The Android Wars

The image of Jeff Bezos presenting the new Kindle Fire didn’t really succeeded into erasing our memories of Steve Jobs launching the iPad, but the product itself is nothing short of extraordinary. Of course we hate the fact that it’s not present in Europe, but this doesn’t make it less important. Here is a company which presents its new product and justifies the deals signed with Fox and other companies for the 11000 movies and TV series. The millions of books available in their bookstore will also be easily accessed.
From the conference it’s easy to understand why Amazon entered Android wars. For them it doesn’t matter that they will pay a tax to Microsoft, their whole business needs a product like this to deliver its movies, music, books, magazines, apps and games. Kindle Fire is a product for consumers, the missing link from Amazon’s ecosystem, and possibly at its 199$ price tag the winner of the Android wars.

Samsung, who for the moment has the best Android phone and the best Android tablet, has agreed not only to pay Microsoft royalties, but also to launch Windows 7.5 & Windows 8 phones. They will also contribute to the next Android launch: Nexus Prime, sometimes in October. Since in several days we will see the iPhone 5, the Nexus Prime will appear as a reaction to this first major Apple launch since Steve Jobs left the CEO position. Currently Samsung does not have a reaction to Kindle Fire, so if this tablet finds its way into Europe, they are in danger of loosing the Android tablet wars. They are also likely in danger to loose their winning Android phones position because of the Google + Motorola Mobility deal.
Why do we talk about Microsoft and Apple when we talk about Android? Not just because of the endless trials and patent infringements, but also because these companies tend to copy designs from one another. It makes sense, it’s easier to imitate the IPhone than to create something new. In some cases it’s hard to debate if something that feels as natural as multi-touch should be patented, but this is the way this war is played.

Next Season

Fall is always a time for new seasons in the TV landscape. This season does not offer us many surprises, but fans will always line up to see their favorite shows. What happened between Raj and Penny (The Big Bang Theory) or where is Peter (Fringe), are just two of the questions that are waiting for an answer. Well, of course the fans of TBBT got an answer to the Raj/Penny question, and the fans of Fringe didn’t really got a satisfying answer (he might come back, and he wasn’t really erased for good, just that it’s not in this world or in the other…), since it’s a J.J. Abrams show.

Speaking of J.J. Abrams, we have good news for his fans. He is one of the executive producers of one of this fall’s most anticipated shows: Person of Interest. Created by Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan’s brother, and also writer for Memento and The Dark Knight, the new show casts Jim Caviezel (The Passion of The Christ) as an ex-CIA agent and probably a government official played by Michael Emerson (of Lost fame) as working together to stop murders before they happen (some similarity with Dark Angel and Minority Report are of course present). If the show is interesting it’s only because it deals with lots of privacy issues, being played like a TV version of Enemy of The State. It’s not accidental because Jonathan Nolan lived in London and had to deal with being watched on cameras every time he would take a walk.
Homeland, with Claire Danes and Mandy Patinkin, is another show that deals with post 9/11 issues like privacy, and we recommend it. The idea of stopping terrorism is at the core of this show, so it should be a very sensitive show.
AMC, the network who brought us Mad Men, brings Hell on Wheels, a drama about the Transcontinental Railroad in the 1860s. Western and business looks like gold. What could go wrong with this? They even signed Colm Meaney, Star Trek alumn famous for playing Irish roles.
Maria Bello’s plays in Prime Suspect, a remake of the British original. She might not be Helen Mirren, but the show might be interesting.
Of course, these are only few of the new shows. The old ones will also go on with new episodes. Here’s hoping they won’t be canceled (and I’m not talking just Fringe here).

