Tech
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Startups in Silicon Valley are like old generals. They don’t die anymore, buoyed on life-rafts of lingering venture capital and modest revenues. They just fade away, eventually purchased for assets that are a shadow of their former promise.
RIP Digg.
When it comes to files, we love to share. No, we need to share. Thanks to the massive capacities of Gmail and other email services, it’s become remarkably easy to share files. Of course, most email services limit the size of the file you can share. Gmail’s, for example, is 25 megabytes.
Sendoid: Finally, Sharing Big Files Isn’t A Huge Pain
The Onion: Facebook “Is Truly A Dream Come True For The CIA” (Video)
You did know that Facebook is a ‘massive online surveillance program run by the CIA,” right? And that Mark Zuckerberg is a CIA agent codenamed the Overlord? Just watch the Onion video above. It explains the whole thing. I especially like the Congressional “testimony” from the deputy CIA director: After years of secretly monitoring the public, we were astounded so many people would willingly publicize where they live, their religious and political views, an alphabetized list of all their friends, personal emails addresses, phone numbers, hundreds of photos of themselves, and even status updates about what they were doing moment to moment.
With nearly $30 billion in annual revenues last year, Google needs to keep both dominating search and find new billion-dollar businesses fast. Google’s biggest opportunities beyond search are display advertising, video advertising (YouTube), mobile search, and local. And if it ever gets its act together on social, that could be a wild card. Last October, the company pointed out that its display advertising business (including YouTube) and mobile search was already bringing in an additional $3.5 billion in annualized gross revenues. Citi analyst Mark Mahaney breaks down some of Google’s opportunities for new billion-dollar businesses in a new research report he released this morning. In particular, he focuses on two of Google’s most promising growth opportunities: YouTube and local advertising.
Citi: Google’s YouTube Revenues Will Pass $1 Billion In 2012 (And So Could Local)
AT&T takeover of T-Mobile: Winners, losers
News Analysis March 21, 2011 12:07 PM ET Computerworld - AT&T and its investors would clearly be winners if the $39 billion proposed takeover of T-Mobile USA is approved by federal regulators. The deal would make AT&T the largest U.S. wireless carrier by far, with 130 million subscribers. But some other winners might come as a surprise: Apple is one, gaining quick access to T-Mobile's 34 million customers as potential buyers of iPads and iPhones . Enterprise customers of both AT&T and T-Mobile are also winners, several analysts said, because of the combined networks' expanded coverage in the U.S. and the opportunity to move to LTE networks faster in 95% of the U.S.
When students asked what subjects they should major in to become a tech entrepreneur, I used to say engineering, mathematics, and science—because an education in these fields is the prerequisite for innovation, and because engineers make the best entrepreneurs. That was several years ago. I realized how much my views have changed when the The New York Times asked me to write a piece for its “Room for Debate” forum this week. The paper wanted me to comment on the divergence of opinion between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. In a speech before the National Governors Association on Feb 28, Gates had argued that we need to spend our limited education budget on disciplines that produce the most jobs. He implied that we should reduce our investment in the liberal arts because liberal-arts degrees don’t correlate well with job creation.
Engineering vs. Liberal Arts: Who’s Right—Bill or Steve?
Yesterday, I laid out why the new Netflix original content plan could be a game-changer in terms of television content and the ultimate disruption of cable. But it still all depends on if the show(s) they pick end up being hits. It appears that Netflix’s first bet, House of Cards , is just about as good of a bet as you could make — but it’s still no guarantee. Here’s an idea that could be much more of a guarantee: saving cult hits.
Another Netflix Content Idea: Saving Cancelled Cult Hits
Netflix Original Content Is Much More Than A Strategy Shift — It Could Shift An Industry
Three years ago, if you had asked people to choose between cable television and Netflix, the vast majority would have laughed at you. A DVD-by-mail service versus thousands of pieces of content always at your fingertips? No one is laughing anymore. Netflix has confirmed that they intend to pay for House of Cards a new show being produced by David Fincher (yes, he of Fight Club , The Social Network , etc) and starring Kevin Spacey (yes, he of The Usual Suspects , American Beauty , etc). Netflix is not paying for the full production of it, but instead they’re paying for the first-rights access to air it.
Not Even Kevin Rose Really Uses Digg Anymore
Update: Kevin Rose Resigns From Digg, Closing Round On New Startup How bad are things at the once-mighty Digg these days? Not so good. It’s been months since Digg relaunched in August in a quest for relevance. They had 18 million unique worldwide visitors that month according to Comscore.
R.I.P. Microsoft Zune, 2006-2011
Bloomberg is reporting that Microsoft has finally decided to put an official end to its Zune media player line. “A person familiar with the decision” has informed them that Microsoft will not be putting out any new hardware in the line, and will be henceforward focusing on integrating Zune functionality with the Windows Phone 7 platform. Not exactly unexpected; the Zune hardware hasn’t changed since mid-2009′s release of the Zune HD , although it has received several significant software upgrades. The writing has been on the wall for a long time, but whether Microsoft would double down (again) or cut their losses was far from clear. Let’s just have a quick trip down memory lane.