The Week in Geek – April 1, 2009
A continued thanks to WiG readers who continue to tolerate the period of ‘every 2-3 weeks in geek’ as I continue to work toward my book deadline. Draft chapters continue to be posted on https://gallaugher.com/chapters. Those interested in the FlatWorldKnowledge model might check out a recent blog post by one of my publisher’s investors.
Tech For Good @ BC, Friday, April 3, 2009. Featuring Three Killer Talks @ Three Different Times & Locations:
9:00-9:50AM, Fulton 511: Bob Metcalfe, Inventor of Ethernet & General Partner at Polaris Venture Partners (and the Metcalfe behind “Metcalfe’s Law”): on Internet History Lessons for Solving Energy
10:00-10:50AM, Merkert 127: Chuck Kane, President & COO of OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) on the firm’s pioneering efforts to provide laptops to the world’s poorest children.
2:00-2:50PM, Fulton 250: Ben Heywood, Co-Founder & President, PatientsLikeMe on the firm’s groundbreaking and inspiring efforts to empower chronically ill patients.
Share the flyer with friends! All are welcome!
Google: Beware the eBay Curse
Sarah Lacy’s BusinessWeek column on the challenges facing Google preempted the faberNovel “Why Google Could Die” slideshow, and both are great, provocative reads. I’ve also put together a bunch of slides for this semester’s Google lectures, and the numbers are staggering: the world’s #1 brand, a near 70% (and growing) share of search, and advertising gains the prior year ahead of all major media companies – online or off. But nothing lasts forever, and Lacy points out that the future of the web is in organizing people, not information. Much of this strength is out of Google’s grasp, either in the ‘dark web’ behind the login of Facebook, or via instant-response on Twitter. Yahoo’s Terry Semel could have once bought Google for $3 billion. Should Google pony up for Twitter before the price rises even more? Google will have to improve acquisition results, having shuttered Twitter-like also-ran Jaiku and the mobile social tool Dodgeball, while Blogger is still an also-ran behind WordPress. Gmail remains an innovation leader – Gmail actually ranks 10th in overall web traffic behind YouTube. But Gmail continues to trail Yahoo Mail, a service responsible for 50% of US web e-mail traffic (and that includes 40 million paying customers from Yahoo’s ’07 acquisition of Zimbra). BTW, the Parisians behind “Why Google Could Die…” also produced last December’s “Everything you wanted to know about Google but were afraid to ask“. A note to service marketers on the web – it’s also VERY interesting to see how a relatively unknown French firm has twice in the past five months become the talk of the tech blogosphere by post some insightful slides. And while we’re on the subject of pundit speculation – Blodget posted a stat-rich piece on oow Facebook Could Kil Google. Of now that former YouTube CFO (and Google VP) Gideon Yu is out at Facebook, the firm needs a new CFO.
How to Twitter
Julia Angwin at The Wall Street Journal offers some insight to those not already in the Twitteratti. There’s clearly a lot of garbage on Twitter, with many would-be cyber-stars ‘following’ everyone in hopes they’ll be ‘followed’ and gain a rankings-rise. But the savvy are using Twitter as significant promotional tools. The latest? Celtic Paul Pierce Twittered he’d give away free tickets to the first five fans spotted wearing a Pierce jersey and shouting the password ‘Truth’ (his nickname). Value that encourages fans to regularly tune into Pierce Tweets, and that gains a boatload of media crossover coverage. Value is the key: Zappos’ Tony Hsieh blasted some of his best engineers out of geek-paradise SF to join his Vegas firm, in part by first Twittering secret code words for a ‘free drinks’ bash, then selling techies on the firm’s top-ranked culture and work environment. It was a one-man recruiting blitz that did an end-run around the conference and was laser-focused on attracting exactly the kinds of candidates Hsieh wanted. Twitter has become so important to firms that Salesforce.com has included a feature to search, monitor and respond directly to Twitter chatter. As an aside, firms looking to leverage the power of microblogging internally, behind a firewall they can control, should check out SocialText 3.0 (the enterprise social networking tool we use to power our class wikis in the Carroll School). Oh, and for the shameless plug – I’m at http://twitter.com/gallaugher.
A Facebook Addict Gets Twitter Religion
More fun news from TechTrek. My student Eric Nam explains why Facebooking Undergrads want Twitter in his recent guest post to Sarah Lacy’s blog. Eric is spearheading a student-led drive to improve technology on campus. You can follow him at: http://twitter.com/ericnam.
Google Prepares Venture Fund
Google Ventures, co-led by Fall BC TechDay speaker (and Android co-founder) Rich Miner, is expected to invest $100 million in the next 12 months. Look for some of the green-tech efforts supported by Google.org to shift to the venture arm. According to the announcement, Google Ventures has already made two investments: Silver Spring Networks, a firm that makes tech for managing electric grids, and Pixazza a firm that embeds ‘to buy’ links in online images (check out the website).
