--------------------
Say that again...
--------------------
"I once drank three pints of beer in an hour. My rhythm didn't
match, and I was denied entry to my computer, because I was impaired."
- Gordon Ross, CEO of NetNanny. Yes, that's right, this is the
man deciding what our kids are allowed to surf, talking about their new
"biopassword" system. I wonder what gets banned after the third pint...
"The restructuring solves problems of spending money in areas we don't
have to spend money in."
- Larry Rosen, CEO of N2K, in the Industry Standard, explaining the
way business *should* be done.
"We're not going to run an ad that crashes someone's machine."
- Bob Pittman, President of AOL. Of course not: their client
software has been proven to do it effectively all by itself...
---------------------------------
iMac, uMac, we all Mac...
---------------------------------
Lots of hype over the iMac release. Lots of sales. Lots
of defects. Lots of "hey that actually *does* look kinda cool". I still stick by my call that the iMac is no savior. It's a funky
looking computer, but I still think they'd be better off starting from
scratch than trying to salvage a dying company...
-----------------------------------
Intel's Inside a lot these days...
-----------------------------------
This week had a whole slew of reports about companies that received
money from Intel. This is a bit of a change from the usual Intel
policy of "we'll give you money if you don't tell anyone about it".
What's this an indication of? Perhaps Intel is realizing that it's
in bigger trouble than it thought, and now needs to find more companies
to help push processors to the limit. The more folks know your investing,
the more folks start coming to you asking for investments...
------------------------------------------
Earnings Reports, IPOs and the like
------------------------------------------
HP is in trouble because it doesn't know how to handle investor expectations...
Dell continues to beat estimates (and they understand the market's irrational
love for stock splits)... Netscape breaks even (well, $80,000 - though
of course, if they actually paid Bark anything there would have been a
loss. I guess his lack of salary does make a difference)... Entrust
IPO'd rather quietly all things considered... Broadcast.com losing more
money than ever, but that's okay: they're an "internet" company... Lycos
beats the street as it gets closer and closer to almost profitable... NatSemi
expects to lose more money than originally expected due to weak sales...
Novell is making money (and growing revenue -- so it's not just a cost cutting
trick)...
------------------------------------------------
Rumors, Conspiracies etc. of the week...
------------------------------------------------
Fires at recently sold Motorola factories in Taiwan blamed on "disgruntled
workers"... Intel artificially creating a Pentium II shortage to make demand
look strong... id is preparing to release Quake III -- Arena in early 1999. Why didn't they get it out in time for the Christmas season? Rumor
has it that the fun folks at Intel paid them a ton of money to wait until
Katmai comes out in early 1999... Bertelsmann, who has been having lots
of trouble getting its "Books Online" online, is talking with Amazon and
Barnes & Noble about a possible "partnership"...
--------------------------
News you could do without
--------------------------
The next version of the PalmPilot is going to be smaller, faster, and
cooler (and in color)... Cisco is launching its first ever consumer ad
campaign ("Cisco Outside"?)... Excite launches its "self building" communities,
and a day later, Yahoo! claims to have the same thing -- in testing both
they seemed more than a bit buggy... Since Yahoo! can never be satisfied
to "just" match services, they announce their calendaring service as well
(seems like a great idea until your friendly neighborhood thief checks
your online calendar to see when your vacation is)... Jamaica should be
just fine concerning the Y2K deal (of course that won't be until 2004)...
Spyglass in a deal with Motorola as they attempt to see if two struggling
companies struggle better together... Pitney Bowes claims patents for PC
metering technologies (the "pay up, suckers" method of business)... Lucent
and Sun to work together on unified messaging systems... British company
fined for selling a copy of Duke Nukem to a 13-year-old... Compaq says
Alpha is better than Merced... Intel swears that Intel and Compaq are still
friendly, (nervous glance) right Compaq? (see where this is going?)...
