April 2012
41 posts
6 tags
Aiming a Gun at the Wrong Target →
Dennis Johnson in the company blog of Melville House, an independent publisher:
Hovering over the entire story, meanwhile, is the innate weirdness of the DOJ’s decision: not only to fly in the face of the Leegin decision, but to charge Apple, and not Amazon, with an antitrust violation. After years of flagrant and public predatory pricing and behavior on the part of Amazon, not to mention its...
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U.S. Government Files Antitrust Suit Against Apple... →
The hammer that’s been hovering for the last few weeks has finally dropped. Bob Van Voris in Bloomberg:
Apple, Penguin and Macmillan want to protect the so-called agency model that lets publishers — not vendors — set e-book prices, said the people on April 5, who declined to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.
The government is seeking a...
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The Speed →
Rick Webb in Betabeat:
But Zynga and Facebook? They seem more able to be toppled. It seems possible to knock them off of their throne. Two companies, OMGPOP and Instagram, came out of nowhere and became viable competitors. That’s kind of amazing. It’s amazing to me that Instagram got 30 million users in no time at all. It’s crazy that Draw Something can get 50 million downloads in 50 days....
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Yahoo!'s New Organizational Structure and Strategy →
Do a search for “mobile”.
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RIM Not Removing Sideloading After All →
John Paczkowski in AllThingsD:
In a post to the BlackBerry Developer Blog this morning, RIM VP of Developer Relations Alec Saunders denied that the company is dropping sideloading from the PlayBook, though that is exactly what he said just a few days ago. According to Saunders, there is a more “nuanced” interpretation of the statement he made on Twitter.
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On Instagram and the Facebook Phone
Here’s one thought that occurred to me that I haven’t seen yet. It’s in the speculative fiction territory, but it seems to pass the smell test.
What if the Instagram acquisition isn’t about advertising or defense, as almost everyone — including me — seems to think it is? What if it’s bigger than that, and an acquisition à la Apple’s of Siri and Lala? Something...
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Sony Losses Worse Than Projected →
Hiroko Tabuchi in the New York Times:
Another challenge will be reaping the benefits of a long-elusive strategy at Sony of bringing together its entertainment properties — which include the music of the late Michael Jackson, the blockbuster Spiderman movie franchise and popular video game titles like Gran Turismo — and its electronics. Company executives have long said that strategy would help...
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'And So Facebook Bought the Thing That Is Hardest... →
I love me some Paul Ford.
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What Am I Not Seeing About This Instagram Deal?
Here are the main arguments I’ve seen for why the Instagram deal makes sense for Facebook:
Instagram was a threat to Facebook, primarily in that it was taking away time spent on Facebook.
Photos have been a core part of Facebook and Instagram was no longer owning that space.
The data that Facebook gets off Instagram is incredibly valuable.
Remember when Google bought YouTube and...
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DRM in eBooks Isn't About Piracy →
Ruth Curry, co-founder of Emily Books, with an essay in paidContent about the e-book market:
Certainly some sort of system is necessary to prevent unlimited distribution of copyrighted material and to be sure authors are paid a fair price for their intellectual property. But the current approach, which makes piracy E-book Enemy #1, misses the real threat. The real threat is the near-duopoly...
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One Laptop per Child is a Failure in Peru →
The Economist:
Giving a child a computer does not seem to turn him or her into a future Bill Gates—indeed it does not accomplish anything in particular. That is the conclusion from Peru, site of the largest single programme involving One Laptop per Child, an American charity with backers from the computer industry and which is active in more than 30 developing countries around the world.
...
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$27 in Print Advertising is Worth $1 in Digital... →
Alan D. Mutter:
In fact, publishers since 2005 have lost $26.7 billion in print advertising revenues while gaining only $1.2 billion in new digital revenue. Thus, the true ratio of print loss to digital gain is 22 to 1, not the 7 to 1 reported by Pew in March.
I see this as a failure on the part of advertisers and their middlemen. Does anyone, at this point, seriously think these dollars...
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Holding Other Companies to Apple's Standards →
Nick Bilton, in the New York Times:
Apple, no paragon of communication, has been publishing reports of the practices of its vendors since 2007, and it eventually, after numerous requests by advocacy and news organizations, shared the names of 156 direct suppliers.
It has pledged to go “deeper into the supply chain” in its own published audits.
In the last week I have asked...
