Start-Ups Think Big, Like Twitter

September 14, 2010

For many entrepreneurs, start-ups are a labor of love.

Build what you want to see created in the world is the advice offered by Twitter co-founder and Chairman Jack Dorsey to young entrepreneurs.

“I wanted my family to use it, my friends to use it,” Dorsey said. He admits falling in love with SMS, or short messaging service, technology when it first came to the U.S.

And what about the micro-blogging site today? Twitter has some “interesting” scaling issues, with massive spikes in traffic volume. “Engineering for that is very difficult,” he said at the Demo conference in Silicon Valley.

Here are several less-established start-ups at the conference hoping for similar breakthroughs:

*Delphix. The company announced the commercial release of its database virtualization software. The product is designed to save companies money on storage hardware. Big corporations have multiple storage devices holding databases and an opportunity for consolidation. Delphix has several customers, including Staples and TiVo

*Metabeam. Metabeam’s Slideshow sends information about a television show or movie to a touch-screen device, such as an iPad. Ten thousands of people are already using the product, which was announced at the show.

*E-Fuel: The company ships an at-home systems for making ethanol from biomass, such as yard waste. (But don’t think yardwaste, because you would have to come up with a way for breaking down the plant material and converting it into sugar.)

Instead, E-Fuel owners are best off relying on distributors to will sell them distilled plant sugar in liquid form. Put the sugar solution in the fermentation tank and pump ethanol into your car. Cost: $10,000.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Solar Powered Cellular Base Stations A New Growth Market

August 25, 2009

Wireless cell phone and Internet access is taken for granted in the developed world.

Millions of cellular base stations grace highways, city centers and suburb neighborhoods.

This is less the case in the undeveloped world, where supplying power can be a gating factor. Electric power isn’t always available, and trucking in diesel to run generators is expensive and polluting.

These difficulties are creating the need for off-the-grid cellular base stations powered by solar panels and wind turbines. By 2014, there will be more than 230,000 cellular stations in third world countries power by alternative energy, says In-Stat.

This implies annual growth of 30 percent – an attractive proposition given the slow recovery the world is experiencing.

In-Stat expects most of the base stations to pop up in South Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and South America.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Burning Man Photo Copyright Controversy

August 19, 2009

What this has to do with clean-tech (or regular tech) I don’t know. But I can’t resist a controversy about copyright (and personal rights) in the Internet age

Electronic Frontier Foundation criticizes BM photo policy

Electronic Frontier Foundation criticizes BM photo policy

A debate has flared up about Burning Man’s long-standing (and restrictive) policy toward photos and videos, just 10 days before 40,000 or so burners gather in the Nevada high desert for a week of self-expression and celebration.

It began a week ago when Corynne McSherry of the Electronic Frontier Foundation criticized a clause in the policy that gives Burning Man officials ownership of photos and video if they object to how they are displayed. That way they can be quickly taken down.

“This ‘we automatically own all your stuff’ magic appears to be creative lawyering intended to allow (Burning Man) to use the streamlined ‘notice and takedown’ process enshrined in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to quickly remove photos from the Internet,” says McSherry in a blog post, thereby misusing the act.

Burning Man’s Andie Grace responded Wednesday by saying the issue is more complicated than the EFF acknowledges. The goal is to protect the privacy of the ephemeral inhabitants of Black Rock City and to prevent companies from using Burning Man images to sell products, she says.

“Find me a participant who would vote ‘yes’ on seeing a video or photo of the Man burning, or their own art car or sculpture, in a car commercial,” she writes in a Web posting. “You probably can’t.”

What’s interesting about this debate is that both sides have merit. I leave you to craft a compromise.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

LCD TV Prices Rise As Internet Access Comes To Market

June 4, 2009

The average price for 40-inch and larger LCD flat-panel televisions rose 3 percent in April as manufacturers sought to improve profitability by delivering more fully featured products.

Samsung introduced several back-lit LED models

Samsung introduced several back-lit LED models

The increase runs counter to long-standing trends that for years have brought lower prices to the market. It also appears to contrast with the current consumer desire to spend less, not more, on discretionary items.

According to iSuppli, the price rise came as top-name makers added features to their products. Samsung, for instance, added several back-lit LED models to its lineup. Other makers introduced Internet connections and the ability to play Internet video.

Prices are likely to hold their ground in coming months, except on low-end models, where competition is fierce, predicts iSuppli.

