Industry-specific forecasts, results, thematic plays.
Ars Technica (via Slashdot) reports that Jim Griffin, a consultant to Warner on digital music, is calling for the blanket licensing of music.
Taking music without paying for it may not be ‘morally voluntary,’ Griffin says, but he admits it has become ‘functionally voluntary.’ No civilized society, he adds, can endure ‘purely voluntary payment for art, [...]
The NYT recaps the newfound enthusiasm for touch screens sparked by Apple. They note that Elo TouchSystems (Tyco), Perceptive Pixel, and N-trig are all hoping to cash in.
But Joseph W. Deal, the president and C.E.O. of Wacom Technology, which makes touch screens and electronic input tools and recently announced its own multitouch technology, issues a [...]
The US FDA has approved a new batch of flu vaccine for the coming Northern winter:
This year’s approved vaccines and their manufacturers include Afluria by CSL Limited, Fluarix by GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals, FluLaval by ID Biomedical Corp. of Quebec, FluMist by MedImmune Vaccines Inc., Fluvirin by Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics Limited, and Fluzone by Sanofi Pasteur [...]
I’m talking platform leverage — the sort of leverage you can get in a proxy battle by putting a page like this in front of millions of people, many of whom may in fact own your stock, the week before the meeting, for free:
Or, the leverage in media you can get by interjecting [...]
It is amazing to see how stupid some companies can be. The technical definition of stupid is acting in a way that disadvantages both yourself and others.
Hasbro has forced Facebook to remove the popular but unauthorised version of the Scrabble game called Scrabulous — which was written by two Indian brothers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla [...]
CNET and others cover the launch of another incredible new Rutan design for Branson – White Knight Two. This is one plane:
Scaled Composites (Rutan’s company) has revealed (pdf) the “WhiteKnightTwo” (WK2) carrier aircraft that will ferry SpaceShipTwo and thousands of private astronauts, science packages and payload on the first stage of the Virgin Galactic sub‐orbital [...]
Cuil, a new search company with all the right principals, is struggling with it’s launch.
…with 120 billion Web pages, Cuil’s search index is larger than any other… Instead of showing results as short snippets of text and images with links, it displays longer entries and uses more pictures… Cuil, which has about 30 [...]
The global mobile handset market grew 15% in the second quarter to 297 million units… Nokia (NOK) continued to dominate the market, with 41.1% share, up from 40.9% in the first quarter, shipping 122 million phones. Samsung followed with 15.4% share, with Motorola (MOT) holding onto the third spot at 9.5%, followed by [...]
Cringely does the Moore’s Law math and works out that faster television video decoders (both hardware and software improvements) combined with higher bandwidth will create a world where each US TV has access to a real-time, customised 1080p (HD) video feed by 2015, and “commercial television as we know it will die”:
Ten years ago, the [...]
An interesting interview of Amory Lovins on Democracy Now in which he argues that nuclear, far from being a solution to energy dependence and climate change for the USA is a huge distraction – displacing more effective and profitable alternatives. He is very good (and has been for at least 30 years).
Less than two percent [...]