Brain Movies

Since forever we are attracted to paradigms like Mind Over Matter. It’s not because of science fiction stories, but rather because of convenience. It’s so easy to sit on the couch and turn on the lights or the TV using only your toughts. We are not there yet (not according to the published articles), but new developments show that science fiction can sometimes become reality. This time is not Mind Over Matter, but an answer to the old question: How do we see? How does our brain constructs the world we see?
According to the current issue from the journal Current Biology, Professor Jack Galant and his team reported that they created the first video clips that reconstruct the visions of the brain. This is a historical experiment that proves that the signals from our brain can be used to recreate what we see. Basically what they did is show different movies to different subjects and record their blood flow through the brain using fMRI techniques (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging systems). They have used these signals to recreate what the brain paints by using voxels (volumetric pixels). This is similar to what a painter does. In fact their results are quite similar to some paintings for the moments, but in time they will improve. If we have a large enough database we will get images that are closer to reality. It is practically the first step toward recreating the movies produced by our brain.

It is a known thing that we can only perceive what our brain allows us. While the system is just a prototype, the results were impressive. Imagine what can be done when this system will be improved: a killer will not be able to lie, we will share our experience with our partner (in a couple, for example), kids will be able to see how the lives of their parents or grandparents were, and so on. Such a discovery should have been on front row everywhere, but it was reported mostly through tech blogs. Makes you wonder what happened to the media these days. We do live interesting times, don’t we?

Emmy Winners 2011

Some of the awards are always easy to guess. Few years ago, Lead Actor in A Comedy Series could have been called the Jeremy Piven Award (the man who played Ari Gold in “Entourage”). We could easily call it the Jim Parsons Award now, as the star of “The Big Bang Theory” won it for the second time. We could also call the Best Drama Series as easily the Mad Men Award, since it’s the fourth year when the AMC drama wins this. And if you have Martin Scorsese, Maggie Smith or Kate Winslet between the nominees in a category you already know you have some good candidates for the big prize.

All in all, beyond Charlie Sheen jokes and enchanting dresses, the biggest looser this year was “Boardwalk Empire”. It should have won Best Drama. Maybe next year. That is if they don’t loose momentum.

Comedy Series: “Modern Family”.

Lead Actor, Comedy Series: Jim Parsons, “The Big Bang Theory”.

Lead Actress, Comedy Series: Melissa McCarthy, “Mike & Molly”.

Supporting Actor, Comedy Series: Ty Burrell, “Modern Family”.

Supporting Actress, Comedy Series: Julie Bowen, “Modern Family”.

Directing, Comedy Series: Michael Spiller, “Modern Family”.

Writing, Comedy Series: Steven Levitan and Jeffrey Richman, “Modern Family”.

Drama Series: “Mad Men”.

Lead Actress, Drama Series: Julianna Margulies, “The Good Wife”.

Lead Actor, Drama Series: Kyle Chandler, “Friday Night Lights”.

Supporting Actor, Drama Series: Peter Dinklage, “Game of Thrones”.

Supporting Actress, Drama Series: Margo Martindale, “Justified”.

Directing, Drama Series: Martin Scorsese, “Boardwalk Empire”.

Writing, Drama Series: Jason Katims, “Friday Night Lights”.

Miniseries or Movie: “Downton Abbey (Masterpiece)”.

Lead Actress, Miniseries or Movie: Kate Winslet, “Mildred Pierce” .

Lead Actor, Miniseries or Movie: Barry Pepper, “The Kennedys” .

Supporting Actress, Miniseries or Movie: Maggie Smith, “Downton Abbey (Masterpiece)”.

Supporting Actor, Miniseries or Movie: Guy Pearce, “Mildred Pierce”.

Directing, Miniseries, Movie or Dramatic Special: Brian Percival, “Downton Abbey (Masterpiece)”.

Writing, Miniseries, Movie or Dramatic Special: Julien Fellowes, “Downton Abbey (Masterpiece)”.

Reality-Competition Program: “The Amazing Race”.

Host, Reality-Competition Program: Jeff Probst, “Survivor”.

Variety, Music, or Comedy Series: “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart”.

Directing, Variety, Music or Comedy Series: Don Roy King, “Saturday Night Live”.

Writing, Variety, Music, or Comedy Series: “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart”.

