "lifestyle magazine aimed at 'screenagers', teenagers and twentysomethings that have grown up with PCs and video games."
—Tom Foremski, "Homes are prime PC frontier," The San Francisco Examiner, June 19, 1994"Here is the full entry from Wordspy.
UPDATE: Doug Millison adds that "screenager" was actually coined by Dave Pola, sales and marketing honcho for Morph's Outpost, Inc. (which published the pioneering magazine for interactive multimedia designers and developers, Morph's Outpost on the Digital Frontier, from 1993 to 1995) and sister company, Blast Publishing, Inc. which published Blaster magazine. (The magazine was originally called Blast, but that was changed to Blaster, for intellectual property reasons, by the time the magazine launched.) Journalist, Doug Rushkoff, now a professor at NYU, helped to popularize the term "screenager," beginning in the column that he wrote for Blaster.
Posted by Tom Foremski at 02:04 AM | Comments (0)
October 28, 2004
Media Watch: Lessons learned from dotcom dotbombs
by Doug Millison for SiliconValleyWatcher.com
Halloween is the appropriate time to take the skeletons out of the closet. And, you don't have to be ashamed of those scary dot-com boom-era business plans either.
Even the most ludicrous failure offers lessons that may help prevent another business horror show.
That's the theory behind the Business Plan Archive, brainchild of David A. Kirsch, a professor of entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland, spotlighted in the Washington Post's "Digital Capital" column today in "U-Md. Professor Archives History Of Dot-Com Bombs" by Ellen McCarthy.
The BPA description of the project:
The Internet boom and bust of 1996 to 2002 was the most important business phenomenon of the past several decades. In the wake of this historic period, we have an unprecedented opportunity to learn from our past mistakes and successes. To help us learn from history, we are creating the Business Plan Archive (BPA) to collect business plans and related documents from the dot com era. These plans – the “blueprints” that lay out the assumptions and strategies of Internet entrepreneurs – will enable entrepreneurs and researchers to conduct both qualitative and quantitative research.Kirsch and a student staff have collected 2,300 business plans so far, McCarthy reports.
McCarthy cherry-picks examples of the vapors that beguiled so many minds in the late 1990s panic to strike Web gold. This is a good one:
The intention of RevElution.Com was to "allow consumers (and businesses) to sell their purchasing loyalty" to the highest bidders in online auctions. At the end of an e-mail introducing the company, Reston-based RevElution.Com's founders included a quote that could sum up the philosophy of an era: "In a world filled with dogma, the future of business belongs to the heretics."Then there was the dotcom that offered to arrange for individuals to sell their souls to Satan, but that's a story for another time.
Links:
U-Md. Professor Archives History Of Dot-Com Bombs by Ellen McCarthy, Washington Post, 28 October 2004
Posted by Doug Millison at 07:00 AM | Comments (0)
Media Watch: Who is bidding as much as $400m for Marketwatch?
Marketwatch, the publisher of CBS Marketwatch--the news and financial online site--is up for sale with a $400m price tag, says the New York Times. This follows a good quarterly report on Wednesday.
Possible bidders include Viacom, which owns 23 percent; Pearson, (the owner of the Financial Times) which also owns 23 per cent; the New York Times, Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones, and Yahoo.
The use of “possible” means, "I don’t really know . . . but it could be," and so the usual suspects are rounded up. But, let’s look at the likelihood of some of these bids (due by next week).
Let me start with Pearson—-this company is likely a seller not a buyer. The FT Group needs a bit of attention and the money would come in handy. Dow Jones is hurting in different ways, and I would think an unlikely bidder, and so is the New York Times for a variety of reasons.
Yahoo is probably the best fit. Yahoo Finance is a huge product for Yahoo. It knows best out of that entire media group how to monetise online content. And it’s not the first time Yahoo has gone into content production— do you remember it had a type of CNBC type broadband streaming video finance show at one time?
Also, I would think that Cnet might be keeping an interested eye on things--it filed a $300m S3 shelf registration on Tuesday. I know that Cnet has cast an eye on CBS Marketwatch in the not too distant past—-not as an acquisition but as moving into the financial news space. It’s probably a bit too expensive for Cnet to swallow as an acquisition.
For Yahoo, it must decide: is it better to be an independent aggregator of news content and risk alienating some of your content partners—or be a news provider too? I would say that knowing how to be a news aggregator is not a unique skill these days. Having a business group that knows how to produce financial news content is not a bad capability to have IMHO.
And if Marketwatch is acquired--it will be interesting to see the effect on TheStreet.com.
Links:
Posted by Tom Foremski at 03:42 AM | Comments (0)
October 27, 2004
Media Watch: Web plug-and-play
by Doug Millison for SiliconValleyWatcher.com
Plug a modem into any wall electric outlet and connect with the Internet - that was always the "next big thing" to rival the telephone and cable television factions back in the Great Information Superhighway Cultural Revolution of 1994.
"Plugging Into the Net, Through the Humble Wall Outlet" by Tom McNichol in today's New York Times updates the daydream, with news of the roll-out of electrical outlet plug-and-play Internet service to 50,000 households in the Cincinatti area by the end of this year, after tests in some 5,000 households in 18 locations for several years.
In addition to delivering Internet service, the dual-purpose network will collect information to help manage the power Grid. Writes McNichol:
Adding a data channel to the power lines also has potential benefits for the utilities themselves. By reserving a sliver of the B.P.L. data channel for themselves, power companies can use the network to identify problems and accomplish troubleshooting remotely, rather than sending out a crew. Down the road, utilities could install Internet-enabled meters and switches to offer automated meter reading, power demand management and time-of-day pricing. "Our main interest in B.P.L. is using it to better manage our utility," said Bob Dobkin, a spokesman for Pepco, which is based in Washington. Pepco has a pilot B.P.L. program in about 500 homes in Potomac, Md. "It enables you to identify problems without having to send someone out."
Links:Plugging Into the Net, Through the Humble Wall Outlet by Tom McNichol, New York Times, 28 October 2004
Posted by Doug Millison at 09:48 PM | Comments (0)
Media Watch: Madison Avenue blogs
by Doug Millison for SiliconValleyWatcher.com
Any doubt that blogging has moved into the mainstream, and that the Apocalypse has in fact arrived, vanished with today's publication of a New York Times story about advertising agency blogs.
So far, Madison Avenue seems to be using blogs as a way to follow advertising trends, reports Nat Ives, in "Madison Avenue Ponders the Potential of Web Logs."
The Big Question:
"Blogs are in fashion, and it is easy to hop on the bandwagon and say that every company should have one," said Linda Sawyer, managing partner and chief operating officer at Deutsch in New York, a unit of the Interpublic Group of Companies and an agency without a blog. "The questions any smart marketer should be asking are, 'Does this provide a platform to connect with their most relevant audiences and how will this address business objectives?' "Penetrating Insight: "The growing number of professional blogs often lack the qualities that made earlier blogs big hits: attitude, irreverence and an apparent interest in kicking up a fuss."
Prediction: It's only a matter of time before the agencies start seeding the blogosphere with blogs that, subtly and otherwise, tout the benefits of specific branded products, services, and companies.
Silicon Valley software wizards are, at this moment, hard at working concocting a bs detector that, when combined with next-generation RSS news readers, will be powerful enough to sniff out propaganda from personal perspectives worth reading.
Links:
Madison Avenue Ponders the Potential of Web Logs by Nat Ives, 27 October 2004
Some of the blogs mentioned in the Times article (the links that work, that is):
Association of National Advertisers links to two blogs, "ANA Marketing Musings" and "ANA Regulatory Rumblings"Adrants by Steve Hall
Daily Kos political blog
Posted by Doug Millison at 08:19 AM | Comments (0)
Book Watch: Recipe for the next Silicon Valley?
by Doug Millison for SiliconValleyWatcher.com
Is the "war on terror" the new Cold War, and if so will it lead to the development of a new Silicon Valley out there somewhere?
I don't know the answers to those question but it seems that Margaret Pugh O'Mara's new book, Cities of Knowledge: Cold War Science and the Search for the Next Silicon Valley might be a good place to start.
The author teaches history at Stanford University, in the heart of Silicon Valley. The dissertation this book is based upon won the Urban History Association's award for Best Dissertation in Urban History completed in 2002.
From the publisher's description:
What is the magic formula for turning a place into a high-tech capital? How can a city or region become a high-tech powerhouse like Silicon Valley? For over half a century, through boom times and bust, business leaders and politicians have tried to become "the next Silicon Valley," but few have succeeded. This book examines why high-tech development became so economically important late in the twentieth century, and why its magic formula of people, jobs, capital, and institutions has been so difficult to replicate. Margaret O'Mara shows that high-tech regions are not simply accidental market creations but "cities of knowledge"--planned communities of scientific production that were shaped and subsidized by the original venture capitalist, the Cold War defense complex.At the heart of the story is the American research university, an institution enriched by Cold War spending and actively engaged in economic development. The story of the city of knowledge broadens our understanding of postwar urban history and of the relationship between civil society and the state in late twentieth-century America. It leads us to further redefine the American suburb as being much more than formless "sprawl," and shows how it is in fact the ultimate post-industrial city. Understanding this history and geography is essential to planning for the future of the high-tech economy, and this book is must reading for anyone interested in building the next Silicon Valley.
