Another Dot Com

WinnA, WinnA, Chicken Dinna!

In typical OSU-fashion, OSU Beavs cameback from the dead to beat Missouri by 1. I actually stopped watching when OSU went down by 14 points in the 4th with around 10 minutes left. Stupid me! When I came to my senses and clicked back to the game, Matt Moore threw a touchdown to pull the game to within 1 point with around 22 seconds left in the game — Mike “the Big Balls” Riley went for 2 and BINGO….OSU wins! What a way to end 2006. Go Beavs! I Love Ya!

According to November data from NPD Group, Zune has just shy of 2 percent share of the overall US hard disk drive (HDD) digital media player segmet. In my opinion, Microsoft’s uphill battle in catching Apple iPod seems almost impossible at this stage. Microsoft will need to make significant update to the Zune player and services, build-up Zune player lineup, and pray that Apple will run into a wall.

Big Brother of the Internet Era is Google. I’ve seen several news reports on how Google’s user search activity reports were used to nab someone on a criminal charge. Now, I’m not saying that catching criminal is a bad thing. What I’m saying is… what is Google storing on their servers about every user coming to use their search? It seems like they are collecting way too much about Google search users. Netscape was sued over some ridiculus claim that Netscape Smartdownload collected user specific data and tracking them…..not true, but the suit dragged on for years. I think Netscape/AOL ended up settling the suit out of the court. If Google is able to pinpoint “per computer”, “per Keyword”, “Per who knows what”….don’t you think that’s considered as collecting personal info? I didn’t see any privacy statement on Google that states what Google collects and how it’s being used. Have you?

AOL is at it again….Reorganization and layoffs. Randy Falco, a longtime executive at NBC Universal, was named last month to succeed Jonathan Miller as the head of AOL. I read that with Falco’s entrance to AOL, Jim Bankoff (EVP for programming and products) and Joe Redling (President for AOL mobile and paid services) will be departing the company. I’m sure Falco will be placing his people to head those positions….though, I doubt that the new executives will do a better job at running programming, products, mobile, or paid services. Time will tell.

I first met Jim Bankoff in 1999, during AOL/Netscape acquisition. Jim’s star has been rising steadily from what I can tell. He went from overseeing operations to running Netscape/Web properties to running AOL Programming and products. I wonder where Jim will end up? YAHOO? Yah, my guess is Yahoo.

Intel launched it’s Web 2.0 product for Enterprise in Nov and I finally got around to checking it out. When I first heard about it, I was expecting to see something new and innovative. But, when I finally saw what it was….I was disappointed with what Intel delivered to the market. It’s crap! It’s crap because they basically bundled products from Six Apart (Blogging), Social Text (Wiki), NewsGator (RSS reader), SimpleFeed (RSS Publisher), and SpikeSource (Integration work to tie the apps together). They offer couple more features like podcasting, but come on, INTEL! You gotta do better than that. Just slapping bunch of exsiting apps on a single UI and calling it - “a fundamental shift toward open (nothing here is open-source, so what’s open?), flexible and participatory computing models, SuiteTwo is a foundation for communication that drives internal collaboration and external, high-engagement marketing.” - is B.S.

This is why a chip company shouldn’t get involved in software/Internet business. They just don’t have any clue. I can’t believe that execs at Intel believed in this project enough to greenlight it for the market. Btw, I’m hearing that SuiteTwo will cost $200 per license annually — which means if you have a company with 1000 people… Well, do the math. It’s spendy. What will happen to Intel’s SuiteTwo if someone decided to bundle free and open sourced suite of Web 2.0 products and made it available for download? Someone at Intel would get Fired!

If Intel expects SuiteTwo to make money, Intel better pay for the license and use it internally. I think that’s the only way SuiteTwo will make money. Just my take.

It’s nice to have cash for marketing. Firefox community has made some ads about Firefox browser and Mozilla corp has decided to create a marketing program around them. I think it’s a good idea — tv ads will create more awareness about Firefox and it will serve as a “feel good” thing for the Firefox community. One total b.s. thing about this is that Mozilla corp is trying to get the public to pay for their marketing program. Total B.S., if you ask me. (smart from the business and marketing sense, but nevertheless, cheap!)

If you miss the ads on TV, you can see the ads online. Go Here.
Also, here’s the schedule for the TV viewing. Go Here.

Sexy commercial….nice way to represent 30sec sample music clips on Napster.

Video: Sex Sells Napster in UK

I never thought News Corp. websites could top Yahoo as most viewed by U.S. Internet users.

According to comScore Media Metrix data, News Corp.’s Fox Interactive unit reported the total of its pages viewed by the U.S. Web audience jumped to 39.5 million in November from 38.7 million in October (Mostly driven by MySpace - it generates tons of page views). Yahoo’s total pages viewed fell to 38.1 million in November from 41.6 million in October. Microsoft ranked third, falling to 17.9 million in November from 19.3 million.

At the end of the day, Yahoo has more audience. I guess Yahoo will have to settle on that.

Some more interesting data:
-Yahoo’s audience measured 129.9 million unique visitors, compared with 57.2 million for MySpace.
-Yahoo visitors also spent an average of 5.5 hours on the site in November, compared with 4 hours on MySpace.

It’s been reported that Fox, Viacom, CBS and NBC Universal have been in talks on creating a jointly owned Website to offer programming online. I noticed that the press is calling this “Anti-YouTube” service. I think that is somewhat misguided. Pirated clips on YouTube may be an issue to create a joint media streaming website, but it’s a small one. I see this more as preparing for the inevitable. I think that the execs at the TV Networks saw the following trends and decided to act on it: success of media streaming and sharing (tons of eyeballs); Broadband usage/availability; Mobile/handheld device adoption of media streaming and downloading; viable Distribution and Revenue channel; full service VOD is coming to U.S. sooner than later. What will this website look like….YouTube-esk? I don’t know. But, I would love to see something more bold from the TV networks than bunch of clips. I would like to see a hybrid service - YouTube+iTunes Movie service+KBS VOD service (One of S.Korea’s TV Network).

I’ll follow up later on some VOD models later. May be I’ll introduce several media services operated by S.Korea’s TV Networks.

Chew on this for a minute. The ISG report recommended that we must work (appease) with Iran on Iraq issues. Well, how do you work with a government that describes Holocaust as a myth! 6 million people were murdered and the Mullahs call it a myth? That’s some crazy-talk from the Mullahs in Iran. I don’t know about you, but crazy people can’t be reasoned with.