Turn Logic into Magic (6)

By Dominique Trempont, Guest Author A world that simply does not get “Magic” is high tech. With the glaring exceptions of Apple, Logitech, Blackberry, Motorola and possibly HP recently, it is a screaming desert. High tech does not understand brand, customer experience and design in general. Not even the beginning of a clue. It may

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Microsoft’s Next Move: A Roll-Up?

Microsoft has finally got its hands on an Ad Network. With its aQuantive acquisition, however, Microsoft has got something else: a portfolio of great interactive ad agencies, including Avenue A/ Razorfish. An interesting, offbeat, but smart move for Microsoft could be to proactively roll-up a large chunk of the online advertising space, which will force

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Online Advertising: One More by Microsoft

WSJ reports: “Microsoft announced plans to acquire Internet advertising company aQuantive in a deal valued at about $6 billion, or $66.50 a share, a significant premium. Founded in 1997, aQuantive is the parent company of Avenue A/Razorfish, Atlas Media Console and Drive PM.” Techcrunch analyzes the deal with a transcript from the Microsoft announcement and

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iPhone and What’s Coming: Synthesis

Over the last few weeks, we discussed a number of iPhone related issues that are key blocks challenging the rest of the eco-system today. Here is a quick synthesis of the key nuggets: (1) It’s positioning as a laptop replacement device, which I believe will force most of the other laptop and cellular handset vendors

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iPhone and the Future of Microsoft

This is a very strange perspective, but I think in the mobile world, the iPhone is actually driving the market towards Microsoft’s Windows Mobile OS, and away from the current OS leader Symbian. Let’s go through the logic step by step.

Microsoft Launches Its Israel R&D Center

By Danny Cohen, Guest Author [SM: I have a great deal of interest in seeing technology and entrepreneurship thrive in other locations besides Silicon Valley. Danny’s article here provides a crisp update on the Israeli scene.] A couple of days ago Microsoft announced the opening of a new R&D center outside of Tel-Aviv. For the

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Salesforce.com Steps into the Main Arena

Today, Salesforce.com (Nasdaq: CRM) announced the acquisition of an OnDemand Content Management SaaS company, Koral, which is a Web 2.0 spin on a mainstream enterprise software application: Content Management. I listened to Marc Benioff’s presentation at the Four Seasons this afternoon. Marc and the CEO of Koral demonstrated some funky functionality, touting Unstructured Data Management

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Tumbleweed’s Turnaround Strategy

I recently interviewed Taher Elgamal, famous cryptographer, and currently the CTO of Tumbleweed, a $60 Million email security company. I asked him where he sees the opportunity for Tumbleweed to play in the Security space, which is hopelessly crowded. Taher said: “The industry essentially was split into different sectors. Some became part of the network

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