Links:Cities of Knowledge: Cold War Science and the Search for the Next Silicon Valley, book page at Princeton University Press
Link to Amazon.com page, including searchable index
Posted by Doug Millison at 07:11 AM | Comments (0)
October 26, 2004
Media Watch: Meme madness
by Doug Millison for SiliconValleyWatcher.com
Now that The New York Times has given its seal of approval, does that mean the Web-as-meme-machine metaphor has peaked, or will it share the limelight for a few more months with "blog," the other trope recently pushed to the forefront of public consciousness?
"Memes (the word rhymes with dreams and is short for mimemes, from the word mimetic) are infectious ideas or any other things that spread by imitation from person to person - a jingle, a joke, a fashion, the smiley face or the concept of hell," writes Sarah Boxer in "Buzzing the Web on a Meme Machine."
Her article includes a host of links to help keep track of the latest memes ... plus instructions on how to propagate your own meme, chain-letter style.
Google has passed Yahoo! in stock valuation, reaching giddy heights that were just beginning to seem possible when the first wave of Web pioneers adopted "meme" from Richard Dawkins and other deep thinkers.
The meme concept has been bubbling around the Internet for well over a decade and will now, it seems, boil over in the rebirth of mass media fever for all things WWW.
Pass it along.
Links:
Buzzing the Web on a Meme Machine by Sarah Boxer, The New York Times, 26 October 2004
Posted by Doug Millison at 09:01 AM | Comments (0)
October 25, 2004
Media Watch: Making Wiki waves
by Doug Millison for SiliconValleyWatcher.com
Will the public accept as authoritative an encyclopedia and a news service open to input and editing from just about anybody on the Web?
That's the question Simon Waldman asks about Wikipedia, in a Guardian feature story today, "Who knows?"
"It has no editors, no fact checkers and anyone can contribute an entry - or delete one," Waldman writes. " It should have been a recipe for disaster, but instead Wikipedia became one of the internet's most inspiring success stories."
The Guardian's trumpeting Wikipedia's success would seem to indicate that people will accept a radically new approach to developing authoritative information sources on the Web by enabling thousands of people to collaborate and pool their knowledge.
Waldman's article makes fascinating reading, with facts and figures and anecdotes about the massive Wikipedia project. Here's an excerpt:
To put Wikipedia's achievements in numerical context, at the same time it was celebrating the publishing of its one millionth entry (a Hebrew article on the Kazakhstan flag) in less than four years, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography launched its latest edition. It had taken 12 years to complete, yet contained a comparatively tiddly 55,000 biographies. It also cost some £25m to create. Wikipedia has so far been bankrolled by Wales, but the total cost so far is still around £300,000.The current Encyclopedia Britannica has 44m words of text. Wikipedia already has more than 250m words in it. Britannica's most recent edition has 65,000 entries in print and 75,000 entries online. Wikipedia's English site has some 360,000 entries and is growing every day.
The same phenomenon that enables political bloggers to prove or disprove statements made by the Bush and Kerry campaigns works to keep the Wikipedia free of error, but it's a process that takes time.
Perhaps this collaborative knowledge work is even better suited to the rhythm and pace of breaking news, with its inherent need for frequent updates as more facts emerge about a particular story?
Wikipedia is betting yes, with the announcement of Wikinews, "a proposed project with the goal to collaboratively report and summarize news on all subjects from a neutral point of view."
From the Wikinews mission statement:
On January 15, 2001, a group of people started a daring experiment: They let the whole world create an encyclopedia in all languages, freely available to everyone on the planet, forever. In the following months and years, it was not just technology that made this dream a reality, but also an incredibly dedicated community of volunteers who wrote articles and formulated the policies and guidelines for the project. They did so through an open, evolutionary process, in a belief in the possibility of consensus, in a desire for the betterment of the human condition, and in love of the human spirit.The idea behind the Wikinews project is no less daring. We seek to create a free source of news, where every human being is invited to contribute reports about events large and small, either from direct experience, or summarized from elsewhere. Wikinews is founded on the idea that we want to create something new, rather than destroy something old. It is founded on the belief that we can, together, build a great and unique resource which will enrich the media landscape.
Wikinews will already be useful even if we start out by having relatively few original reports - because it will provide free, neutral, aggregated summaries of the news from elsewhere. It will already be useful even if the subject range which we cover will initially be full of gaps - because in these subject areas, we will already benefit from the collaborative wiki model. It can grow to become more useful every day.
While Wikinews aims to be a useful resource of its own, it will also provide an alternative to proprietary news agencies like the Associated Press or Reuters; that is, it will allow independent media outfits to get a high quality feed of news free of charge to complement their own reporting. Thanks to copyleft, anyone can create their own free news source - even a non-neutral one - on the basis of our work. Even if our articles will initially be few, they will be free, permanently available and not require registration before reading.
While we are faced with many new challenges, Wikinews will adopt the key principles which have made Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia websites what they are today: neutrality, free content, and an open decision making process.
We seek to promote the idea of the citizen journalist, because we believe that everyone can make a useful contribution to painting the big picture of what is happening in the world around us. The time has come to create a free news source, by the people and for the people. We invite you to join us in this effort which has the potential to change the world forever.
Excuse me, but was somebody saying something about the Web being completely taken over by profit-minded suits and their bean-counter battalions?
Links:
Wikinews a new news service open to all contributors.
Who knows? by Simon Waldman, Guardian, 26 October 2004
Wikimedia Main Page, with links to Wikimedia and other projects
Posted by Doug Millison at 10:09 PM | Comments (0)
Cashing in on GOOG real estate through Google
By Tom Foremski - SiliconValleyWatcher.com
As I was researching a story on Google through Google’s search engine, I popped in the stock ticker GOOG and guess what turned up on the side sponsored link? An advert for a $2.2m home in Menlo Park, right in GOOG’s neighborhood. And the name of the realtor company? Cashin Company Realtors.Very clever, I thought, what an excellent way to target those newly paper-rich Googlers who are checking on the GOOG share price through Google. But what surprised me even more was that there was only ONE sponsored link for GOOG.
Does this mean that Cashin outbid everyone for the adword link? Or does it mean that only one local realtor knows how to run a Google ad campaign? It’s probably the latter.
Which means there is way more room for Google to grow as people become familiar with running a Google online ad words campaign.
Posted by Tom Foremski at 05:35 PM | Comments (0)
VC Watch: Google share surge could lead to VCs cashing out to avoid huge expiring lockup
By Tom Foremski - SiliconValleyWatcher.com
Wall Street’s delight with Google’s first quarterly financial report late last week led to a big jump in Google’s share price as analysts boosted their earnings estimates. This seemed a little worrying in that it reminded some of the internet bubble years when analysts were accused of hyping dotcoms with large upgrades…and we know the rest of the story.
It’s not quite the same this time around. The Google jump stems more from analysts getting to grips with Google’s business model and understanding the dynamics of the surge in online advertising. Analysts now have more information to make a better judgement on Google’s future performance.
The key for Google will be in how effective it is in managing Wall Street expectations—this is important to its stated goal of reducing the volatility of its stock. However, managing expectations is made harder if Google won’t talk about future financial performance—as it said prior to its $1.67bn IPO.
One interesting question right now is: when will Google’s VC investors time the sale of their stock?
Remember: a huge chunk was pulled out of the IPO auction by Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, who didn’t like the offering price. The two VC firms together held about 4.5m shares.
They must weight up the fact that there are about 243m shares coming out of lockup from November to February 14. It wouldn’t be a huge surprise if those VC firms decide to celebrate Valentine’s Day a few months earlier—especially since Google’s share price is now more than double its IPO price. That’s why they call it “smart” money.
But, they would also have to be “smart” in the way they sell those shares, which would increase by about 14 per cent the current 27m share float. The danger would be in depressing the share price if so many shares came onto the market at once.
In the last bubble (not that this is a bubble necessarily) the VCs took their money off the table when they could---while employees and small investors held onto their shares and suffered the consequences.
Posted by Tom Foremski at 05:07 PM | Comments (0)
Tech Watch: Intel invests in Clearwire
by Doug Millison, SiliconValleyWatcher.com
At least one high-powered Wall Street investment banker - an old buddy of mine who emailed me this morning - has his eye on Clearwire, a new company from cell phone empire-builder Craig McCaw... and so does Intel.
Intel Capital has made an unspecified investment in Clearwire, the company announced today, as part of a broader $150 million strategy in wireless technology.