3 tags
The Death of Middle Class Jobs →
Matthew Yglesias, in Slate:
According to the BLS, about 2 million more people were working last month than were working a year ago. But we have 10,000 fewer people working in general merchandise stores. We have 20,000 fewer people working in electronics and appliance stores. We have 17,000 fewer people working in “sporting goods, hobby, book, and music stores.” Now the overall BLS...
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Suing The Toolmakers →
Mike Masnick, in TechDirt:
While I’m incredibly sympathetic towards Twitter’s position here, and the goal of stomping out spammers, I still find it troubling in a few ways. Twitter can and should (absolutely) look at ways to kill spammer accounts and to block spamming tools through technological means. It’s when things go legal that it could get tricky. While my heart wants...
3 tags
On Instagram, Facebook and the Business Model of...
So Facebook just bought Instagram for a $1 billion dollars. Reaction has ranged from WTF to WTF but here are some things to note.
Instagram has roughly 30 million users. That means an Instagram user is worth $33 to Facebook — presumably including future revenues. Of course, that amount goes down by the day — Instagram’s meteoric success will likely continue and Facebook was in effect...
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Last Gasps →
Reuters:
Japan’s Sony Corp. is cutting 10,000 jobs, about 6 percent of its global workforce, the Nikkei newspaper reported on Monday, as new CEO Kazuo Hirai looks to steer the electronics and entertainment giant back to profit after four years in the red.
Hirai seems like the last chance for Sony to turn things around. But the PlayStation 3 and the Vita — which Hirai was responsible...
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No More Sideloading for the Blackberry PlayBook →
Casey Johnston, in Ars Technica:
Research in Motion plans to drop the ability to sideload Android apps on the BlackBerry PlayBook, Alec Saunders, vice president of developer relations, announced Friday on Twitter. Saunders said that RIM wanted to avoid “duplicat[ing] the chaotic cesspool of Android market.”
RIM, of course, announced that the PlayBook would run Android...
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Why Google Bought TxVia →
Felix Salmon in Reuters:
TxVia is a company which powers roughly 100 million prepaid debit cards. And here’s the thing: the amount of data that TxVia collects from every single one of its prepaid debit cards simply dwarfs the amount of data that banks collect with normal debit cards linked directly to a bank account.
There’s also an interesting discussion of how Simple is using TxVia...
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Forks, Forks Everywhere →
Christopher Mims in the MIT Technology Review, on how more and more device manufacturers are considering forking Android:
Ted Morgan, CEO of Skyhook Wireless, has a unique window onto this phenomenon, because his company provides geolocation services for these yet-to-be-announced devices.
“I’m spending a lot of time with companies forking Android,” says Morgan....
4 tags
Pricing Sanity in the App Store →
The developers of Zombies, Run! on why they’re trying to push for higher pricing in the App Store:
So, how did we end up pricing it at $7.99, a price that isn’t just more expensive than most games – it’s the most expensive game in the Top 200 paid apps, and for apps overall, it comes behind only Apple’s own $9.99 offerings such as Pages and Numbers.
In fact, it’s insanity. A lot of...
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Creeping Towards Freemium →
Matthew Handrahan in Gamesindustry with an interview by ngmoco’s Ben Cousins on the future of games:
In addition, consumers are moving away from “specialised electronic equipment” and towards “more general purpose devices.” In that context, the true value of a console platform is not a box full of processors and wires, but the service the consumer receives when...
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Explaining Groupon's Accounting →
Felix Salmon in Reuters has a good explanation of what is going on behind Groupon’s accounting. It’s complicated — too complicated for me to easily excerpt, but worth a read if you’re interested in the subject. And the potential lawsuits are piling up. Could be one of the really interesting stories of the Web 2.0 era.
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ADmented Reality →
If Google Glasses does ever graduate from vaporware status, Jonathan McIntosh has a vision of what it would actually be like. Hilarious.
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ODIN: The Next Alternative to UDID? →
Kim-Mai Cutler in TechCrunch, with a story on how mobile ad networks are scrambling to create a standardized alternative to UDID. Six mobile companies are working on something called ODIN. More on ODIN here, but the service uses MAC addresses, though it hashes them. Here’s why it’s important:
If the mobile advertising industry and developers don’t find an alternative soon, it could...
