--------------------
Say that again...
--------------------
"The total economy would have to make an impossible type of collapse
to reach a point where it would stop the available growth opportunities
in the Net economy."
- Barry Ariko, COO of Netscape, not doing the best job explaining Netscape's
collapse.
"We are certainly far better than Amazon in every regard. There's nothing
they do as well as us and it's going to continue to be that way."
- Jason Olim, CEO of CDNow, on the definition of hubris...
------------------------------------------
Earnings Reports, IPOs and the like
------------------------------------------
AOL, just a few months late, reports its 4th quarter net income numbers
after figuring out just how to "handle" one-time charges. In addition,
they have agreed to hire more folks in their finance group... Nortel warns
of a bad quarter... Healtheon finally sets their offering range at $6-$8...
Michael Dell selling a lot of shares in Dell... TicketMaster Online and
CitySearch by themselves aren't ready to IPO, but together... HP offering
buyout to 2,500 employees (generally, not a good sign)... Barnesandnoble.com
expecting to raise $100 million in its IPO... PC Connection lost nearly
50% of their market cap after issuing a profit warning. In it, they
blamed Intel (okay, that's just dumb)... PeopleSoft had an interesting
week: first they rose a nice bit on the announcement that they'd be added
to the S&P 500, and then collapsed under downgrades... CBSMarketWatch
to go public... Symatnec to lay off nearly 100 employees... Louts is laying
off employees and restructuring... Cyberian Outpost reported better than
expected earnings... Vignette to go public (as their story server seems
to be showing up everywhere)... Epiphany apparently has closed their second
round of financing... Siebel to be added to the S&P MidCap 400... Micron
Technology posts a big loss, but not nearly as big as expected. Meanwhile,
Micron Electronics, which owns Micron Technology, posted better than expected
earnings...
------------------------------------------------
Rumors, Conspiracies etc. of the week...
------------------------------------------------
Intel looking into buying a stake in Micron Technology... AT&T
looking to buy IBM's Global Network operations... AOL and Time Warner talking
about a $2 million deal that would put People magazine online exclusively
through AOL (now, that's not a very "sharing" attitude from AOL, is it?)...
Massive internal political struggles going on at Infoseek concerning the
new Go.com... Not a new one, but people are still talking about Lucent
picking up Ascend... So, that Neilsen study that showed people who use
the Internet watch more TV was funded by a cable TV company, which might
explain why it contradicted an earlier Nielsen study, funded by AOL, which
stated the opposite...
--------------------------
News you could do without
--------------------------
AOL to distribute RealPlayer with its new software and everyone goes
crazy. Some media outlets (of course) claim it's a huge strike at
Microsoft (while most everyone else yawns - as they should - out of boredom)...
Of course, AOL also has decided to distribute Macromedia's Flash and Shockwave
(so, basically, AOL is doing a good thing in distributing the plugins that
everyone uses, and people consider this news. Amazing)... Intel and
Kodak reveal the details of their digital imagining pact (and it's nothing
special - if you ignore the fact they're spending gobs of money on a product
unlikely to win too much support)... ZD renames its online shopping site
computershopper.com (very creative)... IDT is lowering Net2Phone rates
(oh, is that a pin dropping? No, it's just IDT's margins)... Gannett
buys into Big Entertainment Inc... GM trying to sell cars online... Microsoft
says it sees competition from Linux, and Linux nuts go crazy (hey, look,
they need to say that to make the government shut up, so I wouldn't think
too much of it)... Oh my, Hotbot has been portalized... ESPN and Broadcast.com
team up... MSN debuts their own communities (my, my, nearly a month behind
Yahoo! and Excite, tsk tsk)... Expedia agrees to have AmEx as their "featured"
card (how much did AmEx pay for the honor?)... PointCast 2.6 best new features:
it's smaller than older versions... K-Tel just now discovering that going
online isn't as easy as they planned... AOL to "upgrade" CompuServe (I
wonder what CompuServe users think of this)... Oracle resists handing over
some documents subpoenaed by Microsoft and wins. At the same time
two professors are trying to resist a similar subpoena for notes from a
book they have been writing about Netscape... Bug found in Netscape...
The FCC shoots down Ameritech and US West's plans to work with Qwest, and
thereby deny them a chance to enter the long-distance market... Don Tapscott
says "E-Business Communities" will replace the virtual corporation (do
you think these folks spend most of their time sitting around trying to
come up with catchy phrases in the hopes of getting press coverage?)...
Netscape's chief scientist leaves to join a startup... Bell Atlantic to
restructure... Amazon and YahooMail both have fairly long outages this
week (coincidence?)... Germans planning a one-day "Internet boycott" to
force rates down on Internet access... Microsoft to sell dictionaries (giving
credence to the suggestion that they are even trying to take over the English
language)... The Netly News is no more (finally)... Companies from around
the world to hold a meeting next week on how to protect users from spam...