Clearwire will use Intel chips in the nationwide network it is assembling to provide wireless broadband Internet and telephone service, using the emerging WiMAX technology, based on the IEEE 802.16e standard. WiMax is expected to compete with cable modems and DSL within a few years, and can link existing wireless Wi-Fi to fixed network infrastructure.
"McCaw is a smart guy," says my Wall Street friend, who knows where the skeletons are buried in some of the bond deals that financed the first wave of cellular phone networks in the 1990s, and the more recent wave of investment in wireless spectrum.
Clearwire has acquired dedicated spectrum for the new service from companies that managed to raise capital to bid on frequencies at US government auction, then went bankrupt before being able to roll out service. Another McCaw company, NextNet, is supplying technology to the project. In August, Clearwire launched its first broadband wireless network in Jacksonville, Florida. The network, using NextNet technology, is a precursor to upcoming WiMAX networks.
McCaw built the first nationwide cellular empire, McCaw Cellular, and sold it to AT&T for $11.5 billion in 1994.
Links:
Intel, Clearwire to Accelerate Deployment of WiMAX Networks Worldwide, Intel's press releaseIntel Capital, information about Intel's investment unit
Clearwire, corporate site
NexNet, corporate site
Craig McCaw's Secret Plan: His deals in wireless broadband have the telecom world buzzing, in Business Week Online, 24 May 2004
Posted by Doug Millison at 01:08 PM | Comments (0)
Media Watch: Mac co-creator blasts current models
by Doug Millison, SiliconValleyWatcher.com
Jef Raskin, one of the original design team, doesn't think much of today's Mac. But, he does like the new Garrett Wade knife sharpener.
Most savage quote:
Perhaps the longest surviving legacy of your original design is its "appliance" nature. Has this simplicity of design been key to the Mac's popularity?Yes, but unfortunately, the Mac is now a mess. A third party manual (Pogue's The Missing Manual) is nearly 1,000 pages, and far from complete. Apple now does development by accretion, and there is only a little difference between using a Mac and a Windows machine.
Link:Talk time: Jef Raskin, interview by Jason Walsh, in the Guardian
Posted by Doug Millison at 10:20 AM | Comments (0)
October 24, 2004
Silicon Valley Watcher Scoop! Intel beats out DHL for $20m deal to sponsor U2 tour
Silicon Valley’s love affair with the band U2 is about to expand into a ménage a trios, with Intel jumping into bed with the Irish rock band as sponsor of its world tour--reports our very own Silicon Valley Watcher, Jochen Siegle, also a contributing writer to the top German weekly news magazine, Der Spiegel, and Spiegel Online.
According to sources close to the deal, the value of the sponsorship deal is about $20m and Intel outbid DHL, the international package delivery company for the top sponsorship slot. It is part of Intel’s efforts to extend its “Intel Inside” brand into consumer electronics markets.
The deal expands on Silicon Valley's involvement with U2, and it signifies the growing importance of consumer electronics to the region’s technology companies and venture capital investments. Apple Computer is expected later this week to introduce a black iPod, pre-loaded with U2’s forthcoming CD release “ How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.” The songs will be available on Apple’s iTunes service about 1 month before they are released on CD.
U2’s lead singer, Bono, is working with Elevation Partners, a venture capital firm that includes Roger McNamee from Silver Lake Partners, Fred Anderson, the former Apple Chief Financial Officer, and John Riccitiello, former president of Electronic Arts.
The “Intel Inside” campaign has been extremely successful within the PC market. But now Intel’s focus is shifting to consumer electronics, where the Intel brand has less heft.
Intel has been trying to raise its profile in consumer electronics, where its XScale based-chips--based on designs by ARM, the UK chip company--and flash memory chips are used in some cell phones and other digital devices. It has also been heavily promoting the concept of the “digital home” where video, music and internet services can be freely shared within the home.
However, Intel’s cancellation of its large-screen TV chip last week, and prior short-lived forays into consumer electronics markets with its own branded digital music players and other products--are some of the challenges it will face expanding its brand into consumer electronics markets.
U2 could be a valuable ally in Intel’s brand building. U2’s audience includes plenty of people who grew up with U2 more than 20 years ago and now constitute a valuable demographic with plenty of money to buy expensive digital entertainment systems.
The sponsorship deal also indirectly associates Intel with Apple’s iPod music player--an association that sources close to the deal say was a key factor for Intel.
Hewlett-Packard is another large Silicon Valley company that has been keen to exploit the Apple iPod brand. Earlier this year it struck a deal with Apple to offer a HP branded iPod.
Posted by Tom Foremski at 02:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Media Watch: A brilliant dunce?
by Doug Millison, SiliconValleyWatcher.com
Randall Stross's assault on Steve Jobs in yesterday's New York Times takes Apple-bashing in general and Steve Jobs-bashing in particular, to a breath-taking new high.
I doubt even Jobs' bitterest enemies would call him "a brilliant dunce" - a label that Stross insists, in the first sentence of his article, even Jobs' "biggest fans" would apply.
Sorry, but I don't think anybody who was around when the two Steves, Jobs and Wozniak, built one of the earliest microcomputers, would call either of them a dunce.
Jobs was among the first who recognized the vast potential market for a personal computer, at a time when most folks saw them as hobbyist projects for home tinkerers. He was also the first person to recognize the value of the graphical user interface as a way to make the personal computer a product that just about everybody would want to own and use -- not even wonderboy Bill Gates managed to see that, he was only able to rip off Jobs' innovation.
Stross turns these creative leaps against Jobs in this mean-spirited piece, however.
According to Stross, Jobs' transformation of the office and home automation landscape was just a flash in the pan.
Jobs' "strategic vision, which had informed the founding of Apple and the birth of the Macintosh, seemed to have deserted him," Stross writes.
In Stross' revision of Silicon Valley history, Next, the company Jobs founded after leaving Apple in the mid-80s, amounts to nothing but the sign of Jobs' post-Apple "obscurity."
Perhaps Stross missed the San Francisco launch of the Next computer, where Jobs' vision was apparent to the thousands of Silicon Valley luminaries and the international press who gathered for the debut.
Today's desktop, Mac or Windows or otherwise - with its vast silicon and optical storage, high-fidelity music, high-resolution display, and operating system software that made it all work together, linking a vast repository of text, images, music in a seamless web (years before the WWW made that an online reality) - is no more than Jobs' Next computer at a price point everybody can afford now that manufacturing advances have made the necessary components into commodities.
Jobs lucked into Pixar, Stross suggests, not realizing what he had until Disney dumped success in his lap.
Stross does give Jobs some credit for Pixar's massive success, even as he digs the Jobs-as-dunce needle deeper: "In the early years at Pixar, he had incredible technology and no idea what to do with it. But once the strategic vision came into focus, he started on a roll that is unlike any other and continues to this day."
Stross writes at length about Pixar's success compared to DreamWorks, another movie company that tried to jump on the digital bandwagon with sometimes embarrasing results. Amazingly, despite making this direct comparison, Stross seems to miss the point that not every CEO manages to hone such a strategic vision even when looking at the same technology base and studying the same audience.
Xerox, after all, didn't manage to see the value of the graphical user interface that Jobs used to revolutionize computing. And, of the many companies and people experimenting with digital movie making technology in the 1980s and early 1990s, how many besides Jobs have achieved the creative, critical, and commercial success he's enjoyed with five feature film blockbuster hits in a row at Pixar?
Stross uses Pixar's success as a club to give Jobs a final whack for not making Apple the market share monster in personal computers that Pixar is in movies.
Stross quotes a letter that Job wrote to Pixar shareholders in 1997: "It is chiseled in stone at our studio that no amount of technology can ever turn a bad story into a good one" and adds "One could add that the same maxim applies to Apple."
Apple a "bad story?"
Stross forgets his history, joining the long list of Silicon Valley water-cooler wise guys who have counted Jobs out so often in the past.
Links:
Pixar's Mr. Incredible May Yet Rewrite the Apple Story by Randall
Stross, New York Times, 24 October 2004NeXT article in Wikipedia explains the technology breakthroughs of Jobs' project after the Mac.
Previously in Silicon Valley Watcher:
A Tale of Two Silicon Valleys by Doug Millison, examines contrasting media portrayals of Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison.
Posted by Doug Millison at 08:45 AM | Comments (0)
October 22, 2004
Friday Watch: Larry Ellison’s Favorite Paper? / Best in International Media & Public relations
The Pressclub of California hosted the First International Media Summit in Palo Alto last night (21 Oct.). Additionally, members of the Pressclub handed out the 2004 Awards for the Best in International Media & Public relations in the tech industry.
The Pressclub’s 100+ members, foreign correspondents from all over the world as well as numerous domestic reporters, voted “Best in International Media & Public Relations in 2004” the following:
1. Intel
2. Cisco
3. Sun Microsystems
Agnes Kwan (Intel), Ron Pivosan (Cisco) and Kristin Huguet (Sun) took home a good bottle of French (of course, monsieur) champagne. Cheers!
