TechCrunch reports that Twitter hires a new President of Revenue (Adam Bain of NewsCorp) to come up with a revenue angle. What I am surprised is how did investors invest in Twitter without a solid revenue angle. It’s chapter 2 of VC-101 in red letters. Didn’t someone say, “How would we make money with this thing that we don’t understand how to use in the first place, what the heck is Twitter anyway…” or something like that. I think they made a movie about this, if I recall it was called, “The Hudsucker’s Proxy”.

Be that as it may, my opinion is that the minute Twitter starts charging for their service, there will be an exponential drop in the userbase. But look at the bright side, they will save millions in bandwidth costs. And of course the ones that stay will probably give the community better and more relevant timely information than, “… I am at the starbucks, then I will pick up my laundry…”

So Adam, buddy, you have your work cut out for you. I guess you are the miracle worker they were looking for. I will be following. I hope I am mistaken on this and you end up pulling a WII (The video game not the great war)  :-)

Anyway, the article details are in TechCrunch at (http://tcrn.ch/d4tZaw).

Diran Afarian
Founder, CEO
NextEmployee.com

Microsoft asking, “How many Davids were there in David & Goliath?” (Read Here)

Comscore shows market share growth (Loss) for a quarter (Nov 2009 – Feb 2010) for all of the SmartPhone platforms. The big loser is Microsoft with a 21% loss, or as accountants would put it, a -21% gain, which translates to a 4% loss in the smartphone marketplace.

The clear winner in gain is the Android platform, with a gain of 5.2% in the overall market, which translates to almost a 240% gain in position in the same 3 months (from 3.8% mkt share to 9).

3 Month Avg.  Top Smartphone Platforms Total U.S. Age 13+ |  Ending Feb. 2010 vs. 3 Month Avg. Ending Nov. 2009 Source: comScore MobiLens
	Share (%) of Smartphone Subscribers
	Nov-09	Feb-10	Point Change
Total Smartphone Subscribers	100.0%	100.0%	N/A
RIM	40.8%	42.1%	1.3
Apple	25.5%	25.4%	-0.1
Microsoft	19.1%	15.1%	-4.0
Google	3.8%	9.0%	5.2
Palm	7.2%	5.4%	-1.8

 

Well, let’s count:

Goliath	David	David’s Dad	Goliath’s Father
Xbox	WII	Nintendo	(Lost, OK we shouldn’t have been in this market)
Live Search	Google Search	Google	(Lost The Battle, Let’s Find Another 4 Letter Word, Maybe Bong, no Bing Is Better?)
Bing	Google Search	Google	(Still Fighting)
Office Suite	OpenOffice.org	Sun Micro	(This Means War! Not the Business Market)
Office Suite	Google Docs	Google	(Battle Rages On)
Mobile	iPhone	Apple	(Funeral Arrangements for Goliath)
Mobile	TREO	Palm	(No Way! Palm? Are you sure?)
Mobile	Android	Google	(Where did they come from?)
Mobile	Blackberry	RIM	(Goliath Dead & Buried)
Messenger	Yahoo IM	Yahoo	(Didn’t We Buy This Company Yet?)
Messenger	SkypeText	Skype	(Fight Rages On)
Windows OS	Mac OS	Apple	(We won this war once didn’t we?)
Windows OS	Chromium OS	Google	(We have to hit hard and fast before this David starts to walk)
Windows OS	Moblin	Moblin.org	(What? Do we need to worry? Their OS is perfect for Netbooks? Oh My Gravy! I wanted that market too)
Windows OS	Ubuntu	Everyone!	(I thought that weird funky name would never catch on. OK, let’s give all those kids FREE Windows 7 and All the development tools… Cont.)

 

More about UBUNTU – “Are you sure kids are using that instead of Windows? OK,
let’s give all those kids FREE Windows 7 and All the development tools that we
sell for thousands of dollars to corporations, YES FREE!!!