N2K's own music label ditched for a mere $7 million charge... NT 5.0 betas
are out crashing systems everywhere - don't miss it... Netscape 4.06 is
out, but those who care have already downloaded 4.5 beta... People are
still pissed at Intel's "optimized for Intel" ad campaign... Excite names
a new President... Major Yahoo! email outage... Okay, now the press *isn't*
allowed to the MS depositions, which will be delayed for no reason, and
then maybe will be made public to the press later via videotape, but possibly
not. Get it?... @Home has service outage... ISPs don't have to pay
local phone companies access fees... Barnes & Noble to spin off its
online portion (as if anyone couldn't have called for that one)... First
Virtual, a company in search of a business model, has acquired Email Publishing
Co... Norton Utilities bug freezes Windows (I love when programs do the
opposite of what they're supposed to)... Autodesk (still around?) buys
Discreet Logic (still around???) for $530 million... AT&T not impressed
by Ciena's products (investors simply "not impressed")... Cisco buys American
Internet Corp... Shopping.com needs an "emergency" $26 million to stay
in business (hey, come to think of it, I could use an "emergency" $26 million
to stay in business as well -- any takers?)... Oracle acquires Versatility
for $1.50 a share (ouch)... Analog Devices to shut down plants due to "under
utilization"... USWeb buys Metrix Communications...
------------
Surprises:
------------
Cendant to market NetMarket to Juno customers. That's a lot of
eyeballs, but mostly eyeballs that have chosen a "free" service. Are they likely to be the type willing to pay for a service? We'll
see... Westwood Studios sold to Electronic Arts (is there any reasons most
reports focused on the fact that Westwood was owned by Spelling Entertainment
Group more than what the company did?)... Liquid Audio gets lots of new
money from lots of big name folks with money... Java 1.2 delayed by another
2 months (at this point, I don't think Sun really should be pumping vaporware
if it can't deliver)... Bristol Technologies made a lot of news this week
filing anti-trust charges against Microsoft. MS, true to form, basically
did the T2 evil finger wag back at them, as they prepare to crush them
into mere pulp with their expensive lawyers... Excite's senior VP and co-founder
is selling $2.8 million worth of shares, just as the company was beginning
to look interesting. Does he know something we don't?... P&G
holds an "Internet Advertising Summit"... Both Hearst and CBS are interested
in taking a stake in iVillage. Could it be that people are realizing
women use the Internet, too?...
-------------------------------
(Mis)Uses of Technology:
-------------------------------
Activision is bringing back Space Invaders... The McSmartCard... Racing
to be the "first" on the Internet to do something stupid. Last week
I mentioned the open-heart surgery, which was planned for this past Wednesday. Well, some other rebel doctor went ahead and did a different open-heart
surgery on the web on *Tuesday*. This can't be a good thing...
----------
Studies:
----------
USA Today is making nearly 30% of its revenue from e-commerce (anyone
have an idea how this effects editorial control?)... According to IDC,
the fact that there will be more ways to access the internet will lead
to more e-commerce (amazing what they think up these days)... 17% of all
stock trades were done online last year, according to Piper Jaffray, though
others think the number is higher... Forrester predicts online ad revenue
will grow to $15 billion in the next five years... Media Metrix has released
their latest "no surprise there" rankings: Yahoo! and AOL continue to lead...
Here come more intrusive ads: a study by Ipsos-ASI has proven that people
react better to bigger, more intrusive ads (personally, I think the "reaction"
is to click away from them, but that could just be me)... At Plan has shown
that there are plenty of senior citizens on the Internet, and they have
money to spend... According to an NYU professor's study, the rich have
better access to the Internet...
-----------
Overhype
-----------
We've passed the 500 day mark to Y2K... IBM's Cobra computer...
--------------
Predictions:
--------------
We're getting to the point where investors are a little too dumb. If Reuters can get away with a report where they simply compare the *price*
of Amazon's stock to B&N and consider it a direct comparison, and no
one catches this, we've got problems...
------------------------
Too much free time:
------------------------
For all you paranoids out there (you know who you are -- and so do they):
http://www.nashville.net/~police/risk/murder.html
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