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Apple iBooks To Be Wrapped in FairPlay DRM

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 03:48:10 -0500

Did you really think book publishing would go the way of the music industry and publish eBooks without DRM? Amazon already wraps their eBooks in DRM for the Kindle and now, Apple will do the same for publishers in its iBookstore.

According to the Los Angeles Times, sources in the book publishing industry have indicated that Apple's FairPlay DRM the same DRM used for its apps and its audio and video content will be made available to any book publisher who'd like to use it.

While there hasn't been an official announcement on its use, it's unlikely that many publishers will decline to use it except for maybe O'Reilly who is outspokenly against DRM.

Has DRM stopped you from buying eBooks?

Disclosure of Material Connection: http://dsclzr.us/0

[Los Angeles Times]

Remains of the Day: Windows Phone 7 Looks Great, the Video Edition [For What It's Worth]

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0500

Microsoft new Windows Phone operating system looks pretty snazzy, Adobe AIR is on its way to smartphones, and one diligent self-measuring math teacher delivers his 2009 annual report.

Windows Phone 7: First Videos
Closer look at what you can expect from a Windows Phone 7 experience. [Gizmodo]
Apple to wrap digital books in FairPlay copy protection [Clarified]
Remember FairPlay, the DRM scheme Apple mostly dropped after years of locking users into a crappy DRM scheme? Well it's staging a comeback in e-books. [LA Times]
Malware Peddlers Look to Exploit Olympic Luge Tragedy
Same old trick. Find what users are searching for, then fake 'em out! [Mashable]
My 2009 Annual Report
Math teacher Dan Meyer puts a year's worth of personal metrics into the incredible video below. [dy/dan]
The Smarter You Are, The Less You Click
But then you probably already knew that, didn't you smartypants. [RWW]
Sciencefeed
It's like Friendfeed for Science! [via TechCrunch]
Wi-Fi Turns Rowdy Bus Into Rolling Study Hall
Internet on a school bus means students stop all that noisy horseplay! [NYT]
Adobe AIR for Smartphones Wants to Be One Platform to Rule Them All
Adobe's cross-platform desktop runtime AIR is on its way to mobile devices, starting with Android. [Gizmodo]
Apple drops the ban hammer on iPhone hackers
If you develop for the iPhone and App Store proper, Apple's not going to reward your spare-time hacking. [Boy Genius Report]

Tags: apple windows phone air report

10 Cool Asian Cell Phones Features You Can't Have Yet

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 17:55:52 -0500

We Americans like to think of ourselves as trendsetters for the rest of the globe, but when it comes to cell phones, we're still playing catch-up with countries such as Japan and Korea.

In general, Asians use their cell phones in more robust ways than the typical U.S. resident as TVs, wallets, GPS devices, and music players. Japanese cell phones can double as a house key, a credit card, and an ID. Users can even use their cell phones to send their vital signs straight to their doctors.

In recent years, U.S. companies have made baby steps toward incorporating more advanced cell phone features, particularly in the areas of mobile banking and video broadcast. Meantime, the Asian cell phone market continues to be a good predictor of features that could soon be included in American cell phones. For example, Japan had cameraenabled cell phones two years before Americans ever went gaga for them.

Curtis Schenck, a manager of corporate relations at NTT DoCoMo USA, gave TechNewsDaily the scoop on the hottest features in the Japanese market right now. Try not to be too jealous.

1. Personal Butler

Customers don't have to Google for information, since i-Concierge acts as their butlers or personal assistants and caters to their every need. Users can input their food preferences, neighborhoods they like, and entertainments that they enjoy. When new information is downloaded into the system, they get push notifications that are based on their preferences. For example, if they like Thai food and a new Thai restaurant that is opening nearby, their cell phones will notify them.

2. Investigative Visits

This takes the Verizon commercials to a whole new level. If a users' five-bar reception signal drops to three bars or if they have a dropped call, they can call customer service and a team will be sent out to investigate the problem.

3. Barcode Reader

Japanese phones can read QR marks, which are sophisticated barcodes for businesses. If an Asian cell phone user is walking down a Tokyo street and walks past a restaurant that isn't open, they can point their camera to the QR mark and their phone's browser will automatically be routed to the restaurant's Web site.

4. Free TV on the Phone

Subscribers can surf 13 free TV channels on their phones. DoCoMo has also launched their own channel called BTV to air programs that are filmed specifically for the mobile phone.

5. Phones as Payment Systems

Osaifu Keitai, also known as the mobile phone wallet, lets users load up credit card information onto their phones. If stores have a reader, users can swipe their phones over it to pay for their purchases. Cell phones can also be used to pay for subway and train tickets.

6. Send Money to Other Subscribers

Some Asian countries allow users to send money using their cell phones. Users simply input another person's phone number and the amount they owe them and like magic, the money is transferred.

7. Internal Wi-Fi Spot

Japanese cell phone users can download a movie onto their mobile phones and show it on their TVs. This is another way to get entertainment on demand. A femtocell base transceiver station (BTS) in the home hooks up mobile phones to the DoCoMo network through a broadband line such as an optical fiber. The femtocell BTS lets a person with a cell phone download videos and music files. Through femtocell BTS, a person can set up a private wireless network for their home appliances, entertainment systems, and other devices.

8. Home Security Service

Japanese cell phone users can lock their doors and manage their home security systems remotely using their mobile devices. They can also adjust appliances and set environmental controls, so their lights and heat can be switched on before they get home.

9. Environmental Awareness

DoCoMo has deployed environmental sensors throughout Japan and people are now able to monitor air quality, temperature, and UV rays around them using their cell phones.

10. Reads Vital Signs

In the same way that we might plug headphones into our iPhones, Japanese cell phone users can plug in equipment such as a blood pressure monitor to their phones and send vital signs directly to their doctors. This helps save some people a trip to the doctor.

Tags: phones cell phone users mobile

If Newspapers Were Stores, Would Visitors Be Worthless Then?

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 02:14:15 -0500

As the war of words ramps up between Google and some news publishers, the latest spin seems to be how worthless the traffic is that Google sends. In reality, the traffic probably does have value, but the newspapers are likely doing a terrible job of monetizing it.

I'll give some examples in a minute, but how about an imaginary story to illustrate the problem?

Let's say a newspaper executive opens a store. They put some story headlines up in their shop window.

Now one of those old fashioned newskids comes along. You know, the type that you'd see in movies selling papers on the street. Let's call the kid Google.

Google reads the headlines and then scampers off down the street, shouting out to people things like Senate's debating health care! or 1 out of 4 homeowners are in the red!

Some of these people are interested. They ask this Google kid for more information, and Google sends them back to the news store.

At the store, the news exec owner greets visitors by asking them what the hell they want. Perplexed, they visitors say they heard about these stories and wanted to know more. The exec shouts at them. Get the hell out of my store, you freeloader! This is for members-only. We don't need riff-raff like you in here.

That's a hell of a way to run a business, don't you think? But it's pretty much how News Corporation execs seem to view the world. Consider what News Corp digital chief Jonathan Miller said earlier this month:

The traffic which comes in from Google brings a consumer who more often than not read one article and then leaves the site. That is the least valuable of traffic to us the economic impact [of not having content indexed by Google] is not as great as you might think. You can survive without it.

Today, we got similar remarks from James Moroney, executive vice president of A.H. Belo, which publishes the Dallas Morning News and other papers:

This is traffic that's not being monetized to any great degree, Moroney said. It's akin to a person who drops into town, buys one copy of your newspaper and leaves town again and yet you spend a whole bunch of time building your business around that type of customer.

Let's be clear about one reason why these statements are coming out. This is round two against Google. In round one, some publishers said Google steals our content. Google's response was that it sends them millions of visitors for free. So in round two, it's time to make out like those visitors aren't worth much. That's especially important if you're an executive who, after floating the idea of dropping Google, comes under attack as stupidly cutting your own throat.

Me, I see visitors as opportunities. This is the internet, where you can tell far more about a visitor to your web site than you can in print. You can tell:

They're visiting for the first time or on a repeat basis
They came from Google
They came from a specific page, or using specific search terms
The geographic area they're located in

And the visitor who buys your paper printed on a dead tree out of a newsstand? You can tell you sold a copy. And that's it. That regular subscriber? You know they live in a particular area, maybe some demographic info, but you can't custom your dead tree version in any way to target for that.

Can you imagine what would happen if the Wall Street Journal did a one time promotion where for a day, they gave away 1 million copies of their paper? Since there's a real cost to doing so, don't you think they'd figure out a way to make that promotion count? They'd sell special ads? They'd have a super attractive subscription offer?

But on the internet, where they're not paying anything for all that traffic flowing from Google, there just doesn't seem to be any effort. Millions of people are just written off as worthless. If they're watching The Simpsons on Murdoch's Fox TV network, they're valuable (see Free Isn't A Four-Letter Word Offline, So Why Does The Media Hate It Online?). Put the exact same people on the internet, and suddenly they're net neaderthals.

The problem isn't with the people. They didn't suddenly change when sitting in front of a computer keyboard. They don't suddenly have less money. They aren't suddenly less attractive marketing prospects. The problem is with how you're targeting them.

Remember what Miller said? That most of these visitors read a story once and then leave? Well, clearly the WSJ has some analytics running to understand that. Someone, somewhere has churned a report to arm Miller with that information. But that same data can be used to target those visitors better.

Time for a real life example. Today, at lunch, in the hard copy of the Wall Street Journal that I pay $100 per year for, I read a story bout how 1 in 4 US homeowners are underwater or owing more than their homes are worth.

I guess I have at least $100 per year in value to the Wall Street Journal, since I'm a subscriber. But that's gross revenue. Someone's being paid to deliver the hard copy to my door. There are print costs involved with producing it. I doubt the $100 I pay per year covers all that. But the WSJ also convinces advertisers that I'm somehow valuable to them, which is why they pay to place quality ads in the WSJ like this in front of me:

Now that same story is currently being featured on Google. The minute I click from Google to read it, I'm transformed. My $100 per year value is lost. Instead, I become one of those people who Miller says that he doesn't make any money from.

Well, let's see what I get:

That's the beginning of the story. It is EXACTLY the same thing I see if I read this story by clicking through to it from a link on the WSJ's home page (they've made it free to anyone from there). It's also the same thing I see when I'm logged in using my paid account.

Why is the WSJ treating the one-time / first-time visitor the same way as a regular reader? See those two big arrows I've drawn pointing into the story? I'm pointing out that one of the top goals the WSJ would have for first time visitors is to get them to take that 2 week free offer to subscribe or to take one of the free stay connected via email or RSS options. And yet, these things are shoved off to the top and side of the page.

Place them in front of the reader! At worst, you lose nothing. But more likely, you've slightly interrupted one of those freeloaders in the same way you interrupt them when they watch News Corp TV shows and get commercials. And more of them will convert. They may buy more subscriptions, or they may register so you can do outreach marketing to them.

Meanwhile, money IS being made, even off the supposed freeloaders. There's a big ad sitting there off to the site, plus another one right above. Oh, there's too much ad inventory? Then find a way to convince your advertisers to buy more ads or pay more for them, which probably means showing that your ads perform well. And if they're not performing well, fix your problem. Why aren't they?

