What is an iPod worth?... Apparently $100 to Dell

In an interesting marketing move, Dell has announced that they will give a $100 rebate to buyers of their 15 GB Digital Jukebox who mail in their old iPod. I hardly doubt that many people will take Dell up on the offer, but I am sure that the simple publicity and inevitable comparisons between the iPod and the Jukebox is exactly what Dell is hoping for.

In case you weren't confused enough... here come cable cards!

I feel bad for any consumer currently in the market for a television. Currently they have to decipher the terms: analog, digital, enhanced definition, high definition, plasma, LCD, DLP, flat screen, etc. And once you have all those terms figured out, now comes the idea of a cable card. The New York Times has a great article on the impending requirement for CE manufactures to offer cable card ready TVs. Now all CE retailers have to do is to get consumers to understand that utilizing the new cable card technology will mean that most of the advanced features offered by cable companies won't available.

Why Microsoft wanted to buy SAP

I have been a vocal critic of Microsoft lately, especially around its bid for SAP. Well today I came across some internal Microsoft documents, made public via the Oracle trial, that outlines what the boys in Redmond were thinking when they were selling this idea internally. This presentation outlines their strategic reasons for completing the deal, and while some of the document is omitted for corporate strategy reasons, there is one HUGE item missing from this analysis that I am sure the government didn't omit:

Would CUSTOMERS want a combined SAP / Microsoft?? - If you read through the document it isn't hard to read between the lines in terms of what Microsoft is after, and that is customer lock-in. By buying the dominant ERP vendor with a huge installed base, Microsoft would attempt to build hooks between SAP software and Microsoft products like Office. Given Microsoft's recent difficulties in delivering products that are on-time and secure, I don't believe companies would simply buy all this software from Microsoft and lock themselves into the Microsoft platform any more than they have to. My guess is that a combined SAP / Microsoft would have driven the adoption of linux and other technologies simply to ensure there is a balance in the marketplace.

Mainstream media warns people to stop using IE

10 days ago I publicly announced that I had made the switch to Firefox. I made the switch because I believe Firefox is simply a superior product. With all the recent security problems in IE, almost every major media outlet has called for users to stop using IE and switch to another browser. Check out this article from BusinessWeek.

For your own security please stop using IE and switch over to another browser... You can go back to IE after Microsoft releases Service Pack 2 which should tighten up their security.

Local search - could be a Win / Win / Win situation

I have been using Google's Local Search since it was introduced and I must say I love the service. I have found myself using the local search to find everything: places to eat, stores, golf courses, etc. Local search seems to be one of those rare "Win / Win / Win" opportunities for consumers and businesses.

The first Win is for consumers. The service is obviously useful and helps people find what they need locally.

The second Win is for search providers. This opens an untapped and potentially lucrative market for advertising revenue from small local companies. Yahoo! needs to find new revenue streams to justify its lofty valuation (as will Google shortly) and this could be a huge market.

The third Win is for small local companies. Any small company looking to advertise through Google or Overture in the past had to risk paying for ads that weren't well targeted to their market. Local search should help to minimize the waste and make online advertising profitable for these companies. Apparently Yahoo's Overture local service will be able to target ads down to around a half mile radius.

Do you really want a PC - TV?

Convergence of computing and entertainment has been talked about for years, and there is very little debate that it is now finally occurring. A report from In-Stat says that the market for PC-TV's is ready to explode. While I think the concept of entertainment PCs is a good one, a project I worked on this year showed me that consumers might feel differently.

In a product design and development class I worked with a team of students and Intel to design an "entertainment pc". We found that while consumers love the idea of easily managing and consuming their digital content, they hated the idea of a "PC" in their entertainment center. When consumers think of consumer electronic devices they believe that any device they buy should be able to work for 5 - 7 years. When we talked about an "entertainment PC" one of the biggest concerns consumers had was that the device would be obsolete in 3 - 4 years.

The key take away we had was that any "entertainment PC" shouldn't be marketed at a "PC", since a computer carries with it an impression of difficult to use, Windows crashing, and expensive. They should be marketed as CE devices that just happens to have a hard drive and a processor.

The third player

Anyone who reads this blog knows I am very excited by the impending competition between cable companies and regional telephone companies. I have heard various "experts" express concerns that with only 2 players (the cable & telephone company) in any given market that competition will not be fierce and that consumers won't benefit from lower prices. These experts are missing a huge trend that will introduce additional competition to the marketplace, and that is broadband wireless connectivity. While WiMax (which got major approval from the IEEE today), and EV-DO services are scarcely available today, expect a major roll out of these services next year. The providers of these services, including the likes of Cingular, Verizon Wireless, and small startups, will be the third major player that will keep the duopoly with fixed wires into the home honest and help drive prices down.