Named as the top 3 tech companies needing improvement in International Media & Public relations were:1. HP
2. Yahoo
3. Google
Apple received a special award: Simultaneously best and worst in PR. As several foreign correspondents have noticed in the last couple of years, Apple treats international reporters simply “not at all” or with arrogance. The local teams though (I can speak especially for the folks in Apple’s Munich office) are doing a great job. Too bad the key deciscions are made in Cupertino and not in Bavaria . . .
Another story on the side: Kristin Hollins, International PR Manager at Oracle, and also one of the Panelists on Moderator Tom Sanders' Panel on Best Practices in International Media Relations, mentioned what Larry Ellison’s favourite paper is: The Financial Times. Of course!
Enjoy the weekend!Posted by Jochen Siegle at 07:40 PM | Comments (0)
PR Watch: Outcast dinner party Part II -- bits and bites…
Let me rush through the dinner highlights:
Margit and Caryn took the stage to welcome the guests, and they both looked fabulous. They attempted a joke about how Margit, being from Germany, did not know the term “home plate” and thought it was a type of food plate. It’s quite understandable—Margit seems to be on some kind of super Atkins—so she might get a little hungry occasionally.
. . .
I was delighted to find that Gary Reback, Silicon Valley’s top lawyer IMHO, was seated at my table. In the 1990s, Gary helped to set in motion the antitrust complaint against Microsoft, which led to the government winning the case. He has just finished with the PeopleSoft court case, is working on a book, and is looking for his next challenge.
He’s very concerned about Washington D.C, and that the legislators do not understand the technology business. This could lead to problem regulations or ineffectual legislation. Gary is not one of those lawyers that chase after the dollar—he really wants to make a big contribution on large issues.
When I was at the FT, I had the scoop on Gary’s comeback into the law profession. During the dotcom boom Gary founded a communications technology startup company called Voxeo, and became its chief executive. “I wanted to have the business experience of running a startup, but, as CEO, managing teams of software engineers was a lot harder than I expected. And as for dealing with our lawyers....I can understand why lawyers are often so disliked.”
. . .
The indefatigable Tony Perkins, founder of AlwaysOn, Red Herring, Churchill Club, etc, etc, was at the party. I mentioned that he seems to have a ton of stuff going on right now with AlwaysOn. He is launching a quarterly magazine, there is a blog magazine, conferences, etc. “I feel that we’ve come to a stage now where we can monetize our efforts,” he said. Monetizing content is a huge challenge and I hope Tony figures things out—because then we can all benefit from examples of successful online media business models.
. . .
I had an interesting chat with David Helfrich from Garnett & Helfrich Capital. David made his money the traditional Silicon Valley way by working at startups that were then sold for large sums to larger players. This put him into the venture capital business for several years. His focus now, however, is not VC investments, but on financing deals with private, medium sized companies. He says such deals can be very complex---which keeps out the competition.
Mr Helfrich said he got out of the VC business because it hasn’t changed in years and it is not producing the value it once did. He said there are too many VCs living off the very generous fund management fees and doing little in return. I heartily agree--if you have a $1bn fund and the management fee is 2 per cent, the VC team doesn’t need to worry too much about eating, or finding a roof over their heads—or risky investments. I think the investment landscape has changed tremendously in Silicon Valley, yet the VCs are still doing business the old fashioned way. They are still following a herd mentality and seem bereft of good ideas.
It is networks of Angel investors, such as TIE and Silicom Ventures that are going to be the major beneficiaries of the changes occurring —but more on that topic later…
. . .
In the Redwood room later on, it was always a pleasure to chat with the very tall Cory Johnson, Silicon Valley business reporter for CNBC and a familar talking head to many. (I’m hoping he can introduce me to Maria at some point!)
I didn’t hang around too long—although I do remember demonstrating the inherent instability of a Manhattan cocktail to Joe Fay, US editor of Computerwire, using part of his shirt in the demo. BTW, Joe might be leaving Computerwire soon, which would create an internal power vacuum, one that the young but ambitious Kevin Murphy, Computerwire reporter, would like to fill.
Posted by Tom Foremski at 04:33 PM | Comments (0)
Friday Watch: Fantastic Voyage
Mike Langberg puts the "embedded" back into journalism in his San Jose Mercury News column, with a first-person tale of adventure that, well, made my skin crawl.
I'm rolling up my sleeve, ready to get injected with the VeriChip. That's the device cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration earlier this month as the first implantable electronic identification tag linked to a person's medical profile.Langberg's entertaining column explores the privacy and medical safety concerns of the device and offers five guidelines for federal laws he hopes will be adopted to avoid abuse of the devices.
As I was reading it, I couldn't help remembering one of my favorite, cheesy sci-fi flicks of the '60s, day-dreaming about riding inside the VeriChip, with Raquel Welch in a 21st century remake of Fantastic Voyage.
After all, it's Friday.
Links:Under my skin by Mike Langberg, San Jose Mercury News, 22 October 2004
Posted by Doug Millison at 08:23 AM | Comments (0)
Friday Watch: Voodo Goojoo!
Some playful Silicon Valley types are, no doubt, planning their migration north for next Friday's can't-miss event: Anon Salon's Voodo Goojoo!
Voodoo Goojo! is fruit of Mark "Spoonman" Petrakis' twisted mind. (Petrakis put together a mind-blowing evening's entertainment for the Morph's Outpost Art Teco conference that marked a beginning for the emerging San Francisco interactive multimedia community back in '94.)
Just reading Petrakis' invite for next week's party wore this old codger out, but I'm confident the youngsters are on the beam, ready, willing, and able:
ANON SALON
oozes sum
VOODOO GOO-JOOB!
Cult of the Paranormal Hell-O-Ween
Sordid favors and human sacrifice!
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2004
@ Anon Gallery
285 9th Street (@ Folsom)/ SF
9 pm - late
$10 b4 10pm
$15 after 10pm: Possessed
$20: Neither here nor therehttp://www.anonsalon.com/hello04
Featuring...
BonEWiCkED GraveYard
• OBADAYO (ANON SALON)
• ALIA (13 MOONTRIBE)
• GARTH (WICKED)
• JENÖ (WICKED)CaVE of the sNeAKy MoNKEy
• LATE NIGHT SNEAKY (Illuminated Live Funk w/ Vocals)
• LUX (aka Rodman) (Laptop Loo-ping)
• STARLIT (Live Drum-Driven World Mix)
• SPACED COWBOY BREAK-FEAST (Kirk & Chip)
• RANDOM AMBUSH COSTUME CONTEST
* GOBLINS A GLO-GOPaGAN REz-ErEc-TING-LE
• HAUNTED GALLERIES/ FALLEN ANGLE INNER SANCTUMS/
• FRIGHTENINGLY TALENTED ART ATTACKS!
• DR. SPOOK / MAD VISUALZ
• VOODOO DOLL TRANS-FEARS
• 99¢ BRAIN OPERATIONS
• PAST LIFE READINGS/ EDITED FOR THE JUICY PARTS
• DIY POLI-TRICKY HEX-A-GRAM (Exorcise the White House)
(Pin the Bush on Laura)
• MICHAEL'S LIGHT TOYS
• DARK HEART TAROT W/ ANAHID
• RE-ANIMATOR MASSAGE
PLUS SPIDERWEB ROOF GARDEN
(RESPECT THE NEIGHBORS! NO DRUMMING, PLEASE)
* NEON PLUSHY ROOM / SECURE COAT CHECK
& more..
YR ANON-M-US HOSTS:
Joegh "Cadavah" Bullock & Mark "GrueSumSpoon" Petrakis
Link:
Anon SalonPosted by Doug Millison at 08:06 AM | Comments (0)
PR Watch: The Outcast CEO dinner party part 1: The Silicon Valley Hack Pack turns up...
Outcast Communications, the public relations agency, has been doing very well lately and that showed clearly at its 3rd Annual CEO dinner at the Clift on Wednesday evening. The place was full of Silicon Valley luminaries, including much of Silicon Valley's Hack Pack of leading journalists. I picked up some great stories, (however, I also picked up a hangover and forgot some of them!)
Outcast was founded by Margit Wennmachers and Caryn Marooney in 1997 and I've been a fan for a long time because of the "startup" culture of Outcast. It has outgrown its “boutique” image by winning some large corporate clients such as EMC’s software group, and Dell’s Enterprise group. (More on Outcast next week...now back to the party.)
Fortunately for the many baseball fans amongst the hundred or so guests, Outcast had set up a large TV outside the dining room for pre-dinner cocktails. And there was a large and lively crowd following the game.
I preferred the TV-less lounge area, where I could catch up with fellow reporters, such as Constance Loizos, a lead reporter for Dow Jones Venture Capital Analyst: Technology newsletter. This is also where Andreas Kluth from the Economist was hiding out. I was complaining that I hardly see him, “that’s because I hate driving over the bridge and into the city,” he said. And that is how you know that an event is worthwhile attending if you see that Andreas is there.
