Monthly Archives: February 2011

The Publisher’s Dilemma

February 27, 2011 – 6:40 pm

TweetToday’s title pays homage to The Innovator’s Dilemma, Clayton Christensen’s seminal 1997 book. In it, the Harvard Professor describes the effect of what he calls “Disruptive Technologies” on pre-existing markets or businesses. Fifteen years after the concept’s emergence, the impact of digital media on the news industry could be added to the list of most [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (32)

What I want for my Mac

February 27, 2011 – 6:39 pm

Tweetby Jean-Louis Gassée I was a happy man. After twelve years of Windows use at work — the usual Outlook excuse — I was about to be saved by Vista. On January 30th 2007, 8:00 am, the doors opened at Fry’s in Palo Alto. I showed up early to claim my prize, a 17” HP [...]

Edited by Jean-Louis Gassée | Posted in mobile internet, software | Tagged , | Comments (7)

Bloggers, publishers and the Apple lockdown

February 20, 2011 – 2:56 pm

TweetBloggers like simplicity. They view themselves as computer industry geniuses, as the embodiment of a fantasied future, vectors for all forms of intellectual life, culture, news, entertainment… Bloggers believe in a world where traditional publishing will soon meet a well-deserved death. Last week, this Manichaean worldview reached a paroxysm: many self-proclaimed digital pundits were celebrating [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Posted in journalism, online publishing | Tagged , | Comments (36)

Mobile World Clusterf#^k — 2011 Edition

February 20, 2011 – 2:50 pm

TweetPlus ça change…et plus. We are at this year’s Mobile World Congress, held last week in Barcelona. One of the usual suspects, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, stands and delivers the new and improved party line: App Stores are bad. Stephenson wants cross-platform apps delivered through the Wholesale Applications Community (WAC), whose “commercial launch’’ takes place [...]

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

The Traffic Bubble

February 13, 2011 – 7:09 pm

TweetThe new high tech-bubble might not be the one you’re thinking of. Measuring the bubble’s size and inner pressure of is a delicate exercise. For today, we’ll consider two sectors: social networks and online media — such as the Huffington Post acquired last week by AOL for a stunning $315m. In the valuation game, social [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Posted in journalism, online publishing | Tagged | Comments (18)

What future for the Macintosh?

February 13, 2011 – 6:54 pm

TweetWith Apple’s smartphones and tablets making so much money and taking up so much media bandwidth, one has to wonder: Is there a future for the Macintosh? We’ll first take a look at broad trend numbers and try not to molest them too much. As we saw last week, they’ll confess to anything when under [...]

Edited by Jean-Louis Gassée | Posted in hardware | Tagged , | Comments (34)

Tear down this PDF

February 7, 2011 – 12:33 pm

TweetThe PDF document format is digital publishing’s worst enemy. For a large part, the news industry still relies on this 18-year-old format to sell its content online. PDF is to e-publishing what the steam locomotive is to the high-speed train. In our business, progress is called XML and HTML5. Picture today’s smartphone reading experience. We’ll [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Posted in mobile internet, newspapers, online publishing | Comments (29)

Cash is a fact, profit is an opinion

February 7, 2011 – 12:33 pm

TweetApologies in advance: If you’re fluent in the language of accounting, please skip to the bonus Verizon iPhone feature at the end. What I’m about to describe will strike you as oversimplified and could bruise your professional sensitivities. Companies sometimes (often?) manipulate their numbers. Today, we’ll look at a few examples of accounting sophistry and [...]

Edited by Jean-Louis Gassée | Posted in venture capital | Comments (11)