Listening to Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive officer of Amazon is like going to startup school where you learn that failure is part of enterprenurial growth. In the past whenever I have talked to Bezos, one thing that has stuck in my head: his willingness to be wrong and unflinching abhorrence for the status […]
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We’re being cautious about Google’s Wave, and for good reason. It’s not that we don’t believe in the technology. But when something is described as game-changing and the greatest thing since sliced bread, it behooves one to really pause and think about it. And at this point, we have more questions than answers about this product.

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Last last night, I ended up updating my MacBook to Mac OS X 10.5.7, the latest version of the software. It’s caused two problems: The first is that it’s killed the audio output on the computer; in the preferences pane, the only option I have is “digital output.” The second problem has been an overall […]

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Last night, reader Jim Rob Jones emailed to express his displeasure over my switch to the BlackBerry, calling us “irrelevant” because I am not carrying an iPhone. Well, Jim, since I’m not willing to put up with the poor 3G connections from AT&T, I carry an iPod Touch, which does pretty much the same […]

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President Obama last week appointed Aneesh Chopra, until recently Virginia’s Secretary of Technology, as the CTO of the United States. Unlike Vivek Kundra (now the U.S. CIO) and Cisco Systems CTO Padmasree Warrior, Chopra has a lower profile. Tech-industry insiders, such as inventor Mitch Kapor, venture capitalist John Doerr and Google CEO Eric Schmidt, have […]

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MacBook Air, the skinniest of all the Apple machines, has been my computer of choice since the day I bought it. Rarely have I regretted owning the featherweight laptop, but when those regrets do crop up, they’re typically around the lack of storage space — for at times, the 128 GB SSD isn’t enough. My […]

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While I had sworn off spending willy-nilly on new gizmos in 2009, it looks like the $99-dollar PogoPlug is going to test my self-control. Why? It turns any USB-enabled drive into a personal storage locker accessible over the Internet. The little device hooks up to a local storage device via USB and can be connected […]

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MLB Game Broadcast Freezes Firefox Bowser
Tech publications today are having a bit of a lovefest with Major League Baseball’s web site, MLB.com. It’s because it’s the start of baseball season — for die-hard fans, the most important day of the year. And given how mobile we are here in America, many of us follow our […]

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The second edition of Structure, our conference devoted to Internet infrastructure — in particular emergent trends such as cloud computing — will return to the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco on June 25th.
Even amid a global recession, the tidal wave known as the Internet continues to gather momentum, and companies big and small […]

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This Innovation Heat Map crafted by McKinsey and World Economic Forum maps innovation across the planet. Clearly Silicon Valley is in a class of its own and perhaps that is why others want to imitate its success. Paul Graham recently offered up a recipe to replicate Silicon Valley, but even with that I am not […]

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This Innovation Heat Map crafted by McKinsey and World Economic Forum maps innovation across the planet. Clearly Silicon Valley is in a class of its own and perhaps that is why others want to imitate its success. Paul Graham recently offered up a recipe to replicate Silicon Valley, but even with that I am not […]

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Last night, I attended a dinner hosted by Fortune magazine at the La Mar, a new-ish Peruvian restaurant in San Francisco. The dinner, which was emceed by Fortune magazine managing editor Andy Serwer, attracted more than 20 of the better-known technology industry insiders and investors, among them Alan Patricof (GreyCroft Partners), Marc Benioff (Salesforce), […]

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After a short break that involved a whirlwind trip to New Delhi to see my parents and keynote at WordCamp Delhi, I am back in San Francisco and will be back on the job later tomorrow, or whenever I can kick the jet lag. Regardless, it was a fun trip and it was good to […]

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Today, for the first time in more than 30 years, I visited the Taj Mahal, India’s heritage site and truly a wonder of our world. I was spellbound, for the Taj is a collection of small perfections that add up to one large perfection. If you had to pick a modern, and technology-specific, analogy of this high ideal, it would be Apple.

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By the time you read this post, I will be somewhere in Europe — either about to land in Frankfurt or already hanging around the city’s aging airport. I am on my way to India to spend a short week with my parents and also attend WordCamp India, a gathering of WordPress (see disclosure […]

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Folks, today we are announcing a changing of the guard over at WebWorkerDaily, the second-oldest blog in our network. Simon Mackie is replacing Judi Sohn as editor while Judi, who has been the heart and soul of WebWorkerDaily, is transitioning to the role of senior writer.
We want to first take a minute to thank Judi […]

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A few minutes ago, Jon Callaghan, general partner with True Ventures and an investor in our company emailed me to let me know that Martin Schaedel, a long time friend of ours had died in a plane crash in Santa Monica, California. The news was reported in Los Angeles Times blog. My prayers and thoughts […]

