June 21 - 27, 1999
from the Up-To-Date dept
More merger rumors than you can shake a stick at, the latest IPOs, paradigm shifts in vending machines and plenty more. Click below for the latest Up-To-Date.********************************************************************* UP-TO-DATE ********************************************************************* The not always serious, not always weekly update on the High-Tech Industry June 21st - June 27th, 1999 ********************************************************************* Waiting for rumors about Techdirt's imminent buyout --------------------- Techdirt on the Web --------------------- The latest poll question on Techdirt is what folks think the reason behind all this merger talk is. Go vote at: https://www.techdirt.com/pollBooth.pl?qid=merge Brian Day has come back from the missing and has added two new columns to his "Friends of the Revolution" section. The first discusses the age-old battle of hardware vs. software: https://www.techdirt.com/fotr/990624/0049237.shtml The second gets a little more personal and delves into privacy issues on the web: https://www.techdirt.com/fotr/990624/0051237.shtml As always Brian's columns are a great read. All this and more can be found at https://www.techdirt.com/ which is updated most every weekday. -------------------- Say that again... -------------------- "Plan long and hard. This is not going to be fun. This is going to be like an earthquake for a lot of organizations." - Eric Hemmendinger, analyst for the Aberdeen Group, on what it will be like for companies to install Windows 2000 (this is part of his "recommendation"?) "These new vending machines will lead to a paradigm shift in thinking. The machine is no longer merely a coin-operated Coke machine, but is now an interactive entertainment kiosk." - Gedaliah Gurfein, co-founder of TeleVend, on his new vending machines. I'm really not sure the world needs an interactive entertainment kiosk that doubles as a vending machine. I'm positive that the world does not need a "paradigm shift" in vending machines... "We have nowhere to go but up." - Michael O'Donnell, CEO of Salon.com, after their disappointing IPO. And, to be honest, he's wrong. They certainly could go down. ------------------------------------------ Earnings Reports, IPOs and the like ------------------------------------------ Salon.com has an iffy "Dutch Auction" IPO and no one knows whether to blame the fact that Salon.com really isn't a very appealing company or the Dutch Auction process (maybe it's both)... IBM has laid off 1,100 workers in Northern California (maybe they'll move and ease the traffic)... CompUSA is acting to stop their recent slide, in a move that is purely reactive. They're closing stores and cutting costs, but not doing anything to really deal with the fact that the internet exists and is competition for them... Quepasa has a good IPO... Ariba has a damn good IPO (watch to see what CommerceOne does in response)... 3Com beats estimates, but the stock drops... Juniper has a very nice IPO... AMD warns (surprise surprise) that they're likely to be losing a lot more money than expected... TD Waterhouse has an okay IPO... CyberSource has an okay IPO... Software.com has a pretty good IPO... Internet.com has a not-so-great IPO... Micron Electronics beat estimates slightly, but Micron Technologies missed estimates by a lot... ------------------------------------------------ Rumors, Conspiracies etc. of the week... ------------------------------------------------ Takeover rumors are everywhere... Microsoft still thinking about taking over Baan... Gateway thinking of taking over Earthlink... Mindspring, feeling left out, hinted that "hey!" it, too, was thinking about taking over or being taken over or something, but they want to make sure that you stop ignoring it... AltaVista might be taken over by CMGI (which could lead to bad things for Lycos and DoubleClick)... Beyond might be taken over by Amazon... Juno might be taken over by AOL... Microworkz might be taken over by AOL... Now, the question is how many of these are serious, and how many are just overzealous Yahoo! board posters trying to move the stock?... CDNow, who has insisted all along that they will beat Amazon.com by focusing solely on music, is now thinking about selling books... Paul Otellini from Intel is in the lead to be Compaq's new CEO... ---------------------------------------- News you should have read elsewhere ---------------------------------------- AOL has invested $1.5 billion into Hughes Electronics as a way of thumbing their nose at all those cable companies who will have nothing to do with them (of course, once they realize how little they can accomplish by satellite, they might be feeling a little less giddy)... USWest says it agrees with Frontier and wants nothing to do with Qwest, and so Qwest (who strongly insisted they would never do this) raises their bid and guarantees a lower limit on the offer... Amazon.com hires Joseph Galli from Black & Decker as their new President and COO as Jeff Bezos gives up the President's title, but keeps CEO... -------------------------- News you could do without -------------------------- AOL "thinking about" a free ISP in the UK (this is news?)... eToys is leasing a warehouse for distribution, and made a deal with Fingerhut to fulfill overflow items... Free-PC finally is shipping, though the chance of *you* getting one is slim... WashingtonPost.com is getting ready to go through a redesign to become a "portal site" (little late for that, eh?) that they say will cost "millions"... AOL users will be able to access their mail via a 3Com Palm device... eBay buys a German auction site just to try to switch any news away from Amazon.com... Norton AntiVirus bundled on Intel motherboards... Reuters looking for a way to use Instinet in the retail market (but they really - really - don't want to piss off any brokerage houses)... Iridium cuts prices (again - and somehow, no one really cares)... Rite Aid and GNC buy into Drugstore.com and laugh at pitiful CVS who had to go out and buy third place soma.com outright... Microsoft won't advertise on sites that don't have published privacy guidelines... Chase, First Union, and Wells Fargo agree to work on an e-billing system, and causes CheckFree (who already has an e-billing system) to pull its secondary as investors thought they were trying to sneak it through before the banks announced the competitive program (which, of course, they would *never* do)... Excite@Home is offering a program that will put customized info on your desktop (this is exciting how?)