SUBSCRIBER EDITION
STRATEGIC NEWS SERVICE®
"Next Year's
News This Week"
The most accurate predictive letter in computing
and telecommunications
Read by industry leaders worldwide
This June 13th,
2007 Issue:
***SNS*** GOOGLE VS. APPLE VS. MS: MONEY VS.
STRATEGY
Provided by:
Technology Alliance Partners
On the Web:
http://www.tapsns.com
TO SUBSCRIBE, EMAIL SNS@TAPSNS.COM WITH THE WORD
"SUBSCRIBE" IN YOUR MESSAGE; YOU WILL BE BILLED LATER (see the end of
this newsletter for details).
RE-SENDING OF THIS
NEWSLETTER TO ANY NUMBER OF COLLEAGUES IS
ENCOURAGED ON A ONCE-PER-USER BASIS, PROVIDED YOU ALSO CC: SNS@TAPSNS.COM; IN
RETURN, WE WILL PROVIDE RECIPIENTS WITH A ONE-MONTH FREE TRIAL SUBSCRIPTION.
ANY OTHER
UNAUTHORIZED REDISTRIBUTION IS A VIOLATION OF COPYRIGHT LAW.
This June 13th, 2007 Issue:
***SNS*** Google vs. MS vs. Apple:
Money vs. Strategy
IN THIS ISSUE:
SNS Media Page
The Google Strategy
The Microsoft Strategy
The Apple Strategy
Insites
Upgrades
Those Pesky GDP
Numbers
OLED,
at Last
Hydrogen
Solved?
How to Subscribe, Including Corporate Volume Licenses
The SNS Media Page:
Video: Dinner
Presentation: “An Ocean of Genes: the CAMERA Project”: J.Craig Venter, Founder, Chairman and President, J.
Craig Venter Institute. The streaming link is: mms://www.tapsns.com/firefive/oceanofgenes.wmv
Video: “The Next Big Thing: From Entertainment to
Intelligence”: A conversation with Eric
Haseltine, Associate Director of National Intelligence for Science and
Technology; hosted by Mark Anderson. The streaming link is: mms://www.tapsns.com/firefive/nextbigthing.wmv
Audio: “The Future of Robotics, from the Military to the
Civilian”: A conversation with Helen
Greiner, Chair, iRobot; hosted by Jim Louderback, Editor in Chief, PC
Magazine. The streaming link is: <http://www.tapsns.com/media/fire2007/audio/03-futureofrobotics.MP3>
Audio: “Regenerative Medicine: The Future of Stem Cells”: A conversation with Randall Moon, Founder,
University of Washington Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine,
hosted by Mark Anderson. The streaming link is: <http://www.tapsns.com/media/fire2007/audio/02-regenmedecine.MP3>
GOOGLE vs. MS vs.
APPLE: Money vs. Strategy
Imagine that one day last December, as you were working at
your humdrum job, a stranger walked up to you and gave you a check for around
$10.6B. Of course you’d take it!
But wait, this (true) fairy tale gets better: this isn’t the
first check she’s given you. In fact, she’s been coming by every three months
for several years now, and every time the check gets bigger. All you have to
do, she says, is keep on with your humdrum job, and once a quarter -- more
magic money!!!
So far, her strange little habit has resulted in an
improvement in your personal net worth of about $155B and counting.
OK, WAKE UP!! WAKE UP, I SAY!!! YOU’VE BEEN DREAMING !!!!!
OR, you work for Google.
So what should you do with the money? Let’s assume that hiring
adult supervision, in the form of Eric Schmidt, a nice guy who’s been through
two disappointing rides, has already occurred to you. Now what?
1. Pretend you have a detailed,
secret plan. Never disclose it.
2. While doing (1), try investing
in everything that has half a chance. After all, someday the nice lady may
stop writing checks. You quickly realize that replacing her income stream with
one of your design is never going to happen.
3. Find and expand upon the one
application out of a hundred that has traction (Google Earth, a derivative copy
of Microsoft TerraServer, which is a direct result of the SNS Earth II Project,
itself derived from prior sci-fi authors and tech pundits).
4. Admit that the Random Walk apps
development schemes have not panned out. New idea: Lie to everyone about
having no interest in going after Microsoft, and then copy each of their apps,
and release on an as-ready basis.
