More Investment. Too Much? October 17, 2007
Posted by ianmartinez in : Trends, What's New? , add a commentI noticed an interesting number of items in the media today, new and old, that, taken individually, likely wouldn’t be all that significant. But together, they resonated.
Today’s New York Times says tech investors may be showing signs of irrational exuberance and overvaluing startups.
Consider Facebook, the popular but financially unproven social network, which is reportedly being valued by investors at up to $15 billion. That is nearly half the value of Yahoo, a company with 38 times the number of employees and, based on estimates of Facebook’s income, 32 times the revenue.
Google, which recently surged past $600 a share, is now worth more than I.B.M., a company with eight times the revenue.
More broadly, Internet start-ups are drawing investment based on their ability to build an audience, not bring in revenue — the very alchemy that many say led to the inflation and bursting of the dot-com bubble.
It’s tough language, though there’s no evidence we need to “sell high” just yet. But in light what the early part of this decade saw in tech and telecom, it’s almost worth note.
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That’s TERAbytes October 15, 2007
Posted by ianmartinez in : General, Trends, What's New? , add a commentIan drools.
A nuts-and-bolts explanation by c|net:
With the new, elegantly named current perpendicular-to-the-plane giant magneto-resistive heads (CPP-GMR heads to you laypeople), drive makers will be able to come out with 4 terabyte drives in 2011 and/or 1 terabyte notebook drives.
The CPP-GMR drive essentially changes the structure of drive heads. Current drives come with a tunnel magnetoresistance head. In these, an insulating layer sits between two magnetic layers. Electrons can tunnel through the layer. Precisely controlling the tunneling ultimately results in the 1s and 0s of data.
Ones and zeros indeed. This isn’t stopping anytime soon.
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Monday Blog Roundup
Posted by ianmartinez in : General, What's New? , add a commentMore content consolidation: Discovery acquires How Stuff Works for a reported $250 million. It’s apparently a step toward Discovery bringing its video library online — more bandwidth cholesterol, though if you know anything about both of these companies, its goooood cholesterol.
A great debate on Vonage’s place in communications history rages over at Realtime Community | Unified Communications. Garret Smith, through his own blog, takes the tack that we owe Vonage a “thank you.” David Beckmeyer, though, claiming the company “contaminated the VoIP investment pool back in 2003,” basically says “thanks but no thanks.”
Some sad news from O’Reilly: OET will be “winding down” publishing its blog, as well as canceling its 2008 ETel show. The blog was home to occasional diamonds of insight and I greatly enjoyed reading it throughout the week. As for the show, we have seen that trend toward less-ubiquitous trade shows, though I think it speaks well of NXTcomm that it was able to outstrip expectations last year and should do so again this year.
16 GB iPhone “MacRumors” are greatly exaggerated, according to engadget.
Retail broadband at Wal*Mart is a good thing, says Bruce Mehlman at IIA. As it does in consumer goods and prescription drugs, Wal*Mart’s price-cutting model will bring resold broadband to the masses, he argues.
Does new media ad money stop at the river’s edge for smaller players? Ed Sim seems to think so, and yahoo.com seems to agree.
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Housing Boom October 12, 2007
Posted by ianmartinez in : Trends, What's New?, Policy , add a commentWhen I noticed the Internet Innovation Alliance’s new broadband blog, I predicted IIA’s Internet heavyweights would “inform the debates in a major way.”
I think it’s happening.
Bruce Mehlman’s post yesterday on High Speed Housing is the kind of substantive analysis the alleged “experts” — that have no policy experience — simply don’t generate. Also, it’s the kind of consensus, commonsense approach to policy that the best tech wonks and regulators have long taken.
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Phone Killers? October 10, 2007
Posted by ianmartinez in : What's New? , add a commentEnglish actor (and voiceover star!) Stephen Fry has a blog.
His first post? An altogether interesting, and extremely long-winded take on smartphone competition. I’ll be checking in more to see if this is a one-off effort for him.
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Monday Blog Roundup October 8, 2007
Posted by ianmartinez in : Trends, What's New? , add a commentIt’s like Digg, only softwarier! TechCrunch has an interesting take on CoolSW, a Digg clone for, well, cool software. Duncan Riley asks whether the site isn’t somewhat self-defeating as a business model — but he can’t deny its utility.
From the accidental meltdown files: Engadget documents what happens when we leave our electronics devices on the stove too long.
Laugh of the day comes courtesy of Netscape legend Marc Andreesen’s “second bubble” sendup at pmarca.com. Honestly I’m a little disappointed he had to flag the satire — but that’s the way it is when your words are parsed as closely by the investment community as I imagine Andreesen’s must be.
Ruh roh. Some Sprint gossip, courtesy of MobileCrunch.
Meta-roundup alert! Great compilation of reflections on Skype over at Realtime Community’s Unified Communications. A mixed bag, which basically sums up the company’s public perception to this point. Ed Sim of Beyond VC adds his take, as well.
I’m still a sucker for Jeff Pulver’s baseball analogies, even if it’s more on the Mets going down in flames.
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