High Tech Weekly

ZEXSports: Your One Website for Action Sports Events

Keith Cowing — Wed, 1 Apr 2009 02:37:17 +0000

ZEXSports is becoming the go-to website for action sports events. ZEXSports is an interesting startup, leveraging social media and viral marketing to build a loyal following. I can't tell if there is a more in-depth business model, aside from the obvious advertising. However, I think that ZEXSports is building a community that is more valuable than the website itself.

Action sports enthusiasts are extremely passionate and highly impressionable. While typical advertising programs can be effective, I think that ZEXSports is opening a possibility for something more powerful. Large events and celebrity sponsorships, dominated by companies like Billabong and Oakley, are extremely expensive. But if ZEXSports can tap into the influential players in each neighborhood, there might be a new product placement opportunity.

Upstart sports apparel brands, and big names alike, can reap major rewards from placing a few products among influential bikers, snowboarders, and surfers. When ZEXSports reaches critical mass, they'll have a lock on a very valuable demographic. I think they could even act as a broker between action sports brands and local influencers. Giving a neighborhood skateboarder a "sponsorship" would be great bragging rights, even if it just involves $50 and a couple hoodies. But if you place those products on the right person in each neighborhood, something ESPN can't do on a micro level, you've got a great marketing program. Brands would be happy to place their products among the leader in each social circle across the country. Up-and-coming athletes would love the attention and ZEXSports could get a slice for brokering the transaction.

On a similar thought, Sportgenic is a platform that specifically places ads on sports websites. This sounds like a great potential partner for ZEX (if it isn't already).

SlideShare Offers Mobile Version

Keith Cowing — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 05:43:01 +0000

SlideShare just announced mobile access to its presentation-sharing website. I expect it to work particularly well on iPhones, which are featured in the presentation shown below. I haven't tried it on my BlackBerry yet because I need to install a new browser (Opera) for it to work.

Despite a few drawbacks (tiny screen, extra downloads), this is a great enhancement to an already useful platform. SlideShare is an amazingly efficient way to share information and find useful presentations. The ability to embed presentations within your site or social networking page is probably the most important part. It's unclear whether that will work on a mobile phone or not (when viewing a presentation within a third-party site and not on SlideShare's homepage). Perhaps an embedded presentation will show up as a link to a mobile-friendly version. That's unclear. But one way or another, SlideShare provides a valuable service and is making great progress. Startups might be benefitting the most from SlideShare right now. They get great, free exposure by posting pitches on the web and promoting them with services like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Introducing SlideShare Mobile: use SlideShare on the go!

View more presentations from Amit Ranjan.

Web of Trust: How to Survive in a Recession

Keith Cowing — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 02:21:41 +0000

WOT (a web security startup in Finland) recently landed a new investor, Michael Widenius. Widenius, the founder of MySQL, is a major score for WOT. Aside from money, via his investment company OpenOcean, he'll bring great insight on how to buid and monetize web communities.

MySQL is a fantastic example of how to build a free product, leverage your user base, and then create a valuable business (MySQL recently sold to Sun Microsystems for $1 Billion). His desire to fund WOT is a great sign for the company. Stay tuned because you may see some powerful security innovations coming out of Helsinki.

Choosing the Right Cloud Computing Environment

Keith Cowing — Wed, 4 Feb 2009 02:50:18 +0000

Cloud computing environments are going to have a profound effect on web hosts, startup companies, and Internet architectures. High Tech Weekly happens to run on Google App Engine and the user experience has been wonderful. I'm building a new web service, with very different requirements than HTW, and am searching for the proper cloud. Here are the three front runners at the moment and a few pros and cons for each.

Google App Engine

Pros:

Super easy to use.
Good analytics tools.
Ridiculously cheap usage fees (free for development and even modest traffic).
Database is easy to work with and extremely scalable.
No need to touch the web server.
Deployments and version control work like a charm.
Great API's (Image, MemCache, Mail).
Supports Gmail logins for authentication.
Active user community for Q&A, help, feedback, etc.

Cons:

Not very portable (design will be Google-dependent for now).
Database is not built for large reporting or queries with > 1000 results.
No cron jobs (ability to run scheduled tasks).
May not have the credibility yet to run enterprise apps.
Currently only supports Python.

