Silicon Valley Watcher - conversations and observations at the intersection of technology and media

Intel Moves Further Into Health Products Despite Past Problems With Product Ventures

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:50:12 -0800

Intel today launched a portable $1500 e-book reader designed to help people with a broad array of vision problems including dyslexia.

The Intel Reader features a camera with built-in text-to voice software for reading out loud any text placed under the device. [About the Intel Reader]

The form factor of the Intel Reader is similar to that of Mobile Internet Devices which offer similar size screens, an Atom microprocessor, a camera, and wireless connectivity for about $500. The Intel Reader does not have any wireless connectivity yet costs 3 times more.

I attended a briefing on the device yesterday and Intel said it did a lot of research into usability. It has also partnered with organizations that are active in helping the visually-impaired such as Lighthouse International.

The product comes out of a relatively new Intel business group focused on developing healthcare related products and technologies. The goal is to aid people to deal with health and aging issues in their homes.

The potential market size for the Intel Reader is 55m people just in the US. Next week it is being launched in the UK and Intel says it will be easy to produce versions for other languages.

Foremski's Take: Intel is usually a technology evangelist for entire product sectors because it makes the chips, chipsets, and flash memory that are used to create a huge number of digital devices, PCs, mobile devices, smart phones, and servers.

Yet in this case, it is developing and selling products rather than seeking to seed markets and let other companies deal with product development, marketing, and all the other aspects of selling products to consumers.

Intel has bad track record in producing consumer products. It has tried several times and pulled out. It used to sell MP3 players, kids toys, and it announced it would sell large screen TVs before pulling out later. [Commentary: Intel gears up in consumer electronics push - CNET News - January 2001]

Intel's work in healthcare is commendable but puzzling why it wants to be in a business that isn't about making chips. It would seem it could achieve just as much by developing reference designs and licensing its technologies to others with specialist experience in manufacturing, design, distribution, and after-sales support.

(I am a member of the "Intel Insiders" advisory group.)

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Please see: Intel introduces a digital book reader that reads aloud to the blind | VentureBeat

Analysis On Murdoch And Switching Off GOOG: The Dirty Little Secret About Search Engine Traffic...

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:12:22 -0800

Every time Rupert Murdoch complains about Google and says he will cut off access, a mass of Twitterati, Digerati, and Diggerati think the old newspaper tycoon has lost his marbles and doesn't "get it."

Surely, they chorus, all that traffic that Google sends to the Wall Street Journal is the equivalent of sending a fire hose of cash straight into his pocket. Why would he want to turn off such a lucrative spigot?!

The answer is that he wouldn't, if that were indeed the case. The ugly truth is that Google traffic is hard to monetize. It's not the bonanza that people think it is.

Google traffic is low quality, it is people who stumbled upon the article. Usually, about one-half is new to the site, it had never been there before. The other half already knows who you are. For well established brands this offers incremental value.

More importantly, Google traffic doesn't help the newspaper advertisers much because they are trying to buy a specific sector, a specific readership. For example, the Wall Street Journal advertisers are very business and stock trade oriented. For other newspapers, the advertisers want that particular local metro. Having random readers brought in by Google from all around the world, doesn't do much for the advertisers or the newspapers.

Yes, you can sell those extra pageviews to your newspaper advertisers but they get to see the metrics too, and it doesn't take them long to figure out that much of the Google traffic isn't the traffic they want. That, in turn, lowers the amount of money they will pay for pageviews. Google traffic thus lowers the value of all the pageviews that a newspaper pulls in.

Mr Murdoch knows his businesses. He can run the numbers and see if the revenue from subscriptions will outpace relatively weak revenues from Google traffic.

He can selectively use Google and other search engines, and aggregators to pull in traffic to "free" content then shut it off. He has lots of levers to pull in terms of figuring out an optimum for running his business.

In contrast, Google doesn't have any levers to pull. It relies heavily on access to new content. After all, why use a search engine to find what you already know?

Novelty is extremely important to Google. Yet its only answer to content producers has been "we bring you lots of traffic." The dirty little secret is that that traffic is very difficult to monetize, it has a low value. Even Google has trouble monetizing its Google News traffic.

Google is very much at the mercy of all of the Internet's content producers and whether they let it in, or leave it outside.

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Please see:

WSJ Chief: There Are Two Types: Creators And Aggregators - Creators Carry The Burden Of Costs

"Google Devalues Everything It Touches" - Wall Street Journal Chief

FutureWatch: The End Of The News Aggregators And The Future Of News

Adtribution Might Be A Solution For Murdoch, A.P, Et Al, Versus The News Aggregators And Bloggers

Back in 2006 I predicted Google-free zones and offered this designation:

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Recent coverage:

Murdoch may block Google searches

Google may lose WSJ, News Corp sites

Has Rupert Murdoch Finally Lost His Mind?

Now it's Murdoch vs. the World as He Threatens to Sue the BBC | BNET Media Blog | BNET

CiscoWatch: John Chambers Is New To Facebook Suggest Some Friends

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:17:42 -0800

The other day as I was tending to my Facebook duties, and in the "suggestions" for friends column on the far right, up popped John Chambers, CEO of Cisco.

I clicked "add" because I have met Mr Chambers on several occasions and I'm very impressed with his leadership. Facebook then asked me to suggest some friends for him because he is new to Facebook.

It's interesting to see CEOs dabble in social media. I wonder how they have the time because it can be very time consuming.

Sharon Barclay at the Blue Trumpet Group works with CEOs, advising them on how to improve their visibility. She helps them figure out Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, etc.

She says that the CEOs are interested in raising their social media profiles as an insurance measure that could help in future job offers.

I seriously doubt if Mr Chambers is looking for a change of jobs but you never know.