Monthly Archives: March 2010

The Oligarch to the dying press : “Nasdarovie!”

March 28, 2010 – 3:34 pm

TweetCoincidence.  At the same time as the Russian billionaire Alexandre Lebedev was finalizing the acquisition of the British paper The Independent, France-Soir was relaunched with great fanfare and money from another oligarch, Sergey Pugachyov. It is not a coincidence, it is an emerging pattern. A terrible one. In which huge amounts of money of questionable origin [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Posted in journalism | Comments (12)

The Jesus TV: What For?

March 28, 2010 – 3:33 pm

TweetYou’ll recognize an echo of the August 2009 note: The Jesus Tablet: What For? This time, we’ll walk around another increasingly popular topic: Apple’s putative entry into television sets, a huge Consumer Electronics segment. The argument for Apple making TVs is two-pronged: the money and the UI. For the money, there is the $31B television [...]

Edited by Jean-Louis Gassée | Posted in hardware | Tagged , | Comments (9)

Managing the magazine component of newspapers

March 21, 2010 – 8:42 pm

TweetThis is the second part of a series about the evolution of print media. Part I here. A few years ago, the founder of the French daily Liberation was asked what he would do if he had unlimited resources to run his paper: “I would do a magazine everyday”, he said. During the late 80′s, [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Posted in journalism, magazines, newspapers | Tagged , | Comments (9)

Who will buy Palm?

March 21, 2010 – 8:36 pm

Tweetby Jean-Louis Gassée Who will buy Palm? If you’re in a hurry: no one. If you have more time, here is the sad story: in one day, this past Friday March 19th, Palm shares collapsed, -29% in one Nasdaq session, closing at $4. The obvious question is why? But a second query immediately comes up: [...]

Edited by Jean-Louis Gassée | Posted in hardware, mobile internet | Comments (152)

Euthanazing the paper? Not yet.

March 14, 2010 – 6:10 pm

TweetI love this year-old Warren Buffet quote: “If Mr. Gutenberg had come up with the Internet instead of movable type back in the late 15th century, and for 400 years we had used the Internet for news and all types of entertainment and all kinds of everything else, and I came along one day and [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Posted in newspapers | Comments (23)

Software and Brakes — Part II

March 14, 2010 – 6:10 pm

Tweetby Jean-Louis Gassée This week, no iPad disquisition, no large companies engaged in contorted Kama Sutra embraces, no Google-Apple-Microsoft love triangle. We’ll revisit these topics in due course but, for the time being, let’s go back to a geeky topic unadulterated by geopolitics or markitecture: software and brakes. Last month, we looked at the software [...]

Edited by Jean-Louis Gassée | Posted in software | Comments (3)

The future of content navigation

March 7, 2010 – 6:13 pm

TweetLet’s forget business models and monetization — just for a brief moment. Instead, we’ll focus on one key issue: the interface, the way you access, browse, spot, save relevant information. The interface is pivotal. A good one will allow you to rope in your readers / viewers, and make them loyal to your brand, your [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Posted in design | Comments (21)

Honey, I shrunk the Tax Code!

March 7, 2010 – 6:13 pm

TweetIt’s really about another kind of code, but read on a bit… This is an old dream: making the tax code shorter, simpler. From time to time, a politician of the populist persuasion comes out and promises to get things right. The ultimate expression for this drive towards simplicity is the Flat Tax movement: a [...]

Edited by Jean-Louis Gassée | Posted in software | Comments (3)