Regarding the pricing… did you notice it too? The low-end price is $349, but the high-end price starts at…? Not $9,000. Not $9,995. Not $9,999. $10,000. They rounded up the price! Even luxury brands like BMW round their prices down. What is the last mass-market product you can recall that was priced like that? This is a very interesting marketing move […]
Category Archives: Industry
PSA: Stop Releasing Hobby Bitcoin (or similar) Projects for Your Own Good
You’re in serious legal jeopardy if you release a virtual currency project into the wild, and not because the currencies themselves are legally murky. Rather, because you are liable for any wrong-doings that might arise from the use of your product or service. Corporations exist to shield their owners from legal liability. If you pay […]
Browser Wars… Wait, That’s Still Going on Right?
Rewind 5 years (to 2006). Ask any self-proclaimed nerd what the browser market shares were. Market share stats were like the stock market ticker of the Internet Nerds. Everybody knew about it, and everybody cared. But what’s the market shares today? Did you know that IE is below 50% by most measures? Did you know […]
Social Payments: the Future is Unified
Physical credit cards will soon be a thing of the past. Is the rest of the US startup industry ready? The next real-world cash-replacement could be powered by Facebook, Google, Apple, Square, Intuit, Paypal, or some other company hiding in the wings. There are a few obvious names in there, and then there are a […]
The Destruction of the Head Hunting Industry
This is a random thought that just popped in my head. With information becoming increasingly available, I’ve been thinking that the headhunting business will go through a major destructive phase in the next few years. There are two things the Internet changed: Better distribution of information on job openings Better distribution of information on candidates Definition: For […]
Google’s Real Goal Behind All Their Free APIs
Ever wonder why Google gives away so many web-developer tools? Tools that otherwise seem like complete money-and-bandwidth-pissing schemes (notice how most of these don’t directly show ads): Maps Widgets Charts API Open Social YouTube embeds Unified AJAX libraries Android General Search APIs This is all about obtaining browsing behavior in a long term bid to […]
Maybe Google Wanted to be Sued: YouTube and Plan B
No matter how you spun it, a lawsuit was waiting to pounce on YouTube. And when the lawsuit came, it would be from multi-billion dollar media conglomerates. Worst of all, people feared it would trigger a landslide of more lawsuits. Even still, Google bought YouTube. And now the billion dollar war has begun. I wondered: […]
The Future of iPods
In another blog prior to this one, I wrote about a prediction I have for iPods. Because I plan on fully retiring that blog in the near future, I thought I would port the post here to keep the prediction alive. Note: I wrote this post long before the recent flurry of iPhone headlines. Here’s […]
YouTube and Google?
Techcrunch just covered the possibility that Google is looking to buy YouTube for $1.6 billion. I think this acquisition makes a lot of sense. While it was pointed out that Google would be unafraid of the copyright issues, I think another reason why the acquisition is a safe bet is that Google can support the infrastructure […]