IB

As today announced, Adobe took over Macromedia for about 3,4 bil.$. I`m not quite sure if this is a good step. There are pro´s and con´s I´d like to lay out: Pro´s: There could be a better integration between the two dominating webapplications PDF and Flash. I´m seeing a big potential there for on- and offline applications. Flash and PDF are both vector based, and there could be a seemingless co-working in apps like on- and offline-publishing. Imagine actionscript be able to generate PDF´s dynamically. use Indesign to layout your magazine, put it online in Flash-format, integrate online applications like „polls“, and on the other hand send your PDF to the press. Con´s: it was never good when big rivals made a fusion – and Adobe and Macromedia have competing products like Illustrator and Freehand. Ironically the integration-processes and the colour-management of Photoshop and freehand mostly worked better than Photoshop and Illustrator. Lot´s to learn there for the Adobe guys. But a questionable future I see for Flash. Adobe has it´s fomat svg, which is open standard based, but less, less powerful than flash. Adobe would be clever not to try to push svg instead of flash, but push flash-technology especially in the mobile sector. Macromedia has just made huge efforts to license its mobile Flash Lite to several manufactors, carriers, etc… So, I`m curios about Macromedias future

…get searchresults from goyellow.de , gelbeseiten.de, …. as XML-string? I need this for marketing purposes, making newsletters, …

…in front of St.Peter?
(Picture powered by terraserver.com)

Found an article on webpronews.com about pricing strategies for small companies. One big point I want to lay out:

Yes, business is slow for many entrepreneurs right now; however, be cautious with your pricing methods. Don’t simply slash prices; instead incorporate long-term and short-term strategies that are always complementary to each other. If you offer a product for $15 today, then again at $35 six months from now, you must have your reasons in place, otherwise you’ll aggravate your customers.

It´s really important even in such hard times at the moment, not to mess with your prices. Keep them up! For the Servicesector it´s just too easy to say, „hey, I´ll build your homepage for 100 EUR“. One has to offer more: passion, strategie and the long term view. That is the only possibility to keep your customers, and build sustainable growth.

A very nice read of vcinstitute.org about the 25 mousetraps of entrepreneurs:

9. Lack of focus

A
new venture’s most precious resource is talent. Doing one thing well
from scratch is an enormous challenge. Tackling three or four at once
is inviting across-the-board mediocrity or worse.

Carefully
sort through your opportunities before you start. Focus on the
marketplace and the competitive environment. Then pursue the daylights
out of the best of them.

And yes, some of the points are so right 😉
(via business-opportunities.biz)

As PSFK reports, MTV-Overdrive is in BETA. It looks like MTV is going to play the music-clips online. All you need is the Internet-explorer and a special plugin called Overdrive Video Optimizer….mmmh, and what about Mac OS and Firefox? Currently no support because the service uses the MS Mediaplayer 9 Codec for DRM which is neither supported by Mac nor Firefox. Hence MTV uses third party content (mostly delivered through labels like Universal,…) I wonder who built this application for them. Does anyone know?

People quite often discuss how to make money with blogs, and how a business model could look like. I personally don´t think it is in positioning banners on your weblog or insert ads into the RSS feeds. I assume there could be something different: It´s a rule of the „old-media“ that all that counts is „coverage“. TV has a big coverage, that´s why ads on TV are that expensive. Big internet portals have a big coverage, and so adspace is quite expensive there, too. So if your blog has a wide coverage for special keywords than it get´s a value. Maybe this value can be turned into money when companies want to place information there, reviews of products or what else. Now this has to be done in a special way: just putting stupid information onto your blog will kill the interest of the users. So the quality of information has to be very high, and maybe rewritten by yourself, because it has to get your personal note. It´s quite high risk: interest in a blog is hard work and can go away that fast – the blogosphere is merciless.

I´m really deeply impressed: when you search on local.google.com one now can watch either the „normal“ map or the satellite view. and this is so, so cool: I´ve got the feeling, as if web and real world are beginning to merge somehow. The performance is very very well: you can take the picture and drag it around ans you like. Unfortunately it´s just a BETA and only available in the US at the moment. So the integration of keyhole (acquired by google in Oct. 2004) seems to be succesfully finished. (via searchenginelowdown.com)

By the way: there´s another service called terraserver.com and it offers different countries and satellites, too. I´ve found my hometown cologne there, offering a 1 Meter resolution – rocks too!!!

Marks asks himself why there´s no „candy-spam“:

For example, if you make more money selling candy than imaginary drugs, you’d expect in time to get more candy spam and fewer fake drug ads.Why don’t we have spam for hit music? Everyone likes music. Why don’t we have spam for cleaning products? Everyone has dirty dishes.

I personally don´t think that „spam“ itself could be better or worse (it´s a negotiation in itself) but it would be interesting to compare the conversion rates 😉

A nice read on inc.com about 25 fascinating entrpreneurs and why we love them:

1. Martha Stewart, Martha Stewart Omnimedia
2. because she took one for the team
3. Richard Branson, Virgin Group
4. because he’s game for anything. In fact, everything.
5. Michael Dell, Dell Computer
6. for being brilliantly straightforward
7. …

. via business-opportunities