The epidemic spread of the information age has ensured that there are far too many good articles on the web to comment on. Even skimming through them all has become a considerable challenge. Therefore I decided to take a short-cut and just start posting our favorite picks from the endless fountain of information.
- New bill may give Obama ability to shut down Internet (The Industry Standard)
- You can soon use iPhone to monitor your health (VentureBeat)
- The management gospel according to the Godfather (PEhub)
- Teens rather spend on cheap entertainment than food (AdvertisingAge)
- Microsoft running behind the train again, launching its own Twitter (Silicon Alley Insider)
- Gutenberg meets on-demand books - Espresso Book Machine (Guardian)
- Confessions of an Entrepreneur’s Wife (Inc Magazine)
- Michael Douglas & Oliver Stone to make “Wall Street” sequel (Huffington Post)
Stay tuned, more to come …
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My friend Harles Mägi has been pursuing his passion for music and entrepreneurship through his event promotion agency HiMusic Agency. After a several smaller classical music events the Agency is now staging a very interesting series of concert experiences that combine opera and jazz elements in the original production entitled “Femme Fatale.”
The production is rather unique as it combines everyone’s favorite scenes from classic operas such as “Carmen”, “Don Quichotte” and “Samson and Dalila,” but instead of a symphony orchestra there are four saxophones. The intriguing narrative of each man confrontation with his Femme Fatale combined with a mix of musical cultures makes this a very innovative approach to opera that is sure to win new fans to the genre.
The star of the performance is undoubtedly Yaroslava Kozina - a raising European opera star. Kozina has quickly won acclaim for her performances on stages of Paris, Lyon, Berlin, Frankfurt, Bremen, Strasbourg and other European cities. In 2006, the highly respected European music publication „Opern Welt“ conferred her the title “Young Singer Of The Year”, noting her unique velvet-soft timbre, great acting talent, captivating individuality and charming temperament. In 2007, the singer was awarded the coveted „Young Wagner Singer Grant“.
The concert has received positive reviews in the local press (for those of you that can read Estonian the article can be found here). I recommend seeing the performance (14 April in Tallinn or 17 April in Tartu) and experiencing innovation in this cultural arena.
yrjo entrepreneurship innovation
At a recent speaking event in Estonia I reminded the enreprenurs in the audience that while it is important that they contribute creative online content to better promote themselves and their businesses - everything they say can and will be used against them at some point.
In case there was still doubt - here is a California Appeals Court decision to cement that truth. Cynthia Moreno, a student at UC Berkeley, posted on her MySpace page an online rant about how much she thought that the neighboring town Coalinga sucked - stating among other thing “the older I get, the more I realize how much I despise Coalinga.”
Low and behold, the Coalina local paper sensing an opportunity to rabble rouse printed the rant in the paper - which naturally caused a flood of hate-mail directed at Moreno and her family. According to the complaint, Moreno’s father’s 20-year-old business in Coalina lost so much money that it had to be shut down and the family had to move out of town.
Ms. Moreno sued the newspaper for invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress - claiming that the writing was intended for just her MySpace friends.
The California Court of Appeals decided that even if Moreno intended the information for a limited audience, there is no expectation of privacy online. The ruling by Judge Levy dismissing the privacy claim states that:
Cynthia’s affirmative act made her article available to any person with a computer and, thus, opened it to the public eye Under these circumstances, no reasonable person would have had an expectation of privacy regarding the published material.
So the moral of the story is again that everything you post of Twitter, MySpace and Facebook is public information which your employers, business partners and the public in general will see. Think before you post!
yrjo internet Facebook, MySpace
In an announcement recently posted on Amazon’s website, the company revealed that it will no longer pay referral fees to Associates that send them traffic through keyword bidding and other paid search results on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and other search engines.
Amazon announced the following:
After careful review of how we are investing our advertising resources, we have made the decision to no longer pay referral fees to Associates who send users to www.amazon.com, www.amazon.ca, or www.endless.com through keyword bidding and other paid search on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and other search engines. As of May 1, 2009, these paid search Associates will not be paid referral fees.
