mindblast

The Fab Before

fred — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 17:18:00 -0700

Nickelback Live Feed

fred — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 14:04:00 -0700

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Testing Qumana

fred — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 21:20:00 -0700

Say hello to our new sponsor!

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Test Post of QuarterNote

fred — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 13:37:00 -0700

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fred — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 09:50:00 -0800

A report issued on the flash RAM market indicates that Apple is inhaling supplies of memory components in preparation for the next generation iPhone, causing part shortages and raising the spot price for memory.

The iPhone maker has bought out Samsung's entire available supply, putting the world's largest producer of flash memory on allocation until April 2009, according to the report. Samsung makes just over 40% of the world's NAND Flash RAM.

Apple has historically put more RAM capacity in its iPhone than other smartphone vendors. The original model offered 4 or 8GB at a time when virtually no other smartphones gave users more than 128MB, then the typical high-end limit for many mobile operating systems.

Even so, Apple found that its customers were only buying the 8GB model, resulting in a quick drop of the 4GB version and the introduction of a new 16GB iPhone within a few months. Apple also packs 32GB into the high end iPod touch.

Apple's emphasis on iTunes-integrated music and videos for the iPhone, including full length movie playback, also resulted in a device equipped to store lots of mobile applications with a level of sophistication well above that of most smartphones. Other phone manufacturers are now following Apple's lead in packing phones with multiple gigabytes of flash storage.

Finding enough flash RAM supply may become more difficult as Apple continues to eats up an increasing volume of the world's supply of memory parts, even as the global economy cools and production is cut back.

Source: here

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Test Post

fred — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 19:20:00 -0800

Let's try this.

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Consumers are deserting mass media portals

fred — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 09:52:00 -0800

Just 12 percent of visitors to “large” websites often look at ads, and ABC1s (ie. the demographic many ads target) are less likely than C2DEs to pay attention. But social networks are proving better ad platforms than general sites - a lower number, 26 percent, of users shun ads there, though 36 percent say they rarely pay attention. In contrast to all this, specialist sites are far more effective than general-interest sites for ad delivery, with 73 percent of users saying they pay attention to ads there.

The study says 22 percent of users only go to niche, sector-specific destinations, while only two percent visit the mainstream sites - “consumers are deserting mass media portals”.

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Carrie Underwood's Hot Guitarist

fred — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 23:42:00 -0800

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Online Advertising Growth

fred — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 23:38:00 -0800

Tags: advertising

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About music discovery

fred — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 23:16:00 -0800

We just need to hear these cuts. We don't have a piracy problem so much as an EXPOSURE problem. We don't know what to listen to. It's like going into a record store in an era before radio. All the discs are there, are you gonna play them all to find out what's good? No, you need guidance.

Too often the shoppers in indie stores need no advice. They just need someone to discuss their addiction with. The shoppers at the big box need help, but the workers there are clueless. Maybe the indie stores and the big boxes can switch employees?

Meanwhile, everybody's online, where everything's available and everybody's overwhelmed.

I love discovering new music. One of life's great pleasures. I rely on radio, both Sirius/XM and Slacker. I'd like a site that winnows the good from the bad, that isn't in bed with the labels, that isn't trying to be hipper than thou. I don't know how you're satiated with your iPod. It only plays what you already know!

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New Post with Vista

fred — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 09:35:00 -0800

Hello again!

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Hotel Fire in Beijing

fred — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 22:52:00 -0800

A picture from a friend of mine at the scene.

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The Green Economy

fred — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 22:40:00 -0800

http://www.pehub.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads//markdonohueicon.jpg

Last fall, Mark Donohue sold his controlling interest in Expansion Capital Partners and resigned as managing partner and chairman to teach at his alma mater, Babson College. He now teaches cleantech entrepreneurship, and is developing a cleantech curriculum that includes every facet of the business, including public policy.

I recently talked with Donohue about what the federal government might do to stimulate the green economy.

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Test Post with New version

fred — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 22:28:00 -0800

Hello world!

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Test post

fred — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 18:27:00 -0700

Search:

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Important Post by Umare

fred — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 10:05:00 -0800

2008: Edge Principles - Think Bigger

OK.

Why else did almost no value get created in 2007?

A massive reason is that media players aren't thinking big. There's no scope of vision.

