Apple Challenges $625.5 Million Mirror Worlds Verdict

Somehow such news if related to other tech companies than Microsoft get little or no Media attention.

Apple Challenges $625.5 Million Mirror Worlds Verdict

Closely held Mirror Worlds, founded by Yale University computer-science Professor David Gelernter, sued in 2008, claiming Apple’s iPod music device, iPhone and Mac computers infringed its patents for a way documents are displayed on a computer screen. Apple challenged the validity of the patents and whether they were infringed, according to court records. Some claims were thrown out before the case went to the jury.

The trial focused on the Spotlight, Time Machine and Cover Flow features in Apple’s Mac operating systems. Cover Flow lets users scroll through album cover art when browsing for music in their iTunes library. The feature also works for documents, pictures and other material stored in a computer.

Spotlight searches the computer’s hard drive, while Time Machine automatically saves copies of files.

Goldman Sachs downgrades Microsoft

I say timing is little off. With the impending release of Windows Phone 7 and XBOX Kinect release, you would expect to wait for another three months to see if the tables turn and Microsoft being Microsoft will do well enough to sustain Investor confidence at their current levels in these three months.

Goldman downgrades Microsoft, makes case for major overhaul

Goldman Sachs is downgrading Microsoft from "buy" to "neutral," lowering its earnings estimates for the current fiscal year by 4 percent, and dropping its price target for the stock from $32 to $28. The reductions come in an extensive, strongly worded report on the Redmond company, released by the firm tonight.

"We believe the intrinsic value of shares cannot be unlocked if the status quo remains, and we have increased caution near term on a more elongated PC refresh cycle, combined with the newer threat of notebook cannibalization from tablets, where Windows does not yet have a presence," write Goldman Sachs analyst Sarah Friar and associates in the introduction to the report. "Since added to the Americas Buy list on 8/12/08, MSFT shares have returned -13%, compared to -11% for the S&P 500."

Social Networks & Social Activism

Malcom Gladwell has a thought provoking piece in New Yorker on how online social networks aren’t suited for social activism more so what Malcolm describes as “high risk activism”. There are some great points and examples especially around weak ties nature of social networks.  

Small Change - Why the revolution will not be tweeted

The kind of activism associated with social media isn’t like this at all. The platforms of social media are built around weak ties. Twitter is a way of following (or being followed by) people you may never have met. Facebook is a tool for efficiently managing your acquaintances, for keeping up with the people you would not otherwise be able to stay in touch with. That’s why you can have a thousand “friends” on Facebook, as you never could in real life.

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This is in many ways a wonderful thing. There is strength in weak ties, as the sociologist Mark Granovetter has observed. Our acquaintances—not our friends—are our greatest source of new ideas and information. The Internet lets us exploit the power of these kinds of distant connections with marvellous efficiency. It’s terrific at the diffusion of innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration, seamlessly matching up buyers and sellers, and the logistical functions of the dating world. But weak ties seldom lead to high-risk activism.

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The evangelists of social media don’t understand this distinction; they seem to believe that a Facebook friend is the same as a real friend and that signing up for a donor registry in Silicon Valley today is activism in the same sense as sitting at a segregated lunch counter in Greensboro in 1960. “Social networks are particularly effective at increasing motivation,” Aaker and Smith write. But that’s not true. Social networks are effective at increasing participation—by lessening the level of motivation that participation requires.
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Facebook and the like are tools for building networks, which are the opposite, in structure and character, of hierarchies. Unlike hierarchies, with their rules and procedures, networks aren’t controlled by a single central authority. Decisions are made through consensus, and the ties that bind people to the group are loose.

Jonah Lehrer responds citing a classical paper on Wired.com Weak Ties, Twitter and Revolution. Anil Dash also responded with a great piece.

Washington an incumbent protection machine

Google CEO Eric Schmidt in The Atlantic.

"The average American doesn't realize how much of the laws are written by lobbyists" to protect incumbent interests, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told Atlantic editor James Bennet at the Washington Ideas Forum. "It's shocking how the system actually works."

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"Washington is an incumbent protection machine," Schmidt said. "Technology is fundamentally disruptive." Mobile phones and personal technology, for example, could be used to record the bills that members of Congress actually read and then determine what stimulus funds were successfully spent.

Léo Apotheker Named CEO and President of HP

HP has a new CEO.

Léo Apotheker Named CEO and President of HP

The Board of Directors of HP today announced the election of Léo Apotheker as Chief Executive Officer and President. Apotheker, who previously served as CEO of SAP, will also join HP’s Board of Directors. The Board also elected Ray Lane, Managing Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, as a new member of the Board and designated him as non-executive Chairman. Both elections are effective November 1.

Politics in Corp Ladder

Eric Brechner of I. M. Wright's "Hard Code" fame, provides great insights in his latest article, Making the big time. Every role has pros and cons and as you go higher in the organization, the more you get embroiled in Politics.

