Unto The Breach! » Internet

“Oh oh it’s magic” – Part Deux

Tom — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 18:38:33 +0000

Sonos is remarkably well done. But in my mind it’s only the tip of the iceberg; Sonos is a very-specific audio implementation of the combination of three technologies:

WiFi as the new household remote control standard – replacing infrared, X.10, and other standards. For $50, a house can get a WiFi access point that is not only the current and future standard for all things digital, but also is secure, reliable, free to operate, and covers the entire house. There is a whole new level of range, reliability, and flexibility with the adoption of WiFi.
Invisible network appliances (NettApps): Sonos uses an invisible network appliance to invisibly deliver music. By invisible, I mean that I will never ever have to worry about it:
1. The Sonos box will be hidden away and will be unseen by humans for years – it delivers music without being thought about. The functionality is provisioned by the NetApp, but the power resides entirely in the remote. And, we’re now at a place where the cost, utility, and ergonomics (size, power consumption, noise, location requirements) of NetApps are no longer a barrier to purchase/implement.
2. I’ll never have to manage the box: there will be no concern about rebooting, upgrading the CPU or RAM, etc. Therefore, the Sonos NetApp will never become obsolete. (Okay, it will eventually break and need to be replaced.) The NetApp works; there is no room for thought about updating or upgrading; that is nonsensical, because the box already does everything it is supposed to. There is no “more is better” with this NetApp. Pause for a moment: can you say that about any other hardware you own?
A multi-purposed handheld computer as an infinitely flexible remote control. The iPhone (or iTouch) is such an awesome platform that with some relatively easy coding you can build a remote control UX that far surpasses the UX of any other remote control you’ve ever had. Oh, and I already have one on my all the time anyway, because it’s a phone! By the way, although iPhone is remarkable, it’s only the first; there will certainly be other handheld platforms that equal and/or surpass it.

In other words, I can now (or in the very near future), can:

Take any or all of my hand-held computers (iPhone et al) – think interchangeably, meaning whatever is most convenient or newest or coolest
Walk into any location ( home or office or restaurant or …)
Control all the devices that need to be controlled that I have access to.

The future (tomorrow) is gonna be so cool!

“Oh oh it’s magic” Oh oh it’s magic When I’m with you (Oh-o, it’s...

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Microsoft caught acting like Microsoft, 2009 version (aka Silverlight)

Tom — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 18:58:17 +0000

TechCrunch has a nice post about the history and drivers of MS’s browser innovation (or lack thereof). Rather than playing nicely with the exciting development of HTML 5, MS instead is dragging its feet and trying to push people toward its latest trojan horse, which is called SilverLight.

I wonder if, in their strategic planning, MS considers the long term damage to their brand caused by such consistently “evil” behavior. Even amongst non-technical folks, there is a not-so-subtle quiescent level of distaste for all things MS. It feels to me that as technical superiority and/or barriers to switching for the cash cow products erode, MS will find sales of these cash cows increasingly difficult to maintain.

The Economist: Best Books of 2009 The best economics and business books of the year, according...

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More on the death of cable TV

Tom — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 14:22:46 +0000

Recently I upgraded an old computer with an HDMI-capable video board and a wireless keyboard to make it my home theater PC (“HTPC”). I plugged it into my TV, sat on the couch, and happily experienced Windows 7 on a 52″ screen. Two weeks in, my experience is:

- Zero time watching cable TV any more. Zip. Nada.

- Hulu rocks! Colbert etc. – not available with my skimpy cable package – is now available when I want.

- Some time browsing the web from my couch. It works OK, but the experience is inferior to a laptop, so this won’t be a heavily used application of my HTPC

- Music rocks! I can now play music on my home stereo using my favorite PC software and/or Pandora. It’s incredibly easy to use, ie a a great form factor, and the sound quality is as good as your home stereo. I believe that HTPC’s are a serious competitive threat to Sonos et al.

- Photos rock! This was the biggest surprise. Remember your father’s slide shows? This is the new shiznit, and photos look spectacular. It’s a significant upgrade in experience from looking at photos on a PC.

My anecdotal experience agrees with my thinking (here and here) about the decline of the cable industry.

Oh, and Henry Blodget has a nicely written post on the topic as well.

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Sync is a Holy Grail

Tom — Wed, 27 May 2009 14:24:05 +0000

Sync is one of personal computing’s holy grails. Here’s an interesting article on why it’s difficult.

