Social Media Sites Automatically Play Annoying Video Ad

Saw this list of upgrades on Facebook for my iPhone and was turned off when I saw the list of "improvements".

Yes, the annoying automatic playing videos from visiting social media sites such as Facebook. Might start to turn my volume down / off.

Micro Consoles Bring Mobile Gaming To The Big Screen

Sony Playstation 4,  Microsoft Xbox One, Nintendo Wii U are video game + multi-media machines that connect to BIG screen that give gaming a deep immersed feeling not possible with mobile games (that were targeted for casual gamers like your mom or dad).
  

                             Screen  Price     Dev     Avg            Mkt      Instruction      
                              Size                   Cost     Play          Size      length
   -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   Serious games    50"+        $50     $2M   2 hours          23%       40
   Casual games     5"            $5       $10K  10 minutes    81%         3

Companies that sell boxes to play your Android games on a huge TV:


   1. Ouya
   2. GameStick
   3. OnLive


This does not solve a market challenge - it tries to create a new one for both the supplier (programmer) and user. This borrows from Porter's Five Forces.

   1. programmer : easier to create games without learning and sharing revenue with the big console
       boys such as Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo

   2. user : love playing simple casual games on a big screen (really?)

Will this trend work? Initial reviews are skeptical. Perhaps if microconsoles can hit a sweet spot such as:


   1. good enough games that is better than casual games but easier than serious games
   2. cheap enough to just buy it because not only does it play "better than casual mobile" games,
       it can also stream, share message with family, etc


                             Screen  Price     Dev     Avg            Mkt      Instruction      
                              Size                   Cost     Play          Size      length
   -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   Serious games    50"+        $50     $2M   2 hours          23%       40
   Casual games     5"            $5       $10K  10 minutes    81%         3
   Microconsole     50"+        $10     $50K  30 minutes    55%        10



If ( Microconsole = Android game machine + Google Chrome + Roku + DLNA)
   success();

A Poster from the ARM/Mentor Forum in Korea

Tablet SW-HW Relationship

Interesting content are booby trapped ads

A reputable online magazine publishes an article on Surprising Six-Figure Jobs. Intrigued, I clicked and read about HR Managers have a mean (average) salary of $108,600. And right next to the article is a convenient online advertisement for HR Management school:

Click around a bit more, and you will see the same for other Surprising Jobs, such as Art Directors :

How does this online magazine make money? 1. create a website and have interesting content, say "jobs and careers" 2. the website is created such that it is mobile, tablet, and desktop friendly 3. insert a little Google AdSense Javascript code 4. let people know about interesting content on portal sites such as Yahoo finance 5. as visitors visit your site to read about jobs and careers, Google AdSense ads being displayed 6. Google AdSense knows the number of times its ads were shows (impressions) and the number of times it was clicked on (click through rate); you make money according So this is how reputable print magazines make money. 1. create a great online presence (website, social media, blog, etc) 2. create interesting articles 3. sell ads next to the interesting articles

salesforce.com - How To Make Money From Companies

How To Make Money From Companies salesforce.com is aiming to be the preeminent cloud services provide. Why? Every piece of software that you are running on your Windows laptop and Apple Macbook is money that salesforce.com wants. How big is this market? Statistics: Companies spend about $4T / year on technology, mostly through IT CIO makes most of the purchase decisions But the CMO will start to spend more - to reach and grow business CIO needs: CRM : customer relationship management - log, track customer calls ERP : enterprise resource management - manage human resource, accounting, finance SCM : supply chain management - manage parts and service suppliers MRP : manufacturing resource planning - manage work flows, machines, people, schedule Ride the CMO Wagon : Marketing organization needs to: create targeted campaigns (product/service, target customer) distribute campaigns (message, target customer email) track campaigns (impressions, clicks, clicks/impressions = click through rates or CTR) make money from campaigns ( store campaigns in database to sell more in the future sales (funnel, forecast, tracking, lead generation) ExactTarget (ET) acquisition ExactTarget enterprise market price : $1.49B ($33.75 / share) Acquisition price : $2.5B (53% premium) Current annual revenue : $317M Current profit : -$21M Other acquisitions by salesforce.com: Buddy Media $689M Radian6 1: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-salesforce-bought-exacttarget-2013-6

