Tired of noisy surroundings? Well, you can quiet your boss easily with Bose's noise-cancellation headset. Excellent for customer service personnel - makes it so much easier to smile for the complaining customers :-) Technology-review covers: "The Sound of Silence".
Do you want Wlan with your Big Mac? I have hard time figuring out who would use Wlan with McDonald's. The target group is different from Starbucks and other coffee shops. Well, I did not understand many of the previously hyped start-up biz models either. Has anyone seen Wlan bundled with a movie ticket?
Ever bother with the currently playing music since you just cannot remember the artist or the track? Just make sure that you have still some 30sec of the song left and you're saved. An UK-company has released a nice service that's rolling out across the Europe.
The latest Economist was pretty skeptical about the VC industry. According to the article the downfall is not quite over for VCs. The whole industry should still shring into a half. Also the latest IRR reveal cases are not that important or significant. 'Even some of the rocket scientists have difficulties of comprehending the basis for the figures'... Well, I could not agree more. Until the exit has been done everything is just pure speculation. VCs have a plenty of different reasons to back their current portfolio valuations whether in their top or bottom range of the valuation scale.
Recently I visited a publicly listed company that had its IPO on the boom times. The stock price has had only one direction even since - down. They listed around 3€ and the current going rate is only 0.20€. The only way is up? Well, the atmosphere in the company was pretty forward-looking. Lots of management issues behind but the product is solid and a favourite of clients. The oldtimers of the ten years old tech company had a common understanding about the founders and their high flying ideas: passé. Time for real business and forget all the great ideas. Only deeds, please. Also the clear message from the senior management was that they are going to forget the quartal capitalism and concentrate on the business. 'Cook the books' times are over and only the real doers are left behind. Well, that was the message for the VC industry as well. Value added, please: put your hard paid MBAs for the dirty operational work...
Well, tough times but never mind. One should enjoy life still. It's been a hard day's night...
Sorry for the slow posting. I'm on holiday and thus I will drop a note just once in a while.
Camera phones are the latest boom in Asia. People find new innovative ways to use their phones. In Japan it's more handy to snap a picture of a newspaper than to buy a copy. Well, newsstand people are not that impressed... Some Mid-Year review of handset vendors by Steve Wallage.
I'm a great believer of India in IT field. BusinessWeek has a piece that confirms that nowadays even local people are becoming convinced despite China's fast growth path. SAP is also speeding up their presence.
I run into Ryze the other day. Looks better networking site than another start-up called LinkedIn. Is it in the air or am I the only one who bumps into networking stuff recently? A few weeks ago I was 'nominated' for this historical society of international professionals. Maybe the bull market is close since people feel to get right contacts in order to get going. Hope so.
Always-ON has released their choice of TOP 10 VCs for 2003. The list seemed pretty US focused but at least 3i from UK was included.
My excitment for RFID chips seems to get hotter and hotter. Rafle Needleman probes the emerging area from a musical point of view. A friend of mine is in the crime prevention business in South Africa. He opened my eyes for this massive industry: stolen cars, illegal spare parts, pieces of art, counterfait goods (gems, garments, CDs) etc. Funnily enough, there are even factories who are specialised on counterfait BMW spare parts such as bonnets, doors and so on... Almost all areas of life would benefit from unique identification no matter whether the things are broken into aparts or sold as complete items. Currently the tracking and proving are the heel of Achilles for crime prevention.
More about the Wi-Fi boom (or to-be-expected-bust). Hotels I understand and coffee shops also but otherwise I have difficulties to understand the user charged business model. Free Wi-Fi based on sponsoring and advertising will be a killer when smaller devices catch up the technology. I don't mind using my mobile device with Wi-Fi while on metro or in a railway station. But would I open my laptop and start to play around with my Outlook or Opera - too lazy for that.