News Of The Day 11/30/2010

by

Google makes an offer for GroupOn, Yammer gets a ton of cash, Zynga has a new partnership, and the Wikileaks scandal may venture onto Fraudclosure!  Must-know geek news time go!

Economics/Freakonomics:
Restraunt Performance Index Up – Which may indicate consumer confidence is recovering. Also shared for the geekonomic value of using restraunt data . . .

That whole Wikileaks mess with the diplomatic document dump? Looks like the guy behind it may dump info on a major bank, probably Bank Of America. If he's got some nasty info on BofA and dumps it, this could A) further destabilize the state of the bank and others, and B) distract from the controversy over the diplomatic document dump. So my guess, is it's gonna happen.

And the mortgage/foreclosure mess is even worse as many foreclosures are due to servicer issues. Really, just read this one.

Social Media:
LinkedIn to add article-sharing button. I of course am pro LinkedIn, but also feel, objectively, this makes sense. Lots of people share with LinkedIn anyway, this just makes it easie (and lets people share to specific contacts). ALso worth USING on LinkedIn so you can share with your business contacts.

Zynga forms partnership with American Express. Membership reward points can be exchanged for virtual goods. A simple and effective partnership.

Technology:
Prediction of the death of RIM. Meanwhile, analysts seem bullish on RIM due to their tablet.

That above article took some inspiration from an article on lessons learned from ten years in the tech news beat that is also worth reading.

Woah. Yammer gets $25 million in investment. I haven't followed them much, but $25 million for their enterprise messaging/microblogging service. Time to pay attention – and hey they got $25 million and they're involved in a hot area, so send a resume.

Google has made a $5.3 billion offer for Groupon. Groupon's board is going to meet on this. Google seems to be on a spree (though delaying their social media endeavors).

Video Games:
EA aiming at digital market for growth. No one is surprised.

QUESTION OF THE DAY:RIM – bright future or dark?  What do you think of their initiatives?

– Steven Savage

The Analysts’ Freemium Nightmare

by

I'm starting to pity economists, beyond the whole "how did so many of you morons miss the economy melting down" thing.  I'm feeling bad for them because they've got to try and analyze a lot of crazy trends in the actual working parts of the world economy, and things are changing rapidly and are far more distributed.

Last column I speculated on the various facets of Freemium (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemium) that I feel need to be further explored and understood.  I'm quite enthused about the model and feels it holds great promise.

Now assuming Freemium is the wave of the future, as opposed to a tiny splash in the big ocean  of pricing models that lies on the shores of weird economic metaphors, there are going to be changes in more than just how we sell and buy.  There will be changes in how people analyze economic information, from understanding sales, to evaluating the performance of an industry.

Read more

News of the Day 11/29/2010

by

TV and video deals, a literally swinging musical, and Microsoft’s Kinect sales look good!

Economics/Geekonomics:
A roundup of the European bailout. Remember when people discussed the bailout in terms of one country or another . . . just a few weeks ago?

Geek Law:
Apple Lawyers up for it’s various patent showdowns. At this rate I’m having trouble keeping track of it all. This is pretty much business as usual it seems (notice how often Apple has gotten sued), but as this is in the very hot mobile space, it’s a bit more important. I expect things to be settled amicably . . . but if I’m wrong, then watch out.

US Government siezes websites over copyright violations. A rather aggressive approach and it may herald future, harsher approaches. It also further lowers the opinion of the Obama Administration among the geek crowd.

Comics:
Spider Man Musical? A roundup of reviews here, which aren’t exactly positive. io9 feels it’s an imperfect but compellingly surreal and over the top experience. I’m not sure what to say about this, as the musical sounds like some surreal meta-fictional endeavor, but it is certainly ambitious. Sadly no matter what is done I smell bomb.

Publishing:
Virgin’s iPad Magazine launches tonight. Time to see how it goes over . . .

Now that’s using backlog: Playboy releases every issue on a hard drive. All for $300. This is a recent trend that seems to have been building.

Video:
Disney in talks with Google over content on Google.tv. That’s two big powerhouses teaming up – possibly. Let’s see what happens . . . though certainly Google is charging ahead with it’s plans.

Meanwhile down Microsoft way, Microsoft is working on TV deals. So is the XBox going to become more a cable box? An interesting hint on their future agenda – media consolidation? That’s pretty much taking on Sony. Now I wonder how their motion control combines with an increased focus on multimedia – audio/visual TV viewing? Game/TV fusion?

Video Games:
Microsoft says they sold 2.5 million Kinects in the first 25 days. I actually have no reason to doubt them, and can buy the future sales projections.

QUESTION OF THE DAY:What superhero would make a good musical?

– Steven Savage