It takes only three minutes for Jon Stewart to channel Vint Cerf (Internet’s Obi-Wan Kenobi) comments to essentially make fun of the Google/Verizon proposal over network neutrality. And here we were writing post after post after post to essentially point out how Google changed its tune . The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c Internet Exploiter www.  Read More →

I would rather compete with Sony than compete in another product category with Microsoft. Steve Jobs said that to Time magazine soon after launching the iPod  in 2001. We didn’t pay much attention back then; after all, Apple was considered a dying vendor. But a decade later, the statement reads as prophetic. It signaled the start of a trend Gartner would later call “consumerization of technology,” or “the growing practice of... 

Mark Hurd could have been one of the greats –- at least from Wall Street’s perspective. He took a unruly mess that Carly Fiorna left in her wake, and turned Hewlett-Packard into one the biggest technology companies on the planet — leaving International Business Machines behind and daring to take a bite out of  Cisco Systems’ bread-and-butter switching business. Hurd should have been subject of Harvard Business School case study.... 

With opening weekend box office receipts of $62.8 million, it’s clear that the film “Inception” appeals to a broad audience, but Silicon Valley in particular is burning with love for this movie. And I can see why: I loved Inception because I am a geek and a techie at heart. Why does being a geek mean that this movie appeals to me?  True to the spirit of the movie, let me address that question on multiple levels. (Don’…  Read More →

From Andy Grove’s point-of-view on American jobs to Google’s growing power and the importance of solitude for leadership — here are some of the most interesting pieces I have read over the past few days. In particular, pay attention to the un-social nature of social networks; then go out and mingle. Andy Grove : What’s wrong with America and how we can fix it. (On this holiday weekend, find a moment to read what Grove... 

Web’s Big Shift : From Numbers to Relevance : Mahendra Palsule discusses how the advertising is shifting from CPC/CPM to relevance-oriented advertising. John Patrick, ex -IBM/ThinkPad :  ”The iPad as the beginning of the end of a lot of things as we know them today. It will not immediately replace laptops, netbooks, magazines, Kindles, and televisions — not immediately. Over time, however, it is easy …  Read More →

I was in New York for week of fun and learning. It was my chance to meet people outside the Silicon Valley hothouse and get their perspective on the world. Of course, it gave me a chance to read Michael Lewis’ new book, The Big Short . More importantly, the trip allowed me to not bother my team and allow them to peacefully …  Read More →

This week I read some interesting, some bizarre, some funny but mostly mind stimulating articles. Here is a short selection that includes a must read post about the rise of narrative in social networks and a fascinating presentation by graphic designer Nicholas Felton. The Future of Social Networks . It is storytelling – or narrative based services such as Foursquare and GoWalla. This should be at the top of your reading lists. Tapping... 

At our GigaOM company meeting, Simon Mackie , editor of WebWorkerDaily shared his views on why every weekend he publishes and shares a collection of articles & blog posts he had read over the week. Taking a cue from him and my friend Paul Kedrosky , I am sharing a list of articles/posts which I think you should read this weekend. Rolling Stone Magazine interviews Steve Jobs : One from the archives. This interview conducted in 1994 lays... 

As we recently reported, oDesk, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based online staffing startup, has been pioneering new ways for tech workers distributed around the globe to find meaningful work. The company also collects a lot of data on the prevalent tech skill sets that workers have all over the world. Here’s a look. We asked the folks at oDesk for a map-based illustration of the top two tech skill sets found around various countries. The data... 

It’s been a bloody decade for the music industry. Among artists, musicians, labels and startups, few can claim triumph. Expectations have been humbled and the list of failures has been long, as the broadband Internet has compounded the business’s inherent problems. The desperation has resulted in a blame game: labels blaming piracy , musicians blaming labels, innovative ideas killed by lawsuits , and consumers justifying file-sharing... 

Twitter bought Mixer Labs (12.23.2009) View 2. HTC became a smart phone hero (12.23.2009) View O2/Telefónica Buys Jajah for $207M (12.23.2009) View Blippy launched. View App analytics firms, Flurry and Pinch Media merged. View Google released its Open manifesto. View Incubators made a return. View Twitter might actually be profitable. View MyTown proved to be bigger than FourSqure and GoWalla. View In addition, GigaOM Pro has following wrap-ups... 

Tweeting, status updating…you don’t have to look very hard to see how the most popular social networks encourage a kind of groupthink among their users. If you’re a maverick, though, or your organization wants to customize social tools for internal use, here are eight free, open-source resources. Storytlr is an open-source “lifestreaming” application that was recently released on Google Code . It can collect and... 

It’s astonishing to consider how long it can take for technology that already exists, and isn’t all that expensive to execute, to come to market. Case in point are the following three existing technologies, which range from virtually guaranteed life-savers to huge conveniences — where are the VCs and the go-to-market moves? The Pocket Doctor. Great strides are being made when it comes to turning smartphones into devices that...