It’s like this, let me give you an example you would understand. If you want
the kids of today to grow up to be gamblers, you make a Disneyland in Vegas, you
give them free nights at the hotel, wait for 15 years (You have them associate
positive things with Vegas, and giving money… NO IT’S NOT LIKE GIVING MONEY IN
CHURCH!)”

Anyway, I’m sure you’ve heard, Microsoft (Even Apple) are giving away their
Operating systems for almost free (Read here)

Always remember and never forget:

                   ”The only limit we need is that which limits anyone from setting limits.”

If you are like me, you buy any tech gadget that comes out. I always manage to find a way to support the economy, the company that comes up with an inferior first version etc. But I do enjoy getting exposed to the technology before most people, so that’s worth something isn’t it (I know what you’re saying, this is like someone that lost everything in Vegas, and comes out saying, “Well, I still got my health!!”

Be that as it may, I resisted buying an iPad. I actually got the email early to pre-order, and I even went through the process, then later cancelled it, I just thought to myself, “What the heck am I going to do with it?” it was going to be $800 thrown away (I have to get the 3G with the large capacity

Anyway, I am more of a believer of open technologies, so I am an Android kind of guy. Ever since I bought the G1 for my son (BTW, he loooooves it still), and then when I finally gave up on my TREO 755P (Still think it was a great phone), I have been in love with the Android platform. I think it is the future, or some semblance of the future. Apple, Microsoft, HP and others are spinning their wheels, while the new generation is going for everything that’s open.

I don’t think these companies learn from past mistakes. Apple lost a great big market share when the PC Market went open, because IBM messed up (Thanks IBM for letting Compaq creep into the market with superior clones and create a great demand for PCs). They lost again, when they let Dell slide into the corporate market with its “Order the way you want it, and we will make it like you want” strategy. Netscape fell into the “They love our product so much that they will pay what we want” strategy. Microsoft has too many things to talk about and everyone knows it.  This taught me that when you put a lot of hurdles (Hurdles can also be a high price for example $329 for Microsoft Office, ouch! Openoffice.org anyone?), and make things proprietary, you end up losing in the end. Who remembers the Betamax, the Lisa, 8-track tapes etc.

Sure Apple has a lot of following, and they are doing a great job with their interfaces, but most of the people buying are the Apple fans to start with. An article from PCWorld said that  nearly 3/4 that’s 75% of the buyers of the iPad during the pre-order and the weeks following were MAC users, and almost 67% had iPhones (The iTouch is getting cannibalized by the iPad, unless they release a 5″ version soon).

It’s so hard to get an iPhone app into the store that the sheer determination was the only thing that made it grow so quickly. But the priced apps are fading, mostly only the free apps are being downloaded. Considering that currently to get an application on the itunes App Store you need to get it approved by Apple, and there are several criteria, including competitors products, makes it less attractive to newer developers. While this is good for the quality of the available apps, it does limit creativity and push people away. Eventually people like “NO LIMITS!!”

I have a MAC along with the umpteen PCs that I have (I think it’s something like 7:1 now, not counting the 12-15 older desktops sitting in my garage). I have setup an Ubuntu on one of my older desktops, and I have to say, “I am impressed, Linux, you’ve come a long way baby!” I have just finished setting up a Chromium OS machine, I will start testing tomorrow, can’t wait.

So back to the iPad, there are some Chinese companies that have already released 7″ Android tablets, that are going for $100-$140 shipped, yes shipped!!! It has WiFi built in, it is not as robust as the iPad, but it is only $100, and it is still new, imagine what it will be in a few months. Of course, I ordered one, will be testing that as well.

Please don’t take me wrong, I am not one that can say Apple will fail, but I can say that it will not be operating at the full potential that it would if it were more open. Take a look at what Facebook did for the open cause, or rather what the open platform did for Facebook. How about Linux and Apache for the server industry? I wouldn’t ignore it, if I were in the position these companies are in.