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Earlier this week, a new billboard (see below) went up across the street from my apartment building. Every morning on my way to the gym or Starbucks, the message (not the beer) winks at me, challenging my own personal belief system by asserting that perfection has to have a price tag attached to it — […]

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A lot has been written about venture capital industry and how its problems affect (proverbial) Silicon Valley’s innovation machine. And that certainly is true, but the bigger problem for technology industry has been the IPO market that mirrors the pitching average of New York Yankees’ closer Mariano Rivera. This lack of public market liquidity is a […]

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It has taken me a full day to recoup from the Crunchies 2008 and the associated festivities. Silicon Alley Insider, TechCrunch and Venturebeat along with had jointly organized the event, now in its second year, that recognized startups, entrepreneurship and technology in 16 categories. A party in the City Hall rotunda followed the awards […]

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Americans, by nature are an optimistic bunch. Even in tough times, there is something to be optimistic about. Where others see the glass half empty, we see it as half full. That is probably the only reasonable explanation for the findings of this survey conducted by Glassdoor, a Sausalito, Calif.-based start-up that ranks employers by […]

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It wasn’t quite the same lively Macworld keynote without Steve Jobs, but it looks like self-deprecating Phil Schiller, Apple’s VP of worldwide product marketing, did an admirable job of introducing a whole slew of products, including the new Macbook Pro (17-inch version) and the new DRM free iTunes music store, without so much as mentioning […]

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Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs today issued a letter that outlines why he is skipping the Macworld: He has a hormonal imbalance that caused him to drastically lose weight, and he needs to take care of it ASAP. His weight loss had led to rampant speculation that he is dying, and the news has […]

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Exactly one year ago today I was overcome by what seemed like a case of bad heartburn, but what the medical professionals at UCSF would later diagnose as a heart attack. Within just a few minutes, my life changed irrevocably…and in hindsight, for the better.
I hate talking about my personal life on this blog (I […]

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To all of you who have had a rough time traveling this holiday something to put a little smile on your tired face. Hope you have arrived at your destination and are enjoying some quality family time. And to all of you who are part of our daily lives (and our extended family) the GigaOM […]

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The technology sector, already rocked by the credit crunch and slowing global economies, is facing a bleak 2009, the impact of which is going to be felt across the entire ecosystem. From PC makers to chipmakers to chip equipment makers, almost everyone is bracing for a stomach-churning ride.
“The problem is three times worse than everybody […]

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After a nearly year-long hiatus, I have revived my personal blog, where I will be blogging (occasionally) about all things non-tech. From baseball to new movies and of course, books I’m reading and recommending. Best of all, it will give me a place to blog about music, something I miss doing. It’s going to be […]

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Sarah Lacy was kind enough to invite me onto her show, “Yahoo TechTicker,” this week. We talked about a lot of stuff, including Bebo, the future of online advertising, Electronics Arts and Netflix. Below are some bullet points. Click on the links to watch the videos:

Bebo launches a redesign; does it matter?: AOL bought a […]

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I want to take a moment to congratulate Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman, both of whom are angel investors in the parent company of this blog (see disclosure below), for raising $20 million for their Mountain View, Calif.-based startup, Kosmix. The new funding for the company, which has built a topic-based search service, comes from […]

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Another terrorist attack in India, this time in India’s capital city Bombay. I have been following this for a while on Twitter, where people from the city are reporting whatever updates they can get. It is a depressing start to a Thanksgiving weekend here in the US. You can follow the news here on Twitter, […]

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After a long day, I returned home to find a mound of junk mail clogging my mailbox. Of note was a letter from Citibank informing me that it was jacking up the interest charged on my credit card, adding more fees for foreign transactions and other such issues that might result from an economic meltdown. […]

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Over the weekend, rumors emerged that private investor ONEXIM Group, led by Mikhail Prokhorov, was buying Forbes and its residual holdings. Having worked at Forbes during the dot-com days, I was intrigued by the development, but couldn’t get any facts about this deal. So I emailed Roger McNamee, who heads up Elevation Partners and is an investor in Forbes. His intervention got me a quick response. “Forbes absolutely denies this rumor, and has no knowledge of the source,” Forbes said in an emailed statement. “Forbes Russia is also not for sale to the ONEXIM group.”

