{"id":427,"date":"2006-07-24T16:10:53","date_gmt":"2006-07-24T20:10:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/2006\/07\/24\/jan-and-nik-get-bored-cuban-gets-interesting\/"},"modified":"2006-07-24T16:10:53","modified_gmt":"2006-07-24T20:10:53","slug":"jan-and-nik-get-bored-cuban-gets-interesting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2006\/07\/24\/jan-and-nik-get-bored-cuban-gets-interesting\/","title":{"rendered":"Jan and Nik get bored, Cuban gets interesting&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been out of commission for a week or so, due to a death in the family, so I&#8217;ve missed some of the hot topics rolling around the blogosphere lately &#8212; please forgive me if any of these micro catch-up posts seem less than topical  \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom &#8212; otherwise known as the billionaires behind Kazaa and Skype &#8212; are working on bringing their particular brand of peer-to-peer magic to the TV industry, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessweek.com\/bwdaily\/dnflash\/content\/jul2006\/db20060724_713810.htm\">according<\/a> to Business Week (Om notes that he <a href=\"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/2006\/07\/24\/skype-founders-take-on-tv\/\">mentioned<\/a> this earlier in a Business 2.0 piece). This makes sense for a whole pile of reasons, the two most important being that a) TV is in the process of being <a href=\"http:\/\/www.paidcontent.org\/tv-studios-vs-networks-warner-having-right-clearance-troubles-with-nbc\">disrupted<\/a> just like music and voice were, and b) Jan and Nik are filthy rich and likely bored at eBay. Can they make it work? Maybe &#8212; but if it&#8217;s a proprietary standard like Skype, I&#8217;m not sure I&#8217;m interested.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>Chip-maker AMD appears to have decided that the arms race in microchips is heating up, and that it needs a little help competing against 800-pound gorilla Intel (apparently the anti-trust complaints aren&#8217;t getting any traction) so it is <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.zdnet.com\/BTL\/?p=3367\">buying ATI<\/a>, the Toronto-based graphics-chip specialist. This probably isn&#8217;t that surprising, given the combination of pressure on AMD and pressure on ATI &#8212; which has been squeezed by Nvidia, and by an insider-trading lawsuit. But does it make any sense? I think ATI will give AMD an edge, but in many ways that is only part of the solution. It&#8217;s not going to help ease the sting of <a href=\"http:\/\/arstechnica.com\/news.ars\/post\/20060724-7332.html\">60-per-cent price cuts<\/a>.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>Jason Calacanis wants to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.calacanis.com\/2006\/07\/18\/everyones-gotta-eat-or-1-000-a-month-for-doing-what-youre\/\">buy the top posters<\/a> at Digg, Reddit and Newsvine and get them to work for the new Digg-style Netscape instead. Nick &#8220;Web 2.0 is techno-utopian socialism&#8221; Carr says this is a smart move that reveals how the Web 2.0 economy is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/archives\/2006\/07\/jason_calacanis.php\">exactly like<\/a> the old economy. Mike Arrington says it&#8217;s a sign of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.techcrunch.com\/2006\/07\/19\/huge-red-flag-at-netscape\/\">desperation<\/a>, and Scott Karp says Jason should <a href=\"http:\/\/publishing2.com\/2006\/07\/19\/netscape-could-beat-digg-by-focusing-on-average-people\/\">focus<\/a> on average people instead. I think Mike has a point &#8212; the best communities grow organically. That can&#8217;t be bought.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>Mark Cuban, the world&#8217;s most interesting (or at least transparent) CEO, has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.blogmaverick.com\/entry\/1234000960073808\/\">a fascinating post<\/a> about the movie business, and how he is looking for solutions to the problems that plague the industry &#8212; the main one of which is finding a way to lure people to the theatre without spending more than your movie cost to make. Almost as interesting as Mark&#8217;s post are some of the comments and suggestions people have made, which range from &#8220;make better movies&#8221; to &#8220;allow me to reserve a seat.&#8221;<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>Google Blogoscoped says that you can <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.outer-court.com\/archive\/2006-07-20-n71.html\">now link to<\/a> specific places in a video stream, which I think is a tremendous feature, but one that not many people have commented on. One who did is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.micropersuasion.com\/2006\/07\/google_video_ad.html\">Steve Rubel<\/a>, and I would agree with him that this ability ought to rapidly become an industry-standard solution.<\/li>\n<p><\/ul>\n<div class=\"syndication-links\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been out of commission for a week or so, due to a death in the family, so I&#8217;ve missed some of the hot topics rolling around the blogosphere lately &#8212; please forgive me if any of these micro catch-up posts seem less than topical \ud83d\ude42 Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom &#8212; otherwise known as &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2006\/07\/24\/jan-and-nik-get-bored-cuban-gets-interesting\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Jan and Nik get bored, Cuban gets interesting&#8230;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":false,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}