ellementK: (ĕll'ǝ-mǝnt-kā)
noun - A fundamental, essential, or irreducible constituent of a composite entity. Middle English, from Old French, from Latin About Eleanor Kruszewski: I'm known variously as Eleanor or Elle. My last name is like that coach from Duke - kru-shef-ski. Based in Menlo Park, CA, I work for Yahoo! in their Developer Network. The easiest description of what I do is the MBA shin kicker, handling community, marketing, commercial programs and sundry backend stuff. Disclaimer: I've done big corps, midcorps, and startups, so I overstate and oversimplify as much as anyone else. These opinions are my own, not my employer's. |
Archive for November, 2004Cutting edge tech is consumer tech?I’m starting to pay attention to consumer tech because I have to: consumer tech adoption is a subtext to many of the themes I’m tracking. Blogging is an inherently populist, human activity - its very ethos is to make editing pages easy enough for junior high girls and soccer moms. The uber-kewl iPod has, in a sweep, legitiimized the portable digital audio market (probably as much by providing a legitimate place to purchase music for mainstream users via iTunes) and become a fashion and lifestyle accessory. Then we have podcasting, the nascent phenomenon (of which I remain highly skeptical - I struggle with the aural format and hate talk radio). Then we have projects like Creative Commons, with their groundbreaking work with Wired to distribute a free ‘rip mix burn’ cd with major artists under the CC license, and also projects like OurMedia which are trying to create a ecosystem around CC-licensed media. Then there’s the crazy ringtone market. I’ve been tracking some of these themes for a while now, but have only gradually become aware of some of the implications of this. I first noticed when I discussed with people their iTunes habits - people I’ve spoken with have been regularly spending $20-30 a month at iTunes. Then I started checking out the wireless service I will want when I get the Treo650 - TMobile’s all-purpose data+voice service package starts at $80/month, to which you can add SMS, video, Hotspots, etc. That’s a tremendous annuity - and just plain astounding. I’ve resigned myself to the fees because of the productivity gains I will enjoy, but am struck that this is presented very casually as the price of entry. Note that NECSAM doesn’t fund cell phone service that extends beyond traditional voice - so this is my assessment as a user paying out of pocket; I imagine many of those who use these services have their fees covered by their businesses so they might have a different perspective (but that’s a bigger issue - see this post for a sense of the general chaos all us mobile workers are bringing to enterprises) . Then you look at gaming - the launch of Halo 2 topped $125 million in its first weekend - players pay a further $6/month for the service. The gaming industry just held a conference, State of PlayII hosted by the New York Law School - if you can believe it. Prominently featured is the game Second Life, where characters roam through a user-built 3-D environment (I actually signed up for this to see if I can understand what the buzz is about). Check out the blog set up to chronicle the happenings of the online world for a real sense of how deep the consumer connection with virtual worlds is. What all this bespeaks to us is, in economic terms, a revealed willingness to pay. We can see consumers spending a huge amount of recurring money on new toys and services. Consumers are willing to buy cameras and cameraphones and mp3 players. They’re willing to subscribe to broadband and wireless services to use them. They purchase add-on services and applications to make them more usuable and fun. What an astonishing change - and so much of it is driven by the pursuit of access to information and entertainment. And there’s data to back this up - all these disparate trends are being mirrored in the purchasing of content online. Consumers are consuming more as they get a taste for the way they can use it. ClickZ, a site for web marketing, discusses how paid content increased by 14% in 1H2004 - hitting $853M in the US. Contrast this to the state of the industry documented in 1999 by Austrailian Roger Clarke and the change is startling. Startups and enterprises are noticing and improving their offerings. Last week, at the IBDN Under the Radar event showcasing a handpicked cadre of startups, I was struck that at the number of innovative consumer companies. Roku is selling network music players for the home; Akimbo is offering a video on demand service of old series and niche programming; Mirra sells backup devices. These are all toys that will be found at major US consumer electronics stores like BestBuy. It appears that a broad trend is emerging - that a fundamental shift has occured between US consumers and their media. As we heard from SBC’s CEO - people of all walks of life are making media their own - repurposing it, sharing it, and documenting their thoughts on it - via blogs or epinions or amazon comments. Broadband adoption and emergence of meaningful applications have opened up a huge new market, and the pursuit of that market is pushing the state of the industry forward.