Why do VPs and TFs, as well as GMs and directors, get caught up in politics? Because when decisions are widely separated from results, the right decisions become a matter of opinion. When decisions are a matter of opinion, politics play a significant role. This dynamic is reduced at an engineering company, like Microsoft®, since many executives are former engineers and insist upon the support of fact, data, and logic. However, the further you get from actual engineering, the more the door opens to personalities, gamesmanship, and alliances.

“But what about history—you know, case studies and best practices?”  The applicability of the past to the unique situation in the present is subjective. There are always exceptions and counterexamples. If you are going to be a successful executive, you need to learn to play politics. You must know who trusts whom, who influences whom, who has what agenda, who owes whom favors, who is likely to support or oppose you and why, and what are the hot button issues for the key stakeholders.

It’s politics, plain and simple. It appears in every company and government once you get to a certain level of abstraction, where nothing is definitive.

Learn it now, to succeed later.

IBM to buy analytics firm Netezza for $1.7 billion

One by one they all go. After Unica, Sterling Commerce, now Netezza which is also a Data Analytics company is being acquired by IBM. Microsoft/Google, please take note, there are still few good one’s left on the table.

IBM to buy analytics firm Netezza for $1.7 billion

IBM Corp (IBM.N) said on Monday that it would buy data analytics company Netezza Corp (NZ.N) for $1.7 billion to expand its business of helping clients analyze market information.

The move comes as IBM is shifting its focus from increasingly commoditized computer hardware to higher-margin software and services, particularly analytics, which help clients analyze market data to plot trends or prevent fraud.

Why Isn't the Price of Broadband Obeying Moore's Law?

MIT Technology Review points to an analysis done by Kellogg School of Management & Northwestern University on why Price of Broadband connections are not obeying Moore’s law.

Greenstein says that a 2003 decision to leave regulation up to the broadband companies themselves has caused much of the stagnation in broadband service prices. In most urban markets, only two wireline providers supply the vast majority of homes, and the remainder are served by a range of wireless Internet providers. Revenue from homes makes up 70 to 80 percent of revenue in wireline Internet access market, while business demand makes up the rest.

“So if you were in such a market as a supplier, why would you initiate a price war?” Greenstein asks. With no new entries on the market, suppliers can compete by slowly increasing quality but keeping prices the same. According to Greenstein, quality is where providers channel their competitive urges.

Meanwhile, once companies have installed the lines, their costs are far below prices. “At that point, it becomes pure profit,” Greenstein says. A company might spend around $100 per year to “maintain and service” the connection, but people are paying nearly that amount every other month. Greenstein says that it is not surprising that prices were high during the buildout phase in the early and mid-2000s, since the firms were trying to recover their costs. “However, we are approaching the end of the first buildout, so competitive pressures should have led to price drops by now, if there are any. Like many observers, I expected to see prices drop by now, and I am surprised they have not.”

Nothing surprising here. There are fixed costs (Laying Copper/Fiber etc)  involved which Telco’s put in each market which are required for economies of scale. These economies then create barriers to entry, protecting the existing Telco’s business. Once customers are acquired and their habits aligned, it makes it difficult for Potential entrants to seize sufficient market share.

You can 'Compete' With 'Free'

Techdirt covers a recent talk given by professor Michael D. Smith at Google which summarizes with great examples that you can in fact compete with free.

From Evidence Shows You Can, In Fact, 'Compete' With 'Free':

Some of the key points:

·      Contrary to the claim that free viewability of movies decreases demand, research shows that when a movie airs on TV for free, it increases demand for the movie both in DVD sales and via file sharing. And, on top of that, the greater demand for the content in file sharing does not appear to hurt the sales of DVDs.

·      One bit of research involved the natural experiment that happened when NBC Universal, due to a contract dispute with Apple, removed its TV shows from iTunes for almost a year before putting them back. So, what happened when the content got pulled? Well, first, piracy rates increased -- and not just in absolute numbers. The research compared piracy rates against the other major TV networks, and found that the rates tracked almost exactly prior to the content getting pulled from iTunes... but the second it got pulled, NBC piracy rates were noticeably higher than the other networks. In other words, not offering consumers a way to buy your content legitimately increase unauthorized access. No shock there, but nice to see the data to support that. Specifically, the data found that the "demand" for unauthorized versions increased by 11%.

·      Separately, the research showed a smaller, but still significant increase in demand for unauthorized content from those other networks. The theory here is that once NBC pulled its authorized content from iTunes, people who started getting it via BitTorrent suddenly realized they might as well do the same for non-NBC content. So, NBC's decision not to offer authorized content may have actually increased demand for file sharing on other networks as well

·      Here's where it gets interesting: what impact did this have on DVD sales on Amazon? Again comparing NBC data to other networks, there is no noticeable impact after the content is removed from iTunes as compared to other networks. In other words, while the action did increase "piracy," there's no indication that increased piracy decreased DVD demand.

