--------------------
Say that again...
--------------------
"'Community' today is what 'content' was on the Web last year: smoke
and mirrors for companies that have not figured out how to provide useful
services to their customers."
- Seth Goldstein, Managing Director of CKS SiteSpecific in Forbes
"We're not seeing the volumes that we had prayed for. But I think that
over time it will be overcome."
- Dan Lynch, chairman of Cybercash on ZDnet. Reminding us once
again that business models probably should not be based on prayers...
"The good news is we're trying to get people to use us more. We want
them to embed us in their lives."
- Bob Pittman, President and COO of AOL. What does economics
tell us happens when you raise the price of your product? Oh yes,
people use it less. Somebody send Bob an economics textbook.
"Many people are expecting the big-brand advertisers like Coca-Cola
and McDonald's to pile in, but we find that this is not a great medium
for
brand advertisers."
- An analyst with Forrester Research showing classic Internet myopia.
Of course it's not a great medium when it's used poorly.
"I can't comment on rumors, no matter how accurate or silly they will
be."
- Scott McNealy, Sun CEO on Netscape buyout rumors, in News.com
"There's a commitment on behalf of AOL to content. The company is
organizing itself to leverage its resources, rather than create redundancies."
- Anne Bentley, AOL spokesperson explaining their recent layoffs, in
the LA Times. Why don't they just 'fess up and admit that no one
liked
Entertainment Asylum?
"If we can prove that a Web publication like this can be self-supporting--and
this sounds pompous, then it's a service to democracy."
- Michael Kinsley, on his rationale for moving Slate to a subscription
model, in Business Week. Why yes, it does sound pompous.
-----------------------------
Diversifying or Selling Out?
-----------------------------
Seems like a popular time to sell your stake in high tech companies.
This
week it was revealed that higher ups at Intel, Netscape, and Yahoo!
all
dumped or are looking to dump shares of their company's stock.
Craig
Barret, Intel President, is looking to sell 100,000 shares. Frank
Gill,
head of Intel's small business group is looking to dump nearly half
a
million shares... Jerry Yang and David Filo, Yahoo!'s founders both
sold
off significant portions of their stock... Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale
and
Chairman Jim Clark both are in the process of selling huge chunks of
their Netscape stock...
------------------------------------------
Earnings Reports, IPOs and the like
------------------------------------------
AOL's stock price shot up this week following the announcement of an
internal reorganization, an increase in prices, and slightly better
than
expected earnings... 3Dlabs missed earnings expectations by a bit,
and
decided to sue Texas Instruments to divert attention away from such
matters... CDNow went public at exactly the right time for a high tech
company, and just kind of hovered... Informix shocked everyone by making
money this last quarter... Netscape cut their options prices for their
employees to reflect the fact that the stock has tanked. Doesn't
that go against the very *point* of options?... OnSale had record sales
this
quarter, but is still losing money... NASD has delayed the start date
for
implementing new rules allowing brokers and clients to communicate
online via email...
------------------------------------------------
Rumors, Conspiracies etc. of the week...
------------------------------------------------
Steve Case is looking to get out of AOL, and the current favorite to
replace him is Bob Pittman, rather than Ted Leonsis... Computer Sciences
Corp. is trying to get IBM to make an offer for them to avoid a Computer
Associates take over... Lots of speculation on Intel's screwing up with
StrongARM, for which it took over development from DEC. Apparently
most of the development team split for Cadence, and companies that were
looking to StrongARM are now looking elsewhere... Apple has delayed its
annual shareholders meeting, as some are speculating that they want to
announce a CEO at the meeting...
-----------------------------------------------------
Berating the obvious: (they call this news???)
-----------------------------------------------------
DEC gave an Alpha license to Samsung allowing them access to all Alpha
intellectual property (something Intel might not appreciate)... Meanwhile,
sensing where all this was heading, Mitsubishi has suspended its joint
development agreement on the Alpha... SGI revealed some details on their
NT boxes, which are due in the second half of 1998... CompuServe has stopped
working on its web service (didn't AOL claim this wouldn't happen?
Oh well.)... Boston University is suing eight companies that sell term
papers over the Internet... Disney bills people twice for Daily Blast...
Wouldn't you know it? Three bugs found in Microsoft's FrontPage 98...