The Social Summer

Everything is Social. Eating, hiking, dating or traveling are social activities. So is sitting in front of the computer. At least in the last 10 years.
We all know the players: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google +1, Instagram, Flickr, YouTube. Wait. You just said YouTube? Yes. That’s about the only option Google should look at if it wants to cannibalize Facebook’s market. Our opinion is that instead of building +1, Google should have just focused into transforming YouTube into the next big thing. Or maybe they will do it. In the end they always seem to have 2 competing products in the same markets (remember Android and Chromium?). The fact that +1 users don’t post that much anymore is an indication that an improved YouTube would have been really the wining card.

This summer was really a Social Summer. In case you didn’t noticed, it started with Google’s unveiling of +1, and just ended with Twitter’s launch of its analytics platform. Of course they are not the only players. The number of social apps launched every month (even every week) would make a long list by itself. This is just the beginning. They all still need to monetize, and for the moment Facebook looks like the winner. They should have done it gradually, during the last 5-6 years. Now it might be just too late.
Let’s just analyze what happens on different fronts in the Social Wars:

Users – Facebook is the clear winner in this category. Google can also draw millions of users. LinkedIn and Twitter both have more than 100 million users. It all goes down to profiles: how you design them, how you use that data, and what do you offer to your clients.

Analytics – Twitter finally decided to offer something in this direction too. Facebook already has Insights, and Google’s tools are almost legendary.

Games – What’s social without games? Zynga is the clear winner.

Location – Foursquare, Facebook Places and many others are in this game. It’s just that Places is not that cool anymore.

Pictures – Flickr’s time is long gone. Facebook is number one here, but young start-ups like Instagram will definitely occupy some serious market share. Google can buy any one of these newcomers.

Movie – YouTube is the winner. Everybody shares YouTube movies.

Smart lists – While Google’s +1 started this, what Facebook reveals is potentially dangerous. Since they infer data about you friends, colleagues, former colleagues, or persons living in different areas where you lived, they almost compile your entire biography. Should anyone break into your account it will not just steal your messages/mails, but will also have access to unprecedented information about your like all in one place. On reasons of privacy, this feature will probably encounter a major backslash from users around the world. That is if they are educated correctly in matters related to privacy.

Social search – Facebook started the trend. Google and others followed. This feature encounters a major backslash in Germany and some other countries.

Entertainment – It’s not just games. If Hollywood and major music labels decide to go with different social networks, the one who will sign the best deals will have a major advantage in the social wars. Think Hulu + YouTube, for example. Now isn’t that something you would like?

Looking at what happens now in the market, it’s clear that Facebook is the winner. However they are stepping the line in some regards (social search, smart lists, especially), and this might start a movement against them. Google other companies will only win from this if only they will not repeat the same mistakes.

The Copy/Paste Culture, The 3 Ps, UFOs and The Future of Innovation

I know the title it’s ironic, but that’s how it’s supposed to be. Were UFOs inserted just for laughs? Read on. There are 2 sides: the ones that will argue that the copy/paste culture we live in (and we’re not talking just about the copy/paste feature allowed by any modern operating system, but also about reverse engineering and other similar methods) is not bad and it essentially allows us to innovate more, while the others will simply say that if you copy everything you don’t have to think that much about new things but rather about new components and on long term the process of innovation will simply disappear. Basically both camps will say that the copy/paste culture is all about components. They agree on this. In the same it’s also about rejecting smaller scale innovation (why re-invent the wheel?). The truth is that if for several years we haven’t seen major breakthroughs (if you think 3D movies are innovation go back to the ’50s, or even further, to the ’30s), this doesn’t mean we won’t see new innovations in the future. Yes, the ocean and space dreams of the ’60s are gone, but only now the private entrepreneurs are starting to get into these realms. Yes, software is all about components, but it is about components that create value and about creating good software at a lower cost (outsourcing will never exist outside a copy/paste culture).

