--------------------
Say that again...
--------------------
"You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it."
- Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun. A ton of press coverage on this
quote, but it's too good to pass up.
"I am a senior Microsoft executive. I don't deny that."
- Paul Maritz, VP at Microsoft in charge of crushing Netscape (oh,
no, no, no... that's not the case)...
------------------------------------------
Earnings Reports, IPOs and the like
------------------------------------------
Splitsville: Microsoft announces a stock split... IBM announces a stock
split... Intel announces a stock split... AOL announces a stock split...
Xerox announces a stock split (and good earnings)... Exodus announces a
stock split... Iridium loses $440 million on $186,000 in revenue
last quarter (no, go back and look at those numbers again). Meanwhile
one reading into their financial statements indicates that nearly twice
as many satellites as officially announced have failed. Plus, it
seems that they are missing their subscription goals by nearly two orders
of magnitude (ouch).. Amazon reports better than expected earnings (er...
losses). They also raised a ton of money in debt-financing... Egghead.com
doing better than expected, but worse than last year (when they actually
had stores)... AT&T matches expectations... Compaq destroys earnings
estimates... Broadcom also absolutely destroys estimates... eBay meets
expectations and is still profitable... Broadcast.com beats estimates,
but is losing more than ever... Inprise reports a loss (analysts expected
profits) and plans to layoff 20% of their workforce... Infoseek doing better
than expected, but certainly not well (and, traffic for Infoseek sites
are down, despite the launch of Go.com)... PeopleSoft lays off 430 PeoplePeople
as they miss earnings... Tut Systems has a grand IPO... More IPO filings,
including WebMD, Razorfish, and Autoweb.com...
------------------------------------------------
Rumors, Conspiracies etc. of the week...
------------------------------------------------
NBC not very happy with its deal with Snap! and looking to partner
with Yahoo, AOL or Lycos... NEC is looking for an investment from Intel...
Qualcomm looking to sell off Eudora... The decision to spin off AltaVista
was finalized only after a deal with Time Warner fell through... Yahoo
to announce a deal with CheckFree for bill payment... AT&T to buy MSN's
dial up subscribers...
----------------------------------------
News you should have read elsewhere
----------------------------------------
Yahoo first announces its advertising deal with News Corp, and people
think that's swell, but really it was just to keep media attention at bay
while they completed sucking up GeoCities for an insane premium (which
in turn drove up Xoom(.com) and TheGlobe to even more ridiculous heights)...
Everyone in privacy groups (and it seems that new privacy groups were created
*just* for this occasion) still hate Intel - especially the folks in Arizona.
They don't even calm down when Intel backs down... Compaq has finally announced
its plan to spin off AltaVista (which they claim has the best of both Yahoo!
and Amazon - and apparently of wishful thinking)...
--------------------------
News you could do without
--------------------------
Marc Andreessen to become AOL CTO (and why no mention of AOL's current
CTO?), but might not really be in charge of anything... Ericsson cutting
11,000 jobs (ouch)... Qwest becomes an ISP (as if this is a big surprise)...
AOL and Kodak's deal to offer pictures over the Internet isn't working
out as nicely as expected (turns out they can't figure out how to do it)...
Netscape launches its "users' recommendation directory" (wow, you know,
that looks just as useless as NewHoo)... New York City investigating eBay
(who promises to cooperate with Giuliani's goons)... Lycos is going to
remain independent (they claim) but they're still talking to every major
media company and (okay, fine) are sorta (maybe) for sale (just a bit).
One thing's for certain, though, now that the stock's run up nicely, CEO
Bob Davis has dumped quite a few shares. Lycos also brought on an
old 3Com exec (to help drag them down?)... Broadcast.com to broadcast ABC
affiliates (not nearly as big news as their decision to buy the flopping
NetRoadshow)... Special thanks to IEG and Seth for keeping the web interesting:
while canceling their online sex change at the last minute, they did announce
plans to sell Viagra online... FCC explains to Apple that $35 per phone
call isn't exactly what customers thought was meant when signing up for
*free* technical support... E-Trade has decided to increase capacity (this
requires a press release?)... Priceline adds mortgages to its suite of
services that most people don't use... USWeb/CKS finds out that Reinvent
(their proposed new name) is already taken, and so they announce that USWeb/CKS
has too much brand value (obviously) and must be kept as is... The SEC
says it's receiving more complaints than it can process about online brokers...
HP, SGI, and Dell all plan on selling machines with Linux pre-installed...
Advantix and Tickets.com merge... Following @Home's announcement to buy
Excite, AOL sold off the 5 million Excite shares it owned (nice profit)...
Sightsound.com to get into the extortion-by-patent business... Sony finally
gets around to suing Connectix for making a PlayStation emulator (get over
it)... Women.com merges with Hearst New Media... Compaq finally creates
a "compaq.com" division to sell products over the Internet... Varsitybooks.com
forgot one thing in their business plan: once they drew attention to the
idea, companies like Barnesandnoble.com would do the exact same thing (and,
now, they have)... AT&T Worldnet discovering that scaling isn't as
easy as they thought... Yahoo message board day traders claim (in such
graphic ways) that they understand the market better than Greenspan (see
what the Internet has provided us with the ability to do?)...
