Rubber Chicken

Just for fun, I thought I'd join the 2006 prognostication game. My financial sector predictions:
-Interest rates will take the punch-bowl away from the real estate party. The markets that went up the fastest will also go down the fastest.
-The dollar's trade-weighted exchange rate will end 2006 lower against other major currencies than it starts.
-If Google does not address the click-fraud issue, the stock will end 2006 lower than it starts.

My technology predictions:
-Somebody will come to their senses and buy Opera.
-Oracle will struggle to integrate their aquisitions and lose ground to SAP.
-VOIP will see continued rapid consumer adoption as the prices fall through the floor. You just can't ignore cutting your phone bill by 80% (I'm paying about 20% of my Verizon bill to ViaVoice and haven't had any QOS problems in the first 8 weeks with them). However, VOIP profits will remain elusive due to the tough competition.

Since I'm not putting any money on these developments, neither should you ;-)

Posted by Rob at 04:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The C64 is alive and kicking and offering programming jobs with salaries in the low six figures. Nice!

Posted by Rob at 07:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Scobleizer - Microsoft Geek Blogger � Microsoft buying Opera?

Someone ought to. I would think Google (and possibly Nokia) would be in the hunt as well.

Posted by Rob at 11:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One Billion Internet Users (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)

Jakob makes some good observations about the implications of the rapid growth of the Intenet, especially in Asia.

One thing I disagree with is that Silicon Valley "buzz" will be less important because of the growing importance of international use. Sure, the international market is important for some Internet pure-plays (e.g. Google) but for most of the rest that have some atoms to sell (e.g. Amazon) or a culturally Western business model (e.g. Match.com) the main focus is still going to be the home market. Usable i18n is going to gain in importance in the future, but maybe not to the extent he is describing.

Posted by Rob at 08:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Damon, Yankees reach preliminary agreement on $52 million, four-year contract - MLB - Yahoo! Sports

Posted by Rob at 07:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Do government programs really help small biz? Should they? Maybe not. I'm a big fan of iconoclasts and this discussion with Veronique du Rugy is interesting and she asks good questions. She definitely has a point of view (appointements at Cato and AEI aren't exactly centerists), but the analysis makes sense to me. Small business would benefit more from less regulation and a level playing field than arbitrary subsidy.

Posted by Rob at 08:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Jakob nails another one - video on the web is boring. I can't stand watching talking heads on the Web (it isn't too exciting on TV either, but it seems to fit that media better). I guess now I know that there is some science behind it.

If it is boring on the Web, how is it going to play on a mobile phone? VCAST and its ilk seem seem doomed to failure (unless the games are really good).

Posted by Rob at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

A lot of people are really upset about TypePad going down on Friday. I like weblogs, I read them all the time and find them to have valuable information. But, honestly, I didn't notice at all that the presses had stopped. Are weblogs really mission-critical?

Posted by Rob at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As I noted the other day, the digital radio scene is going to start getting interesting. This article talks about some of the forces currently in play. I'm going to stay tuned to this one (pun intended).

Posted by Rob at 11:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I just upgraded my weblog to MovableType 3.2. It was relatively painless and I only had one minor hiccup (needed to chmod the upgrade script to 755).

Since the new version has much better spam management features than the older version I had, I'm going to re-enable pings and comments. We'll see how it goes.

Updated: I just reapplied the templates and rebuilt the site. The look is much better now (not that fond of the blue used, but I'll work on that another day).

Posted by Rob at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Terristerial HD radio looks very interesting. The leading company in this space in the US is iBiquity and radios are just starting to reach retailers. The radios are still pricy, but the signals are free and electronics tend to fall in price rapidly once adopted (how much is an MP3 player these days?) I'd think about buying one myself, but the content will need to improve (let's see in Roanoke, we have gospel and news - this is a classic "two-sided" industry).

People love satellite radio because of the broad programming and sound quality, but this kind of technology could put a big dent in the financial picture at Sirius and XM.

Posted by Rob at 12:12 PM | Permalink

Oh, the fun you could have with one of these. I wonder if it could carry a payload - perchance one of these? A poor-man's version of the Predator. Super keen.

Posted by Rob at 01:57 PM | Permalink

Om Malik makes an interesting observation in this post about direct broadband connections between China and India. Based on current traffic patterns, the US is at the center of the Internet world but if more and more traffic by-passes the US, what does that mean for governance of the Internet? The Internet has benefitted from the benign dictatorship of US influence, if it becomes more fragmented and contentious could it start to fall apart?

Posted by Rob at 09:38 AM | Permalink

I've got to agree with most of the sentiment behind this article about software platforms. Although the author isn't exactly unbiased in his criticism (he is the CEO of RightNow), he does make a lot of sense - there are too many platforms offering too little value out there right now. I disagree a little bit about open source being a "solution" to this. Open source projects tend to be produced just for the reasons he denigrates ("clever coders...packaging their software for mass consumption") and often offer fragmented solutions that require too much assembly. I don't want a clean slate platform, I want to be able to extend and integrate functionality that already exists to create new things.

Posted by Rob at 04:04 PM | Permalink

I don't really see the point of this recently released software to read your email and docs into MP3s so you can listen to them on your iPod. Even if the text-to-speech is good (and some of it does work well), it just doesn't fit with the way most people work with their email - you read it and give a quick reply. It isn't a novel that you want to take time and be entertained by, but something you usually jot off a reply as quickly as you can (hence the popularity of Blackberry). If you want to talk, why not use the phone?

Posted by Rob at 01:59 PM | Permalink

Windows R2 announced yesterday.

Posted by Rob at 01:51 PM | Permalink