The Collaboration Agreement

With the internet becoming more like an application than any variation of "pages", it leaves us with the feeling of longing... as if something is missing from this great landscape of ours but we just can't quite get our fingers on it. Well my friends, that thing that is missing has been peeking its head up every so often like a ground hog, just seeing if all is well and ready for it come out in full bloom - I call it "the collaboration agreement".

I call it is this for a few reasons, and it is not just one company who will be able to single handedly do this (contrary to what most CEO's might tell you). Rather this revolution if you will, is going to be a new face on how we interact and communicate to and with each other with this idea of an information cloud in between each and everything we do. It would not be a big jump to put some of the biggest tech companies hat into this ring, as they have already dipped their toes into the holy water , and developed technologies that will be the footstool of this internet face lift. This isn't "Web 2.0" either, which was just a loosely used term at a conference which has since snowballed into a standard term, especially amongst web developers. No, this is going to focus on the way that we communicate, it will probably infiltrate almost every nook and cranny of your life without you really realizing it, and what will be the business potential of this? Well these companies will "have your number" as it were about who you talk to, what you look at, the e-mails you send etc. In essence they will get a fresh step into your pysche to try and understand exactly how to market to your lifestyle better than any sales person could gather in a 5 to 15 minute window.

Some of the major players in this up and coming category are likely going to be:

Google
It would be easy to see why Google would be very likely a major player in this stage for a new internet, they are one of the most pervasive companies in the tech industry and show no signs of stopping their breath taking pace. They already have infiltration into e-mail with GMail, a search engine that topples pretty much everything else available on the market. They have made strides in productivity software capable of being on almost any platform via the web, and are busily working on an offline version that could sync with this online platform. Not only are they developing their own mobile OS as well, but they have openly talked about their hopes and plans for the soon to be open wireless spectrum, and how they hope that will bring cheap and easy to use "internet" to the masses through various devices.
In tandem with these mobile/communication and productivity efforts they are snapping up companies like Grand Central who provide you with a phone number that you can keep for life and it will ring all of your phone numbers that you store on it. This coupled with their Google Chat technology which operate SMS, instant messaging, and even VoIP; all backed by Google's massive infrastructure of servers, they easily be the delivery vehicle of our new communication.

Facebook
A lot of analysts love this company because they know that social networking has proven to be very viral, adaptive and a cash cow to boot. But what puts Facebook on top of other social networks is their end goal. Founder Mark Zuckerberg aims for his company to be a platform of "the social graph", and has most recently announced that they are creating a way for their members to take their information with them. "It is their information, they should be able to bring that wherever they want to". This gives Facebook an added value that is fluid, attractive and will easily align with the contextual sharing of each persons life with everyone else that they care about. They have already taken their platform to the mobile level with their customized site for the iPhone, which illustrates probably the best example yet of a web based mobile application. (http://iphone.facebook.com) Who is to stop them from creating a pervasive technology for each new device and possible use of their application? That is what makes Facebook so lethal compared to other social networks.

Ebay
The auction site Ebay has a lot to offer for the new web as well. Not only will there always be commerce on the auction level, which again could easily be tied into many different application, but they own the synergistic companies needed to be successful on each level. PayPal and Skype are among the top. Imagine a world where you can take a picture with your mobile phone of an item of interest, let an image reference search engine find similar items online, an up pops relavent Ebay listing shows up where you can buy on the spot with your PayPal, or call the seller real quick on their Skype account to get more information about that item? That is a great example of lifestyle infiltration that these types of technologies are capable of.

Microsoft
As much as everyone loves to hate the big company in Redmond that in reality kid of helped start the whole idea of a technology company, they are slowly but surely chipping away at the digital lifestyle with key products such the Xbox 360 which the original Xbox was just an entry product, and now the line is coming to fruition in their goal of getting a media hub into a majority of living rooms. It could easily grow into the center piece of a social epidemic with its community gaming, integration of Windows Live Messenger, VoIP and video chat but an exchange of both intellectual property as well as monetary funds could be a logical step in the evolution of the "xbox ecosystem". Their surface technology should also bode well for the social aspect of technology in business, entertainment, home use and other creative uses that have not even breached the mind yet.