W3C recommends XML 1.0... In the Government Behaving Badly department,
two Senators have proposed that school's that don't filter Internet content
will not receive federal money from the government's net wiring... Maybe
multiplayer games over the internet don't work, according to some games
developers... Compaq releases "intranet-in-a-box"... Too many stories on
Slot 2, as Intel did a wonderful PR job trying to place it as a "technological
improvement" rather than a "monopoly enforcer"... Sprint (as was predicted
last week) picked up some of EarthLink an ISP (who, apparently, has been
growing faster than AOL)... Not only that, but on the heels of AOL's increased
price, Earthlink has established a "Get Out of AOL Free" program... Seth
Warshavsky proposed this week that a new top level domain be created for
"adult" material. Using the tag .adult it would be easy to block
out porn sites (what a simple solution, which is exactly why
it will never fly)... A former student was found guilty of hate-crimes
for
threatening 60 students via email (apparently his "it was a stupid
prank"
defense didn't cut it)... IBM buys CommQuest... Quicktime as the basis
of MPEG-4... Hillary Clinton suddenly decides that the net needs to be
watched (gee, I wonder why?)... Symantec and CyberMedia bicker over who
stole whose code for which products... Intel releases its i740 3D graphics
chip, and 3D graphics chips makers get a bit worried. However, note
that the i740 will really be useful for Windows 98 (which won't be out
for some time), and the chip companies have some time to maneuver.
Of course, I doubt that will save them... As per usual, lots of box makers
cut prices... Compaq is apparently catching up to Sun in web servers, while
HP has stated that they are going to take advantage of Compaq trying to
integrate DEC to steal away some server market share... Microsoft claims
that 50% of Quicken users want to switch to Money 98. Intuit is not
pleased... Microsoft's Expedia expands through co-branding agreements with
a number of partners... Microsoft's Encarta is going to use content from
Colliers... The U.S. has formally recommended to the WTO that commerce
on the Internet remain duty
free... Motorola has joined the DSL consortium of tech heavyweights...
AOL lays off over 100 of its own content people from Entertainment Asylum...
Nomai has permission to sell its Zip compatible disks in the U.S., as Iomega
is still struggling with its "click of death" fiasco (but they also lowered
prices on the 1 Gig Jaz and released the 2 Gig version)... Cox and @Home
to work together on high speed internet access rollout... Wired, this week,
reported the shocking news that the First Amendment doesn't cover you on
the job (um... note to Wired reporter: it never has)... Motorola claims
that Iridium will be ready by September, even though there have been numerous
launch delays... Scoop Inc. is going out of business... AOL plans to set
up a cable modem connection... "WebTV will soon be obsolete" suggests WorldGate's
CEO. Note, of course, that WorldGate competes with WebTV... Compaq
and SCO plan 64-Bit Unix for Merced. Other Unix vendors
laugh... Microsoft IE 5.0 in alpha testing - has not corrected the
bugs
from 4.0 yet... Microsoft will probably delay the release of SQL Server
7.0 again...
------------
Surprises:
------------
AOL made the bold move to raise their "unlimited access" price $2 to
$22 a month. Other ISPs claim they won't follow suit, and in a News.com
survey, 80% of respondents stated they didn't feel AOL was "worth" the
extra $2 (as if it was worth the original $20?)... Don't complain to us.
Solid Oak, a company that makes Internet filtering software email-bombed
a woman who complained about their product saying "she deserved it"...
OS stuff: A startup called Cache Computing is working on a new operating
system for the Mac, while Apple tries to figure out a way to sue them (friendly,
yes? Think lawsuit. Think lawyer's fees. Think harassment.
Think bankruptcy. Think Different). Meanwhile, Be is set to introduce
BeOS for Intel architecture... Lots of fuss over Computer Associates' unsolicited
bid for Computer Sciences Corp... U.S. District Court Judge Joe Kendall
gave a temporary stay of his own ruling saying that the Telecommunications
Act of 1996 unfairly restricts regional Bells from getting into the long
distance business, as SBC has filed for permission to offer long distance
service in Oklahoma... Senator Orrin Hatch invited Bill Gates, Scott McNealy
and Jim Barksdale to speak at a hearing on government policy in the digital
age. Apparently, they plan to go... A new ruling by a judge in Utah on
Caldera's anti-trust claims against Microsoft extends the claim to Windows
95. Apparently, now Caldera can claim that by bundling DOS with Win95,
MS unfairly drove their DR-DOS product out of the market (sound familiar?)...
-------------------------------
(Mis)Uses of Technology:
-------------------------------
E*Trade via WebTV... RealNetworks has created a special version of
its Daily Briefing to be downloaded and replayed on Audible's portable
MobilePlayer (and this, apparently, is for those folks who are extremely
familiar with new internet technologies, but have yet to master the
complexities of a WalkMan)... Always wanted to go to Harvard Law?