Jason Maynard, software analyst at Merrill Lynch was also in the lounge area. I asked him if he had been following Salesforce.com at all. Interestingly, Jason said he had not yet initiated coverage of Outcast's largest, and oldest client--Saleforce.com--led by the colorful Marc Benioff.(I wish the valley had more Benioffs BTW.)
Jason and I listened to the delightful Julia Blystone from Outcast tell us about Halsey Minor’s new $50m “On Demand” venture capital fund. It targets “On Demand” investments. It was announced earlier in the month but I missed it.
I asked who else is funding the fund and was told it is all Halsey. And why not? Halsey has shown a Midas touch and has done very well. He did very well on his Cnet stock, selling a big chunk before the bubbles popped. And more recently, he has done very well out of his buddy Marc Benioff’s Salesforce.com IPO. Halsey was an early investor in Salesforce and had a nice chunk of that deal. And he is also pushing hard with his Grand Central Communications web services company.
As an aside, I found an interesting link to a webinar conducted jointly between Halsey and Jason Maynard. Next time I see Jason I’d like to ask him how this type of thing is set up. For example, can I hire a Merrill analyst to do a webinar? Or is it a customer type of thing, say, if I kept my IRA at Merrill?
From a posting on WebServices.org:
“Enterprise Software in an On Demand World - Webinar, 17th June, 10am PSTJoin Jason Maynard, Software Analyst for Merrill Lynch and Halsey Minor, Founder of Grand Central Communications for an executive webinar to learn how "On Demand software could lower overall cost of deployment by 5x-10x compared to traditional implementation models, effectively changing the way customers buy, vendors sell and investors invest".
http://www.webservices.org/index.php/ws/content/view/full/5080
And this is the press release announcing Halsey's new venture fund. You’ll notice that Halsey’s buddies provide unbiased testaments to the power and insight of his investment skills ;-)http://www.grandcentral.com/news/press_archive/OnDemand_100404
Part II of the Outcast Party report...
Posted by Tom Foremski at 06:12 AM | Comments (0)
October 21, 2004
Tech Watch: Further evidence of Microsoft's tunnel vision....(Bill, that is not a light--it's a train!)
Steve Ballmer has been talking about the need for an entry level $100 PC in developing countries. This is not because Mr. Ballmer wants to bridge the digital divide. He thinks a $100 PC would help stem software piracy because people would then have money to spend on Microsoft software.
Mike Ricciuti, from News.com, wrote an excellent story on this topic:
"ORLANDO, Fla.--What's one of Steve Ballmer's biggest headaches? It's not Linux or security breaches. It's piracy, the Microsoft CEO said Wednesday."The biggest problem we have right now is that people who should be paying for software aren't," Ballmer told an audience of technology executives at an industry conference here sponsored by market researcher Gartner."
Is Mr. Ballmer saying that the hardware producers should cut their margins so that Microsoft can reap the benefits of its dominant position in software markets? It seems that way. Yes, Microsoft has cut some of its software prices in developing countries--but the piracy of Microsoft and other software in those countries is not a threat to its future revenues. Microsoft should be looking closer to home.
I know lots of people using inexpensive word processors, free web browsers such as the excellent Firefox, using Linux on their PCs, etc. Whenever a viable alternative to using a Microsoft product comes around--it gets a lot of support. For example, I've been playing around with TextPad, which is an excellent shareware word processor, that does everything I will ever need to do.
And the server-side applications are getting better and better. For example, I wrote this entire piece not on Microsoft Word, or TextPad, but within Movable Type blogging software, which sits on a server located somewhere in the "cloud." All I need is a browser window and I can use any computer, even my Treo (another plug for the Geek Beacon!) to input text. The server that runs my Movable Type application uses Linux as the operating system--a choice made not by me, but by my hosting service.
These trends are not favorable to Microsoft. It seems dead in the water these days. Its pipeline of products has been reduced to a trickle. And it is battling huge security issues around its software--deploying many thousands of its programmers to patch security holes instead of developing new products. And it is bereft of any good investment ideas, which is signified by its announcement earlier this year that it would give away a large chunk of its cash mountain to investors.
Is it Microsoft's fault that it needs to deal with these security issues? It often portrays itself as an innocent victim, that its security issues are because of its success, that its dominant position in software markets has made it the number one target for malicious hackers.
But, if it hadn't used illegal means to develop that market dominance in the first place, it would not have been such a large target. There would have been many targets for hackers if other software companies had survived. It would have been too much work for hackers to port their viruses to other platforms and we would have a smaller problem.
Instead, Microsoft used illegal means to drive competitors out of business and now PC users are paying the price in lost productivity due to a plague of viruses, worms, and security exploits.
Mr. Gates and Mr. Ballmer should have taken a lesson from agriculture. If you have a monoculture--you are far more vulnerable to pests and diseases and you need to protect your crops with herbicides and pesticides. Microsoft wanted dominance but it wanted it without impregnating its software with the defenses needed for a monoculture of software products.
Isn't Mr. Gates the Chief Software Architect of Microsoft? Shouldn't he have foreseen many of these security problems? After all, viruses and worms have been around for a long time. The first computer virus spotted in the wild was in 1981--on an Apple II computer. This was when Apple dominated the PC market and its operating system was the largest target around. Shouldn't Mr. Gates have made sure that there were strong defenses against viruses and other security exploits in Microsoft software products from the very beginning?
But, Microsoft is cloistered in the soggy North-West and I strongly believe that this insulates it from critical thinking and the mish mash of ideas and challenges that being in Silicon Valley provides. Microsoft's partner in the PC business, Intel, for example has benefited tremendously from its presence in Silicon Valley. This makes it easier to make tough decisions, such as Intel's big change in its roadmap for future microprocessor designs. Intel, BTW, has done far more to force down the price of PCs than Microsoft. And its strong support for Linux is another indication that it understands the trends and undertows of computer markets far more than Microsoft.
Life in Silicon Valley is hard and often brutal. Companies have to compete in so many ways, for skilled engineers, for markets, for capital, and most do not make it--but this is where the innovative juice is, Bill. Move your HQ down to here; compete on level terms in global markets.
If you can't handle competition, that's fine--give away your ill gotten gains to your investors--but if you can compete you are golden. It is competition that drives you on. Intel knows it, everybody here knows it. Microsoft doesn't IMHO.
News.com story--Ballmer: We Need a $100 PC.News.com story--Microsoft plans to return up to $75 billion to shareholders over the next four years.
The first computer virus in the wild.
Posted by Tom Foremski at 02:47 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
PR Watch: The place to be on Wednesday evening was Outcast's 3rd annual CEO dinner at the Clift...
There was a who's who of industry luminaries, top journalists, and excellent conversation. And I picked up a ton of great gossip and items that I'm dying to share with my loyal readers.
But--it will have to wait for Friday because I have to run out and be a reporter. I'm off to yet another glittering event. This one is in San Jose, the annual Awards banquet hosted by SEMI, the trade group. The event celebrates the massive--but long suffering--chip equipment industry.
Posted by Tom Foremski at 01:40 PM | Comments (0)
Media Watch: Cracking the whip at News.com
News.com is by far the best online news service for the technology industry and it has a near maniacal devotion to producing extremely high quality content. I defy any blogger, or collection of bloggers to mimic News.com in its quality and breadth of editorial (unless those bloggers are trained journalists BTW)
But life is tough at News.com and the long suffering hacks have been told they must increase their productivity.
The reporters must produce at least one feature per week on top of the rising daily news workload. Editor Jeff "Mad Dog" Pelline always gets his way I'm told.
BTW, my good buddy Tom Abate, from the SF Chron, has a couple of zinger stories about Jeff (when Jeff worked at the Chronicle and Tom was at the Examiner) that point to his dogged determination to get the scoop.
I must point out that the "Mad Dog" nickname does not originate from News.com (he is known under a different name), but is from a past life elsewhere. Jeff has always been extremely gracious and pleasant in my encounters with him.
Posted by Tom Foremski at 11:04 AM | Comments (0)
Media Watch: A Tale of Two Silicon Valleys, redux
Back on the two Silicon Valleys tip again - this time looking at the Silicon Valley that liberates people ... while the shadow side exploits them.
Ian Keldoulis' article in today's New York Times Technology section, "Where Good Wi-Fi Makes Good Neighbors," is heart-warming (warms my heart, at least).
What's not to like about a New York University student who shares his wi-fi connection with neighbors, and uses it to encourage them to use a neighborhood BBS?
Keldoulis explains that the student is taking part in "Neighbornode, a project created by John Geraci that is part of a bare-bones software package provided by NYCWireless, a volunteer advocacy group instrumental in turning places like Bryant Park into public hot spots. The group is encouraging people to set up their own hot spots and electronic bulletin boards to let communities of otherwise anonymous urbanites find one another."I wonder if anybody is doing anything like this in Silicon Valley. I share my Airport Extreme wi-fi connection with my next-door neighbor, a sweet little old lady (80-something!) with a killer iMac who was previously suffering from dial-up Internet connection death-watch when she tried to read the latest political news on the Web and email far-flung family and friends.