This is an article about mortgage owners being underwater. Can we assume some of the readers are attracted to it because they may want help with their mortgages? Are there no companies that offer this to type of service? Are there no ad execs who could figure out how to reach them?

Instead, I get served with an ad from Zurich about how to buy the right insurance for my business. Seriously? That's the ad you show me? This is targeting? Roll out one of those Get a mortgage for below 5% ads that I see offline everywhere.

Even better, here's another ad that also shows for this article:

Yeah, in an article about how people can't afford their homes, you show me an ad about buying an iconic residential masterpiece in Boca Raton. And when I don't click on that, because it has nothing to do with my interests, you call me a freeloader.

Your loss, I think. I've got money to spend. Plenty of your visitors do. You're just not figuring out how to get it from me.

That visitor from Google? Show them a completely different experience, if you want. Article and ad, perhaps embedded within the content (labeled as ads, but inline, rather than off to the side). Please, go hire someone like Jeremy Shoemaker or Jennifer Slegg, both of whom live and breathe how to make as much money out of visitors as possible.

Do something. Anything. Please. Survive. But there's one thing you shouldn't do. Blame others for sending you visitors and not figuring out how to make money off of them.

Tags: google visitors story ad news

How Much Is That Apple Tablet Going To Cost? Not $399 Or $499.

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 22:32:24 -0400

There are always good bits of data you can pry from Apple's cold fingers during the Q&A sessions of its quarterly earnings conference calls. Today was no different.

As usual, a question came up about Apple entering the low-end laptop market, which is a fancy way of saying netbook market. Once again, Apple COO Tim Cook reiterated Apple's stance that Our goal is not to build the most computers. It's to build the best. What he means by this is that Apple has no interest in playing in the low-end market, which is of course also a low-margin market, which would mean Apple's pretty margins taking a hit. But wording is everything, and Cook once again didn't exactly eliminate the possibility of Apple making a new type of portable computing device.

He said that no matter what the price point is, that if Apple feels it can build a product worthy of its brand, it will do so. But he also specifically called out two price points that he thought are producing junky products, and implied that such price points will continue to produce junky products: $399 and $499.

And so if Apple is working on a tablet computer (or a larger screen iPod touch) of some kind, it will likely be priced above $500. To Apple watchers, that is obvious, but it's still important to hear Cook more or less say it.

A follow-up question later on about netbooks, asked if Apple specifically saw a future for a new mobile device with a larger screen? Cook joked that while he never wanted to rule out anything in the future, he also never intends to answer questions about new products. He went on to say that he believes most customers buying portable computers want a full-featured notebook. And many netbooks are slow and run old operating systems. Naturally, he didn't mention Chrome OS.

And that just seems to be more proof that whatever big touchscreen device Apple makes, it won't be so much of a netbook, but rather a product that Apple hopes will once again kickstart a new type of market. Whether that will work, who knows. Let's see the thing first.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Tags: apple market cook price products

NBC Universal profits down 41%

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 15:09:12 -0400

Business News: Revenue drops 8% last quarter at GE owned co. -- NBC Universal profits tumbled 41% last quarter, as robust cable networks couldn't offset the broadcast blues.

Tags: nbc quarter profits universal networks

Remember EBay? Traffic at Auction Site Keeps Falling

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 19:53:49 -0400

According to Ina Steiner from AuctionBytes, eBay experienced a major drop in traffic over the last few months. Based on data from Nielsen, Steiner concludes that eBay's page views in May 2009 dropped 32% compared to May 2008, and compared to May 2005, page views were down by 40%. With a 7% drop from May 2008 to May 2009, the unique visitor numbers show a slightly less dramatic decline, but things are clearly not going too well for eBay right now.

Sponsor

Identity Crisis

As Saul Hansell points out on the New York Times Bits blog, eBay is currently suffering from a major identity crisis. As we reported earlier this year, eBay's attempt to drive users away from auctions and towards fixed-price transactions ('Buy-it-Now') drove a lot of users away from the service, which, after all, used to be all about auctions. As Hansell rightly points out, a lot of this is meant to make users feel more secure about shopping at eBay, but at the same time, the company has also managed to annoy its traditional base of smaller sellers by focusing more on large retailers, while confusing users about what eBay really wants to be (auctions or Amazon competitor?).

Of course, it is also important to note that the current state of the economy also doesn't do eBay any favors. Consumer spending in general is down, and a lot of the items purchased on eBay were often collectibles and other items that were not necessities.

Discuss

Tags: ebay users lot auctions identity

Trent Reznor Backs Chris Anderson's Theory of Free'

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 15:31:12 -0400

Macolm Gladwell may have taken issue with Wired magazine editor-in-chief Chris Anderson's assertion that the price of digital goods naturally drops to zero, but Trent Reznor who has successfully practiced the theory for years couldn't agree more.

Some fans objected to Reznor's claim that Topspin Media (video interview) got it right with its re-release of the Beastie Boys album Ill Communication, which offers a wide array of merchandise in just about every conceivable format at a wide variety of prices. It's become a well-worn criticism of the independent distribution model that fledgling bands need a helping hand in order to make it in the music business. Not so, says Reznor. According to him, giving away digital music while charging for scarce, premium edition is the best way forward for artists of all stripes not just Radiohead and his own band, Nine Inch Nails.

Forget thinking you are going to make any real money from record sales, wrote Reznor on his message board. Make your record cheaply (but great) and GIVE IT AWAY [as DRM-free MP3s] Collect people's e-mail info in exchange (which means having the infrastructure to do so) and start building your database of potential customers. Then, offer a variety of premium packages for sale and make them limited editions / scarce goods.

It's a play straight out of Anderson's playbook (and, in fact, Anderson cites Nine Inch Nails as an example of a business that understands Free).

To put it into practice, Reznor advises that bands distribute through Amazon, TopSpin or Tunecore; set up a simple, Flash-free site outside of MySpace (which he says is dying and reads as cheap / generic); never abuse their mailing list; use free tools from Twitter, Flickr, Vimeo, YouTube and SoundCloud; and give people a reason to keep coming back to their site (Reznor's own forums are an example of this strategy).

However, Reznor says the strategy of giving away music in return for e-mail addresses, then marketing pricey box sets and other premium goods to those e-mail addresses only makes sense if a band wants to keep all its money and stay in control of its image.

If you are looking for mainstream super-success (think Lady GaGa, Coldplay, U2, Justin Timberlake), your best bet in my opinion is to look at major labels and prepare to share all revenue streams / creative control / music ownership. To reach that kind of critical mass these days, you'll need old-school marketing muscle, and that only comes from major labels.

Good luck with that one.

See Also:

Photo: Andrea Veraart

Tags: reznor free music anderson inch

Bits: EBay's Traffic Drops Amid Identity Crisis

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 13:43:30 -0400

Shared by Kristopher
and not to mention a significant drop if affiliate traffic and payments as they internalized this program. better payouts and management under commission junction.

--------------------------

It has been a year and a half since Meg Whitman said she would hand the chief executive's office at eBay to John Donahoe, and at least by some measures, the company continues to lose traction with both buyers and sellers.

Ina Steiner, the editor of AuctionBytes, a news service for eBay sellers, just published an analysis of eBay's Web traffic. EBay's audiencemeasured by the number of unique visitors in a monthhas historically been significantly higher than that of Amazon.com. But eBay's traffic began to decline sharply last fall, and it dropped below that of Amazon in November, based on numbers from Nielsen.

By May, the last month for which data are available, eBay nudged ahead of Amazon again. But eBay's audience of 51 million users was down 14 percent from May 2007. The site looks even worse when it comes to Nielsen's count of the total number of pages the site displayed. By that measure, page views in May were down 32 percent from a year earlier.

Ms. Steiner, in an interview, attributes the fall off in audience to eBay's identity crisis. At the highest level, the site has switched from trying to promote itself as a place for a full range of merchandise to one that emphasizes used and off-season goods.

There are other changes as well, she notes, that are not only confusing buyers but also alienating many of the site's sellers. EBay is increasingly changing its rules to favor bigger sellers over mom-and-pop dealers and individuals clearing out their attics. For example, items from high-volume dealers appear higher in search results.

They are pushing shoppers to trusted names, she said.

Some policies also make eBay less attractive to its very first market: sellers of antiques and collectibles. The company is making buyers pay with credit cards or other electronic payment methods. Many of the antique shoppers still preferred to mail checks to sellers, Ms. Steiner said.

They are changing from a fun, anything-goes kind of environment to one with a great deal more consistency, she added.

One reason for the decline in eBay's Web traffic, she suggested, is that sellers are spending less time on its site as they spread their wares to Amazon and other sites.

To be sure, some of eBay's moves are meant to make eBay a more attractive and reliable place for buyers, competing more vigorously with Amazon.com. But Ms. Steiner said the company has managed to annoy sellers without fully meeting the needs of buyers.

If you buy something on Amazon, it's guaranteed. EBay is still working on that.

Indeed, over time eBay may well reposition itself and start to attract more new customers. But Ms. Steiner said this hasn't happened yet. It is a time of great flux, she said.

Based on Web traffic, EBay is losing ground to Amazon.com as its shift in strategy alienates many sellers and possibly confuses buyers.

Tags: ebay sellers amazon said traffic

Best Social Media Post Ever

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 19:00:57 -0400

1. No Silos.

2. Listening.

3. Inbound Marketing.

*drops mic*

Tags: inbound marketing drops mic listening

Bozeman Drops Requirement For Social Networking Passwords

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 08:54:41 -0400

Last week, we were among a bunch of blogs and news organizations who questioned the fact that the city of Bozeman, Montana was making job applicants hand over not just info on their social networking activities, but usernames and passwords to all accounts. This certainly got a lot of attention, and, not surprisingly it's caused the city to drop the requirement and to say that it had made a mistake (found via Slashdot). Still, it makes you wonder why it took a press onslaught for the city to recognize the potential problems with such a privacy violation.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Tags: city bozeman passwords networking social

Political Candidate Drops Out Of Race Due To Racy Facebook Photos

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 22:40:00 -0400

It really was just three years ago when we were saying we couldn't wait for the MySpace generation to run for office, knowing that the skeletons in their closets wouldn't actually be in their closets at all, but would have been posted online for all to see. While we actually expected that it would lead to a point where people pretty much brushed off and ignored such "youthful indiscretions," we certainly have't reached that point yet. A guy running for office in British Columbia, Canada, has dropped out of the election after images of him groping a woman's breast (that first appeared on his Facebook page) came to light. It's not clear when the photos in question were taken, but expect to see political candidates and their online presence scrutinized in more and more detail in future elections...

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Tags: facebook photos online closets political

Firefox Drops Google For Russian Bride

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 22:12:23 -0500

Mozilla is set to remove Google from its lofty seat atop Firefox browsers, for Russian language users at least, in favor of rival Russian search engine Yandex. Now the default search provider for the Russian version of Firefox 3.1 (due in a matter of weeks), the move is a big win for Yandex, and a loss for Google in the Russian market.

