From the monthly archives: November 2006
I’m struck this week by two happenings in the realm of Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D for short).
The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) has an interesting article pointing out that the latest cellphones are coming complete with better prices and similar features when compared to the iPod nano. Sure, Apple has sold more than 60 million iPods globally, but there are over two billion cellphone users in the world. And [...]
The gaming industry is excited about the prospects of in-game advertising, a revenue stream widely untapped. A spokesman for Electronic Arts, the world’s largest game publisher, explains that Need for Speed: Carbon will bring in close to $5 million in advertising revenue just for the last three months of 2006.
A little [...]
Internet Jack-of-all-trades Joi Ito suggests as much in a recent interview at CNET News.com, at least in terms of dealing with the online world. Unlike the physical world, where the current copyright scheme allows casual sharing, such as lending a book to your classmate or watching a DVD with a friend, everytime something [...]
Venture capitalists are on the look out for new battery technologies. Just since July, the following companies have received over $75 million in financing from investors to develop better energy storage: Deeya Energy, Firefly Energy, Gridpoint, Infinite Power Solutions, and Li*On Cells.
Innovations in chemistry and nanotechnology are paving the way for new, safer [...]
Both Wal-Mart and TiVo had some big news today in the area of trying to commercialize the latest advances in digital media. Wal-Mart released its movie download service with a twist: you have to buy the DVD. But for a few bucks extra, you get a download too. TiVo decided to [...]
Last week I pointed out that the easiest way for Google to improve search would be to allow one query to bring up separated results by regular sites, blogs, news, photos, and/or video. I mentioned that the big three for me would be regular search results, blog posts, and news. I’d be [...]
The latest trend in online advertising (you know, that thing that feeds all these websites with otherwise free information) is in-text ads. If you see a word on a website with a double underline (supposedly the "double" part makes it so you won’t confuse it with a link), click on it and chances are [...]
Universities have been known to cash in on technology developed on campus. Arrangements usually include a licensing agreement with the developers, which often consists of royalties for the university. Another option is an equity stake for the university. And yet a third option is the combination of royalties and equity. Stanford, as an example, [...]
This is part 3 of what I’ve decided to call the “Will Workout Series.” Part 1 was discussing how the new Nintendo Wii is causing aching backs and sore shoulders (among other things) across America. Part 2 was a poll to determine if it was [...]
