The latest from TechCrunch
- Please Pass The Bong, Carol
- The State Of Web Development Ripped Apart In 25 Tweets By One Man
- Apple To Shut Down Lala On May 31, iTunes.com Launch Impending?
- Hewlett-Packard To Kill Windows 7 Tablet Project
| Please Pass The Bong, Carol | Top |
| Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz bristles at outsiders opining on what Yahoo should be doing and not doing. An example – just a couple of days ago, when asked about our post saying that Yahoo shouldn’t buy Foursquare , she told TechCrunch EU editor Mike Butcher “I think it’s very easy for people to talk about what somebody else should do, but when confronted about it themselves they look at it a little differently.” Along with lots of swearing, that’s been her key message since day one. Her first day on the job, in January 2009, she said "It's been too crazy. People outside Yahoo deciding what Yahoo should do, shouldn't do. That's got to stop." But that didn’t stop her from giving out a little advice of her own yesterday. Her target? That one-trick pony Google. Says Bartz to the BBC : Google is going to have a problem because Google is only known for search…It is only half our business; it’s 99.9% of their business. They’ve got to find other things to do…Google has to grow a company the size of Yahoo every year to be interesting. An interesting argument. But even if all of Google’s non search endeavors are ignored, like Apps, Android, Chrome, YouTube, etc., they still beat her test. In the last year, Google’s share price has gone from about $393/share to $532/share. That’s about $44 billion in market cap gain. Yahoo’s market cap, including those fat Asian assets, stands at a little under $24 billion today. By my math, Google grew by almost two Yahoo’s in the last twelve months. And my guess is they aren’t sweating growing one or two more Yahoo’s in the next twelve months, either. Bartz also isn’t afraid of Facebook dominating all that social stuff: “They certainly are taking people’s attention and time,” she said. “But what is kind of wrong about the conversation is that social just means Facebook. “Social is interaction. Social is commenting on news stories. It’s blogging. It’s sharing photos. “So there are social capabilities running throughout all of our sites, including Twitter feeds and Facebook feeds.” I actually wonder if Bartz has ever visited Facebook. She certainly doesn’t understand what the core of Facebook is all about . And I don’t see a whole lot of social going on at Yahoo, and the stuff I do see is being brought in from as Bartz says, Facebook and Twitter. The yelling and the rhetoric are entertaining, certainly. And trashing competitors that are crushing you is probably cathartic. But Rome is burning , and words won’t put out that fire. So pass the bong, Carol, because I want some of whatever it is that you’re smoking. We can watch Rome burn together and laugh and laugh about how uninteresting Google and Facebook are. CrunchBase Information Carol Bartz Yahoo! Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| The State Of Web Development Ripped Apart In 25 Tweets By One Man | Top |
| There are few people who knows the ins and outs of the web as well as Joe Hewitt . For the past decade, he’s had his hands deep in everything from Netscape, to AOL, to Firefox, to Facebook (where he currently works). Hewitt also knows a thing or two about the iPhone. He’s the one who first built Facebook’s excellent iPhone web app (before there were native apps on the iPhone), and then the native app — which is one of the best apps on the platform. So when he rants about something (as he does from time-to-time ), people listen. And today he went on one such rant. Following Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ post about Flash this morning , Hewitt went on Twitter and started going off with some of this thoughts. I asked Hewitt if I could recap them; his response, “ sure, why not .” Hewitt, some may recall, quit iPhone development over his distaste for some App Store policies. Today, seeing a wave of anti-Flash talk on Twitter spurred by Jobs’ post, Hewitt started out : Redirect your hatred of Flash to the W3C, whose embarrassingly slow pace forced devs to use a plugin because the standards were so weak. Also, I am looking at you, developers who bitch whenever a browser offers “non-standard” but innovative APIs. Browser makers need to go nuts with non-standard APIs and let the W3C standardize later. Waiting for the committee to innovate is suicide. So basically, Hewitt’s take is that Flash (and all plug-ins) only exists because the W3C (the governing body for web standards) is too slow to formalize and approve innovative new technologies. He urges browser-makers to break away from the W3C constraints and start going crazy with new APIs. He then comes in defense of Microsoft, the company that once all-but destroyed (through what just about everyone including the U.S. government thinks were unsavory means) the company Hewitt started his career at (Netscape). 