That's if you're Google, of course. Note that the post was written just before Chad made the Davos announcement about YouTube's revenue sharing plan with its users.
January 2007
Straight from Mike Oren, the founder of Pegasus News: very interesting and bullet-points take aways from applying new media concepts for serving the local neighborhood needs. Good food for thought.
online video aggregator of the the top-watched videos from youtube and the like.
UK fund raising event organized every other year. Lots of ideas and tips if one wants to get involved at all. The upcoming edition is in March.
15, no more, no less - simple and to the point.
Now that Saddam's execution was all over the internet, Bush and Blair figured that those little websites that allow hosting video clips and whatnot might work out in their favor as well. Sounds like a pure knee-jerk reaction to me - link
a thousand or so, structured by categories
Looks like a hot business to go into nowadays, with Calacanis as a role model and successful case study of selling WeblogsInc. to AOL. Similarly I also know about some local initiative about to hit the Romanian market - though insignificant in absolute numbers the local internet industry seems to wake up, with money coming especially from media companies. And even though they still don't get it, I guess it's an important phase for creating the proper grounds when going to the next level.
For what it's worth, here is a list with some of the most important international blog networks.
For what it's worth, here is a list with some of the most important international blog networks.
Kottke's take, in case you missed it.
A very interesting case study about Statoil changing its top-down command and control budgeting system. So what did they put in place? Nothing, they just gave more freedom to action to their people:
An important principle underpinning all this is that Statoil wants its people to apply sound business judgement and do the right things in day-to-day situations. As part of the new corporate language, performance evaluations are based a 50:50 split between delivery and behaviour, he explained. This is typically mapped on a matrix with up to five components (eg 5 x 5 cells correlating delivery against performance).
Forecasting still takes place at different levels of the organisation, but as part of detailed planning processes where they can provide line managers with more relevant targets. There is also a fairly simple formulation for planning within Statoil, Bogens explained. "Our plans are typically words with some figures attached: what we need to do (words- 90% of the plan content) and what we expect to happen (figures - the other 10%).
link via (reg required)
An important principle underpinning all this is that Statoil wants its people to apply sound business judgement and do the right things in day-to-day situations. As part of the new corporate language, performance evaluations are based a 50:50 split between delivery and behaviour, he explained. This is typically mapped on a matrix with up to five components (eg 5 x 5 cells correlating delivery against performance).
Forecasting still takes place at different levels of the organisation, but as part of detailed planning processes where they can provide line managers with more relevant targets. There is also a fairly simple formulation for planning within Statoil, Bogens explained. "Our plans are typically words with some figures attached: what we need to do (words- 90% of the plan content) and what we expect to happen (figures - the other 10%).
link via (reg required)
Nice and simple - creates a permalink and selects any text paragraph within a webpage.
> 55% of the online US video market. As of December 2006.
...be it under a commercial form or not. And, guess what, they're even willing to trade personal data for that. Moreover people claim that personalization is an important factor for social networking. All those and more on the context in a ChoiceStream survey results - pdf.
Looks like the last detail was important after all, so Cisco did sue. Here's the formal complain, and here's Cisco's clarification: we're not after money we're after open communication with trademark infringement in hindsight.
Basically Cisco got no sign from Apple since just before Apple's iPhone announcement. My take is that the issues will be solved amicably as they are all big boys. However, I am not really sure that Apple's way of doing business in such a matter is an example of best practices. Also, for what is worth, Apple apparently owns already the iPhone trademark in Canada, UK and Australia.
Basically Cisco got no sign from Apple since just before Apple's iPhone announcement. My take is that the issues will be solved amicably as they are all big boys. However, I am not really sure that Apple's way of doing business in such a matter is an example of best practices. Also, for what is worth, Apple apparently owns already the iPhone trademark in Canada, UK and Australia.
...with video/audio from last fall's conferences - saved for the weekend
- web 2.0 summit, podcasts with Chizen, or Bezos, or Zennstrom
- futures of entertainment
- web 2.0 summit, podcasts with Chizen, or Bezos, or Zennstrom
- futures of entertainment
That's the name of a device that measures the time spent in front of an artwork as compared to the total time of the exibition, hence becoming an art quality indicator.
The name, that is, as we all know Cisco already has it trademarked. The tonight's go ahead most likely means that the last round of negotiations settled with a final proposal coming from Cisco last night was implicitly accepted by Apple.
Which one of the mobile carriers Apple would likely partner with for launching the iPhone in the UK? T-Online has the better odds.
