Over the last few days, many commentators, notably Daring Fireball's John Gruber, have been frustrated at, other commentators', but also the market's reaction to Apple's earning report. Basically, over the last quarter, Apple's share price has fallen around 35%. This is the same quarter that got them record iPhone sales, record iPad sales, numerous product …
The deal that got Oswald back to Disney
This is Oswald the Rabbit. He could have been Mickey and Walt Disney wanted him to be: Oswald was created by Walt Disney and animator Ub Iwerks for Universal Studios in 1927 — a time when cartoons ran before every movie in the theater and sound was a luxury. The character was almost instantly a …
Thinking about the BBC
Yesterday I was at Oxford University presenting at a BBC Trust Seminar on the Economics of Broadcasting hosted by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. As it turned out, the discussion mainly focussed on the justification for the BBC continuing as a public entity. I hadn't given that subject much thought considering the …
Facebook's vision becomes clearer
Yesterday, Facebook announced "Graph Search." It's an engineering name that is accurate and communicates nothing to the general public. Nonetheless, the engineering face stops with the name as the feature itself is designed with humans in mind. Facebook's own introduction describes graph search nicely. It is basically a search engine for social networks -- in …
The Triumph of The Org
It is no understatement to say that the business book market is saturated. Most of it is not nearly of the quality that I would comfortably hand or recommend those books to MBA students; which is incredible since MBA students and alumni are invariably the target market for such books. Most of those books steer …
The FTC and Google: What did Larry Learn?
The FTC and Google settled their differences last week, putting the final touches on an agreement. Commentators began carping from all sides as soon as the announcement came. The most biting criticisms have accused the FTC of going too easy on Google. Frankly, I think the commentators are only half right. Yes, it appears as …
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A Review of the ASSA app
Like most of the other economists, for the last couple of days I have been at the annual Allied Social Sciences Association conference in San Diego. This is a gathering of mostly economists with hundreds of papers being presented, strewn across multiple hotels. A staple of the meetings was the 'book.' This was a 500 …
Subscription models for eBooks
One of the things that I propose in Information Wants to be Shared is a move away from a 'book ownership' model and towards a 'book access' model. Basically, that the library model is the natural state for books as opposed to what we have had in book publishing for the last couple of centuries. …
Digitopoly 