February 28, 2010 – 1:48 pm
New world, new approaches. Australia is a vibrant, younger economy. You can feel it everywhere. It moves on, it changes, it adapts. And, in the media business, it seems to adjust pretty fast.
Fairfax Digital is, by far, the leading online group in Australia and in the region. It is a division of Fairfax Media Ltd., [...]
February 28, 2010 – 1:48 pm
Microsoft is doing the right thing: at the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona, two weeks ago, Steve Ballmer hit the reset button and announced an entirely new smartphone OS, Windows Phone 7 Series. This is fundamentally better than flogging yet another ‘’new and improved’’ rev of the aging, failing Windows Mobile (née Windows CE) platform.
This [...]
January 31, 2010 – 5:20 pm
For a large part, the Apple tablet was seen as a potential solution for the media industry problem: a digital infrastructure for delivery and transactions encompassing a vast array of media products — instantiated in a device destined to become a de facto standard.
Many blame the media industry for not being able to come up [...]
November 15, 2009 – 6:36 pm
Our App is up and running. You can download it here.
Now you can read the Monday Note on your iPhone, store stories, even, if you are offline.
In addition to the weekly Monday Note, you’ll get a daily QuickNote, short bursts of news with links to relevant stories and documents.
- At launch, the application [...]
September 6, 2009 – 10:07 pm
Before 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 [...]
This is the speech (in French) by Maurice Levy, CEO of Publicis Groupe at a conference organized by the French Association of Magazine Publishers April 6, 2009. A quite insightful talk.
discours-maurice-levy-appm-6-avril-2009 (texte en Français)
April 26, 2009 – 12:55 pm
4:00am. I find myself reading an interesting story covering Portfolio’s web site – on my iPhone. As sleep comes back, I reflexively reach for the “save” (for later reading) button that is on every iPhone news application. But I am reading from the magazine’s site, as opposed to running an app on my smartphone; [...]
April 26, 2009 – 12:55 pm
Today, let’s have a little fun with Microsoft’s latest attempt at countering Apple’s “Get a Mac” campaign. Their premise is simple: for the same amount of computing power you pay more for a Mac, you pay an Apple Tax. As Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO, puts it: You pay $500 to slap an Apple logo on [...]
April 11, 2009 – 12:10 am
Last week, we addressed the demise of the ad-only model. Solutions won’t emerge overnight, all the more of a reason to start searching. Here are a few leads. (This is the second of two parts, the first one is here)
The AdTech conference took place last week, in Paris; the mood there wasn’t exactly a statement [...]
April 11, 2009 – 12:09 am
Micro-payments are an old idea, some say a bad fantasy. Chief, we’re rich: I found a way to get a millicent per page view…
So far, not much has happened. Unless you look at a tidy, not tiny, little billion-dollar business called iTunes. Three years ago, in February 2006, 1 billion songs served, sold, cashed in, [...]
The brutal recession reveals how flawed the current Internet business model is. As advertising-only business models are falling apart, even the Google ecosphere is under stress. The search giant’s preservation of its margins at the expense of its media partners’ revenue stream could be shortsighted. –First of two parts.
Sorry to be blunt, but Internet advertising [...]
OMG, says the blogger, the next iPhone’s camera will have 3.2 million pixels instead of today’s measly 2 million! The blog entry gave me the final push for an occasional, meaning at irregular intervals, series of columns on digital photography. The idea is to find insights into what’s really going on in this very dynamic [...]
It sounds like the perfect oxymoron: Isn’t cost-cutting the enemy of creativity? True if your main cutting instrument is Excel, one that works pretty well for near-sighted managers. First, rip questionable positions (some are always to be found) and, presto, your P&L looks healthier. Next, human resources problems: summon the victims, hand the letter, follow [...]
You the attentive reader might ask why VCs like yours truly are interested in netbooks. Hardware made in Taiwan, running Linux or Windows, low prices, even lower margins…Where are the opportunities for entrepreneurs, and for those of us who invest in their creations?
This is a different question from: Why are netbooks successful? We know the [...]
Warning: religious debate here. Should a news web site be open or closed, free or paid-for? There is no simple answer, of course, as hybrid models are a likely part of our future. But, first, let’s review the paid-for model I addressed in previous issues of the Monday Note as well as in the French [...]
This is what happens with looooong conference calls: you’re sitting in front of your speakerphone, on mute so other participants can’t hear your typing or other asocial activities; your PC displays the PowerPoint under discussion. You get bored, distracted, or, in the best cases, antsy.
So, as I was listening to one more paean to the [...]
March 15, 2009 – 12:20 pm
Guess: which tool all of us use everyday was invented in the United States in 1947? The mobile telephone. A year later, a wireless telephone service became available in almost 100 cities and highway corridors. Most early adopters were truck drivers. Now, there are about 3.5 billion cellphones in service across the world, thanks to [...]
March 15, 2009 – 12:20 pm
Let’s start with what Google Voice is: Grand Unified Telephony, as in physics Grand Unified Theory. Imagine all your phones (home, mobile, work…) linked together to one number, and all data (calls, voicemail and SMS) also “webbed” together. Add a few wrinkles such as transcribing your voicemail into text, personalized greetings for your mother [...]
This week, back to basics. Forget about complex financial ratios, Ebitda, KPI, even costs. Let’s consider one simple element: for our news businesses, how much are they actually making in revenues, and how do they compare? Let’s go the way of the cell carrier, let’s use one credible metric, the ARPU (Average Revenue per User): [...]
I’ll start with a gadget story but we’ll end up with saving energy, with greening our houses, I promise.To save another kind of energy, patience, I tried a Logitech Harmony One “universal” remote. Again. A few years back, two previous experiences with Harmony remotes had been frustrating and, ultimately, abandoned. It could be me, I [...]
