Well, I think I have successfully made the transition to TypePad. Hopefully, TechBytes will live there happily for the next few years.

If you are using the XML feed for TechBytes, you need to subscribe to this feed in order to keep reading TechBytes.

I finally got the jasonball.com domain issues worked out so clicking here or typing www.jasonball.com into your browser will take you to the latest version of TechBytes.

See you there.

I have been working on a new version of TechBytes over on TypePad.

I have decided that this will most likely be my last year with .Crap (my affectionate name for .Mac). Unless Apple can actually offer something that resembles value for my money, I'm going to drop the service. .Mac is, in a word, pitiful. Maintaining a website on .Mac has been difficult at best, with sporadic outages and unexpected behavior from the service.

So, come by and visit my public beta of TechBytes at it's new home on TypePad's servers. I still have a few kinks to work out, but it's 95% finished. I am having some problems with Network Solutions and getting my domain (jasonball.com) mapped correctly for the TypePad version of TechBytes, but nothing major.

I finally received my Airport Express today. Set up was a snap, even with my lackluster BT service. (I'm using the Hermstedt XDSL modem as well, which has also made my life a lot easier.)

The most impressive aspect of the Airport Express is the size, as you can see from the picture. It's basically the same size as the power adapter for my PowerBook.



Apple has done an excellent job with the Airport Express. Connecting my printer, an HP Laserjet 1010, was a matter of clicks as well, even though it is not listed on the Airport Express compatibility chart. Connecting my stereo was equally as simple.

I purchased a Netgear base station last Christmas and it continually dropped the signal and needed to be restarted. It was also a pain in the neck to set up.

Five stars for the Airport Express- I highly recommend it.

(A bigger picture of the AC adapter/Airport Express is available at my Beta TechBytes site on TypePad)

I've been getting asked a lot lately where ESADE ranks on the Business School tables. Just for the record, The Wall Street Journal ranked ESADE as the #2 International School for 2003.

(I don't put a whole lot of stock in these rankings, because they vary so widely between sources...and business school is only worth the network you build anyway. Real learning, at least in my opinion, doesn't happen in an MBA classroom.)

If you live in London, or simply want to support London, go register here to back the bid for hosting the olympics in London in 2012.

It's a little disappointing to see that Mobileway has only been EBITDA profitable, while similar companies in Europe have been anywhere from profitable to "wildy profitable". That being the case, I can see where this type of integration could provide clear advantages and cost savings, my only doubt is where they will go next. At $120 million in revenue, they will be worth watching. Via Venturewire

There's a nice new service out there called Streamload . This would solve *many* of my current file storage and distribution problems.

"SEND.  RECEIVE.  ACCESS.  STORE.

You have the power to control your files anywhere, anytime. Fast, unlimited, inexpensive, this is the power of the internet used for your convenience — for your needs — for your demanding lifestyle. This is the power of Streamload. Life without limits."

One interesting twist is that you get 10GB of storage FREE. Your pricing plan is based on how much you download per month. For an offsite backup solution, the $4.95/month gives you 10GB of storage and 2GB of downloads per month. If you want to be able to upload and download the full 10GB it's only $9.95 per month.

(That beats the pants off of Apple's $100 per year for a paltry 100MB of online storage. Even my USB flash drive offers more storage than that.)

This is very similar to the type of service that I posted over at my ipod blog a few weeks ago saying that Apple needed to introduce...

Here's to innovative companies making Apple look like Microsoft. Well, even Microsoft is looking better than Apple these days as far as online services are concerned ... (see rant below)

This is a copy of an email I sent Apple earlier today:

Dear .Mac Team,

It's been slow on the .Mac improvement front lately, except for the pretty facelift. My email still loses sent emails, and I have not received any response regarding that after 2 months. It only took 3 months to resolve an issue with iSync that was on the server side. Not bad for $100 a year.

