The Week in Geek™ – Dec. 14, 2009
Barbarians at the Gateway (and Just About Everywhere Else): The Security Chapter
The latest draft chapter in my free, online textbook is now up. Version “1.0” of the book will be released in Jan. Those wanting a dead-tree version can buy it through Flatworld Knowledge for less than the cost of the ink cartridge it’d consume to print. Thanks to all of the beta testers who have offered kind words & encouragement. Much more content is on the way!
Google focuses attention on the Here and Now
How to search Google? Type, of course, and if you use the mobile app, you can speak your query. But now using Google Goggles (demo video) you can take a photo of a landmark, store, or a product, and Google Goggles will attempt to use computer vision algorithms to identify the subject, then return relevant search results. More than 100,000 businesses will get a special QR bar code decal for their door. Snap a pick with your phone & the businesses Google Place site will pop up in the browsers. Android phones with GPS will also get a “What’s Nearby” link. You may have also noticed the ‘real time’ web feeds that started showing up recently. Parnterships with Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace have allowed Google to index the freshest feeds from these services, displayed about half-way down the search results page.
Google to do Rich Media Ads in Search
The Search Sovereign will also be rolling out video and picture advertisements in search. The chart shows why (expanded in article) – Rich Media / Video ads are simply far more effective at driving purchase intent (and hence, they’ll command top dollar). Google has experimented with promoted videos, call-to-action overlays, and pre-roll ads, and (as we mentioned last week) has partnered with TiVo in order to get access to data on TiVo’s 1.58 million subscribers, in order to refine television ad serving (yes, Google does that, too).
Boxee Unveils Public Hardware Beta
Earlier this semester BC Alum Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital shared time with our MI021 students. Investments include Twitter, Tumblr, and Boxee, which unveiled a new, beta version of its open-source software, a platform that promises to be a net video integration hub. Using a simple menu system, you can browse by content partner (Netflix, Major League Baseball, Wired, but Hulu continues to sit this out), plus play music and videos from the service or your PC. Users can drop all this content into a single queue, even lining up video uncovered and bookmarked while web surfing Also announced, the Boxee Box, a <$200 set top box to be demoed at CES & available Q2’10. NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts showed results of a Boxee Apps contest, including Qurious, which shows all sorts of data when action is paused – actors, the music that’s playing, and more.
The Rise and Fall of MySpace
Rupert Murdoch spent $580 million for MySpace because “young people are watching less television and reading fewer newspapers”. And the deal initially looked killer. MySpace once was the most trafficked web property, and the firm quickly inked a billion dollar ad-deal with Google. In 15 months following the acquisition revenue grew 50 fold. But the firm is now in free fall. It’s cut 40% of its staff, closed International offices, and now is about 1/3 the size of Facebook. This Financial Times’ piece reads like an autopsy of what happens when media folks lack the tech-chops and strategic vision to plot and execute. Look at the old media guys who got burned in vision & execution: Terry Semel (Yahoo), Gerry Levin (AOL/TW), Barry Diller (IAC). Looks like the real winners are the geeks (Jobs, Brin/Page, Zuckerberg).
Comcast-NBC Deal – The Future’s in Content
Comcast has a pipe into about a quarter of the homes in the US. Now it’s got one of the big four networks, a host more cable channels, and a major movie studio. The $13.75 billion Comcast ponied up for a controlling stake also puts it in the theme park business. Curious this happens during the same week that another big pipe & content deal, AOL/Time Warner, broke up for good. All suspect a better result for the Philly-based cable giant.
Intel Hopes 48 Core Chip Will Solve New Challenges
It’s an experimental chip, but it boasts 1.3-billion transistors and 48 core, offering up about 10 to 20 times the processing power found inside current Intel processors. And it can operate on as little as 25 watts, or at 125 watts when running at full tilt. That’s about the juice required by just two household light bulbs. With a chip like this, you could imagine a cloud “datacenter of the future which will be an order of magnitude more energy efficient than what exists today”. Caveat – it’s not a product, but it does hint at what may come. Intel will give dozens of these systems to industry and academic partners so they can work on the real trick — figuring out how best to program the thing.
Game On: Time Inc. Shows of Tabletized Sports Illustrated
AOL may be gone, but Time Warner is showing off the future of the magazine. Check out this super-slick must-view concept video, showing the ‘magazine’ of Sports Illustrated delivered via a theoretical tablet. Video is embedded and the static content becomes a rich multimedia experience. Look for games, in-tablet advertising purchasing, integration with fantasy leagues, and more. It’ll be fascinating to see what happens to production costs in this model (they’ll go up), distribution costs (they’ll plummet), and ads, subscriptions, and other revenue models (the Google rich-media #s above bode well).
Beware Social Media Snake Oil
Some cautionary examples on the over-selling of Social Media from BusinessWeek. Social Media isn’t a cure-all, but it is an inevitable dynamic firms will need to engage with. For insights on crafting the Social Media Awareness And Response Team (SMART), see the Nov. HBR article, and slides & podcasts from our MI021 Social Media lecture (apologies for the rapid pace – we were time-crunched by semester’s end).
Best Buy Wants Your Junk
Of course, Best Buy is a believe in Social Media. The CEO post questions to an employee site called “Water Cooler”, tracks consumer sentiment on Facebook and Twitter, and tweets as BBYCEO (claiming all this helps him in the role of “Chief Listener”). Since March, Best Buy has also started taking your e-Waste. Consumers can bring in up to two items per day per household (appliances & TVs bigger than 32” aren’t eligible for free recycling). Best Buy will share revenue with contracting recycling partners. It’s not yet a profit center, but the firm hopes to eventually break event (remember there are more precious metals per-pound in electronics than in mined ore). The real winner is in generating foot traffic – drop off the junk & load up with new stuff from the register. Best Buy also purchased DealTree, a website to help you sell off your old gear to make room for the new.