--------------------
Say that again...
--------------------
"We don't always have to be the first rabbit out of the gate."
- Jeff Crown, VP of Business Development at Lycos. Wait, do they
race rabbits?
"Broadcast.com, meanwhile, keeps surging because [your explanation here]."
- Wired News summary of coverage on Broadcast.com's insane quadrupling
stock price.
"Customers want to buy what their colleagues buy."
- Eric Feldman, Director of Marketing for ComputerLand. And,
they say that marketing is more of an art than a science...
"It would HELP ME IMMENSELY to have a survey showing that 90 percent
of developers believe that putting the browser into the operating system
makes sense ... Ideally we would have a survey before I appear at the Senate
on March 3rd."
- Bill Gates in an email prior to the trial. Miraculously, just
such a survey was "uncovered", and used by Microsoft's economist.
------------------------------------------
Earnings Reports, IPOs and the like
------------------------------------------
@Home will restate its earnings for 1997 and the stock market doesn't
even notice... Investors pour $25 million into TheStreet.com as it begins
planning for an IPO... Making that IPO seem even more exciting was Friday's
insane IPO of CBS Marketwatch. Opens at 17 and immediately trades
well over 90 -- and stays there (the second biggest leap after TheGlobe.com,
which quickly collapsed)... Intel beats earnings estimates by a long shot...
Yahoo beats earnings estimates and hits the whisper number, but the stock
drops due to the insane expectation run up, and the resulting downgrades
(including "Internet Queen" Mary Meeker's)... Seagate destroys estimates
and is actually making a profit (how much did they save by getting rid
of Al?)... Apple beats estimates and shows a huge increase in income (of
course, the revenue increase is pretty small -- which surprises me.
If they're selling so damn many iMacs, you'd think their revenue numbers
would show a larger increase)... The return of failed IPOs: autobytel.com
and Healtheon both decide to try, try again (and investors will buy, buy
again)... Sybase lays off 400... E-Trade losing less than expected... MP3.com
raises $11 million from Sequoia and others (say what?)... Inktomi beats
quarter estimates and last years numbers (perhaps they should spend a little
more money on making a product that can actually find what you're searching
for)... AMD making money, but misses estimates... Beyond.com losing more
money than expected (and a ton more than last year)... Motorola beats estimates,
but is making quite a bit less than last year... Rambus meets expectations,
and is still making money, but expects stagnation for the next few quarters...
Symantec beats estimates and last year's numbers...
------------------------------------------------
Rumors, Conspiracies etc. of the week...
------------------------------------------------
For those expecting Bertelsmann to buy Lycos, an interesting note on
the European front, where Bertelsmann already owns a portion of Lycos Europe:
this week there was a management buyout of half of Bertelsmann stake by
the CEO... Marimba (now that everyone's forgotten about them) to try to
go public (really)... Oracle looking to buy Sybase... Softbank (which owns
stakes in ZD and Yahoo) made Yahoo's profits look nicer by shifting money
from ZD to Yahoo through a secretive advertising deal (sneaky)...
----------------------------------------
News you should have read elsewhere
----------------------------------------
U.S. Supreme Court says algorithms can be patented (antiquated understanding
of intellectual property strikes again)... MCIWorldcom never really in
the race for AirTouch, and Bell Atlantic drops out at the end, so Vodafone
is left to sweep up the mess... Folks from big name companies join together
to try (and good luck to them) to keep governments from regulating the
Internet... Oracle finally gets around to launching their $100 million
venture capital fund (Don't call Larry, by the way. You have to go
through the standard VC channels to get your hands on the cash)... Meanwhile,
Network Associate's new Vulcan fund isn't a venture capital fund (nor is
it related to Vulcan Ventures) but a big pot of money to invest in companies
(yes, the difference is *so* clear now)... Judge calls Microsoft temp contracts
"outrageously arrogant"... Lucent bought both Kenan Systems and Ascend...
Ascend shareholders bitched and whined about the price and filed suit against
Lucent... Katmia officially called Pentium III (milk it for all it's worth)...
Infoseek and Disney launched the Go Network this week (and, let's face
it, it's nothing special)... Iomega buys what's left of SyQuest... The
DOJ wants "more info" on the Netscape-AOL merger...
--------------------------
News you could do without
--------------------------
ICQ has doubled its membership to 25 million in the past 6 months...
St. Louis judge forces IEG to take down their web site featuring info on
the Pope's visit to St. Louis, due to its infringement of the Archdiocese's
trademark (oh, and the "erotic" pictures included on the page)... India
issues a "red alert" against using any security software created in the
US for security reasons... Better yet, an Australian report (which wasn't
supposed to be released -- but has been sitting on library shelves for quite
some time) shows suggested plans to allow legalized government hacking
and the means to cover up such... Samsung gives up on AST and dumps it
off to the former chairman of Packard Bell NEC... IBM was granted the most
US patents for the 6th year running... Bell Atlantic to offer AOL customers
DSL (just what we need: AOL customers with additional bandwidth)... SGI's
NT box finally officially launched to not nearly as much fanfare as past
launches (perhaps that's because people actually cared about past launches)...
The Sharper Image online adds auction capabilities (how original!)... Ticketmaster
buys CityAuction... @Home to add auctions through Egghead.com (copycats)...
Cyberwar plan not really called by hackers, says hackers... Yahoo files
suit against YaHooka for the domain (is it really trademark infringement,
or does Koogle have other plans for the site?)... SBC cuts the price on
DSL as they finally realize that cable modems will win out when DSL costs
three times as much... RealNames and Inktomi in a deal that would matter
if anyone actually used RealName's technology... eBay realizes self-policing
doesn't prevent fraud, and puts in place a number of systems to change
things (including a deal with Equifax)... Pandesic is a drain on the resources
of both Intel and SAP... In a related note, shareholders of iCat, the company
Intel bought to fold into Pandesic, are suing (since the price Intel paid
was just enough to cover outstanding debts, the investors don't get a dime)...
IBM realizes that giving away DB2 free for Linux might hurt sales of DB2
on other platforms (wonder how many committees it took to come up with
that stroke of genius)... Microsoft delays Windows 2000 (as if it were
worth mentioning)...
------------
Surprises:
------------
Apparently Lycos forgot to put "exclusive" in their contract with IBM
to be linked on all new IBM Aptiva's because it only took a few days for
IBM to add Yahoo! and Excite to the list of portals "available" on all
new Aptiva's (is this a special for the net clueless?)... Compaq buys Shopping.com
as a late holiday gift for AltaVista (you need to wonder how much due diligence
was done -- at last check, Shopping.com had hundreds of BBB complaints against
it, and had "problems" shipping products that had been already charged)...
Sucks to be varsitybooks.com. While they continue to focus on just
a few Washington DC schools, Follett Corp has launched eFollet.com covering
books for over 450 universities... The Supreme Court in Norway rules that
it's legal to attempt to break into someone else's computer system (being
successful, however, is illegal)... How to tell that Yahoo has gotten too
big: this week they opened a lobbying office in Washington DC... Microsoft
dumps $10 million into Banyan Systems (do they still do anything besides
"own" Switchboard?)... eTrade to join with an investment bank and start
underwriting IPOs... Bertelsmann buys into ONElist (why?)... Reuters buys
VentureOne... Bell Atlantic to offer Lotus Notes (core incompetence?)...
Infobeat has sold their operations and name to Sony, and will focus on
their service business, Infobeat Express, to be renamed Exactis...
-------------------------------
(Mis)Uses of Technology:
-------------------------------
Delta to charge $2 extra if you *don't* book online (travel agents
are pissed)... China is requiring the heads of all national airlines to
be in the air on January 1st, 2000 as incentive to fix any Y2K problems...
AOL to sell its service door-to-door (I plan on using this as an opportunity
to give back the thousands of "free" AOL CDs I own)... @Home and RealNetworks
to work together on improving the quality of videos on the Internet...
Archie comics taking legal action against the owners of veronica.org for
trademark infringement (the site is for the owner's two-year-old daughter)...
AOL building Dragon System's speech recognition into their software (just
think, "You've Got Mail" becomes the beginning of a conversation)... Folks
at EA sneakily put "The Spirit of Christmas" South Park cartoon on copies
of Tiger Woods golf game (though, apparently, it's fairly tricky to get
at). Other folks at EA find out about it and are pissed... Probably
too good to be true, but worth reading anyway: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/tc/story.html?s=
v/nm/19990115/tc/pagers_2.html
...
----------
Studies:
----------
The Pew Research Center for the People and Press received a bit too
much press for their study showing that the Internet isn't just for geeks
any more. More and more, the demographics are matching the demographics
of the U.S. as a whole (I imagine it's tough not to, when you're up to
74 million U.S. users)... A new study from the Travel Industry Association
of America showed that in 1998 nearly one-half of all travelers booked
their travel arrangements online... Patricia Seybold rated the top three
e-commerce sites as eToys, Amazon, and Eddiebauer.com (I really want to
see which are listed as the worst)... The Marketing Corp has released a
study showing that over $8 billion worth of goods were sold online during
the holiday season... Zona Research has shown that only 2% of online buyers
are willing to pay the extra amounts for faster delivery of products purchased
online... 43% fewer venture backed companies went public in 1998 than in
1997...
-----------
Overhype
-----------
Sarah Flannery's discovery of a method for encrypting email data up
to ten times faster than RSA. Yes, it's big news, but the flurry
of reports (many of whom misunderstood the details) was a bit overdone...
Cyberstrikes. Brazil is the latest country to have one... Joe Firmage
portrayed as a loon. Once again, possibly true, but news outlets
went a little overboard...
--------------
Predictions:
--------------
Blaming the Y2K problem on stupid mistakes that should have been prevented.
This week, the US Labor Department accidentally released data prematurely
on their web page (twice!) and blamed it on Y2K...
------------------------
Too much free time:
------------------------
Weird obsessions: http://ezzell.org/Error_Contest/Error_Contest.html |
