February 06, 2004
The SCO Effect
A nice story at the Register assesses the financial impact ofSCO's Linux lawsuitagainst IBM.
As the piece notes, it's been near a year since SCO first filed - and still they haven't put up any proof that their code is in Linux. But I hadn't realized that SCO's stock has surged to as much as 10 times what it was before the lawsuit - from $2/share to $20/share (it's now around $13/share, the story says).
But that could just be opportunists speculating that IBM will settle and give SCO a bump. But you look at the stock market reaction to the lawsuit as an index of credibility on the lawsuit itself - it's basic market theory, the same idea behind the controversial "terrorism futures market" that DARPA floated - and then killed - last summer. As this Dan Gillmor story points out, the actual theory behind the market is credible - that an open market is very efficient assessment of information.
So take that idea to the SCO world, and you'll have to look at the stock of who might suffer from a SCO victory. The most exposed victim is Red Hat, which even though they're not named in the SCO suit, has taken the action personally, and filed a 'put up or shut up' lawsuit against SCO on their own. In the past year, Red Hat has done just fine:their stock is now at a bit over $18/share, just a notch down from their 52-week high and more triple where it was a year ago.
So the market's verdict seems to be that, while SCO may get something out of their action, it won't impede the continued success of Linux. That's good news - and reassuring to boot.
Posted by thomasgoetz at 09:36 PM | TrackBack
.Coms Are Back in a Little Way
A UK computer company decides that its so desperate for business, maybe switching their name to a .com will help.
I love this quote from the company:
"More and more people are choosing to purchase goods online. Tiny.com aims to tap into this trend and encourage its customers to order their PCs systems via the Web."
How's that for a flashback?
Posted by thomasgoetz at 06:24 PM | TrackBack
Game Over for N-Gage?
A few months after its debut, Nokia's N-Gage videogame/cellphone isbeing dumped by some stores as customers choose something else.
To many this isn't a surprise - though people were excited about the idea, the N-Gage has had bad buzz ever since the first testers got their thumbs on the thing. But it was a nice idea, and takes its place alongside the CueCat, the Audrey, and other ideas that were fine in theory but fraught in practice.
Posted by thomasgoetz at 04:38 PM | TrackBack
TiVo Owners Under the Microscope
Turns out that lots of Tivo ownersdidn't know they were being watched, either.
I doubt this'll turn into any real controversy - Tivo didn't violate its posted privacy policy and the data isn't personalized. Indeed, I think it'll go the other way: it's another step that makes people swallow that they're being monitored and measured along pretty much every step of our electronic lives. That's the price of convenience - a bit of privacy, here & there. And I think most people are just fine with that.
Posted by thomasgoetz at 04:24 PM | TrackBack
Police Raids Over "Piracy"
In the past couple months, there have been police raids, or subpena-endorsed raids, in several countries - the US, the UK, and now Australia and now Australia over what the entertainment industries calls "piracy" but what is really often file-sharing. (There is a difference: file-sharing is non-commercial sharing of content somebody owns. Piracy is copying and selling for profit.)
But what alarms me is just the idea of government law enforcement bringing out the heavy artillery to enforce intellectual property laws - or judges authorizing private trade groups to dispatch their own fake agents. Here in the States, the RIAA has dispatched its own quasi-law enforcement apparatus that it's setting out in subpena-backed raids.
Posted by thomasgoetz at 04:13 PM | TrackBack
Pepsi Superbowl Parody
An amusing parody ofPepsi's downloading Superbowl ad.
(via Boing Boing)
Posted by thomasgoetz at 03:59 PM | TrackBack
February 05, 2004
Money is Bad for Business
A very strange story from the FT - argues that there's too much money out there from VCs, and that startups aren't going to be able to handle the pressure to perform if they get investments.
Well, that's just bizarre reasoning. Isn't that what capitalism is all about: getting a chance to test ideas and products in the marketplace?
I understand why venture capitalists would be complaining about this: in the realm of supply & demand, there's too many of them, and not enough possible investments. But I don't get why the FT's Richard Waters swallows their line so readily.