But I hadn't considered a neighborhood BBS. Maybe that would be a good way to get something done about the little rat-dog that yaps incessantly next door when its owners forget to put him back inside before they go to work....
Shadow side ... slowly moving into the light
Some Silicon Valley companies (and many others elsewhere) that manufacture overseas have been criticized for exploiting workers in countries with low wages and weak labor force protection, beginning in the '80s when chip makers set up wafer fab facilities in places like the Philippines, if not earlier.
It's welcome news, then, when Therese Poletti reports that " HP, IBM, Dell set 'code' for treatment of workers, firms to audit working conditions in foreign plants," in today's San Jose Mercury News.
Writes Poletti, "Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Dell, which were accused earlier this year of having 'dire working conditions' at factories outside the United States, announced Wednesday that they have agreed on a 'code of conduct' for the treatment of workers and the environment."
Poletti notes that "In January, the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development, a non-profit organization based in the United Kingdom, issued a report stating that workers who make computer components for IBM, Dell and HP in Mexico, China and Thailand are suffering 'atrocious conditions for extremely low pay.' "
This is the sort of thing that individual companies and industry groups must do, unless they want to suffer backlash and boycotts, like that of college students who work to alleviate overseas worker exploitation by companies like Nike and other famous brands.
Links:
Where Good Wi-Fi Makes Good Neighbors by Ian Keldoulis, New York Times, 21 October 2004
NYCwireless Community Hotspot Project
< a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/technology/9956462.htm">HP, IBM, Dell set 'code' for treatment of workers, firms to audit working conditions in foreign plants by Therese Poletti, San Jose Mercury News, 21 October 2004
Posted by Doug Millison at 11:03 AM | Comments (0)
Media Watch: Media trips
That's the name of a compelling new blog riding the wave unleashed when creative people started adopting Photoshop (and other digital media tools) and the Web.
Explains the blog's founder, David Goldschmidt:
Sampling popculture is not a crime. It is not an act of civil disobedience. Sampling popculture (or media mashing) is a means for artistic, political and personal expression. And Media trips is a blog that promotes artists and producers who exercise their FAIR USE rights. It is a guide to artists and producers who (sample) (remix) (mash) popculture content to create something new and original. "Popculture content" means any audio, video, image or text produced by the world's major media and entertainment corporations. For my purposes, a "mediatrip" is any original aesthetic or narrative that integrates content ripped from film, TV or other sources.Media literacy (the ability to communicate using text, audio, video and HTML) is the new literacy. And media-mashing is the new criticism. It is time to teach students how to critique the Media's (FOX, CBS, AOL, etc.) broadcast content instead jailing them for violating oppressive copyright laws. Media-mashing is a legitimate form of social criticism.
It's been a long time coming. In 1993 I conceived and developed and helped to launch Blaster, a magazine for "screenagers" (people who had grown up with videogame joysticks and computer mice in their hands) who were embracing interactive multimedia creation and online communications along with skateboards, graffiti art, indie rock, and other alternative lifestyle activities.
Back then, the model was 'zines - fun, creative, hand-made magazines and newsletters. Now it's sites like Fark's Photoshop hacks pages, Media trips, and a growing number of blogs where digital pranksters show their stuff. Very cool.
Thanks to NEWSgrist editor Joy Garnett for the link to Media trips where she is guest blogging.
Posted by Doug Millison at 09:54 AM | Comments (0)
Media Watch: Silicon Valley's favorite novelist interviewed on slashdot.org
Novelist Neal Stephenson has long been a favorite in Silicon Valley, from the publication of Snow Crash and his early celebrity in Wired magazine. He answered questions from geeks in an insightful Slashdot.org interview.
Stephenson discusses hacking, the lack of respect for science fiction as a literary genre, machine intelligence, who would prevail in a smackdown with rival cyberpunk novelist William Gibson, the convergence of novels and computer games, and new publishing models, among other topics.
Most thrilling quote:
The first time was a year or two after SNOW CRASH came out. I was doing a reading/signing at White Dwarf Books in Vancouver. Gibson stopped by to say hello and extended his hand as if to shake. But I remembered something Bruce Sterling had told me. For, at the time, Sterling and I had formed a pact to fight Gibson. Gibson had been regrown in a vat from scraps of DNA after Sterling had crashed an LNG tanker into Gibson's Stealth pleasure barge in the Straits of Juan de Fuca. During the regeneration process, telescoping Carbonite stilettos had been incorporated into Gibson's arms. Remembering this in the nick of time, I grabbed the signing table and flipped it up between us. Of course the Carbonite stilettos pierced it as if it were cork board, but this spoiled his aim long enough for me to whip my wakizashi out from between my shoulder blades and swing at his head. He deflected the blow with a force blast that sprained my wrist. The falling table knocked over a space heater and set fire to the store. Everyone else fled. Gibson and I dueled among blazing stacks of books for a while. Slowly I gained the upper hand, for, on defense, his Praying Mantis style was no match for my Flying Cloud technique. But I lost him behind a cloud of smoke. Then I had to get out of the place. The streets were crowded with his black-suited minions and I had to turn into a swarm of locusts and fly back to Seattle.Slashdot.org users continue the discussion in their responses to the interview, of course, prolonging this interesting experiment in interactive, online journalism.
Links:
Neal Stephenson Responds With Wit and Humor interview by Slashdot.org participants
Posted by Doug Millison at 07:54 AM | Comments (0)
Media Watch: Silicon Valley World Series
What can Silicon Valley learn from the Yankees-Red Sox ALCS series?
That's the Major League Baseball American League Championship Series between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox, in case you don't follow baseball or perhaps live on another planet. (Readers outside the US may be excused for a lack of awareness of this latest passage in the American national pastime.)
The Red Sox came back from a 3-0 deficit in the seven-game series to win four games in a row (each with its own dramatic twists and turns with a come-from behind thriller in all but the last of the ALCS games) and move on to the World Series.
Beyond the thrills and chills, the Yankees-Red Sox play-off series offers several lessons for everybody in Silicon Valley.
1. Never say die. The Red Sox overcame a "curse" that has oppressed players and fans alike since the team's last appearance in the World Series in 1918. Johnny Damon - the Red Sox outfielder with mountain man hair and beard - persisted through a frustrating batting slump in the first six games of the series only to score six of the Red Sox runs last night, a dazzling, record-setting performance.
It's true that the Sox have been able to stay in business and acquire the players (resources) they need to compete - just as Silicon Valley companies need to do. But the refusal to give up made the difference.
2. Play through the pain. A corollary to Lesson No. 1. In the ALCS series, this trait was most visible in pitcher Curt Schilling's heroic performance in game six despite an ankle injury that drew TV cameras to his blood-stained red socks throughout the broadcast. Sometimes you just have to bear down and be brave.
3. Creative management wins. Red Sox manager Terry Francona out-maneuvered a Yankees dream team assembled with virtually no limit to the amount of money that could be spent acquiring the game's best players.
4. Insist on a fair, level playing field. Francona pressured the umpires to revisit some egregious judgements in last night's (and earlier games in this series) game...and they reversed some bad decisions, in the Red Sox's favor.
5. Follow the rules. One of the ugliest moments in the series came last night when the Yankee's billion-dollar man, Alex Rodriguez, while charging towards first base after hitting the ball into the infield, broke the rules when he tried to swat the ball out of the hands of the defender who was waiting to tag him out. Rodriguez made himself and his team look bad in this display of poor sportsmanship, which felt even cheaper and more desperate in light of the Yankee's loss.
6. Your words will come back to haunt you. Yankee fans - tens of thousands of them - taunted the Red Sox with a "Who's your Daddy?" sing-song chorus last night and throughout the play-off series, rubbing in their faces the long history of Yankee dominance in this famed rivalry. They shut up quickly enough when the Red Sox started spanking their beloved Yankees, and the refrain could be heard, ghostly, but undeniably reverberating in the stadium as the Yankees went down last night.
Microsoft executives - just to mention one example near and dear to many of us here in Silicon Valley; other cocky companies and executives also come to mind - may want to remember this lesson the next time they pop off with slimy remarks about Apple Computer, such as Steve Ballmer's recent comments about iPod owners being thieves, as Apple moves on to trounce Microsoft in the digital music market.
Link:
Boston pops ... champagne! by Jim Caple, with links to other ESPN.com coverage of the seriesPosted by Doug Millison at 07:01 AM | Comments (0)
October 20, 2004
Media Watch: SF Chronicle scoops Google's optimistic "assumptions"
Verne Kopytoff of the San Francisco Chronicle appears to be first with a story about Google's rosy business forecasts, working from "internal documents" that he says provide more information than the company's founders are expected to deliver with its first quarterly earnings report as a public company tomorrow.