AuctionDrop - The yard sale killer

AuctionDrop is a service that allows people to take items they want to sell on eBay, and drop them off at an AuctionDrop location and they sell it for you. Some have said that this service will never take off, I couldn't disagree more, I think that the only thing standing between this service and success is consumer awareness. The vast majority of people in this country have never shopped, much less sold anything on eBay... in addition most of the people in the country are not comfortable enough with technology to shop or sell on eBay, but a service like AuctionDrop removes all these barriers for consumers. Everyone has "stuff" in their house they no longer use, that could be sold online, now all they will have to do is drop it off at an AuctionDrop location (There are thousands given the partnership auctiondrop has with UPS).

Often times some of the best business ideas are products that compliment another growing business/service (like eBay). I think that AuctionDrop is a great service for the average consumer and that it is companies like AuctionDrop that eBay will rely on to drive their growth. Here is some free advice to the AuctionDrop people: To avoid competition they should offer a discount for AuctionDrop users to buy other AuctionDrop items, to create some type of incentive to drive growth early and offer an incentive for customers to stay.

Microsoft & Anti Virus software

Earlier this week it was reported that Microsoft is getting ready to launch an anti-virus product. I don't understand how the company RESPONSIBLE for the security holes that Viruses take advantage of can ethically sell software and profit from their own shoddy code. Microsoft selling anti-virus software is like buying a car and then having the car maker trying to profit from every recall the car has.

92 Million user names could get you 5 yrs in jail

Apparently an AOL employee sold a list that contained 92 million user names to spammers. Companies like AOL spend MILLIONS on dealing with spam, you would think that they might spend a little cash on ensuring that the database with user names is better protected.

Google's Gmail - A wasted opportunity, why it this is important, and what could have been done to prevent it.

For over a month now I have been critical of Google's execution of Gmail. Five weeks ago I went as far as to call the execution of Gmail a failure, and with today's announcement by Microsoft that Hotmail will now offer 250 MB of free storage I believe that Google has wasted a golden opportunity with Gmail. Here is why I think this is a big deal and what Google should have done differently.

Why this is a big deal - Unless you have been in a coma for the last few months you know that Google is going public. While the IPO price for Google's offering will be set via a dutch auction, the long term success of the company, and hence the stock price, will be determined by how well Google can compete with Microsoft, Yahoo! and other upstarts. The inability to effectively launch Gmail before Hotmail & Yahoo! could react shows that Google may be tech savvy, but potentially weak on strategy & execution. While being technologically superior to your competition will often sustain a company in its early days, when an industry begins to mature, a firms ability to market effectively, set the proper strategic direction, and execute on that direction become more important.

How this mess could have been avoided:
- One of the first problems with Gmail was that privacy advocates around the country went crazy over the idea of contextual ads in an email. First off Google should have been aware that privacy advocates might have a problem with this approach to email and they should have been better prepared. If they knew that privacy was going to be a concern, and given that the Google founders know Brad Templeton (The founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation) they should have consulted with Brad and gotten the EFF on their side before any public announcement.

- Google has taken months to open this product to the public. While it is wise technically for Google to try and scale an application like Gmail in a controlled fashion, it is foolish given the market conditions. The company should have been more aggressive with their rollout, even risking bugs and outages, in order to get the product open to the public before Yahoo! and Hotmail could respond. Now that Hotmail and Yahoo! have raised their storage limits, one of the key points of attraction to Gmail has been removed, storage size.

- I have asked a few family members if they want a gmail account, and the first thing all of them have asked is "How hard will it be to switch from Yahoo!?". My response has been... "Surprisingly hard, since Google doesn't give you any tools to make the switch easier." Simply put, there is NO excuse for not having a tool to make switching from Hotmail and Yahoo! easier. Hell, given the 2000+ people at Google, the company should have taken 5 or 6 people and had them build a simple utility to extract email and contacts from these two services and load them into Gmail.

In summary, the email market was perfectly set up for Google to enter and dominate based on a great product offering. Delays in rolling out the product have allowed Hotmail and Yahoo to respond and really limit Google's opportunity to take over the email market. If Google wants to be a GREAT company they will need to really focus on marketing, execution, and strategy, and not always on technology.

