Last Thursday I testified before the House Committee on Financial Services on the “The Credit Card Interchange Fees Act of 2009” sponsored by Representative Welch. The Act would allow merchants to impose surcharges on cards, prevent card networks broadly defined from charging higher interchange fees for reward cards, require card networks to disclose publicly […]

Two Gartner analysts have laid out a doomsday scenario in which Microsoft’s Windows operating system is in danger of collapsing under its own weight. They point to Microsoft’s smaller and nimble rivals such as Apple and Linux as more innovative.
They have a point—up to a point. Microsoft has taken on the huge task […]

The lastest issue of Wired Magazine has an interesting article on. How Apple Got Everything Right by Doing Everything Wrong. It provides some useful insights into why companies can sometimes do better by keeping tight control over their product rather than operating as a catalyst that encourages other businesses to join the ecosystem. Any […]

Apple’s recent unveiling of a software developer kit (SDK) for its iPhone is further confirmation that this company is in serious contention to catalyze the mobile ecosystem and disrupt the operator-centric model that many believe has stymied the growth of mobile-phone based businesses in the United States and much of Europe. The SDK has […]

Randall Stross’s comments on the Kindle in today’s New York Times reminded me that I’ve been meaning to review the Kindle which I bought myself as a pre-Christmas present in early December. Unlike Randall, I kept my wife’s paws off of mine and I’ve been happily using it for about six weeks. It is a […]

Steve Jobs has taken a lot of flak since his speech at MacWorld on Tuesday. Of greatest concern is whether Apple’s streak of luck in the digital media space has run its course. The content providers that make its iTunes store valuable and get people to buy those pricey iPods have been bailing in […]

People went a-browsing when they unwrapped their iPhone gift, leading to a spike in Google searches from iPhones on Christmas Day. One takeaway from that is that having a great browser is the secret of the iPhone and the future of mobile. That’s just a piece of it though. The iPhone points the way […]

It used to be that a woman’s worst nightmare was walking into a party and seeing someone wearing the exact same outfit. In order to avoid that fate, women have resorted to a number of tactics, including the occasional little white lie, when asked about favorite shopping haunts or the exact store where fabulous shoes […]

Now that the barrage of 2008 predictions are behind us, we thought we’d take the next couple of weeks to focus on the “realities” behind what some pundits have predicted. This week, we’ll tackle mobile, advertising, and publishing.
Advertising
Predictions: Online advertising will be resilient in 2008, with growth in online video ads, social networks and […]

Google Gets Ready to Rumble with Microsoft according to a long Sunday New York Times article by the usually insightful Steve Lohr and Miguel Helft. They describe an epic battle where Google is pushing its vision of everything happening on remote servers and Microsoft wanting to keep their desktop software in the center. […]