Intel Four Clear Goals

Iconic (but maybe fading) Intel has a new CEO, and he has set out a VISION. The VISION is supported by four GOALS: 1. continue driving sales of PC processors 2. move aggressively into mobile computing 3. accelerate growth in the data center market 4. continue Intel's leadership in chip manufacturing technology, Mulloy said. Let's examine each one of these GOALS using BCG's framework for analysis. Through this framework, perhaps we can analyze Intel's STRATEGY for success. BCG Framework: 1. continue driving sales of PC processors (cow) With about 80% of the PC (really laptop) processor, Intel can continue to milk this cow. Who knows - with a successful execution into the ultra notebook (thin, light, touch screen, believable as a tablet), this entire "PC" market might be revived. Might need help from Microsoft Windows 8 to make it more enterprise / business relevant. 2. move aggressively into mobile computing (question mark) Smartphones and tablets is forecast to grow in emerging economies (such as the BRIC block). Atom processors are making some headway into this. 3. accelerate growth in the data center market (star) Virtualization, cloud, SAAS, IAAS, PAAS - all are driven by servers (web, application, storage). Xeon processors gives Intel about 90% of the server market. Watch out for AMD/ARM combo. 4. continue Intel's leadership in chip manufacturing technology (star) "What" you make drives market (create, grow). "How" you make it drives margins. In Intel's case, the "how" is important. They are the best at it with their 3-D, FinFET technologies. Without manufacturing, Intel is a mere "me too" in the star spaces.

Speculative Execution/Pre-Fetch/Super-Scalar at Starbucks

Waiting in line at Starbucks is sometimes fun because you can think about life or people watch.
But it can also thwart business.

Little's Law tries to predict the average wait in line with

    L = λW

   where

      L is the average time a customer has to wait
      λ is the arrival rate of customers at Starbucks
      W is the average time it takes Starbucks to serve a customer

So if customers arrive at Starbucks at the rate of 60 / hour (or 1 / min), and the college kid at Starbucks can only make 30 lattes / hour (or 0.5 latte / minute, or 2 minutes / latte ), we have:

      L = 1 customer / min *  2 minutes / latte
          =  2 minute wait average

How can we speed this up? Taking some principles from computer science, let's explore the idea of speculative execution, pre-fetch, and super-scalar parallelization.

If Starbucks implement speculative execution, it would probably have fresh lattes pre-made.  If Starbucks pre-fetched, they will send an order taker to find out orders from people in the back of the line. If Starbucks deployed parallization, they will have multiple stations and workers, ensuring that there are no hardware hazard (fancy talk for resource contention - two baristtas waiting on one latte machine).

So for Starbucks, if they can pre-fetch, paralleize, or execute speculabitvely, this will reduce "W", and the result will be:

      L = 1 customer / min *  1 minutes / latte
          =  1 minute wait average

Resulting in more business because a shorter line entices customers, increases throughput (sell more lattes), reduces latency (sell lattes quicker).

Boosting Sales by Creating Engaging Buzz

How can Hasbro boost sales of its century old game Monoploy? By creating a contest to see which of the Monopoly game pieces will retire. A new cat replaced the old iron.

Netflix also boosted its stock price by producing its own content - House of Cards starring Kevin Spacey. A form of verticle integration to pull demand?

Audition in a community/university level orchestra

Want to audition in a community/university level orchestra? This is the Stanford Symphony violin "fixed" audition selection. Interesting that it is all Beethoven:

1. Beethoven: Symphony No. 3. (Mvmt I: m. 55 to m. 83)
2. Beethoven: Symphony No. 3. (Mvmt III: beginning to m. 69)
3. Beethoven: Symphony No. 5. (Mvmt IV: allegro beginning from m. 207 to m. 232)

http://www.stanford.edu/group/sso/cgi-bin/wordpress/member-login/auditions/

LivingSocial Gone Bad

Physical Retailers Paradox

Peer rejection keeps web fact driven