Everyone wants to become the company formerly known as AT&T

When Michael Armstrong started buying Cable companies in the late nineties, the strategy was simple to explain. The cable companies gave AT&T a direct high bandwidth pipeline into the home, bypassing the need to pay regional bell companies for use of their network. Additionally, AT&T would be able to offer Cable TV, Local & Long distance phone, cell phone, and broadband internet access all on one bill. With the core AT&T long distance business crumbling, Armstrong broke up AT&T under the belief that components of the business were undervalued. Armstrong spoke at a few of my classes and when I asked him if breaking up the company was premature he stated that at the time when Worldcom and other Telecos were cooking the books, the had to find a way to appease investors and give them a return on their money, and the best way was too break up the company.

Almost every week it seems like companies are trying to piece together the products that AT&T had gathered. Today Time Warner announced that they are considering getting into the cell phone business. They will most likely resell cell service from another provider, but they are intrigued by the concept of offering the exact same bundle that AT&T was interested in offering.

Everyday it appears that Armstrong made the moves to turn AT&T into a competitor, and then tore it apart in a short sighted move. The only people that got rich off of Armstrong's moves were the investment bankers.

Final nail in the Comdex coffin

The organizer of Comdex has canceled the 2004 show. Back in the late 1990's Comdex was THE technology trade show to attend, but in recent years it has been eclipsed by the Consumer Electronics Show as the place to unveil new computing gear. While I haven't attended Comdex, I have attended CES and highly recommend anyone interested in the future of consumer technology to attend. The organizer of Comdex maintains that they will try and raise the show from the dead in 2005... but I wouldn't expect the show to return to its glory days anytime soon.

Digital home alliance - Great idea but doomed to fail?

As all content goes digital, consumer electronic devices need to interoperate more today than ever before. Companies are aware of this fact and have formed the Digital Home Alliance, which intends to help speed the introduction of products that will work together in the home. I think the problem with this alliance is that there are too many big name companies on board that have conflicting incentives. For example, both Sony and Microsoft are a part of this alliance, and both of these companies are known for favoring proprietary technologies and both view the digital home as their next area of growth. Don't expect either Microsoft or Sony to give in on issues such as digital rights management... too many powerful players could kill a conceptually great alliance group.

Gmail give away part III

Alright, people want gmail accounts, so why not give them away. Here is the next trivia question... all you have to do is answer the question first in the comment section for this posting.

Question: Many believe that the Netscape browser was the original browser. What browser, that preceeded Netscape, did Marc Andreessen help develop while in college? And at what university was he at during this development time?

SBC joins the fray

SBC has announced that they will start rolling out fiber in their network effectively turning up the heat on cable companies and Verizon who is in the midst of a fiber roll out of their own. SBC also announced that they intend to offer television programming using Microsoft's IP based TV technology. I can't wait to get fiber to my home to play the local telco off the cable company!

The IM Platform

Back in May I asked why it was taking so long for companies like Yahoo! and AOL to use their IM products as platforms for launching other compelling services. Well, Yahoo! seems like they have woken up plan to get into the telephony game through their IM offering.

While the service is geared toward connecting Yahoo! IM users to cell phone users, it will take a while to get agreements and software in place to make this a reality. I am a strong believer that AOL, Yahoo, and MSN should treat their IM products as platforms to launch services, and if Google is smart, they will realize they are in trouble in this regard.

Finally Hollywood makes a good move!

Finally Hollywood has made a great move in their attempt to stop movie piracy. Rather than trying to kill fair use or suing 12 year old kids for downloading content they have decided to make a strong effort to stop piracy where it starts, at the theaters. The studios are offering a $500 reward to employees of movie theaters for every person they catch using a camcorder to record the films. This is the right approach to help curb piracy of newly released films since employees of movie theaters, most likely making around $10 per hour would love to catch a few people a week to supplement their income. In my opinion, it is the guy carrying the camcorder into a theater that is the criminal Hollywood should go after, not the father making backups of his DVD collection because his kids throw them around like frisbees.

God bless competition

A month ago I blogged about how I believed the impending head to head competition between cable companies and local telephone companies would drive consumer prices down. Back then I thought it would take years for competition to get stiff enough to drive down my $180 cable, phone and internet bill to around $80 a month. Well, I was WAY OFF... Check out this quote from a news.com article:

"On Monday, Cablevision Systems introduced an aggressively priced bundle of services, offering high-speed Internet access, Internet-based phone calls and digital cable for $90 a month."

I am sure that this bundle isn't as comprehensive as the package I get now, but I am also certain that it is just the beginning of price drops and that these companies won't be able to find any other attribute to compete on other than price. Now if the FCC could help push along standards for super high speed fixed wireless, we could see big time competition.