Harvey Anderson, Mozilla General Counsel, wrote that after research efforts were conducted that Mozilla came, to the conclusion that our Russian users really wanted direct access to the Yandex search services in official Firefox RU builds. As a result, we're planning on setting Yandex as the default search provider for the Firefox 3.1 Russian locale builds (these changes should go into the current beta for testing). This means that, upon download and launch, the Firefox Start Page for RU locale builds will use Yandex for search queries, and the search bar will default to Yandex.

The Google-Mozilla relationship in essential to both parties: it gives Google massive distribution, and provides Mozilla with most of its revenue. And yet the Yandex move, plus Google's debut of Firefox competitor Chrome, must surely cause a little friction in this mutually beneficial relationship.

[via CNET]

More Resources From Mashable

-23 Best Social Networking Toolbars and Plugins for Firefox
-The 10 Best Google Maps Extensions for Firefox 3
-8 Google Reader Extensions for Firefox 3

---
Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:

Report: Russian Search Leader Yandex Set for Massive IPO
Russian Search Leader Yandex is Hungry for International Renown
Firefox 2 Security Fixes Released
400 Million Firefox Downloads
YouTube Mobile, Yandex, Orkut Polls, Amazon PPA, FunMobility, Motorola, MobilePlay, The Onion, Jott, Congoo
Mozilla Officially Ends Support for Firefox 2
Mozilla: Would You Like a Virus With That Add-on?

Tags: firefox yandex search russian google

"Coupons, Inc. Drops DMCA Lawsuit Against Coupon Hacker"

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 15:08:48 -0500

Ars Technica: "Coupons, Inc. drops DMCA Lawsuit Against Coupon Hacker":

A copyright lawsuit against a man who posted instructions on how to print unlimited copies of coupons has been dropped. The defendant, John Stottlemire, posted to his website this week that he had reached a settlement with Coupons, Inc. after a year-long legal battle over the digital coupons, and that Coupons would not be able to file another similar action against him.
In late 2007, Stottlemire posted instructions to tenbucks.net detailing how to perform a number of registry key modifications under Windows that would allow users to print unlimited online coupons offered by couponsinc.com. Without the "hack," users are technologically limited to printing only one coupon apiece.

Tags: coupons against coupon lawsuit posted

Spam Volume Drops as Hosting Firm Goes Offline

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 03:15:00 -0500

The volume of junk e-mail sent worldwide plummeted after a Web hosting firm identified by the computer security community as a major host of organizations engaged in spam activity was taken offline. Experts say the precipitous drop-off in spam comes from Internet providers unplugging McColo Corp., a hosting provider in Northern California that was the home base for machines responsible for coordinating the sending of roughly 75 percent of all spam each day.

Read the article: The Washington Post

Tags: spam hosting volume firm offline

Samsung gets it right Again, Again With the NC10

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 14:11:01 -0400

Remember my in-tent Samsung Q1 Ultra test? 9hrs battery life on the Samsung Q1 with 25% backlight? An average drain of 6.9 watts. It was impressive and since I blew up the Q1 Ultra doing some solar-charging tests, I've been missing those 5, 6 and 7hr figures. I was just getting over the trauma until I read this article about another Samsung Mobile product with great battery life.

Notebook Magazine have just done a full set of battery life tests on the NC10 Netbook and it looks like Samsung have once again worked their magic. The tests included continuous Wifi-on web browsing in battery saving mode which is a very reasonable test to be doing. Far better than the misleading 2001 Jeita test and much more real-life' than the Battery Eater Pro turn everything and and run it at full-steam' approach. The NC10 returned

12% screen brightness: 7hrs 34mins representing an average drain of about 7.6w which is just a little bit more than what I saw on the Q1 Ultra.
50% screen brightness, the duration dropped to 6hrs 30mins which is an average 8.7W.
100% screen brightness, the test result reduced to 4hrs 38 minutes which is 12.3 watts drain.

More after the break

What it highlights is something I've been saying for years. The CPU power drain is not the most important element in determining a devices overall efficiency. In these 10" screens, even the latest LED technology backlight can take a lot of drain. In this case, nearly 5W at full power which is nearly 50% of the total power drain of the whole PC! Obviously, as screens get smaller, the LED power required drops and when you get to a 4.8" screen, you'll see 1-1.5W average drain. If you were to attache that Samsung battery to the Aigo MID, you would see close to 20 hours battery life under similar conditions as the Wifi-on drain is about 3W.

As we move to lower and lower power processors, screens and other components need to follow and the OEM that has access to the best components and the best engineers is always going to have an advantage. Samsung keep proving that.

So how's the rest of the NC10? I was watching a live session at EeePCnews.de a few evenings ago and it was clear that people are really interested in this one. 3000 people watched Sascha, the lead guy there, do live testing and as the session went on you could almost sense people hitting the buy button as Sascha reported positive comment after positive comment! LaptopMag calls it their netbook of choice' right now. From what I've seen, I have no reason to doubt it.

Samsung NC10 links and info in the product database.

Tags: drain samsung battery life nc

HP Mini 1000 netbook comes out of hiding, starts at $399

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 17:37:44 -0400

Our recent posts about HP Mini-note price drops at Amazon are starting to illustrate what we thought last month: HP is either making room for a new netbook or they're adding another choice to their lineup. Vivek caught sight of the new HP Mini 1000 netbook on HP's shopping page, but there's limited information at this point. Here's what we can see and\or guess:

Starting price of $399
Weight begins at 2.25 pounds, which is a little less than the HP Mini-note
Under 1-inch in thickness
Like the Acer Aspire One, the left and right mouse betters truly are left and right... of the trackpad.
The large screen bezel of the 8.9-inch Mini-note is gone; we're guessing a 10-inch display

There's no mention of the remaining specs just yet and the two that are likely of interest the most are the CPU and screen resolution. The Mini-note uses an older VIA C7-M, so the question is: will HP go with VIA for the same-socket Nano CPU or will we see yet another Intel Atom system? Also, the Mini-note differentiates itself from all other netbooks with the generous 1280x768 display resolution. That sounds like a perfect res on a larger 10-inch screen and would continue to set HP's netbook apart from the crowd.

Tags: hp mini note netbook inch

Tyson Plant Drops Labor Day for Muslim Holiday

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 19:01:06 -0400

Workers at the Tyson Foods poultry processing plant in Shelbyville will no longer have a paid day off on Labor Day but will instead be granted the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr.

Tags: day holiday tyson muslim plant

The Declining Value Of Redundant News Content On The Web

Mon, 05 May 2008 04:21:15 -0400

Microsoft withdrawing its offer to buy Yahoo is a sufficiently large story to demonstrate the problem of redundant news content on the web. Google News is currently tracking about 2,000 versions of this story. To get a better sense of why it's a problem to have 2,000 stories about the SAME THING, I've reproduced about ten percent of them below just the headlines and ledes. If you have the stomach to scroll through them all to see what else I have to say about it, check out the sources as you scroll:

UPDATE: The Google News example is reproduced here instead. You're reading this in RSS or email a day after I posted it because this post was so large it broke my Feedburner feed. Too much content breaks the web there you have it. Keep reading for my original argument.

If you've made it this far, you may have noticed the absence of blogs from the sources. So this is far from a representative sample of all of the websites that published a version of this news story.

Let's check out Techmeme, again reproduced in its entirety, because seeing is disbelieving:

Yahoo!:
Yahoo! Issues Statement in Response to Microsoft SUNNYVALE, Calif., May 03, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) Roy Bostock, Chairman of Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO), a leading global Internet company issued the following statement today in response to Microsoft Corporation's announcement that it has withdrawn its proposal to acquire Yahoo!:

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

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Discussion: TechCrunch, StepForth SEO News Blog, BBC NEWS, Forbes, I4U News, VoIP Blog, Geek News Central, Furrier.org, Tech Trader Daily, LiveSide, Paul Kedrosky's and Geek Speaker

Discussion:

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch: Yahoo Responds: The distraction of Microsoft's unsolicited proposal now behind us

Ross Dunn / StepForth SEO News Blog: Microsoft Backs Down from Yahoo

Darren Waters / BBC NEWS | dot.life: Walking away

Elizabeth Corcoran / Forbes: What Microsoft Will Buy Now Expect to hear more from Steve Ballmer.

Luigi Lugmayr / I4U News: Yahoo's Response to Microsoft's Bid Withdrawal

VoIP Blog: Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Proposal

Todd Cochrane / Geek News Central: Yahoo is Toast and Yang needs to be Fired

John Furrier / Furrier.org: Victory for Silicon Valley; The Silicon Valley Poison Pill Worked - As Predicted

Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily: Ballmer Calls Yang's Bluff: Microsoft Walks

Kip Kniskern / LiveSide: Yahoo! responds to withdrawal - issues statement

Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed: Yahoo's Response to Microsoft's Response to Yahoo

Geek Speaker: Why Yahoo is worth more than 50 billion & why Yahoo! For Good

All Related Discussion

Hide All Related Discussion

RELATED:

Microsoft:
Microsoft Withdraws Proposal to Acquire Yahoo! Microsoft Corp. today announced that it has withdrawn its proposal to acquire Yahoo! Inc. Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) today announced that it has withdrawn its proposal to acquire Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO).

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

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Discussion: Search Engine Land, Googling Google, Between the Lines, CNET News.com, Web Worker Daily, TechCrunch, WeBreakStuff, Simon's Blog, I4U News, Microsoft News Tracker, TechBlog, DealBook, Paul Mooney, Pocket PC Thoughts.com, TechSpot, Joe Duck, TechBays, Epicenter, All about Microsoft, Digital Trends, SEO and Tech Daily, Alice Hill's Real Tech News, Mark Evans, Los Angeles Times, WebGuild, Mashable!, Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog, Valleywag, Quick Online Tips, GigaOM, Profy.Com, AppScout, ClickZ News Blog, The Register and Scobleizer

Discussion:

Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land: Leaving Las Yahoo: Microsoft's $5 Billion Mistake?

Garett Rogers / Googling Google: Microsoft withrawls bid for Yahoo, Google wins

Larry Dignan / Between the Lines: Microsoft walks away from Yahoo: Assessing winners, losers and Plan Bs

Stephen Shankland / CNET News.com: Yahoo-Google ad deal could be announced next week

Mike Gunderloy / Web Worker Daily: Microsoft, Yahoo, and Web Workers

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch: Microsoft/Yahoo: Summary Of Today's News & Bonus Gillmor Gang

Fred Oliveira / WeBreakStuff: MSFT and YHOO: It's finally over

Simon Brocklehurst / Simon's Blog: YAHOO! BLOWS IT - HOW LOW WILL THEY GO?

Luigi Lugmayr / I4U News: Microsoft officially withdraws Yahoo Bid

David Hunter / Microsoft News Tracker: Microsoft withdraws offer for Yahoo

Dwight / TechBlog: Microsoft to Yahoo: Never mind

DealBook: Will Microsoft Really Walk?

Paul Mooney: Yahoo Prevails Microsoft Withdraws Proposal to Acquire Yahoo!

Darius Wey / Pocket PC Thoughts.com: Microsoft Walks Away From Yahoo!