Consider one of my favorite lame plays - Honeyshed. A portal for branded entertainment.

Lulz. Are you kidding? Honestly - who cares?

The industry is crashing and burning, it's structural fabric has to be rebuilt, that means: new value propositions, new value chains, new market space, new industry boundaries, new revenue streams, etc.

And, instead, we keep getting stuff like Honeyshed: the same old lame thing.

It's kind of amazing.

Look. You can't be a revolutionary unless you're, well, revolutionizing something. Offering not just something new - but something audacious, big, sweeping, grand, epic.

The size of the things we're focusing on just don't cut it. Even if they're successful - so what? The marginal value they're gonna create is tiny.

Part of the problem is venture guys. They're so trapped in either glad-handing or spreadsheets, they seem to have forgotten what truly radical innovation looks like.

But a huge part of the problem is entrepreneurs. The current crop of entrepreneurs just isn't thinking big enough.

There are no shortage of massive problems next-gen media plays can help solve. Global hunger? Check. Healthcare? Check. Moral hazard across the financial system? Check. The loss of social cohesion? Check. The massive shift of global labour from town to megaslum? Check. Exploding demand for energy? Check.

Simple example. Subprime crisis, global mortgage meltdown, etc. But all Zillow's doing is pricing houses. That's now a knock on the Zillow guys - I think Zillow rocks. But I think the opportunities open to it are far vaster than the opportunities it's pursuing. How about fundamentally redesigning the way houses are bought and sold?

The point.

"Branded entertainment" - and all the other puny ideas we've had - are failing to create value because they solve no real economic problems.

In fact, they're non-ideas. Compared to the above - which are very real, very pressing economic problems - they're lame, nothing, nonexistent, tiny.

In 2008, everyone across the venturescape and mediascape, I think, would do well to think much (much) bigger.

In fact, there's a deeper economic principle at work here. In a discontinuous world, incrementalism is deeply toxic. It plunges us more and more deeply into competence traps, and leaves us more and more vulnerable to competitors who are busy revolutionizing industries, markets, products, services.

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Copyright protection was originally designed to promote the arts

fred — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 09:49:00 -0800

The basis of copyright law is Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution:

“To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries”

Copyright protection is for a “limited time” to “promote progress,” not for an excessive time to enrich publishers. A long copyright period was justified 200 years ago when book sales were extremely limited. What is the point of a copyright of 120 years for a popular movie or for Word 97, when the return on investment is recouped in a few years, not a century? How many fewer movies would be produced if the copyright lasted only 20 years, instead of 120?
Science and the useful arts would be better promoted with a much shorter copyright period. Having the copyright lapse on Word 97 would encourage Microsoft to make a new product that people would want to buy (instead of a new product that people have to buy because the old version is no longer sold and not compatible with new products, even though the vast majority of users do not need or want the “enhancements” in the new product.)

Like subsidies to corporate agriculture and tax breaks for oil companies, music and software publishers have convinced Congress to increase copyright term for their own greed, even though the increased terms run counter to the purpose of the copyright law, “promote the arts.”

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What are the real reasons for declining sales in the media world?

fred — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 09:09:00 -0800

There are many reasons why sales are slipping in the entertainment industry, none of which have been addressed. People got tired of going out to buy an album with a song on it that they heard on the radio, only to find out that this song is the only good one on the album, and the record company obviously didn’t put an money into any other songs. People got tired of building up entire collections in one format (VHS, tape, etc), only to have it go obsolete in a few years when a new format is released, forcing them to re-buy their entire catalog (with no discount for trade-ins). People got tired of having to re-buy up to 25% of their collection each year because the format was cheap and inexpensive, breaking or scratching easily and needing replacement. Digital files eliminate all of these lucrative secondary sources of income that companies have relied on. Why don’t we see these facts accounted for in any statistics? Or - how about weird stuff like this: 10 digital songs equals one album? Nope - 1 digital song equals 1 entire CD not bought because that song was the only good song on the CD.

Or maybe, people (like me) finally discovered that it’s cheaper to wait a few months and buy stuff used on eBay or Amazon. You never hear companies bringing that up…..

Is there empirical evidence for the proposition that the availability of pirated music causes increased CD sales?