Jack Valenti - End of an Era

Jack Valenti has been the voice of Hollywood in Washington D.C. for decades. He has announced plans to step down and conducted an interesting interview with News.com. I can only hope that with Valenti's era coming to an end that the world of technology and Hollywood will start a new era of cooperation. Valenti called the VCR a device that would kill Hollywood due to his fears of piracy. The VCR ended up saving Hollywood and transforming the industry. The Motion Picture Association of America needs a new CEO who is visionary when it comes to digital entertainment, and not someone like Valenti who fights for bills like the DMCA.

Gmail give away - part II

Ok, time to give away another gmail invite. This will run the same way as the last, just be the first to post the correct answer to the comments section of this posting and I will email you the invite. Here is the question:

The internet was originally started by what goverment agency?

EDIT: Congrats to Caske for correctly answering the question! I have another question going right now, so check out my new question and try to answer it for an account.

Napster give away = new era of consumer technology?

Every year hardware prices drop, heck a DVD player was once a $1,000 and now you can get one for around $20. The trend of falling hardware prices combined with broadband explosion and digital convergence has some, including myself wondering if we are heading toward a world where most hardware will be free and consumers will pay for services. Apparently the people at Napster have been thinking about this as well and they have announced a program to give away an MP3 player as long as the consumer signs up for a year of their music service. While some may view this as a signal of desperation from Napster, I view this as a potential strong business model. Almost any digital media company needs to strongly consider giving away hardware to support online media services that will in the long run provide greater margins and smoother revenue streams.

While I don't know what the unit cost of a TiVo 40 hour DVR is, I do know that TiVo should seriously consider giving away the hardware in favor of the recurring $12.95 month service fee. I believe I heard the CEO of TiVo mention that each subscriber that TiVo signed on had a lifetime customer value of around $150... given the large margins on the service, the small unit costs, and huge need to grow the subscriber base to achieve the companies long term objectives, I believe that TiVo should start giving away their 40 hour unit free!

I have made the switch to FireFox

My first browser was Mosaic and I remember in the first few year of browsing the web every new version of a browser was so much better than the previous. When IE 4.0 was released I remember moving to IE from Netscape and I haven't left since. That is until today. I have been playing with the open source browser FireFox, and all I can say is that it ROCKS. It is incredibly fast, easy to customize, and has a great user interface. Now instead of launching multiple IE instances, which both takes a long time and clogs my task bar, I just launch multiple tabs in FireFox.

Do yourself a favor, take 10 minutes to download and test out FireFox. If you don't like it, you only lost 10 minutes. If you are like me and find your pages loading faster and being more productive then this will be time well spent.

A little something for my readers....

So you have read my blog, and while my thoughts on any given topic might not be worth the bytes they take up, a gmail account should be worth something. So over the next few days I will be randomly giving away invites.

At first I was going to just have people email me to get the account, but that seemed a little boring and I would probably just get spammed to death. So I think we should have some fun and do tech related trivia.

So...the first person who posts a comment to this posting with the correct answer to the following trivia question will get a Gmail invite from me. Here is the question:

Who was the first employee at Google after the 2 founders and what position does this person hold today?

Note: When you leave the comment please leave me a way to contact you so I can get you the invite.

EDIT: AND WE HAVE A WINNER... CONGRATS LPH... ENJOY YOUR GMAIL ACCOUNT!

eBay ecosystem grows

There is no doubt that over the years an entire ecosystem of companies have developed around "the eBay economy". There are companies that will help you list items, companies that will help you win auctions, etc. Today eBay signed up HP to compliment their digital photography offering. How long until you see other big name companies offering their online services directly to eBay customers? For every digital gadget sold through eBay there is probably some type of complimentary service offering that could be sold.

Analysts start calling for Microsoft to share the cash

Since I have been blogging I have been calling on Microsoft to stop sitting on their cash pile and start returning it to investors. People have been calling for similar actions for years, and now Bernstein Research analyst Charles Di Bona has written a report calling on the company to both issue a special dividend and start a massive share buy back program.

So why I am so passionate about the company (which I am a shareholder in even though I am openly critical of their business practices) giving money back to shareholders? It is because we have a classical corporate finance problem where the managers of the company are tempted to make poor decisions on behalf of shareholders. The two best examples I can think of for Microsoft are their repeated failures to enter the hardware market (see my previous posting here) and their recent merger talks with SAP (previous posting here). Companies that aren't cash rich don't waste time and money entering these types of markets or considering these types of mergers.

