January 24 – 31, 1999

"I am a senior Microsoft executive. I don't deny that."?
- Paul Maritz, VP at Microsoft in charge of crushing Netscape (oh, no, no, no... that's not the case)...?

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Earnings Reports, IPOs and the like?
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Splitsville: Microsoft announces a stock split... IBM announces a stock split... Intel announces a stock split... AOL announces a stock split... Xerox announces a stock split (and good earnings)... Exodus announces a stock split...? Iridium loses $440 million on $186,000 in revenue last quarter (no, go back and look at those numbers again).? Meanwhile one reading into their financial statements indicates that nearly twice as many satellites as officially announced have failed.? Plus, it seems that they are missing their subscription goals by nearly two orders of magnitude (ouch).. Amazon reports better than expected earnings (er... losses).? They also raised a ton of money in debt-financing... Egghead.com doing better than expected, but worse than last year (when they actually had stores)... AT&T matches expectations... Compaq destroys earnings estimates... Broadcom also absolutely destroys estimates... eBay meets expectations and is still profitable... Broadcast.com beats estimates, but is losing more than ever... Inprise reports a loss (analysts expected profits) and plans to layoff 20% of their workforce... Infoseek doing better than expected, but certainly not well (and, traffic for Infoseek sites are down, despite the launch of Go.com)... PeopleSoft lays off 430 PeoplePeople as they miss earnings... Tut Systems has a grand IPO... More IPO filings, including WebMD, Razorfish, and Autoweb.com...?

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Rumors, Conspiracies etc. of the week...?
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NBC not very happy with its deal with Snap! and looking to partner with Yahoo, AOL or Lycos... NEC is looking for an investment from Intel... Qualcomm looking to sell off Eudora... The decision to spin off AltaVista was finalized only after a deal with Time Warner fell through... Yahoo to announce a deal with CheckFree for bill payment... AT&T to buy MSN's dial up subscribers...?

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News you should have read elsewhere?
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Yahoo first announces its advertising deal with News Corp, and people think that's swell, but really it was just to keep media attention at bay while they completed sucking up GeoCities for an insane premium (which in turn drove up Xoom(.com) and TheGlobe to even more ridiculous heights)... Everyone in privacy groups (and it seems that new privacy groups were created *just* for this occasion) still hate Intel - especially the folks in Arizona.? They don't even calm down when Intel backs down... Compaq has finally announced its plan to spin off AltaVista (which they claim has the best of both Yahoo! and Amazon - and apparently of wishful thinking)...?

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News you could do without?
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Marc Andreessen to become AOL CTO (and why no mention of AOL's current CTO?), but might not really be in charge of anything... Ericsson cutting 11,000 jobs (ouch)... Qwest becomes an ISP (as if this is a big surprise)... AOL and Kodak's deal to offer pictures over the Internet isn't working out as nicely as expected (turns out they can't figure out how to do it)... Netscape launches its "users' recommendation directory" (wow, you know, that looks just as useless as NewHoo)... New York City investigating eBay (who promises to cooperate with Giuliani's goons)... Lycos is going to remain independent (they claim) but they're still talking to every major media company and (okay, fine) are sorta (maybe) for sale (just a bit).? One thing's for certain, though, now that the stock's run up nicely, CEO Bob Davis has dumped quite a few shares.? Lycos also brought on an old 3Com exec (to help drag them down?)... Broadcast.com to broadcast ABC affiliates (not nearly as big news as their decision to buy the flopping NetRoadshow)... Special thanks to IEG and Seth for keeping the web interesting: while canceling their online sex change at the last minute, they did announce plans to sell Viagra online... FCC explains to Apple that $35 per phone call isn't exactly what customers thought was meant when signing up for *free* technical support... E-Trade has decided to increase capacity (this requires a press release?)... Priceline adds mortgages to its suite of services that most people don't use... USWeb/CKS finds out that Reinvent (their proposed new name) is already taken, and so they announce that USWeb/CKS has too much brand value (obviously) and must be kept as is... The SEC says it's receiving more complaints than it can process about online brokers... HP, SGI, and Dell all plan on selling machines with Linux pre-installed... Advantix and Tickets.com merge... Following @Home's announcement to buy Excite, AOL sold off the 5 million Excite shares it owned (nice profit)... Sightsound.com to get into the extortion-by-patent business... Sony finally gets around to suing Connectix for making a PlayStation emulator (get over it)... Women.com merges with Hearst New Media... Compaq finally creates a "compaq.com" division to sell products over the Internet... Varsitybooks.com forgot one thing in their business plan: once they drew attention to the idea, companies like Barnesandnoble.com would do the exact same thing (and, now, they have)... AT&T Worldnet discovering that scaling isn't as easy as they thought... Yahoo message board day traders claim (in such graphic ways) that they understand the market better than Greenspan (see what the Internet has provided us with the ability to do?)...?

