HD-DVD vs. Blu ray - still playing fast-and-loose with the numbers…

In case you hadn’t heard, HD-DVD is still more popular than Blu ray!  Wait, does that make any sense at all?

“Currently, 11% of Americans own an HD-DVD player, while just 7% own a Blu-ray player.”

According to the chart, that might be technically ‘true’, but only if you willfully disregard that the Sony Playstation 3 is, also, a Blu ray player.  Adding BD Players and PS3 ownership bring Blu-ray to 16%, not 7%.  Along those same lines, a XBox 360 with the HD-DVD external drive is, also, a HD-DVD player, bringing HD-DVD ownership to 14%.  Still, something is fishy…

There are a number of odd things about this survey, like Playstation 2 ownership dropping 2% when, by most accounts, PS2 outsells PS3.  In March 2008, Toshiba, the sole provider of HD-DVD players and technology, abandoned the format and ceased all production. Yet, according to this chart, between 2008 and 2009, ownership of HD-DVD players nearly doubled - despite no one manufacturing any players.  The US has a population of approx. 300 million people.  For the installed userbase of HD-DVD players to nearly double would mean that Toshiba had about 13-14 million HD-DVD players in unsold inventory…  we’re talking about 24.6+ million square-feet of inventory, with an MSRP value of about $30m.

Like I said, there is something very fishy about this survey…

Filed Under: News and Rumors
Tagged: blu ray, hd dvd, lies, ps3

This just in - ‘thousands’ protest Iranian election

The MSM continues to prove it’s irrelevance…  I think the protests are a tad beyond ‘thousands’.

Nothing could help relations between Iran and the United States more than standing with the people who have had their election stolen…when the drama in Iran plays itself out, they will remember…

Filed Under: News and Rumors
Tagged: election, iran, msm

This just in - CNN/most MSM drops ball on Iranian election story, Twitter recovers and scores.

On Friday, Iranian’s went to the polls to vote in their Presidential election.  Most of the mainstream media outlets have had tragically poor coverage, but CNN has had a near black-out on the story.  It’s only today that CNN has begun covering this election - on-air and online…  and mostly tossing out information that was available yesterday.  Right now, about 25% of the “Today’s Headlines” section of the CNN home page are about the Iranian election.  Also, in that same section, is an interesting question/story - “Do journalists Twitter too much?”  Interesting because, over the last 48 hours, Twitter users have been tearing CNN a new one.

On Twitter you can ‘tag’ your Tweets, to make them easier to find when someone does a search on Twitter, and an amazing number of people have taken to using “#CNNFail” over the networks lack-of-coverage on the election story.  Of course, there is no editorial-process on Twitter… and it’s hard to say how much of these “#iranelection” Tweets are true, or propaganda… are dorms really being attacked?  Are the opposition candidates under house-arrest?  The point isn’t that the ‘news’ on Twitter is accurate, the point is that there is ‘news’ on Twitter about the Iranian election.  And, the traditional ‘news’ organizations, at a time when they most need to demonstrate their utility, are completely, and totally, missing what is, potentially, the story-of-the-year - Iran’s very own Tiananmen Square.

Filed Under: News and Rumors
Tagged: cnn, election, iran, msm, twitter

Thirty Helens Agree - Headlines are not the story

The New York Post, one of America’s least reliable sources for news, has a great story today - Fear Grips Google!

The basic point of the article is that Google is so afraid of Microsoft’s new Bing search engine that…

…

…

Sorry, I had to catch my breath from laughing so hard…  Okay…

…that Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google - along with Larry Page (pictured to the left) - has assembled a team of engineers to determine how Bing works.  Of course, Competitive Intelligence is important, and I’m sure that Google tries to reverse-engineer each of the competiting search engines.  But “Fear gripping Google” over Bing?  Seriously doubtful…

And, even better, in a different article, the Post bashes Bing over the head because it’s too easy to find porn with it.  Come to think of it, Microsoft should use that to promote the ‘Decision Engine’…  “Bing:  More porn than Google”.

Filed Under: Thirty Helens Agree
Tagged: bing, google, microsoft, search engine

Bing… Bang… THUD!

So, what does $80-$100 million in marketing buy you?  Well, if you’re Microsoft, that’s enough to bring about twice the amount of traffic to their new Bing search engine than their old, MSN Live search engine.  The good news - that’s enough to take Bing passed Yahoo as the 2nd most popular search engine around!

The bad news - that’s still about 40x less traffic than Google.

The badder news - All that traffic went back to Yahoo after 1 week.

The baddest news - The Bing search engine still sucks.