Posted by thomasgoetz at 09:51 PM | TrackBack
Return of the Dot-Coms
So it turns out that having a website that only sells cufflinks or wine glasses or dowels is a great business model.
(via Techdirt)
Posted by thomasgoetz at 03:42 PM | TrackBack
The Trails of the Dead
Every once in a while, when I've got an idle moment before the laptop and a mind for serendipity, I try to dredge up some of the most noteworthy companies from the dot-com heyday. Say, DrKoop.com or Kibu.com. And then I go on a guided tour to the redestination: the rerouted frontiers of post-bust acquisitions.
Enter Boo.com - the infamous fashion website that was too hip for its own good - and end up at the decidedly downmarket Fashionmall.com (though you can go deeper to see some specter of what once was.
Try iBeam (which was a swanky, hubristic streaming media company that held one of the strangest, most expensive IPO parties of the era - Ben Stein doing an awful comedy routine followed by a killer private concert by Elvis Costello) and you'll meander through until you hit TalkPoint Communications, a lowly video conferencing company.
www.webvan.com takes you to...nothing.
Try eToys and you'll end up at...eToys. Which is weird until you scroll down and see that the site is now owned by KB Toys, and is just basically a mirror site for kbtoys.com.
Try it - and send me your best results.
Posted by thomasgoetz at 07:36 AM | TrackBack
The New Newton
I've read lots of withering reviews the past couple weeks of Microsoft's fancy new wristwatch. But this one nicely articulates the general gist: that the watch promises lots of cool stuff, but the functionality of the various brands out there are so much weaker than, say, a Timex, that they're not worth the trouble (let alone the $300 or so most of them cost).
I think there are a couple problems. First, none of the watches look cool. If you're gonna be an early adopter of a technology that's dabbling in a 200 year old accessory, then make it look slick - a retro thing would work well. Make it totally distinctive and people will want to have it. But they didn't do that: instead, they came up with something that looks lots like the old calculator watches of the early 80s. Guys: look at Panerei. Those are cool, big watches.
Second, they seem to be just too hard to figure out. Most reviews agree: The web features are spotty, the interface non-intuitive, and the options just too hard to navigate.
But: that doesn't mean Smart Watches won't happen, someday soon. We've got centuries of proof that the wrist is a great place for a handy device: it's out of the way, but right there if you need it. And it's a good place to accessorize: to show off something a tad different. So it's just a matter of time before somebody puts together a wrist-bound system that looks great, works well, and becomes something of a cool trend. Apple did it with the iPod, after all. But I bet dollars to donuts that Microsoft will pull these things within a year. And within a year later, somebody else will figure out how to do it right.
Wired, of course, bears some responsibility here: we did a big story on the Fossil version of Microsoft's smart watch, and how great it'd be. And over a year later, Fossil has yet to actually release the thing. Maybe they're biding their time till the so-out-they're-in backlash sets in.
Posted by thomasgoetz at 07:23 AM | TrackBack
February 04, 2004
comments on
have turned on the comments box for the past few entries, just to open lines of communication. my email's in the bio box, too.
Posted by thomasgoetz at 07:57 PM | TrackBack
Why eBay Sucks
Michael Schrage makes a great point in a q/a on Tony Perkins' blog about eBay's quality control: that eBay's big flaw is that quality control depends on external vendors.
