February 2012
Perpetual War - Digital Pirates and Creators -... →
Rafer sez: They had to stick this on the editorial page as this esteemed member of the NYT editorial board (link to his bio if you think that much of him, geniuses) replaces fact with conjecture and damning with faint praise slightly more than once a paragraph. An appalling waste of space.
“Samsung now sells about half of all “official” Android phones, and...”
– Battle of the smartphones | Technology | The Guardian
Stewart Baker: The SOPA War: Why the GOP is... →
lilly:
Yep. This is a pretty big problem if the left doesn’t get it’s act together and figure out the web.
radiofreeandrew:
Democrats: The race is on. Republicans are increasingly embracing a pro-Internet, pro-innovation, pro-free-speech agenda. They are making a play for the Internet native generations. Don’t cede the future to the GOP.
“I miss the Valley’s golden age of weird moguls. I know that’s a...”
– SarahLacy.com | Welcome to a day in the life of a (Silicon) Valley girl
“The ad unites both the inventors of phone technology, such as Philippe Kahn (the...”
– Best Buy Super Bowl ad puts phone, app makers in one place | Electronista
Rafer sez: Philippe was always an awesome marketing guy. Just like Jobs invented the GUI.
“Sales > R&D. It is somewhat surprising that sales expense is greater than...”
– Why Facebook Clearly Belongs in the 10X Revenue Club « abovethecrowd.com by Bill Gurley
The comment on how Facebook’s ad business isn’t really that self serve is very interesting to me.
(via sawickipedia)
Rafer sez: @sawickipedia really? we knew this.
The 1% →
parislemon:
The good news: In the past month, the spread of Ice Cream Sandwich across Android devices has nearly doubled.
The bad news: “Nearly doubled” means going from 0.6% of devices to 1% of devices.
Three months in, 1%. That’s progress.
Rafer sez: Au contraire. As an Android developer (check it out), 1% is the good news. ICS is much flakier and buggier than Android 2.X. I want as few...
So, are you going after 'Lean Startup' now?
I gave a talk last evening at the JFDI Bootcamp in which I pushed on how people were applying the Lean Startup ethos. Because I’m a known PITA, a couple people asked me if I was attacking the ethos itself. I’m not. Blank’s work (and by extension Ries’s) are great, should be followed at the beginning of most Internet ventures, will save lots of founders years of grief, etc....
Zuckerberg's S-1 Letter →
parislemon:
The most interesting part:
By helping people form these connections, we hope to rewire the way people spread and consume information. We think the world’s information infrastructure should resemble the social graph — a network built from the bottom up or peer-to-peer, rather than the monolithic, top-down structure that has existed to date. We also believe that giving people control...
Amazon Feels The Profit Squeeze →
parislemon:
Just to follow up, Amazon has released their numbers. As expected, net income doesn’t look great — $177 million, down 58 percent year over year. But at least it’s not a loss (which Amazon had warned it might be).
That $177 million is on sales of $17.4 billion. Crazy. That’s what low margins — and selling hardware at a loss — will do to you.
Speaking of 177, that’s also the...
January 2012
No Disputing This "Winning"
parislemon:
OH- “the best part of having an android phone is that my kids never want to play with it”.
— Bryce Roberts (@bryce) January 29, 2012
“Twitter still works fine in the Hollywood Edition. But all tweets are delayed...”
– Hollywood Edition - Aaron Klein
3 tags
Singlish 123 | Darren's Blogosphere ™ →
Rafer sez: For later study.
Really @Rafer? "Google has no choice #spyw" →
seanammirati:
Upfront, I should say that Scott Rafer is a guy who I really respect - probably as much as anyone in the tech community. He’s been a mentor / sounding board for me for years. However, I couldn’t disagree more with the argument that “Google has no choice.” rafer said:
I certainly sympathize with people’s angst about Google’s more explicit search partiality. However, its the...
needed: Android app publishing service
At Lumatic, we’ve decided to publish each of our Android city maps as a separate app. And we’re starting to publish in multiple markets. Once we have even a dozen cities, that’s going to suck. Never mind when we have a thousand.
Android app publishing needs packaging, marketing, and measurement tools. Can I help anyone get this going as a new startup?
“There’s no ‘i’ in queeet, ese.”
– Señor Clay Loveless (via claylo)
Google has no choice #spyw →
I certainly sympathize with people’s angst about Google’s more explicit search partiality. However, its the only thing they can do. Otherwise, we’d instead be complaining in 2017 how they missed the boat back in 2012.
“33Across plans on raising more money soon, pitching itself as “the largest...”
– 33Across Buys Tynt - Peter Kafka - Media - AllThingsD
Rafer sez: Meanie!
“For the reasons my parents generation and I moved to U.S., for those exact...”
– rafat.org: The Future of the World is Brown: A Globalist’s Reading List
“At over $400 billion, Apple is now worth more than Greece, CNN Tech says.”
– Apple’s Massive Numbers And Some Context | TechCrunch
“But the message Dodd most seemed to want to get across was that “the white...”
– Sundance 2012: MPAA’s Chris Dodd Calls Piracy Defeat a ‘Watershed Event’ - Hollywood Reporter
Rafer sez: If you start the negotiation at a reasonable place, it may well end at a reasonable place. If you start by proposing to end Free Speech as we know it, you are asking for an out...
“There was some back and forth about how best to combat piracy, with some in the...”
– Sundance 2012: MPAA’s Chris Dodd Calls Piracy Defeat a ‘Watershed Event’ - Hollywood Reporter
Rafer sez: It’s def a bad business model if you are CEO of the National Association of Theater Owners. Sorry, pal.
“This worry isn’t about psychology; I’m not concerned that women don’t engage in...”
– A Rant About Women « Clay Shirky
“This is a general problem — there is a reasonable conversation to be had about...”
– Pick up the pitchforks: David Pogue underestimates Hollywood « Clay Shirky
“And don’t think it gets any different when you hop over to the...”
– Monster Cable Claims EBay, Craigslist, Costco & Sears Are ‘Rogue Sites’ | Techdirt (via pukomuko)
Rafer sez: @DiFi here’s why your PIPA-support form letter is worse than bullshit.
“Every really good, really experienced CEO that I know shares one important...”
– Ben (via brycedotvc)
DiFi documenting her corporatist priorties
Rafer sez: Here’s the form letter back from DiFi in/re my opposition to PIPA. Even in the form letter, the right of private companies to use the government as their guilty-until-proven-innocent hammer is prioritized over the DOJ’s potential ‘independent’ actions. I’d feel just a little bit better if she were at least ashamed of her astonishingly corrupt cronyism....
“At this point, I, and I believe everyone else in the room, was agog. I could...”
– How (not) to communicate new scientific information: a memoir of the famous brindley lecture - Klotz - 2005 - BJU International - Wiley Online Library
OUCH
thisistheverge:
Twitter zinger.
To protest #sopa we’re stopping all product development on @flickr, effective five years ago. #yahoo4eva
— Yahoo Board (@YahooBoard) January 17, 2012
“Copying will only ever get easier. Right now is as hard as copying will get.”
– Lockdown: The coming war on general-purpose computing - Boing Boing