CES 2009

8 Jan

I love the ‘green’-tech focus of this year’s CES, including the windup power charger for Nick Negroponte’s inexpensive laptop and the LG Skycharger wind-and-solar powered battery bank. There is also a slew of drop-dead demos (better than in some previous years): Intel demoed a 3D TV film by Dreamworks that (when viewed with a pair of Wayfarer knockoffs) gave an amazingly realistic depth-of-view that would profoundly change the way we watch sports (think football, autoracing or tennis)…And Sony’s flexible OLED display (which bends and flexes like a playing card while remaining incredibly bright and well-defined) is also stunning.

So, what’s the hang up? With the economic doldrums overhanging this CES, these stunning displays of new technology raise the obvious question of who might possibly have enough werewithall to buy them when and if they finally get to market? While I am personally as confident as anyone that some day the economic bounceback will be underway, right now all signs point to the recovery being some distance off. It’s impossible to know how long the current doldrums will continue, and their impact on the adoption of this cool new stuff can only be predictable in one direction: it will take more time, effort and money to get anyone to buy this stuff than was previously expected.

That’s a pity, because many of the breakthroughs on display here — especially the self-powered windup radios, GPSs and computers, actually could benefit people immediately.

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TechCrunch Comment

27 Jun

Not everyday you get commented on in TechCrunch (albeit, comment #92 – not exactly right at the top) : www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/19/tracking-former-yahoo-execs-so-many-have-left/#comment-2384187

Actually, this comment was a few days before the recent Yahoo! reorg…No doubt, Yahoo! and Yahoos have been through a lot in the past several years. And in this industry, it would be ridiculous to assume the pace will slow down.

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Online Video

3 Jun

Just noticed this flattering post from my former colleague Peter Weiss, who was one of the original online video producers, having pioneered a lot of streaming techniques at MyPrimeTime….Nice to see Peter is still pushing the envelope with online video –> http://justplays.wordpress.com/2007/08/13/helen-whelan-craig-forman-and-donald-van-de-mark/

Dinner with Bill Gates

29 May

The ‘D’ Conference is always filled with surprises, and a nice one came last night when Microsoft founder Bill Gates came to our table and joined us for dinner. It was already an interesting group (Esther Dyson, Gordon Crovitz, Don Graham, Craig Mundie, Ann Winblad were there and others (such as Nathan Myhrvold and Tim O’Reilly) joined us off and on as the dinner progressed.

Staci blogged about it here –> http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-d6-serendipity-supper/

It’s true that during the two and a half hours we covered in detail everything from malaria in Africa to monetizing paid search with stops on nuclear power and childhood education in between. Gates may not have technically finished college (yet), but there is no doubt that his brainpower is hard to equal.

Rupert Murdoch and Wapping

29 May

In a tour de force performance much blogged about, Rupert Murdoch wrapped up the second day of the ‘D ‘Conference this evening. Some highlights from Bloomberg here –>; http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aTVbDsf.hq6g

I won’t repeat here most of what he said — except what he just told me exclusively (because only he, I and his security guard rode downstairs in the elevator together).

It will interest now only those who were there — as I was — when he opened his Wapping printing plant in the 1980s and basically crushed the trade unions that were then all-powerful on Fleet Street, England’s newspaper publishing center. His move, coming as the Thatcher government faced tough labor protests in the coal, steel and power industry could have toppled the then-young Thatcher government. Instead, the Thatcher government totally backed his initiative to bring in new technology and thus began the end of traditional labor’s strong role at the center of the British economy.

I asked him if any other person could have pulled off what Thatcher did. “No,” he said. “No one else. And – I never once talked to her about it. Not during, and not after,” he said.

Surprising.

A quick update: Today Rupert Murdoch was asked in the British phone hacking inquiry about his relationship with Mrs. Thatcher and he essentially repeated what he told me in an elevator after a glass of wine in 2008. Consistency in this case, it seems to me, is a virtue!

Here is the NYTimes: NYTimes

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Democratic Party: Obama’s ‘albatross’?

8 Apr

Reading Jerry Seib’s insightful column in today’s Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120761705598196889.html?mod=hps_us_inside_today gave me an eerie feeling of deja-vu. Hillary Clinton implies that she – and only she – can win the ‘big states’ required to put a Democratic candidate in the White House, Jerry writes. Therefore, the logic goes, Barack Obama is ‘unelectable’ in November.

Who knows? But it surely reminds me of a chilly afternoon on the campus of Princeton University in March of 1981, when – as a student and as a ‘stringer’ or campus correspondent for the Philadelphia Inquirer, I attended a seminar given by President Jimmy Carter. He had been beaten by Ronald Reagan only a few months earlier, and was still palpably bitter about the experience.