On the low end of the market, premium brands are competing actively with value-priced brands such as Vizio. Cut-rate pricing helped Vizio rise to the top spot in the U.S. and Canadian LCD-TV market in April, iSuppli said.

The lowest price for a 40-inch flat-panel model in the month was $615.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Web 3.0 Will Create Small Companies, Not Large

June 3, 2009

The next Google may not be the size of Google.

Instead, scores of successful small companies will define the next stage of the Web as the Internet goes mobile and connects billions of portable devices to a ubiquitous public network.

If you aim to build big businesses, you will fail, says Ram Shriram

If you aim to build big businesses, you will fail, says Ram Shriram

“They will have 10 to 15 employees” and there will be a lot of them, says Ram Shriram, a Google board member and founder of the investment firm Sherpalo.

“If you try to aim to build big businesses out of this, you will fail,” he said Wednesday during an appearance at the Silicom Summit 2009 at Stanford University.

Shriram said the Internet is generating opportunities for small-scale applications, such as those that entrepreneurs have built for Apple’s iPhone. Smart phones and portable devices are starting to replace the PC as the consumer’s primary data communications device, he said.

The result is an opportunity for two or three people to toil, build and application and take home half a million dollars if they are successful.

“I think this emerging trend will create a lot of little companies,” he says.

And instead of relying on advertising as the main source of revenue, they will broaden the economic base of the Internet by charging for the applications or subscriptions.

“There will be some micro payment models that could work,” he says.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Cisco Guns For IPTV Sales As Market Slows

June 2, 2009

After months of hyper growth, the IPTV market appears to be cooling.

This is because many of the world’s telcos have already launched service and few new prospective broadcasters are poised to enter the market.

The downturn also is playing a role, choking off investment funds.

Cisco gained set-top box market share from Motorola last year

Cisco gained set-top box market share from Motorola last year

This apparently hasn’t dampened Cisco System’s desire to improve its position in the set-top box market against competitor Motorola.

When Cisco bought Scientific-Atlanta in 2006, Scientific-Atlanta was stronger in the traditional set-top box market and not Internet, or IP, broadcasting. But since the growth was in IPTV, Cisco hoped to change this.

According to In-Stat, the company improved its market share versus ailing Motorola in 2008 as its shipments increase from 2007. Motorola remains the top dog in the market.

However, after 55 percent growth last year, the set-top box market will likely be flat this year.

That’s because providers including France Telecom, AT&T, Free, British Telecom, Deutsche Telekom and China Telecom have generated much of the growth in subscribers. It seems the easy-to-convince customers have already been won.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Smaller Is Better When Developing For The Web

May 11, 2009

We may have reached a bottom to the recession, if CEOs at bellwethers Intel and Cisco Systems are to be believed. But times are far from good.

Sharpen the focus on less ambitious efforts, says Gartner

Sharpen the focus on less ambitious efforts, says Gartner

Unemployment continues to slide, corporate spending is cautious and consumers remain tight fisted.

In this environment, cutting costs is the surest path to survival. Which is why an observation from Gartner struck me as on target – and not just in today’s rough times but good ones as well.

Gartner on Monday released several guidelines for watching the bottom line as companies continue to push e-commerce initiatives. Some perfunctory suggestions were included: use off-the-shelf tools, negotiate hard with software vendors.

The most significant insight was one that smart companies already follow: Rather than randomly building online communities around a corporate Web site, target existing communities, and stay focused on converting these smaller efforts. Here is the way Gartner states it:

“Leverage established community Web sites rather than building communities in your organization’s site.” And with Web 2.0 sales tools, “scale back their development efforts to only those tools that will lead to higher conversion rates. Gartner estimates that this strategy will save around 10 percent for large enterprises and about 5 percent for small enterprises in 2009, and 5 percent in future years.”

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Monster Founder Makes Progress With Internet Obit Site

April 6, 2009

It’s been a just over a year since Monster.com Founder Jeff Taylor announced his latest venture: an effort to do to obituary listings what Monster did to job listings – take them from the newspaper to the Web.

Jeff Taylors vision is of an international site

Jeff Taylor's vision is of an international site

The entrepreneur says he is making progress selling the idea to funeral homes. And every month, a few thousand people log onto Tributes.com to turn simple obit pages into a more elaborate “tributes” to relatives and friends who have passed away.

