Goodbye Zima…
MolsonCoors announced today that it was discontinuing the Zima brand due to poor sales. While I have never been a fan of the malt liquor beverage, it does hold a special place in the history of the Internet. How does Zima have anything to do with the Internet you may ask. Zima was the first known consumer product to feature its website address on the packaging.
This was a turning point for the fledging web in 1994 to have a major (or semi-major) brand consumer product advertise their online presence directly on their product, thus beginning the commercialization of the Internet to drive consumer product sales.
My question is would the Web have stayed a just Fad (as it was considered to be at the time) if something like this would have never happened? Would the Internet as we know it today be different or exist at all if no had thought to use it as a marketing tool?
The Broken is coming back…
Well after nearly a two year long hiatus the broken is supposedly coming back, according to Digg/Pownce/Revision3 founder Kevin Rose. Kevin posted on his Pownce account today that he would do one more episode of the Internet-based show.The broken is an episodic show that was based around the more shady practices on the Internet and in real life, such as how to get free pizza and how to jam a cell phone.
The last episode that Kevin and “Double D” did was in 2006 and that was after a previous nearly two year hiatus. Personally, I cannot wait. I think that this was great show that needs more episodes to be made. It was truly one of the founding shows of the web video revolution. It also has a great opening credit song; “Dinosaurs Will Die” by NOFX.
RANT: This Week in Tech (TWIT) 135: Zuck This
I have been an active listener to the TWIT podcast for the last few years, however I was very disappointed with the episode that I just listened to. Episode 135 featured Leo Laporte, Jason Calicanis, Jerry Pournelle, and Wil Harris.
First, I cannot stand Jerry Pournelle on TWiT. He does not have a voice for radio, it is like listening to my grandfather talk about how he had to walk 50 miles in the snow to get to school. I am tired of hearing about his Sci-Fi books and how back in the day he did this and did that, blah, blah, blah…. He is the ultimate old curmudgeon. I am sure at one time he was a great tech writer, but I just do not see it now, I think he is past his prime.
My Second issue with this episode was that they did not talk about anything besides tech gossip. I was hoping to hear more about Microsoft’s MIX and maybe some substance from SXSW. Instead all that was talked about was Twitter, which I am so tired of hearing about, all Twitter is a chat room in a new package. They also went on and on about the Zuckerburg Interview blunder and the Wikipedia founder’s life.
I miss Dvorak…
Who Also Should Be Looking at buying Yahoo!
Yesterday I wrote about how we should do everything we can to save Yahoo! from certain death at the hands of Microsoft. That got me thinking over the course of my day about Who else should be looking at buying Yahoo! if they are on the block. So below is just few tech companies on my list and some of the reasons I came up with, but is not meant by any means to be conclusive, or have any possibility of ever happening.
-SAP – The 3rd largest software company in the world, but only a small percentage of the world would ever know it. SAP has been considered an acquisition target itself (it was even suggested that MS should buy SAP over Yahoo!), but by acquiring Yahoo! SAP gains access to some of the most innovative programmers in the Web 2.0 space, and they raise awareness of their corporate products that carry their name by associating their name with Yahoo!. If this were to happen they would almost certainly have to allow Yahoo! to remain nearly independent as their German corporate culture would most likely clash with Yahoo’s.
-IBM – If they ever wanted to get their name back in the general public/average consumer’s eye after their sale of their desktop and laptop business to Lenovo this would be the way. Again, they would have to let Yahoo! be an autonomous unit to avoid culture clashes.
-Adobe – Of all of the names being thrown around I think that this one has the most potential. With Adobe making a push at delivering some of it’s apps online and creating new apps that are solely online, such as their Buzzword online word processor, it’s existing efforts to monetize PDF’s with ads from Yahoo!, and similar cultures this could be a good marriage.
-Apple – Everyone knows that .Mac is in dire need of an update and new features, many of which Yahoo can provide, such as a better online photo sharing site, this can be found in Flickr. They could use the Yahoo Music and Video sites to drive traffic to iTunes. They could gain the groupware/email server package that they desparatly need to compete in the business market in Zimbra (which already runs natively on a Mac). This list could go on and on why this would be a great match, of all of the names on my list I think that it would be the best one. If this one were to happen, and I were Apple I would, day one, go to Google and strike a deal to let them run the Search Engine and Ad Serving business, and just focus on the Media and content portions of the company.
Web 2.0 Financial Management Sites
Just a couple of reviews of sites I checked out this weekend:
Financial:
I checked out Mint.com. Really nice site design and some nice features to present you with a financial dashboard. I’m going to stick with Yodlee though. Mint doesn’t seem to be able to pull information in from accounts other than your bank or credit card, these are two of the easiest things to check. With Yodlee, I know I can trust the security (They’ve been extensively audited by the banks and organizations they support), and they have the ability to give you a dashboard on everything. In Yodlee I have my mortgage, credit card, bank accounts (even the numbered ones.. just kidding), Vanguard mutual funds, 401k, I even have my Southwest and AA frequent flier miles. I have the ability to categorize purchases, see trending, and graphs for where my money is going, they are also adding features (just added a Zillow integration to attempt to track the market value of your home). I’ve been using Yodlee for over a year now and am very happy with it, just their site design is circa 1999.
While Yodlee’s site design doesn’t come close to that of Mint.com, I really like the increased feature set I get with Yodlee. If you don’t have an account on Yodlee I would really suggest it. You can get a completely free account here:
http://corporate.yodlee.com/
You will want to select “Register for an Account” in the Yodlee Moneycenter area on the bottom right.
It looks like I’m not the only one to feel the same way:
http://comments.deasil.com
