Thursday, May 30, 2002

Old Economy II This morning I put together a piece that I titled Old Economy. When I wrote it I was in a mindset that was fascinated by the enormous prices being bid for Qwest's yellow pages business. It didn't dawn on me until prompted that what I wrote sounded a little like a rebuttal to John Robb's excellent pieces New Economy and New Economy II. Nothing could be further from the truth. I don't agree with everything in John's essays, but what I wrote wasn't intended as a response. Until now. [Read the story...] 7:03:44 PM     Comments[]

Does anyone know if Sage, which now is known as Best Software in the U.S., has similar concerns about Microsoft's ownership of Great Plains? Sage wants Microsoft's Navision buy investigated. Sage fears Microsoft will bundle Navision accounting apps with Windows [InfoWorld: Top News] 5:58:32 PM     Comments[]

People Still Help Other People Workers Hail Chapel as Haven on Earth Workers who found a second home in St. Paul's Chapel near Ground Zero yesterday honored the volunteers who created a "haven of hospitality" in the historic house of worship. [NY Post: Regional] [Welcome to NPOToday.com - Presented by Changing Our World, Inc.] 2:18:28 PM     Comments[]

Mac Accounting Software MYOB grabs Mac accounting software market lead [MacCentral] 2:15:21 PM     Comments[]

Now, how did he do that? He's a radio user. His weblog shows up in the rankings list, yet he's hosted on another server under his own domain name. Nothing about his site resembles one of the "canned" templates that comes with Radio. How do you "map" all of Radio's fantastic features to a completely different layout? How do you like the new look? [From the Desktop of Dane Carlson] Dane, it looks great! 1:44:34 PM     Comments[]

Camera Clearance PC World: "Technology's unrelenting pace may frustrate those who always want to own the latest and greatest, but for everyone else it can mean better deals on older models. Nowhere is this more apparent than with digital cameras, whose prices are in a state of near free fall." [lawrence's notebook] 1:36:04 PM     Comments[]

Australia Resources We're gathering links and weblogs about Australia. Daughter #1 will be in The Gold Coast for about six months from June to December. If you're a frequent traveler to Australia, a native, a native with a weblog or simply have a tip, leave us a comment. We'll link back to you and try to develop a running dialog! 11:49:38 AM     Comments[]

Lessons learned as the dot com bubble burst might give UO a chance with this effort. AOL looks like the overpriced brand for dial-up access and their broadband strategy is nearly invisible. United Online launches Juno Broadband. The company starts up the high-speed services in Indianapolis and in Nashville, Tenn., as part of its deal to use cable systems from Comcast. [CNET News.com] 11:34:43 AM     Comments[]

Fuel Cells Energy Conversion Devices. "The implementation of fuel cells could be delayed years by recessions and slow moving auto companies." [The Motley Fool] Please Avoid VoiceStream 11:24:34 AM     Comments[]

Moderately Encouraging Air-cargo volume grew last month for the first time in more than a year, a promising sign for economic recovery. [Wall Street Journal] 10:21:28 AM     Comments[]

Digital Cameras Galore Fujifilm FinePix F401 Zoom. Fujifilm has today announced the FinePix F401 Zoom. This ultra-compact digital camera has a three times optical zoom lens and 2.1 megapixel Super CCD which produces a 3.9 megapixel final image size (2304 x... [Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)] 10:19:23 AM     Comments[]

P. J. O'Rourke. "With Epcot Center the Disney corporation has accomplished something I didn't think possible in today's world. They have created a land of make-believe that's worse than regular life." [Quotes of the Day] 10:17:19 AM     Comments[]

A View of CMS The perfect writing tool for bloggers. I spent yesterday in Melbourne, co-presenting a couple of sessions on Web Content Management at a seminar organized by Firmware Design, the Australian distributor of Ektron's CMS products.[Jonathon Delacour] Here's a sample paragraph from Jonathon's post. It's an eye opener for me. The text entry box in his weblog is probably defaulting to "source" input so that he simply pastes the HTML there. "Currently I write each post in StoryView, format it and add the links in Dreamweaver, validate it as XHTML in CSE HTML Validator, paste the HTML into Movable Type's entry text field, preview the post, and finally publish it. When I used Radio, I followed pretty much the same procedure." 10:04:53 AM     Comments[]

The Linkola Scandal No forgiveness. The Linkola scandal played out during my absence in Melbourne. In the comments on my original post: Jeneane Sessum admitted to trying to bribe me. [Jonathon Delacour] 9:54:52 AM     Comments[]

How to go WiFi at home! Wifi: How to Read More Blogs. Yet again LinkSys has made me a happy customer.  I keep hearing about Wifi from people and I'm jealous of Natrak who can blog from his deck so I took the plunge... A quick trip to my favorite mail order place, www.pcconnection.com, a wireless PCMCIA card and a WiFi hub and I'm now blogging from the kitchen table instead of my desk chair...Literally plug and play...  It took longer to restart Windows than it did to get connectivitity.  I just love LinkSys.  I've never had a bad LinkSys experience.  How many companies can you say that about?  And, no, I don't own stock (not even sure if they are public or not). [The FuzzyBlog!] 9:49:40 AM     Comments[]

Old Economy The Yellow Pages is a decidedly old economy way to make money. The difference in it and most "new economy" businesses is it's dependable revenue, cash and profit streams. Even in the on line database variations of the yellow pages, there is a clear business proposition with understandable value propositions to customers. The problem I have with the term "new economy" is that it smacks of something beyond free enterprise or capitalism. It makes no difference how "electrified" our transactions become or how fast information passes from one constituency to the next, supply and demand will prevail (absent government intervention). We may indeed see some new metrics with respect to the price elasticity of demand, but that's not "new economy." As consumers - corporate, retail or otherwise - get information we may discover that a unit drop in price yields 2X or 3X more demand. Those metrics simply show what is possible as we approach the theoretical underpinnings of a free market economy. Certainly, they are enabled by technology, but it's not apparent to me that we've entered any type of "new economy." Thresholds have been surpassed in other fields, but the basic science remains intact. Breaking the sound barrier, driving 30 miles to the gallon and communicating wirelessly via cellular communications were breakthroughs that altered our economy and capabilities in meaningful ways. Some practical barriers in the field of economics have been breached giving rise to our pursuit of the theoretical limits, but isn't it interesting that the yellow pages remains a business that carries a real value? Big Financiers Are Jostling to Acquire Unit of Qwest. The auction for the yellow pages business of Qwest Communications International is turning out to be this season's big private equity derby. By Andrew Ross Sorkin. [New York Times: Technology] 9:39:07 AM     Comments[]

Thomas Jefferson. "Do not bite at the bait of pleasure till you know there is no hook beneath it." [Motivational Quotes of the Day] Please Avoid VoiceStream 9:12:35 AM     Comments[]

VCP, 2 posts in one week! A Sampler Set to Tchaikovsky. American Ballet Theater reopened its box of choreographic pastries on Monday by once again offering its program of little goodies to music by Tchaikovsky. By Jack Anderson. [New York Times: Arts] 9:04:09 AM     Comments[]

© Copyright 2002 Steve Pilgrim.