The Big Idea Capitalist

Marvel Must Get Robert Downey Jr. Back for “Iron Man...

Mon, 06 May 2013 11:00:41 -0600

Marvel Must Get Robert Downey Jr. Back for “Iron Man 4”

More than 94% agree with my take, which suggests most of us think Disney should be willing to pay RDJ up to $50 mil a picture (factoring in bonuses) to play Iron Man, which it did for “The Avengers.” Where do you stand? Vote in the poll, leave a comment.

— I am Iron Man (end credits) (by Piquetero7)

fastcompany: 5 Sunday reads that will help you be more...

Mon, 06 May 2013 05:47:06 -0600

fastcompany:

5 Sunday reads that will help you be more productive this week:

If your inbox is suffocating you, take a deep breath and fight back

8 lessons for innovation and success from chef Mario Batali

The 6 best alternative to-do apps

Slay the emotional vampires that are holding you back

How to use frustration to create something amazing

We hope everyone has a great start to the week!

A Motley Fool poll shows that 81% favor having the ability to...

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 08:35:24 -0600

A Motley Fool poll shows that 81% favor having the ability to convert old DVDs into digital copies playable on any iOS device. Do you agree? Disagree? Weigh in here.

Not that the show needs the help, but the 11th doctor’s...

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 10:32:39 -0600

Not that the show needs the help, but the 11th doctor’s score just makes his adventures more epic.

Wait. China doesn't like the iPad Mini?

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 09:25:50 -0700

Wait. China doesn't like the iPad Mini?:

Seems early to proclaim Apple’s iPad Mini a failure in China but IDG News Service is reporting that initial demand for the device is “nearly nonexistent.” That’s a switch:

Intriguing. I’m personally itching to own a Mini.

(via IDG News Service and PC World Australia; photo via DigitalTrends.)

"We started a Web site, but NBC refused to let us put the address on any of our ads because they..."

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 09:02:49 -0700

“We started a Web site, but NBC refused to let us put the address on any of our ads because they didn’t want people to know the Internet existed. They were worried about losing viewers to it.”

- Judd Apatow in The Oral History of Freaks and Geeks. 1999 ruled. (via amandalynferri)

Sums up the entertainment industry pretty well. (via parislemon)

In a way, they were right (ratings as a whole are down, people aren’t watching TV as much), but in another way, this was so shortsighted. (via shortformblog)

MY TAKE: What if executives hadn’t been so shortsighted? Would we have Netflix today? Doubtful, I think.

I’ve had the good fortune of working with Tom Gardner and...

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 18:30:54 -0700

I’ve had the good fortune of working with Tom Gardner and his brother, David, for nearly a decade as a contributor to The Motley Fool so it’s not unusual for me to hear either of them sharing smart ideas.

You may not have been as lucky. So, in the spirit of sharing, I give you Tom’s Tedx talk about financial education and the pressing need for students to find purpose early in their collegiate careers.

Source: “Liberal Arts in the 21st Century”, TEDxBrownUniversity (by TEDxTalks)

Do you believe in Netflix yet? I do. Here’s why.

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 15:00:26 -0700

Do you believe in Netflix yet? I do. Here’s why.

Because the film is: 1. Released to DVD today. 2. Awesome. 3....

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 15:32:58 -0700

Because the film is:

1. Released to DVD today.
2. Awesome.
3. Emblematic of what Time Warner can do when it lets a smart creator do great work.

"I want Google Fiber!"

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 10:37:05 -0700

“I want Google Fiber!”

- Curious to see how many will reblog or tweet this theme after seeing the speeds they’re getting in Kansas City:

Nice remix, with background typewriter for encouraging faster...

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 07:52:23 -0700

Nice remix, with background typewriter for encouraging faster fingers.

Green Mountain Coffee profit surprises; shares jump

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 14:51:00 -0700

Green Mountain Coffee profit surprises; shares jump :

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters beats estimates and rises 25% after hours. Here’s why you should have seen this coming:

Should you believe Mike Lynch?

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 20:35:01 -0700

Should you believe Mike Lynch?:

Not that I needed one, but this guy [Mike Lynch of Autonomy, pictured below] just gives me another reason to steer clear of Hewlett-Packard. There’s too much risk for the potential reward.

Note that I’m not referring to valuation. HP is almost undeniably cheap compared to its size, market position, and growth prospects in the business of selling and servicing tech infrastructure.

What I mean is execution risk. If the cost of mismanagement is already $8.8 billion — when there’s still so much we don’t know — just imagine how big the price tag might become.

Get more Foolishness on this topic from my colleagues Evan Niu and Eric Bleeker.

Dick Costolo: Twitter as a refinement of the Greek Agora

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 07:32:43 -0700

Dick Costolo: Twitter as a refinement of the Greek Agora:

parislemon:

Good, long talk by Twitter CEO Dick Costolo at my (and his) alma mater, the University of Michigan, earlier this month.

Of note, he once again promises that by the end of this year, users will be able to download their entire tweet archive. Can’t wait.

Agreed. Downloading the old #editorchat transcripts should be fascinating.

What I'd do if I had an unlimited tech budget for Black Friday e-shopping

Fri, 23 Nov 2012 08:37:28 -0700

What I'd do if I had an unlimited tech budget for Black Friday e-shopping:

I’d be all Mac, but with a heaping helping of Google software. What would you do?

From Foolish reader needmorerentals, responding to my analysis...

Wed, 21 Nov 2012 06:42:37 -0700

From Foolish reader needmorerentals, responding to my analysis of a plan to offer try-and-buy listings:

“An interesting take on the developments at HomeAway however a quick bit of research of those hundreds of thousands of owners currently advertising on HomeAway and VRBO will reveal that many are not happy at all with recent changes.”

