09, 28, 2008
Part of me is jealous every time I see someone showing off their sleek Apple notebook or iPhone. They’re so sexy, svelt, and powerful. I’m like a kid who sees that bright red, yellow, and green box of candy. The mouth waters but the eating isn’t as fun as quenching the desire. Now I know Apple theologians will think me an uninformed heretical nut job. They are in love with their MacBooks and iPhones and I’m a just an envious nerd. On the surface they are right. But the 80% rational part of my brain doesn’t want an Apple for one overriding reason: it is a walled garden. The price for beauty, svelt, and power is confinement and I’m just not that psyched to get in, no matter how cool that piece of hardware might make me in the eyes of others.
Perfect example is Wired’s report on applications cast out of iPhonedom embracing Android. It is true Android is playing catch up/me too with iPhone. Apple has the market lead. Apple’s phone is cooler, thinner, sexier. On top of that it has a great application development environment open for anyone who wants to play. But it is also true that it is Apple’s sandbox, not the developers. Just like their hardware, unless your application fits with their world domination plan you’re not allowed in the sandbox. Take your toys and leave please. Now I know Google has its own world domination plan. Call me naive but world domination by Google versus world domination by Apple seems like democracy versus communism, respectively. Both want to rule the world. One just fits what I, the lowly developer, want from that world more than the other. 1984 anyone?
Posted in All, Technology |
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09, 23, 2008
When I first heard of Android I didn’t get it. Coming on the heels of iPod success it seemed like so many other Google attempts outside of search where entrenched competitors reign…not so successful. But in reading about Locale the light bulb went off. Locale is one of the winners of the $275k application contest Google had for Android applications. What they created was to ability for the phone to react programatically to one’s location. The simple case is your phone goes into vibrate mode if you’re in your favorite movie theater. But think about what Google is putting on the table – open programming environment, open location services, and an accelerometer. Now take Locale to its logical conclusion. What if you could wave your phone and your lights turned on. When you got near your girlfriends house it pinged her to let her know to get ready. Automatically pull up your Amazon wishlist when you walk into a bookstore. The mind boggles at the possibilities. I can see a whole hardware/software industry popping up around Android phones much like the games and physical accessories that popped up around the Wii. This could still turn out to be an also-ran attempt doomed to live in the iPhone’s shadow. But, what if this shakes up mobility and real-world interaction the way the Wii shook up game play.
Posted in Technology |
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09, 1, 2008
A friend of mine recently said that cleantech is going to be bigger than the Internet. I’m always on the lookout for leading indicators, so that got my interest. Kleiner Perkins was the canary in the coal mine example my friend pointed to. They were recently profiled in Fortune magazine. They’ve moved completely into cleantech and away from the Internet. Having just raised $1.2 billion for “Green” investments. John Doerr thinks cleantech is a $6 trillion industry. Big bets by some really smart people. Bets that have been ramping for a while. I’ve been hearing about cleantech for some time but always thought of it as 10 years out. The Fortune article plus my friend’s vehemence however got me to take a quick look. What can we make of that statement “bigger than the Internet”? That’s a rather large statement. One leading indicator or at least baseline would be VC investment. According to a recent PwC and the NVCA report on Q2 ’08 VC investments, cleantech investing garnered $884 million in 65 deals while Internet investing was $1.5 billion on 238 deals. So Internet early-stage investing is alive and well and hasn’t been surpassed by cleantech yet. Though that doesn’t mean cleantech won’t be “bigger than the Internet” as this data point doesn’t really speak to velocity nor long-term opportunity. Interestingly, the two largest VC deals for the quarter were cleantech, $132 million and $115 million and cleantech has had the greatest growth as a sector in the past 5 years.
So how else could we gauge the potential? Realistically we won’t know for quite some time. But it’s clear that cleantech is on a tear and ripe for outside the herd potential. Course we’ll also see if it goes through the same bubble, bust, real-potential cycle.
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Posted in All, Energy |
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