Tag: Youtube

California Dreaming

TIME spotlights California on its cover this week.

As a country, California would be with the G8 ( between Italy and Brazil, thus displacing BRIC with CRIC  i.e. California, Russia, India and China).

Yet it has no world-class soccer team (despite having in-shored Beckham) just yet. That’s said, it is one of the brownest States in the Union. And it will stand tall, demographically and technologically.

I wrote about the up-trading Taco truck in my earlier blog. TIME also showed a Korean BBQ truck  using Twitter to announce its stops (high-tech high touch).

What surprised me was foreign students’ major in the State: more chose Business and Management over Science, Math and Engineering (exactly what the Chinese need to move up the value chain).

With 13 percent Asian, California has a natural inroad to Asia (just a plane-hop away).

Washington State has also capitalized on its geographic “proximity” to set up strong ties with the East (and sell some apples, Window and Starbucks while at it).

Who wouldn’t want to live in California: paradise and paradox, problems and promises, most congested freeways, yet greenest state. It has a underexploited Modesto and an overexposed Hollywood , clean tech and bio tech; gay and straight.

California is home to dream factories (Disney and Dream Work). So enamoured with the big screen that the State elected actors to be its Governor not once but twice. Its script keeps getting a rewrite even on location (budget cut? well, hold up a knife Governor. “This is a knife” the line last said by Crocodile Dundee on his first visit to the Big Apple). It’s used to be “Go West young man!” Now, it’s keeping going West and follow the sun.

I talked to people in the Orient and they wanted to come and live in California. To them, California is America (especially if they have a free account on Yahoo, own an I-Phone and watch YouTube, all California home-grown, like its wine and raisins). In up scale China, one can find new developments that were modeled after Newport Beach.

“All the leaves are brown, and the sky is gray”. If the gubernatorial race is an early indicator of things to come, we are in great shape. After all, anything can happen in a dream, or when we “sit down and pray”. The truth is, my relationship with California has been a dysfunctional one, as is the State.

Despite its high costs of living, California is where you’ll find innovation around the corner, or in the garage .

Californians don’t do attic or basement like East-Coast counterparts. They compose music on wheels (Jewel), produce TV shows on wheels (Jay Leno), and of course, cater tacos on wheels. Year round, they don’t need the bottom half of their jeans (hence the cut off or zip out). This recession and recent gold price peak led a bunch of people to the high mountain, once again, creating a mini Gold Rush, California’s original raison d’etre.

Most listened to is its rush hour traffic report. Least visited is the downtown LA library, before or after the fire. When EReader and Kindle get full adoption, they will turn library into museum .  What’s hip in California (women volleyball, muscle beach) can’t be easily duplicated .  This Wednesday, Google will team up with Lala to help us search for that “California Dreaming” tune. Just a phrase, such as “I walk into a church” can trigger a bot crawl.

Or ” I’ll be back” to pop up the Terminator. It doesn’t hurt to have a Governor with sound bites or once picked up a dumb bell in what remained of  a LA fire.

And the media ate it up: light, camera, action (background lighting, actor, prop and audio). Keep dreaming California.

 

Snapperizing

The Nobel Prize winners this year are being honored for their work on fiber optic (which made possible  data transmission across the globe) and digital photography (pixel-driven process).

Put the two inventions together with the rise of crowdsourcing, we got the phenomenon of  iPhoto, Flicker etc..

I am sure Facebook and Match.com are direct beneficiaries of photo sharing across the continents.

Faxing disrupts snail mail. Email disrupts FedEx. And finally, Adobe complements and completes electronic communications with photo/file attachment….that is, until something else (Snapper?) emerges.

I packed away my fax machine last year, and haven’t missed it a bit.

Who needs those grainy black and white copies when one can transmit via the Internet color photos?

Among the ten magazines that got shut down this month were Nick and Nick Jr magazines.

I am sure kids can go directly to Nick’s web sites, search and siege, then share files with peers on Facebook or Instagram.

Glossy magazines for all segmented markets were early beneficiaries of Gutenberg mass printing. Now, print medium starts retreating while photo sharing and amateur photography dominates the world-wide web.

Human resource experts are predicting the coming public acceptance of video CV.

Current TV (as of this edit, was acquired) had tapped into Viewer-Created-Content  (VC2) right before YouTube was launched.

And Google Video followed right behind.

All due to fiber optic (dark and lit) applications.

A pixel here and a pixel there, all of the sudden, we found ourselves living in a whole new society, more visual and global.

The veil has been lifted. And there is no turning back. Gone were the days when the husband’s first glimpse of  his bride is on their wedding day. Or an employer with his/her new hire.

I remember broadcasters always asked for demo tapes when recruiting newscasters. Today, perhaps those ads would say ” please send us your web links”. And the response would be equally fast.

Viva la broadband!

 

A billion bucks!

