Technically illiterate judges making the patent system worse: Genes can be patented because they are separate form DNA?
Academics to build Gigabet net
Get ready for WiFi with a 60 mile range! Now if we could just get our corrupt government to make more of our public spectrum available for public use.
Fruitphone maker to replace potentially suicidal humans with robots.
Burma is now the #1 source of attack traffic.
As we predicted, Google TV crashes and burns.
Google’s open CODEC could face a dozen patent challenges.
To give you some background, I not only play the markets but I co-founded an angel organization in Chicago that invests in start ups. We are starting to see a lot of deal flow that involve some aspect of social media. I subscribe to some angel email services from all over the country, and I see lots of companies today that want money to invade the social media space.The answer on the bubble, it depends. I could make an argument that Facebook ($FB) at $100 billion is cheap. It is a legacy platform that other businesses are building off of. Facebook is sticky, even if you think it’s a time waster. A lot of this social media stuff just becomes background noise. There is so much of it you tune it all out and go with what you are used to. I think that is the appeal of Google+ for a lot of folks, you can tune out a lot of extracurricular noise.
Certain companies are trying to reinvent Facebook. They are riffing on specialized aspects of Facebook and compartmentalizing them. Small little apps that segment the market. Many of them are receiving money from angel investors. The bulk of them could be considered a bubble.
Companies that I like in the social media space integrate and work across platforms. They take the best aspects of social media and quantify it-or make it easier for us to interact with social media. It’s very hard to know who those companies are-or if you do invest, how they will pivot and grow. Help Scout is an example of a company that I would want to make an investment in if they applied to Hyde Park Angels. One of our companies, ReTel, developed the site favo.rs that looks really cool.
So is Carter right that social media as a internet genre in a large run up bubble that is going to pop? I can’t hazard a guess. A lot of these social platforms I don’t know how far they have gotten to date.
Take Twitter. Its Hot, with a cap H. But I shake my head. You look at the traffic and anywhere from a third to a half include some tiny url link. So that implies they want to say more. So why pick `that` platform to say it when the container is ill suited for the content? Eyeballs. I remember when the big I was bleeding out of the universities and going commercial email was the Hot Ticket. Then as a medium it became part of the backdrop of everyday life. The thing is it retained its usefulness. I don’t know if Twitter will.
Lets take another service, FaceBook. Me I avoid it like the plaque. The user is the only thing on sale on that platform. That reason alone I will pass. But I can see the utility of it for others. Its like a nonstop class reunion on steroids. For the most part you are free to personalize the sandbox and your message can be as long as you want.
Long term though? Many Soc Med newbies will die on the vine. I’ll put my money elsewhere.
Walmart wants in on the video streaming biz. It failed miserably in music downloads and DVD rentals, but with it’s clout it could have an impact on the market. Like MP3′s and discs in the mail, I’m betting this will be a short lived venture.
Just like Wallyworld, Amazon’s sales are up with falling profits. If you sell to consumers, competition is very tough for the few $$ they have left to spend. Maybe Bezos & Co could pump profits selling cloud services to Vivek Kundra & Co?
Google complains about flaws in the patent system. No trolling revenue at Searchzilla?
DHS’ latest Chicken Little scare: Stuxnet clones targeting US.
Only fruity books are allowed in Mr Jobs’ orchard. B&N drops out.
Fox to require subscription / viewer authentication for new shows. Bittorrent traffic likely to surge.
AT&T must have put Senator Franken in coach for the for the flight to its last sponsored retreat. Franken wants T Mobile take over blocked.
Yes, the latest Debian Conf is on its way. Its in what was formally Hungary before the split up, Banja Luka, in Republic of Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Could not afford the airfare this trip?
Well be not in despair. Thru the graciousness of HP and Linaro live streams are available! Check it out here — http://debconf11.debconf.org/watch.xhtml
There is one on PGP that is coming up soon. Many of the others are tomorrow. Check the schedule AND the room, there are two streams.
Digital Publishing is taking the world by storm. Indie publishers are crawling out of the woodwork. Fact it looks like a veritable Oki Sooners YeHaw! to stake a claim. There will be some losers, both big publishers and indies alike as it plays out. But it sure looks healthy.
But there is a problem and it has nothing to do with the content providers generally. It has to do with ePub and its sister .mobi. But before we get to the smack-down lets run around the carousel and what they got right. –
Its a reasonable list. But the real world is going to cream ePub pretty severely. So the question is why? One simple answer –
The world does NOT want another etext standard!
ePub has been successful to date as there has not been a viable alternative and that the whole web world was in flux with the infighting for-against-around HTML5. Well that battle is about done. What is left is minor skirmishes about viable container formats for video. Even Adobe seems consigned to the outcome. Only Google battles it.
The second reason for survival has been the divergence in the devices themselves. Most of the primary eReaders have been pushed by publishers. Principally Amazon with Kindle and Barnes and Noble with Nook. They essentially being walled garden affairs. Amazon going to the point of having their own .mobi format for their devices. So long as there were no competing devices, all was well.
Well that will disappear this year. This Christmas I suspect will be the Year of the Tablet. The likes of the Xoom and Toshiba are selling quite well. Carriers are loving the data stream revenues all the way to the bank. Enough that they are subsidizing the purchase price with a contract. Mfrs out of China are cranking out more. The base line cost of a tablet will be in the $99 bracket at Christmas and with capabilities that the $399 models have today. If you are still with me at this point you smell the word I am going to use next is just around the next paragraph.
Convergence. Both in software and hardware. Fact the hardware side will be driven by the software only to be reflected back. You see, a great many of the current Mfrs are using some variant of WebKit. Its the preferred development engine to design browsers. And ironically several eReaders. Android has it, Kindle has it, Feel the Force Luke…. [snap] The point is, if I am a tablet hardware dude am I going to listen to BS that I have TWO layout engines in my converged design?! Perish the thought. The Suit is going to side with the hardware dude and tell the software dink to come up with some CSS code or other to use one layout engine for both the browser and the ePub reader. So the next generation of tablets come eReaders will be using a HTML5 aware layout engine. The base difference of many will be a link rel swap of what base CSS suite they are using for the display. All handled very nicely in a javascript call.
Once that happens its curtains for ePub the standard. Long live ePub the container! Which brings us to the end game. The whole .epub is nothing but a .zip file with a different name. It acts as the bucket for all the subcomponents contained within. Ironic when you think about it. .epub files being implemented like .mht files are today for containing full website volumes. Once the content providers see that they can access the full capability of the layout engine the restrictions will be ignored. That is where we are headed. In a converged future .epub will contain it all, text, sound, video using HTML5 wrappers with the necessary javascript, AV codecs and yes DRM. Which at that point is it an .epub file or an enhanced .mht file? Go further. Is .epub on steriods the perfect way to deliver a video game? Or a combined book + movie package?
You be the judge.
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