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Surprises:?
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Snap.com's comparison shopping feature (which uses Inktomi's spotless technology) only turned up four "alternative" albums available for sale in the world, and three of them are out of stock.? Also, it can't seem to find *any* accounting software in existence - if you went by that you'd think there was a huge business opportunity, yes? (And you *wonder* why MSN dropped Inktomi for Alta Vista)... Microtune puts an entire TV tuner on a chip (while big companies with lots of money ask how the hell they pulled it off)... Someone actually spent $1.1 million to buy the domain bingo.com... AT&T finally comes to its senses and agrees to offer wireless long distance at 10 cents a minute... Delta drops its plan to charge more for tickets not purchased over the web... Sony looking to allow downloadable music on the web (but for minidiscs, not MP3)... Indonesia accused of attacking an Irish ISP for hosting the East Timor .tp top level domain... Qwest and AOL in a $13 million deal for Qwest to provide "connectivity services"... CDNow founders Jason and Matthew Olim publish what appears to be a ghostwritten story about their rise to fame: "The CDNow Story: Rags to Riches on the Internet".? The book is available on Amazon.com, who is hoping to make the sequel "Riches to Rags"... Diamond gets into the portal business... Inprise, which used to be known as Borland, has decided to bring back the Borland name (read this to mean confusion in the upper ranks, and probably some other bad things as well)...?

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(Mis)Uses of Technology:?
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Synchronizing Internet clocks via GPS to make data flow more efficient... Auctioning patents online... Medical smart cards that look on the web for your medical records (why is it that I see my medical records showing up on an AltaVista search?)... PSINet buys the rights to name the Baltimore Raven's stadium at Camden Yards (yet another telecom or telecom related company wasting money on sports stadiums)... Man dialing 10-10-321 (which promises discounted calls) was charged $2.35 for a one-minute call... Commercial in the UK specifically designed to please cats (time to import more American shows, boys)... File your taxes through E-Trade... New security features on the ThinkPad including smart cards and location dependent abilities... Implanting microchips "packed with chemicals" to avoid having to get shots in the future...?

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Studies:?
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Price for ad spots on the web?? Falling.? As if this is a big surprise?? When even the big sites are selling out less than 30% of their inventory, yet are trying to get *more* traffic, something's gotta give... Media Metrix list of top traffic e-commerce sites has Amazon.com in *second*.? Bluemountainarts.com comes in first (but are they making any money off those page views?)... Securities Data released a misleading study that says the most Net IPOs come out of NYC.? Now, I love NYC (and miss it quite a lot), but let's face it, The Valley is where it's at.? The study neglects to combine the different cities in Silicon Valley, and when we see that Santa Clara and San Jose are number 2 and 3 on the list, I'd bet you can figure out which area really has the most Net IPOs.? I don't see Hoboken or Yonkers on the list... Momentum Securities Management Co. has done a study showing most day traders lose money for their first few months... IDC reports that PC shipments increased 12% in 1998, over 1997 (if I remember correctly, there is a steady decreasing trend in year to year growth)...?

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Overhype?
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Jesse Berst claims there may be 40,000 "cyber-stalkers" online *right now*!!! (Gee, Jesse, how would you know that?)... Does Chris Hassett have some weird obsession with "points"?? The founder and ex-leader of *Point*Cast (buy low, sell high, Chris, sell high) received a ton of press this week as he gets ready to launch Prize*Point*, a site that will give prizes to people who play games online (wait, wait, don't tell me, you're hiring Yoyodyne's work force?)...?

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Predictions:?
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Seems a bit late in the game, but everyone's going to start claiming that 1999 is the year of the high tech acquisition, and then be considered geniuses for picking up on the obvious trend that most people noticed a year ago... More ridiculous lawsuits to be brought against the companies who have money or stock.? This week Est?e Lauder sued Excite, because Fragrance Counter bought the search term "Est?e Lauder" on Excite's site... With the filing of Razorfish to go public watch for a slew of other "online interactive agencies" (or whatever they chose to call themselves these days) to file.? Watch for Agency.com, IXL, Organic and others to at least watch Razorfish's acceptance into the world of the public Internet companies...?

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Too much free time:?
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Over the past few months finding good sites for the "Too much free time" section has been a bit more difficult, and quality has certainly been questionable at times.? This is why I'm happy to bring you the following site, which seems to have been created exactly for my purposes.? Please, please, please, only view the following if your computer has sound enabled (it's essential): http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Bluffs/4157/hampdance.html

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