| Subscribe via RSS

Quote of the Day: Jim Prentice

November 30th, 2007 | 1 Comment | Posted in Wireless

The emergence of more wireless players in Canada will lead to “lower prices for consumers, more choice and better service”.

- Industry Canada Minister Jim Prentice after the federal government decided to set aside spectrum to let new competitors enter the $11-billion market.

Prediction:
There will be more choice and perhaps better service but don’t hold your breath for lower prices. And why is the federal government trying to influence free market dynamics?

Technorati Tags: ,

Related Posts

It’s Time to Kill this “2.0″ Thang

November 30th, 2007 | 2 Comments | Posted in Web 2.0

I received a Google Alert yesterday (see below) that finally put the proverbial nail in the “2.0″ coffin for me.

Isn’t it about time that the use of 2.0 to describe something evolving, improving, moving forward, etc. stops being used? It’s, frankly, tiresome and a sign of laziness. Can’t figure out a way to describe that something’s different? Why not take the easy way out by slapping 2.0 at the end.

And don’t get me started about “3.0″

Picture 1-19

Technorati Tags:

Related Posts

Will There be More Wireless Competition in Canada?

November 29th, 2007 | 1 Comment | Posted in Wireless

Big news from the Great White North after the federal government carved out some wireless spectrum for new players.

“Our conclusion is that a more competitive wireless market is in the best interests of Canadians,” Industry Minister Jim Prentice proclaimed yesterday at a press conference.

The initial reaction seems to be: Hallelujah, we’ll now have new national players, who will shake up the market so that penetration rates will increase and prices will decline.

Before anyone gets too carried away, my concern is things may return to “normal” after the new player(s) have been in business for awhile.

Why? It may come down to simple economics. To run a viable business, you need to make enough money to cover your costs, make a profit and increase shareholder value. If your prices are too low, you’ll probably attract lots of customers but could end up making little or no profits (see Microcell). If your prices are too high, you won’t attract many customers unless you have fantastic services, great phones and a brand that truly resonates with consumers. (Virgin Canada?)

Granted, the rules set out by Industry Canada such as forcing the incumbents to share towers with new rivals will reduce costs but it’s still going to be an expensive proposition to play.

My prediction is the new players - Quebecor, for one - will come out with guns ablazing before market dynamics bring them back to earth. Don’t get me wrong, four or five national competitors is a lot more attractive than three (Bell, Telus and Rogers) but it doesn’t guarantee things are going to change much. Time will tell, I guess.

For more, check out Startup North, which describes the decision as “wireless competition explodes”, TechVibes, and Telecom Trends, which contends the government’s intention to creation more competiion “appears to be ill conceived” because two existing players - Manitoba Telcom and SaskTel - will be able to bid on spectrum put aside even though they dominate their home markets.

Technorati Tags: ,

Related Posts

Google’s New Search Wrinkle

November 29th, 2007 | No Comments | Posted in Google

Googleexper
If you ever wonder why Google continues to dominate the search market, check out a new experiment it’s conducting that lets you adjust search results.

The idea, which has caught many people by surprised, is you can move up search results that you particularly like; and remove results you don’t like. So, if it’s a search term that you use on a regular basis, you can get a personalized result. It’s definitely different and intriguing, and I would argue, something that could cause more pain to rivals such as Yahoo, Microsoft, Powerset, etc.

This experiment illustrates one of Google’s biggest strategic strengths: the ability to try different things even if they don’t work or seem downright strange. The ability to dabble gets more difficult the larger you get but, so far, Google’s has managed to maintain its strategic mojo.

For more thoughts on Google’s stab at a new approach to search results, check out Googlified and TechCrunch.

Technorati Tags: ,

Related Posts

No Money in the Blogging Long Tail? Really!

November 28th, 2007 | 6 Comments | Posted in Advertising/Marketing, Blogs

Big revelations (note: high level of facetiousness) from Read/WriteWeb: “There’s No Money In The Long Tail of the Blogosphere”.

Translation: If you have a blog with little traffic, you’ll be lucky if the AdSense Gods earn you enough for a few trips to Starbucks each month.

If you didn’t know this already, where have you been exactly? The online advertising market is a high-volume game. The more traffic you have, the more attractive you are to advertisers, the higher your chances of making money from advertising. And so it goes.

If, on the other hand, you have a site with little traffic (less than 100,000 pageviews a month), you’re probably dreaming about AdSense clicks. There are, of course, exceptions to the rule where a small, well-targeted site can attractive advertisers but these are exceptions to the rule.

A bigger concern for bloggers who depend on advertising, including Read/WriteWeb, is the rapid emergence of RSS as a content consumption tool. If people are getting content from RSS readers, they’re not visiting Web sites where all that pretty advertising is waiting to capture your attention. Not good news for revenue-seeking bloggers or advertisers. I riffed on this growing reality earlier this week.