Amazon
When Amazon first went public it was heralded as the end all form of commerce in the new concept at the time called the internet. It now provides an advanced back end that is able to take a customers viewing habits, and provide a proper product mix on their homepage which has increased the likely hood of their purchase. Amazons technology could be easily implemented in a very similar way of Ebay's, except instead of being a communication, search and purchase from an Ebay seller (which is normally used items), it could be for the new market where you could instead talk directly to a representative from Best Buy etc.

Apple
Lastly, with all of these new software technologies that increase communication and collaboration, consumers are going to need a physical vehicle to help bring all of these things together. While there will always be stiff competition in the hardware industry, one company always seems to be able to separate themselves from the masses because they take a good idea, make it better, sexier and marketable to the majority, it is these characteristics that will aide Apple in its continued success as a market leader for portable and other electronic devices that will be the facilitator of this new era.

All of the things listed above are the brass that will be needed for the new age of communication, and we can see them developing on a daily basis. It is reasonable then to see why these firms stock prices have been steadily rising, and should continue to do so. Expect to see a very interesting technological landscape for the next 5 years, as it should be some of the most intriguing in history. Even Bill Gates has said that we are in store for a very exciting few years that should even surpass "the computing era" that he so aptly help initiate.

Boohoo for Yahoo!?

Yahoo slipped today in the stock market following several analysts putting a "hold" rating on the stock and placing its target anywhere from$24 to $30. The upcoming projections which will be announced Tuesday after the market close are expected to not be stellar despite Yahoo!'s recent upgrade of their advertising technology named Panama, which allows advertisers to switch up the actual ad mid-stream as to try and eek out better conversions of their advertisements. Yahoo! has recently acquired several marketing/advertising companies, had a few major switch ups with their management and merged some of their advertising departments (search and display) which might all help Yahoo! in the long run. With Google's recent upswing in both nation and global search market share which handsomely beat out the Yahoo! network, it is hard to see any investor buzz over the next 6 months compared to what the stock has seen since August. Now might be the time to buy with their short term looking bleak and the potential for either long run growth or a potential takeover of the company by other tech giants.

Commanding Search Market Share

In a recent survey, Google now clearly takes the worldwide lead in search market share, beating out Yahoo!'s conglomerate of websites that came in second place with 8.5 Billion searches. Followed by the Chinese search engine Baidu.com who took a surprising low 3.2 Billion searches. As no surprise, Microsoft came in at 4th place worldwide with 2.1 Billion searches.
Googles total came in at a staggering 37.1 Billion out of the total 61 Billion made worldwide; they were able to gain 5 billion searches from their YouTube service alone. This with news of the AdSense enabled YouTube player, it seems as though Google is finally capitalizing on its 1.65 Billion Dollar investment to bring synergy to its market share efforts.

Tech Stocks Drag Market

In trading today, the bull run of tech stocks, along with most major gauges saw a sharp dive in value today as many investors apparently felt the buzz of upcoming earning reports to be much over heated. The glorious Google today had hit an all time high of roughly $641 at about mid day, only to finish out around a still staggering $610, the first relatively large drop the stock has seen in weeks. Amazon today found itself nestled around the $89 mark despite having hit a high of $95 a few days earlier - the highest price the stock had seen since its last major uprising back around year 2000. Are we finally seeing the results of an overheated market full of weary investors? I sure hope that this is not the first slide of a bubble burst as many analyst have been raising concerns about. With any luck, the upcoming announced earnings by the big players should help stabilize the market with reports of increased web advertising spending and consumption.

The World is Round!

I cannot believe this video. This lady really doesn't know if the world is flat or not! She even comments that if her kid asks if the world is round she would need to go with her kid to the library. What an idiot! Doh!