I’ll say this again, “The only limit we need is that which limits anyone from setting limits.” Keep in mind, the U.S.A. grew this fast because it was based on this open souce model, of course with a dash of capitalism added as a catalyst for extra motivation.

Diran Afarian
Founder
NextEmployee.com

I  have been to the Lenovo website a few times (Deal site clicks mainly) to buy a computer. I have often just clicked back out. Whoever designed the ecommerce side of their site ought to be fired. Can anyone spell F-A-I-L !!!

Too bad I didn’t have this insight when I did my MBA project about IBM, I had to concentrate on the 1993 issues you were having for my report.

Be that as it may, when I get to your site from a link, there is no way (maybe no easy way) to see a picture of the (D&!*?#) notebook computer I want to buy. The first thing you see is the warranty crap.

Hey Lenovo, or IBM–BTW, I don’t know which genius (I’m being nice here) thought Lenovo would be a better brand to push than IBM, is beyond me. But that’s a whole different story in itself. I guess someone thought IBM is just too short to be a good brand? Maybe,  just maybe.

Anyway, send some people to Design 101, or better yet, Marketing 101. Tey’ll teach them that you’re supposed to put the ugly stuff (Like warranty, protection etc) at the end. One principle you need to learn about marketing and human behavior is this:
      – When is a person most likely to buy another product from you?
                   WHEN THEY HAVE JUST BOUGHT SOMETHING!!    
Does, “Would you like fries with that sir…” ring a bell? How about, “For $5 more we’ll send you another thiggamajiggy with free shipping if you decide now…” as all infomercials do. It’s called UPSELL!  Warranty is an up-sell, computer bag is an up-sell, junk that you don’t really need, but we make a lot of fluffy money on is an up-sell.

Mr Watson (yeah I know), if you were alive, you would send some of these genius online employees of yours to a couple of courses (or maybe fire them). Let them learn that showing pictures of the notebook computers from all angles might get someone’s mouth watering and get them to start the buying process, at least it won’t do something that the Warranty page will do, put them to sleep (Or aggravate them to the point that they go to your competitor and buy the notebook computer from there!!).

Just to let you know, FYI, because you need to know, to whom it may concern etc etc. I just had enough, and I went to the Dell site and bought myself a notebook computer, I even paid more, because the pictures showed such beautiful angles and detail that I just had to have it.

Now I will never know if your computer is better than the Dell. Unless our company decided to give me one, or I saw one in a store or?? I definitely will not come to your stale site and go through the process any more.

Oh yeah, this is my 5th notebook/netbook, I am a serial tech product junkie, not just a one product buyer. I also support the economy by being an early adopter of technology products, etc.

Mr Palmisano, you probably won’t ever read this, but it felt good for me to get this frustration out. If this was about my site, I would be extremely alarmed. I wonder how many more deals you have lost because of this backwards system of yours.  Maybe you know?

-Diran

3 reasons, Ubuntu, Ubuntu and Ubuntu. Because they see a lot of students in colleges using Ubuntu and liking it more. Hey, I installed it on one of my older computers (Pentium4 2GhZ w/512MB of RAM) it’s flying!

Open Office comes bundled free with the Ubuntu download and installs automatically. Open Office can even read and write MS office files. It also includes other programs in the suite like draw, and photoshop equivalent etc.

No wonder all the hoopla about Ubuntu. I love it, I am even open to learning another system and have put this system in my office next to my Vista which I will be retiring soon. I even installed Ubuntu on one of my netbooks, these things are so cheap that I keep buying them (SOMEBODY STOP ME!!!).

