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October 2005 Marketing Archives

Friday, October 07, 2005

Hoo-Ray For Blu-Ray High Profile Media Battle Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD

Sony, Dell, HP, and Apple are just a few of the Blu-Ray Big Guns up against Toshiba and various others including Microsoft and Intel that support the HD-DVD format. Movie Studios with the exception of Sony of course, are supporting both formats.

One key element at the center of this debate is "Managed Copy", or the ability of the owner of that DVD to be able to copy their movies to a hard drive, or other backup device. Many any of the popular Multimedia Home Theater products such as Media Center Pc's that store many movies for distribution in a residence via network, would require the movie to be copied onto the local drive on the machine. I cannot help being amused by Microsoft supporting a product because it CAN be copied.

Earlier I read a Post that detailed why the author thought Blue-Ray would win out. It's a great post and a good read but I have to disagree.

The studios and everyone else can support Blu-Ray, Sony can throw all the marketing muscle around it likes but in the end the consumers will decide they like the freedom of the HD-DVD standard. Blu-Ray may stick around for Sony's own devices Play Stations etc..But HD-DVD will be victorious in the long run as the format of choice for the consumer.

People do not want to be forced to connect their players to a phone or data line. I have already seen blogs about how Blu-Ray players may punish people for altering them, what a fun thing for the consumer! Imagine you can purchase a player and have it "disabled remotely".

Making things even more interesting is the news today that China is working on their own next generation DVD format. Will this 3rd format sweep in and take over? Will the ties HD-DVD supporters reportedly have with Chinese manufactures give them an advantage?

This is one media battle that is just getting fired up, and it's one I think we are all influencing and will play a HUGE part in shaping in the future. Enjoy.

Posted By Jason Dowdell at 11:58 AM
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Thursday, October 06, 2005

Aquistion News: Weblogs, Inc. Gobbled Up By AOL

AOL Gobbles Up WeblogsInc for $25 Million

This has been an interesting week for aquisitions, yesterday Upcoming.org was snatched up by search engine giant Yahoo! and today all of Blogland is abuzz with news of AOL aquiring Weblogs Inc. As usual everyone wants to be the first to get the word out. Here are just some of the TOP related posts from Google's Blogsearch and Technorati.

You've gotâ€¦ blogs! - From the horse's mouth himself, Senor Calcanis.

Weblogs Inc. Sold! You have to scroll down to get past all the ads... strangley this is a large post compared others.

Back to the Bubble? Definitely wins the fun title award complete with alliteration.

It's A Blog Deal: AOL Buys Out Weblogs Inc.

AOL Buys Weblogs Inc Quoting Gawker.. which is an interesting choice of a name for a site.

AOL Buys Weblogs Inc.

Weblogs Inc. to Be Bought by America Online - From good 'ol Tig at MarketingVox.

AOL buys Weblogs Inc. - Click to hit, never heard of em.

AOL Buys Weblogs Inc

Many posts I saw seemed to be regurgatations of Rafat's post from PaidContent Exclusive: Weblogs Inc Being Bought Out By America Online via PaidConten.org which had an exlcusive for maybe 1 minute. Hats off to Rafat who seems to have actually been the first to post news of the acquisition.

30 million dollars for a medium that according to some is not even "mainstream". Can we expect bidding on some of these networks in the future to be similar to media companies bidding for Professional Football TV rights? I know some will say I've gone BlogBonkers (copyright me), but we will see. I mean we all know with TIVO and other DVR services nobody watches commercials on TV anyway.

I wonder if we will see the Roadrunner all over Weblogs now? BEEP BEEP Weblogs!

Posted By Jason Dowdell at 03:35 PM
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Reading The Singularity Is Near by Ray Kurzweil

One of my buddies Renee Blodgett was kind enough to send me an autographed copy of Ray Kurzweil's new book, "The Singularity Is Near Book" I just got started reading it last night but I had done a little background research ala Google on Ray and read the folder that came with the book. The folder was full of press clippings from The Wall Street Journal, Time, Entrepreneur, BusinesWeek, etc... about pieces that have been done on Ray in the past. Ray is definitely my kind of guy and I hope to put up a Q & A with him sometime in the near future, it's in the works but cross your fingers cause he's one busy dude.