I think that this problem is well on its way to being solved by Ray Ozzie at Microsoft, with MS’s Live Mesh product. Live Mesh may be the next killer OS feature: with Live Mesh, you can painlessly have everything about your PC (browsing history and personal data such as word docs and spreadsheets) automagically synced across all your windows platforms – eg laptop, home computer, work computer, or a computer your visiting, just as long as it’s running Windows. (No cheesy hardware eg Pogoplug required!) Sorry, but it won’t work on a Mac or on Linux. I think this functionality will have network effects and is a difficult enough problem that it might keep people like me on the Windows platform just a little bit longer.

“Oh oh it’s magic” – Part Deux Sonos is remarkably well done. But in my mind it’s...

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Post du Jour – Localized Twitter Marketing

Tom — Mon, 04 May 2009 19:36:38 +0000

Andrew Hyde has a great post today about how non-internet business can (and should) use Twitter for cheap and effective marketing. Andrew is an expert at community building/marketing, and his points are spot on:

The Easy:

Talk to your customers.
All Positive, All the Time.
Be A Character.
Talk To Other Stores.
Ask Questions.

The Not So Easy:

Realize you don’t own your brand.
Passionate > Passive.
Transparency Can Hurt.
Encourage Interaction

Read the post - it’s great.

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Business Development at Twitter

Tom — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 21:26:07 +0000

Twitter is hiring a BizDev person.

Given that:

Twitter’s buzz is approaching the same stratosphere as Facebooks’;
Bloggers’ number one pastime these days is pontificating what Twitter’s business model is/will/should be;
The optimal business model for Twitter remains unclear;
Growth is exploding and that Twitter is rapidly becoming mainstream, wherein both people and companies are relying on it every day as an integral part of their commercial communications;

It is hard to imagine a more fun and challenging job! The stakes are big, the way uncertain…this is such cool opportunity that I couldn’t help but spend my lunch hour thinking about what I think Twitter BizDev should do.

If I were Twitter BizDev, here is how I would start:

Explore charging for commercial use of the service. For example, charge Dell to use the service; perhaps fixed costs for reserving a name, and variable costs for each tweet sent or read by followers. This is the most obvious revenue source, but it is also filled with landmines: introducing the friction of not being a costless system is hazardous to the explosive growth of Twitter and its “information wants to be free” culture, so such commercialization must be done cautiously and subtly.
Continue to develop paid placement. What Twitter has done to date (recommend paid-placement followees) is perhaps just proof of concept. I can imagine very sophisticated follow recommendations, which usually would need to be voluntarily pulled by the user from Twitter, but could also very occasionally be pushed by Twitter. For example, if I ever tweet about pasta, Twitter has the opportunity to make me aware of time-sensitive and geo-proximal restaurant tweeters and tweets.
Continue developing and offering free non-commercial use of a comprehensive API. Do everything possible to continue the explosive growth of the use of the API. Selectively begin to charge for commercial use of the API: extract only a small portion of the rent for a few of the most profitable users of the API. Do this slowly and un-aggressively as per above.
Explore partnerships with anybody who realizes revenue from text messages. The adoption of Twitter increases those firms’ revenue, and there is no reason why Twitter shouldn’t attempt to capture some of that. I recognize that in many of those situations, Twitter has little leverage, so even though it is creating revenue for these companies, it will have a tough time capturing any portion of it. Perhaps there are ways to create leverage?
Search, baby! Twitter is rapidly becoming the ultimate source of data for real time searches, and it is this data which is which is the most exciting and begets Twitter being used in the same sentence as Google. It is why Google and Microsoft are going head-to-head in their rumored fight over acquiring Twitter. Assuming Twitter chooses not to sell just yet, there are 2 tactics for monetizing search that should start to be developed:
- Facilitate commercial 3rd party exploitation of the crown jewels, by allowing Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, OneRiot, Lijit, et al to fully index tweets, and charge them for use.
- Develop an enterprise market awareness subscription business: for example, Dell could subscribe to a daily Dell report.

All of these directions must be explored with a light touch, learning as much as possible with each deal. This is because, as mentioned above, it is paramount that nothing is done to dampen Twitter’s explosive growth. Secondly, the perspective must be one of a very thin haircut across a broad audience: the network effects are so dominant for Twitter that pricing any entity out of the market really diminishes the value of the entire ecosphere (as well as enables competitors). There is a lot of organizational learning that must happen not just around how to maximize revenue, but also about what the optimal mix of revenue and resulting friction is.

