The most important app on your phone
The last couple of days have seen a flurry of activity in mobile. Apple announced its response to Google’s acquisition of AdMob by acquiring mobile ad network, Quattro. Google announced the much awaited Google phone, the Nexus One. The bulk of the discussion has been around the mobile application battle between Apple and Google. Henry Blodgett thinks [...]
Areas I’m most likely to invest in during 2010
I have always been fairly thematic in my investment approach. For me, the process starts with identifying big markets that are either 1) emerging (and will therefore be created over the next several years) or 2) undergoing some structural shift that will enable new entrants to grab market share from incumbents. I have seen Companies succeed in [...]
So, You Want to be a Platform?
Everyone wants to be a platform these days. And they are popping up faster than I can keep track of them. Facebook became a platform, enabling application developers to develop on top of Facebook. Next came the iPhone. Salesforce.com offered Force.com as a platform. Twitter became a platform. A few weeks back PayPal became a platform. AmEx bought [...]
Looking At Platforms
Earlier this year at the Enterprise 2.0 conference “platform” was the name of choice. Seemingly every company I spoke to was a platform player. It seems the latest “fart on demand” iPhone application is a “platform for virtual flatulence generation”, that the latest Twitter clone with negligible uptake is “a platform for global collaboration” and [...]
Adobe's Hot Air x2
I’ve said it once, and if it was true while Adobe claimed 100 million installs, it’s just as true now that they claim 200 million. So why repeat myself, here’s the original. And yes, I might as well have tweeted this. Related posts: Adobe AIR now installed over 200 million times Adobe Releases Spreadsheet SaaS [...]
Platform Interoperability: Force.com Talks To Google App Engine
In my opinion, the future of Cloud Computing will be a more federated ecosystem than few players holding a monopoly kind of dominance. In such a federated ecosystem, interoperability becomes very important. I have emphasized the importance of interoperability many times in this space. Unless we have Clouds talking to one another, we will end [...]
Things You Can Learn at the Glue Conference
I’ve been working on an agenda update, and in doing so, I found myself re-discovering all of the things that I can learn about a Glue. Here’s a partial list: How Facebook is opening up their platform Why REST is the foundation for web oriented architecture Where identity is heading, and why it has to [...]
Sticky Platforms
This blog post about Leo Laporte’s strained relationship with Twitter has me thinking this morning. The post outlines the “dangers” of twitter (using the front men of Laporte and Dave Winer) as a “closed” or “centralized” system. Now, as a twitter user (and fan), I completely get the closed and centralized argument, but I think [...]
Adobe’s Hot Air
Adobe boasts record download and installation numbers for Flash and Air, and Venturebeat claims they are winning the platform race. But are they really “winning”? Some of the software Adobe makes is a MUST have on any computer, no matter how often you use it, just to allow basic browsing. The first time you can’t [...]
Don't Blame the Platforms
Alex posted asking “Why Platforms Are Letting Us Down – And What They Should Do About It“. The thrust of his post was the everyone wants to be a platform in the good times, but in the bad times people draw back from platform plays citing concerns over a lack of monetisation paths. While I [...]