The reason I bring this up is that I have seen references in some software startup business plans to earning revenue from the Amazon Associates program. So - make sure you deleta that from the business model and revenues before sending out business plans and powerpoint slides to your Angels and VCs
yrjo internet
Recent study about men’s preferences says that video games are taking over our bedrooms!
You can almost hear how the world suddenly polarizes into two by eliciting masculine yodeling from Mars inhabitants and distressed booing from femine Venus. An intergalactic balance and harmony is yet again at risk!
But not so fast! Another study concerning women revealed that they would also prefer virtual fun over pristine physical romance. Although, while men have found their niche in video games, women opted for more generic and socially acceptable assortment - simply surfing the web. I quote:
The study was commissioned by Intel and shows that 46-percent of all women would rather give up sex for two weeks than the internet for two weeks. When looking at the 35-to-44-year-old age group, that number increased to 52-percent.
There, it has been said! Now that we have evidence from both sexes (although semi-anecdotal, but I still choose to belive it), could we just throw away the masks, raise the iron curtain and liberate ourselves from antique world order so that we could embrace the newly found balance?
rait games, internet games, internet
An Estonian entrepreneur and CEO at Resta Ltd. Baldur Kubo thanked me recently for speaking up for the “free” business model associated with the long-tail effect of the internet. I think providing quality free content in nitch markets is one of several viable ways of finding loyal pre-qualified customers for your business.
This got me thinking about the veritable cornucopia of web apps - and how can one actually make money in this e-gold rush.
In investigating who makes money on line I found a a very useful overview by Box UK regarding the most popular business models used for generating money with web applications. Their staff went through the Webware 100 Top Web Apps for 2008, analyzingand classifying their business models. Turns out that of the most popular business models:
- 34% use Advertising,
- 12% use a Variable Subscription model, and
- 8% sell Virtual Products (typically digital downloads),
- 8% sell Related Products (typically a large software company offering a free product to attract you to their platform) and
- 8% employ a Pay-Per-Use model.
You can see the complete survey results at Box UK.
yrjo internet
It has been over 6 months since the last time I purchased a CD. Meanwhile this does not mean that there is no music in my life. I share music with my friends, I listen to samples online and watch videos on You Tube. I also regularly purchase audiobooks on Audible.com clear proof that I am willing to pay for mp3 files. Nevertheless, despite repeated attempts - I have been foiled every time I have attempted to LEGALLY download music from iTunes in Estonia.
Despite large displays and ads for the iPhone in Estonia advertising how to “easily” download music and movies to the iPhone - there is no LEGAL way to do this. EMT (the only authorized seller of iPhone in Estonia) store representatives taught me how to ILLEGALLY sign up with a Finnish address and trick the system with a foreign credit card or gift card number in order to be able to pay for my music (a lot of effort required to get them to take my money).
Meanwhile, Google has provided Chinese consumers with a great solution - free music. Recognizing the reality that Chinese internet users were downloading free music illegally anyway, Google teamed up with the music industry to provide music files for free to everyone, and funding the service by advertising revenue from the site.
President of Google China - Kai-fu Lee said to the New York Times that “We hope this will move the landscape to a legal model.” The Times reports that according to IFPI (representing 1400 record companies in 72 countries) 99 % of the online downloads of music in China are illegal.
However, it turns out that there is more than just moral obligations and desire to bring justice to Chinese online society behind Google’s decision. Google has been consistently loosing ground to Baidu, which has now over 60 % market share of the Chinese search engine market. The most significant driver of Baidu’s growth has been offering music search services and linking to sites that offer free downloads of music.
This kind of a dual system of treating European music downloaders as criminals and blocking music downloads from UK YouTube (subsidiary of Google), while creating a free searchable and downloadable database of music for Chinese users smacks strongly of hypocracy. Looking strictly at the situation - Google seems to be saying that in order for us to get the same opportunity - we need to start using alternative search engines and downloading more music illegally.
I for one, I am starting to do more searched on Mahalo.com - a very interesting and successful human powered (search results prepared by people) search engine started by Internet entrepreneur Jason Calcanis.
yrjo software iPhone, iTunes