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Google Enters Enterprise 3.0 Collaboration

Posted on Friday, Apr 20th

Google has just acquired a small Swedish Webex competitor, Marratech, entering the Enterprise 3.0 collaboration game. Earlier, Cisco acquired Webex for $3.1 Billion, and postured to take on Microsoft, a leader in the enterprise collaboration space. I used to wonder for the longest time why Google wasn’t buying Webex. Well, now all the pieces of

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Will Sun Shine Again?

Posted on Friday, Apr 20th

Struggling under the pressure of a vertically integrated business that had become obsolete over the last 7 years since the dotcom bust, Sun Microsystems changed CEO in April 2006. Scott McNealy stepped down after 22 years at the helm. Jonathan Schwartz assumed the chief executive’s responsibilities. In the last 12 months, however, dotcoms have come

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Sudden Windfall For 3Com?

Posted on Thursday, Apr 19th

An interesting Patent infringement situation seems to be brewing, with Verizon suing Vonage for some fundamental Voice-Over-IP intellectual property violation, and then a former US Robotics engineer, Michael Musiel, who wrote another patent on similar technology, suggesting that 3Com (which acquired US Robotics) actually owns the patent now. From Muriel’s email: “I originally wrote up

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Newspapers Report Weak Earnings

Posted on Thursday, Apr 19th

WSJ reports: :: Three of the country’s biggest newspaper publishers reported sharply weaker first-quarter results Thursday, reflecting across-the-board declines in print advertising, particularly in classified ads related to the cooling housing market. Gannett Co. and New York Times Co. each posted declining earnings for the period. Tribune Co., which recently agreed to be taken private,

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IBM’s India Strategy

Posted on Thursday, Apr 19th

Last week’s Economist had an article called Hungry Tiger, Dancing Elephant. It traces IBM’s globalization efforts, and especially analyzes their India strategy. :: (IBM CEO) Mr Palmisano announced that IBM would invest a further $6 billion in India over the coming three years, up from $2 billion in the previous three. That sum does not

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eBay’s Forays Into Media

Posted on Wednesday, Apr 18th

eBay announced earnings. Skype numbers aren’t great, certainly not enough to justify the price they paid for it. Today, however, it looks like they’re acquiring Stumbleupon. Why? Stumbleupon is a very popular “discovery” engine, which helps users find what they would like via collective intelligence. There is always an element of surprise, and I have

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Monetize the MySpace Parasites

Posted on Wednesday, Apr 18th

I recently wrote a piece called News Corp: Bewildered Pioneer, where I discussed the rather low rate of monetization of MySpace, News Corp’s crown jewel in the online space. Following that, MySpace blocked Photobucket, Photobucket whined, the media went up in arms against News Corp. This is exactly what I would have done if I

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BusinessWeek: Crown Jewel or Achilles’ Heel?

Posted on Tuesday, Apr 17th

In my post, “McGraw-Hill: Beating the Street” I have discussed McGraw-Hill’s overall business prospects, which looks good with lower double-digit growth in 2007. However, BusinessWeek, McGraw-Hill’s crown jewel is struggling and I am going to talk about it here. BusinessWeek, is one of the most widely read business magazines, with more than 4.7 million readers

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