More: Aidan Henry had a good post this week on the economics of online advertising. His math is eye-opening, and hammers home the point that being small online makes it hard to be big in business.

Technorati Tags: ,

Related Posts

Is Water the Next Big VC Opportunity?

November 28th, 2007 | 1 Comment | Posted in Main Page

Water
If you look at some of the recent comings and goings by the VC community in Silicon Valley, there’s a new investment darling in town: alternative energy.

While not to suggest the VCs will abandon the wonderful world of Web 2.0, it is a sign that alternative energy has become a lot more interesting from an investment perspective amid growing interest in the environment and climate change (aka global warming). Even Google is jumping into the alternative energy game with an aggressive R&D and investment strategy.

So, you can expect to hear a lot more news about solar, geothermal and wind power in the coming months. (For an in-depth look at what’s happening in this market, check out Tyler Hamilton’s blog)

If Web 2.0 is kind of passe, and alternative energy is the flavor of the day, let’s look into crystal balls and see what’s next in terms of the next, big technology investment opportunity.

I’ll argue that water will - or should - emerge as the next hot idea.

The lack of water in many areas around the world, including many areas in the southern U.S., is becoming a bigger concern. The water levels in major lakes are declining in alarming ways, rivers are dwindling from a roar to a trickle, and wells are drying up. According to the World Health Organization, one billion people around the world lack access to clean, safe water.

You can point fingers at climate change, booming population growth, aging infrastructure and a lack of conservation efforts but the bottom line is we’re facing a water crisis in many places around the world.

One solution is tapping places that have a lot of water - many U.S. status already have their eyes on Canada’s abundant water supplies. But this doesn’t really address the problem. We need to look at real solutions such as water purification/desaltification, remediation, water conservation, infrastructure, billing/metering, etc.

This is where technology and, hopefully, VC investments could come into play.

More: I stumbled upon this great quote from a 2005 San Jose Mercury News story on investments in water. “Water is the oil of the 21st century,” said Ira Ehrenpreis, an investor with Technology Partners, who is also eager to invest in water start-ups. “There is such a huge demand, and finite supply.” As well, check out this Cleantech blog post called “The Trouble with Water”.

Technorati Tags:

Related Posts

Google Continues to Fascinate

November 27th, 2007 | No Comments | Posted in Google

We’re all obsessed with Google and find ourselves using a growing number of Google services on a regular basis.

And we’re fascinated with Google because it’s a fascinating company. A couple of things popped today:

1. Google has decide to make a huge investment in exploring alternative energy sources such as solar, wind and geothermal. In 2008, it “expects to spend 10s of millions of dollars on research and development and related investments in renewable energy”. Given how much energy Google uses within its data centers, it’s a smart move, and a very good thing for the alternative energy industry. And it makes for great PR.

2. Nick Carr has an interesting article in strategy + business magazine in which he argues Google’s madly off in all directions strategy actually makes sense. It’s based on the idea that “everything that happens on the internet is complementary to the company’s core business. When looked at in this light, Google’s strategy is revealed to be at once simple and extraordinarily unusual - so unusual that it’s probably of limited use as a model for other companies.”

Technorati Tags:

Related Posts

Canada: The Wireless (CDMA) Backwater

November 27th, 2007 | 2 Comments | Posted in Wireless

Okay, it’s bad enough that Canada’s wireless market is an oligopoly, and that prices, including data, north of the border are higher than many places around the world.

Now, Verizon is making Canadians feel even worse by announcing a new initiative that will give its customer the option to use “wireless devices, software and applications not offered by the company”. Early next year, it will publish the technical standards that developers will need to design products to work with Verizon’s CDMA network.

Imagine that, consumer choice for devices if you’re using CDMA - hear that Bell Canada and Telus? And consumer choice for applications - you hear that pretty much every single wireless carrier?

“This is a transformation point in the 20-year history of mass market wireless devices – one which we believe will set the table for the next level of innovation and growth,” said Lowell McAdam, Verizon Wireless president and chief executive officer.

Translation: Verizon needs a way to make its CDMA network a lot more user-friendly at a time when GSM has started to dominate the wireless landscape because it gives consumers more flexibility when it comes to buying/using different devices. In turn, device makers such as Research in Motion are happy to launch GSM products before CDMA ones.

Another point: it interesting to see the wireless market rumble forward in the U.S., while Canadians are still waiting for this new, cool device called the iPhone from some hot-shot company called Apple. And while Bell Canada recently put the spotlight again on an attractive wireless data plan for the HTC Touch phone, Canadians are still getting killed if you want to do a lot of Web surfing, e-mail, instant-messaging, etc.