If you were Twitter BizDev, what would you do?

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Entrepreneurial Batting Averages

Tom — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 14:27:02 +0000

My friend Brad Feld often talks about the important and constructive role that failure has in the entrepreneurial process.

Today’s post-du-jour comes from Will Price, whose mentor has a great perspective on failure. The money quote:

“…the key is to get up in the that batter’s box and take a swing. And all you have to do is hit one single, a couple of doubles, and an occasional homerun out of every 10 at-bats and you’re going to be the best hitter or best leader around.” – John Donahoe, CEO eBay

Identifying and Evaluating Entrepreneurial Opportunities Here’s the deck for the talk I gave last night...

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The Creators of the New Business Model for Music

Tom — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:01:33 +0000

Musically, I’m not a huge NIN fan. From an internet entrepreneur’s perspective, however, it appears as if Trent Reznor has an outsized dollop of business acumen. I admire his approach and learning process, and the results speak for themselves. Frank Rose’s review is a very interesting read about a man on the forefront of understanding how bands can make money in the internet era.

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More on IPTV

Tom — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:46:39 +0000

Following on the heels of my post yesterday about Internet TV:

The NYT has an interesting summary of the discussions about IPTV at The Cable Show last week.

Also, in the NYT’s technology section, is an interesting article about Internet-enabled STB’s.

Change is a comin’ to the cable industry.

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The Future of TV: IPTV is Roaring Toward Us

Tom — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 12:04:16 +0000

Me thinks Mark Cuban dost protest too much: his post on why traditional TV is here to stay is plainly self-serving, but thin on vision and logic (and, for Mr. Cuban, unusually obfuscatory!).

I see Internet TV coming within a handful of years to most every affluent US urban dwelling.

Here’s why:

a) Internet viewings of content traditionally seen on TV is taking off. Witness Hulu’s growth. The reasons for this are twofold: the viewing experience is now as good as on TV (because of widespread adoption of broadband), and because I have broad selection available on the Internet. In fact, some shows that I like I can only watch on my PC, because I don’t subscribe to a cable package that carries them.

b) While quite a bit of TV content is already available on the internet, what’s not already there now seems to be stampeding to get there. Disney, for example, is rumored to be negotiating right now to get in on the Hulu action. More are sure to follow. I think it possible that the selection of shows available on a PC will so dwarf what’s available on cable that cable may even become stigmatized as “limited”. When you’re in the mood to watch oh, say, Josh Bernstein, you’ll turn to the internet first.

c) What will the TV experience be like when Hulu et al are integrated with the rest of the internet, like Google, Facebook, and Twitter? Few can imagine all the possibilities, but viewer experience (and content owner experience too) is going to much much more dynamic – it will be far more engaging than just dumb ‘ole cable.

d) All of this internet content goodness is coming to your couch and big screen sooner than you may realize. This is because within a couple of months Internet set-top boxes (STB’s) will be available for a couple of hundred dollars. Plug in the box to your TV, fire up a Linux- or Android-based browser, and watch Hulu from your couch! These STB’s are fully HDTV and 1080p capable. Oh, and this is the price for early adopters; wait a year or two, and the hardware will be half as much.

e) And, when you’re sitting on your couch, will anyone bother to go through the pain of figuring out what’s currently available on cable when infinite content is immediately available and conveniently accessed? “Time-shifting” and super-cool DVR technology, you’ve just been obsolesced.

f) I should say something about content distribution costs: while it is true that the cost to deliver a movie over IP is still (slightly) more expensive than delivering it via cable, the difference is small (and shrinking), and I believe it is absolutely overwhelmed by the vastly superior convenience that will be (is alread) available via IP.

g) Not only will the viewer experience be superior, but the content owners will prefer viewers via IP as well. Not only will their ads be able to be much better targeted, but also, for paid content, the content owners will have much greater ability to flexibly set whatever price they want then they ever had over cable. And, content owners won’t have to deal with cable companies as an intermediator – so they’ll love it as a distribution channel.

I should note that I’m not a fanboy of either any STB manufacturers or of Hulu. In fact, I expect there to eventually be multiple Hulu’s; Yahoo and Google/Youtube are obvious wannabe’s in this space. Also, there may be content portals that in turn disintermediate the Hulu’s of the world; think google video search or companies like Boxee.

The conclusion I reach is straightforward: we’ll be watching media via IP on our big screen LCD TV’s in the very near future, and it will happen at the expense of the cable companies.

Cable, you’re being disintermediated.

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