Rolling up Open Source Companies February 28, 2006
Posted by innov8ordie in Uncategorized.2 comments
So another Om Malik entry that finally forces me to speak up.
This time its on several companies, particularly Oracle, buying up or putting big investments in Open Source companies.
http://gigaom.com/2006/02/14/open-source-apps-the-nu-cool/
I should probably learn not to lead with links sending people away but what the heck.
The question this begs for me is are they doing this to some how co-op what these open source projects are up to? Do they hope to buy and waylay them? It does not seem that this will work. The project is still out there with all its source code. The founders of the open source modeled companies will probably be encouraged to jump back out there and do it again and resell for more than they are worth. And then more people will show up with their hands out. Hey wait a second maybe I should start an open source service company supporting the new open source router. Anyone want to join me? Anyone with appropriate services selling or relevant experience can have 2% of the company.
So if its not to sidetrack potenitally damaging competitors are Oracle or SAP just doing it for insurance? Somehow buying into a services company that is wrecking your business model does not seem like much insurance. Sure I guess you have a piece of the new evolving market but if you were making a few hundred million spinning CDs and living on the fat and now you own a piece of what replaced it, with a few tens of millions I can’t imagine that even takes the sting out.
Open Source Communications… February 27, 2006
Posted by innov8ordie in Uncategorized.2 comments
Over time, more and more important SW markets get targeted by the Open Source Movement. Some piece of SW that is unecessarily “expensive” is recreated by volunteer engineers. Sometimes someone even “skins” the underlying software app to make it ~very~ similar to the targeted software. Gimpshop as a replacement for Photoshop being a compelling version of this to me. (If this group was a real commercial enterprise they would get sued, right?)
In the communications market, Asterisk, the open source PBX has been the most significant project. There are some VoIP communications clients ala Skype that feel like they should be just as big but to this point they have not. Apparently according to experts the underlying engine in Asterisk is “state of the art” although it still takes work and expertise to get going. It can go head to head with PBX solutions and the PBX market is in pretty bad shape although how much Asterisk is the cause is certainly debatable. (With infinite time I would sure love to try and set one up at my house. Geek alert!)
The latest in this line of Open Source destroying value, (and a potentially very important one) is the open source router being built with Vyatta.
http://gigaom.com/2006/02/23/here-comes-open-source-telecom/
As is frequently the case with these sorts of projects, consulting companies spring up around these open source tools to help businesses realize the value. They focus on the services necessary to enable the free software to provide value. It seems to me that without these service companies, it seems many of these projects flounder or sit in obscurity. They are just about as good as their commercial brethren but with no marketing push behind them and no comfy place for enterprises to go for support they just suffer for traction. I guess this begs the bigger question of where is the value of software. (Actually I should fill it in as we refer to it at my day job, “its just software.”)
In the end it is all about business models I guess and having someone drive the demand. The claim is “lack of support” is the biggest fear but I really somehow don’t buy that.
I actually think its more a matter of reputation and how the products make people feel. I am a serious engineer or IT guy if I paid alot for my tools. If they were free anyone could be me.
Virtual Worlds February 19, 2006
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As all the communications and entertainment options converge and evolve, virtual worlds are going to become more and more prevalent, immersive and individually important.
If its up to marketers I think we all know what sort of world will evolve:
http://web.mit.edu/cms/bcc/2005/12/marketing-empire-of-neopets.html
Of course the most immersive worlds today cost money. So can world providers market while you pay for access to their world. The consumers will decide. I would bet people will put up with quite a bit as long as its up front and clear from the beginning. World of Warcraft is one of the best examples of subscription world that eat people up. I almost think its too late in their social contract to do product placements of any sort. They need to leverage their pull externally from a marketing perspective and not comprimise anything in game.
As there are more and more people on this planet and people are more and more aware how small they are in it the need to virtual world will only increase. We are just starting to feel this phenomenon.
Bit Torrenting the world February 13, 2006
Posted by innov8ordie in Communications, Distribution, Marketing, Uncategorized.3 comments
So 60% of all bandwidth is attributed to bit torrent. Wow…. seriously wow.
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=1083
I use it to download lots of shows I have no other way of getting (international stuff not broadcast here generally). I even occasionally use it to supplement my Replays time-shifting when something gets missed or when something is in HD and I would really like to see in HD. (Although HBOs current lack of new stuff has stopped that from happening lately).
But I don’t know anyone else other than my brother that does this. So where the heck is all that traffic coming from? Is it shows? Pireated software? Music? Sure that is alot of it but 60%? How many people does that 60% represent?
