Maounis Frangoulis

Finally after “careful evaluation”, Yahoo Board believes that Microsoft’s proposal substantially undervalues Yahoo! including global brand, large worldwide audience, significant recent investments in advertising platforms and future growth prospects, free cash flow and earnings potential, as well as our substantial unconsolidated investments. The Board of Directors evaluated all of its strategic options in the context of the rapidly evolving industry environment and was committed to pursuing initiatives that maximize value for all stockholders.

Good job Goldman, Sachs & Co., Lehman Brothers and Moelis & Company! Yahoo you could save some money by asking me… I would have made the same evaluation for free at no time!

You can have anything when you have Eric’s support!

I just read an article in ReadWriteWeb.com about getting free stuff online. Some interesting points mentioned there for what IBM did with java and what Google is now doing with Google Docs, Gmail and free Google Search. I recommend reading the article although there are some points I do not have the same thoughts. We have new ways of expresing ourselfs now than 10 years ago. Today users have a lot to say and even more free time to do that. After all that is the key point of User Generated Content and Social Networking.

Alex (the writer) believes that TV is not free and libraries are free because we pay taxes. Hmm.. I think that TV is free in most of the countries and libraries are a community right to have them. Even radio is free and money is comming directly from adverstising and we don’t pay taxes for this for sure. Even if I had to pay for TV (subscription channels), why those ads do not dissapear? My point is that whatever the subscription is going to be for TV, radio, Gmail or even to cross a road, ads will be there for you to watch them. And to tell you the truth if Gmail was giving the $1/month option to avoid ads, I would keep them. And do you know why? Because they are text ads (don’t really bother me) and that they are really targeted ads (I even use them once a while) and not just pills and drags. A friend sends me an email about the new Nintendo wii that he bought and boom, I already have a link to read more info. This is a phenomenon model and is by far away from any other ad model and will finally be adopted by TV and radio as well. This is not about annoying colored banner ads that distracts me but a tool when you start thinking “Listen if I have to see your ads fine, but at least show me some ads about cars because I am planning to buy one next month”. I think this is fair enough. And finally a question. Would you give $1 dollar more to your daily newspapper just to see ads that are really helpfull? I would, because this makes my quality of life and work better.

I am not sure if free is danger but certainly the right ads are not!

Everyone in the last months runs to open any code they have! Apparently there is something going on out there about “Sharing is Caring”. Even dataportability.org starts to have big fans and even Facebook is now a member. Maybe Eric Schmidt is right about the Cloud Computing and the new world with “Search, ads and apps” where everything is out there for anyone to get and all data will be on servers accessible from any device anywhere.

According to Data Portability Philosophy, “as users, our identity, photos, videos and other forms of personal data should be discoverable by, and shared between our chosen tools or vendors” (is this really safe?). “We need a DHCP for Identity. A distributed File System for data. The technologies already exist, we simply need a complete reference design to put the pieces together.”

The mission here seems to be to put all existing technologies and initiatives in context to create a reference design for end-to-end Data Portability. To promote that design to the developer, vendor and end-user community. Well Google is in this mission too, so lets wait a few more months to see the results. My opinion? A big sound is comming soon!

In an ideal world Internet is pervasive worldwide. Wrong! In fact, huge swaths of the globe are still without access to computers and the lines or cables that connect them to the Internet. This phenomenon is commonly known as the digital divide (read at www.ibm.com).When exploring issues around delivering content to the rural poor, mainly through the use of cheap laptop computers, there is a complicating factor. Even if you were able to connect the masses to the Internet, a large percentage of the impoverished are illiterate, and would find it difficult to master written language skills and a computer interface.

As it happens, some of the most undeveloped parts of the world are already beginning to experience internet connectivity—but they’re using mobile devices instead of cheap laptops or obsolete desktop computers. This is a much better way to experience web browsing and get closer to the new Web 2.0 world. The mobile platform is clearly establishing itself as a superior bridge for the digital divide. Read the rest of this entry »

ReadWriteWeb.com announced that semantic Apps will become popular in 2008, due to their ability to get better content results and make better data connections. Is it really a connection to the travel industry here through recommendation systems? Web-based product and service recommendation systems have become ever popular on-line business practice, with increasing emphasis on modelling customer needs and providing them with targeted or personalized online service solutions in real-time interaction. Many commercial web service systems (including traveling services) adopt some kind of simple customer segmentation models and shallow pattern matching or rule-based techniques for high performance. Read the rest of this entry »

From TechCrunch:

If there is one thing I noticed this past year, it is that companies seem to be tripping over themselves more than ever before to claim the mantle of openness. Openness is now a marketing mantra. Facebook kicked things off in May by opening up its social network to outside developers through a comprehensive set of APIs. Google responded by trying to “out open” Facebook with the launch of its own platform for social networking apps, OpenSocial (which was more open than Facebook’s APIs, but still not open enough for some people). Google also introduced its open-source mobile operating system, Android, which prompted even old-school, closed-network mobile carriers like Verizon and AT&T to play the open card. And in the face of the success of open-source blogging software Wordpress, Six Apart finally made its rival Moveable Type open source as well. These are just a few examples.

Building a product or service on top of open standards is held as one of the highest virtues in technology. It is certainly one of the easiest ways for a company to score points with consumers, developers, or other companies. And for good reason. The Internet, after all, is built on open standards. Open-source technologies such as Linux, Apache, MySQL, and others have lowered the cost to start a Web company. Read the rest of this entry »

So that must be the reason that user generated content is making much more noise now than any other time. And users are using online services and tools easily without having usability or any other issues. The point is: Get more users to your service and let them gain value from it. Revenues will start growing in no time if there is value in your service.

Maybe the motto is: “Open your cloud and let them in”. What are you waiting for?