June 2009
32 posts
“Transformers DO NOT “morph.” They “TRANSFORM.” Please...”
– The Ultimate Spy Plane | Arts & Culture | Smithsonian Magazine
Great story about the SR-71 Blackbird, a spy plane created in the 1960s. The writer briefly mentions that the Blackbird appears in the latest Transformers, eliciting this hilariously aggrieved comment.
One interesting point about...
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RT @felixsalmon RT @rose22 Someone needs to invent an application that finds which open browser tab is playing the music!
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Odd news about Pirate Bay’s sale. New owners want to take legit. Oookay. Is the beta streaming service part of the deal? http://bit.ly/7FqN3
At Loeb biz journo awards. WSJer says only twinners from paper (all knew in advance) were allowed to attended. Bad sign when WSJ rationing.
“GE will take advantage of a pool of out-of-work engineers and scientists as the...”
– GE to Build Michigan Center, Creating 1,100 Jobs (Update1) - Bloomberg.com
You’ve got to love something like this: GE investing $100 million in a Detroit R&D operation. Perhaps this will stop The Road-like trail of Detroiters fleeing the state. On the other hand, with a 14% (!)...
WatchMy interview with Better Place’s Shai Agassi at Wired’s Disruptive Business conference last week.
“Our goal is not to build a car company,” Shai told the crowd. “Our goal is to end oil.”
My story on Shai’s attempt to turn the auto world electric can be found here.
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Old news to anyone following Citi, but I just noticed that 24% of its stock is shorted. Insane. That’s a $4 billion bet against Pandit.
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Can mobile bring dollars back to the content...
It’s become a common complaint from media execs that they screwed up on the Web. Their sites are all beautiful and people come in droves, etc. But users, of course, expect everything to be free. Information may want to be free, but the publishers and producers didn’t have to make it quite so easy. Water wants to be free, too, but you don’t see any fewer $1.50 Fiji bottles on...
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The silver lining in the recession? The fact that the best young minds might not be so attracted to Wall Street. http://bit.ly/sujby
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I’m hoping WSJ’s “somewhat confusing” http://bit.ly/96wOq story about Iran govt using Nokia gear was just it staking a claim. More to come?
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Why the business community should back health care...
NBC’s First Read had a nice little take on the politics of reforming health care: So let’s get this straight: Barack Obama won last year’s presidential election by seven percentage points (53%-46%) campaigning, in part, for some form of universal health care; his party is about to have 60 votes in the Senate; polls show the country is receptive to overhauling health care; and...
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RT @TimOBrienNYT Siebel abandons tech investing. ‘I just do not see the kind of innovation we saw in the last 2 decades’ via Barrons
Your Congress at work: New legislation, the Securing Cabin Baggage Act, seeks to legally limit the size of carry ons. http://bit.ly/k15MV
I agree with Greenberg http://bit.ly/c9TfL. Looks like the Financial Reg Reform could bring massive data transparency: http://bit.ly/nRTKE
“My life is a series of interruptions that are interrupted by more interruptions.”
– From a source. Sounds about right.
Doing final prep for the WIRED Biz conf Monday. I’m on stage w head of PayPal, then founder of EV infra co Better Place. Any q’s for them?
What recession? RT @bldgblog Hermes has begun breeding its own crocodiles to meet rising demand for leather bags: http://is.gd/Z6Ba
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Should be tons of biz cosplayers at #Wiredbiz. RT @KatManalac In the trenches of http://tinyurl.com/nsxk6l, then lighter fare at Comic Con.
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Video of the coup in Albany yesterday http://bit.ly/PjXGl It always amazes me when people preach the need to give power to the states.
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Excited about WIRED Disruptive By Design biz conf. http://tinyurl.com/m6bxlo I’m on with Better Place and PayPal CEOs. Any q’s for them?
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For those of us stuck on Window Mobile, this is a godsend. RT @NewTeeVee Skyfire: Mobile Video Done Right http://tinyurl.com/rbevqf
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XMPP — yeah, you know me
I’m just starting to get up to speed on XMPP, which is an open source technology at the heart of Google Wave. It seems likely to be at the center of the new, Twitter-inspired race for real-time everything (search, publishing, GPS coordinates, etc). XMPP is, as far I understand, a much smarter, more active version of RSS and has been powering Jabber and Google Talk for years. I’ve heard...
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The future of Saturn
I was excited to read this morning that Penske Automotive is buying Saturn. I was always perplexed by GM’s treatment of Saturn as a step-child brand rather than one all of its other companies should be modeling themselves after. The division had interesting styling, a committed workforce and, for awhile, passionate customers. The book Building Strong Brands had a whole chapter on...
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The key is remembering to separate your darks from...
Knowledge@Wharton has a nice piece on the rise of innovation in China. As with every other thing that China has set its mind to, it’s moved at a ridiculous clip from being a place that makes what the world takes (sorry, Trenton), to a place that copies and steals what the world makes, to creating and making what the world buys. (That series really went off the rail there at the end.)
I...
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Target gadfly Ackman goes on 5k word Nocera rant. “Every word is important,” he says. Got to try that line with my eds. http://bit.ly/PDBUR
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JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon reads aloud mock letter to Geithner. Starts with “Dear Timmy” and gets snarkier from there. http://bit.ly/a5ycz
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Whoa—the new ambassador to France? Charlie Rivkin, the CEO of WildBrain, which produces Yo Gabba Gabba! The NYT story doesn’t mention this, calling him just “an entertainment mogul.” But those of us with young, TV-loving kids know he’s more than just some bundler. He’s the guy who dreamed up paid for Biz’s Beat of the Day. I can only hope that will soon...
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The Chinese Hulu seems much more awesome than the...
I heard a rumor today that Disney was going after the Chinese online market by releasing films and TV shows to a site called VV8. At this point, it’s all conjecture, but I wanted to see whether this was the Chinese version of Hulu — the site of choice (so far) for Disney in the U.S.
Couldn’t find anything Disney related, but mostly because I stopped looking when I stumbled on...