Just in time too, because enterprise spending growth has shown no meaningful increase. IBDN Under the RadarHmmm…. I just realized I never published this report. This is just an info dump out of my head. There are no doubt statements somewhere in here which can both help and threaten the companies involved, but it’s nothing they shouldn’t have thought of before. IBDN Under the Radar was a day-long event brought together companies seeking funding, VCs, and people like myself to get a sense of the state of innovation in the Valley. The event was expensive - $390 (a package deal that included a $95 No Frills membership – for members it was $295, for nonmembers it was about $400). That kept out the riffraff. There were no bloggers here, and very few job-seeker types. The format was highly regulated – a series of timed stages on the order of 6 minutes for presentation, then ~7 minutes for questions from the VC panel. The below is the full agenda of company presentations. There was also an intro session and a closing session with a panel of VCs moderated by CNet journalist Rafe Needleman. The strongest message from this event was the lack of real innovation in many of these players. It’s a clear signal that the last 2 years of little seed-stage funding has yielded few truly interesting companies. The weak companies here should not have been allowed to present. The fact that they were means that this was the best they could find. VCs I’ve spoken with on this topic have agreed. When early stage funding dried up, we could see it in the VentureOne statistics, but now we’re seeing it in the market in a lack of viable startups ready for the next stage. Here are my biased, potentially misguided, and personal notes from the event, broken out by session:
My timing wasn’t as good as I wanted - I clearly missed hearing pitches for some of the most exciting companies out there. Still I wanted to break up my day so that I could attend one session from each segment. Participate: 0 Comments | TrackbackChip Chatter - Consumer & Converged DevicesI have a lot of back posts to put up over the next few days, but first a current piece from today. Right away I’ve seen two pieces on chips from big players, tracking with themes I’m developing. First the announcment of the Cell chip, product of joint development efforts of IBM, Sony and Toshiba. This chip is designed for consumer electronics applications targeted at the digital home including Sony’s Playstation and handling video display for high resolution displays. As The Wall Street Journal reports in WSJ.com - IBM, Sony, Toshiba Unveil Chip For Home-Entertainment Sector:
(edited 13 Dec) See also The Red Herring blog post which has more info about the Cell chip as well as comments on where it will fit in in the world of consumer electronic devices and games. The New York Times focuses on Intel and its strategies and challenges ahead with a piece looking forward to Otellini’s ascent to CEO. Most noteworthy for the theme of convergence around multifunction advanced handsets, the piece reports on Otellini’s new strategy of “platformization” — what seems to be Intel focusing less on the hardware attributes of chips but more on the holistic solution. Looking forward to Otellini’s first strategy presentation to Wall Street, The Times expects him to announce Intel’s focus on “four areas for growth: international markets for desktop personal computers, mobile and wireless applications, the digital home, as well as a new initiative aimed at large corporate computing markets that Intel is calling the Digital Office.” We’ll have to wait to see what is shared about the “Digital Office” initiative… that makes me think of Xerox. Perhaps to underscore this shift, the most innovative part of Intel’s strategy that’s discussed in the article talks about Intel’s investment in Craig McCaw’s wimax startup, Clearwire:
What I take away from this is more evidence that consumer facing applications are receiving the focus that was formerly centered around the enterprise. I’m going to be posting on this theme quite a bit (including backposts) so I will return to add links later. Participate: 0 Comments | TrackbackOpen vs. closed approaches of carriers, BREW vs JavaThe distinctions between ‘open’ and ‘closed’ come up quite a bit in the discussion of the future of mobility and wireless providers - because some carriers have controlled both the transmission of data and what you can load on a handset. Developers froth and foam at the walled gardens and the difficulty of getting their applications out of paying customers. Since I’m posting for Japan, it’s probably worthwhile for me to explain the chaotic US carrier market as it related to our heterogenous networks, delivery platforms, and operating systems, so I will give it a shot. Previously, Verizon was the largest carrier and able to provide subscribers with the security that comes from joining the largest and best supported ‘critical mass’ carrier. Developers were faced with the choice of developing via BREW and going in through the closed Qualcomm-Verizon system branded GetItNow, or going through decentralized channels to develop on Java for handsets using MIDP and Symbian based products (for a good overview of the complex world of Java on handsets - see the slides Bill Day developed for