Google Voice May Threaten Other Phone Services
The startup GrandCentral was snapped up by Google a little over a year and a half ago. Now the Google iteration is ready to go live as Google Voice. The product allows users to route all their calls through a single number that can ring on all phones simultaneously – home, office, work, wherever. Google Voice will also offer a single voice mail system for multiple phone lines. And (note to Skype) it lets users make calls, routed via the Internet, free in the US and for a small fee internationally.
And for one more Googly bonus item: Google VP Marissa Mayer, one of the most powerful women in business, was interviewed on The Charlie Rose program last month (see link for video).
Google to Offer Ads Based on Interest
Leveraging the $3.1 billion acquisition of graphic ad-server DoubleClick, Google has brought surf-tracking technology to AdWords running on the partner network. Dubbed “interest-based ads”, the effort will notice where a user surfs, and will begin to target ads based on perceived interests. A big step, since AdSense ads on partner networks typically gleaned keywords from a page’s content (my students will remember ads briefly appearing on the Week In Geek – aka WiG – advertised hair replacement firms & wig shops). While the tactic (which others call behavior tracking) will freak out some, the search sovereign is the last of the big players leveraging this tech in text-based ads, and is empowering consumers to a degree that far-outpaces rivals. Google will be the first of the major firms to let users see and edit the information it has compiled about their interests. To access it, users will just need to click on a link that accompanies each ad. Google will even offer a browser plug-in, in case cookies that identify a user as ‘opting out’ are deleted or expire. Here’s a video where Google describes the new service.
Apple Raisese iPhone Ante 
In eight months since Apple released the app store, 25,000 apps have been written, resulting in 800 million downloads. The firm has sold 17 million iPhones and 14 million iPod touches. The new v.3 software update will include cut & paste between apps, the ability to write e-mail in landscape mode, peer-to-peer networking for things like gaming & contact swapping, and links to a host of new third-party accessories including blood pressure monitors. Developers also get new payment options, including in-game upgrades and subscriptions. The March 17th keynote is online.
Trailing Apple, Nintendo & Sony Push Handheld Game Downloads
Neil Young, not the geezer Canadian rocker, but the former EA executive who now runs game firm ngmoco says the iPhone is as “important a moment in the game industry as the introduction of the (Atari) VCS, or the NES, or the Game Boy and Game Boy Advance (GBA), or Xbox Live, or massively multiplayer games”. iPhone sales are outpacing sales of Nintendo DS and PSP, and that the biggest hits (60% of the top 100 apps) are games. The AppStore is growing by 165 apps a day. With Apple’s example, Sony & Nintendo are prepping stronger moves into downloadable apps. They may also want to consider redeveloping some older games though, as more and more gamers are looking to play Mother 3 Rom for GBA and similar Rom downoads.
iPhone Apps Case Study: To Charge or Run Ads?
Bo Wang, developer of the brick-break iPhone game Galaxy Impact, provides a detailed autopsy of the firm’s initial experiment in free/ad-supported vs. for-fee-game. Graphs & download details are offered, and conclusions are summed up on the end. An interesting read for would-be iPhone entrepreneurs.
AdMob’s iPhone Ad Business Exploding
In Feb., mobile ad network AdMob served up 1.2 billion ads worldwide to iPhone and iPod Touch users, representing 18% of the firm’s business, up from just 1.3% of business a year ago.
Rethinking Software Support
Want a reason to jump into the clouds? Consider that half of Oracle’s $22.4 billion in sales last year came from maintenance and support contracts. This 85% margin coin makes Larry Ellison one of the world’s richest, but the hefty price tag on software support is pushing even big dogs like EMC to ditch Oracle for cloudy firms like Salesforce.com, where maintenance & support go away. The journal also points out that the industry loves the term ‘cloud’, but can’t define it very well. Anyone struggling is welcome to check out the chapter ‘Software in Flux‘, which provides a managerial overview, complete with definitions and examples of Cloud Computing, SaaS, and the infrastructure investments made by cloud firms.
Will Cisco’s Project California Rock the IT Sector?
More disruptive news – this time from Cisco. The firm has more cash than ANY tech firm – $30 billion. And although its business continues to gush profits, it needs big, billion+ markets to move the stock needle forward. The company has entered no fewer than 28 different markets, ranging from home digital music systems to public surveillance systems. But its latest gambit may be the riskiest. By combining servers, networking equipment, and storage, Cisco hopes to grab share from a host of cloud-serving vendors, but also risks alienating partners like IBM (which currently resells about $2 billion in Cisco gear). It’s the cloud market that Cisco CEO John Chambers covets. 50% of the eight million servers sold each year reside in Internet data centers, up from 20% in 2003.
eBay Retreats in Web Retailing
With visitor traffic dropping by 16% and its first ever revenue decline (down 7%) this past holiday quarter, eBay announced a renewed focus on collectables, vintage, used, and overstock items. The move is an acknowledgement that attempts to go head-to-head against Amazon in new item sales haven’t succeeded. CEO Donahoe says flatly “We aren’t a retailer. We’re going to focus on where we can win“. The firm will continue to grow gargantuan PayPal, striking a deal that will make it the exclusive payment mechanism for RiM’s Blackberry application store.