Why the iPhone Isn't a Monopoly

Forbes.com recently reported on a story about a man from California who is accusing Apple of having a Monopoly with the iPhone. The man claims that Apple has done such a crime by barring customers from using any other carrier than AT&T. Now I realize that when you sell a product to roughly 1.3 Million customers, that at least a few are going to be interested in doing some kind of modification to the device, but that should be at the customers own risk. Apple never advertised that the phone would be available through other carriers, and in fact has a 5 year exclusivity deal with AT&T as the sole provider for a reason -- that Apple gets a cut of the contract revenue (about 10% of it).

I personally hate how so many people are complaining that the product doesn't work correctly when they mess with it. Now Apple might be coming down a little hard by saying that if ANY 3rd party applications are installed that it voids the warranty, but those people are overlooking how most hardware companies treat their products. For instance with a laptop manufacturers, if you even install a different version of Windows than what came with it originally, guess what? Yup, no more warranty. Like that Xbox of yours, want it to do more than was advertised? Did something go wrong that was only due to a normal malfunction? Well, too bad, no warranty for you either. It may not be right, but it is just how the industry is working, so of course Apple would want to keep it within a certain provider.

Even other carriers who get exclusivity deals of some kind of another are very strict about their policy to unlock the device, or let it run on other carriers. Think about when the RAZR first came out. It was expensive, trendy, new and yes, exclusive.

For those who still think the iPhone is a monopoly, did Apple not create this "game changing" device themselves? And it is not like there isn't any competition out there either, since its release, all kinds of companies have been feverishly launching their "iPhone killers" so where is the barrier to entry? It seems as though consumers have a choice to buy it or to go with different phone and carrier altogether.

Also, is anyone really surprised by a closed loop system? Look at the iPod. Apple itself refers to it as "the iPod ecosystem" as in, its just them, no one else that works with it. Good luck easily getting an iPod to plug into another media store, or putting iTunes media onto another player -- it just doesn't work. By all respect, the iPhone is just a sexy, touchable iPod that happens to have phone functionality. Apple intends for people to look at their phones more like media devices, so it is safe to assume that they would treat with the same song and dance.

VMWare's Explosive Stock

The virtualization company VMWare has shown tremendous growth since they went IPO back in August. The stock opened up at a humble $48, but has since given significant returns for those lucky enough to have snapped it up on opening day, or even the time since then. In today's trading the stock hit a lofty new high of $104.16 after opening the day at $102.51. The stock has given consistent day after increases and shows no sign of dropping anytime soon.

The company is expected to launch an SMB virtualization kit by the end of this year while expanding its current small and medium business offerings. The last updated price target's for VMWAre were around $100, but with their new offerings, upcoming lineups and their continued performance; a new target of roughly $125 could easily be expected sooner rather than later.

Macbook Revision 10/26 ?

The Mac rumor site thinksecret.com recently announced that a Macbook revision is due closely following the OS X 10.5 announcement which is slated for October 26th. The rumored updates should be more evolutionary compared to revolutionary, and unfortunately are expected to only see some minor core updates, but lacking the much rumored aluminum Macbooks and/or the "Thin Book" version of the Macbook Pro.

The expected specifications include a processor upgrade from 2.0/2.16 upgraded to 2.16/2.33 on the Santa Rosa Architecture. That includes 64-Bit support, up to 4gb of RAM and an 800 Mhz FSB. Thinksecret reports "improved graphics performance" which would likely suggest that the Macbook's might finally get an upgrade to the Intel X3100 chipset that windows machines running vista have had for a while. This should result in much smoother multimedia on the Macbooks. Adios Intel GMA 950!
Note: The last Macbook update was May 15th, 2007.

In other news, Apple is not expected to be making any improvements to their professional line of mobile devices, perhaps a firmware update for the iPod/iPhone line for an extended feature set with OS X 10.5?

Why Apple's Business Model Will Eventually Change [Updated]

Ah, the beloved Apple. They seem to be masters at keeping themselves in the news on a daily basis, capitalizing on the market buzz through submitting all kinds of patents, keeping their elusive demeanor about upcoming products and even having their legal team all over the rumors sites ordering both real and fake depictions of upcoming product pictures to be taken down which just sends the whole community into a tizzy.
When Apple was on its death bed a few years back before Steve Jobs brought forth the iPod which at the time really did help bring forth a new form of how we consume media Apple had a small fan base that would alway stick with them because they did take care of their customers in respect to support for their products. The customer was king because there were so few of them that Steve really could not afford to lose any of them. But as their market share grew, and they more or less cornered a market their respect for the customer, and the level of quality (components wise) has been falling.