10 years ago we bullied Microsoft into stopping innovation on IE so the W3C could take over. How’d that work out? For those too young to remember, IE was innovating like crazy from 4.0 -6.0, right up until the DOJ and web standards commies intervened. @jeff_lamarche Oh c’mon. Aside from ActiveX, Microsoft moved the web forward faster from 96-00 than any other browser maker has. I don’t know why MS abandoned IE, but I do know that web developers were begging them to stop innovating and just follow the committee. Hewitt’s take here is that the antitrust action against Microsoft halted innovation in Internet Explorer. In 1996, when Hewitt says IE innovation really started, that browser didn’t even have 10% share of the market, while Netscape had nearly 90%. As an underdog, IE had to innovate. Until, of course, they took over the web, and then Microsoft inexplicably all-but abandoned the product. Hewitt then turns to the rise of the app stores (including, yes, the App Store). Why are app stores threatening the web and luring developers like me away from it? “Evil” proprietary tech is blowing the web away. I want desperately to be a web developer again, but if I have to wait until 2020 for browsers to do what Cocoa can do in 2010, I won’t wait. The “‘Evil’ proprietary tech is blowing the web away” quote is pretty compelling (I’m still kicking myself for not using it in the headline). Again, Hewitt’s point here is that the web is nowhere near where non-web technologies like Cocoa are — and won’t be for a decade. @KuraFire Did Microsoft patent their non-standard html/javascript/css extensions, preventing other browsers from implementing them? @johnfoliot True, they [w3c] don’t dictate, but developers shame others who use non-standard APIs. That’s the problem. He wonders here why some of Microsoft’s standards weren’t adopted by the W3C? Then blames the web developers for shaming other developers who use tech not sanctioned by the governing body. I am ranting because I want to drop Cocoa and go back to the web, but I am upset about how much power I have to give up to do that. How it should go: browsers innovate differently, users pick the best one, later W3C standardizes what users chose, losing browsers conform. The core of Hewitt’s argument. Web technologies aren’t moving fast enough, and why should he have to use a less powerful language to conform to web standards? Again, he hopes that browsers will start to innovate and force the W3C to conform to them. @joseph_wanja I love what Cocoa can do, I just don’t like C-based languages for UI programming. The reason why Hewitt doesn’t just stick with Cocoa if he finds it superior to web-based languages. @eston Users might be aware of their choices if more developers wrote browser-specific sites. Developers really pick the winner. An urging for developers to take action to reverse the trend. @JamesWatch IE6 was fucking amazing in 2000. It’s not fair to compare it to modern browsers. A word of caution for those who bash IE6 — remember what it was like when it came out. @joseph_wanja unfortunately I would recommend Cocoa [rather than web languages] at this point. Wish I didn’t have to say that. Cocoa, while not perfect, is better than web languages. @michaelvillar So launch a different browser. Not a big deal. Know what is a big deal? Having to buy a different phone for each app store. An interesting point. Hewitt is saying that while it may seem like a hassle to have the web coded for different browsers, it’s much more of a hassle to have apps coded for different phones. @jjathman I’m not justifying ActiveX, but the html/css/javascript side of IE which at one time was state of the art. Again, more defense of IE back in the day. From here, Hewitt goes into a series of thoughts on web vs. native apps. @ppk Yes, exactly. I’d rather developers had forced users to launch different browsers instead of making watered down x-browser sites. @ppk That’s sort of what is happening with mobile web vs. native mobile apps, except app stores don’t extend the browser, they replace it. @slauriat “best viewed in X” was not as bad as “buy another phone”, which is what we got for letting the web go to shit so apps could rise. @ppk As someone who has tried to do both cutting edge native and web iPhone apps, iPhone Safari is a joke compared to iPhone Cocoa. App stores replace the web, simply because their languages are better, in Hewitt’s mind. And it’s our own fault for letting the web go to shit, and letting this happen. His last tweet is particularly powerful: Hewitt does have a lot of experience on both sides, and considers iPhone Safari to be a “joke” compared to what you can do natively. This is a sentiment a lot of developers whisper about, but seldom say publicly. Finally, Hewitt qualifies some of his statements a bit. I’ve been hard on Flash, but we should all thank Macromedia/Adobe for 10 years of picking up the slack of the W3C, Microsoft, and Mozilla. And really, how screwed would we be if the WebKit team weren’t so god damn competent? Ok, signing off now, thanks for listening. :) Fair enough, plenty of juicy post-worthy comments for one day. CrunchBase Information Apple Microsoft App Store Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Apple To Shut Down Lala On May 31, iTunes.com Launch Impending? | Top |
