Technology
Ben Horowitz: High Tech’s New Andy Grove
If Silicon Valley is rich, how come it ain’t smart? How is it that we consistently generate innovative companies but rarely produce management thinkers of consequence? Part of the problem is that many technology leaders are neurotic. They need to be: nobody really knows what is going to work and your idea will most likely [...]
The Kindle: Dead, Deadly, and Dominant
Just before the launch of the iPad, I ventured the safe prediction that Amazon’s ebook reader, the Kindle, was kindling. It was doomed to be crushed by Apple’s reactionary, if magical, iPad. As hardware, the Kindle is history, but as software it is brilliant, with enduring advantages over Apple’s iBook. During the last four months, Amazon has [...]
Visa, Mastercard, or iPhone?
Google and Apple will soon compete with Visa and Mastercard to process your payments in stores, restaurants, and online. Both companies will be pulled into payment processing because both have built two valuable networks: one of developers who build apps, the other of consumers who buy them. But the developer network has diminishing returns, whereas [...]
WhyPad?
Apple’s iPad has been subject to two prevailing narratives: one sycophantic (“a magical and revolutionary device”), the other scornful (“an overgrown iPod Touch”). Here is a fast first reaction that reconciles the two and argues that for many if not most people, a tablet is in your future. 1. Well, it is revolutionary. And as close [...]
"Remember: Your Mother Owns a Bank"
The Jamkid and I caught Muhammad Yunus at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco this afternoon. Yunus is the Bangladeshi banker who received the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for pioneering microcredit loans to women. He also serves as the godfather of social enterpreneurship – the fashionable and laudable notion that many social causes are best organized [...]
Murses, Velcro, and Wipes: the Future of Taplet Computing
I dislike the potential social impact of Apple's vertically integrated, closed system business strategy (details here, here, and here), but I bought a 3G iPad the day it came out. It rocks. The iPad is not your father's tablet computer — it is fast, lightweight, touch-based and runs applets. More like a taplet. You will own and [...]
Holy Cow Batman! Facebook just stole our Internet!
TechCrunch just reported that Facebook has taken control of the Internet. Huh? What is the fuss about? Well, Facebook announced today a plan to reshape the Internet as profoundly as Apple is reshaping mobile computing. They today published a social software platform called the Open Graph. Founder Mark Zuckerberg called it “the most transformative thing we’ve ever done for the web”. He [...]
The Empire Strikes Back: iPhone 4.0
In one year Apple and Google have gone from allies to antagonists to epic combatants. The contest is really just beginning — and it is shaping up as a replay of the battle fought 30 years ago between Apple and Microsoft. At today's release of iPhone OS 4.0, Steve Jobs took a swipe at Amazon, Adobe, Microsoft, [...]
The People's Republic of Apple
Apple, Google, and Microsoft are the three most important technology companies in the world and they now mirror the world's three most important economies. Apple is China, booming but autocratic. Microsoft is Europe, wealthy, stagnant, and declining. Google is the USA, an immature but powerful force for freedom prone to arrogance and to fighting too many wars at [...]
Buzz This
OK, I finally understand Google Buzz. Wave, not so much, but this explanation of Buzz is pretty succinct, if NSFW.
How Amazon Can Compete with Apple
At the moment, Amazon's best selling Kindle is the king of the eBook readers. But the impending launch of Apple's iPad means that unless Amazon changes its direction and its mindset, the Kindle is kindling. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has a tough habit to break. It started when he built the Kindle and he deliberately [...]
Why the iPad Matters — even if you are already sick of it.
The PR was stunning, the product impressive, and the strategy tiresome. Apple stoked rumors of a dreamy tablet for either two years old or thirteen, depending on how you count. For six months, the leading tech blogs have been quivering with speculation about the "Jesus tablet". One blog, Gizmodo, offered $100,000 cash for an hour [...]
Atul Gawande: America's Doctor
Who is Atul Gawande and why is he having a bigger impact on your life than any physician in America who is not treating you?Gawwande is a cancer surgeon in Boston. A Rhodes Scholar and the recipient of a MacArthur "genius grant", he trained at Harvard, and Stanford and grabbed a Masters in Public Health [...]
The Great Sell-out.
It's Oaklandish — the great liberal caterwauling about the death of the public option and the claims that Obama has sold out to big insurance and pharma. To humiliate a liberal, film this stuff and replay it in ten years.If this is a sell-out, count me a buyer. Last night's Senate deal killed Harry Reid's [...]
The Death of the Desktop?
Google today revealed details of its operating system: Chrome OS. There is a reason that they named their operating system after their browser: their operating system IS a browser. Your computer boots in seconds and up comes a browser. Take more than a cursory look at Chrome OS and you realize that Google is offering [...]
Solar Power
There is a natural and healthy tension between politics and markets. The tension is the difference between socially oriented citizens who are often unfamiliar with business and in any case favor the strong, visible hand of government protection and their commercially-oriented brethren who prefer the invisible hand of market competition and generally view government as [...]
The Apple Squeeze
Have your noticed that Apple is getting squeezed? Consider these recent developments: 1. With Windows 7, Microsoft has substantially closed the performance gap with the Mac OS, thus quietly removing the major reason to switch to a Mac. Both professional reviews and personal experience confirm that with Windows 7, Microsoft got it right. In a [...]
US Newspapers in a Free Fall
Today the Audit Bureau of Circulations released weekday circulation numbers for the top 25 daily newspapers in the U.S. The graph below shows changes in circulation during the past six months. These numbers are not simply awful — they represent the total collapse of the newspaper business. Only the Wall St. Journal added any subscribers [...]
The Future of Twitter
Twitter just raised $100 million on a $1 billion valuation, making Twitter about as valuable as say, Barnes and Noble, which has 720 bookstores and about $5 billion in revenue. Twitter revenues? Well, none. But someday we can serve ads to all those eyeballs, right?Right. But the competitors are circling. And I don't mean Facebook [...]
How the Kindle Helps Destroy Textbooks
When Bill Clinton was elected President in the early 1990's, encyclopedias were a $1.2 billion dollar business in the US. The best encyclopedia, Britannica, owned half of the market and advertised "more than 80 Nobel laureates" among its contributors. A Britannica set cost over $1,000. They were sold door to door by over 2,000 commissioned [...]