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Over the weekend, I ended up on San Francisco’s ritzy Fillmore Street. I stopped by to say hello to my dry cleaner and then to Ed Nahigian, a gentleman who has been taking care of my footwear since I moved to San Francisco. As with everything else, the conversation turned to the market meltdown and the pending auto-industry bailout. From our conversation emerged some common sense advice that’s applicable to business of all shapes and sizes.

img src=”http://farm1.static.flickr.com/49/145889449_e4061c35d6.jpg?v=0″ alt=”" />Nahigian is one of the nation’s millions of small business owners and has been around longer than most Web 2.0 entrepreneurs. In other words, he knows what he is talking about. He was fuming over the idea of Detroit bailout. When I asked Ed, what was the secret of his success and his survival for nearly three decades, he was quick to point out: trust. As long as a customer trusts his work, (s)he is going to come back. It’s good advice that works, even in this interconnected world of ours. It is easy to find success. It is easy get users to trust your service. But it is hard to maintain that level of trust.

It is not just Detroit, for we have lost trust in the banking system, our financial stewards and to a large extent in the abilities of those who we elect to govern. Trust, or lack there off is why a bank as big as Citibank was staring down the abyss and had to go to the US government from help. 

As someone who was always attracted to the American Way, it is easy enough for me to figure out that since World War II, the U.S. economic engine has worked on the basic tenet of planned obsolesce. The idea was actually very simple: Consumers would replace their goods with either beefier products or more stylish gear or gear with more features. They would do so because they would trust the quality of the merchandise coming from a company.

As a company management, it was your job to understand consumer’s desires and plan for the future. But somewhere along the line, a lot of companies forgot three basics of building a good business. These basics are looking at the future, earning customer trust, and managing the business well. Detroit gets an F for its efforts on those three counts, and hence are in trouble that they are in. 

In our backyard, there are two computer makers that have done a good job of executing on those fronts — Apple and Hewlett-Packard. Apple and HP have done a good job of predicting their customer needs and built a product portfolio that has style, quality and (more importantly) taps into the primal urge of consumption. These two companies have held their own in a tough market and met their financial projections.

In comparison, Dell, which was at one time the champion of the PC business, last week reported a 3 percent decline in revenues and a 5 percent dip in net income. Dell gets 60 percent of its revenues from PCs, while HP gets about 33 percent of its sales from computers. PC sales are expected to slide drastically next year, according to some estimates. Dell’s predicament is no different than automakers who relied too much on trucks and gas-guzzling SUVs. It shows that no matter how big a company gets, it shouldn’t get arrogant in its success and forget who butters its bread. 

Ed’s common sense advice is something all of us startup guys should adhere to.

Photo courtesy of Gmonster25 via Flickr.

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Three years ago, when John Battelle and Chas Edwards met with me for a cup of coffee across the street from the old Business 2.0 offices in downtown San Francisco, their company, Federated Media, was still in its infancy, and our company, Giga Omni Media, was little more than a dream.

John, a long-time friend and a peer from the tech media world, asked me if I would sign on with his studio of talent and let them represent my then one-man effort, GigaOM.com, commercially. Naturally, I said yes. In the time that passed we had our ups and downs, successes and embarrassments. But we progressed and prospered together.

John now sits atop a gigantic company that is worth hundreds of millions of dollars and represents everyone from BoingBoing to mommy bloggers like Dooce. And Federated Media has become more than just a studio for technology bloggers, but a leader in the conversational marketing movement.

Progress is often accompanied by a divergence of ideas and ambitions within partnerships. At Giga Omni Media, we have been developing a network that revolves around niche verticals. As our needs became more specialized, we sat down with the folks at Federated to try and figure out how we could continue to work together. But both sides quickly realized that instead it was time to wrap up what has been a successful business relationship.

Now we have teamed up with the IDG Group to represent the sales of advertising on our properties — seven today, and many more in the months to come. IDG has a growing blog ad network and I look forward to working with them. Of course, we will continue to supplement their work with our internal sales team, which has been instrumental in selling sponsorships for both our events and specialized weblogs.

Sure we are parting company with our business partners, Federated Media, but we are not ending friendships that have spanned two bubbles, many magazines and countless memories. Thanks to John, Chas, Jason and everyone at Federated for being part of our dream, and for working tirelessly on our behalf.

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If you follow me on Twitter, then you already know that I’m looking for a research assistant, a person whose primary job would be to help me dig up information for longer, in-depth blog posts.

This position doesn’t require a special degree or even a permanent address in San Francisco. What it does require is the ability to quickly ferret out information from various public sources.

When I want to write about a certain trend, for example, I will want help tracking down all the companies in that sector, and to have a coherent dossier written on it that is both short and sweet. It would be a great learning opportunity for a student.

My research assistant will of course be paid a nominal hourly fee for their efforts and should expect to work between 30-40 hours a month. Clearly the part-time money isn’t going to help your retire, but if you make yourself indispensable, it might eventually lead to a full-time job.

So how do you apply? As I said in my tweet, I want you to find my personal email address (the GigaOM.com address doesn’t count.) Use it to send me an email outlining, in 250 words or less, why you are the best person for the job. To tilt the balance in your favor, include a list of five of my favorite brands. The final step would involve an assignment – if I like your work, you’re hired.

