--------------------
Say that again...
--------------------
"Our top priority is our 'simplicity' initiative.... There are still
too many commands, too many ways of storing information."
- Bill Gates, Microsoft CEO. Okay, I agree simplicity is a good
thing, but I'd be happier to know they were spending time making the damn
product *work* first (and this has nothing to do with the fact that Windows
has been crashing constantly while writing this sucker).
"With a name like FrenchToast.com, we have the best-sounding Internet
name since Yahoo!"
- David Centner, CEO & President of FrenchToast.com, displaying
his creative side.
"I was at DLJ's offices and I wanted to buy [Apple] at $13 a share but
my lawyer said I knew too much."
- Larry Ellison, Oracle CEO, showing us exactly how his lawyers soothe
his ego out of making dumb decisions.
"There's a great technological analogy, here... our current federal
gov't is like a large, monolithic, mainframe-based system evolved from
millions of lines of code written in an antique procedural language over
200 years. Gov't for the next century *ought to be* well decomposed,
highly distributed, and object-oriented. USA 2.0 --- Time for
a Rewrite."
- Jeff Bone, CTO of Activerse.com
-------------------------------
Net Porn, Washington DC Style
-------------------------------
Okay, so I hate to open with this story as well, but it's a tough one
to avoid. Apparently, Congress, the body that is so convinced that
the Internet is just chock full of porn decided to get into the business
themselves by publishing some of the steamiest sex stories around.
Nice to know that on the same day they were discussing legislative proposals
to protect children from inappropriate material on the Internet.
Check out TBTF's excellent list of hypocrites at http://www.tbtf.com/resource/hypocrites.html
which lists folks in Congress who both voted for the Communications Decency
Act and to publish the Starr Report on the web...
----------------------------------
Me? A "Key" Business Opportunity?
----------------------------------
The Iconocast this week went through a nice little reader based study
that came to the conclusion there were three "key business opportunities"
in content: (1) Content Architects (2) Personalized media and (3) "Reader's
digest" services. Hell, in some sense Up-To-Date fits in that #3
category (don't expect a "personalized" Up-To-Date anytime soon).
Now, all I need is a bunch of hyper MBA's (just joking - for those readers
who are a little too serious) to come to me with a business plan and all
this work will be destroyed in seconds...
------------------------------------------
Earnings Reports, IPOs and the like
------------------------------------------
pcOrder.com planning to IPO before its parent, Trilogy, even thinks
about it... Quantum announces "operational changes" that include a reduction
in workforce (oh, *that* type of operational change)... USA.net received
$23 million more from investors, including Netscape... Intel announced
it expects stronger third quarter earnings and everyone goes bezerk...
Oracle beats estimates... Adobe beats estimates... Disney expects to miss
earnings estimates... The Learning Company decides to get rid of 500 Broderbund
employees as it completes its acquisition... Dell predicts a "great" third
quarter... iName secures additional funding... When.com secures additional
funding... 3Dfx expects to miss earnings estimates...
------------------------------------------------
Rumors, Conspiracies etc. of the week...
------------------------------------------------
Vodaphone, the large British mobile phone player, considering a merger
with Airtouch... Lycos, despite insisting they wouldn't fire WhoWhere employees,
changed that promise in less than a month and dumped the NY office... Disney.com
to use the newly minted "go.com" as their entry into the portal race...
Intel thinking of buying 3Com (no one really believes this one)...
--------------------------
News you could do without
--------------------------
The "Net Depression" study is criticized (denial?)... Itex Corp., pissed
off at people spreading nasty rumors about it on message boards, has sued
"John Does", since they can't get the actual names (let's face it, if the
idiotic chatter on Yahoo's investment pages can move your stock, you shouldn't
have that stock)... AtHome to use its massive bandwidth to test "flashy"
ads... iMac takes the number one spot for retail computers in August (great
start, let's see the follow through)... Why bother fact checking?
This is the Internet. News.com very briefly posted a story following
Mark McGwire's 62nd home run about how unlucky he was that someone had
already registered "markmcquire.com". They went on to talk about
all the Mark McGuire fan sites out there. Apparently the reporter
never actually looked at the sites, or they would have realized there just
aren't any "u's" in McGwire... IBM announces its tiny microdrive hard disk...