What about the 3Ps? Patents, Passion and Power? Well apparently everybody wants to reuse old patents for power, not for new things while passionate inventors, developers and creators are left in the dust. Big companies need to defend their cause in expensive trials, not to launch new iPads and protect their talent. The 3rd P should have been Property, not Power (Money in reality, but then we would have had a longer and uglier title! And it’s not like you don’t know already that Money=Power!), but today is different. So let’s examine the 3Ps to see what they mean today:

Patents – Apple vs Google, Microsoft vs Google, Apple vs Samsung, and so on. We could go on forever. What happened to the Antitrust mantra: “Human knowledge belongs to the world”? They all want to win at Monopoly! That’s what happened.

Passion – There are still creative DIY geniuses out there. It’s just that some of them joined monopolists, while other refused to battle with them. The problem is not that there are no better products, but rather that marketing costs are so high in some cases that it’s impossible to fight with giants. Whatever happened to the passionate guys is hard to understand, but they are a still not an extinct species.

Power – GM, Samsung, IBM, and many others. They will not disappear tomorrow, but your small start-up might. Or it might end up swallowed by them. Everybody wants to be the cash king!

The 4th P would have been Productivity, but this is one of the main problems at the core of our debate: is Productivity a good or a bad thing for innovation? It’s clear that productive people have lots of ideas, but quality should always be important. I decided to leave it outside this discussion for the moment. Truth is Productivity is directly related to knowledge (the more you know, the more productive you are).
In a normal world there should be a balance between C/P and the 3Ps, but in today’s world balance is still not possible. We should aim at it, but we don’t.
I did not forgot the UFOs, but it’s not just my choice. If we want to get to the UFOs instead of the End of Innovation, we should clearly take some measures. Some simple ones like use C/P only when necessary, or try to think new stuff from time to time.

Friends Forever: The End of An Era

Entourage‘s last episode felt like the end of an era. There are still lots of good shows about friends on TV, cable and so on, but the end of Entourage(2004-2011) marks the end of an era that started more than a decade ago with Sex And The City (1998-2004)(or maybe even faster, if we count Friends in the same genre). I know there have always been series about friends and so on, but these these show some elements in common: they are as much comedies as they are dramas, they focus on a small group of friends (usually single sex, if we don’t think about Friends), they take a light approach towards their stories mixing humor with life lessons, most of the writers involved in scripting the shows were females (even in case of Entourage). The basic idea is simple: you take some friends that live together or not, and you show how they spend much time together and help each other in every aspects of their lives. Friends started the trend, SATC and Entourage took it to perfection. The term is dramedy. In case of Entourage’s last seasons it could as well be drama. It doesn’t matter. Now that Vince, Drama, Turtle, Eric, and Ari are gone, this era has faded to black.

HBO will develop the franchise further. A movie is set for the next year, but chances are it won’t be a major hit, since the best seasons of Entourage were the first three (season 6 being the exception from this rule). You might say that there are still great shows about friends out there, like The Big Bang Theory, but you’re missing the point. TBBT is about nerds, and it’s a hit that can’t be compared to anything else since it’s the first quality trial of its kind. What HBO has done with these shows is impossible to reproduce on classic TV, or any other medium, except maybe some Internet shows (producers that read this: take note!), and not because of the F word and nudity, but because of the talent that was behind (HBO is always betting on quality). R.I.P. Entourage! Long live Mark Wahlberg! Without your entourage this show would have never existed.
HBO is already moving on. Game of Thrones and Boardwalk Empire have proved in just one season that any concept can be brought to television with the right people and the right stories behind.