Twittering to the tune of a billion bucks?

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/sep2009/tc20090924_956402.htm?campaign_id=related_AK

And the deficit changed slightly to the tune of 1.29 trillion bucks.

Since when we are anesthetized to these huge dollar figures?

But I must give it to the Lab geeks who came up with new inventions: copying over the distance (fax), texting over the phone (SMS), Voice over IP (Skype) and Facebook/Twitter (user-generated content).

During the Tiananmen Square incident, protesters tried to send and receive fax documents.

And last summer, in Iran, people twittered. Signs of the time.

Tech and social change.

And the Beatles albums got remastered.

“All we are saying, is ‘give Peace a chance'” (Lennon Legend).

It’s not that we are lacking the means for social discourse but we certainly lack the will.

Tribal societies just hunt for enough food (no Frigidaire) and the rest of the night, gather around

the fire, to hear the Chief telling his folklores.

Definitely those fairy tales lasted longer than 140 characters. And I bet you any of the people in that community could recite those tales from memory, their version of soundbites . But they wanted to hear it again and again from the Chief. It’s assuring, like a child who needs to be tugged in . Somehow, in the darkness of night, they believe tomorrow will be the same, safe and secure.

Well, today, you can’t even walk out of a check out line without double-checking your receipts (because the line items

might have been charged with the older and higher prices by the computer, while the sign advertised a lower amount).

Supply chain, bar code, algorithm fluctuation (just like airline price change).

We have mutated way past the smokestack era. And it depends on what your view of the future is,

a Billion bucks for Twitter might be too low an evaluation. You see, it’s the Southwest Airlines model for Narrow-Casting. Citizen news, where it happens, while it is happening. No microwave (truck) nor microphone to make news.

Just twitter. I am sure YouTube will soon limit their video length to accommodate the Network effect (more video, the higher value of the network).

We, worker bees, buzzing and pollinating  user-generated content, 140 characters at a time, to a tune of a Billion bucks. By the time the bottom billion joined in, a billion bucks will have been too low an evaluation.

Whoops! I have just passed 400 words. Old school! Forgive me. My first tech sales was a fax machine, then “brick” phones with separate batteries. And way back then, the Chief used to ramble on way past bed-time. What’s the hurry? Isn’t information (hence knowledge) supposed to be infinite. I got it. We are still operating on old assumptions of network and spectrum scarcity. A agricultural-based Malthusian view  as applied to the information age.  When Twitter gets properly IPO’ed, it might have enough cash in their war-chest to increase data rate to 150 characters. I will then be much happier.

 

low-emission Recession

The Law of Unintended Consequences kicks in: we got 25% lower in carbon emission this past year, and maybe lower gas prices toward year-end.

Extra cash for Christmas shopping: kids need shoes.

Nation leaders are flying in to NY to attend a Summit on the Environment.

Big boys (and powerful women) club.

Hope they represent the human race well.

Those trees will still be standing when we, one by one, passed away.

But it is more desirable to hand over a clean (green) baton to gen Y.

As a side note.

There are some area restaurants refusing to serve Libyan and Iranian leaders.

(dream on, they aren’t going to stop by for a burger and fries. They are not inspector Clouseau “I would like a hamburger” in French accent).

My head spins just trying to follow the news: health care talk shows, Afghan terrorist plot uncovered, Emmy Award lowest broadcast audience, and the UN summit on the environment.

But there are tectonic shifts underneath: we are living longer and healthier due to medical awareness (proliferation of information available on the Internet), less time devoted to Idiot Tube and more time on YouTube.   Talking about tech. Dell is buying Perot System, trying to diversify away from its core PC business.

Companies and countries have to reinvent themselves every few years. Jumping the curve to the next bubbles (Educational loan? Life insurance?)

The US is no longer number 1 on competitiveness. And Singapore is right behind at number 3.

Instead of meeting in Pittsburgh, the G-20 should try to meet in Singapore, and observe and learn.

It’s humbling when one has to change. Lower emission should be achieved by design, not by default. Granted that, I celebrate this good news nevertheless. In Recession we got lower emission.

Apple in my eyes

 

Everybody loves a winner.

Today’s is Apple, starts with the “A” in the alphabet.

Not bad for a college drop-out who then learned calligraphy, hung out with “evangelist” Kawasaki, forced out then came back to the tune of billions. He embodied the “I” in I-phone.

I remember my first encounter with personal computers, and of course, it was a Mac.

Silicon Valley back in the early 80’s was brimming with S Asian programmers;  the Vietnamese-American community were working 2 or 3 shifts a day as assemblers (before the offshore trend).

You got to have a garage: garage band, garage sale, and start-up in garage. It’s cool to be in a garage, although it was meant for cars.

In California, you don’t freeze to death by sleeping in a garage, unlike in the cold Winter of the Northeast. Thus, it allows for start-up mindset and venture capitalist, risk takers, trend setters or just drifters.

