The technological revolution that preceded the digital revolution was autos and airplanes. They were invented in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and the first commercial startups emerged in the first decade of the 20th century.  The auto/airplane revolution played out until the 1960s/1970s. That suggests that a technology revolution lasts around 75 years.

The transistor was invented in the late 1940s and by 1958 we had commercial startups working on the technology. So if this revolution is anything like the last, the next big thing will be invented any day now and within a decade or two we will be on to the next technology revolution.

And in that case, all bets are off. Silicon Valley could become the next Detroit and who knows what will be the next Silicon Valley.

This is interesting.

There are clearly some signs in the air regarding new industries, but it’s still too difficult to say what will fly big time.

A great article on Reuters regarding the IPO of Facebook and how the underwriters make money on it.

There’s also a concept called greenshoe option where the underwriters sell the stock they bought at a discount to the market. However, in this case – the underwriters sold more than they owned.

The greenshoe does, however, raise certain existential questions — not least, how can 484 million shares be sold, if only 421 million shares have been issued? Do those extra 63 million shares exist?

And now that the underwriters have sold more shares than they own – they are basically short on Facebook.

Let me explain.

Firstly, I work on two different Macs, one at the office and a MacBookAir while I’m on the move. This is where the first challenge came. I had synced my iPad with my office computer ages ago and it required me to “Erase and Sync” to begin syncing it with my MBA at home. I’d need to do this as I keep all the rugby games on our external hard drive here at home.

Needless to say, the value in erasing one’s iPads content and then syncing it with an empty library of apps isn’t extremely useful.

Secondly, the world is full of different codecs and formats of videos no matter how much Apple dislikes this. Why in the world does Apple not understand these files and then convert them to the one that is supported best by its iOS devices?

My guess is that it is trying to force people to download videos from their iTunes Store and in doing so try to cut down on potential piracy.

iTunes (the app) has lost its focus long ago. It’s now over 10 years since Steve Jobs outlined the Digital Hub strategy at Macworld 2001. In it they promote the Mac as a way to handle all your digital files be it video, photos, etc.

Sadly, that vision seems to be as far away as it was in 2001 with regards to iTunes and user generated video.

This is kind of sad:

The stock had been widely predicted to soar on its first day. Instead, up until the closing moments of the trading session, Facebook’s underwriters battled to keep the stock from slipping below its offering price of $38 a share. Such a stumble would have been a significant embarrassment, particularly for a prominent new issue like Facebook, the most heavily traded IPO of all time.

As Facebook finally began trading, some 30 minutes late, I put out a public forecast at that it will close lower than the opening price of $42.

It was quite easy to see behind this.

I believe Amazon is another such a public company that there are a lot of retailer investors who don’t fully understand the potential of the company, giving it overly high multiples.

The same goes for Amazon. As far back as I can remember, Amazon has had a P/E far above 100. Many people would say that a P/E isn’t a good figure to look at since it doesn’t take into account the potential of the company.

I partly agree, but having been in the internet business long enough I find it hard to justify buying Facebook stock at such high multiples – it’s extremely unlikely it will go up dramatically this year.

I’m also quite certain, despite not wishing anything bad for Facebook, that the stock will close below $38 towards the end of the year.

“New York Life Insurance Company has a deal with 10 Major League Baseball teams that triggers a promotional plug every time a player slides safely into base. When the umpire calls the runner safe at home plate, a corporate logo appears on the television screen, and the play-by-play announcer must say, ‘Safe at home. Safe and secure. New York Life.’ ”

$783,529 spent on Zuckerberg’s “comprehensive security program” in 2011, which included the procurement, installation, and maintenance of security measures for his personal residence, annual costs of security personnel, and the use of private aircraft.

And many more interesting (and mostly irrelevant) facts.

“People look at my profile and say, ‘You can have all the options,’ ” he said. “But really, everyone does.”

So true. While money may make some things more accessible, people in general share the same opportunities.

One could use this same setup for a question regarding Greece: How much money do we have to give them to realise that it is not working?

As many have most likely noted, Greece has failed to come up with a majority government and will aim for new elections on the 10th or 17th of June. Economists were also quick to note that Greece will run out of money in a month.

To be honest – I don’t believe we have an easy solution to the situation in Greece, when the problem at hand is so tough to crack.

This isn’t a prediction that everything will be fine, but it is a caution that the pessimism about Greek prospects once the turmoil is past may be overdone.

But then again – who knows?

16 photos – worth the quick watch.

I believe the model is heavily borrowed from that of the Financial Times. They allow reading on their site only through articles shared via social networks. In addition to this they will allow only 10 articles through free credentials.

I personally believe this is a step into the right direction, but the execution may be wrong here. Kauppalehti is basically putting the content they previously had available for free behind a paywall. What I believe the company fails to see in the current setup is the uniqueness of those news.

Kauppalehti is the most recognised daily business news brand in Finland. Despite this, I believe they might not be able to capitalise on the concept as well as they believe. This is because the same news are available elsewhere for free. Opportunity cost for consumers is low as the news is available elsewhere, unless Kauppalehti is truly able to innovate here.

Then again, the media business in Finland is quite established towards only a handful of brands. Kauppalehti and Taloussanomat battle it out in the daily business news while Talouselämä basically owns the weekly business news space with their publication.

Having this little competition could mean that Kauppalehti is able to capitalise on their paywall quite well. In the end, the media business is very similar to any other business out there, to survive you need to create value. If you create enough value – you’re able to charge a premium on that.

In today’s world, the de facto price for news online is €0. Competition is wild and alternate sources are available easily. If you’re able to create enough value – you’re able to charge for it. This is the reason why New York Times and The Economist are able to charge over €100 for their publications per year – and people pay eagerly, me included.

I’ve been thinking about this quite a lot due to the future of ArcticStartup. We are also looking into charging for our content, but differently. The kind of content we publish today will stay free in the future as well. If we ever decide to charge for content, it will be highly unique, original and through those – valuable, hopefully enabling us to charge a premium on it. Charging a premium means we’re able to put a price on it as opposed to giving it away for free.

Many organisations say that the media business is one where you can’t make a living. I strongly disagree. It’s just been an industry with high barriers of entry and that has enabled companies to charge dramatically higher prices than they would have been able to do in an environment where competition was healthy.

I’m hugely optimistic looking into the future of media. However, business models will play a key part and in my opinion, subscription is one of the best ones out there.

Hence, I believe Kauppalehti is doing the media industry in Finland a huge favor for taking this step, but I’m not confident it will be to their favor as much as they would want to. Nevertheless, I’m supportive of this cause and look forward to seeing more online news sites charging for their content.

ICANN has received approximately USD $350 million in fees for applications for new gTLDs.

ICANN will announce the new gTLD applications on Tuesday May 8th. Will be interesting to see who’s been applying for what.

All the relevant info regarding the IPO in one place.

The Financial Times is preparing to kill off its iPad and iPhone app for good, signalling its final conversion from executable-app to web-app publishing.

We ask that you clear out and personal belongings and leave your company-issued laptop at the fifth floor help desk and leave the premises immediately. We will also be sending you a bill for any damage to the rug near your desk.

This kind of “journalism” and integrity would make TechCrunch something it once was – too bad AOL doesn’t allow for that.

A Creative Commons licensed data journalism handbook, to be read freely online.

Steve Wozniak on Lumia 900 and WP:

I’m kind of shocked. Every screen is much more beautiful than the same apps on Android and iPhone.