Yearly Archives: 2011

My 2012 Watch List

December 18, 2011 – 11:00 pm

TweetWhen it comes to cracking the digital media code, 2011 involved more testing than learning. Media companies seem to be locked in a feverish search mode. Their sense of urgency is reinforced by the continuous depletion of worldwide fundamentals: digital advertising’s encephalogram remains flat (at best); and when audiences grow, revenues do not necessarily correlate. [...]

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

2011: Shift Happens

December 18, 2011 – 10:59 pm

TweetWhatever 2011 was, it wasn’t The Year Of The Incumbent. The high-tech world has never seen the ground shift under so many established companies. This causes afflicted CEOs to exhibit the usual symptoms of disorientation: reorg spams, mindless muttering of old mantras and, in more severe cases, speaking in tongues, using secret language known only [...]

Edited by Jean-Louis Gassée | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Comments (14)

The Best of Curation

December 11, 2011 – 10:43 pm

TweetI love talking about the things I enjoy using. The emerging ecosystem in which a bunch of smart people curate long form journalism is definitely one of those things. The companies are called Instapaper, Longreads, Longform. I love the material they find for me and I’m in the debt of developers who wrote neat applications [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Posted in journalism, online publishing | Tagged , , | Comments (12)

HP Kicks webOS To The Kerb

December 11, 2011 – 10:25 pm

TweetWe strongly believe that the best days for webOS are still ahead. Thus spake Meg Whitman in her memo to the troops, an intramural rendition of HP’s official announcement that webOS will be “contributed” to the Open Source community. …the executive team has been working to determine the best path forward for this highly respected [...]

Edited by Jean-Louis Gassée | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (23)

Datamining Twitter

December 5, 2011 – 7:00 am

TweetOn its own, Twitter builds an image for companies; very few are aware of this fact. When a big surprise happens, it is too late: a corporation suddenly sees a facet of its business — most often a looming or developing crisis — flare up on Twitter. As always when a corporation is involved, there [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Comments (11)

Behind RIM’s $485M Write-off

December 5, 2011 – 5:54 am

TweetOn December 5th, three days ago, RIM announced a $485M write-off “related to its inventory valuation of BlackBerry PlayBook tablets”. Wall Street didn’t like the news and dumped the stock, it went down 9.7% in one session. One of the last analysts supporting RIM, Scotia Capital’s Gus Papageorgiou, finally gave up and turned vocally bearish. [...]

Edited by Jean-Louis Gassée | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (41)

Unaccounted For Readers

November 27, 2011 – 11:04 pm

TweetNewspaper publishers need to quickly solve a troublesome equation. As carbon-based readership keeps dwindling, the growing legion of digital readers is poorly accounted for. This benefits advertisers who pay less for their presence. Putting aside web sites audience measurement, we’ll focus instead on the currently ill-defined notion of digital editions. A subject of importance since [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (8)

A Facebook Smartphone – Why?

November 27, 2011 – 10:53 pm

TweetAt the end of last week’s Monday Note, I briefly wondered about the rumored Amazon smartphone. Would it follow the Kindle Fire strategy: Pick Android’s lock and sell the device at or below cost in order to lubricate the wheels of Amazon’s e-commerce of tangible and intangible things? This week, we have the rebirth of [...]

Edited by Jean-Louis Gassée | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (19)

Apple’s Antitrust Problem (Part 2)

November 20, 2011 – 8:41 pm

TweetLast’week’s Part 1 column about Apple’s dominant’s position in the tablet market triggered an abundance of comments and emails, both on the Note’s blog and on the Guardian. All interesting, most well reasoned. But, for some people, it’s always funny to see how an Apple topic can turn religious. Question a few basic facts and [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (20)

The Apple Wireless Carrier (Part 2)

November 20, 2011 – 8:40 pm

TweetSpurred by years of frustration with AT&T, Verizon, Orange and the like, I wrote a half-serious Monday Note a few months ago (Steve, Please Buy Us A Carrier!) that imagined an Apple wireless universe. Simple pricing, no-surprise phone bills, no-tricks agreements. There would be dancing in the streets… Unfortunately (I concluded), if Apple were to [...]

Edited by Jean-Louis Gassée | Posted in hardware, mobile internet | Comments (18)