Business Models

Bring Out Your Dead! Revisiting some old Web 2.0 favorites

Over the years that I’ve intermittently poured energy into this blog, I’ve commented on or reviewed a fair number of websites. Every once in a while, I like to check-up on some of them - to see if my predictions of doom or success were spot on or outrageously wrong. Today’s round up includes one… »

File Sharing and Red Light Cameras: Law at the Speed of Technology

The internet provides such a fascinating legal environment: because we can, should we? Britain asked this about retaining IP logs and answered “yes.” Bad, bad, idea. France has now done the same for the question of piracy - if we can identify pirates, should they be stopped? That’s a “yes” too, apparently. And I agree… »

Microsoft is the New GM

Edit: Good discussion at Reddit. There are two differences between Microsoft and GM: Microsoft doesn’t have GM’s debt issues, and MS isn’t labouring under onerous union contracts. Otherwise, the two are eerily similar: both have significant product perception challenges, have bloated product & brand portfolios, and seem to be wildly out of touch with their… »

Where are the Desktop App Stores? Adobe? Apple? MS?

Earlier today I posted about the NYT Reader desktop app and the shift that I (and others) perceive away from browsers and towards the “app” model that Apple pioneered. Enabled by business-model-friendliness, advanced IDE’s and low-cost coding, and (potentially) superior user experiences, there’s a lot to be said for apps as a desktop paradigm.
Which begs… »

Death of the ‘Net is at hand; or - “Web 3.0″ isn’t in your browser

EDIT: When your done reading this, you should read the follow-up post “Where are the desktop App Stores?”
This article on the NYT’s Adobe Air newspaper reader I think highlights a trend that iTunes started: pulling applications and content back out of the browser. It makes sense:

Apps can provide a better user experience than generalist browsers.
Apps… »

Why LinkedIn’s Never Hockey-sticked

A quick link for a busy Saturday: Joshua Porter at Bokardo cleary explains what an “everyday” app is, how LinkedIn is not one, and why it may be important for your business model to become… »

A Note for Rupert Murdoch: “Content” has been overvalued on the basis of Distribution

Rupert Murdoch sounds off on expanding the WSJ model of pay-wall websites to other News Corp. web properties. The summary is the same old story: traditional media, watching their revenue decline, seek to reclaim profitability by looking to online subscriptions to form a revenue stream.
What I would suggest, however, is that Murdoch’s assertion that “content”… »

Chaordix: The Rise and Fall of Cambrian House

I’m sure this has been written about elsewhere, but I was saddened today, upon revisiting Cambrian House, to see that the experiment is over. Cambrian House began as an internet crowd sourcing platform where communities could form around ideas submitted by anyone, with execution moderated by Cambrian House, and profit sharing for all.
Out of the… »

Kindle DX won’t save newspapers, but it will revolutionize textbooks (bye Chegg.com)

Much of the hoopla around the Kindle DX has focused on its ability to “save” the newspaper industry - see: VentureBeat, Gizmodo, MacDailyNews. Let’s be clear: newspapers are suffering from changes in behaviour patterns - how the public wants to consume information - not from a lack of digital tools with which to consume it…. »

State of the Web: Bangladesh

I recently spent six weeks volunteering in the depths of rural Bangladesh. During that time, I lived in a town of 50,000 people (Rayenda) – of which about 30% had electricity (which went out for hours at a time, several times a day), few had running water, nobody had a landline, and the only car… »