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Still on hiatus (no, really)
----------------------------
Okay, so I (that would be me: Mike) am still on hiatus, but we have
David Lundell (delundel@techdirt.com) to thank for this excellent guest
issue. Please feel free to send both of us feedback (feedback@techdirt.com)
and let us know what you think (i.e., should he really quit his day job
and let me just edit these things). While David put a small note
at the end pointing out that he wrote this issue, I just wanted to thank
him for making sure that my hiatus was more of a semi-hiatus. Still
no promises on how many issues will be produced over the next few weeks,
but keep the feedback (and subscriptions) coming.
If anyone else is interested in writing guest issues at a later date,
please send email. Okay, enough of my babbling from beyond. Onward
to David's work:
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Say that again...
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"Ultimately, we said we would rather own 40 percent of No. 1 than 50
percent of No. 3"
- C|Net's Halsey Minor, discussing NBC deal giving the television network
the option to buy 60% of Snap! And you thought AOL, Yahoo and Excite were
the Top Three. Memo to Halsey: how bout 40 percent of number eight?
"There is nothing sexier than a C.E.O. who has a passion for his product."
- C|Net editor Christopher Barr, on his boss Minor
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Operating System stuff
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Dataquest said Microsoft will ship 56.7 million units of Windows 98
and it anticipates "modest to low interest" in Win 98 upgrades... Be released
BeOS upgrade version 3.1. Expect modest to low interest in that one too..."Loud
boos," but thankfully no violence or bloodshed during the "Linux vs. NT"
public forum at the 35th Design Automation Conference...
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Earnings Reports, IPOs and the like
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Iomega continued to slide, announcing Thursday that it will report
losses
between $25 million and $35 million for the second quarter. This isn't
just
another bad quarter for the Zip drive maker -- it is in danger of defaulting
on its $200 million credit line. Iomega execs maintain that they will be
profitable by the fourth quarter, but don't put too much faith in that
-- last quarter they said that this quarter would be "in the range of a
small loss to break-even"... Best Buy beats estimates, shares drop over
2 points... Software.Net issues IPO, price skyrockets 47% in first day
of trading... Interplay Entertainment goes public, stock price skyrockets
from $5.5 to $6...
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Rumors, Conspiracies etc. of the week...
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On the heels of Nortel's purchase of Bay Networks, Sweden-based telecom
equipment maker Telefon AB L.M. Ericsson is looking to buy up to seven
small-to-medium sized networking companies, with a few deals possibly happening
soon...
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News you could do without
--------------------------
The big news of the week is actually old news: AT&T made an offer
to buy AOL weeks ago. Aside from "cultural differences" between the two
companies, many factors complicated the proposed $32-33 billion deal.
Some of these deal-breaking factors included AOL's hundred million dollar
plus agreement with Tel-Save and the fact that CEO Steve Case is on the
board of Worldcom, which is acquiring AT&T arch rival MCI... If only
to make C|Net's ongoing "portalopoly" feature even more exciting than it
already is, the portal grab by major media companies continued as Disney
bought a minority stake (43%) in Infoseek for $70 million plus Starwave.
Disney can purchase the 7.1% it needs to gain a majority holding for an
extra $139 million. Infoseek promptly put those trademark mouse ears on
its home page, along with the phrase "Let the magic begin"... All this
of course following NBC's investment in Snap two week's ago, a deal potentially
worth $66 million -- not bad for a portal whose 70 content providers are
only slightly outnumbered by the number of visitors it receives every day
(its 1.67 million users per month puts its traffic at less than half of
Hotbot, which is #7)... Compaq is negotiating with IBM to license the Alpha
processor architecture from Digital Equipment, now officially part of Compaq.
Compaq isn't just trying to take advantage of Intel's Merced delay - due
to the FTC decision following the Alpha architecture lawsuits earlier this
year between Digital and Intel, Compaq must make Alpha technology available
to companies other than Intel... Hyundai-owned Axil computers called it
quits. Some blame the Asian market crisis, while those with a clue point
to increasing competition from Intel and the fact that there was really
no significant market for eight-way NT servers to begin with... Microsoft
Start page redesigned - to include more links to MS services (but where
did the link to Hotmail go?)... Senator calls spamming "the scourge of
the Information Age" - sorry, Matt Drudge!... Merrill Lynch exec says do-it-yourself
online trading is "a serious threat to American financial lives"... Netscape
4.5 will be released in beta early next month... And oh yeah, by the way,
PC Expo also happened. This too-perfect quote from InfoWorld Electric sums
up the week's events at the Javitz Center: "PC Expo this year offered a
grab-bag of new products aimed at various types of technology buyers, from
consumers to small and big businesses."
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Surprises:
------------
While AOL seemed too busy maintaining its independence to do much else,
it did find the time to file paperwork with the SEC to indicate that it
may sell unsecured debt or shares of preferred or common stock to raise,
oh, say a billion dollars or so. Such an offering, combined with a likely
strategic alliance with AT&T, will give AOL plenty of cash to grow
its already dominant business into new areas... Meanwhile, AT&T is
reportedly looking to merge international assets with British Telecom.
BT has been criticized recently over its plan to pay for its ISP business
with increased phone rates. AT&T, on the other hand, seems to be feeling
the heat of the MCI-Worldcom merger, which inched further along this week
when European officials cleared some legal stumbling blocks and Cable &
Wireless dropped its suit against MCI... U.K. cable operators Telewest
Communications and NTL called off merger talks soon after NTL acquired
two other U.K.-based cable franchises... Compaq announced a $200 million
investment in cable-modem vendor Road Runner, as well as plans for an extranet
for enterprise resource planning systems... Micron, after acquiring Texas
Instrument's DRAM operations, passed NEC to become No. 2 Memory maker behind
Samsung... Newt Gingrich will seek $4 billion to fix Y2K problem...
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(Mis)Uses of Technology:
-------------------------------
3Com's Palm Pilot to go beyond the browser -- what exactly this means
is anyone's guess. 3Com execs are mum on the new software due by the end
of the year, which will supposedly move away from the browsing "metaphor"
for downloading information from the Internet. Let's hope 3Com isn't banking
on a handheld Gopher revolution...
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Studies:
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Good news for 3Com: IDC predicts handheld PCs will surpass desktop
PCs in popularity within six years... The Business Software Alliance and
the Software Publishers Association find that almost half of all newly
installed business programs worldwide were pirated and, as a result,
the U.S. software industry lost $11.4 billion of revenue in 1997...
--------------
Predictions:
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CBS has been rumored to be on the verge of either buying or taking
a big stake in Lycos, the likely next portal to be snatched up, since its
valuation is somewhat closer to reality than Excite's or Yahoo's. Aside
from CBS, look for News Corp. to jump into the action at some point,
as it is rumored to have looked into both Snap and Pointcast within the
past year. Interestingly enough, the same publications which have been
wondering aloud whether the portals are overvalued, are now shocked to
see Infoseek to go for such a "low" price. Let's see, $70 million and an
unprofitable business in return for a minority stake in the number four
or five player? Sounds reasonable enough to me, if reason indeed exists
in all of this "portal madness."
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Robots with too much free time:
------------------------
It's no surprise that, when two computers meet, they talk Trek:
http://www.fringeware.com/~rsw/forbin.html
And just for the fun of it: http://www.memelab.com/sweetheart/
(worth the download time if you have QuickTime).
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