| Lala – where music will stop playing … In a brief message that was just posted on the Lala.com website, Apple has announced that the service will be shut down on May 31st, 2010. Apple will not be accepting new users, and existing users will be able to log in only until the end of next month. Does this mean we can start raising our hopes for iTunes in the cloud ? At the bottom of a Wall Street Journal piece published back in January 2010, the paper suggested that Apple was gearing up to launch iTunes.com as soon as this June, citing sources familiar with the matter. For an extensive view on how far-reaching that could prove to be, check out this guest post by Michael Robertson , the former CEO of MP3.com, who laid out Apple’s cloud-based media strategy going forward. An iTunes-in-the-cloud offering – which is basically what Lala’s value proposition boils down to – is the central part of such an endeavor. Late last year, we wrote about how a move to the cloud was inevitable for iTunes . With the imminent shutdown of Lala, it’s safe to assume something is brewing at Cupertino. Will Apple be the first company to turn online music subscription services into a sizable business? Perhaps Apple, which acquired Lala late last year, will be making an announcement at its Worldwide Developers Conference, which will be held June 7 in San Francisco. Update: here’s what it says when you’re logged in (click for larger image) Update 2: and this is the email that was sent out to users: Dear, The Lala service will be shut down on May 31st. In appreciation of your support over the last five years, you will receive a credit in the amount of your Lala web song purchases for use on Apple’s iTunes Store. If you purchased and downloaded mp3 songs from Lala, those songs will continue to play as part of your local music library. Remaining wallet balances and unredeemed gift cards will be converted to iTunes Store credit (or can be refunded upon request). Gift cards can be redeemed on Lala until May 31st. Click here or visit Lala.com/support for more information, or to view Lala’s Terms of Service. Thank you. Lala (Thanks for the tip, Josh) CrunchBase Information Lala Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Hewlett-Packard To Kill Windows 7 Tablet Project | Top |
| Hewlett-Packard has killed off its much ballyhooed Windows 7 tablet computer, says a source who’s been briefed on the matter. The device was first unveiled by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at CES 2010 in January and was supposed to hit the market in mid 2010. But our source tells us that HP is not satisfied with Windows 7 as a tablet operating system and has terminated the project (something CrunchGear mentioned months ago). HP may also be abandoning Intel-based hardware for its slate lineup simply because it’s too power hungry. That would also rule out Windows 7 as an operating system. So what will HP use as an operating system? Look for Google-powered devices, which have already been announced . And HP really does seem determined to make a go of the Palm WebOS . They said how important it was to them yesterday, and they will likely experiment with porting it to a slate-type device. Will WebOS emerge as a successful operating system for tablet devices? That seems very unlikely given the dominance of the closed Apple OS and the likely success of the open Android and Chrome operating systems from Google. To get traction from third party developers with WebOS HP will need to sell a lot of units. And it’s not clear what they’d gain from all that effort, anyway. HP knows how to build and sell hardware, not operating systems. We’ve reached out to HP for comment. Here’s the video promoting the HP Windows tablet from January: CrunchBase Information Hewlett-Packard Microsoft Information provided by CrunchBase | |
CREATE MORE ALERTS:
Auctions - Find out when new auctions are posted
Horoscopes - Receive your daily horoscope
Music - Get the newest Album Releases, Playlists and more
News - Only the news you want, delivered!
Stocks - Stay connected to the market with price quotes and more
Weather - Get today's weather conditions
| You received this email because you subscribed to Yahoo! Alerts. Use this link to unsubscribe from this alert. To change your communications preferences for other Yahoo! business lines, please visit your Marketing Preferences. To learn more about Yahoo!'s use of personal information, including the use of web beacons in HTML-based email, please read our Privacy Policy. Yahoo! is located at 701 First Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94089. |
No comments:
Post a Comment