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Developing an Android App — and Charging for It →
Ryan Bateman created Papermill, a well-designed Instapaper client for Android. He also wanted to charge for it. And it also required a subscription. None of those things are entirely out of place in the iOS world, but here’s what he found in the world of Android:
While it’s hard to estimate exactly, I believe I’ve spent at least 280 to 320 hours developing Papermill in one way or another...
4 tags
'Android Economics' →
Horace Dediu:
This shows a positive trend for Google: revenues per smartphone per year is increasing. However, the growth is coming from non-Android devices which means mostly iOS. Revenues per device for Android is probably declining.
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Netflix for Magazines →
Peter Kafka, in AllThingsD:
The pitch is simple and intuitive: All the magazines you want, delivered digitally to your tablet, for a flat fee of either $10 or $15 a month.
Only available for Android tablets at the moment, and the list is still limited, though it includes titles like The New Yorker and Fortune. But a great idea, and something I hope to see spread to the rest of the...
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A Very Quick Thought on Why Instagram for Android...
Remember those Old Spice ads with the very handsome man asking you to “Look at your man. Now back to me. Now back at your man. Now back to me. Sadly, he isn’t me”?
That’s what I was reminded of after seeing MG Siegler’s post comparing Instagram shots taken with the iPhone and an Android phone. This was one of those small things that would just add on to the pile of...
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Google Gives Samsung the Tools to Compete With... →
There’s no doubt that a very big reason for the success of Samsung in the mobile market is Android. Now, Samsung’s looking to get into the mobile ad game, competing directly with Google. John Letzing in Marketwatch:
OpenX’s technology competes with the advertising exchange provided by Google Inc.’s DoubleClick, which offers advertisers space on mobile phones and...
3 tags
Apple's Incremental Strategy →
A smart piece by Glenn Fleishman in TidBITS that is, I believe, one of the keys to understanding Apple’s long-term strategy:
Apple makes its money over the long term not just by introducing disruption, which would mean flash-in-the-pan products that spark and then fizzle, but by seeing disruption through into stable releases, each with significant improvements that appear to be...
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Facebook Timeline: Bad for Brands, Good for... →
So how’s the transition to Timeline going for brands on Facebook? Dave Copeland in ReadWriteWeb:
EdgeRank Checker looked at 3,500 brand pages and found that all — whether or not they switched over to Timeline or not — lost traffic during the month of March. All brands were automatically switched to Timeline on Friday, but many started switching over just after the new feature...
The Future of Console Specs →
Interesting article by Peter Bright on the how it looks like console manufacturers may actually be trying to make money on the hardware they sell in the next-generation:
Cutting-edge hardware is expensive to produce. While Microsoft could probably stomach another round of massively subsidized gaming hardware, Sony probably can’t. Subsidized hardware is a risky proposition. More modest...
'Labor Audit on Foxconn Is Thorough, Experts Say' →
Steven Greenhouse, in the New York Times:
“The F.L.A. did a fine job with the report,” said Dara O’Rourke, a workplace monitoring expert and professor of labor policy at the University of California, Berkeley. “This report is serious. It’s detailed.”
He praised the association for uncovering problems that Apple’s internal monitors had not found, including the existence of a cheat sheet...
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Good Luck With Those Mobile Ads: Our Brains Don't... →
Steve Smith in Media Post:
But according to some fascinating research involving brainwave analysis and ad response, the basic elements of human perception, cognition and emotion stack the deck against advertisers getting from a mobile ad the kind of engagement we might get from a 30 second TV spot. “We find a very interesting correlation between emotional engagement and form factor,” says A.K....
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Path Now Hashing Data →
Good move by Path — though they didn’t have any choice at this point. I don’t think the story got big enough for the average user to care too much, but they definitely seem to have lost some trust among the early adopters. I think Path has an opportunity here and go even further and be the standard-bearer for educating developers, and users, on data security and privacy, especially in...
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Your Android Customers →
The comments — sorry, “engagement” — on the announcement of Temple Run for Android are gold. Check out the most-liked comments.
UPDATE: This tweet from Temple Run developer Natalia Luckyanova is telling.
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Not a Spec, Redux →
Dan Frakes in Macworld on the iPad and its Retina Display:
I don’t recall ever making such an unequivocal recommendation about a new version of an Apple product, but with the possible exception of the first iBook with Wi-Fi, I also don’t recall being so impressed by a product’s flagship feature.