Take their most recent launches of products for instance. Each iPod appears to be riddled with an array of hardware issues, especially when it comes to their screens which had bright easy to read screens and ease of functionality is what Apple built their iPod business on, why would they sacrifice just a few cents per unit at that kind of quality cost? The most disturbing though is that they are now artificially crippling their systems, and ignoring what the users really want. The iPod Touch for example had the Calendar add/edit functionality removed when it was even originally touted on their website. Why would Apple remove such simple functionality when it was already in the code that they ported over from the iPhone?

The iPhone animal has been beaten to a pulp, but with the locking, bricking, and other shady events occurring, a consumer must ask if they really want to drop that kind of money on a device that will just be continuously restricted and keep them locked out of innovation unless it gets Apple seal of perfection.

Update: Apple has since followed up with the barrage of consumer feedback and will be bringing out an SDK to allow 3rd party (approved) apps onto the iPhone. A good step in the right direction.

The most influential reason as to why their business model is going to have to change has actually been their best move so far. By getting their bread and butter, their mac line, onto Intel architecture, Apple has thrust themselves into the same fury of technology advancement that Windows users have been a part of since day one. By running on X86 hardware instead of IBM's PowerPC architecture, it will become very apparent when they are behind the times. Their product refreshes will be larger and more frequent, these alone will help keep them distinguished from the rest of the industry. They no longer control the entire ecosystem as much as they would like to think. They are in the hardware business, and sometimes they need to remember that when locking things together.

The Google Effect

The search engine Google as really taken our culture by storm. We no longer have to sift through pointless information to quickly grasp the answers in which we seek. As any college student could easily proclaim, today's upper level courses (even that of high schoolers) could not be completed without the aide of the nation's number one engine of search. It has helped meld together productivity with curiosity, and when used in conjunction with Google's other services finding that one answer, or the perfect restaurant is just a few clicks away.

Many people see Google as nearing their topping point of creativity, and expect to see a large, sloth like company who makes only incremental changes. This view could be justified if you look at the fact that for a while Google was fulfilling its "king of the hill" appetite by consuming roughly one company per week. But I see a different company; one who while easily capitalizing on the lucrative search market has a lot left on their business agenda. Why stand still when innovation has lead the two founders down the road of being catapulted towards the top of the Forbes 400. Both are tied for 5th and 6th place on the list valued at $18.5 Billion. Also notable is that they are by far the two youngest amongst the top 25 at only 34 years old.

Sorry ladies, they are already spoken for in case you were wondering.

The next market for Google seems obvious; the multi-colored giant wants to be in your pocket. They want to deliver their ad supported gMail to you during every waking moment. Which conveniently would also allow you to cleanly find and book that nearby Seafood place that boss keeps telling you about. With mobile media expected to blow up over the next few years, especially that of mobile search, you could expect just about anyone except for Google to be sitting still. The product that they will actually bring to market has been speculated greatly, some expected Google to directly challenge the iPhone, I believe this is completely off for a few reasons.
1. Google already has themselves nestled neatly inside the iPhone, and while it is a game-changing device, it's really not where the mass market is at. In addition to the majority of the market not being with the iPhone, the money is not even really in the device itself. It is in the implementation of the software on the device which is where Microsoft is king, and just as we see in other sectors, Google likes to take Redmond head on because they believe they can do the job better, or in a manner easier to use -- in most cases they are spot on.
2. The most likely of events; They are bringing out a modified version of Linux for handset devices that will free many mobile carriers of their hard to use, costly software. But most importantly a Linux derivative would help standardize a thin and light way of using your mobile device that should greatly benefit consumers the same way their wide spread, lightning fast web search revolutionized the way we use the internet.