Category Archives: Uncategorized

Ebooks: Defending the Agency Model

March 11, 2012 – 8:44 pm

Tweet(Last of a series — for a while.) Launching an antitrust probe against books publishers, as the US Department of Justice might do, can’t come at a weirdest time. In the two previous Monday Notes, we explained how Amazon is maneuvering itself into a position to dominate the entire book industry. The Seattle giant keeps [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Tagged | Comments (19)

Carriers Whine: We Wuz Robbed!

March 11, 2012 – 8:43 pm

Tweet[First: No (new) iPad report, yet. In the meantime you can feast your eyes, or nurse your dyspepsia, by googling “iPad 3” or “new iPad”. This will tell you almost everything (minus the Fingerspitzengefhül, the all-important gut-feel) about the product, and definitely everything about the kommentariat. If we thought we’d plumbed the nadir with the [...]

Edited by Jean-Louis Gassée | Comments (57)

Ebooks: The Giant Disruption

February 26, 2012 – 10:39 pm

Tweet(Part of a series) In the last twelve months, I’ve never bought fewer printed books — and I’ve never read so many books. I have switched to ebooks. My personal library is with me at all times, in my iPad and my iPhone (and in the cloud), allowing me to switch reading devices as conditions [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Tagged | Comments (16)

Apple’s Grand User Experience Unification

February 19, 2012 – 9:33 pm

TweetApple just announced Mountain Lion, the 10.8 version of the Mac operating system, scheduled for delivery in late summer of this year. I dutifully installed the developer preview; it works, mostly (see here for PCMag’s list of notable features, and here for a quick video tour.). More important is that less than a year after [...]

Edited by Jean-Louis Gassée | Tagged | Comments (40)

Twitter, Facebook and Apps Scams

February 12, 2012 – 8:32 pm

TweetHere is the latest Twitter scam I’ve heard this week. Consider two fictitious media, the Gazette and the Tribune operating on the same market, targeting the same demographics, competing fort the same online eyeballs (and the brains behind those). Our two online papers rely on four key traffic drivers: Their own editorial efforts, aimed at [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Tagged , , | Comments (8)

Strange Facebook Economics

February 5, 2012 – 9:07 pm

TweetExactly three years ago, Charlie Rose interviewed Marc Andreessen, the creator of Netscape and Facebook board member. In his trademark rapid-fire talk, Marc shared his views on Facebook. (Keep the February 2009 context in mind: the social network had 175 million users and Microsoft had just made an investment setting Facebook’s valuation at $15 billion.) [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Tagged | Comments (14)

Facebook: The Revenge of the Nerds

February 5, 2012 – 9:07 pm

TweetWe’ll look at the other side of the coin in a moment, but first let’s give credit where it’s due and admire the obverse: I’m delighted to see Facebook going public, just deserts for Mark Zuckerberg and his group of very smart techies. If you have the time and inclination, take a walk through Facebook’s [...]

Edited by Jean-Louis Gassée | Tagged | Comments (9)

Piracy is part of the digital ecosystem

January 22, 2012 – 8:15 pm

TweetIn the summer of 2009, I found myself invited to a small party in an old bourgeois apartment with breathtaking views of the Champ-de-Mars and Eiffel Tower. The gathering was meant to be an informal discussion among media people about Nicolas Sarkozy’s push for the HADOPI anti-piracy bill. The risk of a heated debate was [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Comments (41)

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 | Tagged , , , | Comments (14)

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 | Comments (23)