This morning news or last night's in the States (saw it this morning over at OM) is Mybloglog's sale to Yahoo. Didn't blog it as I found it a bit ridiculous that a big company would pay for something it would have been able to internally create with a 4 people team in 2-3 months.
Now I read that the price was 10 millions for a mere 45k user-base. Holly shit! - OK, no more talking, just look at some of the angles on why this figure just doesn't make sense from a pure business perspective.
Now I read that the price was 10 millions for a mere 45k user-base. Holly shit! - OK, no more talking, just look at some of the angles on why this figure just doesn't make sense from a pure business perspective.
Orkut Büyükkökten, creator of the Google social network that bears his name, dashes into CEO Eric Schmidt's office and says, "We have a million Brazilian users!"
Eric says, "Keep up the good work."
After Orkut leaves, Eric calls VP Marissa Mayer and asks, "How many is a brazillion again?"
[source]
Eric says, "Keep up the good work."
After Orkut leaves, Eric calls VP Marissa Mayer and asks, "How many is a brazillion again?"
[source]
His keynote speech (90 minutes) and an informal geeky discussion with Scoble et all (approx. 43 min). Not bad, on the contrary, very informative - Billy G's certainly got vision and seems on top of things though a bit patronizing at times.
Or a low probability of being announced, since Apple's got no formal FCC approval for a phone.
How about a VOIP over WLAN feature on the iPod(-like new device) though? :) [via]
update: Steve proved us wrong. More info over at Apple's page, Steve's presentation notes and pictures from it.
How about a VOIP over WLAN feature on the iPod(-like new device) though? :) [via]
update: Steve proved us wrong. More info over at Apple's page, Steve's presentation notes and pictures from it.
The demos from over at Microsoft adCenter - cool and very interesting stuff if you're after some SEO tactics.
Apropos of mobile stuff, I just remembered a cool dude whose blog used to be my default choice whenever looking for anything mobile-related. He is an old dog of the blogosphere and by the time he quit blogging last April he was working for Yahoo, apparently no longer since September. The archives are still online so if you have anything to look up in the mobile space, there's lots of stuff you might find over there.
Anyways - if you read this Russell, how the hell are you and what are you up to these days? :)
Anyways - if you read this Russell, how the hell are you and what are you up to these days? :)
In Poland that is -- MNI, which is a media group providing online content to ISPs, IP TVs and the like acquired a mobile gaming shop for 1.2 million euros. Apparently it is a vertical strategic move for creating a strong portfolio for a compelling value proposition in a future move towards becoming a mobile virtual operator.
Last fall I actually had the chance of looking very close to the MVNOs fundamentals - that's a very interesting opportunity, still virgin in Romania and that basically needs a god differentiator in the niche one is aiming at. It is a wholesale business whereas in a classical Porter way you position yourself somewhere between being the lowest cost provider or the highest value proposition provider -- it's basically a marketing business.
Hence segmentation is key - take some some nice examples from the Scandinavian market: Norwegian Chess sold a while ago to TeliaSonera, gaymobile or Kvinders (mobile operator targeting women only) from Denmark.
That's one industry I would bet my money on, as opposed to hmm, real estate for example, which is still hot in Romania and where everybody and their mother is an expert. :)
Last fall I actually had the chance of looking very close to the MVNOs fundamentals - that's a very interesting opportunity, still virgin in Romania and that basically needs a god differentiator in the niche one is aiming at. It is a wholesale business whereas in a classical Porter way you position yourself somewhere between being the lowest cost provider or the highest value proposition provider -- it's basically a marketing business.
Hence segmentation is key - take some some nice examples from the Scandinavian market: Norwegian Chess sold a while ago to TeliaSonera, gaymobile or Kvinders (mobile operator targeting women only) from Denmark.
That's one industry I would bet my money on, as opposed to hmm, real estate for example, which is still hot in Romania and where everybody and their mother is an expert. :)
It is likely that Norwegians set a new record, sending well over 4.5 billion SMS last year - or roughly 1,000 per person. [link]
Looks nice and neat, no doubt about it, still in beta and with a somewhat grand mission and vision.
Will it fly? Well, it should be said that its main competitive advantages are or should be best defined by relevance and lightning-speed. That involves indexing sources that are comprehensible and delivered fast.
It is still the early days and probably that's why some of the usual features are still lacking (comments, feeds, alerts). However, most likely daylife has a broader mass-market approach as for being on top of the news heavy users will rather rely on their rss readers than on such an app.