Nokia’s Tech Days last week). Many developers I’ve spoken with have cited Verizon’s 40 million customers as the reason they develop in BREW, despite the transaction costs of working with both Qualcomm and Verizon and the sense that it is a ‘walled garden’ with only limited areas of allowed development. The merger of AT&T Wireless and Cingular has shifted the conversation in a new direction, because now the dominant carrier in the US will be a GSM provider - the applications for which are developed primarily using the Java and Symbian operating systems. The new Cingular’s 50 million customers change the calculations, potentially to favor the more-open Java and Symbian world. I’m tracking this for its likely impacts on innovation, startup formation and investment patterns. In the closed-system Verizon world, you can only download applications through their GetItNow program, and it is only feasible to go through the entire process of application validation and catalogue engtry for commercial applications. In the Java/Symbian world, applications are designed to be downloaded straight from the provider and publisher, but until the recent announcment of Preminet, there was no integrated application and delivery system available on the Java side. Java has always had the ability to support viral applications with free or shareware type licenses, or applications which are free but exist to drive revenue in other areas (think of a mobile app to enhance functionality for paid services, like Buzznet’s community photo sharing services). Now the Java side is supported by both the infrastructure and the flexibility to accomodate alternative business models. As we’ve seen countless times, standards faciliate innovation by speeding adoption. Cingular uses the GSM /GPRS format that is in use throughout much of the world. And Nokia’s Tech Days event is worth a second look - not only did attendees get free training, but they also received copy of Borland’s developer kit (essentially all you need to begin Symbian development). This signals a strong investment by Nokia in nuturing and growing its developer community. Participate: 0 Comments | TrackbackSBC’s Chair discusses intent to offer integrated cable, cellular, wireline serviceThe Wall Street Journal has a very interesting piece with an interview with SBC’s Chairman and CEO, Edward Whitacre. I’ve posted the entire article here for those without subscriptions. This piece is important for several reasons. First, SBC is 60% owner of Cingular (which is now the merged entity including AT&T Wireless), so this shows that SBC is planning on creating synergy between their wireline and wireless offerings as a strategic necessity. Secondly, he offers valuable insights into the competitive dynamics of the industry. Even more subtly, I was struck by Whitacre’s assessment of personal technology:
This is an additional datapoint which is fueling a new theme I’m starting to track - consumer-driven adoption (I’m writing a longer piece with an overview of the themes I’m tracking - see . Participate: 0 Comments | TrackbackIntel assisting Asian OEMs with support for Linux installs for desktop machinesCynthia Webb, in her Filter column in The Washington Post has a great rundown of the news around Intel’s move to simplify Linux installation for Asian PC manufacturers. Check out the full piece Linux Ready for Prime Time, Intel Says. Mozilla-based browser Firefox off to strong startInformation Week has a decent round up of the recent browser stats wars. We’ve got a couple different reports with slightly different takes on the numbers, but it’s clear where the momentum is: Firefox is definitely taking market share from Internet Explorer and is surprising in its swiftness. In a summary of the stats, OneStat.com, an Amsterdam-based Web metrics firm, has Microsoft’s Internet Explorer with a 88.9% usage share (down 5 points since May) to Firefox’s 4.6% and sister-suite Mozilla at 2.8%. That puts Mozilla-based browser share at 7.4% (up from 2.1% in May). US-based competitor WebSideStory has IE at a 92.9%, and Firefox at a much smaller 3%. Under their model, IE is only down 3% since May. Not a huge difference, but IE share falling below 90% represents a pyschological threshold. So it’s worth quibbling just a little:
This time period is especially pertinent when you consider that FireFox itself was only officially launched (v 1.0) 2 weeks ago. Since then users have downloaded more than 5.6 million copies of the free Firefox. Based on what I see and hear, I tend to agree with Brinkman that a couple weeks brings a lot of change with all the buzz around Firefox. I still use the Mozilla suite (since 1999). I’ve spoken with other power users (as I type I have 3 windows open, one of which has 39 tabs open) and they say it’s not quite ready for prime time. Thunderbird (the Mozilla-based mail client) definitely isn’t, and Mozilla mail has finally become stable - I don’t want to play the crashing game. I’ll move to Firefox and Thunderbird together, once they are both stable. Updated: I hadn’t checked on Thunderbird’s status - but today I see that Thunderbird is nearing release and that release candidate 1.0 is available for testing. Full release of 1.0 is set for tomorrow! I do, however, feel less cool not using Firefox too. In the Bay area, people