Of course, if there was real competition among the wireless carriers in Canada, things might be a little more interesting. Until then, we’ll just have to be content to watch the action from the sidelines, while a few brave souls take things into their hands by unlocking these iPhone gadgets so they can work in Canada.

Technorati Tags: ,

Related Posts

GPS Should be a Standard Laptop Feature

November 27th, 2007 | 5 Comments | Posted in Apple/iPod

Laptopgps
My brother the musician had his apartment burglarized last week. The bad guys had probably cased the place because all that went missed was his MacBook and his girlfriend’s laptop.

My brother isn’t oozing with extra cash so it’s not like he can just lay down a cool $1400 for a new MacBook. Needless to say, he’s upset for a variety of reasons - mostly that awful feeling of being violated when someone breaks into your house.

The loss of his MacBook got me thinking that GPS should come as a standard feature in all laptops as a way to deter their theft. It would only involve some software and/or a GPS. This could help the police track down the laptop or destroy the data on it if the laptop couldn’t be foud. This kind of service is available now through companies such as LoJack, which offers a LoJack for Laptops service for $49.99 a year.

It’s a solid option but the reality is these services should come as a standard option on all new laptops given a laptop is apparently stolen every 53 seconds. If it meant adding an additional $20 or even $50 for the software and/or GPS, I’m think most laptop owners would be happy to pay for it. I mean, if Apple offered a iLocateMyLaptop service for $20 a year, you’d likely get a lot of people signing up.

The lack of a GPS/theft protection service as something that just comes with a new laptop is puzzling given it would give a laptop maker some great goodwill if they embraced it. Strange.

Of course, this is little consolation to my brother, who is now sadly MacBook-less. If, on the odd chance, someone’s got an extra MacBook lying around collecting dust, let me know.

More: Thomas Hawk had a nice rant about this issue last year that included this quote: “So answer me this. They can put GPS in a cell phone. Why not put GPS in your laptop? And why not also put GPS in your car DVD player (I’ve had several break ins with my car at West Oakland BART and as such no longer park there)?”

Technorati Tags: ,

Related Posts

What If No One Actually Visits Blogs?

November 26th, 2007 | 10 Comments | Posted in Advertising/Marketing, Blogs

Rss-1
Last week, I installed a Wordpress plug-in, Open Web Analytics (aka OWA), that provides a pretty good snapshot of how much traffic a blog receives and how it gets there.

OWA isn’t significantly different from Clicky, Mint, Google Analytics, etc. but, for whatever reason, it hammered home the message that the number of people visiting my blog is fairly insignificant. Rather than be disappointed, this reality is interesting because, I think, there are lots of people are reading my blog judging by the 1,600 or so FeedBurner subscribers.

What’s happening is most people who take the time to check out MET - and I thank them for investing some of their time to do it - are doing so through an RSS reader. And I think you could make the same argument for many tech blog readers. Of course, the widespread use of RSS readers should not be a surprise given tech blogs attract tech-savvy readers who should know all about the benefits of RSS.

The upside is you have lots of readers even if only a handful of them actually visit your blog. The downside is many people never see your comments, the plug-ins you’ve diligently hunted down, your cool blog design or any advertising. For those of us not trying to make money from blogging, this is alright. But for people looking to make money from blog advertising, this is far from ideal.

Here’s an interesting scenario: what if RSS readers become more ubiquitous?

What if people who read political, gossip, entertainment, automotive, health, sports and science blogs start doing so through RSS readers as opposed to visiting a blog. How would that affect blog-vertising if, at best, all a reader sees is a small ad in your RSS feed? Would these ads generate enough revenue to make blogs viable economically? The answer, I think, is no.

The question that begs to be asked is whether RSS is a bad thing for blog-vertising? If people stop visiting blogs, do advertisers think twice about allocating some of their dollars into blogs? Maybe.

Let’s look at the counter-argument to the evilness of RSS.

While RSS is an efficient way to read blogs, it doesn’t give you the full experience. If you believe that comments are as interesting and valuable as a blog post, an RSS feed is going to be unsatisfying. If you want to see a blogger’s personality and things like their blogroll and interesting widgets, RSS ain’t going to do the trick. If you’re into fashion or celebrity blogs that feature large photos, RSS might not fit the bill.

Still, I do believe RSS is moving into the mainstream at a rapid clip as services such as Google Reader make it easier than ever to read and subscribe to a variety of content. At the same time, content producers are embracing RSS as a distribution vehicle.

This means blogs and advertisers using blogs will need to quickly adapt because the landscape is changing as we speak - and read.

More: For some thought-provoking perspective on blog traffic, check out Rob Hyndman’s post looking at quality vs. quantity.

Technorati Tags: , ,

Related Posts






  • Wikio - Top Blogs - Technology