I have 2 notebooks, 3 netbooks, 3 desktop computers and I am running, XP, Vista, Win 7, Ubuntu flavor of Linux, and Mac’s Snow Leopard as operating systems. Oh forgot, the Ubuntu is installed on the Pentium 4 comp that had Windows 2000, now it’s a dual boot in case I want to boot to Windows 2000

So now I understand what Microsoft’s thinking is. If a hardy Microsoft guy like me that started with DOS 3.0 in 1985 and then moved to Windows 2.0 in 1987 (Hated it till Win 3.0)then Win 3.11, OS2 (omg get me out of there), then Win NT, then Win 95, Win 98 (0ne of my faves), then ME (1 week flat, remove or throw away the computer), then Win 2000 (another gem), XP, then Vista, then XP again (Yes upgraded to XP, but I have one computer with Vista still), now Win 7. Whheewwhh, that was a mouthful. (BTW, I still have a shrink wrapped MS-DOS 6.22 & a Wordstar Manual, you never know).

Microsoft’s site is at:
            http://www.win741.com/
and other deals for tech students is at:
            http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/academic/dd795303.aspx 
They can get Microsoft software for free.

Also on the other side, Apple is selling their Snow Leopard for $29 to students. Here is the link:
             http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC573Z/A

Lebanon has less than 1/10th of one percent of the population of the earth, but has 1% of the world’s gold reserves. What does this mean?

I thought this was an interesting fact. I didn’t know that Lebanon holds 1% of the world’s reserves. Ranked #15 in the world. I read that just as an example, the UK owns more than $11.8 billion in reserves, Lebanon owns more than $11 billion.

This means they did very will in the last 3 years with the reserves gaining a lot of value. From the beginning of 2009 to the beginning of 2010, the value of the gold they hold went from $4.1 Bill to $11.1 Bill. Not bad I would say.

Here is the chart in 2008 with the rankings by country:

(Click for the rank chart) showing rank of each country in amount of gold reserves.

#17 at that time. Now that some countries have sold some of theirs, it has moved to rank #15.

My theory is that if Lebanon can back it’s monetary system with the gold, then it can offer lower interest to investors (Banks currently pay around 20% interst). It has to stabilize the monetary system, so the Lira stays stable against the dollar, and with the reserves backing it up, it can offer 7% and money will flock to the country.

Some interesting facts:

1- Portugal owns 382.5 Tonnes but it is almost 84% of it’s National Forex Reserves (Reserves it has to take care of it’s liability when currency demand is low)

2- The United States owns more than 27% of the worlds reported gold reserves

3- Countries like Kuwait and Malta that have the highest exchange rates for their currency (Kuwaiti Dinar & Maltese Lira) have a very low gold to forex percentage (11.4% & 2.2% respectively)? They don’t need to worry about devaluation and demand for their currency.

4- Why are Armenia, Vietnam, Turkmenistan and a lot of other countries not listed? Because not every country reports their Gold reserves.

5- Very interesting to see the value of the gold go up for each country (See here)

6- Most of this gold that other countries own is held in the United States !!!

7- India holds almost $560 tonnes of gold, almost as much as Russia (607 tonnes). But Switzerland holds almost as much as India & Russia combined (1,040 tonnes vs. 1165.4 tonnes respectively).

8- Switzerland holds almost as much as China (1,040 & 1,054 respectively)

9- Italy holds as much as france (about 2,450 tonnes) but each of them hold more than China and Switzeland combined or almost as much gold as China, Switzerland, Russia combined !!!

10- USA holds almost as much gold (For itself) than Germany, France & Italy (the rank 2,4 & 5) combined (USA 8,133 tonnes, Germany France & Italy 8,295).

Caveat: Listen, before I start, I would like to let you know that I am an Engineer, I like detail, I like to be exact, I know decimal points and most of all, I know how to put people to sleep better than your priest, pastor or rabbi. So don’t comment that it is not accurate, because I will be using new rounding techniques that I call Nuero-Axo rounding, which is also green BTW and it goes on in my head. See, this is what marketing people do, to make it easy for people to take with them and remember (Yes, I am marketing people too, I have a piece of paper on that one also). Oh, another thing, all the numbers I’m using I got from Market Share by Net Applications (http://marketshare.hitslink.com)
Thanks guys.