have Firefox stickers and t-shirts and it is quite the topic of conversation, even (especially?) among the less technical folks. I feel sort of left out of the revolution. Well, I’ll just download Mozilla 1.8 alpha 5 and try my best to feel cutting edge. Participate: 0 Comments | TrackbackPerils and travails of social networkingDavid Coursey’s deeply skeptical article from back in August, Beware of ‘Free’ Services, captures a subtle objection to some of these social networking sites. As Coursey says, everything has a price - whether obvious or implicit. I share his deep suspicion of Plaxo - the lame company which offers to spam customers’ contacts with arbitrary email requesting that contacts update their info. This is a personal predjudice, but I have to confess that I tend to think poorly of anyone associated with Plaxo’s email. As a non-user, it’s worse than spam - it tells me someone else has shared my info with a 3rd party. Not to mention the fact that it implicitly says I am valuable to that person only as a correct email address in their database. Maybe Plaxo could fix it by adding a chattier tone to the notes, but its request to ‘please update my info so that so-and-so has it correctly’ leaves me cold. Services like LinkedIn however do suit me - I use LinkedIn quite a bit. For me it serves as a mental map of my contacts. My outlook contacts are too extensive and fragmented by the categories that I use to classify them locally. LinkedIn serves a useful purpose as a sort of superset category of something that could be classified as ‘people to keep my eye on’. It could be my position as an itinerant researcher, but I’m not at all bombarded with requests for contact (or then it again, it could be that, as I sense, my network is already interlocked - that would be an interesting analytic tool for LinkedIn to add). I haven’t used it to make contacts either, as I have nothing to sell and usually get information from relationships I’ve developed in the real world. So, for me at least, the business case of LinkedIn in forming new connections has fallen short. It has helped me keep track of and keep in touch contacts I’ve formed elsewhere. I heard (or read? I forget) that a possible business model for LinkedIn was selling companies access to “the references that are not on the resume” people with whom you have worked, but explicitly did not list as references. Now, how they would sell that access I’m not sure (it sounded more reasonable before I got to putting it down here) - but in that case, I agree that it would be a valuable thing. It’s so costly to mishire that I believe it’s economically benefical to reduce uncertaintly. On the flip side prospective employees can mine LinkedIn to get a sense of the culture and even the personalities of some of their potential colleagues. It’s on the same scale of reasonableness as Googling dates to get the backstory on them. With the data out there, we are better off knowing. And that’s where I come down on Coursey’s objection - I am ok with the risk as long as I can extract value as a user. Fail to deliver me value, and the contract is broken. The other social networking companies have failed to interest me. I deemed Ryze worth trying until I realized that I needed to pay $10 a month to get the sort of data I wanted out of it (it is free however to submit a tremendous amount of personal data, and it is free to get contacted by those in your affiliations 0 se here for more info). Friendster is for dating and pure social stuff - and the hype around that one crested when I was deeply skeptical about it as a popularity contest. Tribe might be interesting, especially in light of their partnership with (someone I’m interested in), but then again - it’s a matter of time. I can only invest so much attention in these services. And then there’s Tribe - but you know - I have never figured out what that’s for. But all this is so much work, and requires investment. Take the last 2 days, for example - it took me the better part of yesterday to input my 60 new contacts into Outlook (granted I was addled with a bad cold). Today I spent time sending followup notes and invites into LinkedIn. While social networking tools make this process easier to tackle in a bulk fashion, they don’t do anything to mitigate the fact that dealing with people on the one-to-one level that is so essential to building and maintaining solid relationships. And that takes time. Participate: 3 Comments | TrackbackSolaris 10 on x86 - critical to Sun’s continued successThe Register’s Ashlee Vance has a piece on Sun and its future - positing that Sun will only retain relevance if Solaris 10 on x86 becomes the new growth engine. Vance takes the audacious positon that Sun is in extreme danger of becoming “a bigger, richer version of SGI”. I definitely recommend you check out the full article, but it goes like this:
This part is very insightful, because its at the crux of the fight between HP and Sun over Schwartz’s blog posts (which I blogged here) that marginalize HP-UX as a dead platform. But Solaris’ franchise is based on its success with the RISC architecture - which is itself in decline. Therefore, it is critical to Sun that they get their ‘best of breed’ operating system out there on as many x86 boxes as possible, as quickly as they can.