321 Studios in big trouble

321 Studios, maker of DVD copying software, is in big trouble and close to shutting down. 321 studios' problems are from a lack of demand for their product or poor management. This company is in trouble because Congress and Hollywood have conspired through the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to eliminate fair use! As someone who has a couple of nephews who would destroy a DVD if they got their hands on it, I am a supporter of software to create backups of DVDs. The DMCA needs to be overhauled to allow real fair use of copyrighted material.

With all the lawsuits that have been thrown at 321 Studios, and the injunction set forth by the courts that has halted sales of their software, Hollywood is once again making a huge mistake. Rather than having a few companies that they can work with / control, Hollywood will now have to deal with open source software available from around the Globe where the DMCA has no jurisdiction. This reminds me of the RIAA shutting down Napster rather than working with them... and we all know how that worked out.

Tablet + One Note = good stuff

As much as I hate Microsoft, I have to admit that I think a tablet PC with the One Note application rocks. For those of you unfamiliar with One Note, it is the first innovative product from Redmond in years (had to get that shot in), and it allows users to take notes in a very intuitive fashion. I fell in love with One Note during my last semester at business school because it allowed me to take great class notes in a digital fashion. Now if I am looking for a concept that I knew was covered in this time period I can simply just search for it. Now if I could only go back and get all my class notes in a digital format that would make my life so much easier.

Apparently not everyone loves tablets though. A report has come out detailing the slow adoption of tablets in the marketplace. Nobody should be surprised by this, because outside verticals like insurance, it is going to be very hard to sell IT managers on a product with a questionable return that will make their lives harder.

As much as I hate Scoble (just kidding Robert, just seeing if you are reading this) and Microsoft, I have to say I hope my next laptop is a tablet.

RSS Feed for this site

A friend of mine just asked me where my RSS feed for this site is. Unfortunately, sites that use Blogger don't produce RSS feeds, only Atom feeds... which aren't supported by many news readers yet. I do have a URL that will transform my Atom feed to an RSS feed, but it is supported by annoying advertising... meaning that in the feed there will be listings that are clearly advertising, and are marked as such.

For any of you that are willing to put up with these ads in the feed and want the RSS URL please shoot me an email... you can find my email address at the top right hand side of this page.

Cheers,

Mark

Google's marketing plan for Gmail

I have been VERY harsh in my analysis of Google's execution of their Gmail roll-out. Well it is time to mention one thing that I think Google is doing well with the roll out of Gmail, and that is the invitation method of rolling the service out. Getting users to try a new online service can be difficult for many companies, even for a powerhouse like Google (just look at how poorly Froogle did before a link was placed on the Google homepage). By rolling out the service via user invitations Google is wisely allowing current Gmail users to market their product for them.

I had a conversation one day with Brodie Keast (EVP of TiVo) and he is a big believer that it is one thing for a company to tell consumers how great their product is, and it is an entirely different and better thing to have actual consumers talk about how good the product is. Google is doing exactly this by allowing the service to grow virally through its current user base who is enjoying the application. Now if only they had gotten all this done about a month or two ago, I wouldn't be so critical of the overall execution.

P.S. - On a side note, it appears that Google reacted today to Yahoo's increase in free storage by giving all Gmail users 3 more invites to the service.

The CONTINUED failed execution of Gmail

Almost exactly one month ago today I wrote about what I perceived to be "The failed execution of Gmail". At that time I stated that Gmail was in risk of failing due to the extended time it was taking the company to launch the product after announcing it. I thought it was taking Google far too long and that Yahoo! or Microsoft would respond before they got to market, and that if that occurred it would be a BAD thing for Google.

Well today the window of opportunity for Google to execute on Gmail has closed. Yahoo! has officially upgraded all their free email users from 4 MB to 100 MB of storage space. While the 100 MB is still 10 times less than the 1000 MB offered by Gmail, I believe that 99.9% of web based email users have no idea exactly how much space they need for their online storage, but they do know that the 4MB or 2MB account they had before was too small. Additionally, without any tools from Google to help they switch accounts, Yahoo! users now have almost no incentive to ditch their Yahoo! account and move to Gmail when it becomes public.

Like I have stated before, I am a big fan of Google, but I really think the company has totally botched this offering.

Wireless Hard Drives!

Wireless hard drives... what a simple and cool idea! I have never even thought about making external hard drives wireless, but it makes complete sense once you think about it. The boys over at Maxtor and Linksys have thought about it and today they have are debuting a product that could make this concept a reality.

Good Google IPO read

Volumes have been written about Google's impending IPO. Scott Kessler of Standard & Poor's has written what I consider to be the best freely available reports on Google's future prospects. He has written two pieces, one about what lies beyond search for Google, and another on putting a valuation on the company.