You definitely find yourself there, because to go further West (young man), you will have to fly to Hawaii.

The best you can do is driving North, through Red Wood, onto Portland and Seattle.

Meanwhile, South of SF is sufficed.

It will keep you busy “coding” for a while.

What Steve Jobs brought to the business world is his signature turtle neck and a little bit of rebellious streak.

Meanwhile, he doesn’t mind to surround himself with the likes of Kawasaki, long before having an Asian partner becomes a hip (Yahoo, YouTube).

People of the Valley are not only Californians, but also tribal members of the Tech world. You don’t talk shop, you talk Tech. You are not the Man, you’re the Burning Man.

I remember attending a speech by Armstrong when he became CEO of AT&T. And having been at various start-ups

such as MCI and Teligent, I had a nagging feeling that you could not fake “coolness”.  In other words, you cannot be both the old IBM (blue suit) and the new new thing (like Apple). The elephant cannot walk.  Sure enough, after some “reality checks”, IBM sold off the hardware division to Lenovo to pursue the higher margin world of convergence and Cloud, while AT&T back then sold off NCR and other assets.

I admired the crowd Apple stores were able to draw in.

Apple takes it to the mass, at a boutique level, and bridges the gap between high-tech and high touch.

It’s been a long way since 1976 garage days. A lot of Chinese take-outs, brainstorming and risk taking.

It’s really tough to be number 1. Now the hard part is to stay King of the Hill. Apple in the post-Jobs era. Gotta Think Different this time.

 

Fat pipe, fast food

FIOS in Triple Play, for $79.00 for the first six months.

The last time I looked, it was $100 for the Triple Play package: phone, TV and broadband.

In China, kids played until they dropped dead (unwilling to lose their seats at the Internet cafe and online, where supposedly, they were up against competitors from all over the world. Sort of 24/7 Beijing Olympics).

And the China you and I had in mind (Nixon and Mao, Madam Butterfly and man in front of the tanks) is now replaced by a new generation of only boys, obese and online.

It will be just another step before they are online and home alone (at least, they drag themselves out to the internet cafe around the corner for now).  At home, one has access to Haeir small refrigerators: lactose, sugar, carb diet are in abundant supply. Stressed over a lost game? Have some more sweet!

The chairs and screens grow larger to accommodate larger “young” population. The next Billion ( according to Jump Point).

Marketers always seek to win over the next generation. Well, they are no longer the Generation without the Sun as in Japan, but something resembles Bangalore and Beijing. Without repeating Friedman’s mantra, but they are the ones who will take away my kids’ jobs, if not mine already, while we are asleep.

Their older and rural counterparts might have been mistreated and working under age at off-shored garment plants,

but these Asian urban kids are internet savvy, and fast food junkies.

They could multitask (typing and eating fries at the same time), code, and speak two if not three languages. Hard to beat!

The future prospects are quite frightening, if you can envision the Hongkongization of  China. 1.3B entrepreneurs and consumers of every thing fatty: fat pipe and fast food. It’s quite a recipe for a disaster, if not, obesity and obscurity.

Asians kids are by and large, not that extroverted. Now, they spend hours in front of the screen, developing and playing games. We will have to take old maid’s matchmaking from an art to an industry. Honey.com anyone? Remember now, when both boys and girls look like Sumo, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Plus, they can do a lot of stuff online nowadays to alter the look, size and shape of a person. Plastic surgery goes East, right after Madison Ave.

YouTube China will have quite an audience to reckon with, provided they roll out enough fat pipe for fat people.

 

white balance

Digital TV is here. Selected reality represented by a series of 1’s and 0’s. I miss the Indian-head
poster TV studios used to put up to “white balance” and signal align their cameras before each broadcast. The jump from analog TV to digital TV will be more significant than the jump from B/W to color TV. This time, we got mobility and speed, not to mention
accuracy and security. In the old days, opera houses hired claque professionals to start a string of applause. With digital TV, Nielsen will have less work to tabulate audience response (and advertisers with collection) .

With digital TV i.e. 24/7 news cycle when you want, where you want, one no longer has to warm up the TV dinner and wait for Ted Koppel at 6:30 PM to tell us how many days (444)  there had been since US hostages were taken at the embassy in Tehran (79).
One of these days, I might even upload some digital video on YouTube, by far, the best of  Web 2.0 apps, in my opinion.
After all, it’s a tech-enabled global society, isn’t it? Satellite transmission (vertical upload) renders the concept of gatekeepers (one-way information flow) kind of obsolete (well, I purposefully left out fire walls and all that IT stuff. Go IT go!). Just make sure that what’s being uploaded meet the standards of public decency i.e. tasteful and respectful.

Whatever the means, we still abide by the Golden Rules: air that which we ourselves would like to view.