Well let me tell you a little bit about the book. I'm only on page 4, hah, so I haven't even gotten to the good stuff but I have read a bit about Ray's upbringing and it's awesome. It's kind of the stuff us entrepreneurs love to read. Ray knew he wanted to be an inventor since the age of 5 and is a hopeless geek, but unlike the majority of CEO's filling Silicon Valley's most powerful companies, Ray isn't in his mid 30's or even his mid 40's, he's a bit older and a lot wiser. He's the type of geek I hope to be 40 years from now, full of life and using his mind, technology and the power of ideas to make people's lives better and advance humanity as we know it today. The Inventor Entrepreneur

Anybody that knows me knows I'm an idea guy and that I understand business is more about the execution of ideas rather than the generation of those ideas. My mind is an idea factory and it's not easily turned off nor do I enjoy turning it off. But you can only work on so many ideas at one time and Ray's other books talk about that process and the execution and implementation of ideas and he has more than enough background to speak with wisdom on such matters. He invented the keyboard synthesizer, the flatbed scanner, and several other items that have transformed the world in which we live in.

I will be putting up numerous posts about the book as I go through it but it's available at Amazon and although the list price is $29.95, you can get it for $17.12 so I highly recommend picking up a copy for yourself.

Posted By Jason Dowdell at 12:12 PM
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Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Upcoming.org Snatched Up By Yahoo

Upcoming, Another Small Data Centric Company Snagged By Yahoo!

I like the way Yahoo! has started to move in recent days. Acquiring smaller, more nimble companies, rather than huge bohemoths is always nice to see. A few months back you'll recall Yahoo! acquiring Flickr, a photosharing site I personally enjoy as does my wife. And today they announce the acquisition of Upcoming.org. It's an events database with a nice little api that has some good niche data for their market segment. You'll notice that both Flickr and Upcoming.org had an API prior to being acquired by Yahoo!

That's a sign of the times my friends.

It's no longer difficult for smaller companies to offer up an API and use it for business development slash product management purposes. Plus it makes you quite attractive if you like sharing data and have a lot of data to share. You become the expert in your niche market and expert data aggregators and analysts are what the search engines are all about these days and will be for years to come. As long as that niche fits into their big picture [2 - 3 year product dev roadmap] then you're golden. Toss in a few thousand members and a couple hundred users of your API and the price goes up.

On a more personal note, take my buddy Pete. Pete was just showing me a little natural language search tool he built on top of the Upcoming.org API last week. Being a geek he thought it would be much cooler to build an app that allowed him to plan a romantic weekend away with his girlfriend than use any of the existing sites / tools out there. So he hooked into the Upcoming.org API and away he went to geek lala land. Then today he posts about that little app and the Upcoming.org guys mention it in their blog.

The world of data analysis and integration from disparate sources is getting smaller and smaller every minute. Are you going to be a leader in that area? If you don't plan on being a leader in it then you can plan on being out of business in 2 years. No I'm not kidding. The excuse of being a small mom and pop shop is not enough to keep you from suffering that fate. Like the motorcycle cop that handed me a ticket for doing 37 in a 25 mph zone a few weeks back said, ignorance is no excuse.

Congrats to the Upcoming.org folks on a job well done and good luck with the integration at Yahoo! They're a swell company and I'm sure it'll all work out quite nicely.

From Upcoming's homepage...

"Upcoming.org is now a part of Yahoo! and use of this site is now subject to the Yahoo! Privacy Policy. Please read the policy for important information about the personal data we collect from you and how we use it."

Posted By Jason Dowdell at 03:48 PM
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Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Soflow Social Networking Launches Out Of Beta

Soflow just launched v1.0 of their social networking / community site today. A buddy, Olivier, turned me onto Soflow several months back when he was working hot and heavy on product management and getting the site to a stable beta. I'm a member of Soflow and found that when it had around 4,000 members it was quite nice. It was a kind of who's who of internet marketing and advertising but whenever you get a high concentration of leaders in any industry, the wolves will follow. Soflow's not out of control with wolves just yet but the ratio is not what it once was.

Soflow has some unique features that combine social networking with forums and user groups called [can't remember what they're called right now] but they are pretty cool. One of my favorites is the OldTimers group which is a group of ad execs & veterans of marketing who've got years of experience in the dog eat dog world of ad agencies and a lot of wisdom to share.

So go check it out, perhaps you'll find something you didn't know you were looking for. Here's info from the email sent out to Soflow members last night.

"Soflow version 1.0 has now been launched offering a range of new features including Soflow Missions, Soflow Connector and Soflow Ads. Try out the new tools here:

Create a new mission.

As part of the launch, for a limited time only, we are offering all our members a 1 month free trial of our premium service:

Upgrade your account for free.

Have a great week,

The Soflow Team"

Posted By Jason Dowdell at 11:31 AM
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