·      Next experiment involved a move in the opposite direction. Looking at the "demand" for unauthorized BitTorrents of shows from ABC right before and after ABC added its shows to Hulu, again, as compared to the other networks. And here, there was a massive decrease in "demand" for the unauthorized works on BitTorrent.

·      Again, however, when the content went "free" on Hulu it did not harm DVD sales. Actually, DVD sales went slightly up (not enough to be statistically significant).

·      The final study looked at what happened to demand for movies that went on HBO, which created an interesting situation, because before HBO will air a movie, it requires the studios to remove that movie from video on demand or other digital distribution channels like iTunes. So, the content disappears from those other channels for a few weeks before it shows up on HBO. The research looked at where former iTunes and video on demand customers went for content in the window between the content being pulled from those channels and when it aired on HBO.

·      What the research showed was actually no statistically significant change in demand when the content got pulled from the digital distribution channels... but a big increase in demand after the movie aired on HBO.

The key conclusions:

·      You absolutely can compete with free.

·      If you offer a convenient and reasonable offering, eve people who were getting content in an unauthorized manner, will often buy (i.e., it's possible to turn "pirates" into buyers). That is, it's not the "free" part that's the driving aspect of much of their behavior, but the convenience factor.

MakeMyTrip Jumps In IPO As Investors Bet On India Travel

Totally missed this. I expect MakeMyTrip to do well as more and more Middle class families take to Air Travels and Vacations outside their Hometowns.

MakeMyTrip Jumps In IPO As Investors Bet On India Travel

Shares of MakeMyTrip.com (MMYT) leapt 89% Thursday in the Indian online travel firm's Nasdaq debut, marking the best-performing U.S. public stock offering in nearly three years.

India's No. 1 travel site by bookings priced 5 million shares at $14 each, raising a total of $70 million. The price came in at the high end of the $12 to $14 range expected by Wall Street. Shares closed at 26.45.

"It's pretty obvious that India is an emerging market that's typified by fast opportunities," said Standard & Poor's equity analyst Scott Kessler. "One of the significant opportunities is the continued growth of the consumer class.

"As online travel becomes even more global than it already is, we think companies well-positioned in the Indian market are likely to benefit as a result."

EFF's Review of Verizon and Google's Net Neutrality Proposal

In line with what most others have said on this topic. The Fail includes:

“Lawful” Content and Wireless Exclusions — Fail:

The proposal essentially ignores some of the key problems that EFF and others have had with previous network neutrality proposals. These loopholes could undermine the goals of neutrality, or lead to unanticipated and regrettable outcomes.

1.       It still limits nondiscrimination to “lawful” content without defining the term or giving any indication of who decides what is “lawful,” opening the door to entertainment industry and law enforcement efforts that could hinder free speech and innovation Last year, the big media companies took advantage of similar language to push for a “copyright loophole” to net neutrality that would have allowed them to pressure ISPs to block, interfere with, or otherwise discriminate against perfectly legal activities in the course of implementing online copyright enforcement measures and a similar loophole existed for law enforcement. So long as your ISP claimed that it was trying to prevent copyright infringement or helping law enforcement, it could be exempted from the net neutrality principles. This was the focus of EFF's comments to the FCC in January, 2010 and our Real Net Neutrality campaign.

2.       As many others have noted, the exclusion of wireless from all but the transparency requirements is a dreadful idea. Neutrality should be the rule for all services, and a distinction between wired and wireless not only defies reason, it also abandons the portion of the Internet that is currently most lacking in openness and neutrality. Users are increasingly demanding the ability to do many, if not all, of the same things in a wireless environment as they do in a wired one. Regardless of what regulation may look like or whether there is any regulation at all, there shouldn’t be a distinction between the neutrality available on wired services and that available on wireless services.

 Others are still chiming in with their opinions. Here.

Getting in (and Out of) Line in India

In India and elsewhere, the reigning idea of modernity involves not just an evolution into queuing but also an evolution out. As scrums succumb to queues, queues are succumbing to the free market.

NYTimes: Getting in (and Out of) Line

When a line becomes necessary — say, while boarding a plane — some dutiful citizens will rise and form its initial trunk. Then, when the trunk appears too long to some, it sprouts branches. People create their own lines by standing next to, say, the fourth person in the trunk and hoping that others line up behind them. This process continues until you have a human evergreen tree, a single-file trunk of tender fools with impatient foliage on both sides.

There is a feline quality to standing in Indian lines. Certain parts of the man behind you — you don’t know which — brush against you in a kind of public square spooning, the better to repel cutters. (Women do less touching.) Still, this is no deterrent to cutters. They hover near the line’s middle, holding papers, looking lost in a practiced way, then slip in somewhere close to the front. When confronted, their refrain is predictable: “Oh, I didn’t see the line.”

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India’s experience seems to feed into a tradition of seeing line etiquette as a marker of modernity, of graduating from chaos to order, whims to rules, brutality to gentility, scarcity to abundance