In that campaign, Carter told us, the Democratic Party had been his ‘albatross,’ and a failed challenge by Sen. Edward Kennedy – who, at one time had been the favorite of many Democratic delegates, had sapped Carter’s campaign of needed momentum.

Fast forward to today: Obama leads in votes and delegates, but Sen. Clinton continues her challenge, continuing a fierce rivalry within the party. Not a prediction, but worth asking: is history repeating itself?

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Does Watching TV Make You Unhappy?

2 Apr

That’s the electrifying implication of an unassuming piece today by the WSJ’s Jonathan Clements (Journal subscribers can read it here : http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120709012659781613.html?mod=hps_us_editors_picks).

Citing research from Princeton’s prize-winning professor Daniel Kahneman and colleagues, the piece suggests that being actively ‘engaged’ in a variety of activities (including leisure and spiritual pursuits) is a major determinant of happiness. Moreover, of three components to ‘happiness’: how you spend your time, your basic disposition (sunny? optimistic?) and your life circumstances (age, health, income, etc.) — the choice of time spent is one over which you can exert the most control. These academics say many people spend this time in a relatively unengaged state, watching television (17% of men’s waking hours; 15% of women’s)

There’s long been a debate about the utility of time spent watching the tube. But the notion that watching television can contribute to unhappiness is step beyond simply wasting time…it will be interesting to see what happens next with this research.

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Kara on the clash of technology engineering and media cultures…

31 Jan

Kara had a very interesting post today from the SIIA conference where Gordon Crovitz and others were due to speak. The post, here : http://kara.allthingsd.com/20080131/engineers-are-from-mars-media-moguls-are-from-venus/#comments focuses on the skills gap between technology and media executive leadership.

There is a lot of evidence about this gap, but as I mentioned in my comment on her post, it is being bridged by 1. diligent attention to the underlying core innovation and skills that build the products that work, 2. a fundamental understanding of the blocking-and-tackling of consumer engagement and managing large-scale consumer technology supply/demand and 3. real understanding of the ROI and IRR on investments required to take something new and innovative and make it a business success.

It’s hard, but I believe since the mid-1990s and my first foray into Silicon Valley (Infoseek – ah, those were the days) we have come a long way, Baby!

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CES 2008

5 Jan

Busy next week at CES…lots of meetings, people, new gadgets….Focus of the conference appears to be heavy on mobility — devices, automotive, always connected…But I am sure there will also be the world’s largest flat-screen TV….

Should be fun — let me know if you plan to be there….

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Bill Gates and Steve Jobs onstage….

31 May

….was the highlight of the ‘D’ Conference in Carlsbad, Calif…lots of folks are blogging the conference, including Rafat at www.paidcontent.org and Om at www.gigaom.com, and of course hosts Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher of The Wall Street Journal at their new site www.allthingsd.com.

I just want to add how impressive it was to see Gates and Jobs in a moment of reflection. This duo has collaborated and clashed for 30 years – substantially all of their professional lives. But they know each other well and were charmingly authentic about the issues that drive their passion and energy.

Gates said he views the development of the personal computer as the driving professional accomplishment of his lifetime. Nothing that he achieves will ever mean as much to him (which is saying a lot for such a philanthropist.) “Cut open my head and you will find software,” he joked. Jobs, who has struggled with serious illness in recent years, acknowledged Gates’s generosity by saying his longtime collaborator and rival had learned it is no accomplishment to “be the richest guy in the cemetery.”

Jobs added he felt lucky to have found the work he loved “at the right place at the right time.” Jobs said he wished Apple had known better how to partner with people – a lesson it might have learned from Microsoft. Gates indicated he envied Jobs’s “taste” in product design and in people issues.

There was much more give and take about the current times being “very healthy” for innovation and creativity in the technology world, and that continuing advances such as touch computing and 3D displays will continue to dramatically change the landscape over time.

It was a charming and revealing session – and a real accomplishment by Kara and Walt.

Walt also failed to mention his own tiny role in the personal computer revolution: During the summer of 1982, The Journal got its first PC, an Apple II-E running a small software program that helped us write headlines that would fit the Journal’s column widths (a task that previously was a laborious manual counting exercise).

Walt, then a defense reporter in the Washington Buro, was among the few folks in the newsroom agitating for the purchase of the computers.

I know because I was there – a pup copy editor just starting my career and benefiting from the timesaving new technology.

Thanks, Walt. You were a pioneer even then….

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