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Archive for March, 2008

Mar 26

Leopard Puts Vista To Shame In Corporate Satisfaction Survey

Corporate users of Apple Inc.’s Leopard operating system are more than five times more likely to say that they are “very satisfied” with the OS than business users of Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Vista, a research firm said Wednesday.

In a February survey of 2,200 U.S. corporate computer users, 53% of those using Mac OS X 10.5 reported that they were very satisfied with their operating system. Of those using Windows XP or Windows Vista, however, 40% of the former and only 8% of the latter said they were very satisfied.

But while Apple shows some sales strength even as the general pace of U.S. corporate computer sales looks to slow in the next quarter, it remains a minor player in the market, reported ChangeWave. More than half — 53% — of the computers companies plan to buy in the second quarter will be equipped with Windows XP, the survey said, compared to 20% with a version of Windows Vista and just 8% with Mac OS X.

“Apple continues to set the standard for corporate customer satisfaction,” said Paul Carton, director of research at ChangeWave Research. That, and the fact that corporate buying plans for Macs remain at historically high levels, indicate that users like what Apple’s doing, continued Carton.

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Mar 26

2015 Laptop

Hello, gorgeous! Meet the laptop you’ll use in 2015

2015 LaptopCheckout this March 2008 Computerworld article (online) describing the laptops we’ll all be using in 2015.  I love these futurism articles. Does anyone go back and see how close to reality they were?  I’ll set my alarm clock and watch and come back to this article to see just how much they got right!  Only 7 more years to go!

A lot has changed in the 20 years since the first laptop computers appeared, including gigahertz processors, color screens, optical drives and wireless data. However, one thing that has stubbornly stayed the same is the conventional clamshell format with its hinged display lid that opens to reveal a mechanical keyboard.

That’s about to change. The rules of notebook design and the components that go inside are being rewritten to make the road a better place to work and play.

The CPU’s front-side bus will likely disappear by 2015. The bus acts like a traffic cop, sending data to the different parts of the system at a slower speed than the computational core. In its place will be an integrated controller that makes this distribution of data much more efficient by operating faster.

Currently, adding 64GB of solid state capacity to a notebook’s hard drive runs an extra $1,000. By 2015, the typical mainstream notebook could be outfitted with a 2TB hard disk drive, which should be plenty of room for even the biggest data hog, the experts speculated. For smaller and lighter machines, look to having something like 250GB of flash memory at your disposal, but it will likely come at a small premium.

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Mar 26

DRM, Digital Content, and the Consumer Experience: Lessons Learned From The Music Industry

DRM, Digital Content, and the Consumer Experience: Lessons Learned From The Music Industry

Mar 24

Google Pushes FCC to Develop TV Airwaves for Web

Google sent a letter to the FCC continuing to press its case to allow technology companies to develop unused TV airwaves to provide wireless Internet access.

In a letter to the Federal Communications Commission, the Internet search giant pressed the government to open up the white space for unlicensed use in hopes of enabling more widespread, affordable Internet access over the airwaves.

“As Google has pointed out previously, the vast majority of viable spectrum in this country simply goes unused, or else is grossly underutilized,” Richard Whitt, Google’s Washington telecom and media lawyer, wrote in the letter.

Google said the white space, located between channels 2 and 51 on TV sets that aren’t hooked up to satellite or cable services, offer a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to provide ubiquitous wireless broadband access to all Americans.”

In addition, opening up the spectrum would “enable much-needed competition to the incumbent broadband service providers,” Mr. Whitt wrote.

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Mar 23

Lessig Bets ‘Wikipedia’ Approach Will Transform Congress

This is one of those “crossover” posts that fits somewhere between Xlog and Politalogue.

Lawrence Lessig, a prominent Stanford law professor has worked tirelessly to free content from restrictive right management (DRM) schemes employed by content owners and distributors.

On Thursday Lessig launched an ambitious project that aims to use collaborative software to harness the extraordinary levels of pent-up political energy and dissatisfaction that voters have shown over the past two years with their members of congress.

Lessig, known for his decade-long role in trying to loosen the entertainment industry’s vise-like grip on popular culture by shaping copyright law, is betting that the energy and dissatisfaction exhibited by voters against the status-quo in Washington DC, and the emergence of collaborative software that enables vast numbers of geographically-dispersed citizens to become politically active on their own schedule, will enable a new kind of transparency and accountability in political campaigns.