Microsoft Azure

Pros:

.NET environment is very robust.
Supports Microsoft SQL Server (Great reporting).
Easy to scale.
Don't need to touch the web server.
Will likely be aimed at supporting enterprise apps as well.
Supports LiveID's for authentication (such as hotmail accounts).

Cons:

Still in beta.
Only supports .NET.
Deployments are slow.
No proven apps yet for reference.
Waiting for a user community.
Pricing hasn't been announced (though it's supposed to be "competitive").

Amazon Web Services

Pros:

Most mature product of the bunch.
Direct access to a machine (full control of web server and all applications).
Good user community.
Reasonably priced.
Lots of flexibility, not locked into any particular development environment or programming language.

Cons:

Have to deal with the web server (can be a pro or a con, just depends).
More expensive than App Engine (not sure about Azure yet).
Slightly longer setup time.
A little more difficult to build persistent storage (if not using their proprietary database).

There are other options as well, but for now it's important to have a household name behind my infrastructure. Salesforce (Force.com) happens to be out of my desired price-range (and a little too high-end for my needs). I'm very interested to see how Azure plays out over the next year. Most of the negatives are simply due to the fact that it's brand new. For now I'm leaning towards using Amazon Web Services and building everything in .NET so that it can later be ported to Azure if there is ever a major reason.

All Eyes on John Chambers: Cisco to Report after the Bell

Keith Cowing — Wed, 4 Feb 2009 00:14:19 +0000

Cisco's quarterly earnings will be released at 4:00pm today. For better or worse, tech stocks may swing sharply based on Chambers' outlook for the quarter and the rest of 2009. The street has average EPS guidance of $0.28 per share, but what really matters is the forecast for the year. With a heavy hand in all things digital, Cisco is seen as a major prognosticator.

Look for some thoughts on cloud computing and virtualization. Cisco has made some serious moves recently, including a great partnership with VMWare. I don't know if their movement into the margin-pressure business of selling blade servers will help. That's a tough world and Cisco would be competing with its own partners, such as Dell and HP. But entering the datacenter cloud is a sharp move. For a giant company, Cisco always proves to be nimble and innovative. Cisco was a major survivor during the first dot-com crash and I have faith that they will make it through this recession stronger than ever. However, let the markets have mercy on tech stocks if Chambers says that IT spending will be down for the entire year.

Here are three reasons to be bullish on Cisco (and to buy if the stock drops during early trading tomorrow). If the stock is flat or up I'd say it's a good hold, but I'm not one to try to call the bottom here.

Cloud Computing and Virtualization: Revolution or overhyped buzz words, call it what you want - it's here and Cisco is in the game. Web hosting and startup business models are moving this way (along with some major enterprise technology environments). This will be an important growth area for Cisco.

TelePresence: Cisco has some incredible TelePresence services now. With corporate jets popping up on eBay, travel budgets tightening, and global workforces remaining a strong reality, Cisco has a major selling point here. Wall Street executives may lose their bonuses and jets, but they still want to make eye contact with their business partners around the world. Cisco will let them do it for less. Sold.

HD Streaming Movies: A major driver for Cisco's core product line is Internet video. YouTube is wonderful for people selling networking gear. But when NetFlix, Hulu, and others start streaming lots of HD movies, the networks will feel it and Cisco will be there to help in a major way. Long live high def video. Tags: Cisco, Markets, VMWare, Cloud Computing, Virtualization, TelePresence,

Earth Class Mail: Now depositing checks right from your mailbox

Keith Cowing — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 02:39:00 +0000

Earth Class Mail offers a unique service where you send your mail to a specified address (a distribution center) and then review it online. You receive a digital notification for every piece of physical mail that you get. You can look at each item and have it either opened and displayed online (by automated robots and scanners), shredded and thrown out, or forwarded to a physical address (wherever you happen to be at the time).

It's an interesting concept. I've been following the startup since seeing it on Start-up Junkies and noticed that they recently announced a service for depositing checks. If you review the items in your mailbox and find a check, Earth Class Mail will take it right from your mailbox and electronically deposit it into your bank account. They are currently working with Wells Fargo and plan to extend it to other major banks.

During a recession, Earth Class Mail is an impressive company to watch, since their automation centers must be capital-intensive. They recently landed a deal to work with the Swiss post office, which should bring in some cash. They're also working on a sizeable Series B funding round. The service starts at $9.95 per month and is priceless for consultants, ex-patriots, and anybody who is constantly traveling. Getting important notices can be hard for people that are never home. Now you can get your mail no matter where you are.

