The video stream from the BBC Seminar on the Economics of Broadcasting that I discussed a few weeks ago is now up. You can access it here. My talk is the third on the list and it is entitled (this will surprise no one), Television Wants to be Shared. There are lots of interesting talks …
Facebook's vision becomes clearer
Yesterday, Facebook announced "Graph Search." It's an engineering name that is accurate and communicates nothing to the general public. Nonetheless, the engineering face stops with the name as the feature itself is designed with humans in mind. Facebook's own introduction describes graph search nicely. It is basically a search engine for social networks -- in …
Managing Complements
Most software companies fall short of perfection, and that’s just the way it goes. It’s routine for most software firms to slap beta on the product and ship. Most companies aren’t Apple, however. In case you missed it (and if you did, where have you been?), Apple released imperfect mapping software for the latest iPhone. …
Google Maps and competition on the platform
Google Maps for iOS arrived today and it is clearly the best maps app for the iPhone and perhaps, according to some reports, over all mobile devices (including Android). It is beautifully and sensibly designed as Google's latest iPhone app offerings are. More significantly, it is a considerable advance for the Google maps that was …
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A few little things
These bits of news warrant a mention but not a full post: A Kickstarter project has fallen $28 short of its $50,000 goal. This prompted speculation that Kickstarter might offer some flexibility in its rules. I have to point out here that that would be a terrible idea. What Kickstarter is, is a revelation mechanism. …
Does the app economy need institutions?
A New York Times piece on the app economy makes the point that very few apps make money and even fewer make lots of money. It is basically a cautionary tale that like everywhere else making money is hard. Like being in on the first days of a Gold Rush, having an app when there …
Bitcoin appears to be gaining traction
Bitcoin is touted as a virtual currency controlled by a peer-to-peer network that apparently places it out of the reach of traditional monetary authorities. I have to admit that when I first heard about Bitcoin I couldn't see the point. What BitCoin is — near as I can make out — is a token that …
I'm a Mac. You're a PC. There really are two types of people
This week saw the unveiling of Apple's iPad Mini and the launch of Microsoft's Surface. I want to focus on the latter as I think that it reveals something fundamentally important about the personal computer/mobile computing/mobile phone market that no analysts are really appreciating: the type of person you are really matters. And for that …
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Twitter's policies cause prices on third party apps to rise
I have written before about Twitter's new rules and how they have backed away from platform promises. One of their new rules limits the number of user tokens a third party developer can issue before effectively being 'owned' by Twitter. (I say, 'owned' because Twitter apparently can then exclude them from the platform). Now the …
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Being careful about openness as a strategy
Open is better than closed. We all know that, right? If you are trying to get into a house, when the door is closed you walk right into it. That sounds bad. But if you are in the house, things are less clear. If the door is open, wind and rain and who knows what …
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Digitopoly 