06, 1, 2009
I don’t generally short stocks but for the longest time I told anyone that would listen that the stocks that I would short, if I did do such a thing, would be the stocks of the satellite radio players. They reminded me of AOL early on. Data wants to be free and tiny walled gardens cannot compete with 6 billions authors. My overall thesis has proven correct but I was wrong on the how, almost. Turns out Apple’s iPhone probably did more to kill Sirius than the Internet. However if there was any doubt of the ultimate demise of satellite radio’s dumb, unprofitable business model, the nail in the coffin has arrived in the form of Slacker and Pandora portable radio. Pandora is available on the iPhone. Slacker is available on the Blackberry (giving non-descript middle managers across the globe new potential for self-perceived coolness). I just loaded Slacker onto my Blackberry, and now there is simply no reason to use Sirius. You can kiss the remaining $0.35 of share price goodby.
Now slacker portable is not the portable music Internet. It’s not the 10,000 college radio stations available online (I guess I’m still going to have to build that app). It’s also not the millions of playlists available on sites like lastfm.com. But it is a great portfolio of radio stations plus any station of your own that you want to create. It’ll probably also go a good way toward finally putting a bullet in FM radio (and therefore part of CBS) as soon as the average consumer figures out how to get their phone playing through their car stereo. iPhone is going a long way in paving the way here as well.
6 Comments | 
Music, Technology | Tagged: blackberry, cbs, fm radio, iPhone, pandora, sirius, slacker | 
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Posted by edaciuk
03, 7, 2009
If you listen to music on your computer check out Slacker.com. It’s like Pandora but has a much better mix when you seed a station. They have some good radio stations as well. And it’s free. Oh and you can listen on your Blackberry.
If you ever need to take screenshots or partial screen shots check out Jing. I take a lot of partial captures for product, marketing, and sales presentations. I also take them for things like this blog. Usually I use SnagIt but Jing is a much cooler, more functional way to take captures. It’s from the same company, TechSmith. Think of it as the Web 2.0 version of SnagIt. And it’s free.
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Music, Presenting, Tools | Tagged: jing, Music, presentations, shout out, slacker | 
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Posted by edaciuk
01, 29, 2009
File this under the “Just kinda cool” category. The Technion-Israel Institute of Technology is working on piezoelectric roads that generate electricity as cars drive over them. Using crystals the experimental road generates 400 kilowatts of power per hour. Not a lot but… I like the outside the box/herd thinking.
Combine this with the MIT City Car and a trolley like electricity system and we might have something. Perhaps a more realistic version of Minority Report-like Singapore MonicMRT or England’s Ultra.
1 Comment | Cleantech | Permalink
Posted by edaciuk
12, 21, 2008
Foreign dependence on oil is the triple threat: economic vulnerability, killing the planet, and inciting traditional, terrorist, and religious wars. We need a Manhattan Project slash Go to the Moon by the End of the Decade-like commitment to attack this problem. It’s gotten lip-service and the occasional ineffective government initiative for the past 40 years. We haven’t moved the dial at all. What we need is an aggressive yet realistic program to get energy independent. Now I’m not sure about the math or the pitfalls of the proposal but Andy Grove has an interesting article in the latest edition of McKinsey Quarterly. In it Mr. Grove makes a convincing, concise argument for retrofitting existing cars with batteries as the most practical and expedient method of getting us off our dependence on foreign oil. He makes some really interesting points:
- 80% of cars in the U.S. drive daily distances that wouldn’t make any use of gasoline in a hybrid engine,
- Replacing existing U.S. cars with new hybrids would take too long. If 10 auto makers did as good a job as Toyota in rolling out hybrids, in 10 years they would still only account for 5% of all cars on the road,
- The $10 billion cost of a pilot program is peanuts given everything else we are throwing money at,
- We’d have an opportunity to grow a strategic industry – battery technology
Again, I haven’t looked into the math so I’m taking Mr. Grove’s word for it. But it makes for an interesting discussion.
Battery technology versus alternative fuels is a really interesting dynamic in reducing our foreign oil habit. It’s similar to the disk storage versus high-bandwidth downloads for digital distribution. Storage improvements drive down the alternative cost of just-in-time delivery. In the case of cars, increasing battery technology will drive down costs across the board for powering cars even if batteries themselves aren’t employed widely. However, electric/battery-powered cars are inevitable as we move the technology forward. Witness the recent advance by a Korean research team in solving silicon degradation problems that prevent silicon from replacing graphite in batteries as an example of the progression. Battery technology, in cars and elsewhere, is not there just yet but it’s just a function of time.
1 Comment | Cleantech, Energy, Technology | Tagged: Andy Grove, Batteries, Electric cars, McKinsey, Oil | Permalink
Posted by edaciuk
12, 9, 2008
A new browser was/is not at the top of my wish list. However I’m really enjoying Google Chrome. It’s only game-changing in the sense that Google’s search was game-changing when it came out. It doesn’t cook dinner or anything. It just works better, faster. Faster, however, is the main thing. It is just so much faster than IE, even Firefox. You don’t appreciate it until you try. Now IE seems painfully sluggish in comparison. It definitely makes surfing more pleasurable. It’s not a complete alternative to IE. Just like Firefox, Sharepoint breaks. Also a bunch of css/javascript-filled web sites haven’t been made compatible yet. Nothing major, just some annoying format glitchs from time-to-time. Assuming that over time the web developer community embraces it as a legitimate platform to include when coding, Chrome will probably be my default browser from now on. Which is surprising since I wasn’t looking for a new one.
5 Comments | 
Technology | Tagged: Chrome, Google | 
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Posted by edaciuk
10, 10, 2008
In a fire there is usually some either official or self-anointed person who tells people to please walk to the exits in an orderly fashion. This is usually required to counter that ever-present, panicky, over-caffeinated person who is screaming and running to the exit. This is the same person who manages to extract intense drama at back-to-school night. In the current crisis one of the very loud, panicked voices in the room is the media. It’s that announcer on NPR this morning that must have said the word “crash” 20 times in a five minute period. It’s the talking head comparing this to the Great Depression yet not really presenting any facts to counter the dramatic effect. They may not be technically wrong in what they’re spouting but it’s not helping. And it’s not fear for self preservation or good journalism that is driving it. It’s ratings and dollars. It’s the ad-driven infotainment industry that modern news organizations have become. So where is that calming voice that is imploring us to walk to the exits for our own good?
Normally it would be our President but we all know that is not going to work in this case. So in the absence of a singular leader we can turn to, how about if the Fed or some other organizing force created that calming voice? Where are the radio ads and commercials explaining the situation to Americans and the world? It won’t fix the problem of mortgage defaults. But it will at least potentially influence what has become the root problem, the psychology of the markets. In the past two weeks I haven’t heard a single government official on NPR that has been tasked with getting the message out that the government has an approach they think will work (of course that requires them to have one). Why not create a concerted media campaign to just calm people down. As part of that why not enlist the help of the media conglomerates. We all know that the patriarchs of these huge media conglomerates can influence the content on their properties. It would be a much bigger effort but not dissimilar to the networks agreeing to not broadcast election predictions until after all the polls have closed. Why not appeal to their civic obligations and enlist their help to be that calming voice alongside a well-orchestrated government campaign to do the same?
2 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: Bernanke, economics, economy, Fed, markets, media, news | Permalink
Posted by edaciuk