Interesting stuff.
Sometimes the detail is nice too! Participate: 0 Comments | TrackbackInstitute for the Future report on location based servicesThe Institute for the Future, a futurist think-tank in Menlo Park has been doing a lot of thinking around location-based services. Check out their report, Infrastructure for a New Geography. Some of it is pretty far out, and of questionable value, but their report of projects and companies involved is useful. Membership in the IFTF is available in the Technology Horizons Program for about $15K a year, with numerous benefits including reports like these, an annual conference and access to thought leaders. Future Salon presents Doug Englebart, inventor of the mouseI was unable to attend due to illness, but they have a very good summary on this page. This is a very good group of people with close ties to SAP. Another great example of both the sheer quantity of very interesting events we have here in the bay area, and simulataneously that the attendees do circle back to publish a synopsis of what happened. Participate: 0 Comments | TrackbackComputer History Museum and Computer Reseller News eventsI attended the evening reception to honor inductees to Computer History Hall of Fame, but CRN hosted all day events, which I’m told were very sales-oriented. I arrived just in time to make friends with my dinner companions – both VARs. Cappy Frederick, Storage Media Sales Manager with Data Distributing and Brad Green from Redwood Imaging helped me reconnect with life out in VAR-land. I reported back to NECSAM Software Business Division (Adachi-san’s group) that, had I known so many VARs would be there, their people should have gone for sales and business development for the Valumo line. This is certainly the event I’ve seen with the most VARs in one place. The honorees this year were John Seely Brown (PARC), Jim Clark (SGI, Healtheon, Shutterfly), Dr. Edgar Codd (developed relational database concept) and his partner Chris Date to evangelize the idea, Bob Huang (Synnex founder), Alvy Ray Smith (co-founder of Pixar and graphics guru). Steve Wozniak gave a horrifically long and boring keynote – it was over 75 minutes long and put the reception far behind schedule. I certainly respect the man for his contributions, but he definitely rambles (he told many of the same stories during Gnomedex in October). See here for CRN’s report. Participate: 2 Comments | TrackbackChurchill Club event around WineI wasn’t inclined to go to this because of the non-busines nature of this presentation, but it was recommended by several of the people I spoke with at last week’s Top 10 Tech events (blogged here). The attendees were again quite interesting. I met some of the people in IBM’s Venture Capital Group, including Juan-Antonio Carballo, their strategy executive. I also met Vintela’s Director of BizDev, Glenn Kesselman, who discussed their announcement of Microsoft investing money in them (blogged here). On the pure technology side, I met Heath Pois, head researcher for ThermaWave – a semiconductor fab equipment and process supplier. We discussed innovation in fab capacity and what it would mean for future innovation. Based on this and the prior Churchill Club event I attended, I do agree that these are very valuable (no matter what the topic) – it’s a completely different group of people than other events, which tend to have familiar faces. There were several clusters of professional VCs, but they were in tight conversation so I did not interrupt. Participate: 0 Comments | TrackbackOpen Source projects gaining adoptionI’ve been looking at open source this week (as I sit in the SDForum Open Source: Entering the Mainstream event). I ran across an older NetworkWorld piece Somewhat less developed, but more ambiitious is IBM’s Eclipse framework project. For a good overview of what Eclipse is and where it’s at now, check out this eWeek article discussing how Eclipse is coming out from IBM’s shadow and taking on life as an independent open source project. From a keeping-track-of-important-open-source-projects point of view, the piece gives a good precis of the relationship between Eclipse and other players:
How I read that is that BEA is using Eclipse to build the IDE for Beehive, which is an open source version of WebLogic Workshop…. but one thing is for sure - industry leaders are making investments in open source tools development far beyond LAMP. We’ll watch to see what enterprise adoption looks like….. Participate: 0 Comments | TrackbackNorcalBMA Product Marketing/Management Roundtable – breakfast meeting on Blogging and RSSI run the Product Marketing/Management roundtable for the Northern California branch of marketing trade association BMA. This month we held our monthly breakfast meeting on Blogging and RSS. Bill Flitter, chief marketing guy for startup Pheedo, who blogs extensively about marketing and blogging, gave an overview to our attendees. 21 people attended, and they were very interested. Their questions however tended towards the very basic. You can view Bill’s presentation here. I offered a link to Mary Meeker’s overview of RSS and blogging as a good primer. When she’s interested, you know it’s important. Participate: 0 Comments | TrackbackUpdate on IBM WorkplaceHere’s a snapshot of the current plan for IBM Workplace - IBM Workplace Changes in Store Participate: 0 Comments | TrackbackMicrosoft takes stake in ADFS-enabling startupTonight I was at a Churchill Club event where I met Glenn Kesselman, director of channel and partner sales for Vintela, a Utah based company that works to bridge the conflicting identity management services of *nix and Microsoft. Glenn said they had big news coming out on the wires, and it turned out to be that Microsoft took a minority stake, with a cash infusion of “under $10m”. For full details, Vintela: Microsoft’s Secret Unix/Linux Weapon?. This investment continues a positive relationship of co-development and joint sales/marketing efforts. Tools like these help ease the pain of integration now, but I do wonder about Vintela’s long term strategy in the face of the Sun-Microsoft alliance - which is fueled by this exact issue. If big customers brought Sun and Microsoft to the bargaining table and extracted committments to deliver interoperability, it throws the long term viablity of Vintela’s product line in question. I can’t help but wonder if they would have been better off in an outright purchase. Participate: 0 Comments | TrackbackNovell’s leadership carries open source pedigreeFrom an eWeek piece, Novell Open Source Carries on Without Stone, talking about the sudden departure (reported without comment as being “within days” of the announcement of the settlement with Microsoft) of Novell Vice Chair and top open source advocate Chris Stone, we have a comprehensive list of what open source ’superstars’ still remain at Novell: Participate: 0 Comments | Trackback Novell proclaims intent to back open source with patent arsenalAfter acquiring SuSE Linux, Novell has joined IBM as a key large corporate supporter of Linux. In part to quell FUD around licensing and IP risks, Novell has announced a policy of using its patents in a (presumably) retailiatory way against any company that brings a challenge to open source. This is all pretty vague, and as Bruce Perens notes in this InfoWorld article, InfoWorld: Novell to defend open source software with patents, not legally binding. It’s also somewhat of a strange approach since the SCO-IBM case is still ongoing. I wonder how much impact this policy of deterrence would have on those who might bring challenge. Participate: 0 Comments | TrackbackNovell releases Linux Desktop 9 as competitor to Microsoft OfficeNovell made their Linux Desktop 9 broadly available last week. The product is based on SuSE’s Linux Enterprise Server, and Novell is aggressively selling it to enterprises as a viable alternative to Windows. It must be noted that they’re targeting specific job functions, including call centers, and not the broader knowledge worker segment who often uses more of the capabilities of Microsoft Office. The package, which includes Open Office, is priced (MRSP) at $50/user and is expected to appeal first to the public sector and education. See Linux Insider for more coverage.
Given all this talk weighing the attractiveness of stripped down pc’s running an almost-free OS, it’s worth it to revisit Sun’s thin client offering. As cost reducers and Microsoft-free solutions, they certainly must both be on the consideration lists of many prospective customers. Sean Gallagher of eWeek grives his assessment of Sun’s BluRay thin client offerings. Participate: 0 Comments | Trackback |
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