------------
Surprises:
------------
Snap.com's comparison shopping feature (which uses Inktomi's spotless
technology) only turned up four "alternative" albums available for sale
in the world, and three of them are out of stock. Also, it can't
seem to find *any* accounting software in existence - if you went by that
you'd think there was a huge business opportunity, yes? (And you *wonder*
why MSN dropped Inktomi for Alta Vista)... Microtune puts an entire TV
tuner on a chip (while big companies with lots of money ask how the hell
they pulled it off)... Someone actually spent $1.1 million to buy the domain
bingo.com... AT&T finally comes to its senses and agrees to offer wireless
long distance at 10 cents a minute... Delta drops its plan to charge more
for tickets not purchased over the web... Sony looking to allow downloadable
music on the web (but for minidiscs, not MP3)... Indonesia accused of attacking
an Irish ISP for hosting the East Timor .tp top level domain... Qwest and
AOL in a $13 million deal for Qwest to provide "connectivity services"...
CDNow founders Jason and Matthew Olim publish what appears to be a ghostwritten
story about their rise to fame: "The CDNow Story: Rags to Riches on the
Internet". The book is available on Amazon.com, who is hoping to
make the sequel "Riches to Rags"... Diamond gets into the portal business...
Inprise, which used to be known as Borland, has decided to bring back the
Borland name (read this to mean confusion in the upper ranks, and probably
some other bad things as well)...
-------------------------------
(Mis)Uses of Technology:
-------------------------------
Synchronizing Internet clocks via GPS to make data flow more efficient...
Auctioning patents online... Medical smart cards that look on the web for
your medical records (why is it that I see my medical records showing up
on an AltaVista search?)... PSINet buys the rights to name the Baltimore
Raven's stadium at Camden Yards (yet another telecom or telecom related
company wasting money on sports stadiums)... Man dialing 10-10-321 (which
promises discounted calls) was charged $2.35 for a one-minute call... Commercial
in the UK specifically designed to please cats (time to import more American
shows, boys)... File your taxes through E-Trade... New security features
on the ThinkPad including smart cards and location dependent abilities...
Implanting microchips "packed with chemicals" to avoid having to get shots
in the future...
----------
Studies:
----------
Price for ad spots on the web? Falling. As if this is a
big surprise? When even the big sites are selling out less than 30%
of their inventory, yet are trying to get *more* traffic, something's gotta
give... Media Metrix list of top traffic e-commerce sites has Amazon.com
in *second*. Bluemountainarts.com comes in first (but are they making
any money off those page views?)... Securities Data released a misleading
study that says the most Net IPOs come out of NYC. Now, I love NYC
(and miss it quite a lot), but let's face it, The Valley is where it's
at. The study neglects to combine the different cities in Silicon
Valley, and when we see that Santa Clara and San Jose are number 2 and
3 on the list, I'd bet you can figure out which area really has the most
Net IPOs. I don't see Hoboken or Yonkers on the list... Momentum
Securities Management Co. has done a study showing most day traders lose
money for their first few months... IDC reports that PC shipments increased
12% in 1998, over 1997 (if I remember correctly, there is a steady decreasing
trend in year to year growth)...
-----------
Overhype
-----------
Jesse Berst claims there may be 40,000 "cyber-stalkers" online *right
now*!!! (Gee, Jesse, how would you know that?)... Does Chris Hassett have
some weird obsession with "points"? The founder and ex-leader of
*Point*Cast (buy low, sell high, Chris, sell high) received a ton of press
this week as he gets ready to launch Prize*Point*, a site that will give
prizes to people who play games online (wait, wait, don't tell me, you're
hiring Yoyodyne's work force?)...
--------------
Predictions:
--------------
Seems a bit late in the game, but everyone's going to start claiming
that 1999 is the year of the high tech acquisition, and then be considered
geniuses for picking up on the obvious trend that most people noticed a
year ago... More ridiculous lawsuits to be brought against the companies
who have money or stock. This week Estée Lauder sued Excite,
because Fragrance Counter bought the search term "Estée Lauder"
on Excite's site... With the filing of Razorfish to go public watch for
a slew of other "online interactive agencies" (or whatever they chose to
call themselves these days) to file. Watch for Agency.com, IXL, Organic
and others to at least watch Razorfish's acceptance into the world of the
public Internet companies...
------------------------
Too much free time:
------------------------
Over the past few months finding good sites for the "Too much free
time" section has been a bit more difficult, and quality has certainly
been questionable at times. This is why I'm happy to bring you the
following site, which seems to have been created exactly for my purposes.
Please, please, please, only view the following if your computer has sound
enabled (it's essential): http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Bluffs/4157/hampdance.html |