Julio Franco / TechSpot: Weekend tech reading (5.04)

Joe Duck: Ballmer has left the Building

Carlo Maglinao / TechBays: Microsoft Yahoo! Deal: the NO votes win

Betsy Schiffman / Epicenter: Microsoft Walks! Says Yahoo Demands Don't Make Sense

Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft: Microsoft takes its ball and leaves Yahoo on the Web 2.0 playground

Geoff Duncan / Digital Trends: Microsoft Abandons Yahoo Takeover

Charlie Anzman / SEO and Tech Daily: Microsoft pulls the plug on Yahoo!

Michael Santo / Alice Hill's Real Tech News: No Microhoo: Microsoft Walks Away from Yahoo! Deal

Mark Evans: Let's Get the (Yahoo-Microsoft Blogging Party) Started

Los Angeles Times: Microsoft drops bid to acquire Yahoo

Joseph Hunkins / WebGuild: Ballmer's Letter to Jerry Yang Withdrawing Microsoft's Offer

Paul Glazowski / Mashable!: Breaking: Microsoft Corporation Rescinds Offer For Yahoo Inc

Todd Bishop / Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog: Ballmer's internal e-mail on Yahoo decision

Owen Thomas / Valleywag: Ballmer to Yang: How stupid are you?

Quick Online Tips: Microsoft Unable to Buy Yahoo!

Om Malik / GigaOM: Microsoft To Yahoo: Take a Hike!

Cyndy Aleo-Carreira / Profy.Com: Steve Stands Jerry Up for the Internet Prom

Brian Heater / AppScout: Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo! Bid

Anna Maria Virzi / ClickZ News Blog: Microsoft Withdraws Bid for Yahoo

Drew Cullen / The Register: Microsoft walks away from Yahoo!

Robert Scoble / Scobleizer: The First FriendFeed Event: MSFT and YHOO

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
MicroHoo: The Odd Couple Meetings Led Nowhere After today's events, I guess you could say Yahoo and Microsoft tried, holding a series of meetings about a possible takeover that ended up proving exactly how incompatible the companies were. Kind of like Oscar Madison and Felix Unger, but not funny in any way at all.

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

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Discussion: Between the Lines, Valleywag and Paul Kedrosky's

Discussion:

Larry Dignan / Between the Lines: Microsoft walks: Five reasons why it's a good move

Jackson West / Valleywag: YAHOO'S $37 DEMAND TALKS, MICROSOFT'S $33 OFFER WALKS Microsoft

Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed: First Tick-Tock of Da Deal Gone Dead

Ina Fried / Beyond Binary:
OK, so what's Microsoft's plan B? With Yahoo apparently off the table, it's time to see what Microsoft's back-up plan looks like. Microsoft has said for some time that it has a strategy with or without Yahoo, but it's a strategy clearly in need of a jump-start.

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

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Discussion: The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs and About Mobility Weblog

Discussion:

Steve / The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs: Ballmer now looking for other companies to not buy

Ceo / About Mobility Weblog: Steve Ballmer as The Creature

DealBook:
Guessing Yahoo's Opening Stock Price Well, Yahoo seems to have gotten what it wanted. The company managed to fend off Microsoft's unwanted advances, even after the software giant sweetened its bid by $5 billion an amount Yahoo felt still wasn't enough.

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

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Discussion: Silicon Alley Insider and Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog

Discussion:

Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider: Why Yahoo (YHOO) Should Go Ahead With Google Outsourcing Deal (GOOG)

Terry Heaton / Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog: Ack! Microsoft walks away. Winner? Google.

Wall Street Journal:
Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Offer After Attempt to Bridge Gap in Price Microsoft Corp. said it abandoned its offer for Yahoo Inc., as the two companies failed to bridge a gap between them on price. Microsoft Saturday released a letter from Chief Executive Steve Ballmer

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

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Discussion: Peter O'Kelly's Reality Check and Tech Beat

Discussion:

Peter / Peter O'Kelly's Reality Check: Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Offer After Attempt to Bridge Gap in Price - WSJ.com

Rob Hof / Tech Beat: Microsoft Drops Yahoo BidAt Least For Now

Dawn Kawamoto / CNET News.com:
Report: A peek behind the Yahoo-Microsoft meltdown Curious how Microsoft's multi-multi-multi-billion dollar buyout bid for Yahoo sputtered, then crashed? Kara Swisher's BoomTown column in All Things Digital has an interesting account of the missteps, sidesteps

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Yahoo's Nightmare Scenario: I'm From Google and I'm Here to Help! Here's what a top-notch source at Yahoo joked to me tonight, after Microsoft walked away from its unsolicited takeover bid to acquire the long-troubled Internet giant. Google is now officially our best friend. Oh no.

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

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Discussion: Groundswell

Discussion:

Charlene Li / Groundswell: What's next for Microsoft and Yahoo!

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Yahoo's Tough Week Ahead At around 4:30 California time today news broke that Microsoft has formally withdrawn its offer to acquire Yahoo (see Ballmer's email to Microsoft employees here). Among other things, that ends a three month stock party where the market value of Yahoo jumped

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

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Discussion: Guardian Unlimited, Microsoft Watch, MediaShift and Paul Mooney

Discussion:

Jack Schofield / Guardian Unlimited: Microsoft walks out of Yahoo deal (updated)

Joe Wilcox / Microsoft Watch: The Microsoft-Yahoo Blame Game

Mark Glaser / MediaShift: Yahoo-Microsoft Drama::Takeover Tiff Best Thing to Happen to Yahoo

Paul Mooney: A YAHOO RUN, OR A RUN ON YHOO?

Yi-Wyn Yen / Fortune:
Blame it on Google Microsoft CEO Ballmer said the software giant decided to walk away from a bid because Yahoo would become undesirable' if it formed an alliance with Google. (Fortune) Google proved to be the final straw that broke Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's back.

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

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Discussion: MacDailyNews and CNNMoney.com

Discussion:

MacDailyNews: Ballmer's Folly ends: Microsoft abandons Yahoo bid because of Google

Mark M. Meinero / CNNMoney.com: Microsoft withdraws bid for Yahoo

Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed:
Analysis of the Microsoft Decision, Plus Yahoo's Hari-Kari Here is my first-cut analysis of what has happened here: On the friendly front, Yahoo drew a hard line at $37 per share, well above the $33 that Microsoft now says it told Yahoo this week it was willing to go

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

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Discussion: broadstuff

Discussion:

Alan Patrick / broadstuff: MICROHOO NO MORE.. So the deal is off - though whether

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Email From Steve Ballmer To All Microsoft Employees The following email was sent to all Microsoft employees from CEO Steve Ballmer at 5:17 pm PDT (see Breaking: Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Bid; Walks Away From Deal): To: Microsoft - All Employees (QBDG)

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

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Discussion: InsideMicrosoft, WebProNews, VentureBeat and Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

Discussion:

Nathan Weinberg / InsideMicrosoft: Microsoft Drops Plans To Buy Yahoo

Nathan Weinberg / WebProNews: Microsoft Is Done Pursuing Yahoo!

MG Siegler / VentureBeat: Microsoft now has $50 billion burning a hole in its pocket

David Snyder / Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim: Steve Ballmer's Email to Microsoft Employees

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Breaking: Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Bid; Walks Away From Deal (Updated)
Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

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Discussion: BoomTown, Beyond Binary, Reuters, The Next Web, BBC NEWS, Coop's Corner, Voices, LiveSide, Electronista, Valleywag, mathewingram.com/work, Business Technology, SarahLacy.com, Master of 500 Hats, Thomas Hawk's Digital , Search Engine Journal and WinExtra

Discussion:

Kara Swisher / BoomTown: BoomTown Decodes Microsoft's Steve Ballmer's Letter to Yahoo (The Kiss-Off Edition)

Ina Fried / Beyond Binary: Ballmer's e-mail to staff on Yahoo

Reuters: Microsoft says it withdraws offer for Yahoo

Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten / The Next Web: Microsoft walks away from Yahoo deal

Rory Cellan-Jones / BBC NEWS | dot.life: Microsoft v Yahoo - post-match analysis

Charles Cooper / Coop's Corner: Post-Microhoo: Winners and losers

Ina Fried / Voices: Microsoft's Move: Is It Just a Feint?

Kip Kniskern / LiveSide: No MSFT-YHOO deal; now what? Microsoft just walked away

Electronista: Microsoft backs out of Yahoo bid

Owen Thomas / Valleywag: Is Ballmer on his way out and if so, who's the next CEO?

Mathew / mathewingram.com/work: YHOO and MSFT: Jerry Yang should be fired

Ben Worthen / Business Technology: The Most Famous Non-Deal in Tech History

Sarah Lacy: Or Maybe I Won't Be Working for the Evil Empire

Dave McClure / Master of 500 Hats: MicroHooFreude! (Memo to Jerry: Prepare to be Sued)

Thomas Hawk / Thomas Hawk's Digital Connection: Remember When Thomas Hawk Said If He Were Microsoft He'd Lower His Bid for Yahoo?

Arnold Zafra / Search Engine Journal: Microsoft Cancels the Yahoo Acquisition Deal, Finally!

Steven Hodson / WinExtra: Please tell me it's so

New York Times:
Microsoft Withdraws Its Bid for Yahoo
Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

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Discussion: CNET News.com, The Big Picture, deal architect, Slashdot, HipMojo.com and Digg

Discussion:

Stephen Shankland / CNET News.com: Yahoo: Microsoft's price just wasn't right

Ritholtz / The Big Picture: Ballmer, Yang Agree to See Other People

deal architect: Back to customer focus So the Microsoft/Yahoo! deal appears finally off.

Timothy / Slashdot: Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Takeover Offer

Ashkan Karbasfrooshan / HipMojo.com: Should Investors Sue or Back Yang?

Digg: Microsoft Withdraws Its Bid for Yahoo

Ina Fried / Beyond Binary:
Microsoft pulls its Yahoo offer
Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

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Discussion: DSLreports, Forbes, CNET News.com, Business Week, Smalltalk Tidbits , Scobleizer, Techlog, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, InformationWeek, HipMojo.com, Search Engine Watch Blog, paidContent.org, CenterNetworks, Search Engine Land, John Battelle's Searchblog, WebGuild, MacRumors, Engadget, VentureBeat and Digital Daily

Discussion:

KathrynV / DSLreports: Microsoft Rescinds Yahoo Offer - No agreement could be reached in talks yesterday

Elizabeth Corcoran / Forbes: Forget It, Ballmer Says To Yahoo!

Stephen Shankland / CNET News.com: Is Google ad deal really Yahoo's best option?

Robert Hof / Business Week: Microsoft Drops Bid for Yahoo

James A. Robertson / Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants: Reality 1, Scoble 0

Robert Scoble / Scobleizer: How will Yahoo heal after Microsoft walked away?

Harry McCracken / Techlog: No MicroHoo? Hallelujah!