Beyond PCs – The Legacy

We know we told you PC is dead. We maintain our opinion. We do live in a Post PC age, but of course, that does not means that PCs are dead. One of the major news that signals this was the fact that some fans succeeded into breaking the 8GHz World Record using an 8-core AMD machine. The other major news is that there are already all sorts of previews into next year’s Windows 8, which apparently will run on any kind of devices in less than 10 seconds by calling just the APIs it needs for that device, and features the new Metro interface (we know running on all devices means Post PC). There are also new gadgets like a mouse than can transform your workspace into a huge multimedia wall regardless of how many screens you use (also from Microsoft). We should not forget about the Android x86 initiative that is trying to port this operating system to the classic PCs. So the PC is dead, long live the PC! Not so fast. Didn’t you noticed? Half of what we wrote is about PC being just another device (Windows 8 and Android x86), and the other half means just expected incremental advances. What feels strange when you read the latest tech blogs is that even the popular image of the PC being the command center of the multimedia home has vanished. It shouldn’t be a surprise to us since we already know how interesting mobile wars will be (not that they aren’t extremely interesting now).

So if the mobile is replacing the PC, what happens to the PC then? It will remain useful just for researchers, graphic designers, animators or directors, the ones who most probably need huge screens, mouse, keyboard and all the accessories? Or it will evolve into something different? For the moment the only safe answer is that the PC will not vanish, but it also won’t be the most important business tool. We are not just talking about suppliers or cable guys (it should be clear that PCs are not and have never been an option for these categories), but about all business people. Now here is the challenge? How will a day in the office look like without a PC? What other gadget will occupy most of the office space and our whole day? The mobile? Well, busy persons do talk a lot on mobile. The tablet? Probably not for accountants. The whole office will be just an interface? It might be. There are already some hints that we are moving into that direction. Any version has its drawbacks, but it should be clear, that whatever happens, the PCs legacy (the operating system, the APIs, the graphical interfaces, and so on) will stay with us for a long time from now on. Truth be told, the PC is not dead. It’s just everywhere you look. It’s present on so many levels that we tend to forget it’s a PC. That’s why we are tricked into believing mobile phones, tablets or other gadgets are more than just interfaces.
Speaking of the operating system: the first to rule them all seems to be Windows, again. Google and Apple still need to merge their operating systems, while Microsoft has just done it…And we tought Redmond is still years behind. Microsoft’s Windows 8 is the first operating system to really work on all platforms. And having some iPad competitor running Adobe or Microsoft Office is what everybody wants. If it will only be cheaper. Unfortunately there are still 2 problems with Windows 8′s quest for world domination: it’s not open-source and it’s not free (free as free for download, not in the Richard Stallman way).

9/11 – One Decade Later – Is 11 the new 13?

10 years later. What can be said now? We all remember how we heard this sad news.
It was a quiet day. You maybe went to the cinema or took a walk through the park. Or maybe you even watched tennis, like I did. Either way, at some point during the day you heard a phrase like: “One plane hit WTC” or “2 planes hit WTC” or “WTC and Pentagon were hit by an unknown enemy”. Than you sat down in front of the TV and started to look at the clips. So they started to play disaster movies? Is this is the real version of “The Towering Inferno”? Why did they choose this day? Now, looking backwards, in a single decade we had 3 major incidents in the eleventh day:

9/11/2001 – WTC + Pentagon + Pennsylvania attacks.
3/11/2004 – Madrid bombings.
3/11/2011 – Fukushima incident.

Is 11 the new 13? It certainly looks like it is. Of course there are just few of the events that shocked the globe in the last 10 years, so we can’t declare this yet, but we should nonetheless reflect upon it. Each of these 3 days changed our view of the world:

9/11/2001 – America can’t be attacked from the air because of the 2 oceans.
3/11/2004 – Terrorists attack everywhere.
3/11/2011 – Nuclear power is not a joke and the nuclear clock is now even closer to 12.