"If I'm eBay, why do I want to bear the costs of doing quality control for the
thousands or tens of thousands of auctions I have running at any given time
and the thousands if not tens of thousands of buyers and sellers? That's too
expensive. But I realize I need some sort of mechanism for quality control, so
I turn it over to the community. That's taking a bug and turning it into a
feature. "
Schrage is exactly right, as any of us who've been burned by an eBay auction well know. I'm going through one of these right now. In early November, I won an auction for a antique coffee table, paying $100 for the table and $50 for shipping. The seller only accepted checks & money orders. When the table arrived from UPS, it was in pieces; all four legs were snapped off. So I wrote the seller and he said 'UPS's fault; file a damage report and collect the insurance.' A pain, I thought, since it was his packaging that failed. But I dutifully filed the claim and waited. Two weeks later, called UPS and they tell me company policy is only to deal with the shipper (who pays UPS) - not the receiver. I relate this to the seller - and wait. A month goes by, I call UPS, they say they've 'closed the file,' but can't tell me what the determination of the report was. So I ask the seller. And wait. Now all this time I have held off on filing any feedback - my only recourse under eBay. But I do notice that in the meantime, another guy has posted negative feedback for the same thing - broken merchandise. But the seller then swatted back with his own negative feedback. So now I am in a quandary: the seller says he's still hassling UPS, but I have no way to determine the truth of that. And he won't respond to my requests that he just reimburse me my $100 and cash the UPS check when/if it comes. And now I've got 1 week before my window to leave feedback closes.
So I ask you: What should I do? And at what point does it make no sense for me to keep trying to get my $100 back and just do a tit/tat of negative feedback? The only thing I can say is that I'm much less a fan of eBay now - I know it's caveat emptor, but really, how much risk should a buyer take on?
Posted by thomasgoetz at 07:53 PM | TrackBack
Dating Sites - the Next Bubble?
Joining the list of Match.com and all the other online dating services: overweightdate.com, a self-explanatory service for those of a certain size. Besides the fact that this sites homepage only shows the svelte (rather than the substantial), I gotta think that this is a harbinger of a bust. It's great that the profusion and efficiency of online dating is removing the stigma of personal ads, but I can't imagine that there are enough desperate lovers out there to maintain all these companies.
Of course, many of these companies promise particular advantages: better listings, better matching, and so forth. But there's a profusion, that's undeniable.
Which, as a married man, makes for an interesting diversion: Watching a shakeout happen. It's been a long time since there was a rush towards a "space" on the Internet, where "eyeballs" and "community" help merit a business model. So pick your favorites - Yahoo Personals, uDate.com, etc., etc., - and let the shakeout begin.
Posted by thomasgoetz at 07:34 PM | TrackBack
Does the Penalty Match the Gain?
These sort of punishments always perplex me: Credit Suisse First Boston agreed to pay a $770K fine for an IPO stacking case, where it basically sat on some shares of MP3.com (remember them?) in order to make some cash.
What gets me is that 1) there's no mention in the story of how much CSFB made in the scheme or 2) no indication how much CSFB made in all the IPOs it offered in 1999 and 2000.
So basically, they get caught on this one, highly technical, rather arcane trading practice. Fine. That's what the feds could get them on. But does that $770,000 in any way approach what the firm made by fixing such deals in the first place? I'd have to guess not.
As Bob Dole said: Where's the outrage?
Posted by thomasgoetz at 05:55 AM | TrackBack
GoldenPalace.com - the place to be
I've been fascinated by GoldenPalace.com for about 5 years, since they put a temporary tattoo on, I think, Sugar Shane Mosley (or was it Felix Trinidad?) in a middleweight (or was it welterweight?) first in 1997 (or 1998?). Anyway, it was amusing then because it gave an odd backdrop to a fairly boring fight: you could watch the ink wash away from the boxer's body as the fight went on & he sweated more. By the 3rd or 4th round, the GOLDEN PALACE .COM letters were a black blur on his back.
By the next year, the online casino had gotten a tad smarter, and had gotten a henna artist to do longer-lasting tats on boxers' backs (as it happens, I indirectly know the henna artist who made a temporary killing doing these tattoos, as well as henna tats for all sorts of trendy late-90s H'wood celebs).
So funny that, lost in the Janet/Jason breast-off thing, was this "streaker" (who didn't even really streak - compare his lame stunt with the classic 1970s guy who - i'm remembering wrong here - streaked during the World Series or the ALCS with the Red Sox?? But at least that guy had the guts to do a real streak - that is, to bare down to nothing. This guy had a jockstrap (or something) on, and it turns out was just a sad overweight guy paid to get, yes, a henna tattoo on his broad stomach (not back) that says "Goldenpalace.com".
Anyway, it's a curious form of advertising. And I'm not sure it's worked.
