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Tom Foremski is a former Financial Times journalist and the Founder and Publisher of Silicon Valley Watcher, which is an online news site reporting on the business of Silicon Valley and the culture of disruption.
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The "White Men wearing Google Glass" is a killer meme, a potential product killer.A friend who is a prominent geek, always a bit of a rebel and very comfortable with self-promotion, is very concerned about posting a picture of himself wearing Google Glass.He just got them and was super excited to finally have them, and he told all his social networks about it days in advance. When they finally arrived he told his friends he couldn't post a photo of ...
Google Glass has a promising future -- although not in the markets that Google thinks it's targeting: urban early-tech adopters -- they are a fickle bunch at best.Where Google Glass will make its mark and find a large and loyal customer base is in helping families and communities deal with the ravages of old age.We have a very large population of Baby Boomers. This is Generation A -- Aging on a massive scale, a population that's on a collision course ...
This quarter Amazon reported a US$82-million net profit on US$16.1-billion in sales for its fiscal first quarter and warned that it might lose more than one-third of a billion dollars (US$340-million) in its current quarter.The unremakable financial performance, and the warning of a large loss, didn't upset shareholders by much. According to the Financial Times:Its shares oscillated in after-hours trading once its results were released but settled down 2.9%.As Amazon steps up competition against giants such as Apple, against ...
I'm not a fan of Google Glass because I am absolutely certain it won't be socially acceptable to be video or audio recording people around you without their permission, or to be online constantly without others knowing. It's just creepy and people won't put up with people that wear them in their company.Andrew Chen, a San Francisco based entrepreneur, believes Google Glass will be a failure, he compares it to the Apple Newton. But he's more concerned about the tech ...
Jaron Lanier, an early internet pioneer, recently spoke with FT Business about the new digital economies, and why free information is not a good idea.Lanier says he was one of the first in advocating digitizing the music industry and he used to argue that free music would enable artists to make money from live shows and merchandising.He now says that this did not turn out well and that information should not be available for free because it doesn't create the ...
Alan Kay is one of Silicon Valley's top computer pioneers due to his work with colleagues at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) on a broad range of technologies in the early 1970s that directly led to the creation of the PC industry -- a $35 trillion global business.In this short video clip he speaks about Silicon Valley's current boom being based on innovation that was funded by the government and by private companies such as Xerox, over a span ...
Facebook users that click "like" on a variety of cultural subjects reveal a surprisingly large amount of information about themselves even if they've taken steps to tighten up their privacy settings.A recently published study by researchers at Cambridge University in the UK and Microsoft Research, used an automated analysis of 58 000 volunteers' Facebook "likes" to make highly accurate predictions about a person's private and very sensitive personal attributes.The authors of the study: "Private traits and attributes are predictable ...
With just weeks to go, Intel, the world's largest chipmaker has yet to name a new CEO even though it's had nearly four months since Paul Otellini made a surprise announcement that he would retire in May 2013.This is a very unusual situation because Intel has a long tradition of providing a clear CEO succession path well ahead of any changes.However, it appears that its board was surprised by Otellini's resignation in August. At 62 years old he was expected ...
Colleen Taylor at TechCrunch, reports that Yahoo! has changed the way it describes itself in its latest 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.She writes that it's a small change but symbolic.A far better description of Yahoo! would be a "technology media company." It uses media technologies to publish digital content and advertising. What's not "media company" about that?Technology companies develop and sell technologies, such as databases (Oracle), microprocessors (Intel), software as a service (Salesforce.com). What technology can you ...
Groupon CEO Andrew Mason was fired after more than four and a half years during which he managed to cash out US$30-million and holding more than 46-million shares of the public company, valued at nearly US$1.4-billion at its peak.In January, CelebrityNetWorth estimated his net worth had crashed to about US$230-million. Groupon's share price has continued to fall since January.Groupon's woes are not good news for the tech sector because it's broadly perceived as a tech company yet it's not.Groupon's fall ...