David Snyder / Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim: Microsoft Retreats or Withdrawls, Depends on Your View

Alexander Wolfe / InformationWeek: Microsoft Yanks Yahoo Bid

Ashkan Karbasfrooshan / HipMojo.com: Latest Chess Move: MSFT Withdraws Offer

Kevin Heisler / Search Engine Watch Blog: Breaking: Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Offer; Yahoo Responds

Staci D. Kramer / paidContent.org: Microsoft-Yahoo: Yang's Response: With Distraction Behind Us

Allen Stern / CenterNetworks: What's Next for Yahoo? Merging With AOL Still My Pick

Greg Sterling / Search Engine Land: Microsoft Yanks Its Offer For Yahoo

John Battelle / John Battelle's Searchblog: MICROSOFT BAILS, YAHOO'S GOOGLE THREAT APPEARS TO HAVE WORKED

Joseph Hunkins / WebGuild: Microsoft Walks Away From Yahoo

Arn / MacRumors: Microsoft Walking Away from Yahoo Acquisition

Ryan Block / Engadget: Microsoft pulls bid for Yahoo!, Microhoo will never be

MG Siegler / VentureBeat: Yahoo breaks the wrist, Microsoft walks away

John Paczkowski / Digital Daily: Ballmer to Yang: Dear Jerry, Drop Dead

Ina Fried / Beyond Binary:
Microsoft says proxy battle not worth it
Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

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Discussion: BloggingStocks

Discussion:

Peter Cohan / BloggingStocks: It's off. Microsoft withdraws its offer for Yahoo for now

BBC:
Microsoft walks away from Yahoo
Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

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Discussion: Gizmodo and TECH.BLORGE.com

Discussion:

Jesus Diaz / Gizmodo: Microsoft Retires Yahoo Offer, Won't Try Hostile Takeover

Erna Mahyuni / TECH.BLORGE.com: No Microhoo - Microsoft terminates bid on Yahoo

Kara Swisher / BoomTo

Tags: microsoft yahoo news google discussion

Chicken S#@t Bingo Drops Its Lucky Load at SXSW

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 17:30:00 -0400

With some plywood, some chicken wire and a live hen, a Texas honky-tonk turns a DIY game of chance into a local institution. Wired.com ditches SXSW to hang with some hens.

Tags: chicken sxsw chance game diy

At SXSW, Chicken S#@t Bingo Drops Its Lucky Load in Austin

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 17:30:00 -0400

With some plywood, some chicken wire and a live hen, a Texas honky-tonk turns a DIY game of chance into a local institution. Wired.com ditches SXSW to hang with some hens.

Tags: chicken sxsw chance game diy

The Other Shoe Drops On Yahoo

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 16:26:19 -0500

It's become an old saw - Microsoft will bid for Yahoo, because neither company can figure out how to crack the Google code. Now that it's happened, will it ... happen?

My previous coverage of this includes a prediction it'd happen in 2007 (nice timing), and a modest proposal the two companies join their search efforts. Here's my interview with Steve Ballmer at Web 2 last year, where this topic certainly comes up.

I'm still not sure this works. I don't see how the two cultures merge. But perhaps that's not the point. Perhaps at the end of the day, Yahoo becomes Microsoft's long misbegotten media arm, and the folks in Redmond can finally stop worrying about what their focus is. More later...

Tags: yahoo perhaps microsoft merge web

Jobs Take a Downturn

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 14:00:00 -0500

Wall Street's hopes for upbeat employment news were dashed on Friday morning when the Labor Department reported that U.S. employment shrank for the first time in more than four years.

The report on January employment showed that employers pulled back sharply, cutting jobs in the face of rising costs and a slowing economy.

Employers slashed 17,000 jobs last month, while median forecasts were for hiring to grow by 80,000 jobs. It was the first drop since August 2003, when payrolls slid by 42,000. Job growth was upwardly revised to 82,000 from an originally reported 18,000 in December.

Steep losses in construction and manufacturing jobs continued, offsetting gains in health care, food services, and retail trade, the Labor Department reported. Employment in professional and technical services and financial services remained little changed.

The unemployment rate, which was at 4.5 percent a year ago, is now 4.9 percent, down from 5 percent in December. Average hourly earnings rose by 4 cents, or 0.2 percent.

The unexpectedly gloomy data will mean yet another big challenge for the Federal Reserve, which is trying desperately to combat weakness in the credit markets while at the same time encourage growth and stifle inflation. The Fed has cut the benchmark interest rate a total of 1.25 percent in the past weeks, from 4.25 percent to 3 percent.

Have Facebook Apps Peaked in Popularity?

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 02:39:29 -0500

There appears to be evidence that Facebook users are beginning to suffer from app fatigue, and there is growing discontent about how applications are being distributed and about the amount of noise that the application platform has introduced into the Facebook ecosystem. As Mark Glaser writes on the PBS MediaShift blog, Facebook has a growing trust problem. Further, new numbers suggest that fed up users might have had enough of some of the most popular Facebook apps. This, however, could be a good thing for users and for the health of the platform in the long run.

Glaser talks about how he used to be excited when he received a notification of a new action on Facebook -- a poke, a wall post, a message -- but more recently, all that has changed. "Now, my reaction to getting the same kinds of notifications has changed, and I dread clicking through to see what kind of spam or scam is coming my way," he writes.

What happened? Well, for one, the Facebook platform happened. The Facebook platform allowed application developers to flood the site with applications, both useful and not (by many accounts, mostly not), and because of the way it is set up, app developers were able to encourage, and sometimes force or trick, users into sending out mass invites, notifications, or new feed announcements about often times trivial matters. This increased the noise on the Facebook network ten fold, and decreased the enjoyment of the social networks for some people.

Users, though, are beginning to push back. In just over a month, more than 65,000 people have joined the No, I will NOT invite 20 friends just to add your application! group, which has spun off an ancillary group that catalogues the applications that require users to invite friends before even using the app. And over 4,200 people have signed a petition calling on Facebook to step in and stop developers from using the "forced invite" tactic to grow their apps virally.

Further, blogger Alex Saunders points to recent statistics from Adonomics that indicate that the top Facebook apps have recently seen significant dips in the number of active users. "All of the top 10 leaderboard applications have seen substantial drops in daily users since peaking in November and December," writes Saunders. The chart below is from his site:

	Peak	Today
Funwall	5800	2500
Superwall	4800	1800
Top Friends	2900	2200
Likeness	821	181
Super poke	1500	500
Movies	814	500
Compare People	1000	471
iLike	941	372
Causes	469	110
Superlatives	320	110
	All figures in 1,000s

It is important to note that not all (if any) of these applications employ forced invites or tricky user invite schemes. Nonetheless, the drop in active users is telling, and is perhaps indicative of a Facebook populace that is beginning to get fed up with application noise or is getting tired of applications in general. It is certainly possible that the novelty has begun to wear off, and users are no longer interested in trying every hot new app under the sun, and have grown weary of some of the apps they were once so fond of.

One of the most annoying apps on Facebook -- at least in my opinion -- "Pirates vs. Ninjas," is way down off its November peak as well, according to Adonomics. What would make an app slide from over 165,000 daily users to 24,000 in just a couple of months? It's hard to say, but perhaps users have begun to grow tired of noveltly apps that don't do much else except spam their friends with invites to join the application.

App Fatigue: A Good Thing?

I wrote earlier that users suffering from app fatigue and pushing back against apps that employ sneaky invite schemes to grow is a good thing, and I think it probably is. Assuming Facebook steps in and imposes stricter invite rules -- which they should, applications will need to find different ways to spread virally. If people are simultaneously beginning to suffer from app fatigue (or app apathy -- appathy?), there is really only one sure fire way to get apps to spread virally: make better applications!

There are now 15,422 apps on the Facebook platform -- how many of them are truly useful? Anecdotal evidence would suggest that the novelty has worn off and users are finally starting to demand more of the applications they install. As Alex Saunders writes, "Developers of Facebook applications, however, have reached a watershed that demands a focus on delivering utility and value rather than thinly disguised advertising vehicles."

What do you think? Are you suffering from Facebook app fatigue? Do you think Facebook should step in and tighten invite rules for developers? Sound off in the comments below.

Tags: facebook users app applications apps

Living in the Future

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 01:38:36 -0500

Given Jobs' purported secret meeting with Bill Gates in CES Vegas last week, I was on maximum alert today for Redmond DNA at the MacWorld keynote and aftermath. It helped that a Microsoft PR official denied the existence of the meeting, which only served to make it all the likelier that it occurred. Why call attention to it if there was no substance to it? Or put another way, if it did occur, and it was secret enough to escape the camera phone grid in Vegas, wouldn't Microsoft PR have to deny it. Or maybe PR was out of the loop too a la Ron Ziegler.

Other than a pushback from an HP guy to the effect that Craig Mundie said Silverlight integration with the iPhone would never happen, there were no obvious clues in the lobby after the SteveNote. Of course, in keeping with the PR denial, the fact that I made up the Silverlight scenario out of whole cloth made it more than a little interesting that an HP official had actually discussed such a thread with Mundie before I had even made it up. Given the wave of exits from Microsoft Classic in recent weeks (Jeff Raikes, Charles Fitzgerald, Gates' glidepath) my bet is whatever Mundie says may be irrelevant in the reasonably near future. But then you have to examine the breadcrumbs Jobs sprinkled around Moscone West.

For starters, the transitional upgrades to both the iPhone and Apple TV auger well for Jobs' continued accupuncture approach to finding pressure points on the body politic of the carrier and cartel communities. Get static from NBC and competition from Amazon and the record companies switch over to the movie rental business and resuscitate Apple TV in one nifty move. Decouple Apple TV from the Mac and Windows, and Steve sends a loud message to the record companies too: watch the iPhone go tetherless next and regain the lion's market share. And Time Capsule combined with a free upgrade and a lowered price point suddenly turns Apple TV into a child management system in HD without having to wait for BlueRay to drop into the adoption zone.

The iPhone upgrade offers another clue in the Google containment scenario. The Maps location functionality is augmented by an additional GPS workaround with WiFi to supplement the cell tower triangulation now commoditized across every other mobile platform. Broadcast SMS keeps us connected across both the iPhone network and the downlevel rest of the market, including smart and even dumb phones as receivers. Webclips deliver application status to the iPhone home screen two months ahead of SDK apps and suggests that the value add of native apps will be integration of offline storage and rich services. Hmmm how will that be delivered?

Flash? Nope. Java FX? Never. Google Gears? Maybe but only as a caching mechanism for text. Let's see, what multimedia service fabric will work equally well across Windows and OS/X and Linux other than those two which Apple has frozen out of the loop? Could it be Silverlight? Does Apple want to let Google control the RIA turf with the possibility of an Android-seeded nullification of the Apple leverage over the carriers and cartels? Build it anew and have less clients than Dennis Kucinich has voters? Or partner with Microsoft and continue to exploit the advantage of control of the entire device to maintain market dominance to wield against the content and bandwidth suppliers?

More breadcrumbs: Office 08 ships on the MacBook Air DVD-less, over the air. Apple TV sucks down rentals (aka software) over the air computer- and DVD-less. If Entourage and the rest of Office were to move to a Silverlight platform, the iPhone, Air, iMac devices would be the Rolls Royces of computing devices in the enterprise. The Intel Trojan horse that Jobs has so strategically exploited will complete the takeover of the PC from within, particularly if iPhone 2.0 includes Intel chips. It's hardware plus services, something the new guard at Microsoft can live and prosper with.

Like the Presidential campaign, it's not who is most experienced or most viral or any of that. Rather, it's who's left after the least are gone. All the religious arguments closed versus open in particular are left in the dust by our desire to live as much in the future as we can. How else to explain the power of the iPhone to upend the usage patterns of 1.0 mobile devices and create a small but highly influential class of users who live as much or more on the mobile Net as they do on the corporate and home networks. With 2% device share, the iPhone has beaten and now runs a close Obama second to devices with a 43% share. One device works on the Net; the other sort of does. Game over.

