Got a surprise invite to Google Music

I don't remember asking for Google Music invite. Surprisingly received an invite today and promptly signed up for it. It is obviously a competing service to iCloud and Amazon Cloud Drive, no matter how slice and dice it. Difference is, Google Music is free while the others are offered for a nominal price but with unlimited storage.

After sign up, the music service ask you to select your preferred genre of music style. To upload your songs you need need install a small piece of software. You can update up to 20,000 tracks to the service. I suppose that is more than enough to store most people's collection (I've 32k tracks!). Here is a screenshot of the service:

Google Music has free selection of music that is presented to you based on the music genres you like. I've some free selections shown (I cannot figure out the total number of tracks in my free music playlist?).

The service is a good add-on for Google's ChromeBook OS, as a iTunes replacement for ChromeBook. Google's strategy does seem to evolve towards moving users to Cloud based OS, Storage and Media(refer my previous post on SageTV acquisition). However, I would like to have offline storage as well. ChromeBook's cloud OS seem to choke my computing senses by offering just a browser. I invariably try to close that damn browser (jail) and feel choked when I cannot access my hard disk!. Why not offer a local caching option so that I don't need to always look for internet connection to use my Laptop? Have some intelligent caching and offer users a way to access local storage for music, photos and video that they don't want to upload to cloud?

Google acquires SageTV, Hulu up for sale, very intetesting dynamics emerging in the fight for living room

This acquisition makes sense for a variety of reasons. Personally, I've been using SageTV as replacement for Dish network from Nov 2010. I've also been watching this company for some two years now. They have nifty little new hardware device (HD 300) that plays almost any multimedia file you throw at it. They also have a very nice DVR and EPG guide for those of us want to use OTA transmission and get rid of Cable/Satellite.

Now that Google has acquired SageTV one wonders what their plan is? Is SageTV going to be the base platform for building Google TV ver 2.0? What SageTV features are going to be integrated in to Google TV? Will Google continue to support DVR functionality in SageTV?

How about hardware HD 300? Is it going to be a reference platform for Google's partners (Logitech/Sony)? Is there a plan to build DVR-in-the-Cloud?

Two companies that will be watching closely are going to be NetFlix and Apple. SageTV offers a fantastic platform to build advanced multimedia capabilities. Only if Google can get license agreements with Studios and Television Networks they will be in a much better position to compete against Apple and possibly threaten NetFlix.

Should Google get into the bidding game for Hulu with Yahoo? (Does it make sense to Yahoo to acquire Hulu?). Hulu is still trying to prove its business model (free vs paid) to its overlords. It is not hugely successful in raising its advertisement revenue. Google has ambition to extend its search and advertisement beyond YouTube into the living rooms. Google TV is  complicated to setup and expensive to buy for a common person. Combining the Hulu content with YouTube on the content side and simplifying setup and also reducing the cost with SageTV will be a big win for Google. Now Apple should worry about this compelling eco-system from Google.

Related articles

• Will YouTube Buy Hulu? (247wallst.com)
• Google buys Sage TV (geek.com)
• Google Acquires Sage TV, Google TV Looks Bright Again (techie-buzz.com)

Google's 11 rules for Good Management

Infographic: Anatomy of a startup

     Original Graphic Here

Silicon: Intel reinvents chip design with 3D and 22nm

• Intel announced that it is going to use 3D chips technology in forth coming chips.
• High lights:
• Pack more processing power with a small form factor
• Less power consumption  
• Extend Moore's law.
• Business Leaders
• Keep on the lookout for similar offerings from NVidea and AMD.
• Carefully compare alternative architectures (eg. ARM) against this.
• What sort of devices you can build with this architecture?
• How your existing investments in other architectures are affected?
• For End Users
• Interesting times ahead with more powerful, lighter, smaller and long lasting devices on the horizon
• More choice in terms of devices
• Expect to pay more initially for devices based on this new design.
• Video: Intel's Mark Bohr Explains the Design

                

Infographic: A brief history of iPad

Click to enlarge


A Brief History of the iPad Infographic created by a discount codes website

Cisco Cius in NCIS: Los Angeles

• NCIS: Los Angeles is one program I llike to watch once in a while.  SageTV records it automatically  every week. I watch it whenever I've sometime to spare. 
• This week Cisco Digital Display systems signage in building J piqued my interest with a reference to NCIS: Los Angeles. As usual NCIS: Los Angeles catered to  in the building J showed that my favorite show was going to feature Cisco Cius. 
•  I'm a skeptic of the utility of Cius Tablet . I for one think Cisco would be better of creating a software for Telepresence End Point that runs in Android and iOS tablets.
• Well... I'm not the product manager!!!? 
• I had the same thought when Cisco acquired Pure Digital (flip). I know you would say it is hindsight 20/20!. 
• Product placement is a marketing technique used by many companies to promote their product to much wider audience. 
• New products get introduced to much wider audience.
• Movies and TV shows get another source of revenue
• NCIS: Los Angeles is too generous in product placements. 
• Recently one of the episodes prompted me to search for a sexy Chrysler car in the episode. In the end it wasn't Chrysler rather an expensive Aston Martin Rapide.
• Who would've thought Navy detectives would drive such an expensive car.
• Clever product placement.. huh.
• In the "Plab B" episode, NCIS analyst Nell uses Cius in the office and (surprisingly) in the moving car, in High Def!. Nice, does that demonstrate Cius's 3G capability!
• Remember "Super Size Me?". The same team has created another documentary that deals with the product placement in movies and TV shows, called "Greatest Movie Ever Sold" . I can't wait to watch it (in NetFlix - ofcourse).