Posted by thomasgoetz at 05:42 AM | TrackBack
Does Product Placement Even Work?
I've gotten several emails about the Sex & the City idea, that Carrie has failed to get a better iBook. Which prompted another observation about Apple's product placement strategy:
In movies and television shows where characters use a computer, by and large those computers are Macs (usually iBooks or PowerBooks). They do this, I suppose, for two reasons: first an Apple conveys that the character has some 'character,' that they have real personality. basically, it's a shortcut on character exposition (Wired's ace products editor, Robert Capps, relates that while at MacAddict he commissioned a story on just that take: the story never ran). Second, it mutually reinforces Apple's rep as a 'hip' brand, keeping them in the public eye as "cool". I'd heard, for instance, that Apple went to some effort to get in Mission:Impossible, where Tom Cruise notably used a Mac to "go online" (this was after all in the mid-90s).
Anyway, here's the observation: for all the effort on both the part of the set designers and, perhaps, Apple itself to get product placement over the last few years, there's been no discernible impact on Apple's market share. (The actual number of computers shipped has remained about flat, but since more computers are being sold overall, the market share is in decline.) The fact is that, for all the exposure, there are fewer people choosing to buy Apple.
This seems to me to call into question the whole notion of product placement as a substitute for old-fashioned commercial advertising. Though commercials have always had a debatable impact on their own, with actual metrics hard to come by (due to no lack of trying on the part of advertising firms, networks, and other interested parties), Apple seems to provide a clear object lesson in the *failure* of product placement: it's the computer almost everyone uses on TV and in movies, but it's not helping.
This even as the Wall Street Journal has started to run a monitor of the 'most memorable' product placements on network TV (the King of Queens lusting after a Pontiac Bonneville, or some such stunt).
Anyway, it crossed my mind.
Posted by thomasgoetz at 12:54 AM | TrackBack
The Perils of HDTV Porn
A hilarious story by Brendan Koerner is Slate on high-definition porn. A tough assignment, but good for Brendan that he was able to muddle through to some definitive analysis.
Posted by thomasgoetz at 12:23 AM | TrackBack
February 03, 2004
Selling TiVo's Secrets
Jon Mensing reminds me that last summer, TiVo announced that it would be selling its user data. At the time there was some worry of a slippery slope, that TiVo's privacy policy would start to slip as customers got more hungry for the data. But so far, I haven't noticed any such incrementalisms. That said, the publicity TiVo is getting over the Jackson stat is a nice way of advertising that it can, and will, crunch its subscribers' usage patterns.
Posted by thomasgoetz at 07:58 PM | TrackBack
The White House Version of Science
A terrific report on Wired News (which is unaffiliated with Wired magazine, confusingly) on a frightening new White House policy that lets bureaucrats choose which scientists will review research. This is, as reporter Kristen Philipkoski points out, a horrible approach to science, which depends on legitimate, broad peer-review to establish legitimate research.
The White House positions this under the guise of "sound science,'' a term that popped up in the early 90s to counter the supposedly ideological science that seemed to indicate things from the greenhouse effect to dangers of genetically modified food. In truth, 'sound science' is a term dreamt up by lobby groups looking to discredit their political adversaries. And it's particularly ironic coming from a White House that continues to pretend climate change isn't happening, that 'the science' is inconclusive - despite the near-unanimous conclusions of scientists actually studying the matter.
But take politics out of it - say I thought GM food was, in fact, a viable technology that offers more benefits than dangers. The fearful thing about the White House policy is that it injects politics into scientific research, in much the same way that, 15 years ago, politics got injected into the funding process for the National Endowment for the Arts, or a decade ago in funding for public broadcasting. There's a place for politics - and a place for science.
Posted by thomasgoetz at 05:32 PM | TrackBack
Janet's Breasts & Tivo
So TiVo says that viewers hit rewind a record number of times on Sunday to watch the Justin & Janet's "mistake."