... The FTC is "shocked" that websites are selling miraculous cures... IBM to use AMD chips in new PCs... Office Depot is posting signs in its stores saying that its computers might not be Y2K compliant, so buy at your own risk... Microsoft plans to "reinvent" how it deals with customers (I suggest they start by making a product that works a little better)... Oracle buys Geodan... MicroWorkz begins offering $199 iToaster computer... BancBoston Robertson Stephens is relaunching their internetstocks.com site... Microsoft and the Government tried again to settle the current dispute with no luck... Dell reorganizes just to show how nimble they are... CNBC is beta testing its new website... Microsoft throwing $50 million at Concentric... AMD decides to name the K7 "Athlon", but apparently a French company already has the trademark (um, really guys, these are the type of things you check with the lawyers *before* you announce)... ------------ Surprises: ------------ Lycos is to be "included" in the latest version of Lotus Notes, basically meaning that Lycos will probably get some more traffic, but Lotus Notes doesn't actually get any better... Metricom got a huge investment (for 87% of the company!) from MCI and Paul Allen. Hopefully this will mean a wider rollout (and higher bandwidth!)... Venezuela has hired psychiatrists to figure out a Y2K "policy" to fit with the country's "mentality"... S3 really gets into multimedia by buying Diamond Multimedia (though Diamond then announces it's spinning off the Rio, among other things)... Metromedia Fiber Network bought AboveNet... VoiceStream buying OmniPoint for $2 billion... Softbank, Bandai, and Yahoo Japan working together to sell toys online in Japan... Bank One has started an online bank, but they are branding it WingspanBank.com and keeping it entirely separate from Bank One (except for its impact on their earnings - which they admit it will cut in to)... ------------------------------- (Mis)Uses of Technology: ------------------------------- The Georgia Institute of Technology is working hard on developing a hybrid biocomputer that mixes live nerve cells with silicon circuits. The horror movie potential is endless... eBetween, by Phoenix Technologies, will allow us all to receive advertisements that will be encoded in the system BIOS... Reuters will use Reciprocal's technology to develop digital distribution of their content (I don't believe this will ever go live - or if it does, that it will be used by very many)... Paying to have a computer pray for you (wrong in so many ways)... Coupons being sent to your wireless devices (as in you're near a grocery store, go buy Ocean Spray Ruby Red Grapefruit Juice and you'll get 10% off *right now*). Okay, how annoying would that be?... Microsoft Windows will soon let you set a filter that will not let certain computer games run on that machine (do parents actually think their kids won't be able to hack around that?). They should build a filter for kids to make sure their parents don't mess up all the work they've put into the computer... RealNetworks' G2 to be put in cable set top boxes (so we can stream fuzzy broadcasts through our TV?)... AT&T Worldnet has spent $60 million dollars so you can get a higher quality busy signal... ---------- Studies: ---------- Arbitron NewMedia has released a study showing that while the percentage of households with PCs has gone up, the percentage of people who actually use those PCs has fallen from 90% in 1995 to 53% today... Ernst & Young has found that e-commerce does not pose a "significant" threat to tax revenue for state and local governments... An InformationWeek study has shown that IT executives have found they need to "reset their priorities" more often due to the rapidly changing nature of IT... Xerox PARC got a lot of press this week for their study showing that popular websites are self-reinforcing - that is, by being popular they become more popular as word spreads (well, duh)... Amazon.com finally becomes a top 10 website according to Media Metrix... No, wait, the latest study says that cell phone really *are* dangerous (how long until the next study says the opposite)... IT workers are at least twice as productive as others (and earn nearly 80% more for their efforts) according to the US Commerce Department... Newsweek has found that 71% of people questioned find the Internet "essential"... A study by Rockbridge Associates shows that nearly 60% of people don't think online transactions are safe (nearly 80% don't think it's safe to give a credit card number over the internet - so there's the question of the 20% who don't think it's safe to give a cc number, but overall think the transactions are safe)... A study from Case Western Reserve University shows that people are more honest when they communicate via email... ----------- Overhype ----------- Politicians use email... Spam cop... People are surprised that a Microsoft expert witness from MIT was paid by Microsoft (um, how do you think expert witnesses work?)... Wired complains that Linus is boring at latest presentation... Streaming cell phone calls via shoutcast on the internet... -------------- Predictions: -------------- UNext.com, the online training company (with Michael Milken backing it) is going to run into some problems with getting beyond the hype factor... ------------------------ Too much free time: ------------------------ Okay, I'm the first to admit that my grammar ain't great (and I honestly believe that certain family members of mine only read this list to point out my grammatical errors), so this next site seemed somewhat appropriate as I often "misuse" quotation marks: http://www.juvalamu.com/qmarks/. ********************************************************************* Up To Date is written by Mike Masnick from whatever news he hears from whatever sources they happen to come from. It is not intended for any uses other than as one of many possible ways to follow what's going on in the hi-tech industry. I certainly wouldn't rely on it as your only source of info. And, of course, my comments may not accurately reflect reality. Finally, an explicit warning about investing: I do not, under any circumstance, consider any piece of information in this newsletter "investment advice" and neither should you. If you would like to subscribe to the email version please send an email to utd-sub@techdirt.com with "Subscribe Up-To-Date" in the subject heading. Up To Date is also available on the web at https://www.techdirt.com/uptodate/ If you want more in depth, daily up dates, along with your own commentary head over to https://www.techdirt.com/ Comments are always welcome! Email: feedback@techdirt.com *********************************************************************
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