Monthly Archives: September 2009

The Long Tail: Coming Up Short.

September 27, 2009 – 8:11 pm

TweetThe Long Tail is a beautiful intellectual construct. Beautiful, therefore right. Who wouldn’t want to see it succeed? Chris Anderson coined the term back in 2004, in a Wired magazine article. A skillfully marketed book followed, which turned out to be a bestseller (i.e. the the Tail’s profitable head). When the concept began to gain [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Posted in online publishing | Tagged , | Comments (9)

Processors: More, yes, but better?

September 27, 2009 – 8:10 pm

TweetLast week’s Intel Developers’ Forum brought the expected crop of new CPU chips. The simplest way to summarize what’s taking place is this: We’re stuck at 3GHz, so we add more processors on the CPU chip. Intel continues to lead with small “geometries”, 32 nanometers today, 22 nm tomorrow. The company pitches its x-86 processors [...]

Edited by Jean-Louis Gassée | Posted in hardware | Tagged | Comments (5)

A Case Study: Le Figaro’s Advertising Gamble

September 20, 2009 – 11:08 am

Tweet Let’s start with a counterintuitive move: At a time when, all over the world, publishers are  tired of the red-ink their printing plans produce and dream of dumping the dinosaurs, the historic French daily Le Figaro fires up this Monday a brand new €80M printing facility to launch a redesigned edition. Behind this apparently [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Posted in magazines, newspapers, online publishing | Tagged | Comments (10)

Technology: It’s Over…

September 20, 2009 – 11:07 am

TweetIn an “Entrepreneurial Thought Leader” lecture given at Stanford University earlier this year, Tom Siebel argues that all of the great technological advances and development of great companies are behind us – and the growth rate for the tech sector is just on par with the rate of current economic growth. The previous sentence introduces [...]

Edited by Jean-Louis Gassée | Posted in hardware, venture capital | Comments (4)

How to make readers pay for news

September 13, 2009 – 8:43 pm

TweetAn idea is gaining momentum: online readers must open their wallet. In recent weeks, several suggestions for moving from wish to implementation have popped up. The latest one comes from Google. The company proposes to give a boost to its not-so-successful Checkout service by harnessing it to online newspapers interests. Quite a change here. Only [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Posted in newspapers, online publishing | Tagged | Comments (19)

Kremlinology For Fun and Profit

September 13, 2009 – 8:43 pm

TweetI’m quite fond of kremlinology, the metaphorical one, not the literal sort. For me, it started as a hobby and ended up making me decades of fun and money. Allow me to explain before we proceed with an attempted decryption of recent Apple events and statements. Working in Paris in the seventies, I struck an [...]

Edited by Jean-Louis Gassée | Posted in hardware | Tagged , , | Comments (3)

Medias : time to fix the training problem

September 6, 2009 – 10:08 pm

TweetLet’s start with sobering facts : the top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010 didn’t exist in 2004 today’s learner will have had 10-14 jobs… by the age of 38 new CEOs landing in a “great” company will devote most of their time, months or years, to placing the right person in the right slot. How [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Posted in journalism | Comments (9)

The Healthcare debate

September 6, 2009 – 10:07 pm

TweetBefore I jump into the topic, you might want to know: Why do we, venture investors, care about the debate? Is this another case of financially comfortable people getting in touch with their inner left-winger? I can’t answer for the deeper layers of my psyche, I’ve given up on such explorations. All I can say [...]

Edited by Jean-Louis Gassée | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Comments (2)