Mittwoch, 13. April 2005

Macromedia Flash for Phones. There's an interesting interview with Stephen Elop, CEO of Macromedia, in USA Today about the company's plans to penetrate the mobile market with Flash. [Just in case you're wondering, Flash is the software that allows primarily, PC's currently to quickly run animations and games.] Macromedia has been eying the potential of Flash for mobiles for a while and has already had success in the Far East - DoCoMo and KDDI were early converts. But Nokia and Samsung have just signed up to produce Flash phones too. This means that Sun and Qualcomm now have another serious competitor to Java and Brew, respectively. And since, Flash is meant to be easy to develop applications for and I can tell you from first hand that Java is a bitch, maybe Macromedia have a good chance of succeeding. From a business model perspective, Macromedia are also very excited. Flash for PC's is certainly a nice business, albeit B2B. They make their money by giving away the reader free and selling software to developers. But with mobile, they can sell a licence per phone (c. 50c - $2). Market size 890 million per annum by 2008, according to IDC, which adds up to a nice slug of profit. I'm also pretty amazed that Microsoft seems to be allowing serious players into this market without attempting a challenge of their own. [The Mobile Technology Weblog] 6:31:31 PM    comment []

Web 2.0 News: Firefox, VCs, MSN Spaces. A daily shot of news from your favourite Web 2.0 blog. Each item has a main link, one or two lines of R/WW commentary, plus views of the story from other bloggers. Start-up building on top of Firefox ZDNet reports that a company called Round Two is building "a new crop of products and services that will enhance your Firefox experience." Views: Slashdot: "...they are offering extension support and bundling for corporations which want to adopt Firefox" Round Two website - doesn't have any products yet, but they're sponsoring a number of Firefox extensions and add-ons. My comment: This is a great example of using the Web as a platform for business. It's been said before that Open Source provides opportunities for new businesses to bundle OS products into user-friendly packages, along with providing support. This looks like such a play - and they'll add new products to the mix too. Venture Capitalists Bullish AP reports: "Venture capitalists ended 2004 on their most profitable run since the dot-com bust, continuing a gradual recovery that has coincided with the stock market's renewed interest in young companies." My comment: If VCs are happy, then we're all happy :-) There don't seem to be as many IPOs these days though - start-ups are more interested in getting bought by a bigco. A sign of a more risk-averse Internet climate nowadays? Volvo Sponsors MSN Spaces According to the press release, Volvo partnered with Microsoft's blogging service "to reach users who are engaged in telling the stories of their lives, mirroring the "Volvo for life" brand campaign." Views: Andy Lark comments: "Maybe that's a reason not to use MSN Spaces - the fact you don't get to choose who is advertising in your personal space." Steve Rubel sees "three distinct groups of blog advertisers forming". My comment: MS and Volvo think these adverts on MSN Spaces will "add value to consumer's experience". Hmmmm. Well I guess it's better than all those pop-up ads we used to get in the Tripod days ;-) Other Web 2.0 Links Today The Aggregation Kool-Aid - points out that aggregation is only part of the solution; relevance/matching are the key problems to solve. Is the Internet Under-Hyped? - sure, we can always use more exaggeration and overstatement... Yahoo! News Adds Custom RSS Feeds - this was from last week, but I didn't mention it at the time. Yahoo one-ups Google News (which has email notifications, but it's not the same). Google top home for blogs - Google's Blogger.com, LiveJournal.com and Xanga.com lead the blog authoring tool market. MSN is about to crash the party though, driving their fancy volvos no doubt. [Read/Write Web] 6:28:11 PM    comment []

Hook you up with whoever and whatever's local. MEETRO is an online meeting place that lets you find new friends, events, restaurants, etc [^] based on wherever you are when using MEETRO. You can chat on AIM, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ with Meetro users in your vicinity, whether you're at home or in a foreign city, find out what's going on in their area, share photo gallerie, etc. First time i read about an idea that might make me love IM! Via del.icio.us/tag/socail_software. [we make money not art] 6:24:46 PM    comment []