Taylor’s vision is of an international site, where records are accessible to people everywhere. One problem with obits is that in today’s mobile society, keeping track of the lives of distant friends is difficult. An obit run in a local newspaper won’t be seen by friends who now live across the country.

Taylor says he believes it will take five years for society to shift to expect obituaries online, and another five years to see mass adoption.

But the Web is the logical spot for memorials. Sites can remain in place essentially forever, and they can be turned into multimedia “stories” of a relative’s life, with video, photos, audio clips and the like.

“I am targeting it to be a global resource,” Taylor says of his site. And with newspapers on the brink of failure, it may be the beneficiary of a collapsing market.

But Taylor is out to prove a second, perhaps more challenging concept: that of a paid Internet site. To put a basic tribute page on Tributes.com, family members need to pay a funeral home $39. A more elaborate, multimedia site costs $250.

Free is a short-term business model, says Taylor. He may be right.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Tables Turning In Telecom With Video Trumping Voice

March 20, 2009

It used to be telecommunications carriers made a living connecting phone calls.

But this year could be the first where the new video services offered by AT&T and Verizon grow faster than the telephone services cable companies are selling to their customers.

This year could be the first where new video customers at top telcos exceed new cable voice customers

This year could be the first where new video customers at top telcos exceed new cable voice customers

This analysis comes from the Wall Street firm of Stifel Nicholaus.

Up to now, the cables have made inroads into the teleco’s home turf, stealing voice customers faster than AT&T and Verizon could attract customers to their new fiber-optic networks, over which they deliver high-speed Internet connections and TV programming.

In 2008, for instance, two Baby Bells added 1.8 million video customers while the top four cable companies, such as Comcast, signed up nearly 4.8 million voice subscribers.

But the video programming has been popular with consumers, and both telecommunications carriers have received high marks for customer service.
In addition, voice signups at the cable companies have slowed, with new subscribers falling from 1.2 million in the third quarter of 2008 to 870,000 in the fourth quarter, says Stifel Nicolaus.

“We view telcos as the likely market-share winners over the course of the next couple of years, as cable’s core video product will continue to be stripped away by competitive telco offerings,” the firm said.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

The Demographics Of Online Porn Access

March 13, 2009

It is an open secret: some Americans do visit pornographic Web sites as part of their use of the Internet. However, it is not well known whether there are differing degrees of online porn consumption based on U.S. geographic regions. A recent study titled “Red Light States: Who Buys Online Adult Entertainment?,” by Harvard Business School Professor Benjamin Edelman, digs in an attempt to find answers.

Just over a third of Internet users visit at least one adult Web site each month, says Eric Sinrod

Just over a third of Internet users visit at least one adult Web site each month, says Eric Sinrod

Professor Edelman’s methodology behind the study was to analyze credit card data from 2006 to 2008 regarding payment for online adult entertainment based on the postal codes of the purchasers. After adjusting for relative populations and accounting for broadband Internet access between states, the study does not reveal a remarkable difference between the states with the most and least online pornography purchases.

There nevertheless were some interesting findings. For example, the largest relative online porn purchasing state was Utah, which averaged 5.47 adult content subscriptions per 1,000 home Internet broadband users. Montana, on the other hand, came in last as an adult entertainment purchasing state, with 1.92 adult content subscriptions per 1,000 home Internet broadband users.

What are the reasons for these differences in terms of apparent consumption? Well, there could be other unaccounted for factors at play. For example, it has been reported that hard copy pornography tends to be more difficult to obtain in Utah than other states, and that many adult entertainment companies will not ship materials to Utah based on tough state and local laws. As a result, it is possible that a greater percentage of people in Utah than other states who seek adult content will turn to the Internet, because other sources are less available.

Perhaps of greater macro interest is that the study documents that 36% of Internet users visit at least one adult Web site each month, as of June 2008. An average visit to an adult site goes for 11.6 minutes, and of people who access at least on such site a month, they actually visit adult Web sites an average of 7.7 times per month.

Bottom line, while there may be some minor differences between states in terms of online porn consumption that may be caused by differing variables, Americans generally have a fairly large appetite for Internet adult entertainment and that industry, even though subject to certain legal regulations, likely will not disappear any time soon.

This column was written by Eric Sinrod, an attorney at Duane Morris and a guest blogger on TechPulse 360. It was originally published on Findlaw.com.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

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