Another obvious answer that now jumps into my head as I type is that it could be the porn community has somehow adopted bittorrent. You always hear about them being involved in pushing the technological envelope. It makes perfect sense actually. Cheap mass distribution. No censoring or monitoring of any significance. I dont think there is a lot of time sensativity to exactly when most of that content shows up. So in many ways its a better fit than regular broadcast TV. Theres tons of it and a seemingly endless appetite for it. That’s got to be it. Anyone have anything better to explain it?
Its about the transactions friction, not the cash. February 9, 2006
Posted by innov8ordie in Distribution, Marketing.add a comment
Its funny but it has become increasingly obvious to me that money is really not a big determination on whether anyone makes a purchase unless someones sense of what is “right” or “fair” sets in. As long as it is what is what X costs and its right there in front of me, boom, get it. Unless its a really major transaction it wont really show up on most peoples balance sheet.
Now where money is generally not a turn-off, ~any~ friction in the transaction is. Make it harder and it can be free but won’t be used. http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,70150-0.html?tw=rss.index is what is making me think about this again.
Free ringtones of any song in three or four easy well laid out steps. Fact is three or four easy steps is three or four two many. A few bucks every time I want to get a new one though is apparently no friction at all for millions of people. What the carriers and ringtone vendors need to be worried about is when the free methods become frictionless. Literally billions are on the line. Truly astounding to me.
Aggregators as self discovery February 5, 2006
Posted by innov8ordie in Web Life.add a comment
(I had this sitting in notes and after reading someones post on similar ideas:
http://www.micropersuasion.com/2006/02/handling_feed_o.html
I figured it was overdue.)
I am a big bloglines user. I check in nearly every day. I have more feeds than I have time to read. Therefore there is a survival of the fittest where only the most attractive and consistently good feeds get my attention. I frequently go back and delete those feeds with tons and tons of unread messages.
In fact beyond the quality (there are some feeds I ALWAYS read) there is also a sweet spot in the pacing to those that stay on my page. Generally it needs to be more than three a week because otherwise at some point I ask, what was this again, ah… forget it. But if its too many a day it probably gets skipped and backs up.
At times this feels almost like self discovery. I reveal to myself at meta interest level my interests with thousands of quick choices at the detail level. Emergent interest.
Turns out although an engineering manager by trade I am really more drawn to marketing and creative pursuits. I knew this at some level although the marketing part is more acute than I would have imagined were it not proven out by a thousand little choices in the last year…
Media flowing to market and the path of least resistance. February 3, 2006
Posted by innov8ordie in Distribution, Marketing.add a comment
Fred from a VC in NY has a really well put together argument about the new ways to syndicate conent and the clear sense of going as wide as possible. http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2006/02/syndicate_your_.html
There will certainly be some pain for many in the current video media distribution chain, local affiliates from the write-up above, but there will certainly be many more.
It’s interesting to me that the Telco’s think that they are the new path for delivery with VDSL and Fiber to the premise initiatives. These however have currently only been framed up as being conceptually perhaps 10% or 15% different than current distributions. Monthly payments for scheduled programming. IPTV gives a few new capabilities and a wider lineup but they and their traditional mindset are not getting very far outside of that. Such small thinking probably comes from their defensive reasons for the moves.
It seems that fundamentally “trickling” the content (bittorrent or download) rather than needing a big pipe has some fundamentally superior characteristics and represent a much bigger change than anything the Telco folks or even the cable or sattelite folks have thought up. Replay and Tivo are great but I don’t need them for that capability at all.
On a related note I noticed Slingbox and place shifting got a bunch more funding. I sort of get it but should really try one since on some level that sort of placeshifting doesn’t seem worth the effort. Sitting in a hotel room on the road it just seems easier to turn on the TV there rather than sling something to my laptop or treo. And again, isnt a little automatic RSS/torrent magic better. Wider choices and I can watch it on the plane when I am completely unconnected. I understand downloading shows, particularly automatically, takes set up but that up front cost will be driven out over time.
Actually if someone had one self configuring SW package that read the RSS TV feeds, downloaded the conent through a torrent client, resized it for the Video Ipods or PSPs of the world and then transfered it the next time the device was avaialbe, that might just give that model the chops to show its superiority. Still represents a questionable source in some senses (user redistributed shows) but wow would it be smooth. I want one!
Anyone got a spare million or two they want to give me to build the tool out and push it out into the world? Or even a few hundred thousand to prototype and assemble the POC?