Take a course on line (it's free): http://cyber.harvard.edu/metaschool/
... Or, if you've always wanted to be a CPA, Kaplan has now put its CPA
review course online... Lots of reporting this week on the work of
some scientists at Cambridge who developed a technology that would allow
folks in vans to drive around and tell if computer users inside buildings
were using illegally pirated copies of software. Not to worry, claim
the creators, they've also created a package to block such a thing.
Meanwhile, Microsoft, whom they were developing the technology for has
turned them down... Okay, so I was joking last week about computerized
Lego's, but I thank everyone who called, emailed or smoke signaled to me
that this product already existed... TCI is going ahead with a project
to broadcast different commercials depending on where you lived.
They hope to get this down to a per house level, but don't expect that
to be feasible for some time... A fully automatic robotic gas pump is being
tested for a US rollout next year... Apparently, last year a toy was introduced
in the Philippines known as the "Letter Bomb" which was promoted with the
tag-line: "have fun and become a terrorist"... The dog breeder who sold
President Clinton his new puppy is offering Buddy's siblings for sale online
(http://www.btlarkin.com/buddy/siblings.htm
)... Linux for the PalmPilot (while the concept may seem cool, think about
the problems of a pen based Unix system. I cringe at the thought
of editing in a pen based vi, but maybe that's just me - screenshot at:
http://ryeham.ee.ryerson.ca/uClinux/peng-pilot-sc.gif
)... Virtual coupons
available for new members of GeoCities... Priceline.com lets travelers
name a price they want to pay for a flight, and the airlines decide whether
or not to give it to them... Indian tribe launches a web based "U.S. Lottery"
while some government officials look for ways to shut them down... Lots
of stories this week about the new thin plastic TV screens that Cambridge
Display Technologies is getting set to unveil (sounds like a cool concept,
but I'd like to see one before I pass final judgment)...
----------
Studies:
----------
Dataquest this week lowered its forecast on the market for semiconductors
in 1998 to $160 billion from $175 billion... According to a Price Waterhouse
study, nearly 80% of CEOs from companies around the world believe that
electronic commerce will significantly change the way they do business...
Nearly $827 million worth of travel bookings were done online last year,
about 3 times as many as the year before, according to the Travel Industry
Association of America... Computer Reseller News has a new study showing
that Internet companies spent a lot more on R&D in the past year (for
which they, of course, blame their lack of profits)... RelevantKnowledge,
the company that tracks the important websites, has found in its latest
study that Amazon and Pathfinder have fallen out of the top 25... Media
Matrix has found Microsoft's Expedia to be the fastest growing travel site
on the web... Middleburg and Associates has released a study showing that
journalists rely on the web to get info when they can't reach a source
directly... About 75% of adults on the web used it for investment information
in the fourth quarter of 1997 according to Cyber Dialogue... A rather interesting
study from Ernst & Young shows that 64% of consumers with internet
access, research products online and then buy them through regular channels.
This was something I've believed for a while, so
it's nice that someone backed me up.... Dun & Bradstreet has found
that
nearly 10 times as many small businesses find the Internet to be an
important tool this year as opposed to last... Market researcher In-Stat
predicts that xDSL sales are going to take off, reaching nearly $700
million by the year 2000... A new Yankee Group survey, however,
says that xDSL won't take off until prices get lower. While people
like high speed access, they certainly don't like paying for it...
--------------
Predictions:
--------------
I think it's about time for some serious Internet backlash. I've
heard the
rumblings of a few people, but with Hillary Clinton starting the attack
this week, as well as other government members chiming in, I can see
a full out PR blitz on the horrors of the Internet coming along...
-----------------------
Memes o' the week:
-----------------------
What you *need*. I keep seeing reports saying you need IP multicasting
or you need xDSL. You don't need any of that. It might be nice,
but the only one who needs something is the company trying to sell you
the products, and the reporters trying to sell you on the story... The
wonders of the Internet in covering things such as the Olympics.
Way too many stories about all of these Olympic web sites. Yes, I
realize that the Olympics are on the other side of the world, and it's
tough for TV coverage to work well with the time difference. Most
people realize this as well. Why do we need six million stories telling
us this?...
------------------------
Too much free time:
------------------------
Dumb things you can do with Shockwave (of course requires the Shockwave
plug in): http://www.dreamingamerica.com/snow/ |