But comparing to their natural competitor Google News the news over at daylife are hand-picked which may add *a lot* to the relevance even though, of course, at a higher overhead (time and $$). Actually I am subscribed at several GNews keywords alerts and frankly I am not finding them of too much of a use -- often times either the articles are a few days older or they're not representative for my topics of interest. Or both.
And this is where probably daylife may be onto something. Another revenue stream may also be coming from licensing the technology, they already have some sort of partnerships, though that may have a broad sense.
Anyways, the problem is there, they seem to have developed the solution for it and now its' a matter of the execution - the context is just right, with a ton of high profiles investors involved - even more than their employees. :)
However, I think that the revolution will come when we will see the video-based version of this sort of thing. :)
Will it fly? Well, it should be said that its main competitive advantages are or should be best defined by relevance and lightning-speed. That involves indexing sources that are comprehensible and delivered fast.
It is still the early days and probably that's why some of the usual features are still lacking (comments, feeds, alerts). However, most likely daylife has a broader mass-market approach as for being on top of the news heavy users will rather rely on their rss readers than on such an app.
But comparing to their natural competitor Google News the news over at daylife are hand-picked which may add *a lot* to the relevance even though, of course, at a higher overhead (time and $$). Actually I am subscribed at several GNews keywords alerts and frankly I am not finding them of too much of a use -- often times either the articles are a few days older or they're not representative for my topics of interest. Or both.
And this is where probably daylife may be onto something. Another revenue stream may also be coming from licensing the technology, they already have some sort of partnerships, though that may have a broad sense.
Anyways, the problem is there, they seem to have developed the solution for it and now its' a matter of the execution - the context is just right, with a ton of high profiles investors involved - even more than their employees. :)
However, I think that the revolution will come when we will see the video-based version of this sort of thing. :)
Got tagged by Nicole - it's not really my thing but what the hell :)
1. I do a lot of sports and I am an adrenaline junkie - most of it being fed by mountain biking, gliding or, last fall, jumping off the parachute.
2. In spite of that I was never able to ski properly - never think I will but am seriously considering trying out snowboarding this winter.
3. I used to work in corporate finance for a few years - a field that I still love and enjoy reading about. (ok, I also have a graduate degree in CF :))
4. I love Bucharest in spite of its awful looks or moods. As much as I have launched a little website entirely dedicated to it, its community and its lifestyle - metropotam that is.
5. I have lived in 5 different countries - the Czech Republic, Norway, Belgium, Canada and Romania.
Next in line are Bogdana, Kit, Doug, Espen and Michael.
1. I do a lot of sports and I am an adrenaline junkie - most of it being fed by mountain biking, gliding or, last fall, jumping off the parachute.
2. In spite of that I was never able to ski properly - never think I will but am seriously considering trying out snowboarding this winter.
3. I used to work in corporate finance for a few years - a field that I still love and enjoy reading about. (ok, I also have a graduate degree in CF :))
4. I love Bucharest in spite of its awful looks or moods. As much as I have launched a little website entirely dedicated to it, its community and its lifestyle - metropotam that is.
5. I have lived in 5 different countries - the Czech Republic, Norway, Belgium, Canada and Romania.
Next in line are Bogdana, Kit, Doug, Espen and Michael.
27, 491 - as in 27 countries and 491 million people in the newly enlarged European Union that included Bulgaria and Romania. On the Eve there were a few celebrations parties in Bucharest and in Sibiu (considered an European cultural capital) but as far as I can tell in Bucharest more people are still enjoying their holidays, most likely business will resume from Monday on.
In other news, it should be noted though that in 2006 Romania had one of the fastest growing economic pace in spite of the now weekly political scandals that everybody is sick of. Except for politicians, they should justify their positions, right? :)
In other news, it should be noted though that in 2006 Romania had one of the fastest growing economic pace in spite of the now weekly political scandals that everybody is sick of. Except for politicians, they should justify their positions, right? :)
Right, the service that tracks your comments all over the blogosphere and whose one of the co-founders was Laurent got 1.5 mil in VC funding from a Japanese house. Nice!
No updates on their official blog yet. [via the same a:c europe]
No updates on their official blog yet. [via the same a:c europe]
...a whole show around porn and religion starring Arrington and Scoble as guest stars -- take some popcorn and enjoy!
