Google Fiber spawns startup renaissance in Kansas City | Internet & Media – CNET News.
1 Gbps pipe right to your home. The power of bandwidth to spark things.
Databases are Cool
I can post and teach a wonderful class at St. Joe’s at the same time. How cool is that?!?
Wake Up, RIM
Methinks Blackberry should take it’s own advice. It’s never smart to call your potential customers stupid especially if they “mean business.” They didn’t buy from you right?
(Via The Loop)
Tax Common Sense
Bruce Bartlett speaks of economic common sense in the midst of the current political circus.
| The Daily Show with Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
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Dirty Money
David Coldewey writes in his article Dirty Money:
Well, not all the cards. As I wrote once, the reason Apple does the things it does is to please us, the consumers. We demand a new iPhone every year that must be better and cheaper. We insist that a thousand dollars is too much for a state of the art computer. We want bigger TVs and external hard drives and slim cameras. And we, almost without exception, fail to care when our demand for more iPads drives Apple to double its orders, driving Foxconn to push more overtime, driving poorly-maintained ventilation systems to their maximum, driving a spark to ignite an aluminum-dust explosion. It’s not our problem, it’s Apple’s or it’s Foxconn’s or it’s China’s. Very reassuring. Continue reading “Dirty Money”
Take ‘Em to Church?
The truth is, the average Android user is not the same as an average iPhone user. iPhone users surf the web more, they’re more willing to buy software, they’re more willing to install and use apps…
You can say that it’s elitist or arrogant to argue that iOS users are better customers than Android users. But you can also say that it’s the truth.
(Via Daring Fireball)
Apple has 2/3rds the share of industry profits while it has garnered only 5% in market share. Why would I want to go after market share in this scenario?
More on the Louis C.K. Experiment
Just how successful is Louis C.K.’s indie video experiment?:
Still, a very cool experiment. And now one I’d love to see applied to some really, really popular celebrities, and some not-quite-yet celebrities. Then we’ll have a better idea of how much indie distribution will actually shift the balance of power in the media industry. It could be a little, it could be a lot, but it’s too early to tell.
(Via SplatF)
Beleagured Doesn’t Begin to Describe It
Ian Austen, reporting for the NYT:
Research in Motion said on Thursday that a new line of BlackBerry smartphones that it hoped would turn around its flagging fortunes will not come to market until late next year.
It was the latest, and perhaps most significant, setback in a string of product delays and missteps from the company.
In the meantime, profits are down 70 percent. I love to say “I told you so”, so: I told you so.
(Via Daring Fireball)
Louis CK: Live at the Beacon Theater…Cheap!
Louis CK: Live at the Beacon Theater:
The show went on sale at noon on Saturday, December 10th. 12 hours later, we had over 50,000 purchases and had earned $250,000, breaking even on the cost of production and website. As of Today, we’ve sold over 110,000 copies for a total of over $500,000. Minus some money for PayPal charges etc, I have a profit around $200,000 (after taxes $75.58). This is less than I would have been paid by a large company to simply perform the show and let them sell it to you, but they would have charged you about $20 for the video. [emphasis mine] They would have given you an encrypted and regionally restricted video of limited value, and they would have owned your private information for their own use. They would have withheld international availability indefinitely. This way, you only paid $5, you can use the video any way you want, and you can watch it in Dublin, whatever the city is in Belgium, or Dubai. I got paid nice, and I still own the video (as do you). You never have to join anything, and you never have to hear from us again.
(Via The Loop.)
Information on the internet is costly to produce, near costless to distribute, but marketing can be an issue, a costly one at that. Louis CK has an established brand so he can take the risks in production and let the viral nature of the Internet do its thing.
The experiment was successful but it’s not a game changer for Louis CK per se. (If you doubt that, you put out $250,000 for production and see how viral your show goes.) He just cut out a middle man, made more money and we saved some. That’s the game changer for the big distribution, really marketing, companies. Social networking is not good for their business model. Not at all.
Read his whole post. A lot to learn there.
In Ways that Seem Inconsistent
Apple may be using patent troll to do its legal dirty work:
It’s not clear just how complicit Apple is in Digitude’s business, but EFF staff attorney Julie Samuels told TechCrunch that if Apple was deliberately aiding Digitude’s patent trolling, “it would be horrifying.” And even if Apple were somehow coerced into settling with Digitude, Samuels doubts that “Apple didn’t have any other options.”
As we noted recently, Apple has a tendency to use its intellectual property in ways that seem inconsistent. For instance, an Opera developer claims that Apple has a pattern of using patents to slow down the W3C’s open standards process, while promoting open standards when it gives Apple leverage against its competitors. This situation with Digitude seems similar; Apple opposes the tactics of patent trolls when they come after iOS developers, but seems to support them if it aids its ongoing legal battle for dominance of the smartphone market.
(Via arstechnica.com)
Disturbing to say the least!