Microsoft to provide the "exclusive" real estate listings for GeoCities
Real Estate Center (one $50 million home on the shores of Lake Washington
is NOT for sale)... Microsoft is also working with E&Y to create "RapidStart",
to allow just anyone to jump into the e-commerce fray... Exodus promotes
Ellen Hancock to CEO... CD Warehouse discovers the Internet... Paul Allen
keeps selling shares of Microsoft... Marc Andreessen keeps selling shares
of Netscape... Irridium announces a delay in launching, just shortly before
competitor GlobalStar makes that okay, by having 12 expensive satellites
crash land slightly after take-off... AT&T, in response to Sprint's
ION vaporware, announce AT&T Inc... Microsoft apparently pressured
DEC execs not to produce an NC... Reel.com to be the "preferred" (rather
than "exclusive") video merchant for Excite... InfoSeek pays $26 million
to be the exclusive search service on WebTV (um, can't the bright folks
who use WebTV go to yahoo.com?, just like everyone else?)... AOL will be
included on all Acer computers (as if they still sell machines)... AOL
will be included on all Sony computers... FEED "reinvents" itself (and
I thought it had already starved to death)... US West follows suit on BellSouth's
plan to charge Internet telephony providers, as ICG says "nyah, nyah, nyah
- bet you can't *make* me pay"... Adobe denies it has plans to ditch the
Apple platform... Quark gives up on its Adobe takeover bid, saying "it
just wouldn't work out right" (uh, yeah, to say nothing of the fact that
they couldn't afford it if they wanted to)... E*Trade launches a new site
that looks damn familiar (wait, I know, it's yet another "portal")... The
US government attempts to come up with a new plan to tax Internet commerce,
without infringing on privacy rights... Bill and Melinda Gates give $20
million to Duke University... Yahoo! Auctions... Microsoft-DOJ not thrown
out, as per Microsoft request... The FCC approves MCI-Worldcom, but warns
that it has had enough of these mega-mergers...
------------
Surprises:
------------
TriStrata revisits a concept from 1917 and figures out a way to encrypt
files hundreds of times faster than most methods used today (hell, forget
about "pre-web" research, that's pre-computing research)... Intel to ship
Celerons with the old 390-pin design over Slot-1 (they claim because it's
cheaper - my guess is that it has more to do with the DOJ)... WorldCom
announces that it really wasn't so big on Ciena products, and the already
shaky merger proposition of Ciena & Tellabs goes away... Novell distributing
IE (you know folks at Sun are pissed about this one - Eric, why have you
strayed?)... Sun to provide native NT services on its Solaris operating
system (a story many news organizations seem to have misunderstood)...
Compaq has licensed technology from Microsoft's NT that will be used in
future versions of Compaq's Digital UNIX OS (can we say "irony"?)... Mindspring
buys AOL's Sprynet customers for $45 million... Paul Jain and Steven Allan
criminally indicted for fraud for their tricks running Media Vision Technology
(creating false sales and inventory, hiding millions of dollars in returned
products, misrepresenting expenses? Why, that happens all the time)...
Yahoo! and MCI's agreement goes away... 24/7 to sell ads on Netscape's
NetCenter... Citibank buys a "significant" stake of Microsoft and First
Data's venture, Transpoint... Qwest buys Icon CMT (still not sure I understand
this one)...
-------------------------------
(Mis)Uses of Technology:
-------------------------------
Encoding facial image data onto smart cards... Interactive TV "e-commercials"
thanks to Wink Communications, with the help of AT&T, Levi Strauss
and GE... Xerox working with Lotus to scan photo-copied documents into
computer files... Visual Data Corp.'s HotelView will allow folks who visit
TravelWeb to take "virtual tours" of hotels... Stanford offering engineering
graduate degrees entirely online... New IBM flat-panel technology with
200 pixels-per-inch clarity - indistinguishable from a printed page...
NCR's Microwave Bank that not only cooks food, but has an internet connection
to pay your bills, and do grocery shopping... RealAudio versions of Starr
Report... More of these email-over-the-phone services. This time
from ITServ...
----------
Studies:
----------
Dataquest's study that the Internet server market is expected to grow
received way too much press (as if this couldn't be extrapolated from all
the "Internet growth" studies)... Europe is slow (I imagine, they would
prefer to use the word "cautious") to "exploit" e-commerce, according to
Andersen Consulting... A study in Scientific American shows that playing
video games changes brain chemistry, and is possibly addictive (man, I
need my Quake fix)... IDC reports a continued slowdown in worldwide PC
sales, predicting only 11% growth this year... J.D. Power and Associates
says that 21% of all new car buyers will use the net to "facilitate" a
purchase by 2000... E&Y study shows that most financial companies have
no clue what they're doing by spending on Internet related ventures.
Of course, that doesn't stop them from increasing the money dump... Not
much change in the top sites according to RelevantKnowledge, though people
checked out more weather and travel sites during the summer...
-----------
Overhype
-----------
Sun, Microsoft, Java, hostage-taking, significant harm, blah blah blah...
Hackers. A "malicious" hacker stole passwords at Berkeley (nearly
50,000 of 'em). China makes its first "hacker" arrest. Finally,
the NYTimes goes down for nearly the entire day as hackers (repeatedly)
post a page that said plenty (though mostly hidden in the source) about
hackers and the folks who write about them... Hey, guess what? The
Internet didn't collapse under the voyeuristic barrage of folks wanting
to know about our President's extra-curricular activities...
--------------
Predictions:
--------------
Time Warner's announcement that they're jumping into the e-commerce
fray will result in another Pathfinder. Lots of hype, but a blatant
misunderstanding of the medium...
------------------------
Too much free time:
------------------------
Okay, so I knew that about:jwz went away, but I didn't catch his side
of the story until now (I can't surf the *entire* Internet, you know):
http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/blowme.html
|
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