Now Apple TV is refreshed with a sidestep of the HD conundrum. Switch to cable for HD because satellite has less capacity? Or wait until BlueRay drops below a hundred bucks? No need, particularly if you already have one gathering dust. Upgrade your backup and Airport to Time Capsule and watch as HD podcasts come to life around the free transport and advertiser subsidy built into the Apple TV model. Who's threatened here? Netflix, Blockbuster, and the TV networks who better settle their ass soon with the writers before the public catches on to the fact that the presidential campaign seems to have continued right through the strike without a hiccup and with far more drama, humor, and cliffhangers. The soaps never recovered from the OJ trial, you know.

Apparently nobody considered what would happen if the razor was software-upgradeable. Nobody but Steve Jobs, that is. The best moment of the Air demo was when Steve pinched and expanded a picture with the now-familiar iPhone multi-touch move, the one I've seen people reach out to their current screens and unconsciously attempt to do without thinking. Free upgrades across a wireless grid of devices send a powerful message that everybody wants in on.

Tags: iphone apple tv devices jobs

DRM Officially Dead. Sony BMG Drops It.

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 12:08:05 -0500

I guess you can call it peer pressure. All the major labels - Warner, EMI, Vivendi - have already given up on DRM (remember who started it all with his fiery imagine a world without DRM speech) and Sony BMG probably woke up, looked around, realized that everyone else is long gone from the DRM party, and decided to quickly follow suit before the landlord shows up.

Remember, this is the company that embedded an evil rootkit on CDs - and then did something similar again with USB flash sticks. Even other major labels look like the good guys compared to them, but now they've at least partially redeemed themselves by not being a lot more stubborn than them.

I'm gonna let you in on a little story here. I was close to a team that worked on an online music shop in a country where that would be a first. At first, they've designed the entire service around MP3 format; when they tried to talk to the major labels, they were practically laughed at, as each and every major demanded some DRM-supporting format. The team worked a couple of months to change the application and rerip the music into some other format, and now it's no longer necessary. Fun, eh? This example illustrates how sudden and abrupt this change really was. For reasons known only to them, major labels did not simply decide to drop DRM - they were forced to do it.

In any case, DRM is officially dead, and everyone that predicted this for 2008 (hint: everyone) was right. Sony BMG will probably offer only a part of their catalog in DRM-free format, but I'll go out on a limb here and predict that there's no turning back now. Soon, all music will be DRM free, and again, I hope that DRM will soon be a relic, forgotten by everyone except tech blogger-fossils like us. Unfortunately, while DRM will probably be gone from music altogether quite soon, it's still very much alive in other formats. When will they learn?

[via BusinessWeek]

Success & Motivation

Mon, 24 Dec 2007 09:59:00 -0500

With almost 4 years of Blogs in the hopper, I decided to bring back some of my favorites and republish them... Here is the first:

Success and Motivation, Part 1

Apr 23rd 2004 9:37AM

Success and Motivation

I did it too. I drove by big houses and would wonder who lived there. What did they do for a living? How did they make their money? Someday, I would tell myself, I would live in a house like that. Every weekend I would do it.

I read books about successful people. In fact, I read every book or magazine I could get my hands on. I would tell myself 1 good idea would pay for the book and could make the difference between me making it or not.

I worked jobs I didn't like. I worked jobs I loved, but had no chance of being a career. I worked jobs that barely paid the rent. I had so many jobs my parents wondered if I would be stable. Most of them aren't on my resume anymore because I was there so short a time or they were so stupid I was embarrassed. You don't want to write about selling powdered milk or selling franchises for TV repair shops. In every job, I would justify it in my mind whether I loved it or hated it that I was getting paid to learn and every experience would be of value when I figured out what I wanted to do when I grew up.

If I ever grew up, I hoped to run my own business some day. It's exactly what I told myself every day. In reality, I had as much doubt as confidence. I was just hoping the confidence would win over the doubt and it would all work out for the best.

I remember being 24 years old, living in Dallas in a 3-bedroom apartment with 5 other friends. This wasn't a really nice place we all kicked in to move up for. This place has since been torn down. Probably condemned. I didn't have my own bedroom. I slept on the couch or floor depending on what time I got home. I had no closet. Instead I had a pile that everyone knew was mine. My car had the usual hole in the floorboard, a '77 FIAT X19 that burned a quart of oil that I couldn't afford every week.

To make matters worse, because I was living on happy hour food, and the 2 beers cover charge, I was gaining weight like a pig. My confidence wasn't at an all time high. I was having fun. Don't get me wrong. I truly was having a blast. Great friends, great city, great energy, pretty girls. Ok, the pretty girls had no interest in my fat and growing ass at the time, but that's another story....

I was motivated to do something I loved. I just wasn't sure what it was. I made a list of all the different jobs I would love to do. (I still have it.) The problem was that I wasn't qualified for any of them. But I needed to pay the bills.

I finally got a job working as a bartender at a club. A start, but it wasn't a career. I had to keep on looking during the day.

About a week later I answered a want ad out of the newspaper for someone to sell PC Software at the first software retail store in Dallas. The ad was actually placed by an employment agency. The fee was to be paid by the company, so I gave it a shot.

I put on my interview face, and of course my interview suit, which just happened to be one of my 2 polyester suits that I had bought for the grand total of 99 dollars. Thank god for 2-fer, 2-fer, 2-fer madness at the local mens clothing store. Grey Pinstripe. Blue Pinstripe. Didn't matter if it rained, those drops just rolled down the back of those suits. I could crumple them. They bounced right back. Polyester, the miracle fabric.

I wish I could say the blue suit and my interview skills impressed the employment agency enough to set up the interview with the software store. In reality, not many had applied for the job and the agency wanted the fee so they would have sent anyone over to interview. I didn't care.

I pulled out the grey for my interview at Your Business Software. I was fired up. It was my shot to get into the computer business, one of the industries I had put on my list!

I remember the interview well. Michael Humecki the Prez, and Doug (don't remember his last name), his partner double-teamed me. Michael did most of the talking to start. He asked me if I had used PC software before. My total PC experience at the time was on the long forgotten TI/99A that had cost me 79 dollars. I used it to try to teach myself Basic while recovering from hangovers and sleeping on the floor while my roommates were at work. They weren't impressed.

I was trying to pull out every interview trick I knew. I went through the spiel about how I was a good salesperson, you know the part of the interview where you are basically begging for a job, using code phrases like "I care about the customer", "I promise to work really, really hard" and "I will do whatever it takes to be successful". Unfortunately, I was getting that "well if no one else applies for the job, maybe" look from Michael.

Finally, Doug spoke up. He asked me. "What do you do if a customer has a question about a software package and you don't know the answer?" All of the possible answers raced through my mind. I had to ask myself if this was the "honesty test question" you know where they want to see if you will admit to things you don't know. Is this some trick technology question and there is an answer everyone but me knows? After who knows how long, I blurted out that "I would look it up in the manual and find the answer for them." Ding, ding, ding...Doug just loved this answer.

Michael wasn't as convinced, but he then asked me the question I was dying to hear: "Would you not go back to the employment agency at all, so when we hire you we don't have to pay the fee?" I was in.

What does all this mean? Nothing yet. It was just fun to tell. You have to wait till part 2, if you care, and if there is a part two. Right now, it's much more important that I go play with my daughter.

Success and Motivation, Part 2

Apr 25th 2004 3:41AM

So my career in Dallas begins. I'm a software salesperson with Your Business Software in Dallas. $18k per year. The first retail software store in Dallas.

I have to sweep the floor and be there to open the store, but that's not a bad thing. When I tell my future ex-girlfriends that I sell software and am in the computer biz, I'm not going to mention the sweeping the floor part. Plus, I had to wear a suit to work, and the 2-fer madness specials looked good at happy hour after work. Better yet, the store didn't open till 9:30am, which meant if I had a fun night, I had at least a little time to sleep.

I bet right about now you are questioning where my focus was? Where was my commitment to being the future owner of the Dallas Mavericks? Please. I was stoked I had a good job. I was stoked it was in an industry that could turn into a career. At 24, I was just as stoked that the office was close to where the best happy hours were and that I might finally have more than 20 bucks to spend for a night on the town.

Since I'm talking about partying, I do have to say that my friends and I were very efficient in that area. Beyond living off bar food and happy hours, we literally would agree that none of us would bring more than 20 bucks for a weekend night out. This way we all could pace each other. At least that was the way it was supposed to work, and it did until we figured out the key to having a great night out on the cheap. They key was buying a bottle of cheap, cheap champagne. I can't even spell the name, but it was a full bottle, and it cost 12 bucks. Tear the label off and as far as anyone knew it was Dom. Each of us would grab one, and sip on it all night. It was far cheaper than buying beers or mixed drinks all night, and we never had to buy a drink for a girl, we just gave them some champagne! Of course the next day was hell, but since when was I responsible enough to care about a hangover...

But I digress. Back to business. As fired up as I was about the job, I was scared. Why? Because I have never worked with an IBM PC in my life. Not a single time, and I'm going to be selling software for it. So what do I do? I do what everyone does: I rationalize. I tell myself that the people walking in the door know as little as I do, so if I just started doing what I told my boss I would do, read the manuals, I would be ahead of the curve. That's what I did. Every night I would take home a different software manual, and I would read them. Of course the reading was captivating. Peachtree, PFS, DBase, Lotus, Accpac... I couldn't put them down. Every night I would read some after getting home, no matter how late.

Of course it was easy on the weekends. After drinking that cheap champagne, I wasn't getting out of bed till about 9pm, so I had tons of time to lie on the floor and read. It worked. Turns out not a lot of people ever bothered to RTFM (read the frickin' manual), so people started really thinking I knew my stuff. As more people came in, because I knew all the different software packages we offered, I could offer honest comparisons and customers respected that.

Within about 6 months, I was building a clientele and because I had also spent time on the store's computers learning how to install, configure and run the software, I started having customers ask me to install the software at their offices. That meant I got to charge for consulting help: 25 bucks an hour that I split with the store. That turned into a couple hundred extra bucks per month and growing. I was raking it in, enough that I could move from the Hotel (that was what we called our apartment) where the 6 of us lived, into a 3 bedroom apartment across the street, where instead of 6 of us, there were only 3. Finally, my own bedroom!

I was earning consulting fees. I was getting referrals. I was on the phone cold calling companies to get new business. I even worked out a deal with a local consultant who paid me referral fees, which lead to getting a $1500 check. It was the first time in my adult life that I was able to have more than 1k dollars in the bank.

That was a special moment believe or not, and what did I do to celebrate? Nope...I didn't buy better champagne. I had these old ratty towels that had holes in them and could stand on their own in the corner, they were so nasty I needed a shower from drying off after a shower...I went out and bought 6 of the fluffiest, plushest towels I could find. I was moving on up in the world. I had the towels. Life was good. Business was good and getting better for me. I was building my customer base, really starting to understand all the technology, and really establishing myself as someone who understood the software. More importantly no, most importantly I realized that I loved working with PCs. I had never done it before. I didn't know if this was going to be a job that worked for me, or that I would even like and it turns out I was lucky. I loved what I was doing. I was rolling so well, I was even partying less... during the week.