It seems like every day the newcomers to the browser frontier are gaining ground on the behemoth. Google Chrome came on the scene in 2008, and it is already at 4.63% of the browser market share. 1st year it grew to 1.4% market share and now 4.63%, that’s an increase of almost 231% in 2009 alone, and 463% in the last 18 months! Watch out Microsoft.What seems to be fueling this growth? I know I’ve been using it more because of the speed. I don’t like the interface, it seems like it is still in Beta (I think Google needs to pay royalties for the word “Beta” Anyway, I like the element inspector also. If you do any kind of web design or programming, it is very helpful. And of course I looooove the way I can search and get suggestions right at the address bar (I know other browsers can do the searching, but it is not as robust, so leave me alone).

But a couple of other honorable mentions are Opera Mini and Playstation. Although their market shares are very insignificant (.53% & .04% respectively), Opera Mini grew from .12% market share to .53%, that’s a respectable 341.67% almost as much as Chrome which has grown (463% of course, 0-4.63% in less than 18 months). Playstation doubled it’s size for market share, it went from .02% to .04% in the same time, (hey don’t knock it, that’s 100% growth), bravo Sony!

One thing I’m concerned about though is the privacy and the security of these browsers. So I use a combination of IE, Chrome and of course Firefox. Oh, I forgot Firefox, this is like the tortoise in the T&H story, a Timex (Takes a lickin’ keeps on tickin’, or the Energizer bunny. It is steadily growing, and now has a very respectable 25% (24.61% to be exact) of the browser market share. I also looove Firefox, because of all the addons (Specially Ubiquity)

So here are some interesting facts:

Browser (Market Share %)

	Dec 2007	Dec 2009
Microsoft	78.81%	62.69%
Firefox	16.25	24.61%
Chrome	0.00%	4.63%
Safari	2.46%	4.46%
Netscape	0.51%	0.32%

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Browser Rank, by year

		12/2007	12/2008	12/2009
Microsoft		1	1	1
Firefox		2	2	2
Chrome		N/A	5	3
Safari		3	3	4
Netscape		5	6	7
Opera		4	4	5
Opera Mini		6	7	6
Playstation		7	8	8

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All the market share numbers I’m using I got from Market Share by Net Applications (http://marketshare.hitslink.com)

Have iPhone, will travel? I think pretty soon the chop-o-matic guy or Ron Popiel is going to be selling an iPhone that can chop onions or cook a chicken.

Take a look at this Quad copter controlled with the iPhone, similar to the BMW being controlled by James Bond a few years back: Watch the Parrot Drone in action. I know someone whose name starts with H and ends with agop that would buy this if they make it for the Palm Pre

-D

Google  is doing to phone service what they did with Gmail to email service. Now (Invite only of course at this stage) you can add Google Voice to your phone to be able to do the following:

Voicemail: voicemail like email (Keep track of them like you do email in Gmail)

Voicemail transcription: Have the system read what your voicemail says

Custom greetings: Set it up so when you get a call from Bob, it says, “Hi Bob, I am not in just leave me a message and I’ll get back to you. So you can vary voicemail greetings by caller

International calling: low cost calls to the world

Notifications: So once voice is converted to text you can read voicemail messages via email or SMS, without having to dial into the voicemail

Share voicemails: Manipulate voicemail just like you do an email; forward, embed, or download voicemails

Is this cool or what? DO you want to make it even more cool? Add a Google number. You get a Google number that stays with you no matter where you go, you just go online and link other numbers to it, so if you home number changes, you can change it, if your cell changes, you can change that, and no one will know you have changed numbers, because our google number stays the same-Forever!! There are other added features that I will discuss later with Google number.

These are still invite only services so it might take some time for you to be able to use it on your phone. But in the meantime I have Vonage, and I’m able to do most of these now (I’ve been doing them for 3 years actually) but it’s on the land line.