SiliconBeat

We learned in late December that Yelp turned down an acquisition offer from Google reported to be worth $500 million. Yelp then raised $25 million from Elevation Partners, with another $75 million possibly coming down the road.

It may need that money to ward off Google, which is ramping up its local advertising offerings. The new service places Yelp directly in Google’s scope. And I wonder if it won’t lead Yelp to regret not selling when they had the chance.

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Noah Wyle as Steve Jobs and Anthony Michael Hall as Bill Gates

A few months back, I noticed a bunch of folks tweeting about the 1999 made-for-TV-movie “Pirates of Silicon Valley.” I remember hearing about the movie just as I was moving to Silicon Valley that year, but never got around to watching it. I had heard mixed things about the movie, and its accuracy, but the tweets seemed pretty positive, so I decided to rent it and see for myself.

It exceeded my tremendously low expectations. Though as far as factual accuracy, it’s hard to say where truth ends and creative license takes over. The movie hits some of the high points of the emerging battle between Microsoft and Apple as told through the stories of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. And narrated by their wingmen: Steve Wozniak and Steve Ballmer.

There’s an amusing scene, about 20 minutes in when Wozniak and Jobs walk out of the famed Homebrew Club in 1976, having triumphantly demonstrated a version of their personal computer:

Jobs: “IBM is going to be loading in their pants!”

Wozniak: “Steve, I don’t think IBM even knows who we are.”

Jobs: “That’s okay. Because they’re the enemy.”

And later, in a conversation with John Sculley:

Sculley: ”Steve, I’m worried. About what’s happening. All the “them versus us” stuff. Macintosh versus Apple II.”

Jobs: “You don’t understand, John. People need a cause.”

Creative license aside, back in the late 1970s, and the early 1980s, Jobs had enormous power and the ability to impose his will. If you wanted to play with Apple, you did things Jobs’ way. And he wasn’t afraid to define his enemies and go after them (IBM, Microsoft). That is, until he was ousted in 1985 and Apple began its long, slow decline. And even after Jobs’ return in 1996, Apple was just happy to still be around, even striking a deal with Microsoft to invest to keep it going.

Apple’s clout has grown steadily over the past decade, thanks to the success of the iPod and the iPhone. With the iPad announcement a week behind us, it seems the the gadget itself may turn out to be less interesting than some of the things it tells us about the state of Steve Jobs and Apple. With the iPad, it appears that Jobs is confident that he’s once again in a position to dictate terms and define the opposition in a way he hasn’t been able to since the early days depicted in Pirates of Silicon Valley.

You could feel this renewed swagger when Apple announced it recent earnings. Jobs said in a press release:

“If you annualize our quarterly revenue, it’s surprising that Apple is now a $50+ billion company,” Jobs said. “The new products we are planning to release this year are very strong, starting this week with a major new product that we’re really excited about.”

That was a not-so-subtle reminder of Apple’s financial strength. Consider that Apple has closed the gap in terms of market capitalization with Microsoft. This is from Silicon Valley Insider last November:

“In May 2000, Apple’s market capitalization was $17 billion. Today it’s $182 billion. Meanwhile, Microsoft was around $356 billion in May 2000. Today it’s around $261 billion.”

By the way, Google’s market cap is $171.73 billion as of mid-day Wednesday.

Since the release of the iPad and iTunes, Apple has had the music industry under its thumb. And with the iPhone, Apple was able to change the balance of power between device makers and phone companies. But with the iPad, let’s look at the new ways Jobs is flexing those growing muscles:

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Boy, is that an understatement.

I have been learning that lesson all week since we published my story Monday on  “Why we didn’t get a Wii for Christmas.” The story, which I figured was a pretty innocent tale of my family’s decision, has sent some members of the gaming community off the deep end. Read the rest of this entry »

Once again, Netflix has been placed on a death watch. But I’m not buying it for a second. We’ve heard that too many times over the company’s history. And each time, the company has nimbly defeated new and established competitors, while growing like gangbusters in a horrid economy.

I wrote last year that I was done betting against Netflix. And I’ll stand by that now. Read the rest of this entry »

And lo, the mighty gods of Apple came down from their Cuptertion Mountain on Monday with invitations for members of the press to attend an event Jan. 27 in San Francisco. Though no details were revealed, the invitation contained the tantalizing phrase: “come see our latest creation.”

Of course, if that new creation is not the long-rumored, much-hyped tablet/slate thingy, there will likely be riots on the Streets of San Francisco next week.

The Apple event is scheduled for 10 a.m. PT in the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco. No word on whether there will be a livestream from the event for the many, many others out there who are eager to get a glimpse of this mythical gadget.

According to The Wall Street Journal, sources have told them that the device would be a 10- or 11-inch touch-screen tablet offering wireless access and sporting a price tag of $1,000.

I have a hard time betting against Apple. But what I’m waiting to see, and probably can’t really know until we have all the details, is this:

What problem will this solve for me?

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I’m at the Berkeley Center for New Media attending the Future of the Forum: Internet Communities and the Public Interest. A lot of great speakers today, and I’ll be tweeting at #FOTF. There’s a live video feed available through the conference site.

Like many air travelers, I followed in bewilderment last week the strange tale of the Northwest Airlines pilots who inadvertently overshot their destination of Minneapolis by 110 miles, or so. Were they drunk? Was it terrorists?

At last, this week the pilots explained the mystery: They were looking at their laptops and just got so wrapped up, they forget about that whole landing thing. No harm, no foul.

Now, let’s not judge them too harshly. Because let’s face it, we’ve all been there. If not in our planes, then at least while driving our cars.

Distraction by technology while traveling is becoming a plague on our busy, modern day lives. I’m not just referring to gabbing on your cellphone or texting while driving. That’s kids stuff. I’m talking about the large scale distractions that cause us all to do our share of bone headed moves.

In solidarity with the beleaguered crew of Flight 188, I wanted to share my woeful tales of techno distraction in the hope that we, as a society, can collectively learn some important lessons and make the world a safer place. Read the rest of this entry »

About a year ago, I started using a service called SlideShare. The idea is pretty simple. You can upload PowerPoint presentations and it converts them into Flash presentations. These new presentations can then be shared and embedded just about anywhere. It’s all very Web 2.0.

I’ve uploaded a few of my presentations here. Very modest stuff, nothing world changing. And over the months, I’ve embedded dozens of presentations over at The Next Newsroom Project.

Since I’ve been using SlideShare for awhile, I was happy to get a chance to chat on Monday with SlideShare co-founders Rashmi Sinha and Jonathan Boutelle. The company is announcing two new services today that are noteworthy, if for nothing else, because they will move SlideShare into earning revenues in ways besides advertising. And since I think ad-supported business models are mostly doomed to fail, I applaud them for moving into new revenue models.

But as we chatted, and as I thought about presentations, I was struck by just how important such presentations have become in our culture. Indeed, corporate presentations have improbably become a form of entertainment. It says a lot about how our relationship to business and celebrity has been transformed in the digital era. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the weekend, the New York Times published a piece by technology editor Damon Darlin under the headline, “Serendipity, Lost in the Digital Deluge.”

As the headline suggests, Darlin laments that the digital age is robbing us of those wonderful moments of serendipity. I couldn’t disagree more strongly. In fact, I’ve found myself discovering more through serendipity than ever, in large part thanks to the rise of social media.

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Google VP Marissa Mayer was speaking on a panel: “The Growing Pains on Innovation” at the AlwaysOn Summit at Stanford. The moderator asked each panelist for their thoughts on why the aren’t more women leaders in technology.