The Future of Cell Phones
Nokia’s head of R&D discusses technology that could shape the look, feel, and function of mobile devices in the next few years.
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17734&ch=biztech
YouTube gets ‘Invention of the Year’ honor from Time magazine
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/15944212.htm
YouTube, which had 27.6 million unique visitors in September, according to Nielsen NetRatings, came along at just the right time, according to Time: social-networking Web sites were hot, camcorders were cheap and do-it-yourself media was expanding beyond text-based blogs.
Blogging for Big Bucks
http://biz.yahoo.com/weekend/blog_1.html
For starters, blogs today are so cheap to create and operate that a lone blogger or a small team can, with the ever-expanding reach of the Internet, amass vast audiences and generate levels of profit on a per-employee basis that traditional media companies can only fantasize about.
The Next Net 25
A list of 25 promising Net Startups
http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/23/smbusiness/business2_nextnet_intro/index.htm
We are in the early stages of what might be better thought of as the Next Net. The Next Net will encompass all digital devices, from PC to cell phone to television. Its defining characteristics include the ability to interact instantaneously with any of the more than 1 billion Web users across the globe — not by, say, instant messaging, but by evolving instant-voice-messaging and instant-video-messaging apps that will make today’s e-mail and IM seem crude.
The Next Net is deeply collaborative: People from across the planet can work together on the same task, and products or tools can be rapidly tweaked and improved by the collective wisdom of the entire online world.
Google’s Home Town to Get Web Access Free
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/060816/google_wireless.html?.v=1
The new wireless, or “Wi-Fi,” network, is believed to establish Mountain View, Calif., as the largest U.S. city with totally free Internet access available throughout the entire community …
Google to pay $900 million to MySpace
Last year News Corp bought MySpace for $580 million. Now Google is paying $900 million to become MySpace search provider … http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/607895/google_to_become_myspace_search_provider/index.html?source=r_technology
Blair in the Silicon Valley
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/15162564.htm
Seated around an arrangement of tables were Chambers; David Gardner, chief operating officer of Electronic Arts; Hector Ruiz, chief executive of Advanced Micro Devices; Vint Cerf, chief Internet evangelist for Google; Shantanu Narayen, chief operating officer of Adobe Systems; Jim Ward, president of LucasArts; Jonathan Schwartz, chief executive of Sun Microsystems; John Hennessy, president of Stanford University; Jobs, the chief executive of Apple Computer; and Mark Hurd, chief executive of Hewlett-Packard.
The group had some unlikely advice for Blair. The key to Silicon Valley’s success, they said, was failure.”Each of us had one massive failure: a company we founded or an investment we made,” Narayen said after the lunch.”If you have taken a risk and you failed, you potentially become more interesting and more valuable because now you know something,” Schwartz agreed.
Schwartz, whose company was founded by Stanford University graduate students in 1982, said the relationship with the university did not end after the founders moved off campus. That connection continues to this day, and is one of many similar relationships that helps Stanford craft a curriculum that prepares its students to continuously come up with new technological breakthroughs.
Emerging Giants
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_31/b3995001.htm?chan=search
The new multinationals: They’re smart and hungry, and they want your customers
A new breed of lean and hungry rivals is challenging the global business dominance of the West and Japan. Some come from China and India, others from Russia, Brazil, and even Egypt — yet they all have resources that traditional established multinationals may lack.
Google Mountain View WiFi
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/15037109.htm
The network will bring maximum outdoor data-transfer speeds of up to 1 megabit per second, roughly equivalent to DSL. To get coverage indoors, residents can buy an additional router to essentially amplify the signal…
… the network will not be used to gather personal information or track people’s Web-surfing habits, and has launched it solely “to understand emerging technologies.”