Microsoft’s entire strategy here is backwards…  training-their-fire at Yahoo makes about as much sense as Apple ignoring Microsoft Windows dominance and marketing Macs to Commodore 64 users…

Yahoo has, about, 5% of the search engine market, Microsoft - about half that at 2.5%…  Google?  87.62% market-share for all search engine traffic.  Yahoo is, essentually, dying…  the days of Yahoo making waves in search are long-gone.  MS would be better off shooting for Google and  just forget about Yahoo.

Filed Under: Fearless Predictions
Tagged: bing, google, microsoft, search engine, yahoo

What does a scary chart look like?

It looks like this…  how low can you go?

Filed Under: News and Rumors
Tagged: depression, recession, unemployment

This just in - MySpace to get pwn3d by Google

A couple of days ago, I made some Fearless Predictions about the future of social networking, including the observation that MySpace was becoming the new AltaVista… and today, we have news that MySpace and Google are negotiating a new deal for how MySpace will display Google advertising.  A few years ago, when MySpace was hot-as-the-sun, Google ended up paying $900m, or about $300m/year.  These days, MySpace is losing users and traffic, at a clip of about 20% per year, and now MySpace needs Google much more than Google needs MySpace…

Sources say that while Google has gotten plenty of advertising impressions (MySpace uses any excuse to put Google search results and Google ads in front of users), those ads don’t convert well. Add to that the dramatic shrinking of MySpace page views and the predictive modeling gets ugly.

Google knows MySpace is shrinking by about 20% a year. And unlike the last time they negotiated with News Corp., they now have nearly three years of actual operating history with the company. They’ve got real data to value the deal.

Unless Microsoft or perhaps Yahoo comes in and bids very aggressively, MySpace is going to get slaughtered in the negotiations.

Like I said, MySpace = AltaVista…  doomed.

Filed Under: Fearless Predictions
Tagged: facebook, google, myspace, social networking

Thirty Helens Agree - Facebook Fanclubs are out-of-control

Facebook must be a fascinating place for Sociologists to watch, because popular-trends grow, evolve, and die at an accelerated rate there.  The first one I experienced was the, “25 Things About Me” notes… seeming it started slowly, but with a frequency that let you know that it was going to eventually explode.  Then came the “Top-5 Craze”, where folks posted the five NFL teams they hated the most, or the 5 movies they know by heart, etc…  to a certain extent, Top-5’s still pop-up, but a lot less these days. Currently, the “Quiz Craze” dominates Facebook, where you take a quiz to see which Friends character ‘you are’, or the ideal city for you, and so on. However, a new trend is quickly emerging, which promises to be much more annoying than any of the previous ones… as the “Quiz Craze” quickly fades, the “Fan Club for Everything Craze” is cranking up to be huge.

Read more

Filed Under: Thirty Helens Agree
Tagged: facebook, fan clubs, social networks, trends

Thirty Helens Agree - Category names are important

During the first season of The Kids In The Hall, there was a reoccurring skit where 30 women named Helen would agree on something totally obvious.  Things like, “Honesty is the best policy”, or “Tattoos aren’t for everyone”.  Frequently some Helen’s would be highlighted to further carry the argument.  When summing up their agreement on, “You can’t pay too much for a sensible pair of shoes”, one Helen exclaimed, “My god, your feet are what you walk on!”  Only once did the 30 Helen’s disagree, when only 29 of them agree that, “Punctuality is important”.  Controversy exists, to this day, over whether the 30th Helen also agreed, but was unfortunately delayed, or if she truly disagrees.

In honor of these ladies, and their timeless wisdom, I’m bringing back the “Thirty Helens Agree” category, where I too will state the obvious… or, at least, what should be obvious.

Filed Under: Thirty Helens Agree
Tagged: kids in the hall, stating the obvious, Thirty Helens Agree

Don’t be evil! Oh, wait…

For years, Google’s corporate motto was, interestingly enough, “Don’t be evil”.  Interesting in that Google hasn’t been exactly angelic…  they allow pretty much anyone to infringe on trademarks, unless that trademark happens to be owned by Google.  Recently, researcher Ben Edelman discovered a pattern of Google inflating performance metrics for its AdWords advertising platform, and in such a way that - conveniently - allows Google to bill clients for traffic, Edelman claims, that the advertiser should have received free.  Now, it appears that Google is turning their mathematical algorithms to determine…  wait for it…  which of their existing employees are likely to quit and go to a different employer.

I guess it’s a good thing that Google has, quietly, dropped “Don’t Be Evil” as their motto…

Filed Under: News and Rumors
Tagged: adwords, employee monitoring, evil, google, inflating traffic

Next Page »