Then one day, about 9 months into my career as a salesperson/consultant, I had a prospect ask if I could come to his office to close a deal. 9am. No problem to me. Problem to my boss, Michael Humecki. Michael didn't want me to go. I had to open the store. That was my job. We were a retail store, not an outbound sales company. It sounded stupid to me back then too, particularly since I had gone on outbound calls during the day before. I guess he thought I was at lunch.

Decision time. It's always the little decisions that have the biggest impact. We all have to make that "make or break" call to follow orders or do what you know is right. I followed my first instinct: close the sale. I guess I could have rescheduled the appointment, but I rationalized that you never turn your back on a closed deal. So I called one of my coworkers to come in and open up, and closed the deal. Next day I came in check in hand from a new customer and Michael fired me.

Success and Motivation, Part 3

May 7th 2004 1:48AM

Fired. Not the first time it's happened, but it reinforced what I already knew; I'm a terrible employee. I just had to face facts and move on. So rather than getting back on that "how the hell am I going to find a job" train, the only right thing to do was to start my own company.

My first act of business? Pile into my buddy's 1982 Celica, nicknamed Celly, and drive to galveston to party. Of course we stayed in only the best $19.95 a night, plug the hairdryer in the wall and the circuit blows, motel. Nothing but the best as I prepared for my journey into entrepreneurial territory again. I could say I was preocuppied with how to get my new business off the ground. That while my friends got drunk, did stupid tourist tricks and ate at greasy spoons, I sat by the pool on the 1 chaise lounge chair with rust on the clean side and wrote up my businessplan. I didn't. I got just as drunk and ate the same disgusting food. Then we faced the road trip terror that everyone knows exists, but refuses to admit, the ride home. It wasn't until we pulled up to the apartment that it hit me. No job. No money. No way to pay the bills. But I had nice towels.

Fortunately the hangover didn't last too long, and I realized I had to get off my ass and make something happen. First day, first task, come up with a name. This was the start of the microcomputer revolution, and I wanted a name that said what the company was going to do, which was sell personal computers and software and help companies and individuals install them. I was going to offer microcomputer solutions. So after struggling with different names for about 30 minutes, I chose MicroSolutions Inc.

Now came the hard part. I had to call all the people I had done business with at my last company, and let them know that I had been shitcanned and ask them if they would come do business with me at MicroSolutions. I got the expected questions. No I didn't have an office. No I didn't have a phone yet other than my home phone. Yes it was just me. No I didn't have any investors. The only question I dreaded was whether I had a computer to work with. I didn't. Fortunately, no one asked.

I made a lot of calls, and got some decent response. We love you Mark, we want to give you a chance. A lot of lets stay in touch. I got two real bites. One from a company called Architectual Lighting and the other from a company called Hytec Data Systems.

Architectual Lighting was looking for a time and billing accounting system to allow them to track the work with clients. I don't remember the name of the software package I told them about, I think it was Peachtree Accounting, but after going out to meet with them it came down to this. I offered to refund 100 pct of their money if the software didn't work for them, and I wouldn't charge them for my time for installing and helping them. In return, they would put up the 500 bucks it would take for me to buy the software from the publisher, and I could use them as a reference. This was my "no money down" approach to start a business. They said yes. I had a business.

My 2nd call Hytec Data, was run by Martin Woodall. I met with Martin at the S&D Oyster House on a beautiful June day, and I remember sitting there and him telling me, "I graduated in Computer Science from West Virginia University. I have 50k in the bank and I drive a brand new Cadillac. I know technology better than you. We can work together". I had a customer, and now with Martin's help, I had some hope. Hytec Data sold multi user systems. The old kind that used dumb terminals. He bundled it with accounting software and he and a contractor named Kevin, would make modifications to the Cobol source code. They were the hardcore geeks that could help me when I needed it. I was still just 10 months from my first introduction to PCs, and had zero clue about multi user systems. If I came across prospects that could use their system and software, I would get referrals. That was good.

Even better was Martin's offer of office space. He and Kevin shared office space with the distributor of the computer systems he sold. They had this one office, that when the CEO of the distributors son wasn't using it to study his spanish, I could use it to make calls, and keep my folders and paperwork. Still no computer, but hey, I had an office and phone. I was bonafide...

At some point I'm going to have to go back and look at my appointment books that I kept from those days to remind myself of who my 2nd, 3rd and on from there customers were. They were small companies that I got to know very well. People that took me under their wing and trusted me, not because I was the most knowledgeable about computers, but because they knew I would do whatever it took to get the job done. People trusted me with keys to their offices. They would find me there when they got in in the morning and I was there when they left. I made 15,000 dollars that first year. I loved every minute of it.

As time went on, my customer base grew. I got my friend and former roommate Scott Susens to help with deliveries. Scott was working as a waiter at a steakhouse at the time. I remember asking him over and over, would you please help me out. I have a customer that had bought a bunch of Epson dot matrix printers from me, and I had to sell Scott on how it wouldn't be hard to learn how to hook a parallel cable to a pc and printer, and how learning all of this would be a career move compared to working at the steakhouse. Unfortunately, I couldn't pay him as much as the steakhouse. My good fortune was that Scott worked nights and weekends and decided to take some time in the afternoons to help me out. Not long after that, he was working fulltime installing PCs, learning whatever he had to figure out before an install.

Martin also began to play a larger and larger role. His company was growing, and he was watching my company grow. I would get the PC based stuff, he would get the accounting system stuff. It was a nice split. The better part of the relationship was based on Martin being the most anal retentive person i had ever met in my life. While I covered my mistakes by throwing time and effort at the problem, Martin was so detail oriented, he had to make sure things were perfect so problems could never happen. We could drive each other crazy. He would give me incredible amounts of shit about how sloppy I was. I would give him the same amount back because he was so anal he was missing huge opportunities. We complemented each other perfectly. It would only be a matter of time before we both knew we had to be partners and work together instead of seperately.

That first year in business was incredible. I remember sitting in that little office till 10pm and then still being so pumped up, I would drive over to the gym I belonged to and run 5 to 10 miles on the treadmill going through that day, and the next in my head. Other days I would get so involved with learning a new piece of software that I would forget to eat and look up at the clock thinking it was 6 or 7pm and see that it was 1am or 2am. Time would fly by.

It's crazy the things that you remember. I remember when my accounts receivable got up to 15k and telling all my friends. I remember reading the PC DOS manual (I really did), and being proud that I could figure out how to set up startup menus for my customers. I remember going to every single retail store in town, BusinessLand, NYNEX, ComputerLand,CompuShop, all those companies that are long gone, and introducing myself to every salesperson to try to get leads. I would call every single big computer company that did anything at all with small businesses, IBM, Wang, Dec, Xerox, Data General, DataPoint (remember them?), setting meetings, asking to come to their offices since I couldn't afford to take them to lunch. I didn't need a lot of customers, but my business grew and grew. Not too fast, but fast enough that by the time MicroSolutions had been in business about 2 years, I had 85k dollars in the bank, a receptionist/secretary, Scott helping me out, and a 4 room office that I moved into along with Martin and Hytec Data Systems.

Then I learned a very valuable lesson. Martin had done a great job of setting up our accounting software and systems. I got monthly P&L statements. I got weekly journals of everything coming in and everything going out, payables and receivables. We had a very conservative process where Martin would check the payables, authorize them and then use the software to cut the checks. I would then go through the list, sign the checks and give them to Renee our secretary/receptionist to put in the envelope and mail to our vendors.

One day, Martin comes back from Republic Bank, where we had our account. He had just gone through the drive through and one of the tellers who he would see every day dropping of our deposits asked him to wait a second. She comes back and shows him a check that had the payee of a vendor, WHITED OUT and Renee Hardy, our secretary's name typed over it. Turns out that in the course of a single week, our secretary had pulled this same trick on 83k of our 85k in the bank. As Martin delived the news, I obviously was pissed. I was pissed at Renee, I was pissed at the bank, I was pissed at myself for letting it happen. I remember going to the bank with copies of the checks, and the manager of the bank basically laughing me out of his office telling me that I "didn't have a pot to piss in". That I could sue him, or whatever I wanted, but I was out the money.

I got back to the office, told Martin what happened at the bank, and then I realized what I had to do about all of this. I had to go back to work. That what was done, was done. That worrying about revenge, getting pissed at the bank, all those "I'm going to get even and kick your ass thoughts" were basically just a waste of energy. No one was going to cover my obligations but me. I had to get my ass back to work, and do so quickly. That's exactly what I did.

Success and Motivation P4

May 25th 2004 11:01AM

You never quite know in business if what you are doing is the right or wrong thing. Unfortunately, by the time you know the answer, someone has beaten you to it and you are out of business. I used to tell myself that it was ok to make little mistakes, just don't make the big ones. I would continuously search for new ideas. I read every book and magazine I could. Heck, 3 bucks for a magazine, 20 bucks for a book. One good idea that lead to a customer or solution and it paid for itself many times over. Some of the ideas i read were good, some not. In doing all the reading I learned a valuable lesson.

Everything I read was public. Anyone could buy the same books and magazines. The same information was available to anyone who wanted it. Turns out most people didn't want it.

I remember going into customers or talking to people in the industry and tossing out tidbits about software or hardware. Features that worked, bugs in the software. All things I had read. I expected the ongoing response of "Oh yeah, I read that too in such-and-such." That's not what happened. They hadn't read it then, and they haven't started reading yet.

Most people won't put in the time to get a knowledge advantage. Sure, there were folks that worked hard at picking up every bit of information that they could, but we were few and far between. To this day, I feel like if I put in enough time consuming all the information available, particularly with the net making it so readily available, I can get an advantage in any technology business. Of course my wife hates that I read more than 3 hours almost every day, but it gives me a level of comfort and confidence in my businesses. AT MicroSolutions it gave me a huge advantage. A guy with little computer background could compete with far more experienced guys just because I put in the time to learn all I could.

I learned from magazines and books, but I also learned from watching what some of the up and coming technology companies of the day were doing. Its funny how the companies that I thought were brilliant then, are still racking it up today.

Every week a company called PCs Limited used to take a full-page ad in a weekly trade magazine called PC Week. The ad would feature PC peripherals that the company would sell. Hard Drives. Memory. Floppy Drives. Graphics Cards. Whatever could be added to a PC was there. What made the ad so special was that each and every week the prices got lower. If a drive was 2,000 dollars last week, it was $ 1940 this week. For the first time in any industry that I knew of, we were seeing vendors pass on price savings to customers.

The PC Limited ads became the "market price" for peripherals. I looked for the ad every week. In fact, I became a customer. I was in Dallas. They were in Austin.

I remember driving down to pick up some hard drives that I was going to put into my customers PCs. I had no idea up to that point, but it turns out that they had just moved from the owner's dorm room into a little office/warehouse space. I was so impressed by this young kid (I was a wise old 25 at the time), that I actually wrote a letter thanking him for the great job he was doing, and...I'm embarassed to say now, I told him that if he kept up what he was doing he was destined for far bigger and better things.

