Archive for November 6th, 2008
One More Race: Wi-Fi
Well, AT&T wanted to be known as a wireless company, so that explains AT&T buying Wayport today for approximately $275 million in cash. Wi-Fi is the new battle ground between Sprint and the Pivot posse and the RBOC’s. Wayport manages about 12,000 hotpsots including McDonald’s. AT&T figures with millions of devices utilizing a wi-fi signal, they should own that transit. Before cable does or Sprint/Clearwire/Xohm does. If you want the snarky post about t...
AT&T Buys Wayport to Keep iPhone Users Happy
Today AT&T said it would buy Wi-Fi hotspots operator Wayport for $275 million in cash. Not only is this an exit for the 12-year-old Irving, Texas-based company that raised more than $130 million, but it also gives AT&T 80,000 Wi-Fi hotspots all over the country. As AT&T brings in more WiFi-enabled phones that encourage a rich web experience, those hotspots will help offload bandwidth-clogging traffic from its 3G network. AT&T already requires iPhone users to use their Wi-Fi conn...
On the Web, Obama Is Hot
Barack Obama is a hot ticket to high sales online, according to the latest rankings on Amazon.com. The president-elect’s “The Audacity of Hope” and “Dreams From My Father” are the two top bestsellers among Kindle e-books and paperbacks on the site and his September policy pitch “Change We Can Believe In” is ranked No. 11. Sales of an Obama tie have soared and Obama t-shirts from some of Amazon’s independent retailers are jostling with iTunes acces...
At Cisco, Macro Economic Reality Bites
The stresses of the global economic system are catching up with technology companies. Cisco Systems, which till recently was confident of its future fortunes, lowered expectations for the coming quarters after posting as-expected results for the first quarter 2009 ending October 25, 2008. (Revenue for the quarter was $10.3 billion, approximately an 8% year-over-year increase. Cash generated from operations was $2.7 billion and earnings $2.2 billion or about 37 cents a share.) How bad the situat...
Loopt Deal Means Lower Costs for Location Data
Today Loopt and Qualcomm announced a deal that allows Loopt the ability to grab location data for a monthly fee, rather than each time someone checks their locale–making it cheaper to figure out exactly where a mobile device is at any time. Location is becoming increasingly relevant on the mobile phone after years of unfulfilled promises. But location can add costs for developers trying to apply it to their applications. Normally, developers are charged each time their program asks a serv...
The White Space Opportunity - Priceless
“Priceless” is not an overstatement of the value of the radio spectrum opened for free, unlicensed use by the Federal Communications Commission order on TV white spaces. Literally, this spectrum is priceless because no one has to buy a license to use it – just like the spectrum we all use for WiFi today. Figuratively, this spectrum is priceless because it’s impossible to calculate the innovation which will result from making the spectrum available WITHOUT specifying either th...
Let’s outlaw too-big-to-fail
Let’s outlaw being too big to fail. Companies that are so big that they might require a public bailout should be cut down to size. Pre-emptively. Let’s hire some economists and give them effective incentives (is there a humane way to do this?) to watch our biggest companies, to do the relevant scenarios, and to force divestment when they’re simply too big. Or maybe we could start a futures market where people bet on TBTF, and when the price of the bet reaches a certain thresho...
Has Friendfeed Stalled?
As much as I’ve tried to like Friendfeed, it just hasn’t stuck. Given many of the social media digerati love it, I thought maybe there was something about Friend that I wasn’t getting. But if you look at Compete.com, it looks like Friendfeed may have stalled with the number of unique visitors plateauing at about 500,000 over the past three months after a spectacular first half of the year when it was all the rage. (See the chart below) Now, 500K unique visitors is damn good but...
On My Way to the Rosh Pina Festival
In an hour I will be on my way to the 2008 Rosh Pina Festival. I am looking forward to spending the next couple of days in Rosh Pina, Israel taking part in the Rosh Pina Festival, the event where “Content Meets Technology.” The Rosh Pina Festival brings together digital media executives from both Israel and abroad. The Rosh Pina Festival was started by Ami Giniger, Chairman and CEO of Taya Communications. This year, my friend Yossi Vardi is co-chairing the event. During the 2008 Ro...
Yahoo’s Yang Has No Regrets — He Should
In hindsight, we are all geniuses or simpletons — it’s just a matter of how much time we give history to ferment. At this point, it doesn’t look like history will be kind to Jerry Yang, who has had the unenviable job of rescuing the company he co-founded. A man of lesser moral fiber would have kicked the search giant on its duff, and that’s after giving it a thorough shake to wake it up from its stupor of mediocrity. Instead he has chosen to reign over what has become a...
For Conversations, No Place Like The Well
Neither the blogosphere nor Web 2.0 social networking services provide the kind of intellectual community that drives innovation, according to Google.org’s executive director, Larry Brilliant. As a result, there’s room for growth for companies that can find ways to foster productive intellectual exchange — and facilitate it for themselves. Brilliant made his comments at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. In his view, The Well, an online community he founded back the publ...
Mobiles Can Dial Virality for Money
New research from Flirtomatic, provider of a mobile and web-based messaging service available in the UK and Germany, suggests viral marketing via mobile phones has plenty of room to grow. A majority of the 5,800 Flirtomatic users who responded to the survey said they primarily use their mobile phones, not the web, to access the service. And nearly 84 percent of those surveyed said they use their phones as their primary Internet connection at home. More importantly, some 38 percent have invited...
Site Alert: We Are Making Some Changes
Guys…you might find sudden and odd design changes showing up on the site. We are trying to make some quick design changes and this might cause some problems in the interim. Hang tight…it should all be fixed soon. ...
Linden Lab Revises Rebellion-Causing Price Hike
A week after Linden Lab said it was raising the cost of buying and maintaining much of the virtual land in Second Life, leading to open revolt among many users, the company has significantly revised its pricing policies. Citing enormous customer feedback, Linden CEO Mark Kingdon laid out the revision today on the company’s blog. At issue are the fate of so-called “Openspaces,” Second Life regions where wilderness and open ocean predominate. Such regions were designated for &#...
A Good Day to be in the USA
Call it luck of the draw, but I got to be in the U.S. today. I’m not that politically inclined, but the election was pretty special, and everyone senses we’re living important history right now. It’s a good day to be an American, it’s a good day for America, it’s a good day in the eyes of most people outside America, and it’s a good day to be in the USA. Smiles all around for me. Obama is in the House now, and hopefully the honeymoon will be a long one. If yo...
What should President Obama do?
Since yesterday at 11 PM EST, I’m feeling like I’m sitting in the capsule of a rocket ship and they’ve just said, “Three, two one . . . ” . . . I’ve got butterflies and twitches. I’m waiting for the Gs to kick in. Here’s a hint at what the real work is shaping up to be. The current top ten citizen priorities for President Obama according to whitehouse2.gov are: Stop the Iraq warEndorse 203 endorsements Enact universal, single-payer healthcareE...
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News, opinions and announcements about fast changing communication tools and technologies, from various blogs and ezine.