Harry Chen Thinks Aloud

Both Google and Yahoo! went through the millennium bubble burst. However, years after, the business of those companies seem to have gone into two different directions. Google’s stock price has risen more than 500%, and the price of Yahoo!’s stocks is nearly unchanged.

So what business discussions have contributed to the success of Google and the failure of Yahoo!? Conrad de Aenlle in this IHT article explains…

The strength of Google has been to take complicated technology - a superb Internet search engine - and build an uncomplicated business around it: selling advertising aimed at consumers based on Google’s understanding of their needs and wants, gleaned from their search patterns.

Yahoo is a jack of all trades - a communication medium, aggregator and distributor of news and entertainment - and it has not mastered many of them, Weiner said. “Yahoo is attempting to become a broadcasting platform, creating original content, cutting deals with film studios and TV networks,” he said. “None of that has really panned out.

A simple answer to the question is this…

It takes more than great technology to make a great technology company.

When it comes to building a successful technology company, while technology and innovations are important, but the company’s operation and execution are even more important.

Source: Why Yahoo! came up short

Here is a cool physics mashup application: Rubens’ tube. The idea to demonstrate how sound waves can affect air pressure and using flames as a means to demonstrate their effect.

A video that demonstrates how Rubens’ tube works.

Read more about Rubens’ tube on Wikipedia.

I read The Economist religiously. With the new audio edition of The Economist, I think soon I will also listen to it religiously. For those who are unfamiliar with The Economist, it’s a weekly magazine (or newspaper as it calls itself) that discusses politics, economy, business and science and technology. I like it because it gives a good overview of what’s going on around the world every week.

The audio edition features download-able MP3 of all articles in the weekly magazine. These files don’t come with DRM protection, so you can play them on your computers or save them in your MP3 players. Because this service is still in its early stage of development, all MP3 files are free for download (for now) even if you don’t currently subscribe to the magazine.

Recently I bought a new phone Sony Ericsson K550i. When it’s coupled with the T-Mobile data service (t-zones), it becomes a fun machine.

The following are the kind of tasks that I perform using my new cellphone:

1. Snap pictures and post them directly to my blogger account
2. Check my personal email via Gmail mobile
3. Send short chat messages to friends without using SMS Text Messaging
4. Read my Bloglines RSS feeds
5. Browse the Web and get information

These mobile applications I highly recommend:

• Opera Mini
• ebuddy mobile or ebuddy web
• Gmail Mobile
• Blogger Mobile

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland recently published a technical report on social media and its business models. In this report, the authors surveyed several social media companies and products, and concluded that while online advertisements, e.g., via Google AdSense and Yahoo! Publisher Network, continue to be the most popular business model for social media companies, there are alternative business models for making money.

I highly recommend this report to readers who are interested in the business aspect of social media. It did a good job in explaining social media concepts and its relationship with Web 2.0 and other technology derivatives (e.g., swarm intelligence and mash-ups). Key issues associated social media are also discussed, which includes user behaviors (active v.s. passive), user identity, copyright, mobility, trust and spams.

In the rest of this post, I highlight the existing and emerging social media business models that are discussed in this report.

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According to a market research firm, as of the end of April 2007, Nintendo has sold 2.5 million Wii consoles in the US, almost double PlayStation 3’s sales and closing in on Xbox 360’s 5.4 millions sales. There is a little doubt that the video gaming market is now divided.

The question is how did we come to this situation? Few years back, Nintendo was considered a “dead” company by many analysts. Sony’s game console was the king. What did Sony do wrong? What did Nintendo do right?

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At TED, Microsoft demonstrated its latest computer graphics technology called photosynth.

[photosynth] takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for similarities, and displays them in a reconstructed three-dimensional space.

• How does it work? Read on.
• Want to try it on your computer? Go here.
• See a demo video. Go youtube.

Can you imagine what you can do with this technology if it’s combined with Microsoft’s Surface Computing?