Groupon... four months post Google offer! Doesn't look pretty.

• What goes on in the minds of  Groupon management these days? Remember they turned down $6B dollar offer from Google in December, 2010. I thought it was a dumb decision by Groupon to turn down that offer  from a giant internet company. They could've done much better with the muscle power of Google and built a strong barriers to entry for competition. It seems competition is mounting pressure everyday and the eventual successful IPO might be in jeopardy.
• Today every company that has a website with reasonable traffic seems to have a desire to tap in to this "Local Deals" market and consumers are tired of it.
• Local businesses are already feeling the negative effect of advertising with Groupon.
• Google plays a bigger part in it. Google shows recent Groupon deals in its local search page.
• Imagine the reaction of your regular customer when they learn the discounted price somebody paid for the expensive dinner they just had.
• Think about another issue, when a coupon expires Groupon shows your competitors deals  "similar" offer. How would you feel about that?
• What was Groupon's strength again? Network effect? ( they had most number of local businesses posting deals with them?). How difficult it is for competition to reach out to these local businesses?
• At&T has announced that it is going to launch Groupon Competitor. It makes sense, it already has a relationship with local businesses through its Yellow Page Service.
• Expect announcement shortly from other Yellow Page companies. There are no barriers to entry in to this market for the entrenched players. So why wait?

Facebook, RenRen, Wii 2 and Blackberry

• RenRen - Facebook of china to raise $690m in IPO tomorrow (May 3rd-Tuesday). It appears if you live in a China and little bit internet savvy, you'll be better off copying successful ideas from the west (Silicon Valley) to create local knock-off version. China provides number of glaring examples of companies that copied successful ideas. Wang Xing (The Cloner - Forbes l) has a "PhD" in ripping off ideas and cloning them for the Chinese market.
• Nevertheless there seems to be a huge appetite for Chinese internet companies in the wall street. RenRen has already raised its IPO pricing from $12 to $14.
• RenRen was also helped by the fact that Facebook is blocked in China till now. However, Facebook is in talks with Chinese government to allow it operate under the Chinese law. We all remember the principled stand took by Google and how it backed out of Chinese market altogether when faced with censorship of its search results. 
• While we are at Social Networks topic....Facebook's negotiations with Chinese government (Facebook's Dubious New Friends- WSJ) will surely raise few eyebrows, protest from free speech advocates and possibly stir up cries  in the US congress. As the WSJ article points out, recent uprising in Arab world was possible in part by the influence of Social Networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter. Had Facebook decided to go under the censorship of governments in question, the revolutions we witnessed wouldn't have happened. Facebook users believe the information they post in Facebook is shared only with their approved contacts. How would they feel if the information is shared with police states and repressive regimes without their consent, all for expanding the market share? I think, Facebook is entering a dubious territory with this decision. We have to wait and see how its users, free speech advocates and US government react to this recent development.

• Lawrence Bonk claims Nintendo Wii is underpowered because Nintendo insists on profitability of their consoles from the get go.

"Because Nintendo demands their consoles be profitable from the get go. That is why you'll have to wait until 2040 to trade insults with a holographic Mario. If the underlying tech isn't available at a mass market price, Nintendo isn't going to go for it. Microsoft and Sony, on the other hand, operate at a loss until the parts become cheaper. This usually takes a few years -- in fact, the PlayStation 3 just became profitable last year".

• New Blackberry models 9900, 9930 were announced by RIM. They run Blackberry OS 7 (QNX), support NFC and host of new features. As expected, the announcement hardly registered under tech radar for many users. Blackberry needs a blockbuster device to get out of this slump in its PR relationship. With the new phones and tablets the company is trying to address more general consumer base than its traditional business users. If the developments are any indication, it doesn't bode well for its future.

Great... Can we go home now!

It is a terrific day for America and the world, OBL is killed in Pakistan by our forces. A major achievement indeed. This is someone we tracked or tried track day and night for years. Now that he has been killed it ends a dreaded chapter in the war on terror. We have spent almost 10 years obsessing over taking the revenge and protecting ourselves from these dreaded, bearded monsters from a distant land. This is a man who as a face of Al Qaida and evil for so many americans for as long as we can remember. However, we are not sure what differences it makes in the ground and in the region.

At the least I hope we can justify bringing the troops home, end this economy busting war, start concentrating on building and funding our own schools and in our future. The costs of this war is too much to bear. Our schools are loosing valuable teachers , we are unable to pay the paltry salary. We are unable to invest in development efforts to build our technology, research and business infrastructure. It is high time we start investing in the country rather than assisting other countries to build theirs. Charity begins at home.

Boom and Bust Cycle - Rap (if you know Keynes & Hayek you will enjoy this)

Surprising truth about what motivates us

It is especially relevant, for any managers and leaders of organization with influence on monetary incentives for people. Basically, it brings some science to intuition we’ve probably all had for years about incentive based compensation.

In summary, it talks about the purpose motive and people’s desire to work in a self directed way. It also suggest that large monetary incentives for cognitive work often inhibit performance.