“The problem we face is … the problem of crony capitalism using money to capture government,” he said on Monday during the launch of his project in Washington, DC. “The challenge is whether in fact we can change this. The political experts tell you that it can’t be done, that process always win over substance.”

Lessig and Joe Trippi hope that their project will bring the beginnings of this change by getting voters to challenge their members of congress to commit to Change Congress’ four pledges. The project will rely on engaged voters to record and map both the responses by, and the positions of candidates who are running for open seats. The idea is to make what seems like an abstract idea visually tangible through a Google mash-up.

The professor wants legislators to promise to do four things which he says will reduce the influence of money on policymaking: To promise not to accept money from lobbyists and political action committees; support public financing of elections; commit to passing legislation to permanently ban the funneling of money to their districts’ projects of questionable worth; and to commit to “compel transparency in the functioning of congress.”

Candidates can signal their intentions to take any one or all of the pledges by filling out a form at the organization’s web site, which then formulates code that provides a graphic that the candidates can then place on their election campaign web sites.

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Mar 23

Miro 1.2

New Version of Miro – Internet TV / Torrent Downloader

Miro 1.2Version 1.2 of Miro has just been released. It’s a major update with performance and bug fixes, new download settings, personalized channel recommendations based on your ratings. Miro is simply the easiest way to use bittorrent and the best video rss reader anywhere.

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Mar 5

12 Learnings From My First Turn As Startup CEO

Jason Goldberg, founder and former CEO of Jobster (now vice-chairman) has put together one of the best lists of learnings I have ever seen on leading a startup. It is well organized, thoughtful, and clearly is borne out of experience–the kind you get by making mistakes, learning and moving on.

Here are a few of my favorites:

  • The CEO’s job is to create value.
  • Technology companies are all about the product. Getting the product right is critical before aggressively going to market.
  • the rapid iteration model (ship early, learn from usage, adjust) works well for consumer services but works not as well for B2B services. Consumers will let you learn with them over time. Paying business customers, however, have less patience for your learning on their dime.
  • You must get close to your users and customers and live their personas.
  • Hire people who are passionate about the specific problems you are trying to solve.
  • The value of your company is directly related to your capital efficiency. Spend every dollar like it is equity. Preserve cash! Preserve cash! Preserve cash!
  • Have fun.

You can read the full post here.

Mar 5

The trouble with Steve Jobs

A friend of mine pointed me to an interesting article about the personality traits/flaws of Steve Jobs and the impact, both real and imagined on the stockholders of Apple (for purposes of disclosure, I am a stockholder). The article is worth reading and raises several issues germane to the issue of disclosure to shareholders. The core issue is summarized in the prologue:

Jobs likes to make his own rules, whether the topic is computers, stock options, or even pancreatic cancer. The same traits that make him a great CEO drive him to put his company, and his investors, at risk.

My reaction is typical of these pieces. The author, Peter Elkind, is a typical investigative journalist who has never sat behind a desk as an executive of a publicly traded company and endured the kind scrutiny he forces on others. He of course, has the advantage of hindsight to assist him as he passes judgment on decisions made by executives with less than perfect information.

It will be interesting to see if Jobs in another case of a celebrity (in this case a celebrity executive) built up by the media only to be torn down. I guess this would be the second time for Jobs.

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Mar 3

Belgacom Reports 2007

Belgacom reported a solid business performance for 2007. As many of you know, Belgacom was the first Tier 1 operators to deploy the Myrio IPTV platform. Based on the lasted subscriber numbers below, I believe this represents about 20% of the total addressable market for BelgacomTV. Not a bad penetration rate after less than 2 years. Congratulations to the excellent team at BelgacomTV and kudos to the Myrio/Nokia Siemens Networks team.

Here are some key numbers:

  • Belgacom proves to be a strong iDTV market player with very solid results for Belgacom TV, adding in total 165,654 new customers in 2007.
  • Belgacom proves to be a strong iDTV market player with very solid results for Belgacom TV, adding in total 165,654 new customers in 2007. This brought the total TV customer base to 305,319 at the end of December 2007, with an ARPU of EUR 16.1
  • Since the launch in April 2007, about 153,000 packs combining Internet with TV and/or mobile services were sold by Belgacom

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