I couldn’t find much in the way of complaints at HomeAway’s community site. Can any owners verify or contradict this claim? Let’s get a few more with direct knowledge to weigh in.

Source: 1 Change That Could Make All the Difference For HomeAway (by TheMotleyFool)

ShortFormBlog: New Myspace is about as profitable as old Myspace...

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 22:15:00 -0700

ShortFormBlog: New Myspace is about as profitable as old Myspace...:

shortformblog:

$25M in funding will be lost by the new Myspace at the end of 2012, following a year of disappointing revenues. The company has lost more than $40 million this year after only raising $14 million in revenue following yet another rebranding.

$50M in new funding will be sought by the…

Translation: Justin Timberlake couldn’t bring the sexy back. Sad. Predictable.

I Got Bugs

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 09:42:31 -0700

I Got Bugs:

parislemon:

Nate Waddoups, Senior SDE at Microsoft answering “What is so great about Microsoft?” on Quora:

The Windows team invests a mind-boggling amount of time, hardware, and people into maintaining compatibility. There are bugs in Windows that could have been fixed years ago, but can’t be, because that would break applications that (deliberately or accidentally) depend on those bugs. Bug-for-bug compatibility is a problem, but breaking backward compatibility would be a much bigger problem, so even as the lowest layers of the operating system are revised and rewritten, the layers that applictions talk to (the application programming interface, or API) are carefully tested to ensure that no changes are visible to the application.

Bugs as a feature. Can’t imagine why so many of us ditched Windows years ago.

Or avoided Windows in the first place …

Cisco acquires Meraki: how 3 guys from MIT transformed the networking industry

Sun, 18 Nov 2012 19:08:55 -0700

Cisco acquires Meraki: how 3 guys from MIT transformed the networking industry:

sequoiacapital:

Quick: when was the last time you plugged in an Ethernet cable? If you have trouble answering that question, you’re one of the reasons why Cisco has agreed to acquire Meraki.

Six years ago Sanjit, John and Hans saw our Wi-Fi world before many others. Meraki offered smaller…

I interviewed Sanjit during a tour of Silicon Valley in Oct. 2008. Here’s how I described the meeting to our Motley Fool Rule Breakers members back then:

I’d never hit a hornet’s nest before. But after I pulled our bright red compact into a small parking spot on San Francisco’s Rhode Island Street, the buzzers were buzzing, stinging wildly at a car that felt no pain.

Then, I was embarrassed. Today, as I write, I’m reflective, wondering if it was the weirdest possible metaphor for our quest — a search for sustainability in a part of the country that’s given rise to some of the business world’s most sustainable names. Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL), Intel (Nasdaq: INTC), and Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), for example.

Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), too, of course. Like our red coupe, it had proven too durable for the onslaught of pesky hornets. Could we say the same about the company Google itself found irresistible?

Searching for Silicon Valley’s Bobby Fischer

Heading into the nondescript concrete fortress that housed Meraki and a handful of other SOMA — as in, “south of Market” — start-ups, I was skeptical. Cheap Wi-Fi? Doesn’t everyone do that?

No, not the way that CEO and co-founder Sanjit Biswas sees it. He believes that Wi-Fi, today, is the answer to giving 1 billion more people broadband access to the Web. “We can do this at about a 10x cost advantage,” Biswas says in describing the ‘aha!’ moment that led to his founding the company with John Bicket in 2006.

I believe him. Biswas, like the late Danny Lewin of Akamai (Nasdaq: AKAM), began working on the idea behind Meraki while a PhD candidate at MIT. But his roots as an innovator reach farther. He took an assignment programming for Oracle’s (Nasdaq: ORCL) Oracle 8 database at 15. If there’s anyone smart enough to figure out how to connect 1 billion more people to the Web, it’s this guy.

Bandwidth is the key. Biswas says that, on average, users consume 200 to 300 kilobits per second in actual bandwidth. That leaves a lot of room for additional users when your connection to the Web itself delivers data at 6 megabits per second.

Meraki, in other words, is a bandwidth Robin Hood. It redistributes to all who need it. The idea has huge implications. Witness its “Free the Net” test network in its hometown. More than 190,000 users are connected via 1,000 devices placed around San Francisco.

Today, Meraki is far from the test stage. Its hardware — the Meraki Indoor and the Meraki Outdoor — has shipped to all seven continents. It’s powering networks in rural Chile. And yet Biswas wasn’t gloating during our meeting. To the contrary; he appeared genuinely surprised by what some are doing with Meraki’s technology.

Google, on the other hand, must be not at all surprised. Meraki may have begun as an idea at MIT but it was formed at the behest of Google employees who saw Biswas give a presentation about his academic research in mesh technology — think of it as the glue that binds distinct nodes on a Wi-Fi network — in early 2006. At least one in attendance offered to invest in Meraki immediately after the presentation. Both Google and Sequoia Capital have put money into the company.

So will this Baby Breaker grow up to join the public markets? I think so, as did my teammates. We like Biswas’ focus. We like the opportunity. And, most of all, we like how he combines realism with idealism. “No one we talk to (as a prospective employee) doesn’t have choices,” Biswas says. “They’re all smart. What separates us is the change the world factor.”

One more post today, if only because I’m geeking out over...

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 16:00:56 -0700

One more post today, if only because I’m geeking out over the new Web series Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome, a prequel to the reimagined TV series produced by Syfy and Machinima and broadcast via YouTube. To me, it’s precisely the sort of original programming that makes YT’s custom channels so amazing.

So why you should care about this as an investor? Simple: Every time an amazing new series debuts on YouTube it proves that, like Netflix and Amazon, the platform is every bit as capable as a cable or satellite operator when it comes to distributing great content.