The Washington Post and the L.A. Times are suing the Free Republic for
archiving articles from both newspapers without permission... Ameritrade
to switch to email trade confirmations over snail mail and expects to save
$300,000... Compaq has plans to keep using Alphas in high powered machines
even after Merced is released (tough call on that one, eh?)... Scott McNealy
"only" received $1.7 million in compensation this year, nearly a million
less than last year... FTC looks to expand the Intel investigation... Reporters
complain that whited-out pages in Microsoft anti-trust case make it difficult
for them to know what's going on (well, duh, that's the point)... The Senate
passed a bill that limits the liability of corporations dealing with Y2K
problems... Baan pulls an Oracle and offers an outsourcing solution for
small businesses... Microsoft Exchange has pulled ahead of Lotus Notes
in sales...
------------
Surprises:
------------
Symantec buying Intel's anti-virus software business (what anti-virus
software business?)... Peapod announces a 3-year deal with the HomeArts
Network (who apparently believe that Peapod will still exist in three years)...
Anti-spamming bill was actually signed in California, and spam (for the
most part) will become illegal as of January 1 (no, I don't believe it
will work)... The US delays handing over domain name registration capabilities
for one week to prevent chaos (and we are to expect that everyone will
get their act together in that one week)... IBM and AT&T to handle
BancOne's telecom network... Sony and Toyota teaming up in Japan to compete
against NTT to handle data communications for businesses... The National
Cable Television Association is hoping to provide net access to all US
public libraries... HP leaps into SGI's market with high-end graphics machines
that look fairly impressive... SightSound.com says it has the patents on
music and video downloads (has someone thought of buying the patent office
a clue?)... CMG buys into ragingbull.com, a site run by 3 college students...
Platinum Entertainment and the Music Connection Corp. have partnered to
offer customizable CDs for sale on line... Motorola seems all over the
place these days. Its latest move is to get into online interactive
radio at radiowave.com... Despite nearly every press report expecting easy
passage of the Senate Internet tax bill, it was decisively defeated...
NOW supports software filters in public libraries...
-------------------------------
(Mis)Uses of Technology:
-------------------------------
Live performance of Rod Stewart ("Three Hours of ALL ROD, ALL THE TIME")
on rodstewartlive.com (if it's only for 3 hours, how is it all the time,
and better yet, does anyone want to watch Rod Stewart on the computer for
any amount of time?)... Turns out the report of a hack into the Pentagon's
site was greatly exaggerated (it was just a simulation, apparently)...
Pet blessings over the Internet (must... resist... urge... to... comment)...
Graduate students at West Virginia University are now expected to submit
their dissertations and theses electronically, as the professors apparently
can't be bothered with any more of this human interaction stuff...
----------
Studies:
----------
Netscape's browser share still falling, Microsoft's still rising according
to IDC (whose analyst mistakenly described the shift as "dramatic")...
Odyssey Research has found that consumer awareness in Excite and Infoseek
has been increasing faster than awareness in Yahoo! (considering the fact
that nearly 80% of people were already aware of Yahoo, it didn't have very
far to go)... The Internet Industry Almanac is predicting 3 times as many
Internet users by 2000 (assuming we can still turn our computers on in
2000)... Another study by Odyssey Research has found that many more people
are satisfied with AOL than in the past (meaning either they have improved,
or they've gotten better at brainwashing people into believe this is the
best it will ever get)... Greenfield Online has discovered that more people
are shopping online now than they were at the beginning of the year (damn
useful, these studies)... Meanwhile the OECD has released a report saying
that e-commerce is overhyped and represents only a tiny portion of overall
world commerce (which the optimist translates into "opportunity", rather
than a "disturbing report")... Add to this the new Zona report that says
almost a third of online shoppers find it very difficult to shop online,
and it makes you wonder... ST Microelectronics predicts that the semiconductor
market will rebound next year... I'm almost ashamed to put this in here,
but according to NetPartners, employees reading the Starr Report online
cost companies more than $450 million (I don't even want to start on the
reasons why this is perhaps one of the stupider studies ever done)... Gomez
Advisors has rated the various travel websites, and puts TheTrip.com safely
at the top of the list (interestingly, Microsoft's Expedia comes in at
a fairly poor eight place)... Market acceptance for DVD happening faster
than for PCs or home video (according to DVD companies, of course)...
-----------
Overhype
-----------
Motorola's VoxML... Microsoft launching local versions of MSN in 24
countries... Intel and Netscape investing in Red Hat, and the resulting
media storm over Linux in general... Netscape "Tuneup for IE" seen as both
a new strategy for luring IE users, and as an implicit acceptance that
IE is catching them in market share. Of course, less hype was put
forth about Microsoft's next version of FrontPage, which includes better
support for viewing with Netscape's browser...
--------------
Predictions:
--------------
The success/bitching/moaning/complaining created by Michael Wolff's
tell-all book "Burn Rate" is going to create a ton of poorly written, annoying,
and generally pointless "tell-all" books by disgruntled Silicon Valley
workers...
------------------------
Too much free time:
------------------------
Okay, this story came to me multiple times from multiple sources, and
it took me about a week of partial readings before I made it through the
whole thing, but it's worth it: http://www.cardhouse.com/rocketcar/ROCKIT.HTML
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