Writes Kopytoff:
Everyone agrees that Google is expanding rapidly. The questions are how much and for how long.The internal Google documents obtained by The Chronicle give unusual detail about the matter. They include advertising forecasts that have not been publicly disclosed.
Google predicted that the number of advertiser accounts will jump from 280,000 this year to 378,000 in 2005, according to the documents. From 2004 to 2008, the number of accounts is expected to more than double to 652,050.
Google made the forecasts as part of its specifications for a new billing system that was to be built earlier this year by BFS Finance, a subsidiary of the conglomerate Bertelsmann AG. The numbers, labeled "assumptions," were intended to help in designing the project.
A Google spokesman declined to comment other than to say that the company has thousands of advertisers.
Kopytoff fleshes out the scoop with facts, figures, and analyst observations. It's worth reading in its entirety for a snapshot of the Silicon Valley upstart poised for explosive expansion.
The cynic in me insists on wondering if Google planted this story, however. It makes the company look awfully good, at a time when it's coming under increasing pressure from search engine competitors, and with Microsoft eager to nip a desktop rival in the bud.
Equally possible: given the Valley's boom and bust cycle, and the troubled history of Internet companies in particular, the hopeful projections may be remembered as a flash of optimism before the balloon deflates.
Links:
Google forecasts growth: Search engine sees 372,000 new ad accounts in 4 years by Verne Kopytoff, San Francisco Chronicle, 20 October 2004
Recent Silicon Valley Watcher coverage:
Media Watch: Search & destroy by Doug Millison, 18 October 2004
Tech Watch: VCs searching for search engines in all the wrong places by Tom Foremski, 18 October 2004
Posted by Doug Millison at 07:53 AM | Comments (0)
October 19, 2004
Media Watch: A Hacker Manifesto
That's the title of a new book that explores the shifting boundaries and conflicts over intellectual property and piracy ... and defines a powerful "new progressive class, the hacker class."
The book, by McKenzie Wark, Professor of Cultural and Media Studies at Lang College, New School University, in New York, will appeal to readers with intellectual and political interests, judging from the publisher's description:
A double is haunting the world--the double of abstraction, the virtual reality of information, programming or poetry, math or music, curves or colorings upon which the fortunes of states and armies, companies and communities now depend. The bold aim of this book is to make manifest the origins, purpose, and interests of the emerging class responsible for making this new world--for producing the new concepts, new perceptions, and new sensations out of the stuff of raw data.A Hacker Manifesto deftly defines the fraught territory between the ever more strident demands by drug and media companies for protection of their patents and copyrights and the pervasive popular culture of file sharing and pirating. This vexed ground, the realm of so-called "intellectual property," gives rise to a whole new kind of class conflict, one that pits the creators of information--the hacker class of researchers and authors, artists and biologists, chemists and musicians, philosophers and programmers--against a possessing class who would monopolize what the hacker produces.
Drawing in equal measure on Guy Debord and Gilles Deleuze, A Hacker Manifesto offers a systematic restatement of Marxist thought for the age of cyberspace and globalization. In the widespread revolt against commodified information, McKenzie Wark sees a utopian promise, beyond the property form, and a new progressive class, the hacker class, who voice a shared interest in a new information commons.
Links:
A Hacker Manifesto book page at Harvard University Press
A Hacker Manifesto at Amazon.com, which says, "McKenzie Wark's A Hacker Manifesto might also be called, without too much violence to its argument, The Communist Manifesto 2.0. In essence, it's an attempt to update the core of Marxist theory for that relatively novel set of historical circumstances known as the information age."
Thanks to the always interesting political art blog, NEWSgrist, where I learned about the new book and which provides details of the book launch party on October 21 in New York.
Posted by Doug Millison at 09:29 PM | Comments (0)
Media Watch: The triumph of "deep geekdom" - from Silicon Valley to off-Broadway
That's the trajectory followed by The Last Starfighter, in 1982 a video game from Atari created to celebrate the creation of megahit, PacMan, now resuscitated as an off-Broadway musical.
Courtesy of the ever-fascinating blog, Boing Boing, comes a review of the production from blogger Jason Scott.
An excerpt from Scott's tribute to "deep geekdom":
1982. Atari Games, to celebrate the creation of their Atari 2600 Pac-Man Game (which, I might add, was one of the most pathetic, slapdash, slipshod piece of programming ever to churn out of a development studio) held a massive "Pac Man Day" in Citicorp Center in New York City. Being a confessed "Pac Maniac", I couldn't resist. To complete the picture, you have to know that I had that great uncontrolled 11-year-old hair of unequal length, and an old army fatigue jacket with a "PAC MAN" t-shirt transfer on the back. Now, it was me and literately THOUSANDS of kids jammed into the inadequately-planned celebration area at the Center, with all of us vying for places to stand and have fun. They had the contest, which only had maybe a dozen of us actually show enough nerve to go up on stage, and due to a REALLY LOUD chomping sound, I placed somewhere around third. Of course, this is up to dispute, because the place essentially turned into a riot (I can still recall my father up on a balcony, screaming at me to stand against a wall so I wouldn't be stepped on) and they generally just THREW stuff into the crowd, but I was third.This is a memory I will hold dear until all of time. It was not a depth. It was a pinnacle. It was a heady, breathless moment in time in which my own fannish interest in something led me to a situation, a unique situation, that could barely be explained to others without sounding truly off-the-wall, absolutely beyond saving. And like many such unique events, you hold a fear in your heart, beyond the memory, a fear that as time goes on you will not feel such things again.
So, as I sit here typing these words to you, I know I have achieved something of equal, deep geekdom.
I have attended an off-broadway musical based on The Last Starfighter.
Scott's review is worth reading in its entirety.
Sounds as if we've reached the outer limits of re-purposing content and have reached the point where the Serpent devours its own tail.
Links:
Review of "The Last Starfighter: The Musical" at the blog, ASCII by Jason Scott
Storm Theatre, where "The Last Starfighter" currently plays in New York
Kekulé dreams the Great Serpent holding its own tail in its mouth, the dreaming Serpent which surrounds the World link to page in Thomas Pynchon's novel Gravity's Rainbow, courtesy of Amazon.com's searchable index (page 412 in the classic Viking or current Penguin Twentieth Century Classics edition)
Posted by Doug Millison at 06:53 AM | Comments (0)
October 18, 2004
Tech Watch: VCs searching for search engines in all the wrong places
VCs are pouring money into any search engine company they can find but they are missing the point about Google’s success. Google is not a search engine company.
It seems that almost every venture capital firm I meet with has a search engine investment or two in their portfolio--or is searching for one or two.
I met with Raul Valdes-Perez, president of Vivisimo recently. This Pittsburgh-based company has a search engine product that uses a very interesting technology that can generate a taxonomy-on-the-fly. This means it can quickly group search results into folders representing different subjects. It recently introduced the search site Clusty.com as one demonstration of its technology.
“We’ve got about forty VC’s chasing after us,” Mr Valdes-Perez complained. “We don’t even need the money.” Vivisimo is far more interested in partnering with Silicon Valley companies that could use its technology. But VCs are desperate for any search related company. (And you thought the mistakes of the bubble years, with the herd-like behavior of the VC community, were a thing of the past...)
The VCs are missing the point when it comes to understanding Google. It is not a search engine company but an extremely efficient advertising delivery network. It already derives a significant share of its revenues from non-search web pages through its Adsense service.
Search is merely an application for its advertising delivery technology.
In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Google might one day decide to outsource search. If say CompanyX built a better search engine—so what? Google would offer to sign it up as an advertising partner and CompanyX would accept.
Why? Because Google would be far better at monetizing that search engine because it has this enormous advertising delivery network.
I could tell VCs what kinds of companies they should be chasing (BTW it’s not advertising network technology companies ) but I'll wait a bit...
Here is a link to Vivisimo and Clusty.com.Posted by Tom Foremski at 01:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Media Watch: The Blogosphere is more like a Plug-o-sphere...
...or an endless hallway of mirrors.
Early this morning I was doing a little bit of ego surfing when I ended up on Drew B’s take on Tech PR weblog. Drew was taking credit for a trackback that led me to the weblog of Charles Arthur, a tech reporter for The Independent in the UK.
I had left a comment with Charles that we should consider a trans-Atlantic hook-up of sorts. And that led Drew to conclude in his weblog, that there is indeed a JV underway—which triggered this latest ego-linked journey back to Drew’s weblog.
As I was writing a comment, thanking him for taking an interest in such things, it struck me again, just how incredibly self-promoting the Blogosphere is. I know bloggers who are constantly mentioning each other’s weblogs (not I) and dropping names all over the place. As I was saying to Ed (Zander,) just before he got the Motorola gig... “Ed, you need a bigger challenge than Silicon Valley can provide."
