BREAKING: Google to Capitol Records–We’re Not Going to Let You Shut Down Cloud Computing
Can someone tell Capitol Records that the music has stopped? If you haven’t been following events, Capitol Records (EMI) has sued Boston-based Redigi (a used digital music marketplace) for what amounts to copyright infringement. Today, Google decided to enter the fray as a third party, and filed an amicus curiae brief (friend of the court) [...]
Xero Raises Another Round and Acquires WorkFlowMax
Exciting news today from Xero ahead of their user conference tomorrow that spans two important announcements. I’ll cover them individually. $20M Raised from Existing Shareholders Existing shareholders have reinvested to the aggregate tune of $20M. Sam Morgan, Sam Knowles, Craig Winkler and Peter Thiel’s fund Valar Ventures have all taken
To RIM: Don’t Change The Strategy, Change The Rules
A lot has been said and discussed about RIM’s downfall: indecisive leadership, inability to innovate at fast pace, and no clear path to recovery. I don’t disagree at all with the analysis and the interpretation of the situation, but I do disagree with the conclusion that many people are drawing and vehemently disagree with their [...]
Big Blue’s Sphere
LotusSphere is an odd name for an event about non-Lotus software. That was just one of the themes from IBM’s (presumably last) LotuSphere 2012, that it is killing the Lotus brand. Not that the show is dying – it’s a huge show. IBM has slowly been distancing itself from the name/brand Lotus – and replacing [...]
Wanted dead or alive: any Facebook user, $ 125 reward
With the upcoming IPO of Facebook this week, I got a little worried. I told a few people “Mark my words, this IPO is going to blow the Social Media bubble once and for all” and even “Wouldn’t be surprised if FB’s IPO is going to start the final leg of this crisis and finish [...]
Assistly rebrands as Desk.com. Quick Analysis
It was only a few months that salesforce acquired Assistly (more here) but already we see the product relaunching under its new corporate overlords. Rebranded desk.com, the offering has been rebuilt from the ground up including an all new UI, a new HTML5 mobile app and a range of new
StartupCamp5
StartupCamp5 will be taking place at ITExpo Feb 1-3 at the Miami Beach Convention Center. I’ve attended the past four ITExpo’s and StartupCamps, but won’t be at this one. Feeling a bit wistful as so many people I know are heading that way. ITExpo is a good show – particularly strong for hosted service providers [...]
Master These 5 Remarkable Strategies of Motivation and Go Straight to the Top
According to a recent Gallup Poll, about a third of all U.S. workers are dissatisfied with either the recognition they receive, their chances for promotion, or the amount of money they earn. Worse, seventy-one percent of American workers are “not engaged” or “actively disengaged” in their work. Since most of us cannot change the economy, [...]
Apple margin per device – expressed in Chinese
[Image by Sven Teschke] An article in the New York Times published 2 days ago suddenly gained a lot of traction and got discussed, reposted and reblogged today: Apple making money off of the United States, while directly employing “only” twice as many employees in the US than overseas – but indirectly more than ten [...]
Music Industry to Business: If We Can’t Buy SOPA/PIPA Laws, We’ll Just Sue You Instead
The song Blackout is moving up the Music Industry charts, and is bound to reach number one because it fits the industry’s belief systems. In what can only be described as acts of Dumb and Dumber, the music industry is now targeting businesses in their quest to censor the internet and control our rights to [...]
10 Reasons Why RIM Won’t Die
It has been fun to kick RIM. Text book example of why incumbents get disrupted – they owned/invented email on a mobile phone. They invented the smartphone. We used to call their addicts ’”Crackberries.” But they (along with everyone else) underestimated Apple. Blackberry had a huge market share – relationships with every major cellular carrier, a [...]
Data Market Chat: Tyler Bell discusses Factual
Having received some $27 million in investment from big names like Andreessen Horowitz, LA-based Factual is one of the better funded examples of a ‘data marketplace.’ But Tyler Bell, the company’s Director of Product, is not sure that Factual necessarily fits most people’s perception of what a data marketplace should be. Focussed — for now — upon [...]
Subscribe To Own As New Lease To Own
The Beatles are timeless and so is music and enterprise software. There’s been an ongoing innovation in the music services. iTunes with iPods disrupted the traditional CD business model and in the ever connected cloud world Pandora, Spotify and countless others are challenging the very concept of “owning” music. Spotify gives you access to a [...]
Startup Business Growing Pains | Staying Focused
There are a few good things in life that you can never have too much of, and at a startup business that good thing is growth. However, we all know there is always a price to pay for overindulgence. To my way of thinking, the key to being a glutton is to balance your consumption [...]
Carrot Beats Stick
WooHoo: You’ve just unlocked the URL of Blogville Badge! With Hostess becoming as bankrupt as the nutritional information in a Ding Dong and Kodak redefining the Kodak moment of another kind of bankruptcy, I immediately thought of my childhood. Thankfully those cheerful marketing images that blanketed the store shelves were replaced by a different set [...]