5. Start doing everything Microsoft
does: phones, games, etc. You are the Next Microsoft, you tell yourself, so
Act Like It !!!!!
6. Ask yourself why no one is
downloading your free Microsoft-copy Apps (which, of course, MS copied from
Apple and Lotus).
7. Continue to be nice to the
Stranger Lady.
Just to show you that I can be equally tough on Microsoft,
here is a similar breakdown of its history, from Billg’s view:
1. At partner’s suggestion, write a
copy of a language (BASIC) that someone else already invented, modified to run
on a new machine on the cover of an electronics magazine. Partner moves to
Albuquerque to cement the relationship with the maker of these machines. Fate
as a follower company is cemented.
2. Write some other copies of other
languages invented by other people, for various machines invented by someone
else. Emulate your old friend Gary Kildall, founder of Digital Research in
Monterey. Gary says CD storage is the Hot new thing.
3. Convene your own CD Convention
in Seattle, position yourself as the leader, make a million bucks off a
thousand people at a thousand a head, with Sony as your partner to make it
real. Gary is writing operating systems now, including CP/M.
4. IBM needs an operating system,
fails to meet with Gary (or, by one account, won’t sign his NDA), and they come
to you on the same trip. You don’t have any, but your partner knows of someone
in town who does, so you get distribution rights to this QDOS/QuickDOS thing,
rename it PC DOS, and license it to IBM a few weeks later. It will
subsequently appear to turn out that QDOS was stolen, in whole or in part, from
Gary. The deal creates the company, generating over $200MM in free cash flow
in just over a year.
5. You now have your own Stranger
Lady. From now on, she will visit you once a quarter, writing you a larger
check every time, for a product you didn’t write. As this product becomes a
clear monopoly play in a growing market, your total value will escalate to
about $287B. Gary is knocked out and, a few days later, dies, killed by a stranger
in a bizarre bar scene. No one ever locates the killer. His company
eventually fails.
6. Copy Apple’s operating system
and word processing program, Lotus’ spreadsheet, Apple’s AppleWorks bundle,
GO’s pen computing technology, etc. etc. etc. Wipe out all of your
competitors; literally drive them out of business or into the arms of
acquirers.
Which works on everyone but Apple, for whom you are now
providing best-selling applications.
Which brings us to Apple’s historic strategy, from SteveJ’s
view:
1. Find a guy at the Homebrew Club
who says he can make a computer. When he succeeds, this becomes the first real
personal computer.
2. Go to Xerox PARC, see the mouse,
tiled windows and folders. Get an immediate pass on borrowing the same from a
shared director.
2. Inside the company, Jef Raskin’s
group invents what becomes the Mac; drop your own project and take over the
group, ticking off Raskin forever. Result: best-designed computer in history.
Problem: priced too high (Jef’s complaint), aimed at consumers. Result: IBM
takes over PC business.
3. Hire John Sculley to do
marketing, even though you are best marketing exec in world. Result: Sculley
backdoors you; welcome to the street.
4. Invent a too-expensive computer
that no one wants or needs, with an OS based on the Mach Unix kernel. Gil
Amelio buys the OS, hires you as consultant; nuke him immediately. He’s on the
street, but rich.
5. Spend $10MM to buy a special
effects unit from George Lucas; rename it Pixar. Do a tough deal with Disney
that creates the most successful film company launch in history.
5. Use industrial design, rather
than technical breakthroughs, to sell scads of Mac versions, fruitcake flavors,
cubes, etc. Except for the cube, everything sells.
6. Find the iPod under
construction, kind of a copy of Creative’s MP3 players, get it, finish it, sell
it; don’t advertise it was not your own top-to-bottom creation. Add beautiful
design.
7. Do a tough deal with music
companies allowing the sales of single songs through your iTunes site, kind of
a copy of Real Networks’ Rhapsody project. Everything sells.
8. Copy the Prada, a design-winning
Korean phone, etc. You realize that software makes the phone. It makes the
tune monopoly possible for iTunes. It makes the Mac great, and new software
differentiates the Mac from everybody else. You realize what SNSers have
already known for a few years: Apple is a software company.
9. Set up the new iPhone so that it
represents what SNS has been asking for for years: a tight PC/phone link.
Cement this with iTunes downloading through the computer, and release a new
Safari browser that a) also runs on Windows, and b) runs applications, without
special modification, on the iPhone.