Microsoft Shuts Encarta
Redmond killed Britannica when parents who once spent $2,000 on a rack of leather bound books started spending $2,000 on a PC. But then came ‘the crowd’, and it seems Wikipedia has killed Encarta. The NY Times takes Encarta to the woodshed – pointing out that Wikipedia scored 97% of ‘online encyclopedia’ visits in January, while Encarta had 1.27%. Perhaps entries that still have Joe Biden listed as a “U.S. Senator” show Encarta’s problem with trying to edit such broad tracts of knowledge.
The Sunday Times also reviewed the new book The Wikipedia Revolution. Wikipedia, a site that functions on roughly $7 million in donations and grants (previously it was below $3 million), is now within shouting distance of the traffic numbers posted by Amazon and eBay (roughly 60 million January ’09 visitors). Does your firm have a strategy for dealing with a world where the top 3 hits on your brand/firm/executives likely include a crowd-sourced entry?
IT Innovations Help Kiva Expand its Microfinance Mission
During our “Tech for Good” week, it’s only appropriate to highlight ComputerWorld’s recent cover story on Kiva. The firm leverages technology to create microfinance markets linking primarily western investors with worthy and impactful entrepreneurial efforts in developing countries (scroll down to catch the video).
Google & Indian Village Phones
Google Labs India launches a public message board where a centrally located PC can be used to record and respond to community notes. TechCrunch reports that the service is geared at developing nations where not everyone has a computer – think of it as village voicemail on shared computers.
Kenya Plugs Into Mobile Crowdsourcing
There’s a quiet, mobile payments revolution brewing in Africa. As MIT’s Technology Review points out: Kenya’s SafariCom offers MPesa that can be used to pay for a taxi or water from a remote village’s well. “Electricity is sold, pay-as-you-go, in Kenya, and a startup there lets people buy prepaid cards and authorize them using their phone. Thirty percent of the population now pays that way, instead of standing in line.” Now MIT researcher Nate Eagle’s new effort, Txteagle, hopes to create a text-driven online market for services. Think of it as Amazon’s Mechanical Turk via cellphones. Participants, who perform the small tasks requested, get paid in small blocks of money or in chunks of airtime. Although Nate’s an MIT guy, we like his last name & hope he succeeds. Look for rollouts in Rwanda and the Dominican Republic, soon.
Do you Viv?
Undergrad TechTrekkers from a few years back met then Facebooker Arul Velan, and have been looking for word on his new startup ever since. It’s out – Viv is a platform for encouraging firms to go green in a way that drives profits. It’ll be fun to watch the firm’s roll out. Good luck Arul!
A Great Time to Launch a Good Startup
Great companies are often formed in crummy times. The enclosed graphic posted by Brad Feld offers some inspiration for those of you braving the startup world in these tough times.
The PC in 2019
More from MIT: a fun attempt to show what PC interfaces in 2019 might look like. Scroll down & click the video.
Newspapers: Thinking the Unthinkable
A long, and provocative note by Clay Shirky on the decline of the newspaper revolution. Tough to sum up, but worth a read by anyone concerned with our evolving world where newspapers aren’t necessary, but journalism is.
Offbeat Name? Then Facebook’s No Friend
If your last name’s Batman, you’ll have a hard time registering for Facebook. Plus side? Your name is wicked cool!
Roche buys Genentech for $46.8 Billion
A quick note on perennial TechTrek stop Genentech. Not unexpected. And we suspect Roche won’t meddle at all with the organizational magic created by the geniuses in the South Bay.
The Conficker Worm: What Happens Next?
By the time you read this we’ll likely know if we’ve been punked in what the Washington Post called ‘The World’s Longest Rickroll‘, or if the Conficker has, in fact, unleashed its cyber-nastiness. Those who want a quick primer can catch the 60 minutes broadcast on the hyper-worm, which as infected millions of Windows PCs worldwide. And if you got the WiG before April Fool’s day, the AP ran a piece on how to run clean.
DVD rental firm Netflix Defies the Naysayers
Why do we use Netflix as the first Carroll School undergrad case on strategy? The firm has continually trumped rivals. Last year the firm hit 10 million subscribers, revenues were up 13%, and in this market the stock price has doubled in the last three months. Digital downloads present a challenge (and Blockbuster just linked a deal to stream, Netflix-style, over TiVo), but for a firm constantly pronounced dead by the press, it’s got more lives than an ally cat.
The Onion Visits Historic Blockbuster
Just Brilliant! Worthy to show when covering the Netflix Case!
My Dinner in Edmonds
Thanks to the wonderful students on Edmond’s 8th (Lizzy, Katherine, Stephanie, and Ji-won), who invited me back to the floor, where 20 years ago I was an RA. Also in our local press, TechTrek got front page coverage in The Heights!