January 17 -23, 2000
from the Up-To-Date dept
Happily Haphazard. This week's Up-To-Date has a whole bunch of earnings reports (it seems as though just about everyone is beating estimates - which says something about the estimators). Also, lots of new lawsuits this week (and I even left out a bunch) as well as silly things up for auction. Click below for this week's Up-To-Date newsletter, or just subscribe to the right...********************************************************************* UP-TO-DATE ********************************************************************* The not always serious, not always weekly update on the High-Tech Industry January 17 - January 23, 2000 ********************************************************************* Happily Haphazard -------------------------------- Random Notes -------------------------------- Up-To-Date is still here and it's still not spam. No one 'fessed up to reporting me as spam, but I haven't been shot by my ISP yet, so I'm hoping all is well. And, for those of you who claimed I was "whining too much" about the spam episode, I know who you are too... Now, the nice news of the week is that Techdirt received a nice mention in an article in Inter@ctive Week. It's one of the more accurate descriptions of the site (haphazard being the key word), I think: http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/news/0,4164,2424098,00.html Also, Techdirt.com has been added as a content provider for Geekboys.org... --------------------- Techdirt on the Web --------------------- Techdirt Poll: We had a bit of a debate among Techdirt admins this week concerning toysrus.com and their handling of their holiday mess up. Figured it might be interesting to find out opinions of the rest of you for this week's poll question: https://www.techdirt.com/pollBooth.pl?qid=toysrus These days it's popular to write stories about the IPO process. How about the process behind actually launching a dot com? Here's the story of LetsTalk.com: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/000117/1220237_F.shtml Everyone's favorite study of the week (because none of us believe we're incompetent, so it's funny to laugh at those who are). It seems that incompetent people are less likely to realize they're incompetent (get that?): https://www.techdirt.com/articles/000118/119233_F.shtml The article that inspired this week's poll. Should we care that Toys 'R' Us messed up this holiday season? Join the debate: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/000119/1030225_F.shtml And, as always, there's plenty more stuff at https://www.techdirt.com/ updated most every weekday. -------------------- Say that again... -------------------- "It's an upscale audience that has the disposable income to pay monthly dues to health clubs. And you have them when they are totally captive, bored out of their minds, actively seeking distractions." - Tom Proulx, CEO of Netpulse, on their plans to put internet terminals on exercise equipment. "If you read it literally, he would probably have to stand in one place for three years. This would probably include refrigerators and garage door openers. Forget about a cellular phone." - Donald Randolph, attorney for finally free Kevin Mitnick, the "convicted cyberspace bandit" on the restrictions that bar Mitnick from approaching anything computer-like for 3 years. Lawyers are always good for silly quotes. "People think of Bill Shatner as the head of a starship from the future. That is a great image for the kinds of customers that we want." - Jay Walker, founder of Priceline. Once again, the punchline is too obvious. "Our industry is made up of a bunch of lemmings. When was the last time you heard an original idea from a venture capitalist?" - Andy Rachleff, Venture Capitalist for Benchmark. Of course, it's tempting to point out that even this is not an original idea... ------------------------------------------ Earnings Reports, IPOs and the like ------------------------------------------ Microsoft (of course) beat earnings estimates (though a lot of that is due to its equity portfolio and not sales - which might not be a good sign)... SGI reports a slight loss (surprising those who forgot they were still in business)... Apple beats estimates (and to celebrate they give Steve Jobs a jet and lots and lots of money in the form of stock options - what's the fun of profits if you can't squander it?)... IBM beats estimates... AMD beats estimates... AOL earnings double and beat estimates by a bit... Excite@Home breaks even (meeting analyst expectations) and Tom Jermoluk fades away a bit giving up the CEO spot to George Bell... Sun beats estimates by a bit... With all these folks beating estimates it's nice to see Lucent miss even its *revised* estimates... DoubleClick still losing money (but less than expected)... Gateway's profits fall (and can we shoot the Register editor who used the headline: "Don't Have a Cow, Man"?)... ------------------------------------------------ Rumors, Conspiracies etc. of the week... ------------------------------------------------ Been mentioned in too many places already (and NTK gets the nod for being the first one I saw to mention it) but Microsoft, Apple, and (soon enough) AOL-Time Warner will all be run by guys named Steve (if you can't come up with a good conspiracy theory out of that one then you need an imagination upgrade)... The US Department of Justice has signed a contract to use WordPerfect instead of MS Office (does this disprove part of their monopoly claim?)