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Another Note...
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Sorry again to bug you. Just a warning that over the next few
weeks/months I'm going to have to be a bit more honest in the "not always
weekly" bit. Next week is almost definitely going to be a no show.
If you really can't wait two weeks to get my commentary on these things,
feel free to join the backstage email discussion list: https://www.techdirt.com/diner/huh.html
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Say that again...
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"GeoCities Pursues Revenues"
- Headline of an Infobeat article summarizing GeoCities brilliant new
strategy
"We intend to establish a meaningful presence on the Internet."
- Avie Glazer, President of Zapata Corp.
"Hey, these days it's almost as good as a Mac."
- Time Magazine's preview of Microsoft Windows 98
"If the error messages were in plain English, end users could figure
them out without having to call the help desk."
- Anne Thomson Reed, from the US Agriculture Dept. and chairwoman of
the Messaging Interoperability Committee for the Federal CIO Council.
With insights like that, perhaps Microsoft should hire her.
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Cross purposes
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Ameritech decided to follow AOL's plan to increase flat rate prices
from $19.95 to $21.95, while Bell South has gone the other way: $19.95
to $17.95. What exactly are these two companies basing their decisions
on?
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Earnings Reports, IPOs and the like
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Gruntal & Co. stopped covering Sybase, and suggested that everyone
pretty much give up on the company altogether... Informix, however, posted
a profit, surprising everyone... AOL says AOL's stock is underpriced (would
you believe that?)... Amazon.com increases revenue, increases customer
base by over 500%, beats the Street's estimates, but still is losing money...
Qwest, still losing money, beats estimates by quite a bit... LCI, soon
to be a part of Qwest, beats estimates... Western Digital misses earnings
expectations by a long shot... ZD's IPO wasn't nearly as exciting as predicted,
but still generated quite a bit of hype (and cash)... CompUSA profits decrease,
but they beat estimates. The stock falls anyway... Ericsson shows
lots of growth, but still misses expectations... CDNow shows tremendous
growth, but loses money, and blames their marketing budget... Network Solutions
beats estimates (ah, to be a government sponsored monopoly)... Ingram Micro
beats estimates... MCI beats Wall Street estimates... Adaptec misses estimates
by a long shot... Cybershop continues to lose money... EDS misses estimates...
Mentor Graphics (still in business?) losing even more money than expected...
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Rumors, Conspiracies etc. of the week...
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Apple desperately trying to figure out how to make a machine for under
$1,000... Seems as though the exposing of the faked "grassroots" PR campaign
for Microsoft was one of the best things to happen to the anti-MS side
of the world. Now that a bunch of big name tech companies have written
the government supporting Microsoft, nobody believes their sincerity...
It's damn easy to overclock a cheap Intel Celeron and turn it into a 400MHz
powerhouse... Wired Magazine has been sold to Miller Publishing Group LLC,
and is just waiting to make the announcement...
--------------------------
News you could do without
--------------------------
Qwest continues to be quite the darling company in IP telephony as
it has received a $430 million contract with the government to provide
a virtual-private network (just what is a "virtual" private network, and
why does the government want one anyway?)... Lucent snaps up Yurie Systems
Inc for about a billion... Apple feels very strongly that Apple is making
a comeback (well, at least *someone* believes in them)... Dell plans to
have 50% of its sales via the Internet... The US Senate, doing what they
do best, has formed a "committee" to discuss the Y2K problem (good for
them)... AOL (back to basics) to send out millions and millions of Compuserve
diskettes (Kao's back inventory?) to go along with its brilliant new campaign
slogan: "Complete. Comprehensive. CompuServe." (how much do
you think they paid someone to think that beauty up?)... Zapata bought
the online money sucking magazines Word and Charged from Icon... Netscape
to sell half its stock in @Home... N2K to become the "exclusive" online
music reseller for Ticketmaster (in a move that actually seems to make
some sense)... Andy Grove warns of the horrors that face us if the US Government
doesn't do something about Y2K... News reporter Larry Matthews seems to
think the law doesn't apply to reporters: in an effort to report on child
pornography, he actually exchanged pornographic photos with folks online,
and then claims he shouldn't have been arrested... Everyone agrees: the
Fed is going after Intel now... Meanwhile, individual states will go after
Microsoft... Bill Gates predicts that computers will have "human" capabilities
within a decade (yes, but will they be able to create monopolies and collude?)...
Congress has retroactively approved the "tax" imposed by Network Solutions
for registering domain names (there goes my $30 refund)... Film.com redesigned...
GeoCities to offer credit card through First USA... AOL isn't doing particularly
well in Japan... "Think Different" billboard in Silicon Valley vandalized
to read "Think Disillusioned" (oh, those creative Apple users)... shitakemushrooms.com
rejected by Network Solutions as an "obscene" domain name (proving what
we knew all along: Network Solutions is uncultured)... PointCast to announce
a new version of their software (apparently in an effort to remind people
that they exist)... US Agencies haven't been putting electronic information
online, as per the 1996 Electronic Freedom of Information Act... Now that
L.A. has taken "The Digital Coast", Washington DC is looking to choose
its own cheesy high-tech name... Microsoft COO Herbold doesn't win SPA
board seat (but MS hopes that he'll get appointed a seat anyway - to hell
with democracy, this is Microsoft)... Intel cuts Pentium prices... Sun
releases new servers... RealNetwork's RealSystem G2 wows everyone... 7th
Level shakes up management and company "focus" as they realize that maybe
they really ought to do something now that so many people bought their
stock... Disney, reporting that they are kicking ass in the Internet world
(well, not in those words exactly), buys Paul Allen's share of Starwave...
Scottish Telecom buys Demon Internet...
