Category Archives: Observer

iNews

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This morning’s Observer column…

The saga of the Apple iPhone continues. Last Thursday, AT&T’s chief executive, Randall Stephenson, was asked at an industry gathering about the prospects for a future iPhone with a faster net connection. ‘You’ll have it next year,’ quoth he. Those ‘familiar with the matter’ (as US newspapers quaintly put it) are amazed that Mr Stephenson still lives and breathes – or at any rate was doing so when this column went to press. For there are two things that Steve Jobs, Apple’s mercurial – not to say explosive – CEO, cannot abide. The first is anyone other than himself making product announcements. The second is announcing forthcoming upgrades while there’s plenty of old stock to be shifted over Christmas. After all, who in their right mind would buy a steam-powered iPhone now when they can have a 3G one in a few months? Answers, please, on the back of a death warrant, to Steve Jobs, 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA 95014, USA.

Kindling for a new market?

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This morning’s Observer column…

It’s the end-of-the-book story again. Last week, Amazon launched its Kindle electronic book reader, amid corporate hopes that it would become the ‘iPod of e-readers’. Strange, isn’t it, how everyone now aspires to create the ‘next iPod’?

The Kindle is a neat gadget that is the size of a paperback book, weighs 10.3 ounces and doesn’t beep. Its display gives a good approximation of the clarity of print on a six-inch screen. Of course it relies on battery power, but Amazon claims that you can get up to 30 hours of reading before having to plug it in for a two-hour recharge. It can hold up to 200 books. In sleep mode, the device displays tasteful images of ancient texts, early printing presses and classic authors like Emily Dickinson and Jane Austen….

Radiohead: gold in them thar downloads?

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This morning’s Observer column…

A few weeks ago, the band Radiohead made waves by making their new album In Rainbows available online as a free download. But people could also decide how much they wanted to pay for it. This experiment was greeted with gleeful incredulity by many cynics, who opined that Radiohead had showed a touching but naive faith in human nature, and predicted that freeloaders would so outweigh the paying customers that the experiment would be a financial flop….

The Ferrari and the lawnmower

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This morning’s Observer column…

Until now, phones have been relatively primitive devices, so the corrupt absurdity of the closed systems operated by networks has not been obvious to most. The arrival of the iPhone lays it bare. Having an iPhone locked to a network which doesn’t provide 3G connectivity, and is unable to make VoIP calls despite having good wireless networking built in, is like buying a Ferrari and finding that the only thing you can do with it is power your lawnmower. It’s nuts – and our regulators have allowed it to happen….

Missing column

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As a result of some — as yet unexplained glitch — yesterday’s Observer column didn’t make the leap from print to Web. If you’re interested here’s a pdf.

Who said there isn’t life after death? Hard on the heels of Radiohead’s ‘pay what you like’ experiment — in which fans were able to decide how much (or how little) they wanted to pay for the group’s latest album — comes news that Cliff Richard is also testing new online business models. He’s asking his fans to determine the price of his forthcoming meisterwerk, ‘Love, the Album’. The maximum anyone will be charged is £7.99 (the price of an album on the iTunes store) but the the final price will be determined by how popular the album is — as measured by the volume of advance orders.

Ingenious, eh? It just shows that there’s still life in these old codgers. Sir Cliff says he had no choice but to embrace new technology. ‘Who’d have thought I’d get a buzz from creative marketing?’ he told the Daily Telegraph. ‘As artists we face a stark choice. We either keep one step ahead of the technology which is changing our industry so radically – or we throw up our hands and quit. Personally I’m not for quitting.’

Right on…

Correction: The column was published on the Web edition, but in a different location. Phew!

Facebook and the Groucho problem

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This morning’s Observer column…

Pssst … have I got a deal for you! Send me a cheque for £10 and I will sell you a 0.000001 per cent interest in NetworkerColumns Ltd, a privately held company which produces copious quantities of mildly irritating prose. I will then release a press statement announcing that we are both partners in a £1bn company!

Daft, isn’t it? Well, it’s exactly the same logic that has led the mainstream media to hail Facebook as a $15bn company – that is to say, the fifth-most valuable internet company after Google, eBay, Yahoo and Amazon. What happened is that Microsoft, after months of secret negotiations, announced it was paying $240m for a 1.6 per cent stake in Facebook. Multiply 240 million by 100, divide by 1.6 and out pops the ‘valuation’…

In millions of Windows, the perfect Storm is gathering | Business | The Observer

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This morning’s Observer column…

Storm has been spreading steadily since last January, gradually constructing a huge botnet. It affects only computers running Microsoft Windows, but that means that more than 90 per cent of the world’s PCs are vulnerable. Nobody knows how big the Storm botnet has become, but reputable security professionals cite estimates of between one million and 50 million computers worldwide. To date, the botnet has been used only intermittently, which is disquieting: what it means is that someone, somewhere, is quietly building a doomsday machine that can be rented out to the highest bidder, or used for purposes that we cannot yet predict…

Vicious beasts and melting butter

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This morning’s Observer column…

It is said that savage beasts are most dangerous when cornered. Cue the record industry, lashing out with increasing viciousness in its death throes. It’s been pursuing a policy of suing file-sharers, most of whom have settled out of court. But a court in Minnesota has been hearing the first of these cases that has actually come to court….

VoIP: Very over-Inflated Price

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This morning’s Observer column…

First of all, an apology. In previous editions, this column may have suggested that VoIP (internet telephony) stood for ‘Voice over Internet Protocol’. Now it turns out that it is, in fact, an acronym for ‘Very over-Inflated Price’. The proprietors deeply regret this error and hope that it has not caused any reader to make foolish investment decisions.

This matter was drawn to our attention by an announcement made last week by eBay. The company reported that in the quarter just ended, it will take £700m in write-offs and charges related to Skype – for which two short years ago it paid £1.3bn in cash and stock, plus what was enigmatically described as ‘a potential performance-based consideration’ estimated by industry sources at £750m. That’s £2.75bn in total…

I also wrote a short piece on the Wikipedia-obituary kerfuffle.

Taking people at their Facebook value

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This morning’s Observer column…

To the old question: what are friends for? we must now add: how much are they worth? This is topical because rumours abound that Microsoft is contemplating buying a stake in Facebook, the social networking site. The really interesting bit is the arithmetic. Microsoft is supposedly contemplating paying between $300m (£147m) and $500m for a 5 per cent share. If true, this suggests that its advisers put a value of between $6bn and $10bn on Facebook. Google is also reported to be sniffing around, raising the prospect of a bidding war for a website which essentially enables people to post embarrassing photographs and impress acquaintances with accounts of their busy lives…