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December 31, 2002
working on a new layout.
working on a new layout.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:53 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 30, 2002
Another satellite play
WildBlue announced it has raised new funding of $156 million. It plans to launch nationwide two-way broadband service via satellite in 2004.
With DirecTV and many others abandoning grand plans for satllite broadband, one must be skepical about yet another effort. By 2004, terrestrial broadband should be widespread enough to leave only a limited market for satellite. But Kleiner Perkins and the other investors who put money into WildBlue must think they know something. Unlike their original investments, this is a post-bubble round. And $156 million is a pretty big number these days.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 12:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Wireless Commons Manifesto (via
The Wireless Commons Manifesto (via Lawrence Lessig)
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:32 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 27, 2002
The big telecom story of 2003?
Residential voice over IP service (VOIP) provider Vonage just announced it has completed its 5 millionth call, and is at a run-rate of 75,000 calls per day. A tiny sliver of the overall telephone market, but enough to show that VOIP is ready for prime time. This will be a big story in 12-18 months.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:22 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 25, 2002
Very merry
Merry Christmas to everyone of that persuasion. I'm engaged in my traditional Christmas Day pursuit -- making split pea soup. Oh, and revising the design of this weblog.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 11:41 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 24, 2002
Tivo branches out
Marc Canter posts a sneak peak of Tivo's forthcoming photo album feature. Cool.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 10:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Interesting stat from Yahoo-Inktomi coverage
New York Times: "Susan Decker, Yahoo's chief financial officer, estimated that for every one percentage point that Yahoo was able to increase its market share in searches, it would gain $20 million to $60 million a year in advertising revenue."
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 10:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The hybrids are coming
Bold holiday prediction: By 2010, half of new cars sold in the US will use hybrid gas-electric engines.
We have one, a Toyota Prius, and it's fantastic. The only difference you notice from a traditional car is that it gets >50 miles per gallon. Fuel cells get all the hype, and they will eventually be the dominant technology. But that transition will take decades, if for no other reason than the need to build hydrogen fueling stations everywhere. Hybrids are ready to go today.
A constellation of factors are coming into play: maturing technology; ongoing worries about oil supplies amid Middle East instability; pressure to increase gas taxes for revenue generation and conservation incentives; competitive pressure from Japanese car makers; and the coolness factor. There are few hybrids on the road today in the US, but expect an onslaught beginning in late 2003. GM, which has been a laggard, just announced it will put hybrid engines in five of its models by 2007.
Things move slowly in the car business, but once trends start they become inexorable. Witness the SUV invasion. Remember, this is one of the world's biggest industries, generating hundreds of billions of dollars (if not trillions) in global revenues. And we're talking about the first major shift in engine technology in a century.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Funny, isn't it?
Holiday online shopping is up 40 percent from last year, despite a generally poor retail season.
When air starting going out of the dotcom bubble in 2000, everyone scrambled to shift from B2C to B2B, thinking that's where the real money was. But today, most of the success stories from the late-1990s Internet startup craze are consumer-focused companies -- think eBay, Amazon.com, and Google. The enduring business-oriented startups tend to be infrastructure providers such as Verisign and BEA, rather than those focused on commerce.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Java injunction, what's your function?
The injunction granted yesterday requiring Microsoft to bundle Java with Windows strikes me as a non-event. OK, so people who buy new PCs now get Java pre-installed instead of having to spend a few minutes downloading it the first time they open a Java object in their browser. It's not like we're back in the days when installing a plug-in was a cumbersome, manual process.
Who cares about Java on the desktop, anyway? J2EE remains strong on the server side, though Microsoft is giving it a run with .Net. I suppose Sun's concern is that Microsoft will use the client-side .Net runtime to tip the scales against J2EE. But how realistic is that? If I were Sun, I'd be much more worried about the possibility Microsoft might acquire Macromedia, with its widely deployed Flash runtime.
Presumably, Sun is just trying to stick it to Microsoft any way it can. The private antitrust suit under which the injunction was granted is seeking serious monetary damages as well, I assume. Still, the injunction raises a question that came up during the government's antitrust case against Microsoft: Is it remotely possible to create a viable remedy? We can't put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
In this light, it will be interesting to watch the regulatory developments around "neutrality" of broadband networks. A coalition including Microsoft is lobbying hard for rules barring cable operators from discriminating on their broadband platforms. Many of the same arguments, however, could apply to Microsoft itself.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 23, 2002
Gunning for Google?
Yahoo! to acquire Inktomi for $235 million.
The only reason I can think of for Yahoo! to make this deal is to challenge Google for search supremacy. Google has done an amazing job of becoming the Net's default search engine, and leveraging that position to create a profitable business. Inktomi has a strong search technology portfolio. It recently pulled back from its amitious efforts in content management and related fields to focus on the search market. The acquisition gives Yahoo! the resources to compete head-on with Google as a search provider for both consumer and corporate markets.
One thing that doesn't add up. Yahoo! uses Google for its search results today. It just renewed that agreement in October for an undisclosed "long term". Sure, Inktomi gives Yahoo! many other revenue opportunities. But the value of Inktomi to Yahoo! seems smaller if the core portal search function is off the table.
Another interesting question is who will be next. How about USA Interactive buying Ask Jeeves?
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
PVRs: A Convergence Success Story
Wired News chimes in with another skeptical article about Tivo and personal video recorders (PVRs) (via Mitch Ratcliffe). The good news -- there are now 1.8 million of the things out there. The better news (from Tivo President Morgan Guenther at the Supernova conference) -- churn is less than 1 percent, and Tivo is close to profitability. The best news, and I've said this before -- PVR is a killer app. People love it, and it's a platform for other new services.
It will take more than three years for PVRs to hit the upswing of the growth hockey stick. Guess what? It always takes a few years for huge consumer electronics success stories to take off. We forget that was true with CDs, DVDs, mobile phones, PDAs, digital cameras, dial-up Internet access, and television. And maybe the bigggest beneficiary won't be SonicBlue and Tivo as PVR functionality is built into other devices (though I don't think people give Tivo enough credit). By 2005, though, I'm sure we'll be seeing stories about PVRs as a huge seller the way we are today for DVD players.
And then things get really interesting.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 20, 2002
Still catching up.
Still catching up.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 3:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 19, 2002
I've added a new album
I've added a new album of Eli pictures from September through December. Enjoy!
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 12:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 18, 2002
Back from the dead
All my Weblog's archives disappeared last Friday, due to a botched recovery from a backup disk. It felt as though someone stole my wedding album. I won't bore you with the details, but thanks to the efforts of Lawrence Lee of Userland and the Google cache, most of it has been restored.
The blog is now current as of November 11, the latest post that was stored in Google. That means a month is still missing. If you happen to have more recent posts, RSS feeds, or weekly/monthly archives from my blog on your machine, please send them to me. Thanks.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 8:02 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack