05 · 27

Facebook Courting Opera? Now THAT's Interesting!

Forbes.com is reporting a rumor it picked up yesterday that Facebook is actively pursuing the acquisition of Opera Software ASA, makers of what may be the most popular commercial Web browser. Perhaps the most interesting thought sequence here goes something like this:
  1. Facebook sucks at mobile.
  2. Opera makes one of the very best mobile browsers with great HTML5 support.
  3. Facebook has a boatload of cash.
  4. Ergo, ipso facto and a bunch of other Latin.
This would be a natural move on the part of Facebook. And it would presumably give Opera access to enough cash to push for, if not dominance, at least greater commercial success. 

Of course, the assumption is that if FB bought Opera, they'd revise the browser to be a social media-focused app. And that could become worrisome to users concerned with privacy issues. At the same time, though, it would merge browsing and social in ways that presumably anyone without access to the FB code vault could only dream about.

This is one worth watching.
Browsers Facebook Technology Web
05 · 26

Musings on the Facebook IPO ((Target: Technology, Business, Facebook))

The Facebook IPO is being shouted down as a corruption-ridden, badly managed disaster. That's true if you were one of the insiders who didn't make out like quite as much a bandit as you'd hoped when the stock went out at $38, climbed briefly and slightly and then dropped to about $32 yesterday. 

As Joe Nocera says in the New York Times, "Facebook maximized its take, at $16 billion. Long-term investors should be happy about this outcome; the company now has plenty of capital as it competes with Google and the other Internet big boys." In the long term, it's better for investors if the company has enough money to compete and grow. 

The problem, of course, is that folks who invest in IPOs are typically never long-term investors. They are in it for the quick big gain. But the truth that Nocera gets is that the company offering its stock to the public for sale benefits most when the stock price is near or even a bit above what the market decides the company is actually worth. Otherwise, the company ends up raising less money than it could have if it had priced the shares right to begin with.

Nocera again: "We’ve all become brainwashed into believing that, when it comes to I.P.O.s, up is down and down is up. A successful I.P.O. is one where the company gets hosed by Wall Street. A failed I.P.O. is one where the company’s interests, not those of Wall Street speculators, are served. It’s Alice in Wonderland goes to Wall Street."

Precisely.
05 · 25

Whole New Use for the Cloud

USA Today had a story today about a woman who located her lost/stolen iPhone because the thief used it to take pictures of himself without realizing she had her phone set up to automatically upload photos to her iCloud account.

Now that's what I call cloud computing!
Cloud Computing Technology iCloud
05 · 23

Google CIO Says Tipping Point Near on Cloud Computing in Enterprise

Google CIO Ben Fried has told a tech executive summit in New York that he thinks the tipping point for Cloud computing to explode into the Enterprise space is at hand. And Fried says the prospect is scary and disturbing.

Of course it's clear that Google has a vested interest in spreading this meme, but that doesn't mean the meme is a lie. As Fried points out correctly, "The macroeconomic tides — you can’t fight them forever — will force companies to adapt. "

This shift opens myriad opportunities for entrepreneurs and for mid-size companies with agile development capabilities to jump in and provide services and supporting products that could fuel another round of economic expansion. At the same time, as large companies outsource IT infrastructure, jobs will be lost. My guess is that the smart IT guys have already figured this out and begun joining the ranks of the self-employed to tie into and support the Cloud services their former employers need.

What say ye?
Cloud Computing Google Technology
05 · 20

HuffPost's Problem With the iPad: Aggregator Beware!

I love-love-love the Huffington Post. It has become my second favorite source of online news (behind one of the best-kept secrets in America, The Week). When they upgraded their iPad app recently, I downloaded it to give it a try. Earlier versions of the app had been...sort of ok but not exciting.

The new version is much better. I like it a lot. But it continues to suffer from one problem HuffPost can't help because by its very nature as a content aggregator, it is stuck with stupid decisions made by its sources. This means that very often a video re-published by HuffPost ends up a blank spot on my iPad. A quick random sample this morning suggests that less than 20% of the videos they share are usable on iOS. Which makes me wonder about whether their sources are ignoring HTML5 or using some proprietary player-required format in a misguided effort to protect their IP.

Whichever it is, the whole thing makes HuffPost much less enjoyable on the iPad. Which in turn dramatically limits the number of hours I spend on the site each week.
HTML5 Huffington Post News Technology iPad
05 · 19

Facebook IPO Price Was Exactly Right. For the Company

There's been so much "analysis" in the popular press over the meager 23-cent uptick in the price of Facebook's initial stock offering that it seems like someone has forgotten Business 101.

The company that went public here obviously did so precisely correctly. By pricing its initial stock at $38, the company hit exactly what the market agreed it was worth. That is rare. And it means, among other things, that Facebook didn't leave a lot of money on the table. 

See, if they offered shares at, say, $33 and the price jumps to $38, a bunch of investors are delighted. But the company only sees the proceeds of the initial sale, not the subsequent re-sales between investors. So if the stock is priced so low it makes these investors happy, it means the company didn't take in as much as it could -- and should -- have.

As it is, the company realized nearly as much from the IPO as the market felt it was worth. Brilliant job by the investment bankers who priced the offering. The purpose of the market is to enable companies to raise funds for expansion and operation, not to make a bunch of individuals whose only claim to fame for the most part is being in the right place at the right time wealthy.
Business Facebook Stocks Technology
05 · 18

GM Bored FB Fans to Death

In this piece in Ad Age Digital today, B. L. Ochman provided proof positive that GM doesn't even begin to get Social Media.

She listed 11 mostly boring things GM posted on its FB page. I disagreed with her on one or two, but the overall impact: Boredom City.

So when they pulled their advertising from FB days before the company's IPO, it turns out they were saying a lot more about themselves than they were about FB or social advertising.

They needed to hire someone who was tuned into the social media world and could engage in dialog instead of broadcasting crap.
Facebook Social Media Social Voice Technology
05 · 17

HP Demonstrates What's Wrong With American Business

The once-venerable now severely tarnished Hewlett-Packard Co. has indicated that it will put between 25,000 and 30,000 people on the unemployment line in coming days. The company has suffered in recent years from terrible CEO hiring, confusing strategy, and decreased demand for many of its products.

I generally believe that when companies decide they want to convince institutional investors (aka Wall Street) that they are serious about turning a profit, the first knee-jerk response they have is to trim the workforce. Never mind they could save as much money by cutting salaries in the upper reaches of management, partnering with other companies to share or offload less profitable operations while preserving jobs, and in many other well-known and well-documented ways to reduce costs without destroying workers' lives and livelihoods.

Here, we have a company that has been so poorly managed that its R&D labs, once the jewel not only of the company but of the tech industry, has been reduced to near rubble, with scientists there reportedly reduced to running key systems on pirated software, takes the axe to people to try to recover from yet another series of stupid decision making by the top execs. Meanwhile, company employees and observers have suggested that cutting R&D in the past has contributed heavily to the company's current woes. In addition, the company appears to be pinning significant near-term hopes on cranking up its cloud storage server farms offering at a time when Asian suppliers are on a slash-and-burn attack that sells capacity by the rack and is clearly squeezing out American companies like Dell and HP.

If there were a way to calculate and factor into a company's earnings the human costs of layoffs so that the stock price after such a move would accurately reflect the company's value, perhaps corporations would try harder to find more creative and intelligent solutions that would end the misery of so many thousands of lives casually tossed aside by those looking down from the Mahogany Rows of American business.

Bill Hewlett & David Packard must be mourning the loss of the icon they founded and nursed so brilliantly for so many years.
Business Hewlett-Packard Jobs Technology
05 · 17

Google's Knowledge Graph Grabs My Attention

The announcement yesterday that Google is beginning to roll out its new Knowledge Graph on search results pages (SERPs) is the latest salvo in the quickly escalating battle among Google, Microsoft and Facebook for Web dominance in the information space. I have not yet seen or tried the Knowledge Graph but I will closely monitor Google's rollout and hope to get a look soon.

Based on this video on the Google blog, though, I'm pretty excited. 

In fact, I'm more excited by the Knowledge Graph than I am by Microsoft's recently announced intention to include social results on Bing SERPs. A few days ago I compared my thoughts about how Google and Microsoft Bing plan to incorporate social results into their SERPs and I gave high marks to Bing. The Knowledge Graph moves the marker strongly back toward Google for me. As much as I sometimes like to know what my friends and followers are saying and thinking about some subjects, the kinds of searches I do will largely not be enhanced by that additional data. But the Knowledge Graph -- really, what appears to be a strong first take at the Holy Grail called the Semantic Web -- has the potential to make search far, far more useful and interesting to me.

It certainly is a fun time to be alive and watching technology!
Bing Google Search Technology
05 · 17

Crowdfunding Produces a Book

The microfinancial model known as Crowdfunding has generated a new book entitled The Crowdfunding Bible, which you can get for free at the publisher's Web site, You can also get it on iBooks, Nook and Sony Reader. On Amazon, the download version is $2.99 (a print copy is $13.99 on the website and at retailers).

This 80-page book appears on a quick read to be pretty comprehensive and will undoubtedly make a good read for those of us who want to follow this intriguing investment approach or make use of it. The foreword is by none other than Eric Migicovsky, the genius behind the Pebble, an ePaper based wristwatch, whose company has raised just over $10 million on Kickstarter.com in under a month after starting out looking for $100,000. One look at their offering page (all expired now for all practical purposes) reveals one secret to success: lots of different packages and options for backers to buy into.

If you're not up to speed with crowdfunding, you really should get this book and read it. It may inspire ideas or re-ignite old ones you thought you'd never get investment for.
Crowdfunding Microfinance Technology eBooks
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Dan Shafer, Technology Gray-Hair

I got interested in technology in 1968. I cut my programming teeth on APL. I've learned a couple dozen languages over the decades. I've written over 50 books on technology. I can't get enough of the stuff. And unsurprisingly I have a lot of opinions on related subjects. I'm a particular fan of open source and standards-based Web app development these days. Lately, I've been focusing on online marketing technologies.

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