We'll see how far Earth Class Mail gets, they're definitely gaining traction. Ron Wiener, the CEO, has a strong track record and is highly invested. He even sold his house and his plane to get the company going. With a talented, hungry CEO and an economy that is begging for new ways of doing business, I'd bet on them being successful.

Rubicon Project: Look Quick, a Tech Company that is Hiring!

Keith Cowing — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 15:16:16 +0000

Every morning I read more bad news about companies taking hacksaws to their headcount. It was refreshing to finally read about a tech company that is opening new offices and hiring! The Rubicon Project, an ad network aggregator that helps websites optimize their ad space, just announced on its blog that it opened an office in Manhattan and is currently hiring. The Rubicon Project is based in LA and also has an office in San Francisco. It isn't the only business of its kind, but it's growing tremendously fast and is definitely the only company to run its operations from the set where the tv show "24" was filmed.

At the time of this article, they had 321 ad networks, 1350 publishers, and 78.5 billion ads served. Pretty impressive for a company that's only been around for a year and a half or so. Then again, not a surprise given the track record of its founder: Frank Addante.

Tech, Finance, and the New Age of Transparency

Keith Cowing — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 17:09:16 +0000

One of the things that greatly interests me about the current market crisis is the constant talk about the need for transparency. One of the reasons for the crash in mortgage-backed securities and the spikes in CDS prices was due to the lack of transparency. If you watch CNBC, you'll hear Dylan Ratigan constantly harp on the need to standardize asset-backed-securities and put them on an exchange. We're a long way from standardizing these products enough to trade them on the Chicago Merc (or anywhere else), but there is a general movement away from the secretive Wall Street culture to a place where information is readily available to everybody. This might be one of the most powerful ideas that comes out of this crisis.

Technology is going to play a major role in the changes that roll out in Wall Street during the next few years. There is going to be a lot of opportunity as Wall Street goes through this "tectonic shift." Smart entrepreneurs, technologists, and financiers alike will be able to create massive value if they look beyond the old investment banking model, which has clearly been driven into the ground. Here are a few of my favorite examples:

Covestor: Social networking meets stock trading. Covestor provides an interesting platform for managing your portfolio. You can connect it to your brokerage account and it'll automatically track your trades (or you can enter them manually). Then you can see what other people are doing, discuss ideas, and get a feel for what investors and traders are feeling. Most importantly, there is an opportunity for star investors to make money as financial advisors. You can track other people's performance over time and if you are impressed with a particular individual's track record, you can designate a portion of your account to track the portfolio of that investor. In return, the investor will get a small fee for each user that follows them. In my mind, this is pretty amazing. It's a pure meritocracy in financial investments. This is a niche that isn't going mainstream tomorrow (nor will it capture the upper echelon of wealthy individuals who get red carpet treatment from private banking services). But this is a fundamentally different model where your investment management success is purely based on performance and nothing depends on Wall Street politics or the stamps on your resume. I hope that this type of model will become the future of Wall Street.

Stock Twits:Another way to discuss stocks with people around the web. Simply put a $ in front of a ticker (such as $GOOG) while using Twitter and you'll be able to see what people across the world are saying about specific stocks in real-time. Information travels fast these days, but financial advice has always been faster to get to the wealthy. With services like this, information will get to everybody with phenomenal speed.

Google Finance: NYSE and NASDAQ quotes are now available for free, in real-time, to general Internet users. Historically, anything available for free was delayed by 20 minutes. Most professional traders, etc., will still pay thousands for their Bloomberg terminals. But in the future, products like Google Finance are going to start to eat away at the long tail. You can see real-time quotes tick in your browser without paying a dime in subscription fees. This is a fundamental shift in the way that people consume financial information. You no longer need a Bloomberg terminal or a seat on the New York Stock Exchange to get the latest quotes. The democratization of financial information is a very powerful and important concept.

This is just the start. Many more of these services will come. I am excited to see what new ideas will come out of the intersection of technology and financial markets.

Is Webhosting Dead?