Look at the US Album Charts. No. 1 is the new album from Radio Head, that could be downloaded legally for nothing before the sale. (actually, as people could pay for it also, it seems that the group made a mean profit of 3$ per download - more than they make in selling the CD)

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Test post for Vista

fred — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 13:19:00 -0800

Exploring using Qumana with Microsoft Vista.

Hi World

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Test post

fred — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 13:16:00 -0800

Exploring using Qumana with Microsoft Vista.

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Great gifts for the Mac

fred — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 13:15:00 -0800

Among the “10 great gift ideas,” he suggests for “the Mac user on your list,” Ryan Faas (computerworld.com) singles out such products as Mac OS X Leopard (“a holiday winner because it includes Time Machine, the easiest—and coolest—backup software on the planet and screen-sharing via iChat”), iPod nano (it’s “the lowest priced video-capable iPod ever available and is a great gift for anyone on the go who wants a small fully powered iPod”), and a variety of other enticing options.

Tags: gifts

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Making money on the Long Tail

fred — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 11:37:00 -0800

You can make money on the long tail but not in the long tail. The precise point of Anderson's argument is that it is a collective of the long tail amounts to substantial dollars because the volume is there. The retail/advertising game is a game based on volume. You make money on a lot of traffic to a single popular site or the sum of smaller amounts of traffic to many less popular sites.

Source: The Read/Write Web

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Is this the new generation gap?

fred — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 23:36:00 -0800

Radio broadcasters don't understand this generation. It's a generation that wants control. They are used to getting control. They want what they want when they want it. Baby boomer parents gave it to them that way. The same parents, by the way, who still run America's radio stations. Ironic.

Source: Inside Music Media

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User Generated Radio

fred — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 10:23:00 -0800

Baby boomer managers think they can control radio stations by devising formats that different demographics will listen to. It’s always been that way so why not follow the logical conclusion.

But the next generation is different – very different.

They want to be the program director.

They want to be involved in their lives every step along the way. They turn to YouTube and are happy enjoying content created by other people --- even other people who are not their age. User generated content.

They have their own social website pages – Facebook, MySpace and increasingly smaller niche sites. They want to discover their own music, share it and enjoy the music of others even it isn’t number 12 with a bullet in Billboard.

Source link: Inside Music Media

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Facebook missed the mark with Beacon

fred — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 10:10:00 -0800

Facebook has missed out on a tremendous opportunity to use recommendation permissions to annotate their social graph with trust information – that’s an order of magnitude more valuable than the graph itself.

They got it wrong. No one is going to say “please show me more ads based on what my friends like.” But plenty of people will ask a friend to recommend digital cameras or books to them. There are subtle and important differences. First, there’s the asking. Asking someone for recommendations puts both parties in a position of giving permission. That changes the feel of the transaction.

Second, and more importantly, most of the people who are friends on Facebook are probably complete bozos when it comes to buying cameras or LCD TVs. I’m not dissing them, it’s just a fact of life that we trust certain people for certain kinds of things. I may trust one friend’s judgment on clothes and another’s on music.

Source link: ZDNet

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Umair on Contexual vs. Behavioral Advertising

fred — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 18:15:00 -0800

Why was contextual advertising superior? The economics of behavioral targeting don't make any sense. The benefits are clear for advertisers, but not for audiences. Since behavioral targeting imposes greater costs on users (cost of privacy loss, cost of lost attention from more invasive ads) than contextual targeting does, it must offer audiences greater gains as well.

How could it do this? Well, the most straightforward way is to push ads that consumers want to see. Unfortunately, behavioral targeting can only be marginally better (if that) at this than contextual targeting can. Assuming behavioral targeting can't offer consumers gains, consumers have great incentives to disable behavioral tracking systems - and they do. What this, in turn, means, is that behavioral targeters have the incentive to hide their actions from consumers - it's a classic case of moral hazard. This is how adware/spyware emerged.

So contextual targeting has, and I think will continue to, be more efficient at advertising to consumers the stuff they're searching for.

What this means is that behavioral targeting will continue to stay locked into the (profitable) niches that it's been successful in: serving ads in places where consumers spend a lot of time (and so can be costlessly tracked). Think NYT. In other words, behavioral targeting will pick up where contextual targeting stops. You search for 'Ferrari Dino' (and see contextual ads), and then visit a car review site (and see behavioral ads). This is the thinking behind the funding of plays like Revenue Science from fairly heavy hitters.

source: http://www.bubblegeneration.com/2005/04/advertising-2.cfm

This allows profile-based targeting, which I think has the potential to be the aforementioned disruptive tech - it can be superior to both behavioral and contextual targeting on value-driving attributes, but inferior in others.