If anything, events like 9/11 of the Madrid 3/11 were between the last major events to be covered better on TV. The Arab Spring and the Fukushima Incident proved that the Internet is even more capable of presenting live events than the TV will ever be: the way BBC and CNN added the Twitter streams, previous clips, infographics and other gadgets to their pages that covered these events changed the coverage and the news industry forever. So if at the beginning of the century we were just able to watch how buildings collapse, now we have live data from all those involved in the events. If it’s good or not, it’s still too early to tell. In theory it should be, in practice you never know what could happen.
9/11 didn’t marked just the end of the idea that America will not be attacked from the skies or the start of The War Against Terror, but also the first time when robots were used to find people. It was also the inspiration for new online communities like Meetup, a place where people meet to talk about the subjects they like. It proved that in the face of major threats nations can react. 9/11 happened after the dot-com-bubble, and its tenth anniversary comes after another big crisis. It’s strange that its impact and coverage far outreached some smaller crisis. That says something about how media can influence our perception about specific events.
Today, conspiracy theorists can’t really say too many things about shocking events because each event will leave its marks on the Internet as proven by the pioneering multimedia methods used by BBC and CNN (check the Fukushima reports if you don’t believe me). If anything, 9/11 was just the eye of the storm (the calm), the rumor before a crisis (remember subprime rumors and Lehman Brothers?), the eye opener, the proof that most of us prefer to stay outside of the game. The cost of wars has led the U.S.A. were it is today (remember the debt crisis and the scandal that surrounded it at the beginning of August?). When you enter into the “graveyard of empires” (Afghanistan) you should be prepared to loose everything you have. Apparently the war has ended, but since it takes as little as one man and a bomb to start it again, we should seriously think if it’s not a forever war. The decade has passed, the technology has changed, the memories remain. A new WTC will rise in the next years, and hopefully it will not have the faith of its predecessors.

The Entrepreneur’s Fear of Flying

“I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.” (Michael Jordan)
Fear of Flying. We’re not talking about Erica Jong’s novel about “zipless fuck” and sexual revolution as seen by a woman in the ’70s, but rather about those things that stop new entrepreneurs from flying high into the unlimited business space.
The term is not accidental, as some of the causes are related to meetings with other people and fear of success. We think one of the most important reasons for failing in business is the fear of failure. Why? Because it just stops you from experimenting new stuff and eventually it will stop you from creating innovative products and services. Ideas do not appear out of thin air every day so if you find some obstacles in your way you should not despair. Dealing with failure, trying to overcome obstacles might help you discover new things you didn’t knew about you or your company. It might even refocus your entire business on something else. How do you think Microsoft became such a huge player in the gaming zone?
Entrepreneurs can fall into different categories: from dreamers, to problem solvers, to doers, for example. Chances are if you are a dreamer you will not feel as comfortable as a problem solver when trying to overcome obstacles. Some solutions would be to move to another country (there are better conditions to develop certain types of businesses in Sillicon Valley or England than in Ukraine, for example) or to hire somebody to deal with all the operations you’re not good at.
Lack of financing should not be a problem, except for projects in expensive areas like automotive, space travel, search engines. Lack of a business model is a problem. If you just copy something there is no guarantee that you will achieve the success you are seeking. It’s not impossible, but it usually means to replicate something in another country. Some new service was launched in the Valley? Why shouldn’t I try this in Italy? Well, if it’s not the country that will get you into trouble, patents might do it, especially if the business is related to IT or consumer electronics.
If you want to succeed you always have to keep your mind open and to change your state of mind if something’s not working. Please remember Albert Einstein: “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” If you want to be an entrepreuner, you have to be a motivational guru not just for your employees, but also for yourself.

An entrepreuner is like a cowboy: he has to take care of the cows (those that will give him the profit), but he also needs to build the farm (the company); he has to take care of his friends (not only employees, but basically all important people), but he has to be ready to shoot every time he is in danger (fire the unproductive people, otherwise he can loose money), and most of all he likes to explore the unknown and lead his herd (his company) to the promised land.
Today even big companies sometimes can enter into a zone where they fear they won’t be able to innovate anymore, but this should not stop you. Please keep in mind that nothing can stop a motivated man, not even the fear of flying. As long as you keep trying, and keep your focus so that you can pass the milestones from your business plan, great things can happen.