Archive for September, 2006
September 29, 2006 at · Filed under internet
mark cuban thinks that anyone who will buy youtube is a moron. i guess he is talking from his own personal experience, since yahoo! proved to be morons for buying his company, broadcast.com for over $5 billion…
his big reason has to do with the legal liabilities. that as soon as someone with deep pockets (say yahoo! or viacom) will buy youtube the record labels and movie studios will file their lawsuits.
he also does not believe that advertisers should be really interested in putting their ads on user-generated content.
i kind of agree with his first point. copyright laws being so twisted make for a very real risk for youtube or anyone who would acquire them. i believe youtube (and its likes) are discussing the copyright issues with the big copyright holders, and hopefully they will come to some sort of an agreement.
i disagree with his second point. there are now over 100 million videos being watched on youtube daily. they reach a massive audience, and are also collecting information about their userbase. i don't think IBM or GM will buy ads there, but consumer brands who are targeting the 15-35 demographic will do well to advertise there. and youtube could offer much more than the plain-vanilla video ad.
mark cuban just does not like youtube very much. for whatever reason it rubs him the wrong way.
September 28, 2006 at · Filed under books, internet, technology
i am going to hear chris anderson talk about the long tail later today, so i pushed myself to finish the book in time.
the long tail is a pretty simple concept that anderson is applying mostly to the business world. wait better let wikipedia define it:
Anderson argued that products that are in low demand or have low sales volume can collectively make up a market share that rivals or exceeds the relatively few current bestsellers and blockbusters, if the store or distribution channel is large enough. Examples of such mega-stores include the online retailer Amazon.com and the online video rental service Netflix. The Long Tail is a potential market and, as the examples illustrate, the distribution and sales channel opportunities created by the Internet often enable businesses to tap into that market successfully.
A former Amazon employee described the Long Tail as follows: "We sold more books today that didn't sell at all yesterday than we sold today of all the books that did sell yesterday." In the same sense, the user-edited internet encyclopedia Wikipedia has many low popularity articles that, collectively, create a higher quantity of demand than a limited number of mainstream articles found in a conventional encyclopedia such as the Encyclopædia Britannica.
the origin of the book is an article published in wired, which then grew to become a book.
the book got my entrepreneurial cycles going, which not many books do, but overall i think it is a simple concept and phenomenon that does not require 225 pages to explain and analyze. there is A LOT of repetition. at a certain point i thought i am reading "the long tail for dummies".
to anyone who is interested i recommend reading the original article and some of chris's blog entries. …but the book is a good read and it is thought provoking, so maybe you should read the book, too.
September 26, 2006 at · Filed under general, technology
i have been discussing a GPS with real-time traffic info with tom and maskit a while back. we all came to the conclusions that:
a. it would be great to have a GPS that could recommend different routes based on traffic
b. that basing it on just the people who use the specific GPS is useless (since there is no critical mass)
today a company called Dash demonstrated their "smart"/internet connected GPS product, Dash Express at the Demo conference. and they list a few cools features.
first and most important is their "Network Traffic" feature. it combines historical traffic flow information with real-time reporting from the Dash Network (i.e. people who are using Dash Express). it's not clear whether they also throw into the mix traffic reports from the internet/radio (i think they should). the Network Traffic feature will suggest the driver 3 possible routes with estimated times based on traffic.
as i mentioned above i believe the real-time data will not be useful until they reach critical mass, which may never happen. a much better approach to solving this problem would be to build on people's mobile phones (and i think i know how to make it work).
the second feature is "Destination Search", which sounds like they are integrating the location information with internet search. that makes perfect sense. my current GPS is very limited in the information it has, and i rarely use it because of it.
the third feature is "Send to Car", which enables users to send destinations via email to their GPS. small but very useful feature in my opinion.
it all sounds very promising. i signed up to 'be the first on the block'.. since my audi does not have a GPS it may very well serve as a good enough excuse to get a Dash once it comes out
September 25, 2006 at · Filed under internet, mobile, technology
so starting tomorrow everyone can register a ".mobi" domain. so what?
i am not sure i understand why it is needed. i believe (know) today's technology can enable device/browser detection, so if a mobile phone is accessing google.com the webpage can be rendered to fit to the mobile device form.
if you look at dotmobi's site and read what they are saying in interviews/pr they mention the main reason for dotmobi is to create a mobile friendly web. users accessing a .mobi site will know it works properly on mobile devices.
this does not sound like a convincing argument to me. for websites to be more mobile friendly they need to care about mobile usage, and create a version of their site that will cater to mobile users. the fact that there is now a .mobi domain will not make a difference.
so why create a .mobi domain given that .info, .biz, .us did not really succeed (nor does .net)? i think that the companies involved just thought there could be money made. thousands of companies will register the .mobi domain just to protect themselves. and if it catches on thousands more will follow, and a business generating millions of dollars will be created.
i don't think .mobi will be a success among end-users. time will tell.