I kept on doing business with PCs Limited, and Michael Dell kept on doing what he was doing. I dont think he really needed my encouragement, but i have since told him that I thought his weekly full page ads with ever declining prices, changed the PC industry and were the first of many genius moves on his part.

Michael wasn't the only smart one in those days.

One of the PC industry's annual rituals was the Comdex trade show in Las Vegas. Every November, it was the only 3 days I knew I would get away and get a break from the office. It was work during the day. Visiting all the new technology booths. Trying to get better pricing from vendors. Trying to find out where the best parties were. If you could believe it, back in those days, the number one party was the Microsoft party. I sold some Microsoft products, so I could get in.

One particular year, I was on my way to having a memorable night. I had met some very, very attractive women (I swear they were). Got them some tickets to come with me to the big party. All is good. I'm having fun. They are having fun. Then we see him. Bill G. As in Bill Gates dancing up a storm. I'm a Bill Gates fan, so I wont describe his dancing, but he was definitely having fun.

At that point in time, Microsoft had gone public and Bill Gates was Bill Gates. If you were in the business you knew him or knew of him. The girls I was with were in the business. Long story short, I went to the bar to get some drinks for all us, I come back, they aren't there. Come to find out the next day, Bill stole my girls. As I would learn later in life, money does make you extremely handsome. :)

Bill G also taught me a few things about business. Put aside how he killed IBM at their own game by licensing PC DOS to anyone that wanted it. What MicroSoft did to knock Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect off their thrones was literally business at its best.

At that point in time, software was expensive. WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 both sold for $495 and their publishers were proud of that fact. In order to be able to sell Lotus 1-2-3, you had to go to special training to become authorized. How crazy does that sound now going to a special class to be able to sell a spreadsheet. WordPerfect wasn't quite as bad, but they had their own idiosyncrasies as well. Meanwhile, Microsoft was on the outside looking in. Excel, Word, Powerpoint were all far down the list of top sellers until lightning struck.

Microsoft decided to go against industry protocol and package those 3 programs as a suite and offer them as an upgrade to competitors' products for the low, low price of 99 dollars. Of course you needed to have and use Windows for it to work, but in a time when people were buying new PCs with every dramatic increase in power and decrease in price, it was a natural move for us at MicroSolutions to sell the bundle. It made the effective price of the PC and software together far, far lower. We loved it. It also taught me several big lessons.

Always ask yourself how someone could preempt your products or service. How can they put you out of business? Is it price? Is it service? Is it ease of use? No product is perfect and if there are good competitors in your market, they will figure out how to abuse you. It's always better if you are honest with yourself and anticipate where the problems will come from.

The 2nd lesson is to always run your business like you are going to be competing with Microsoft. They may not be your direct competitor. They may be a vendor. They may be a direct competitor and a vendor. Whatever they may be to your business, if you are in the technology business, you have to anticipate that you will in some way have to compete with Microsoft at some point. I ask myself every week what I would do if they entered any of my businesses. If you are ready to compete with Microsoft, you are ready to compete with anyone else.

Watching the best taught me how to run my businesses. Along the way I taught myself a few things those come next blog.

Success and Motivation, almost Part 2

Apr 25th 2004 2:42AM

This isn't quite a continuation of part 1, but I happened to stumble across an interview I did last year for Young Money Magazine that covers a lot of the things that I probably would have included in part 2. :)

YOUNG MONEY TALKS TO CUBAN: During an exclusive interview with YOUNG MONEY, billionaire Mark Cuban shared his thoughts on using the fear of failure as a motivator, beating the competition, and why investing in the stock market may not be such a good idea.

YM: What is the key to recognizing a profitable business opportunity?

CUBAN: Knowing the industry very well. Most people think it's all about the idea. It's not. EVERYONE has ideas. The hard part is doing the homework to know if the idea could work in an industry, then doing the preparation to be able to execute on the idea.

YM: What personal characteristics should a person possess in order to become a successful entrepreneur?

CUBAN: Willingness to learn, to be able to focus, to absorb information, and to always realize that business is a 24 x 7 job where someone is always out there to kick your ass.

YM: Did you set career goals for yourself while you were in college? If so, what were they?

CUBAN: To retire by the age of 35 was my goal. I wasn't sure how I was going to get there though. I knew I would end up owning my own business someday, so I figured my challenge was to learn as much as anyone about every and all businesses. [I believed] that every job I took was really me getting paid to learn about a new industry. I spent as much time as I could, learning and reading everything about business I could get my hands on. I used to go into the library for hours and hours reading business books and magazines.

YM: Do you consider yourself an innovator? Why?

CUBAN: No. I don't really have new ideas, but I manage to combine information in ways most people hadn't considered. They aren't new ideas, it's just that most people don't do their homework about their businesses and industry, so there is usually a place to sneak in and do something a little different. You just have to make sure what you want to do can sustain a business and make it profitable rather than be a niche that can be crushed [by the competition].

YM: What advice would you give young adults just struggling to move up in the business world?

CUBAN: There are no shortcuts. You have to work hard, and try to put yourself in a position where if luck strikes, you can see the opportunity and take advantage of it. I would also say it's hard not to fool yourself. Everyone tells you how they are going to be"special," but few do the work to get there. Do the work.

YM: What types of opportunities would you pursue if you were starting over today? CUBAN: I just started a business called HDNet. There never is one area that has a door open to everyone. Try to find an area with something you love to do and do it. It's a lot easier to work hard and prepare when you love what you are doing. YM: What would you tell entrepreneur hopefuls who are afraid of failing?

CUBAN: It's good [for them]. I'm always afraid of failing. It's great motivation to work harder.

YM: What is the most important piece of advice you could offer someone who's just starting a business?

CUBAN: Do your homework and know your business better than anyone. Otherwise, someone who knows more and works harder will kick your ass.

YM: Did you have to sacrifice your personal life in order to become a business success?

CUBAN: Sure, ask about five of my former girlfriends that question... I went seven years without a vacation. (from the time I got fired from a job, and started MicroSolutions) I didn't even read a fiction book in that time. I was pretty focused.

YM: Do you have any general saving and investing advice for young people?

CUBAN: Put it in the bank. The idiots that tell you to put your money in the market because eventually it will go up need to tell you that because they are trying to sell you something. The stock market is probably the worst investment vehicle out there. If you won't put your money in the bank, NEVER put your money in something where you don't have an information advantage. Why invest your money in something because a broker told you to? If the broker had a clue, he/she wouldn't be a broker, they would be on a beach somewhere.

Success and Motivation - You only have to be right once!

May 30th 2005 1:46AM

In basketball you have to shoot 50pct. If you make an extra 10 shots per hundred, you are an All-Star. In baseball you have to get a hit 30 pct of the time. If you get an extra 10 hits per hundred at bats, you are on the cover of every magazine, lead off every SportsCenter and make the Hall of Fame.

In Business, the odds are a little different. You don't have to break the Mendoza line (hitting .200). In fact, it doesnt matter how many times you strike out. In business, to be a success, you only have to be right once.

One single solitary time and you are set for life. That's the beauty of the business world.

I like to tell the story of how I started my first business at age 12, selling garbage bags. No one ever has asked if I was any good or made money at it. I was, and I did...enough to buy some tennis shoes :).

I like to tell the story of how I started up a bar, Motley's Pub when I wasn't even of legal drinking age the summer before my senior year at Indiana University. No one really asks me how it turned out. It was great until we got busted for letting a 16-year-old win a wet t-shirt contest (I swear I checked her ID, and it was good!).

No one really asks me about my adventures working for Mellon Bank, or Tronics 2000, or trying to start a business selling powdered milk (it was cheaper by the gallon, and I thought it tasted good). They don't ask me about working as a bartender at night at Elans when I first got to Dallas, or getting fired from my job at Your Business Software for wanting to close a sale rather than sweeping the floor and opening up the store.

No ever asked me about what it was like when I started MicroSolutions and how I used to count the months I was in business, hoping to outlast my previous endeavors and make this one a success.

With every effort, I learned a lot. With every mistake and failure, not only mine, but of those around me, I learned what not to do. I also got to study the success of those I did business with as well. I had more than a healthy dose of fear, and an unlimited amount of hope, and more importantly, no limit on time and effort.

Fortunately, things turned out well for me with MicroSolutions. I sold it after 7 years and made enough money to take time off and have a whole lot of fun.

Back then I can remember vividly people telling me how lucky I was to sell my business at the right time.

Then when I took that money and started trading technology stocks that were in the areas that MIcroSolutions focused on. I remember vividly being told how lucky I was to have expertise in such a hot area, as technology stocks started to trade up.

Of course, no one wanted to comment on how lucky I was to spend time reading software manuals, or Cisco Router manuals, or sitting in my house testing and comparing new technologies, but that's a topic for another blog post.

The point of all this is that it doesn't matter how many times you fail. It doesn't matter how many times you almost get it right. No one is going to know or care about your failures, and either should you. All you have to do is learn from them and those around you because...

All that matters in business is that you get it right once.

Then everyone can tell you how lucky you are.

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Tags: business software work back job

How much is your iPhone contract worth to Apple?

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 22:00:00 -0500

Filed under: Apple Financial, iPhone

How much is your iPhone contract worth to Apple? Today, we got a concrete answer. It's worth 600. According to MacRumors, Deutsche Telekom will start selling an unlocked iPhone for 999 as well as the locked 399 version that comes with a two year contract. For those who don't want to jump over to google, that 600 is equivalent to $879.48 at today's exchange rate. That's very, very close to the New York Time's estimate of $831 late last month.

I worked up a little math based on these costs and our recent options coverage. At the going American rates, you pay $399 for the iPhone. Add to that either $1440, $1920, or $2400 for the individual 2-year costs and clearly Apple is getting a huge chunk of that money. If you go the contract-free way that I did, those costs drop to $1200 for the least expensive plan, assuming a 2-year period of use. If you then, as I did, go ahead and drop your data plan, that number drops even lower, to $719.76. In other words, I just became a loss to AT&T if they have to fork over the full normal value to Apple for two years. What do you think? Is AT&T sending a fixed amount or a percentage of the monthly fees?

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Tags: apple iphone contract year worth

Stephen Colbert Drops Presidential Bid

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 19:22:08 -0500

Stephen Colbert's announcement to drop presidential bid comes after South Carolina Democratic Executive Council voted last week to keep the TV host off the state's primary ballot.

Tags: stephen bid presidential colbert tv

PageRank Drops for Many Sites

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 16:22:23 -0400

Reports are coming in that several usually well-ranked sites have seen a loss in PageRank. Sites being downranked include SearchEngineJournal.com (from PR7 -- for several years -- to PR4, though these values may vary depending when you check), Forbes.com (from PR7 to PR5), StatCounter.com (from PR10 to PR6), as well as WashingtonPost, SERoundtable.com, and many others. Some of these sites sell or at one point sold PageRank by accepting non-nofollowed text ad links -- I wonder if there is a connection, but don't have anything close to proof so far. Please join the discussion to help dig into this. Interestingly enough, the last time I checked Google's own AdWords still allowed text link brokers to advertise their systems... not sure if that's still the case. Now if ...

Tags: pr sites pagerank text several