The article about what lies ahead for Google is really a great read, and I highly recommend it. The article has some good analysis and research attached to it. After reading the article I was hoping for a good article on valuing the company, but Scott didn't exactly pull through on this front. On the valuation side his analysis is VERY weak and he essentially falls back on a valuation method called "comparables"... essentially this valuation method says "find a similar company who is public and find appropriate market multiples and apply them to the company you are trying to value"... so all Scott does is pull Yahoo! multiples and apply a +/- 10% multiple on Google. I would have like to have seen some deeper analysis around EBITDA projects for the next few years given various growth scenarios. I hope any of you planning on investing in Google reads these articles.

New online advertising format?

We have all seen about a 1,000 different types of online advertising... everything from banner ads, to pop-ups, to contextual ads that are related to the search completed or article being read. Today I stumbled across a type of online advertising I have never seen before. The advertising is in the form of a link within an article... when you mouse over the link you see an ad and when you click on the link it takes you to that ad. The ads appear to be from Vibrant Media... Check out the following article which has this advertising built in.... let me know if you have seen it before:

PC Advisor - Microsoft Media Player Article

Microsoft in your next DVD player...

Well, it is now official. The DVD Forum steering committee has ratified version 1.0 of the physical specifications for high definition DVD players. Microsoft's VC-9 codec is one of three codecs required to be installed on machines meeting this standard. This is a huge win for Microsoft as they have been trying to get into the living room for a long time now. Consumers can only hope that Microsoft doesn't repeat any of their shaddy business practices of the past.

Here we go again...

The RIAA is now seeking digital radio copying limits. I think I agree with Walt Mossberg that the recording industry is the dumbest industry around (a close second is the airline industry). I don't know if there is another industry where the companies are constantly trying to make the lives of consumers harder!

Branson keeps living the life

Richard Branson is probably my favorite entrepreneur. He seems to work hard and play hard with the best of them. For example, this morning Branson took an amphibious car across the English Channel and set a world record in the process. Now if my Monday morning had that on the agenda, well Mondays wouldn't be so hard to get excited about.

Golfing vs. Blogging...

It is finally a nice day up in Boston and in the battle for my time Golfing wins in a landslide. I will be playing a crappy public course here in Boston but I can't wait to get out and play. So here are the stories I would have blogged about this morning:

- I have been writing about this one for a while, but it is finally official, Best Buy will start selling some Gateway CE gear... even a 4th grader could have seen this one coming.

- Here is a shocker... the Korean regulators think Microsoft might be up to no good.

- Check out this cool gadget... if you ever see something and wish you could have taped it, this will do that for you... it is like Tivo for your life.

- Love Wi-Fi but want more from it... check out this article over at Forbes.

Ok... off to the course... have a great Friday!

Gmail Still Lacking

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, Google is really making some big mistakes with their launch of the Gmail service. The early users of Gmail were tech savvy people who could deal with a few of the services short comings. With the recent explosion of invites the user base is changing to a less technology savvy crowd. These new users need tools that make switching email accounts easier. Google at a minimum needs to offer the following:

1) Hotmail & Yahoo mail extraction & loading
2) Hotmail, Yahoo, & Outlook contact extraction & loading
3) Simple form email to send to all contacts letting them know you have changed email accounts

Consumers hate managing multiple email accounts, Google should make our lives easier to make a clean break to Gmail.

Supply Meets Demand... but for how long?

When Gmail accounts first found their way onto eBay they sold for over $200 a pop. Well supply finally caught up with demand when earlier this week it appears that every gmail user was given an invite to distribute as they saw fit. When I jumped over to eBay the last night there were over 3000 accounts up for sale and most accounts are now selling for between $15 and $25.

Yet I wonder how long this equilibrium will last. The rush to sell accounts on eBay was almost instantaneous... it was like anyone that really wanted to sell their next invite knew that they should run to eBay as soon as they could to sell it. When this initial rash of accounts gets sold off we could very well be headed back to a shortage until Google decides to open the flood gates again. Heck, the number of listings is already down to 2600 and falling fast.

So if you are looking to sell your Gmail account, I would recommend holding off until this surge of listings gets through.

The power of PageRank

PageRank was developed by Google years ago to try and measure the "importance" of a page on the web. Since PageRank is one of the variables used by Google to create their search results people have tried to improve their PageRank to drive traffic. I thought it would be good to give people an example of why having a high PageRank is important.