... Drugstore.com, which made such a big deal of its partnership with Rite Aid, is apparently working on getting itself out of the deal... ---------------------------------------- News you should have read elsewhere ---------------------------------------- Microsoft (of course) tries to explain why it's not a monopoly by taking statements out of context... BulkRegister messes up in bulk: they apparently released domains for sale after they'd already been bought resulting in multiple owners of the same domains (oops)... Ah, now here's a fun one. I always enjoy when a company pops up suddenly remembering that they've patented something that everyone is already using, and then tries to collect royalties. The latest is Geoworks (reinventing themselves yet again) claiming they have patents on some important WAP components... RIAA finally gets around to suing MP3.com for their new site... -------------------------- News you could do without -------------------------- The Supreme Court says that the fees Network Solutions used to charge were not an illegal tax, and thus the country has lost out on an insane amount of money for domains registered over the past two years... WebTV's founder, Steve Perlman's new gig is an incubator (these are getting way too popular)... AOL and Gateway to jointly sell DSL service... Priceline's YardSale finally comes on line the same week that Half.com (yes, the company that convinced a town to change its name to Half.com) announces that they too want to create yard sales on the net (never realized there was such big money in dolls with missing heads and old board games)... Beyond.com's CEO finally steps down, as the company lays off 20% of its workforce (and, oh yeah, despite their attempts at consumer branding they're now a strictly B2B company - it's great to see when companies shift strategies to remain buzzword compliant)... New York Times is building its own online community (they're just trying to take on Techdirt)... Engage, an online advertising company owned by CMGI, buys Flycast and Adsmart, two more online advertising companies owned by CMGI (this announcement serves no purpose)... RealNetworks to allow music subscriptions (no, stop, don't call it push technology!)... AOL 5.0 disables other online services. AOL says they don't care (and, I'd bet they don't, really)... IcraveTV.com is finally sued by TV networks for rebroadcasting copyrighted programming... About.com bought ExpertCentral - one of about a thousand similarly named "expert" sites (it's tempting at this point to tie this story to the study of incompetent people... Rambus getting lawsuit happy... ------------ Surprises: ------------ Ask Jeeves thinking about setting up a site for porn searches (borders on overhype)... MGM and Blockbuster in a deal to allow people to download movies over the internet... The online version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" has been played over 8 million times despite there being no cash prizes (perhaps this belongs under too much free time)... Microsoft invests $100 million in VerticalNet, which will use Microsoft technologies... Canada trying to set up a tribunal for settling web disputes and most people ignore them... Pseudo, which always seems to be a company set up to throw parties rather than to actually build a business, has hired a real life CEO?... ------------------------------- (Mis)Uses of Technology: ------------------------------- Inktomi now claims there are more than 1 billion unique web pages on the internet (think of what that means in terms of the absolute number of ridiculously pointless web pages)... Musicmaker claims they have a patent on creating custom CDs on demand over the internet... This is sickening: Pets.com (mostly owned by Amazon.com) is now auctioning off the annoying (yes, I know everyone loves it) sock puppet from its commercials via Amazon.com Auctions... More Japanese robots!... Georgetown University auctions off spaces in a class on multimedia... The whole virtual newscaster thing (how quickly will that one disappear?)... Illegal endangered species trade on eBay... A company has created DVDs that self-destruct (no, no, no, it's not Divx)... The LA Times, in a fit of pure stupidity, will now email you stories if you pay $0.20... ---------- Studies: ---------- Online advertising revenue was well over $1 billion in the third quarter of last year according to the Internet Advertising Bureau... Nielsen/NetRatings reports that online shopping comparison sites will be the hottest internet sector this year, and as if to prove them right, online shopping comparison site mySimon convinces CNet to shell out big bucks to buy 'em (take the money and run)... Andersen Consulting study says that 88% of online buyers abandoned shopping carts at some time during the holiday shopping season... ----------- Overhype ----------- What this category was invented for: Transmeta. When the best Wired can do is discuss the food served at the launch you have to wonder... Stories about dot com commercials during the Super Bowl (yawn)... BeOS for Free (sorta)... Women.com's list of Silicon Valley's top 10 bachelors... -------------- Predictions: -------------- What's with this new trend for publicity auctions? The latest is, of course, the T-Rex skeleton. So far, the only real reason to set up such an auction is for the PR value. That can't last much longer... ------------------------ Too much free time: ------------------------ Growing up on the east coast I always thought of California as "the land where the earth shakes" and had no plans on ever living here. For those of you fortunate enough to live elsewhere, check out this next site for an idea of what you're missing: http://sridhar_h.tripod.com/calif.html ********************************************************************* Up To Date is written by Mike Masnick from whatever news he hears from whatever sources they happen to come from. It is not intended for any uses other than as one of many possible ways to follow what's going on in the hi-tech industry. I certainly wouldn't rely on it as your only source of info. And, of course, my comments may not accurately reflect reality. Finally, an explicit warning about investing: I do not, under any circumstance, consider any piece of information in this newsletter "investment advice" and neither should you. If you would like to subscribe to the email version please send an email to utd-sub@techdirt.com with "Subscribe Up-To-Date" in the subject heading. Up To Date is also available on the web at https://www.techdirt.com/uptodate/ Unsubscribing is just as easy: unsub@techdirt.com with "Unsubscribe Up-To-Date" in the subject. If you want more in depth, daily up dates, along with your own commentary head over to https://www.techdirt.com/ Comments are always welcome! Email: feedback@techdirt.com *********************************************************************
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