Category
Is Google Bashing the New Black for 2006?
Here’s some interesting thoughts about Google’s purchase of 5% of AOL. The NY Times gives a more detailed look at the deal with some interesting revelations. Google has been providing Web search and search ads for AOL since 2002. In the new arrangement, Google will offer promotion to AOL in ways it has never done [...]
Google Print…Legalized Theft?
( Books andBusiness andMatt's Posts andNews and Politics andScience and Technology )
According to this editorial in the Washington Times, Google’s new service is going to destroy intellectual property rights. Let’s check their claims. And so we find ourselves joining together to fight a $90 billion company bent on unilaterally changing copyright law to their benefit and in turn denying publishers and authors the rights granted to [...]
Old School Anti-Piracy
I don’t know why, but this struck me as rather interesting. Evidently, dictionary companies occasionally put several made-up words in their dictionary so that they can tell if someone copies their definitions. Turn to page 1,850 of the 1975 edition of the New Columbia Encyclopedia and you’ll find an entry for Lillian Virginia Mountweazel, a [...]
Where has all the social responsibility gone?
( Business )
Being an MBA, I have had my share of classes and discussions on business ethics, especially these days with Enron and the like. I must say that one company that I believe lacks all social responsibility is Safe Auto, the car insurance company. Everytime I see their commercial on TV it makes me want to [...]
Hotel WiFi
If you travel at all and carry a laptop with you, you’ve probably run into one of the biggest scams around…charging $10 per day for WiFi access. This is totally a cash cow…I’m sure it’s almost pure profit as there’s no way on earth WiFi cost anywhere near this much to provide. Anyway, here’s a [...]
We Know What We’re Getting For Christmas
If you don’t know by now, then you probably don’t care…but Apple announced the next big thing in the iPod world today. That would be the 30 GB and 60 GB iPods with video capabilities which you can now order. Leigh Ann and I decided awhile back that an iPod was what we planned to [...]
Google Office: Now You See It, Now You Don’t
In follow-up to what seemed like the eminent announcement of an online Office suite by Google, Sergey Brin now says it’s not going to happen…at least for now. Head fake by Google or can Redmond really sleep a little easier? Google co-founder Sergey Brin has quashed speculation that the giant ad broker is to introduce [...]
Google Office?
The speculation du jour…Google (or Yahoo!) is building an office suite to be used via the Internet. Last month CBROnline reported the rumour that Google might come out with a web-based office suite of its own. Since then there has been no further news to substantiate the rumour and the company has stayed mum, but [...]
RIAA Gets Countersued
I’m sure this has little chance of actually hurting the RIAA, but it is quite entertaining nonetheless. A woman has countersued the RIAA under laws generally used to prosecute organized crime. This is the case peer-to-peer file sharers have been waiting for. Tanya Andersen, a 41 year old disabled single mother living in Oregon, has [...]
Review: Startup.com
Yet another documentary, Startup.com is about two friends (one of whom looks a lot like The Rock) that start govWorks.com during the high of the Internet boom, get millions in VC funding, and end up busting all in the course of less than two years. It’s pretty entertaining to see the whole process you’ve probably [...]
No Skype for Google
Guess that the speculation after the introduction of Google Talk was wrong. eBay is the happy new owner of Skype at a price of $2.6 billion. Not exactly the first company I would have expected to buy Skype.
Rules of Modern Advertising
The BBC has a list of the 26 Rules of Modern Advertising. Some of my favorites: 1. Men are obsessed with sex but will forego sex in order to watch football or drink beer. 2. Women are locked in a constant battle with their weight/body shape/hairstyle. 5. Any act of male stupidity (e.g. walking across [...]
Gender Gap or Decision Gap?
( Business andMatt's Posts andNews and Politics andScience and Technology )
Here’s an interesting NY Times article looking at why, on average, women make 25% less than men. There’s some rather interesting statistics (who knew unmarried, childless women make 17% more than their childless male counterparts?). It looks at salaries as a function of decisions people make between the life-work tradeoff and finds that, many times, [...]
You Can’t Stop It, You Can Only Hope To Contain It
Unsurprisingly, research finds that when legal action targets one P2P network, then file-sharers will just move to another one. There will always be another P2P program as soon as one is killed by legal actions and there’s really no way to outlaw the concept of P2P file-sharing since its concept is no different that the [...]
Political Leanings of Law Professors
A new study finds that professors at top law schools are overwhelmingly Democrat supporters. Three quick comments about such studies: If you did a similar survey on the leadership in the US military, another large institution that trains young and “impressionable” people, it would probably show that they are almost as overwhelmingly Republican supporters. I [...]
It Has Been Decreed
Alan Greenspan says that the end of the housing boom is inevitable. Which is obvious…you can’t sustain double-digit prices increases every year for real-estate in the long-term when wages grow around three percent. But, when Greenspan says it, well, that’s about as near as you can get to it being written in stone tablets handed [...]
Microsoft: Fear Apple (Not Google)
Robert X. Cringely’s most recent article speculates that Google is finished with new innovations. No buying of Skype for them. Now, they’re just going to mature their existing products. In a time when a lot of people believe Google is going for Microsoft’s jugular by moving the operating system farther away from the desktop and [...]
Want to Start the Next Google?
In this article, eleven venture capitalists give an overview of a project that they’d like to fund with several million dollars. All you have to do is come up with a convincing business plan .
Maybe Crappiness is More Damaging Than Piracy
( Business andEntertainment andMatt's Posts andMovies andScience and Technology )
The NY Times has an article that makes me optimistic that the movie industry is more willing to adapt to the digital age than the recording industry. Consumers are no longer biting for the inferior products: “Part of this is the fact that the movies may not have lived up to the expectations of the [...]
Voice Over IP as a Disruptive Technology
Here’s an article looking at the state of Voice over IP (VoIP) in light of Google’s entry into the area. It’s definitely a disruptive technology poised to unseat the powers that be. We’ve used pre-paid calling cards (which use VoIP) for long distance for years and have never had any problems. Of course, the telephone [...]