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The global economic downturn has started to take its toll on Silicon Valley, especially since the news of an emergency meeting Sequoia Capital held for its entrepreneurs, asking them to buckle up for the nausea inducing ride that lay ahead of them. In the weeks that have gone by, we have seen waves of job cuts - 20,000 or so by some estimates. Whether it is Sun Microsystems, Yahoo, eBay or Jobster — they are all shedding jobs.

These news of the layoffs has a tinge of morbid glee. American writer Russell Baker once wrote, “Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it.” Perhaps we try and use the cacaphony and turn a blind eye to the human cost of these cuts.

This weekend, when details emerged on the news that three executives at a Santa Clara, Calif-based chip start-up, SiPort were shot dead by Jing Hua Wu, an employee recently laid off from the company, like many others was forced to face the harsh and dark side of the job cuts. In a few random shots four families were destroyed forever. The sad episode is weighing heavy this weekend. Join me in saying a silent prayer for the families of three victims.

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Today is Diwali, one of the holiest days on the Hindu calendar, one that has transcended religious barriers because it celebrates the victory of good over evil. It is therefore appropriate that today is when the news is emerging that large Internet companies — Google, Microsoft and Yahoo — are teaming […]

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The credit crisis is resulting in slowdown in technology sales, according to the Wall Street Journal. This credit crunch is a much bigger problem than most people in technology realize.

Technology financing is estimated to top $88 billion or about 14 percent of the total amount spent on computer hardware and software in 2008, according to […]

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Sure it is not like the early 2000s when those crooks from Enron were driving the prices of bandwidth down into the ground, but even today prices on Internet Bandwidth continue to fall. If you are a consumer, there is a good chance you are wondering what is Om talking about: after all broadband service […]

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From time to time, I have shared with you the steps we’re taking to build Giga Omni Media, the 27-month-old company behind this and the other publications that make up the GigaOM network. Today, I am thrilled to announce the start of our company’s next phase.
We have just raised $4.5 million, led by new investor […]

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eBay, a San Jose, Calif,-based company today announced that it was cutting 10% of its workforce, about 1,000 jobs in addition to getting rid of several hundred temps. These cuts will cost them between $70-to-$80 million. It bought two companies for $1.2 billion.

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The post Big-Dig Boston is actually a pretty and lovely town – I walked around in what could best be described as weepy October rain, looking at some of the older buildings and near empty streets. Unlike New York or London or New Delhi, Boston doesn’t pulsate with energy; instead you can feel the weight […]

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It is October and they are still playing Baseball in Boston and Chicago and LA and Philadelphia. Just not in New York, where even a combined payroll of $335 million doesn’t buy a playoff birth. The only team(s) more incompetent is in Washington DC, playing football with the future of US. The ignominy that is […]

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For quite some time, I’ve been in the market for a pair of speakers to match with my Mac(s). I don’t care much for speakers that take up too much room or have a separate bass unit, however; those are the main reasons why I left my SoundSticks back in New York. There are tons […]

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With US Presidential elections likely to be held in November 2008, two major candidates Senators John McCain (Rep.) and Barack Obama (Dem.) debated issues around foreign policy yesterday. To mark the occasion, Current.tv, a citizen journalism-based TV network teamed up with San Francisco-based Twitter to host a special event that allowed folks to participate in […]

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Earlier this week, when I announced the promotion of Paul Walborsky to CEO of Giga Omni Media, the company I started in 2006, it was part of a plan that was hatched long before I returned to work after my health scare. That plan was to make the company less reliant on any one person […]

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Just like that, the summer of 2008 has come to an end here in the U.S. (though gratefully, San Francisco is only going to get warmer over the next 60 days.) Summer is the one time when the business community, that of Silicon Valley in particular, pauses a bit to refresh and recharge.
No such break […]

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Liz Miller says that these days all people are talking about Michael Phelps, the winningest Olympian and a former presidential candidate’s lover. Eric Schmidt, Director of Media and Advertising Evangalism at Microsoft tells Beet.tv that nearly two million people tuned into watch Beijing Olympic Games on NBC’s website, making it one of the much […]

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There are some days when you really don’t want to get out of bed. All you want to do is watch your favorite shows on Hulu.com. Today turned out to be one of those days - mostly because a thick fog enveloped the city of San Francisco and turned the morning into a dark haze. […]

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With little to no desire to do any real writing this weekend, I decided to clean my work space. Once the papers were filed and the books were shifted to the right corner, a clear picture emerged, one of too many gadgets — and too little desk space.
Thankfully, some of those gadgets are review […]

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