I've pasted below a very friendly email from Microsoft regarding my free Hotmail account. I hope to see some improvement in .Mac soon. Renewal time is approaching you know...

For once, I wish .Mac would actually pull through and offer something resembling value for my money instead of expecting me to prop up Apple's stock price by shoveling sub-par services to the Mac faithful.

Jason

"Dear MSN® Hotmail® Member:

As a valued MSN Hotmail Member, you will receive your storage upgrade automatically in the coming days. Over the month of August we will upgrade the storage capacity of your e-mail account to 250 MB - that's 125 times your current storage limit! We will also increase your attachment size from 1MB to 10MB. This means you will be able to store and attach more than ever and it's free!

But that's not all.

Last month, we upgraded your e-mail account's anti-virus protection. This makes MSN Hotmail, the only free global e-mail service that both scans and cleans incoming and outgoing email for viruses and worms.


We'd like to thank you for being a valued MSN Hotmail Member and look forward to telling you about even more exciting changes to your Hotmail e-mail account in the coming months. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy your new larger inbox!

Thank you,

MSN Hotmail Member Services"

"The City of Corpus Christi, Texas, will deploy Wi-Fi system for use by the city-owned water and gas utilities, public works departments, and public safety agencies.

The Tropos Wi-Fi system will provide an automated gas and water meter reading twice per day from all meters in the coverage area. By eliminating the need for utility personnel to visit each meter and manually record customer consumption, the city can more quickly and accurately provide up-to-date billing information to their service recipients. Moreover, customers can access real-time usage data through a Web-based billing and information system automatically updated with each wireless meter polling.

The network will also be available for use by city public works crews, as well as Police and Fire Departments. The city plans to operate GPS-based asset and vehicle tracking applications over the Wi-Fi network, increasing both officer and community safety." Via We make money not art

This looks very similar to a business I was looking at about one year ago and thought it was a very compelling idea. All those Wi-Fi meters would literally have created a blanket of connectivity over the city... Gas & Water meter reading plus wireless connectivity for laptops and Wi-Fi enabled phones. Apparently quite a few other VCs thought it was compelling as well...

A recent article on CNN regarding Real's reverse engineering of Apple's FairPlay points out:

"Harmony (Real's product) could help iPod sales," says Charlie Wolf, an analyst with Needham & Co. "It could also take some sales away from the iTunes store, but it's the iPod that makes the money." "They need [an answer] that doesn't sound anti-consumer and yet preserves the system they've built for themselves," Bernoff says. "I can't think of a response that satisfies both of those requirements."

Well, I certainly I can.

1. Ignore Real.
2. Make FairPlay and the iTunes Music Store better.
3. License FairPlay.

Ignore them like the fly they are: small, but annoying. Apple needs to focus on making iTunes and the iPod better. As a result, FairPlay (and the iPod) will be updated and changed over the course of time. Since Real's Harmony is essentially a reverse-engineered hack, it will break and songs purchased through Real will no longer work on iPods.

By licensing FairPlay to other parties, say in six months time, if Real decides to continue to provide music using their "hack", they are the ones that will end up looking incredibly stupid and cheap for not licensing FairPlay from Apple. The iTunes music store has always been a loss-leader (or break-even leader) for Apple, and I agree that having a variety of ways to buy music for my Mac and iPod is a good thing. Apple is obviously aggressively expanding its iPod World Domination to phones and PCs, and a licensing/SDK could open up new distribution and revenue opportunities for Apple and others (such as buying and downloading songs via 3G or Wap portals on those fancy new Motorola phones from Orange, Vodafone, Verizon,etc.).

Apple legal is probably itching to deliver a cease and desist order, but I think that might backfire. By using this three-step plan Apple takes the moral high-road, increases the attractiveness of the iPod to customers, increases revenue and expands the iPod/iTunes ecosystem. It's a clear winner for everyone but Real.