Interesting, but not really a surprise. But is anybody else curious how TiVo *knows* this? It's my understanding that TiVo is a big harddrive, and you record a show on your drive, and forward and rewind using that disc - locally. So it's mildly disconcerting that all that usage is being monitored by TiVo.
I'm not usually one to scream 'privacy!' and in this case I'd guess that TiVo doesn't monitor by user, but aggregates the data, which usually assuages most privacy concerns. And it makes sense that TiVo would track usage, since they're all about tailoring the service for each user. But the rapidity of the results, and the precision - those 30 seconds - is certainly stunning, if not disconcerting.
Posted by thomasgoetz at 05:07 PM | TrackBack
Rational Pricing for Broadband?
Another move towards reasonable pricing, this time with DSL broadband . Like cellphone service, there's no reason for broadband prices to be so skewed - except for the fact that they are. That is, once upon a time broadband was a novelty, and companies had to go to some expense to build up infrastructure that put high-speed access into people's homes.
But that was last century. Now broadband is simply a matter of flicking a switch, and like basic phone service, should be priced accordingly. Indeed, unlike cable service, there's no 'value added' in getting broadband - it's simply a pipe, without addons or options (which is why some providers have been deliberately slowing down service for most of their customers, in order to offer 'super high speed' access to those who pay more).
So does SBC's offer mean rational pricing has finally arrived? Not yet. Even though they've slashed their rates in half (for a one-year promotion), they're still way out of proportion compared to electricity, or water, or gas, or any other utility - which is what broadband is (and how it should be treated).
But maybe it'll be a start.
Posted by thomasgoetz at 04:59 PM | TrackBack
The Quintessential Nerd, UK Style
So here's a pretty familiar story: A British teenager hacks into a US government lab, and pokes around, downloads music, and basically does lots of boring kid-with-a-computer things. It's so War Games, circa 1983. But just to bring the cliche to life, take a look at the kid: this guy is no Matthew Broderick. He's about as goofy and geeky and gawky as you could imagine. No - he's worse than you could imagine. Damn, he's even still using gel in his hair. Somebody get this boy an appointment at Lasik & some proper pomade!
And just because it's a far better take on the story, here again is our own (or formerly our own) Bernhard Warner on the beat. That's two for two, Bernhard!
Posted by thomasgoetz at 01:28 AM | TrackBack
February 02, 2004
Cellphone Wars
Finally - almost 3 months after portability goes into effect, driving thousands of customers to ditch their plans & go shopping for a better deal, the wireless companies are offering real deals for customers. Cell phone pricing is screwed up - seriously. It's a classic case of an industry that started small, and dreamed up a tricky way of getting consumers to pay more than they need to (rather than the 'antiquated' but totally reasonable pay-per-minute approach AT&T took with the telephone). So now they've got a huge industry on their hands, with a significant percentage of the customers *always mad* at the service provider, almost always because of 1) bad service 2) crappy service plans.
I never understand why one maverick doesn't just jettison the whole 'call plan' approach and offer a way that consumers would ask for themselves. Same goes with cable companies - why doesn't an upstart like RCN (which I get in San Francisco instead of Comcast) offer a 'pick you channel' plan? I'm sure people would flock in droves to such sanity.
Posted by thomasgoetz at 10:16 PM | TrackBack
Google Delaying Filing?
Hadn't seen this picked up much - over the weekend, the Times of London reported that Google has delayed its IPO . Of course, they haven't filed yet, but still, this would disappoint lots of people - and buck the assumption everyone has made. The New York Times, for instance, on Sunday said they'd be going public this year - without any qualification whatsoever.
Posted by thomasgoetz at 05:02 PM | TrackBack
WalMart's Bold New PR Strategy
Seems that Wal Mart is getting tired of being the model for how not to do PR - they're rolling out a new PR strategy.
"We are not popular with a lot people," Vice Chairman Tom Coughlin said at the grand opening of a new Wal-Mart store in San Antonio in January.
"If our wages and benefits were so bad, we wouldn't have had that type of attraction with the customer," he was quoted as saying in the San Antonio Express-News. "The chain wouldn't be the size it has become if we were doing as many things wrong as people like to attribute to us."