September 25, 2006 at · Filed under internet, technology
business week has on its cover a story about click fraud.
it gives a good overview about the subject and how it is impacting online advertisers.
it is very clear that google and yahoo don't have too much incentive to detect and fight click-frauds. yes there is a long-term, big picture risk for google and yahoo in case advertisers lose confidence in the cost-per-click (CPC) model, but in the meantime they are making lots of money. as someone quoted in the article said, if it would have cost them money rather than make them money they would have resolved it already.
i am not sure click-fraud can be completely resolved, but i think several measures could be taken to reduce it:
- tracking how much time a clicking user spend in the site - if the user (or bot) that clicked the ad leaves the site after a few seconds it is obviously not a very valuable click
- tracking geo location of the clicking user - if the visiting user is from Kazakhstan and the ad is for grocery service in dallas, tx then there is a good chance this is fraudulent click
- comparing user behavior based on source - if users that come from a specific site running the ad are behaving very differently from the average user that came after clicking an ad (lower conversion rate, less time spent in the site, etc.), it is a clear sign of fraud
to measure all this there needs to be software installed on the advertiser's site. i am not sure it is a good idea for that software to be coming from google/yahoo.. it makes more sense for google/yahoo to certify 3rd parties click-tracking software and work with the advertiser to define the specific parameters that would define a click-fraud.
all this may lead to a change in the model from CPC to cost-per-transaction (CPT). where CPT will be defined based on the specific circumstances of the advertiser, it may be buying something, or just spending a certain amount of time on the site, or getting to a certain stage in a process that takes place on the site.
CPT has been used for years in the online gambling and sex sites, and its about time it will be used by mainstream advertisers.
September 24, 2006 at · Filed under books
i started reading this book during our latest vacation, but after the first night i forgot it in the hotel. i hate it when it happens. so i re-ordered from amazon and finished it quickly.
post office is charles bukowski's fictional, yet semi-autobiographic novel (james frey would probably have published it as a true story…). it is the first bukowski i read, and i was not very impressed. but probably it should be judged based on the time when it was published (1971). back then it was probably considered as breaking some new ground.
the book reads very fast. and doesn't require the reader to think much. so like the main character you can do all your reading while you're drunk.. the 'hero-anti-hero' is hank, a constantly drunk, chain smoking, chain coffee drinking, don't-give-a-shit, tough-guy who works at the post office (on and off).
i think james frey actually copied a lot from this book..
anyway, back to bukowski. i'll try reading some of his other stuff, but i don't have high expectations.
September 22, 2006 at · Filed under music, technology
MTV is acquiring Harmonix for $175M.
harmonix makes guitar hero which is a video game that let players play along popular songs, and works basically like dance, dance revolution.
we tried playing the game in a store in piermont a couple of months ago. i was TERRIBLE, but maskit picked it up quickly (i think she was playing Ziggy Stardust).
i think it will probably qualify as the video game that was most appealing to maskit ever. and i tried to get her involved in many with no success.
i don't know the metrics, but it seems like a very smart strategic acquisition for MTV. they could do a lot with tying it back to their TV and online businesses.
September 22, 2006 at · Filed under music, technology
we decided we want to buy the bose docking station for iPod. main reasons being:
a. our mediacenter has been dead for a couple of months, and we are yet to replace it with a new one
b. we have lots of music and podcasts on the iPod, which is also on the laptop with iTunes, but playing stuff from the laptop has a lousy quality.
c. when we do get a new mediacenter running, we could move the bose to another room instead of a stereo system (do people still use this name?)
d. we felt like it.
now that we have it. we love it. and roee loves it too. he enjoys listening to music and sometimes dancing.
September 22, 2006 at · Filed under internet, mobile, technology
i have been using Vonage for about 3 years, and i am not a very happy customer. some of it has nothing do with them, and more with cablevision which is my broadband provider.
but i think i am ready to make the next step and abandon my legacy VoIP vendor and move to a pure Skype set-up.
the idea will be to have a wireless (wifi) skype phone (like the one i just pre-ordered on amazon), have skype-in number, and use skype-out to make outgoing calls to PSTN.
i'll give it a test and if i am a happy customer then i will turn-off my vonage.
September 21, 2006 at · Filed under books
this is another book which took me a while to finish. it sheds lights on the condition of China's peasants (estimated at over 900 million). the book became a best-seller in china and sold over 10 million copies. it was banned after the first 250,000 were sold, since the government was concerned that it will cause civil unrest.
the picture the book is painting is not pretty. it seems that not much have changed in the life of peasants from the period described by pearl buck in "the good earth" (which takes place in the same province, anhui. if anything it seems now there is a system in place making corruption and abuse much more wide spread.
for those who believe china's rise is imminent and nothing could stop it, i think this book could shed a new light. if china will not find a way to improve the lives of the peasants it may be the one thing that will stop it from catching up with the west.
the book itself is poorly written in my opinion. the writers paint every village/township boss a cartoonish villain and every villager as a prosecuted saint. and the way they choose to describe some of the situations is so one-sided in the way it is described that it in my opinion it loses some of its credibility. but this may also be some kind of cultural gap between current western writing and the state of non-fiction writing in china.
recommended reading for anyone who is interested to learn more about china.
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