This should come as no surprise - Microsoft is apparently launching a ‘cash back’ program for searchers who go on to buy products. I won’t try to speculate as to whether this will be successful in stopping or even reversing Microsoft’s slide in search share (I am sure there are already plenty of opinions about that and in any case we will find out what happens). But it does strengthen my conviction that it’s far from game over in search. The current google economics are simply too good. And u...

A while ago I bought an AppleTV, mostly on a whim because I had some store credit. I liked the form factor and the HDMI output and thought it might provide a good solution for getting pictures from my ReadyNAS onto the TV. Sadly, the AppleTV software is geared toward synching content instead of streaming it. Streaming is possible, but it’s not the default mode of operation, is hard to set up and so far has proven flaky. This is a big flaw as far as I am concerned. I have almost 1TB of storage...

This should come as no surprise - Microsoft is apparently launching a ‘cash back’ program for searchers who go on to buy products. I won’t try to speculate as to whether this will be successful in stopping or even reversing Microsoft’s slide in search share (I am sure there are already plenty of opinions about that and in any case we will find out what happens). But it does strengthen my conviction that it’s far from game over in search. The current google economics are simply too good. And u...

A while ago I bought an AppleTV, mostly on a whim because I had some store credit. I liked the form factor and the HDMI output and thought it might provide a good solution for getting pictures from my ReadyNAS onto the TV. Sadly, the AppleTV software is geared toward synching content instead of streaming it. Streaming is possible, but it’s not the default mode of operation, is hard to set up and so far has proven flaky. This is a big flaw as far as I am concerned. I have almost 1TB of storage...

This is the second in my occasional series on negotiating. When negotiating a term sheet or a biz dev deal it’s important to keep in mind that the end goal of the negotiation is establishing a partnership. This is very different from say buying a house where post closing you (hopefully) have nothing to do with the seller. For a partnership to get off to a good start it helps for both parties to feel good about the process of the negotiation. I have found that an important ingredient is to set...

This is the second in my occasional series on negotiating. When negotiating a term sheet or a biz dev deal it’s important to keep in mind that the end goal of the negotiation is establishing a partnership. This is very different from say buying a house where post closing you (hopefully) have nothing to do with the seller. For a partnership to get off to a good start it helps for both parties to feel good about the process of the negotiation. I have found that an important ingredient is to set...

At our house we have Optimum Voice, which is Cablevision’s VOIP service. It works perfectly well with good call quality and a decent web admin panel. It even let’s you forward a .wav file of your voicemails to PhoneTag for transcription which is truly useful since Susan and I see both out of the house all day. But it’s not really VOIP as it was meant to be. The service is delivered in blackbox fashion in the form of a cable modem with two phone jacks on the back (we have two lines at home). I...

At our house we have Optimum Voice, which is Cablevision’s VOIP service. It works perfectly well with good call quality and a decent web admin panel. It even let’s you forward a .wav file of your voicemails to PhoneTag for transcription which is truly useful since Susan and I see both out of the house all day. But it’s not really VOIP as it was meant to be. The service is delivered in blackbox fashion in the form of a cable modem with two phone jacks on the back (we have two lines at home). I...

As I had suggested in a post earlier this week on Google’s Friend Connect, there is a fight brewing over control of the social graph. Much of the discussion of FaceBook’s reaction has focused on the explicit social graph as declared by people via a ‘friend’ type mechanism. But there is also the implicit graph based on interactions such as email or commenting. That graph is a lot more distributed or at least has been. In some ways Friend Connect is an attempt to get at and potentially control ...

As I had suggested in a post earlier this week on Google’s Friend Connect, there is a fight brewing over control of the social graph. Much of the discussion of FaceBook’s reaction has focused on the explicit social graph as declared by people via a ‘friend’ type mechanism. But there is also the implicit graph based on interactions such as email or commenting. That graph is a lot more distributed or at least has been. In some ways Friend Connect is an attempt to get at and potentially control ...

It is amazing how quickly google is expanding its influence beyond the idea of organizing the world’s information. There are plenty of community-in-a-box vendors out there plus some great open source packages. There are also standards emerging for connecting these communities together so that members of one can participate in another. Yet google appears to be releasing a free competitive offering that nominally embraces the standards but looks about as closed as could be (at least in its curr...

It is amazing how quickly google is expanding its influence beyond the idea of organizing the world’s information. There are plenty of community-in-a-box vendors out there plus some great open source packages. There are also standards emerging for connecting these communities together so that members of one can participate in another. Yet google appears to be releasing a free competitive offering that nominally embraces the standards but looks about as closed as could be (at least in its curr...

So the decade plus old dryer in our basement that had been making funny noises for the last year finally broke. With 6 people in our household (3 kids and 1 Au Pair) we need an immediate replacement. No big deal, I thought - I will just do a bit of online research. Well two hours later I am none the wiser. I have settled on a model but with an awfully low degree of confidence. I started by going to consumerreports.com. Even though they had a fairly recently updated set of ratings several of t...

So the decade plus old dryer in our basement that had been making funny noises for the last year finally broke. With 6 people in our household (3 kids and 1 Au Pair) we need an immediate replacement. No big deal, I thought - I will just do a bit of online research. Well two hours later I am none the wiser. I have settled on a model but with an awfully low degree of confidence. I started by going to consumerreports.com. Even though they had a fairly recently updated set of ratings several of t...

This is my third post on cloud competition. Today I want to address the question of how cloud computing changes competition at the infrastructure layer. A part of the answer comes from yesterday’s post on the changing boundary between the application layer and the infrastructure layer. As infrastructure pushes up ever higher, the lower portions of infrastructure become further hidden and abstracted away. AMD has not had a lot of luck in their effort to compete with Intel and make money at the...

This is my third post on cloud competition. Today I want to address the question of how cloud computing changes competition at the infrastructure layer. A part of the answer comes from yesterday’s post on the changing boundary between the application layer and the infrastructure layer. As infrastructure pushes up ever higher, the lower portions of infrastructure become further hidden and abstracted away. AMD has not had a lot of luck in their effort to compete with Intel and make money at the...

There is nothing like competition to help drive innovation. I love using my Blackberry because of its enterprise integration, but I hate the barely functional browser and the complete absence of HTML email support. Now that Apple and RIM have locked horns, we are on the path to rapid innovation. Apple will be offering enterprise integration for the iPhone. RIM claims that the new Bold will have a great browser (no word in the official announcement on HTML email). This is a great time for endu...

There is nothing like competition to help drive innovation. I love using my Blackberry because of its enterprise integration, but I hate the barely functional browser and the complete absence of HTML email support. Now that Apple and RIM have locked horns, we are on the path to rapid innovation. Apple will be offering enterprise integration for the iPhone. RIM claims that the new Bold will have a great browser (no word in the official announcement on HTML email). This is a great time for endu...

Yesterday, I started a series of posts about how the move to cloud computing is affecting competition. The second question I posed was how cloud computing changes the boundary between “infrastructure” and “applications”? At the most basic level I believe that some things that were standalone applications will become features that are provided by the cloud. We have seen this play out with content. Essentially, the web to date has been “content in the cloud.” And one of the most important devel...

Yesterday, I started a series of posts about how the move to cloud computing is affecting competition. The second question I posed was how cloud computing changes the boundary between “infrastructure” and “applications”? At the most basic level I believe that some things that were standalone applications will become features that are provided by the cloud. We have seen this play out with content. Essentially, the web to date has been “content in the cloud.” And one of the most important devel...