This seems to me a classic non sequitur. To translate: "If we paid our staff poverty-level wages, our customers would stop buying things here." Well, no: that's not true at all. Indeed, that's part of *why* WalMart has managed to get its prices so low - at times artificially low. Not by streamlining supply lines or managing their supplies better to meet demand, but by artificially imposing their will onto a market. Ie, they demand that Acme Widgets sell them widgets for 16 cents, even though it costs Acme 15 cents to just get them out the door. If Acme refuses, Walmart will move on to their competitor. So Acme caves, slashes its own employee wages, and Walmart gets its price. That's unfair leverage. And if part of that Low, Low Price comes because Walmart pays it's own employees so little, well, that's the story Walmart doesn't want to let get into the press.
No wonder these guys are finally facing rounds of lawsuits across the nation.
Posted by thomasgoetz at 04:35 PM | TrackBack
Pepsi Goes Saccharine
here's a great take on the Pepsi ads, from The Register:
Twenty years ago, let's not forget, Apple used a Superbowl TV intermission to introduce its iconographic Macintosh computer with the image of an athlete smashing Big Brother. The easy-to-use computer proved to be a liberating tool for personal creativity and with Adobe's Postscript and Aldus' software, created the desktop publishing industry. Now the same Apple is endeavoring to reduce personal freedoms by ushering in a regime where the recording industry enforces copyright with Big Brother's iron fist.
Posted by thomasgoetz at 04:17 PM | TrackBack
Apple Product Placement
I'm sure that, like me, most of the Superbowl audience switched channels to HBO to catch the fading episodes of Sex & the City. One thing I've noticed this year is that Carrie is still using an old black G3. Now given that the series' audience is pretty solidly Mac-sympathizers, why would Apple not foist a shiny new Powerbook onto her?
One reason: It's part of her character to spend thousands on couture & shoes, and have nothing left for little things like a new computer. Response: May be, but it's not convincing to me. First, she's a reporter (even though she so rarely has to actually write or go to the office or... whatever). I know it's television, but if you argue 'character', I think it's less convincing that if she'd actually buy a necessary tool to do her job.
OK, this may not be the sort of stuff you wanna read at TheStandard.com, but hey - it's a blog.
Posted by thomasgoetz at 04:03 PM | TrackBack
One Comment on Superbowl Ads
Avoiding Janet's bustout and the game itself, one comment on Pepsi's iTunes downloaders ad. Even though the ad played on how downloading is cool, there's already chatter on how well the ad condemned illegal behavior (as the RIAA would like file-sharing to be perceived, or whether the ad glorifies downloading. Me, I'll take a page from Tom Frank and call it neither: it's classic hipster appropriation. Like it has for decades, Pepsi sees what it thinks is cool 'youthful' behavior (in this case file-sharing), and tries to associate that behavior with drinking its sugared, colored, fizzy water. In past campaigns, they pulled this off with transparent slogans (Pepsi Generation), but this time they couldn't even pretend there was anything to do between soda and downloading (or at least not Pepsi - isn't Mountain Dew the geeks' chosen fuel?). So they paid Apple to let them give away iTunes passes. Forget whether it was positive or negative for file-sharing; in my book the lawyers did a superb job of making it entirely ambiguous and defensible either way. But what it does demonstrate is that file-sharing is entirely mainstream. It is something 60 million Superbowl viewers will understand in 30 seconds. Considering Napster didn't exist 5 years ago, that's an incredible testament to the change wrought by P2P. But I still don't think it'll make Pepsi any cooler.
Posted by thomasgoetz at 03:50 PM | TrackBack
Turning SCO into the Good Guy
We'll never know who's brilliant idea it was to attack SCO with MyDoom, but really, the strategy sucks. It makes SCO look like a victim, gives them the veneer of legitimacy ('if we can't win in the courtroom...'), and taints the entire, legitimate protest that SCO is abusing its Unix rights to go after Linux.
(And for you folks monitoring log-rolling, I can't help but enjoy the fact that the Reuters story is written by Bernhard Warner, my old Standard colleague.)