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New releases have doubled in the last six years

fred — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 20:25:00 -0700

Interesting tidbit from the Unsprung Artists blog: there has been a dramatic increase in the number of new titles released in the last seven years.

The DAWG (Digital Audio Workstation God) has also dramatically driven up the number of choices for consumers to sift through. Consider the number of new titles released each year between 2000 and 2006 (Source: Billboard: 35,516, 31,374, 33,443, 38,269, 44,476, 60,331, 75,774). With this much competition, it’s easy to see why artists and labels feel more compelled then ever to focus on promotion instead creation.

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Interesting analogy

fred — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 13:24:00 -0700

I always try to write articles that help both artists and labels. Usually I focus on marketing and leveraging the power of the Internet. However, for this post, I want to talk about dirt sifting. Have you ever seen a large-scale dirt processing plant - sifters, conveyors, shakers, trucks, hoppers and dust overwhelm the landscape?

Prior to modern dirt processing, man had to sort his dirt by hand. Imagine sifting tons and tons of dirt, sticks and stones into separate piles organized by size and weight. The process was hard and messy and it took forever.

Music is like dirt. There’s tons of it, and the process of sifting through it was hard and it took forever. Then came digital music technology – ah the modern dirt processing plant for music. It neatly allowed us to sort out the sticks and stones, and pile them into little neat folders by mood, genre, tempo, artist, or into any pile we could imagine.

You know the mechanized dirt processing plant put the human dirt sorters out of business; but the dirt sorters didn’t quit, they learned how to drive tractors and trucks and how to run the sifters and sorters.

Then the dirt sorters grew the dirt market, and it grew and grew and grew, and now you can get every type of dirt, stone and wood chip imaginable; blue rocks mixed with white rocks, yellow wood chips, pink sand; if you can imagine it, you can probably buy it.

The dirt sorters were smart; they learned how to run the machines that made the neat little piles, and how to rapidly move the piles to the people that longed for different types of dirt, stone and chips. And, they made a lot of money. And they didn’t have to get dirty any more.

So, if you are an artist you should know that if you can find the exact pile to put your stones into, someone will eventually buy that pile. And, if you are a record label, go down to the dirt farm, watch the dirt processor, ask questions, learn from the dirt farmer, and you will see – he is clean and he prospers.

Bruce Warila – Unsprung Artists

— Posted by Bruce Warila

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The next big moneymaker

fred — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 12:58:00 -0700

The music business is resisting rather than exploiting the Long Tail. Here’s the lesson from the Web 1.0 bubble - in the long tail - value context over content. A music search application that will let you find the indie artists that you appreciate out of all the terabytes of music available will be the next money maker. And the musicians won’t get rich, but they will get played. The loser: the people who made their money out of artificial scarcity and payola.

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Important quote from Peter Rojas

fred — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 12:44:00 -0700

The Internet, combined with low-cost (or even no-cost) digital tools, has led to an explosion of creativity, with millions of amateurs making music for every conceivable genre, sub-genre, and microgenre, and then sharing their creations online. Andrew Keen might look down on these results, and no doubt 99.9 percent of the music being created today is terrible; but that’s besides the point. Even that one-tenth of one percent means that there is more great music being created than any of us will have time to listen to — and that’s not even taking into account all of the “professional” music that still manages to get made. Many professional artists are discovering that, regardless of how well their music sells, they’re still able to make a healthy living from live appearances, merchandise, and licensing — and the Internet only makes it easier for them to build a fan base. It’s the Britney Spearses of the world that are hit hardest by all of this change. Manufactured pop doesn’t do quite so well when consumers have better options to choose from.

The majors thrived in an era of artificial scarcity when they were able to control the production and distribution of music. Today, we have an infinite number of choices available to us, and when content is infinitely abundant, the only scarce commodities are convenience, taste, and trust. The music companies that are successfully shaping the Internet era are recognizing that the real value is in making it easier to buy music than to steal it, helping consumers find other people who share their music tastes, and serving as a trusted source for discovering new music.