If you have been wanting to add additional search engines to Safari's search field, AcidSearch is your software. This has to be my new favorite piece of software (right behind Quicksilver). To add a new search channel:

1. Go to a website that you would like to add and search for something
2. While on that page, go to AcidSearch and click "Edit Search Channels"
3. Click "New Channel"

AcidSearch automatically adds the correct search syntax to the URL field. Feel free to change the name of the Channel and its location on the list.

"UK mobile services provider iTouch has acquired Finnish based Jippii Mobile Entertainment in a deal worth EU12m, made up of EU5m in cash and EU7m in iTouch ordinary shares. Jippii, a wholly owned subsidiary of Saunalahti Group, is a pan-European provider of mobile entertainment applications and Internet-based online gaming services with offices in six countries. PaidContent

iTouch bought Spain's Movilisto to gain access to Spain and Portugal, now Jippi gives them access to Russia, Finland, Ukraine, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, Austria, Sweden and Norway.

Strangely, one of the main things that I try to shy away from, which is copy-pasting from various news sources, is the one thing that I like best about reading others' blogs.

In many cases you get the same story 100x. I can't tell you the number of times I have seen "Apple released....". But looking at more specialized blogs, i.e. venture capital or mobile phones, in the vast majority of cases I see articles or comments that I normally would have missed.

The value of the blogging ecosystem, as I understand it, is that blogs offer an alternative to mass media's watered-down reporting. Which is true in many cases. But it also fills in gaps for niche areas and provides a service that I couldn't get elsewhere (well, perhaps, but I would have to pay $$$).

At the same time, no one site fills in all the gaps. This is where the cumulative input from 50 different people acts as a collective conscience and gives a fuller picture of what's happening in the world. Maybe this should be known as borg-ing instead of blogging.

On that note, I thought I'd post a copy of my OPML file. I need to add many of these to my Recommended Reading list, but haven't. If anyone knows of VC blogs from London, or has other recommended sites, email me a jasonball at gmail dot com.
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Update

I found this graph over at Strategize. It looks like I'm one of the 79.7% of blog readers.

There were several fundings that in this space that caught my eye this week:

First, "Qualcomm, Carlyle Invest $3M in Chinese Content Company: Wireless communications company Qualcomm and private equity firm Carlyle Group have invested $3 million in Beijing-based Enorbus Technologies. Enorbus is a leading wireless application publisher and developer of games and entertainment content for wireless phones in China. Press Release

Second, KongZhong, which delivers content via mobile handsets in China, made its debut in the U.S. stock market on last Friday where they managed to raise $100 million from U.S. investors. The interest is in part due to KongZhong's head start in positioning itself to deliver rich-media content via mobile phones.

Third, Mobile messaging infrastructure services company mBlox has raised $10M (USD) in VC funding. The investors of this latest round include Bank of America Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, Novus Ventures, Duff Ackerman Goodrich, Entrepreneurs Fund and Avanti Capital Ltd. 160Characters

This last investment is the one that threw me a bit. I'm not sure if this is the result of poor information, overhang or exuberant optimism. The messaging platform (SMSC) space in Europe is very competitive with "Gorillas" like Nokia offering solutions to the operators. The solution would have to be very appealing for Vodafone to decide to use their platform, plus with more innovative areas to explore (like the first two examples) I find it hard to believe they are investing in what is, basically, a commodity.

[Update]

I left off JamDat , another American mobile content company. They have filed for an $86 million IPO .

I just learned that a weekly from my hometown, Jackson, Miss., is at the forefront of cutting-edge newspapers in the US:

"Now the weeklies are trying again: the New Times chain trying to outdo Craigslist with its Back Page initiative, and the Village Voice Media chain appointing a vice president for online. And innovation is coming from the edges, with the Buffalo ArtVoice wading into online multimedia, the Jackson (Miss.) Free Press putting Weblogs front and center on its site, and The Stranger (in Seattle) and Chicago Reader pushing new "aggressively local" online personals." PaidContent.org