The Third Wave and Steve Case’s Apple Disconnect
Former AOL CEO and Chairman Steve Case has been snagging headlines and interviews. A year after Verizon bought AOL for $4.4 billion and 16 years after AOL peaked with a market cap of $163 billion (when it bought Time Warner) Case has been talking up ideas contained in a book released last month, The Third Wave: An Entrepreneur’s Vision of the Future. The book is a mixed bag. Case himself calls it “part memoir, part playbook for the future, part manifesto.” The title theme is his classification of the First, Second and Third Waves, which...
read moreBoston INTX – Less Turbulence, More Focus
Last year in Chicago, change was in the air. The NCTA had just unveiled INTX, the Internet & TV Expo, as the new brand for the Cable Show. The proposed Time Warner Cable-Comcast merger had flopped, but industry dealmakers were not done yet. Only a few weeks later, Charter announced its intention to acquire Time Warner Cable. At this year’s event in Boston, attendees were more comfortable with saying and hearing the expression “In-Tex.” The Charter-Time Warner Cable merger was a done deal, having finally met with anti-trust regulatory...
read moreThe Wired in Wireless
It was once common to think that cellular communications were entirely wireless. If the public were polled, a large number would have thought that calls hopped back and forth from tower to tower until they reached their destination. The truth, of course, is otherwise. The all-wireless misunderstanding is less common today. All it takes is one look at a cell tower. While festooned with antennas and transmitters of all kinds (some, indeed, microwave) communications towers are highly wired structures, with hard-to-conceal cables dropping into...
read moreRichmond VA vs. Silicon Valley?
Richmond VA-based Lighthouse Labs hosted a “Startup Journey” forum last week, featuring medical services innovator Iggbo. It also touched the sensitive issue of Silicon Valley. Lighthouse Labs Talks with Iggbo Lighthouse Director Todd Nuckols moderated the event at the University of Richmond. Headlining the evening were two of the Richmond-based founders of Iggbo, whose mission is to streamline the delivery of blood samples to medical laboratories. Dubbed the “Uber of phlebotomy,” Iggbo launched in early 2015 and scaled up fast. It raised a...
read moreMobile World Congress 2016 – Too Big to Ignore
This year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) broke 100,000 attendees. That’s up from 94,000 in 2015. The Barcelona-based event is too big to ignore, and too big for vendors to skip. Meanwhile, the event’s organizer, the GSMA, appears to be sitting pretty. According to Light Reading (LR), two years ago it generated $164 million, when attendees numbered only 85,000. Vendor angst is a reality, as the comments to that LR article suggest. But is that an evergreen sentiment? Large industry events always create concern about costs and return on...
read more3 College-Football, Tech-Writing Lessons
Two football teams are about to play for the national championship. I grew up in the shadow of one. Which raises the question: What I did learn in that town that relates to what I do today? Here are three college-football, tech-writing lessons, and a few related questions: 1) Brands matter. The local university adopted a new logo when I was in grade school. Decades later, it still triggers memories: fall days, screaming fans, marching bands, acrobatic cheerleaders, large football players. With a winning team, a university brand tends to...
read moreScrivener, 79 Deliverables and a New Year
In December 2014, I bought a copy of Scrivener, a “content-generation tool for writers.” I may be an atypical user, but the app immediately became part of my routine. In fact, it helped me to complete 79 projects over the past year. Why atypical? The developers of Scrivener designed the tool for creative writers. (Not surprising: the company behind it is named Literature and Latte.) There is a category for “Non-Fiction,” but that contains academic templates. What it does have, however, is a “Blank” project, with no presets. That’s works just...
read moreScrew the Valley – Review Essay
Silicon Valley gets plenty of attention. The Santa Clara Valley itself is beautiful, and companies based there have created staggering amounts of innovation and value. I have reported on and been happy to collaborate with many of them. So business reporters and analysts are right to focus on the Valley. But as important as it is, there comes a time when you just need to look beyond. Even players in the Valley reach that point. “Blame the seemingly never-ending hustle to find, train, and retain top development talent,” writes Tim Sprinkle,...
read moreCable-Tec Expo ’15 – A Return to New Orleans
There’s a temptation to pack the passport when traveling to New Orleans. I left it at home, but upon arriving for Cable-Tec Expo ‘15, knew that I was once again in a place both familiar and strange. New Orleans is foreign for well-known reasons. It’s familiar for particular ones. My first visit was for Cable-Tec Expo 2000, fifteen years ago, and I’d been back several times. Other ties relate to my mother, who grew up in a home on St. Charles Ave., near Tulane University. The city left its imprint. That’s where her lifelong enthusiasm for the...
read moreThe UCI World Championship – and a Memory
After a long buildup, the UCI World Championship finally came to town. When it did, it sent me back a few decades, to a year I spent with my family in northern France – and to a gray day when I stood with my brothers beside one of the region’s old stone-paved roads. We waited in the drizzle; then cyclists on the Paris-Roubaix road race appeared, and sped by as spectators shouted out names. To a young American, this was a strange scene. The locals were thrilled, but the pack of cyclists passed by so quickly. That was it? And this Belgian...
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