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Surprises:
------------
Microsoft has given up on trying to use NT to manage its Hotmail service,
and has gone back to using Sun Solaris (I've heard so many stories like
this in the past that I would not be at all surprised to discover this
is simply a myth)... Amazon buys the Internet Movie Database as they get
ready to sell movies online... AOL blames earnings shortfall on the fact
that they *increased* their flat-rate (okay, someone want to explain the
economics on that one to me?)... WorldCom sold MFS Networks to Able Telecom
Holdings. Amazingly, the press kept pretty quiet on this one.
Apparently having the FTC say okay to MCI is more important than hanging
on to MFS... For the first time this year, PC's based on Intel PII's outsold
AMD K6's... NetChannel gives up. Decides that Microsoft is too strong
a competitor... Lycos went haywire this week, buying WiseWire, claiming
to be the number 2 search page (most give that position to Excite), saying
it will begin offering its own online service (probably through AT&T),
and threatening to sue each and every search engine site for using its
patented technology... Borland ditches its name, strategy, and well just
about everything. Now, it's Inprise, and it's focused on enterprise
software (good luck)... Kodak and Intel to form a joint venture to develop
digital-imaging products... Microsoft's Internet Gaming Zone redesigned
so that Netscape users could visit as well (aw, how nice of them)... Bill
Gates admits (well, sort of) that NT 5.0 needs improvements... Mac market
share improves for the first time in ages... Netscape renews deals with
Lycos, Excite, Infoseek, and Yahoo!, all of whom are competing with its
Netcenter offering... Lucent's market cap higher than AT&T's?... Carolina
Power & Light to merge with TriNet, an Internet consulting company???
(things get stranger every day)... Be quickly sold out of BeOS for Intel...
-------------------------------
(Mis)Uses of Technology:
-------------------------------
Scientists demonstrated "differentiated" Internet transmission services
this week. Seems cool. I'd like to see how well it scales before
I buy into it. Also, if it really does work, I feel sorry for the
people on the bottom of the totem pole... Princess Cruises to install a
security system that takes your picture when you board the ship, stores
it, and then uses it to make sure that everyone who's supposed to be onboard,
is, and anyone who isn't, isn't ("Welcome aboard Princess Cruises, a subdivision
of Big Brother enterprises")... British Members of Parliament will need
to use a fingerprint ID system before they can vote (this announcement
comes the same week as Intel invests in fingerprint ID technology.
Coincidence? Um, yeah, probably)... Infrared smart cards that automatically
log you on or off your computer as you get close or move away... Blizzard
Entertainment, a gaming company, is being sued after the discovery that
one of its games has the added "feature" of rummaging through the users'
hard drives and secretly emailing info to the company... V Sync technologies
to put a 333MHz PII in your fridge (Personally, I'm scared to think what
my fridge would do with that sort of power)... IBM is encouraging home
builders to incorporate PC servers into new homes (I don't know about you,
but I'd prefer if my house was still standing on January 1, 2000)... If
you type in ICQ as an AOL keyword it brings you to AOL's own competing
Instant Messaging service (and you thought only Microsoft played deceptive
games)...
----------
Studies:
----------
Adams, Harkness & Hill, going against last week's predictions from
Dataquest say the semiconductor industry won't grow until the end of 1999...
Even stranger, however, is *Dataquest* going against last week's Dataquest
report, and saying the semiconductor industry is going to be stagnant (gotta
keep those internal predictions straight, now don't they?)... Worldwide
PC shipments rose 14% in the first quarter, also according to Dataquest...
According to AdKnowledge, the rate for web based ads decreased 6% over
the past year, though technology sites increased their ad prices... Forrester
Research says that, although software is the most popular product bought
over the web, the fact that it usually can't be downloaded is slowing the
adoption of electronic commerce... Consumers "really not interested" in
Digital Television according to a PBS study... Forrester predicts that
within four years, 10% of US homes will contain networked consumer electronic
devices... MCI study finds that nearly 60% of web users surf at night...
Brown Wright Security finds that anti-virus programs are a "waste of money".
Anti-virus companies disagree (I'm just waiting for all of Brown Wright's
data to be wiped out)... Venture capitalists invested $12.2 billion according
to Coopers & Lybrand... A Meta Group study says that 75% of data warehousing
projects have "some degree" of success (what that means, I have no clue)...
According to Elron Software, nearly 70% of workers logged on to pornographic
web sites from work... Meanwhile, the folks at the American Society of
Chartered Life Underwriters & Chartered Financial Consultants (who?)
have released the study saying that nearly 45% of the US workforce engaged
in "unethical" uses of technology...
-----------
Overhype
-----------
So, the gorilla found AOL boring. Gorilla's are pretty intelligent,
right?... Anything that involves K-tel International... Way too many stories
on the fact that AMD changed the name of the K6 3D to K6-2. I mean,
come on, that's not a very big deal... That whole Hank, the Angry Drunken
Dwarf thing. If this doesn't show you why most Internet based polls
are a waste of bandwidth, then perhaps you're one of the folks who voted
for Leonardo...
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Predictions:
--------------
Hardware margins driven down to next to nothing. No one can justify
money being poured into online content stocks. No one, outside of
Microsoft, is making enough money on software. Perhaps it's time
for serious partnerships to emerge to create the all-in-one end-user solution
that went so out of vogue when everyone praised the horizontal market structure.
Focusing on a niche is great. Selling to that niche isn't.
Bundling through partnering combines the best of both worlds. It's
happening already, but watch for it to get even stronger in the days to
come...
------------------------
Too much free time:
------------------------
How to keep an idiot occupied: http://members.tripod.com/~lambine/idiot.htm
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