The underlying argument started from the newly launched "Flickr for porn" --- how's that for pitching the VCs? :D
The underlying argument started from the newly launched "Flickr for porn" --- how's that for pitching the VCs? :D
That's right, the European Google wannabe (a jointly German-French effort). The reason is fairly simple: politics. The price tag: 600 mil. euro. [link]
Apparently the Wall Street Journal is among the first traditional big media outlets that had an articulated strategy for embracing the online medium as part of their core competence, even though the subscription model (aka the walled garden) still plays a significant role in their online revenue model. It is of course a hedge move as one doesn't keep the eggs in only one basket and the Journal's brand awareness and loyal subscribers don't really are important as well as they don't mean that it should suddenly switch to the online advertising path only and all of a sudden.
Also, keep in mind that it is just now that some big names from the newspapers industry seem to be waking up and figure out how the internet can help for improving the news gathering, reporting or analysis process, aka their core competence. Even though the inertia still plays a considerable role.
Anyways, here is the list of the new features that were just made available over at WSJ. Also, for more context, read a very good interview with Bill Grueskin outlining exactly the WSJ approach.
[bonus: Wallstrip's chat with Wall Street Journal Money & Investing Editor Dave Kansas]
Also, keep in mind that it is just now that some big names from the newspapers industry seem to be waking up and figure out how the internet can help for improving the news gathering, reporting or analysis process, aka their core competence. Even though the inertia still plays a considerable role.
Anyways, here is the list of the new features that were just made available over at WSJ. Also, for more context, read a very good interview with Bill Grueskin outlining exactly the WSJ approach.
[bonus: Wallstrip's chat with Wall Street Journal Money & Investing Editor Dave Kansas]
...or who's who on a pissing contest. That's just lame, competitive intelligence includes benchmarking against your competition. And then, again, it doesn't matter who's first at the party but who's becoming or is the market standard.
The average viewer spends 25 hours a week watching television, which means that video via the PC could account for two and a half hours a week. [link]
A classic entrepreneurial case study of determining a market problem, approaching it as a business opportunity, being persistent and seeing an awesome exit in about 18 months - video.
An old calendar for determining the position of the sun, no more - fascinating stuff.
Besides sleeping a lot, I mainly did two things during the few days off I had in this period.
First of all I managed to read all of my RSS subscriptions - that would be a first in longer than 12 months as far as I remember. Accordingly, I unsubscribed from a lot of feeds and added some new ones and also realized that I was following more Romanian that English-written ones - a possible explanation for the less to none this blog's activity in the last year or so.
That being said I also realized that during the last year I got so much distracted by a lot of noise coming from most of the Romanian blogs (on an exepectedly upward trend). Now things have changed and the ratio in my reader is somewhere at 20/80 in the favor of the English-based ones and comes somewhat in line with one of my 2007 resolutions of reading more & being more involved in argumente.
The other thing that I did, besides catching up with my piles of DVDs, was watching a lot of TV shows and movies online only via the usual suspects - youtube et all (check out this resource for instance). And even though the experience is still not as good as watching via TV or DVD player (quality, comfortability of having a remote control, etc) it is just a matter of time till those problems will be solved. Perhaps sooner rather than later as now the attention span for online video is somewhere in the 2 to 5 minutes range. But I reckon that this depends on how soon the traditional media will realize that the internet is an additional profitable communication channel rather than a support one for the their core.
First of all I managed to read all of my RSS subscriptions - that would be a first in longer than 12 months as far as I remember. Accordingly, I unsubscribed from a lot of feeds and added some new ones and also realized that I was following more Romanian that English-written ones - a possible explanation for the less to none this blog's activity in the last year or so.
That being said I also realized that during the last year I got so much distracted by a lot of noise coming from most of the Romanian blogs (on an exepectedly upward trend). Now things have changed and the ratio in my reader is somewhere at 20/80 in the favor of the English-based ones and comes somewhat in line with one of my 2007 resolutions of reading more & being more involved in argumente.
The other thing that I did, besides catching up with my piles of DVDs, was watching a lot of TV shows and movies online only via the usual suspects - youtube et all (check out this resource for instance). And even though the experience is still not as good as watching via TV or DVD player (quality, comfortability of having a remote control, etc) it is just a matter of time till those problems will be solved. Perhaps sooner rather than later as now the attention span for online video is somewhere in the 2 to 5 minutes range. But I reckon that this depends on how soon the traditional media will realize that the internet is an additional profitable communication channel rather than a support one for the their core.