What rankles me about standalone journalism--as some like to call blogging--is that you have to do many jobs and one of them is publicist. And since blogging is personal, personal opinion, personality—you have to be a self-publicist. This is not a pleasant label at all. Having grown up in the British culture there is an unwritten understanding that “one should not blow one’s own horn.” I agree. It’s always better for someone else to do it for you.
So please send a link to Silicon Valley Watcher to your friends!
Here is Drew B’s excellent weblog:
Introducing Charles Arthur blog to Tom Foremski blog!And here is Charles Arthur's weblog:
Charles...on anything that comes alongFrom the New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy:
blow one's own hornPosted by Tom Foremski at 08:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Media Watch: Search & destroy
Against the daily news backdrop of bombings and aerial attacks, veteran Silicon Valley journalist, John Markoff's article,"Google Envy Is Fomenting Search Wars" in today's New York Times comes as no surprise.
Business as war is a trope that journalists haven't been able to leave alone in the 20+ years I've been covering Silicon Valley, even in the most peaceful times. It's become distressingly common as fighting has intensified in Iraq and the rest of us citizen-soldiers are supposed to keep Silicon Valley, and the rest of the homeland, safe from terrorists.
Markoff's martial prose covers all the hot spots in the latest war to control the personal computer desktop: Google's challenge to Microsoft with a Desktop Search function that searches the Web as well as files on the user's computer, the new Google Print feature to compete with Amazon.com's Search-Inside-the-Book, plus Google SMS to enable Web searches from a cell phone.
Microsoft, Yahoo!, and a host of new contenders - Vivissimo, Idealab, Amazon's new A9 search engine, Apple's upcoming Tiger - are in there fighting, too. And what a fight it is!
Markoff notes an "explosion," a "burst of activity," "furiously intensified efforts." Even as new battles begin, these armies of software engineers and marketing guerillas are "refighting the battles of the past."
Just as CNN or MSNBC or Fox News lets ex-generals second-guess the latest military maneuvers in Iraq, Markoff invites expert observers to comment on the chances of Microsoft and Yahoo! checking upstart Google's bold advance.
Unfortunately, also like the Iraq war, when the smoke clears and the dust settles and the casualties have been carted off the battlefields, questions arise: just what's been won? And, who won it?
Markoff astutely observes that "the search market, one of the Internet's most profitable areas, will increasingly be shaped by brand and other nontechnology factors."
This confirms what I heard from some very smart software engineers at a search engine start-up firm a few years ago, during my stint as an editor at Knowledge Management magazine.
They demonstrated technology that could run circles around Google and Yahoo!, producing search results far more precise and useful, albeit on enterprise information sets much smaller than the burgeoning Web.
Why not sell it to them? I asked.
They're not interested in making the necessary investment to implement it for the Web, was the reply.
Convinced that Internet users were reasonably satisfied with search results, the established search engine companies realized that brand name recognition and high-profile advertising programs would win the market share war. They were happy to leave the high-horsepower indexing schemes and advanced algorithms to companies that serve niche markets like enterprise knowledge management.
In the restaurant business, it's not the steak, it's the sizzle.
In the search engine wars, will shock and awe prevail?
Links:Google Envy Is Fomenting Search Wars by John Markoff, New York Times, 18 October 2004
Posted by Doug Millison at 08:15 AM | Comments (0)
Media Watch: Best news show bar none
Jon Stewart at the Daily Show hosts the best TV news show out there.
Few in Silicon Valley are familiar with his work because the show airs at 11pm weekdays.
Chris Dichtel sends over this link to Stewart's recent appearance on CNN's "Crossfire."
Here is a link to the CNN transcript of Crossfire.
Affiliate link:Jon Stewart's top selling book
Posted by Tom Foremski at 04:00 AM | Comments (1)
Media Watch: Keeping up appearances of impartiality even in private
Do reporters have to hide their opinions, even in private emails? That seems to be the way things are heading.
There is an excellent discussion on this in the magazine “Editor and Publisher” and the reaction in newsrooms around the country:
“The latest controversy began after Farnaz Fassihi, The Wall Street Journal's respected Middle East correspondent, sent an e-mail to about 20 friends and relatives in September while covering the war in Iraq. Among other things, the e-mail complained about the dangers to reporters, quoted Iraqis growing disillusioned with the U.S. effort, and stated frankly that despite "President Bush's rosy assessments, Iraq remains a disaster." The letter found its way to the Web, then got print coverage, and was even cited in "Doonesbury" this week. “
Many reporters have been forbidden by their employers to publish a blog or a personal site because that might reveal opinions that could harm the reputation of the newspaper as an impartial news provider.
However, this attitude towards impartiality is nonsensical. Everyone has opinions and it is better that they be known rather than hidden. The premise that some news organizations are operating under is, “let’s maintain the appearance of impartiality”. Would a reporter slant a story to reflect their opinion? Maybe. But trying to hold up a false appearance of impartiality is much worse.
Reporters should be free to offer their opinion on subjects that they cover, in weblogs, email, bars, anywhere. It doesn’t prevent reporters from producing fair and balanced work. In fact, it makes it better. I’d much prefer to hear it straight from the reporters in the thick of it, than bland news stories that attempt to mask any underlying bias.
This applies to business journalists covering Silicon Valley and the tech industry. There would have been a lot less hype about in the dotcom days if reporters in the field were more able to write news stories that had room for their opinion.
Editor and Publisher: To E-Mail or Not to E-Mail: Can Reporters Offer Views in Private Correspondence?
Posted by Tom Foremski at 03:13 AM | Comments (0)
October 15, 2004
Media Watch: NTKnow watches Web 2.0
The latest issue of that cheeky UK newsletter, Need to Know, offers an irreverent take on the recent Web 2.0 show in San Francisco, a refreshing change from the near hagiographic treatment some of the people and companies received in the local Silicon Valley press.
Here's the relevant item:
Currently residing in the "Where Are They Now?" file: Web 2.0 was a convention with a disturbing meld of the usual suspects and the usual convicts. Spruced geeks failed to recognize each other with trimmed hair and proper non-T shirts. Previously dapper VCs and analysts either dressed down, or were still living in their 2001 suit. Either way, they're not aging well - and these Golden Oldie Nostalgiafests can't be helping. In the end, gentle shock at how long it's been seemed to be the only reason for being here. The geeks, in their hearts, know there's no real money-making plan in what they're planning next. The VCs, deep in their blackened coal-pit guts, know the same. Still, didn't stop anyone on the old "Web 1.0", did it? We can't quite believe the entrepreneurs will be able to pull *another* blinder on the investing public, but stranger things have happened. And there is some hope in all of this: if you thought that hell would freeze over before the rich kids of tech would pay even lip-service to open licenses, fair use, and publicly stabbing Hollywood in the eye over the Internet, let alone using their *actual money* to do so, do bring a woolly jumper to Web 3.0: Yet More Hell On Earth. http://www.transmitmedia.com/svr/vault/polese/ - what the rigour of ten years hard work do: Polese then http://www.gsinstitute.org/about/directors.shtm - now. Dave Winer, however, remains scarily well preserved. http://www.bowblog.com/archives/000872.html - over here: a bit like they wanted to sell you timesharesThe newsletter, distributed via email every Friday, is worth reading in full, of course. Subscribe at the web site.
Link
Posted by Doug Millison at 10:15 AM | Comments (0)
Media Watch: A Tale of Two Silicon Valleys
Two articles in today's San Jose Mercury News convey two very different pictures of Silicon Valley, as reflected in the way they portray two of the high-tech hothouse's most visible chief executives.
Steve Jobs, in Mike Langberg's "The swagger is back," is the youthful Levi's- and sandal-clad upstart, opposed to Larry Ellison, all grown-up and sophisticated in an expensive Sartoria Attolini suit, as depicted in Mike Cassidy's "Ellison suited to NFL's brutal competition."
The differences go deeper, of course.
Langberg's Jobs, with his well-chosen and undoubtedly pricey casual clothes, embodies the attention to style that has made Apple products industrial design leaders almost from the start.
The chain of Apple retail mini-stores Jobs launched yesterday - the pretext for Langberg's article - "are made from imported Japanese stainless steel .... Perforated with hundreds of small holes for ventilation and fire-prevention sprinklers, the walls look much like the front of Apple's stainless steel Power Mac G5 computers."
But, the Koolhaasian interior design leaves Langsberg cold.
"I felt like I was standing inside a giant Sub-Zero refrigerator" he reports.
It's not just the architecture that makes Langsberg chilly. He complains that, despite a recent bout with cancer, Jobs persists in his familiar "unshakable -- even arrogant -- confidence in his ideas."
I wonder. Could it be - given the dramatic success he's achieved, having lost Apple to a soda-pop salesman then returning to bring the company back from near-death, and having juiced the movie business with Pixar and its digital wizardry - that Jobs' confidence is justified?
Cassidy touches on the pillar of Ellison's Silicon Valley reputation, his $14 billion net worth, as he builds his article around a rumor that the Oracle ch