When I started this blog I had a PageRank of 0... I was a nobody on the net. Within about a month my PageRank improved to 1 where it stayed for about another month. During my month with a PageRank of 1, I would occasionally get visitors that were sent to me via Google, but not too many. Recently my PageRank improved to 3, and literally my traffic from Google has more than tripled. I know that part of the reason I am getting more results is that because everyday I add content that gets indexed and makes my site relevant to more queries, but I know that the majority of this new traffic is due to my improved PageRank.

If you can't go back to dial-up, you won't go back to a wired world either!

I remember when I was a freshman in college I was exposed to my first broadband internet connection. When I returned home for the holidays and had to dial-up to the net, I looked at my father and told him that I didn't think I could deal with dial-up ever again... this was all back in 1995.

An FCC report was released today that showed broadband access grew at 42 percent last year, to around 28 Million lines. I was certain in 1995 that once people experienced broadband they would never want to go back to dial-up. Over the last 2 years I have felt the same way about wireless broadband. I hate having to plug an ethernet cable into my laptop almost as much as I hated having to dial-up.

What is my point? I believe that the growth of broadband access and wi-fi networks in the home will lay the foundation for EXPLOSIVE growth in broadband wireless services like Verizon's EV-DO. Consumers are quickly becoming used to their wireless broadband and they will soon expect it to be available to them everywhere.

Check out this review of Verizon's service from Walt Mossberg who is notorious for tearing apart products and services that aren't ready for prime time. Needless to say I hope this service comes to my market soon!

Additional Microsoft + SAP thoughts

The other day I equated the idea of merging Microsoft and SAP as essentially corporate misconduct. The following day I felt as though I might have over reacted. I have numerous friends at Microsoft and even know someone working on their corporate strategy team. But after reading this article at Business Week, I am not certain I did NOT over react.

While Microsoft hasn't stated what their motivation for the proposed merger would be, the article throws out a few theories. The best theory they have is that the combined Microsoft and SAP would be a "One Stop Shop" for IT houses. The theory is that large organizations could come to Microsoft and buy ALL their software and it would all work together. Having been an IT consultant before business school I know that the LAST thing most CIOs want is more lock-in to Microsoft products. They are sick and tired of having to deal with their buggy, insecure software and they want MORE competition, not less.

I stand by my original call for Microsoft to start returning their cash pile to the owners of the company, shareholders! Does anyone really believe that they would consider this merger if they weren't sitting on ~$60 Billion in cash?

AT&T trying to ride Vonage's back?

For years AT&T was one of the most powerful brand names in the world. There is little value left in that brand, just take a look at the picture above... it is for their VOIP service. Is it more or does the "Vantage" part of the service offering look a lot like "Vonage"?

Are these far out predictions ever right?

Predictions about what the world will be like decades from now are invariably wrong and often times just annoying to me. I still wonder where my flying car is and why I can't teleport around the world. Never the less, here is a page full of interesting articles for those of you that do like this type of stuff.

And the hits just keep on coming...

Last week a DirecTV exec left the TiVo board, now it appears that DirecTV has sold their equity stake in TiVo. The writing is clearly on the wall that DirecTV plans to launch their sister companies DVR product into the market for testing. TiVo's best bet to get into new homes if this happens is through DVD recorders, but the big problem is that the DVD recorders with TiVo built in cost around $700 bucks, not the price point for mass adoption.

TiVo should really drop their price down to around $99 and start selling through Wal-Mart and other mass merchant channels quickly. While these channels don't exactly fit well with the "Lifestyle brand image" the company has built, it is do or die time, and they need the subscribers.

Huge Demand for DVD Burners

Here is a quote from a New.com article: "Boom days are apparently on the horizon for DVD recorders. One in eight Americans is in the market for such a device, according to a recent survey--and that's in spite a bewildering array of recording formats from the DVD industry. "

I hope CE companies don't look at this as justification for standards battles! I hope they look at this data and say, "Wow, maybe it could be 1 in 6 or 1 in 4 if there wasn't an alphabet soup decryption problem consumers had to go through to buy our products."

LG Philips - a suckers IPO

LG Philips, the joint venture between LG & Philips,has received approval for an IPO. LG Philips is the second largest LCD manufacturer in the world and hopes to raise about $2 Billion through the offering. This is a TERRIBLE offering to get in on. Just look at the dynamics in the LCD panel display market... LCD TVs are destined to become commodities, so why someone would want to invest in a business that will slowly errode over time is beyond me.

