Once In A Lifetime – Talking Heads
Loved this song the first time I heard it a million years ago. And I still love it today. Turn it up.
Thinking about the future of cable & telcos
Cable companies have been doing a lot of things over the past 10 years as they made the switch to digital to make sure that they don’t become a “dumb pipe”. Thats a phrase you will hear over and over again if you have spent any time talking to any MSOs.
The telcos have been investing big time as well and want to make sure they also don’t become a “dumb pipe”. One bit of humor is that the “dumb pipe” description is really in reference to the POTS business and common carrier but that is for another post.
Cable companies and telcos investments are delivering all sorts of new products. It’s easy to make fun of these companies at times but we are getting better products & services. Faster internet connectivity, telephony, VOD, HD, DVRs, packaging, bundling, you name it. They have also been buying or investing in digital channels as well as needed or warranted. All of this in an effort to stay competitive. And to avoid being the “dumb pipe”.
But, I’m afraid that really isn’t enough.
Consumers are spending more time watching Hulu, downloading video from iTunes, streaming from Amazon, YouTube, Veoh and Netflix. All of it online. And while AppleTV, Roku, MediaCenter PCs, et al may not be the ultimate internet player today, the trend is undeniable. In 5 years (or sooner) video consumption online vs broadcast is going to flip on its head. Evolution.
If I were running a major cableco or telco I would do 2 things:
1. Buy Tivo. Forget that Tivo has patents. Tivo has a retail (no subsidies), cablecard friendly DVR that offers home networking, mobile access, expandibility and streams online content. Imagine the advertising capabilities. Imagine building FirefoxTV, imagine offering a TV version of search. Imagine launching the Tivo App Store and an SDK where a thousands developers could create a zillion apps. Game changer. The alternative is for cable and telcos to continue to hash it out with their current technology & set top suppliers Motorola & Cisco (formerly Scientific Atlanta).
2. Buy a popular video site. YouTube is now in Google’s hands. So that’s out. But they could buy another popular service and deliver a bigtime consumer branded experience. Hulu is the studios & networks attempt to control distribution and go around cable and telcos. Cable and telcos need to fight back and own one of these sites. Building one from scratch is one approach or they could probably buy one which would be faster and easier.
So which one of the major telcos or cable companies will do this first and put a real stake in the ground? Some will be leaders and some will continue to hope that their current vendor relationships will help them figure it out.
My two new favorite iphone apps
I’m writing this post using a new iPhone app called Tumble. It’s free and you can get it now. So far I really like it a lot. You can’t browse the Dashboard but you can post using any data type and you can upload photos from the iPhone camera roll.
I’m also using a brilliant new iPhone app called Summizer. It’s a 3rd party app that is essentially Twitter Search. I use it to track trends and also to search @bijan. It’s like the old version of twitter track but now as an iPhone app. And I really like how it can save multiple search queries. This app isn’t free but I think it’s worth the price of admission.
Update: holy smokes, with all due respect to Tumble, I just tried to Tumblrette thanks to the tip from Jacob and it rocks! You can browse the Tumblr Dashboard and get access to other cool stuff like tags and advanced post options.
California Sun – The Replacements
Heading to SF this evening for a few days. Look forward to seeing some new and familiar faces.
After the Gold Rush – Thom Yorke
Neil Young tunes and the brilliance of TY. Great combo. I could listen to this all day.
Mo’ News
I’m very excited to announce that Mo Koyfman has officially joined the team at Spark Capital. Mo brings a wealth of experience from his various roles at IAC and we love his endless energy and thoughtfulness. And he’s also a lot of fun (we made a mean badminton team at our summer party).
Mo will be based in Boston but helping us with our growing number of investments in NYC and elsewhere. He still has a place in NYC.
And naturally he’s on Twitter :)
You can follow him at @mokoyfman
Welcome Mo !
Thinking about the browser
FireFox has been my default browser for a long time. Fellow Mac users can remember just how bad life was when we had to use IE for the Mac. It’s was like we were second class web citizens and basically a complete after thought when it came to the web.
Then we got Safari which brought speed and a great look & feel.
Yet FF remained my default browser all this time.
When Google launched Chrome there were avid supporters and plenty naysayers. The supporters give Google credit for doing something more ambitious than just another browser. The naysayers had their doubts and worries. Time will tell if Google can fullfill their Chrome vision or not.
In the meantime, what do we want from our browser?
Here’s a bunch of random thoughts about the future of the browser
-All browsers should be open source. maybe that is shy way of asking for the OS to go open source. but seems to me that this just needs to happen.
-I’ve been wondering if Google should have proxy servers for Chrome users or not. Pros’s and con’s there. Proxy servers is how/why the Danger web experience works the way it does. More stuff in the cloud making the device smaller and simpler is a good formula.
-we need better online and offline sync. storiage is only going to grow in our devices. we gotta use it better as a friend to the cloud.
-I like Seth Godins point about the how the browser should get better as more of us use it. That is a very powerful notion. It’s the same notion that powers Me.dium Search. As more of us use the Me.dium FF extension it will make their search engine better and better.
-I don’t want my browser to become cluttered my various social net profile data. We need a better system for having the browser learn about me.
-anyone have stats of the Firefox extensions downloads and developers vs iphone app downloads & developers?
-here’s a funny thing about the iphone browser. My favorite web services on the iphone are actually custom apps and iphone optimized sites. Browsing sites that aren’t optimized for mobile just dont’ work great. Doesn’t matter which browser you use. Try this site on an iphone. Point it to www.bijansabet.com vs bijansabet.com/mobile. Big difference. And the iphone browser is the gold standard right now.
-Where will the best mobile browser come from in 5 years? Microsoft, Apple, Google, Firefox or some startup. I’m guessing it will come from a startup.
-Completele customization. e.g. I want to be able to take the nytimes.com and move stuff around. Cross out articles, markup articles, draw on things, save things to the cloud, rearrange items, etc.
-somehow commerce & payments needs to be swifter, simpler and faster. I use PayPal but it feels stuck. Bank Of America’s online banking service is a clunker.are we going to get frictionless mobile payments in 5 years that works everywhere?
-this cnet article from 2003 is interesting to me. basically they wrote off the browser years ago. That was the time when MSFT “won” the browser war. How about this quote from the article:
“The message is that the Web browser isn’t designed for applications; it’s designed for documents,” said Kevin Lynch, Macromedia’s chief software architect. “I think developers have done an amazing job of stretching what the browser is capable of doing. But we think there’s a need for an environment specifically designed for hosting applications.”
A lot has changed over the past 5 years.
What are the next 5 years going to look like?
So, Firefox needs to add functionality that makes the surfing experience better for all users when more users use Firefox.
I’ve been thinking a lot about what the browser could look like in 5 years. I’ll write up my thoughts later tonight or tomorrow.
3g iPhone is no longer in beta
Even though I’ve been happy with my 3g iphone it often feels like we’ve been beta testers since it came out. Apps crashed, flakey 3g connectivity, unusable address book search & frequently a sluggish keyboard. We’ve all been dealing with it.
But a day into the latest 2.1 release and I don’t feel like i’ve got a beta phone anymore.
This thing now works as it should. And I’m happy about that.