Keith Cowing — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 02:34:45 +0000

The Royal Pingdom Blog had an interesting blog post today about how during the last four years there have been increasingly fewer Google searches for "webhosting." They asked for ideas about why this might be so. Well, here goes my take:

Experts don't need to search, and non-experts don't use webhosting anymore: I am going to broadly, and somewhat accurately, divide the world of people who use webhosting services into two categories. The first category is application developers and webmasters. These are the people who are familiar with the different flavors of webhosting, can build a website from scratch, and know how to navigate around a webserver and a database. These people know what webhosting is and would rarely google the term (unless they're looking for the latest prices and deals). Now it's time for the other half: the amateurs. These are the folks who like the web and know a little bit about it, but definitely aren't development experts. If they want to build a website, they naturally Google "webhosting" to figure out what it involves and how to setup their first homepage. I strongly believe that these people, who would account for a large percent of the searches for "webhosting", have less and less need for webhosting at all. A lot of the basic functions that you would put on a website are now freely available elsewhere. Posting pictures? Use Flickr. Blogging? Use blogger. Creating a calendar? Use Google Docs. Promoting a band? Use MySpace. Chatting with friends? Use Facebook. This brings us directly to my second point.

Social networking, and other interactive sites, have killed a lot of the reasons for amateur websites: I strongly believe that social networking sites have killed a lot of the reasons to build an amateur webpage. There are so many, free, interactive websites available that there's no reason to build something from scratch if it's already available. The Internet is a place to post different types of media and interact with people. Historically that happened through a long list of individual websites. Each website had an owner who was responsible for creating and maintaining all of its content. There has been a fundamental shift away from this model. The web is moving towards networked communities where the site owners (Facebook, MySpace, Google, etc.) don't create the content as much as provide a platform on which others create content. Now all of the people that want to use the web to communicate and express themselves can do so without writing any code, they just sign up for one of the readily available social networking tools. Net result: less Google searches for "webhosting."

People are still using webhosting and people are still creating plenty of new sites. But I think that a lot of the amateurs have taken other routes. The main clients for webhosts are developers who are looking to build applications or make money off advertising. These people are more likely to understand what webhosting is and less likely to plug the search phrase into Google.

The Music Business

Keith Cowing — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 02:19:01 +0000

This is an interesting question recently posed by Peter Kafka from SAI. There has been a lot of talk about music recently, especially among venture capitalists and entrepreneurs (see Fred Wilson’s Blog for some great insight into the music industry). The first part of my response is a question: What are the components of this giant arena called the music industry? The answer is pretty simple.

Production: Music studios build expensive setups and rent out time to musicians, either current stars or up-and-comers who can get their hands on some cash. Production studios will always be around, but now small bands can find digital studios that are really cheap (or even create their own for a few grand). The new era of music studios are moving away from the deep relationship with record labels and are starting to focus much more on independent, unsigned artists. Who needs a record label if they don’t add any value to your game plan?

Promotion: This one’s going…going…gone. Historically, the only way anybody ever knew about your band was if you could get radio time. In order to get radio time you either needed to join a giant record label or payoff a radio exec. Now all you need to do is create a MySpace page, a Facebook account, upload your music to Yahoo! Radio, etc. Viral marketing is proving very powerful, and nearly free of charge.

Distribution: Old world: record sales. New world: subscription services or MP3 download sites. There is still money to be made here, but it’s not going to be from the record labels – it’s going to be from portals like iTunes, Amazon MP3, etc. The record label doesn’t provide much value in this space anymore because the marginal cost to sell an extra song is practically zero. All you need is to get your album, or even a single track, setup on an MP3 service and you have the potential to sell a million copies. The subscription-based model is also looking very likely. At a certain point musicians have to stop fighting digital piracy. It’s too hard to fight MP3 sharing if you can find a way to play along with it and still make money.

Live Shows: This is where the smart people are putting their money. Is it a fluke that Jay-Z just landed a ridiculous, $150 million deal? No, because he can sell tickets and bring people to events and that’s where music is heading. Back to live shows. You can never quite replace that concert feel and there is still money in that game. Lots of it. Some artists in Europe are even giving away their tracks for free, and solely focusing on sales via live events. Instead of fighting digital piracy, why not play along with it? Get your music out there for free, promote yourself, and get fans to pay to see you in person. After, it is still a “Show Business.”

So my bets are placed in three categories: 1. Technologies and business models that allow musicians to produce quality music on their own (with no record label). 2. Technologies and business models that support wide spread marketing and distribution (subscription services, MP3 portals, and social networking utilities that focus on music). 3. Companies that focus on promoting and managing live events.