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Amazon's Strong Arm →
Amy Martinez, in The Seattle Times:
Now, McFarland and others in the book world worry that Amazon will use its pricing pressure to crush publishers. They say Amazon’s demands for deeper discounts threaten already-thin profit margins, and some warn about an Amazon monopoly.
Remember when Walmart was the Empire?
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Trying to Make Real Money Off Billions of Views →
Not much talk in this Mike Shields-penned AdWeek piece about Machinima’s revenues, but this company’s reach is staggering:
An online programming company boasting a fanatical following among young males and a staggering 149 million unique users, last month Machinima’s videos were viewed 1.3 billion times (that’s billion, with a “b”). Across YouTube and other online destinations, Machinima...
5 tags
Creating Victims and Then Blaming Them →
My latest argument in TechCrunch, on why apps and services like Girls Around Me deserve your blame:
There is an extremely fine line to be walked in these situations involving identity and too many companies are on the wrong side of it, which makes me think that it must be very fine indeed if very smart people can’t see it. They can’t see the difference between a person finding a site that...
March 2012
118 posts
6 tags
Whom Do We Blame? →
This story by Nick Bilton in the New York Times, which John Brownlee first wrote about in Cult of Mac, discusses an iOS app called Girls Around Me. Creepy doesn’t begin to describe it:
Girls Around Me uses Foursquare, the location-based mobile service, to determine your location. It then scans for women in the area who have recently checked-in on the service. Once you identify a woman...
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Kickstarter Blockbusters Help Other Kickstarter... →
From the Kickstarter blog:
As we’ve grown, we’ve heard people worry that it will be harder and harder to fund projects as the total number of projects grows. They wonder: Do more projects mean greater competition for the same dollars?
And when there’s a blockbuster project, they ask: Are these projects stealing backers from other worthy projects?
For both questions,...
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'Do Not Track' Means Whatever We Say It Means →
Alexis Madrigal in The Atlantic, on the way the advertising industry wants to define Do Not Track:
Who would ever think saying, “Do not track me,” actually means, “It’s fine to collect data on me, but don’t show me any signs that you’re doing so.” Simply because the industry itself has defined ‘Do Not Track’ in an idiosyncratic way...
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Workers Unhappy With Foxconn Working Hours Cuts →
Reuters:
“We are here to work and not to play, so our income is very important,” said Chen Yamei, 25, a Foxconn worker from Hunan who said she had worked at the factory for four years.
“We have just been told that we can only work a maximum of 36 hours a month of overtime. I tell you, a lot of us are unhappy with this. We think that 60 hours of overtime a month would be...
3 tags
Tablets Aren't Consoles →
Watts Martin, on the rumors that Google may be subsidizing their tablets to make them more competitive:
But subsidizing the tablets to get to that point is boggling. This isn’t like a game console, where you expect to make all your money on the ongoing purchases. Apple makes most of their money on the hardware, and Google makes nearly all of their money on advertisements. If Google spends $100...
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The Ground Beneath Apple's Walled Garden →
My latest argument about the inherent risks in developing for iOS and that Apple can do little to mitigate those risks is up at TechCrunch.
This was an interesting experience; I had thought my defense of Apple’s practices were fairly clear, yet I was attacked by some for trying to manufacture another Applegate-type controversy, which I assure you was the farthest thing from the truth. That...
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Al Franken Puts Google and Facebook on Blast →
Nilay Patel in The Verge:
But Franken also cautioned that the lure of crossing those lines would become greater as both companies become larger, calling them “essentially tremendously innovative and profitable advertising companies” whose incentive to collect data is held at bay only by slowly-fading market pressure.
Franken raised the specter of antitrust regulation, which is...
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What Were You Expecting? →
Chris Ziegler, in The Verge, on RIM’s quarterly results. No spoiler alert; you knew this already:
RIM has just announced its earnings for its fiscal fourth quarter of 2012, and as expected, they’re not good: the company lost $125 million before adjustments on revenue of $4.2 billion. That revenue is down 19 percent from the third quarter. Its BlackBerry smartphone shipments...
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Samsung Galaxy Note Sells 5 Million Units →
Samsung’s Galaxy Note, the 5.3” smartphone cum tablet that confused many in the press, including myself, with it’s size and its “pen” looks to be off on a good start. This is surprising considering how it got savaged in the press, though it’s too early to tell if it’s a momentary blip. But more interesting is that the success of this opens up some...