Result: phone is integrated with the computer, control moves
from operator to boxmaker, market share shifts from Windows to Apple. Game,
set.
Now let’s take a moment, and look at these strategies from a
customer perspective.
My original point was this: people are more likely to buy
their applications from Microsoft, which makes real money from them, than from
Google, which does not. Not because they are better or worse, but simply
because they represent profit centers to MS, and so the buyer is protected in
knowing that support will continue.
What if you switched your whole F500 company to Google Apps,
and then, for whatever reason, Google decided not to do apps any more, but
would rather go in the direction of GIS or communications?
And here I find myself comparing founders, showing how the
real inventors were consistently pushed aside by those who “found” them.
None of these companies is what it would have you think it
is -- including Google, the Do No Evil company. (This week, as noted in our
Quotes section, a global privacy group gave Google the worst possible rating
for being essentially “hostile” to users’ privacy interests.)
It all ends up in the strategy, not for being clever, but
from customer self-interest. Google has no strategy, other than kicking out at
MS and beefing up its online ad sales, so there is nothing for a customer to
grab onto. Microsoft has a follower strategy, but as soon as the taillights
are gone, the customer has to rely solely on the fact that MS not only wants
to, but has to, make money on its products.
And then there’s Apple. Apple is the only company of the
three with a real strategy. It’s clean, smart, and provides Apple (and its
customers) with benefits at every step. iPod owner? Benefit from new Macs,
iTunes site, optional accessories. iPhone owner (as of this month)? Benefit
from everything iPod had, plus PC integration, video on iTunes, new DRM-less
content deals from Apple, and new Safari-based application software, from a
developer community just announced this week.
Is this a tough choice?
Your comments are always welcome.
Sincerely,
Mark R. Anderson
CEO
Strategic News Service
LLC
Tel. 360-378-3431
P.O. Box
1969
Fax. 360-378-7041
Friday Harbor, WA 98250
USA Email: sns@tapsns.com
-------------------------------------------
INSITES
SNS readers interested in additional predictions and information
can turn their browsers to:
The SNS website, at http://www.stratnews.com.
The SNS Blog, at http://www.tapsns.com/blog
The SNS Media Page, at http://www.tapsns.com/media.php
SNS Future in Review Conference, at http://www.futureinreview.com
SNS Members' Corner, at http://www.tapsns.com/subscriber_corner.shtml
SNS Members' Gallery Spotlight Page: http://www.tapsns.com/gallery.php
SNS Project Inkwell: http://www.projectinkwell.com
The Orca Relief Citizens' Alliance, a
501(c)(3) non-profit effort to study and reduce Orca mortality rates, supported
largely by technology workers. Please visit our website, at http://www.orcarelief.org, for more
information. Contributions may be sent to: ORCA, Box 1969, Friday Harbor,
Washington, 98250.
New to the Family:
I would like to welcome, among others, these new members to the SNS Family:
David Kestenbaum, Science Correspondent, NPR, Washington DC; Greg McCarthy,
Director of Information Services, Martin’s Point Health Care, Portland, ME;
James Aley, Assistant Managing Editor, Fortune Magazine, New York, NY; Otto
Berkes, Architect, Mobile Platforms Division, Microsoft Corporation, Redmond,
WA; John Costello, Vice President of Marketing, Gateway Computers, Irvine, CA;
Tom Greaves, Chairman, The Greaves Group LLC, San Diego, CA; Dietrich A.
Stephan, Founder, Amnestix, Burlingame, CA; Barry Taylor, Managing Director in
the Technology Group ,Warburg Pincus, Menlo Park, CA; Bill Strecker, Partner,
Flagship Ventures, Cambridge, MA; Douglas Myers, CEO and Executive Director,
San Diego Zoological Society, San Diego, CA; Paula Brock, CFO, San Diego
Zoological Society, San Diego, CA; and Helen Greiner, Chair and Co-founder,
iRobot, Burlington, MA; and many others.
Quotes of the Week:
“This is now an issue of a different Russia. It’s a Russia
that is run by the KGB, who thinks strategically and surreptitiously and
dangerously, and will murder at whim. They’ve murdered every opposition leader
they can find, not only at home, but abroad as well. And they are in control of
most of the federal republics, even those that are not independent -- or that
are independent, they’re beginning to move in. They’re blackmailing every
country for energy. They now control a good part of the energy. And Western
Europe, for reasons which I can remember quite well, seemed to make the Western
Europeans more dependent on the Soviet Union. So they are more dangerous rather
than less dangerous.” -- General (ret.) Alexander Haig, from an on-air
interview with Larry Kudlow, CNBC.