Microsoft + SAP ~ Corporate Misconduct

It appears that Microsoft and SAP considered merging earlier this year. As a shareholder of Microsoft stock this is exactly the reason I want Microsoft to start paying out a huge dividend. Can you imagine how much it would have cost to buy SAP, how difficult it would be to convince the DOJ that this was a good merger, and how hard it would have been to merge these two giant companies. The execs of the combined company would be swamped with merger issues instead of focusing on high growth markets (Which ERP isn't).

Come on Microsoft, give the cash back to the owners of the company before you waste it on idiotic moves like buying SAP, launching another hardware business, or giving another $5 Billion to a cable company with nothing to show for it!

Very bad news for TiVo

I have been a believer in TiVo. It may be because I have had the pleasure of meeting with a few of their executives and I think they have the right strategy. With the recent news that the DirecTV exec on the TiVo board has left I am starting to wonder about the fate of the company. In the most recent quarter almost 75% of all new subscribers came from DirecTV and DirecTV has a sister company in the News Corp empire that makes DVRs. For TiVo to make it they will have to perfectly execute over the next 12 - 18 months and grow their base FAST before the DirecTV funnel dries up.

What took so long?

Have you ever heard the question: "What two industries have been around for decades but never made a profit?" The answer is the Airline industry and Bio-Tech. The airlines are notoriously poorly run, and that is shown in the fact that it took a meeting of nearly 700 execs to finally decide to kill paper tickets and other expensive outdated technology to save the industry roughly $3 Billion a year. Now if the industry could finally figure out how to hedge against the price of oil maybe they could get into the black.

Nike to use blog to advertise

It appears Nike will try and advertise through a blog. Hmmm... don't people to to read blogs because they are the voice of the people, this seems like the blog will be one giant advertisement.

While I applaud Nike's vision in terms of recognizing the importance of blogs, I think they picked the wrong mechanism to generate buzz.

Webcast of launch of CELab at MIT Media Lab

A while back MIT's Media Lab launched their Consumer Electronics Lab (CELab). Here is a link to the webcast for the day... I really recommend watching it, in typical MIT fashion there is some great technology with the potential to chance the world. Enjoy:

http://cel.media.mit.edu/events/2004-0510/webcast.html

D: All things digital

The Wall Street Journal is holding their second annual D Conference this week, from June 6th to the 8th. This event has the Who's Who of the digital world attending and it reportedly isn't the "typical conference". While we shouldn't expect any major announcements from the event, look for some good stories from Dan Gilmore over on his blog.

New Format Coming

When I read blogs I tend to read the ones whose postings are short, witty, and to the point. From here on out I will attempt to follow that format. You may notice a slow down in postings over the next 3 - 4 days as I have family in town for graduation this Friday.

Sony Exits Handheld Market

Sony today announced that they are exiting the PDA market. Off the top of my head I believe they are doing so for the following reasons:

1) With phones like the Treo 600 showing flying off the shelves the PDA market itself will probably decline over the next few years as "smartphones" begin to do a better job of converging PDA functionality with a cell phone.

2) While PDAs were once considered potential "laptop killers", they now seem to be morphing into smartphones. A new breed of potential "laptop killers" called Ultra Portable Computers (See oQo for an example) is emerging and Sony may be gearing up for this market.

3) The company might be ditching all "Laptop killer" markets to refocus on their struggling core businesses, like TVs and portable audio. (See all my previous posts about how Samsung will pass Sony in the coming years)

Craig Barrett understands convergence

In a very interesting interview over at News.com Barrett talks about a variety of topics including one of my favorite... convergence. Here is a quote that shows me that Barrett understands what needs to happen to make convergence a reality:

"You go to the CES show and the Sony guy stands up and says the TV is the center of the universe. Then the Intel guy stands up and says the PC is at the center of the universe. And then somebody else from a software company stands up and says no, the software is at the center of the universe. I think that is all kind of hokey thinking.

All this stuff needs to work together. I mean it's common interfaces and common protocols. These things have to be complementary and work together. I do not see it as competition. "

More Gmail Info...

Phillip over at Engadget is reporting that Gmail will be adding the following features:

- Automatic forwarding of your email to another account
- Plain HTML version of Gmail
- Import/export Contacts

Some of these features are more interesting than others. The plain HTML version of Gmail will allow non Internet Explorer users to use the site as well as making Gmail available on more mobile devices. The last feature, importing and exporting contacts is a huge feature on the path to lowering the pain in switching email accounts.

I have said it before, and I will say it again, the Gmail team should be working hard to create features that make it easy to switch from Hotmail and Yahoo! mail. They need to build utilities that will extract a users mail, contacts, folders (turn them into lables), etc. Lowering switching costs will help drive Gmail adoption.