--------------------
Say that again...
--------------------
"I suggested that it wasn't helpful to any of their goals or our goals
to have software that had incompatibilities and was low quality and broke."
- Bill Gates, you know who he is. Do you think he said this with
a straight face?
"I don't want you to say I said it's ridiculous, but, whatever."
- Francis Gaskins, financial analyst, on EarthWeb's IPO. I'd
like to hear Francis' comments about theGlobe's IPO...
"Prior to the development of the Internet, airline industry pricing
was borderline stupid."
- Julius Maldutis, analyst at CIBC Oppenheimer. Implying that,
thanks to the Internet, they've gone over the border?
---------------
Apologies
---------------
Took an unscheduled two-week break there. Sorry 'bout that.
These things happen. Should be back on a regular schedule this week,
though, if Comdex proves to be as painful as expected, I may have to recover.
Also, it seems that the "subscribe" mechanism on the web page was down
for about half a day this week. Of course, those affected probably
won't be able to read this, so I'll stop whining about it.
------------------------------------------
Earnings Reports, IPOs and the like
------------------------------------------
K-Tel makes a deal with Microsoft, following on last week's deal with
Playboy, and the stock (of course) shoots through the roof. Oh, but
then they state that they need "substantial" investments to keep going,
and the stock collapses again... Meanwhile, the folks at Playboy Enterprises
report that their online revenues doubled last quarter, but their losses
quadrupled (of course, this is excellent, I'm sure, according to the new
rules of internet company finance)... Oracle bought Concentra for $43 million
(a bit more than twice their market cap)... Dell has a great quarter, but
Wall Street isn't totally impressed... Okay, I admit that I might have
slept through a couple of those accounting classes back at school, but
could *someone* who stayed awake please explain to me how "new accounting
rules" could change the acquisition charge that Motorola chalked up for
acquiring Starfish Software to drop from $117 million to $18 million.
Thanks...
------------------------------------------------
Rumors, Conspiracies etc. of the week...
------------------------------------------------
Creative Technology to launch a hostile bid for 3Dfx... Borders to
drop out of the online commerce race?... Sega, as if they didn't have enough
problems, is having production problems with their new Dreamcast console,
and expect to only deliver half the expected units to stores in time for
the holiday season... Joe Firmage forced out of the USWeb-soon-to-be-ReInvent
CEO spot, thanks to his new-age-spouting book...
----------------------------------------
News you should have read elsewhere
----------------------------------------
Netscape (still looking for that working business model?) steps into
online billing... E*Trade's new plans for the International Securities
Exchange... Beta copies of Office 2000 are crashing Wintel machines all
over the place... Qualcomm and Microsoft's WirelessKnowledge finally announced...
Pete Higgins, Microsoft's VP of interactive media to step down...
--------------------------
News you could do without
--------------------------
Charles Schwab, Excite, and Intuit to work together to provide you
all the financial news you could probably already get elsewhere... Meanwhile,
Bank One is paying $125 million (yes, this world *has* gone crazy) to Excite
in order to be their finance center (um, what about the previous deal?)...
AT&T WorldNet adds communities (very original, guys. What's next,
instant messaging?)... As if Globalstar doesn't have enough problems already,
they've delayed the launch of 25 satellites... News reports all week talking
about RealAudio as if they've already been beaten by Microsoft... Mecklermedia
buys jumbo.com... SGI claims they've now got the world's fastest computer
(maybe they'll use it to calculate how much longer they can stay in business)...
AOL steps into the comparison-shopping world with the purchase of PersonaLogic...
AOL increases to 14 million users... And, as if AOL hasn't made enough
noise this week, they also released the latest version of ICQ ("not ruined
yet", some say) and discuss their new ICQ "portal" (one step closer to
the grave)... iMac is CompUSA's best selling computer ever... News.com
redesigns the site to make it harder to actually read news (and while I'm
picking on news.com, I feel obliged to point out their crack investigative
reporting team turned up the following gem: "Ingram dominates Amazon supply".
Who would've guessed? Everyone?)... Compaq finally decides to sell
directly to consumers... Netcom for sale (again)...
------------
Surprises:
------------
Intel expects $2.5 billion in online revenue for Q4, and a kick ass
quarter altogether (and those stagnating shares finally move up again)...
Sales of Lotus Notes outpaced MS Exchange last quarter... Experian and
Intellipost sell bits and pieces of each other to each other... Marc Andreessen's
investment in Replay being considered news... Classified Ventures suckered
into buying Auction Universe... GeoCities buying WebRing (why did this
happen?)... Geocities to use Switchboard (is GeoCities just trying to be
nice to Internet has-beens?)... Netscape *buying* AtWeb for $92 million
(is it my imagination, or could Netscape have built the same functionality
in about a week)... Levi's decides to sell clothes directly online, pissing
off department stores... Earthlink teaming with Network Solutions (okay,
this one seems questionable on the ethics spectrum)... iSyndicate gets
funding (if *they* can get funding, perhaps techdirt should try to)...
Microsoft claims Intel bullied customers (pot calling kettle... nah...)...
Intel investing in Be...
-------------------------------
(Mis)Uses of Technology:
-------------------------------
Audible to offer downloads of "verbatim" readings of the Wall Street
Journal at a price... Excite to use "virtual credit card wallet" (also
known as "big fat credit card security risk") to allow you to buy stuff
from multiple merchants while only entering personal info once... Funerals
online... Trying to sell a Russian space shuttle on eBay (okay, I admit,
it's pretty damn funny). Link probably won't last all that long:
http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=40868497
...
----------
Studies:
----------
The shareholders of all those e-commerce companies would like to thank
the folks behind the Dell/Harris study that showed online shopping was
going to be big this holiday season... Visa added their two cents (no,
probably a bit more) saying that holiday online shopping would boost clothing
over CDs and books as the hot category... Too bad Jupiter followed up with
their study showing that 42% of e-commerce web sites studied have crappy
customer service... But, that's okay, because Consumer Reports now says
online shopping is "OK" (thanks, guys)... IDC reports that AOL has become
"synonymous" with the Internet (amazing how much nausea one little study
can cause, yes?)... Another study from IDC says that the online brokers
will see increasing competition over the next few years... The costs to
fix your Y2K problems is going up as time runs out according to Cap Gemini...
Nielsen releases a study saying that internet access has little impact
on TV viewing (contradicting their earlier study showing that it caused
people to watch *more* TV, contradicting their earlier study saying that
it caused people to watch *less* TV)... Market Tracking International says
that digital delivery of music will be big business in the next few years
(the question is for who?)... A study from Rochester's Simon School of
Management says that paying for information on the Internet will increase...
-----------
Overhype
-----------
TheGlobe.com and EarthWeb. Read their statements. Make
your own decision. Don't look to me to say bad things about them.
I'm tired of actually *thinking* about these things, and so, apparently,
are investors... Yes, the Amazon, Barnes & Noble dueling press release
were damn funny, but then they showed up *everywhere*. For those
of you who were obviously on another planet this week:
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/981106/wa_amazon__1.html
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/981106/barnesandn_1.html
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/981106/wa_amazon__2.html
--------------
Predictions:
--------------
Too much money going after lame ideas. See above. This
is a bad sign. For the most part, I am very much an Internet optimist,
but things are just going crazy... With all the timed-specifically-to-Comdex
press releases coming out this week, nothing really big will be reported...
------------------------
Too much free time:
------------------------
How to write an apology:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/981113-000020.html
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