In the wake of Hurricane Irma this weekend, Tesla pushed out a software upgrade to owners of Tesla 60kWh versions to give them the range of their 75kWh. Just like when pilots say they will "make up time in the air," commentators said: "well isn't that interesting." It seems like all Tesla's have the same …
The deal that got Oswald back to Disney
This is Oswald the Rabbit. He could have been Mickey and Walt Disney wanted him to be: Oswald was created by Walt Disney and animator Ub Iwerks for Universal Studios in 1927 — a time when cartoons ran before every movie in the theater and sound was a luxury. The character was almost instantly a …
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. …
How do you sell a news scoop?
Felix Salmon observed the other day that the NYT's Walmart expose sent Walmart's share price tumbling. As it is the kind of investigative reporting we'd all like to see if someone would pay for it, he wondered if this fact meant there would be someone to pay for it. A slight tweak to the NYT's …
Cultural clashes in science
On This American Life this week, is a podcast devoted to the subject of "So Crazy it might just work." Now if you are interested in scientific discovery, its culture and openness, go and listen to the first half of that podcast right now. I'll wait. OK, all done? I'm not going to discuss the …
Are Digital Resale Markets Legal? Should They Be?
The other day I came across an article at Ars technica about ReDigi. You may have heard of ReDigi. They resell digital goods. Me, I was puzzled, so I emailed Ben Shiller, who has just finished his dissertation about resale digital markets. His dissertation is called “Digital Downloads and the Prohibition of Resale Markets for …
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Technological Plateau or Promise?
http://s.marketwatch.com/media/swf/main.swf Have we reached a technological plateau or is innovation still going strong? If you've read my book with Andy McAfee, you know where I stand. David Wessel of the WSJ discusses the pros and cons of the argument and ties it to our current economic woes in this five minute video.
The Dismal Economics of Moneyball
Moneyball is a huge hit, which doesn't happen too often to movies featuring an economics major who's good at statistics. It tells the true story of how the Oakland A's became a competitive team despite having a payroll less than 1/3 of the Yankees. They did it by using statistical techniques pioneered by sabermetrician Bill …
What CAN'T computers do?
Not too long ago, there was a relatively long list of things machines couldn't do by themselves: play chess, read legal briefs, translate poetry, vacuum floors, drive cars, etc. But that list is getting shorter and shorter every year. The latest casualty may be writing newspaper articles. Kris Hammond and Larry Birnbaum at Northwestern's Intelligent Information …
The Flipside of Cisco's Flip Decision
In 2009, I purchased a Flip HD camcorder. Around the same time, Cisco purchased Flip, the company, for about $600 million. It was never clear precisely what Cisco was up to, but with YouTube being a big deal, some form of Internet connectivity seemed to top the list of the possible "synergies." It took Cisco just a …
Digitopoly 