“The new architecture of economic relations requires a
completely new approach.” -- Russian President Vladimir Putin, at an
international gathering of 200 global CEOs which he arranged in St. Petersburg
just before the G8 meeting, and at which he for the first time proposed the
ruble as an international reserve currency.
Whatever you think Vlad is planning, his real ambitions are
larger.
“BusinessWeek’s analysis of the import price data reveals
offshoring to low-cost countries is in fact creating ‘phantom GDP’-- reported
gains in GDP that don’t correspond to any actual domestic production.” -- BW,
6.18 issue, cover story.
I have been telling SNSers that the GDP figures are wrong
for several years now. London Dinner participants will be particularly
familiar with this story, which we have discussed for at least two years. You
heard it here first, I suspect.
“Comprehensive consumer surveillance and entrenched
hostility to privacy.” -- the language used by Privacy International to
describe Google’s practices, in giving it its lowest possible grade in a report
this week.
“The worst strategic mistake in the history of our
nation.” -- Al Gore, referring to the Iraq invasion, in a speech at Town Hall
in Seattle last week.
[In comparing a 9% Dow jump this year to the most
sluggish domestic economic growth since 2002:] “ There’s friction between those
two numbers. That’s why investors are a little bit worried, and why we’re not
hitting home runs every day.” -- Hugh Johnson, Chair and CIO of Johnson
Illington Advisors; quoted in the Seattle Times.
One pictures a Hokusai-like tsunami wave hovering over two
preoccupied fishermen in a small boat, wondering aloud why the fish are so easy
to catch, and the waters so shallow.
“In these modes [the media] is like a feral beast, just
tearing people and reputations to bits, but no-one dares miss out. -- and to a
dangerous degree -- unraveling standards, driving them down.” -- Tony Blair,
turning bitter and old before our very eyes, in parting shots yesterday; quoted
in the BBC.
I will note that Tony gutted BBC management when they
correctly reported the initial scandal of how Britain was sucked into the Iraq
conflict. So much for Tony and press independence.
“The city government has listened to the opinions
expressed and has decided, after careful deliberation, that the project must be
re-evaluated.” -- Vice Mayor Ding Guoyan, Xiamen, after a citizen revolt
against construction of a polluting chemical plant, culminating in nearly a
million text messages sent in opposition.
Democracy by cellphone: why not?
UPGRADES
Those Pesky GDP Numbers
Most of the world uses GDP (gross domestic product) figures
to assess national and global economic health. For instance, if you were in
the U.S. government, you might turn to the BEA for these figures:
From the Bureau of Economic Analysis,
http://www.bea.gov/national/xls/gdpchg.xls
we have:
Quarterly GDP
(Seasonally adjusted
annual rates)
GDP percent change
based on
current dollars / chained 2000
dollars
2006q1 9.0 5.6
2006q2 5.9 2.6
2006q3 3.8 2.0
2006q4 4.1 2.5
2007q1 4.7 0.6
Here’s a MarketWatch story, typically showing some of the
many revisions that occur in GDP numbers after their first announcement.
Notice the BEA graph, and ask yourself if it matches the figures in the story:
GDP revised lower to 0.6%
in first quarter
Corporate profits growing at slowest pace in five years
By Rex
Nutting, MarketWatch
Last
Update: 1:34 PM ET May 31, 2007
WASHINGTON
(MarketWatch) -- The U.S. economy slowed to a crawl in the first quarter, held
back by falling investments in homes, shrinking inventories and a large trade
gap, the Commerce Department reported Thursday.
The economy
grew at a 0.6% annualized pace in the quarter, revised down from the initial
estimate of 1.3%, the government said in its second estimate of quarterly gross
domestic product. It was the slowest growth since late 2002. Read the full government report.
Economists
surveyed by MarketWatch were expecting GDP to be revised to 0.7%. See
Economic Calendar.

The economy
has grown just 1.9% in the past four quarters, well below the 3% growth most
economists say is the long-run potential. It's the weakest year-over-year
growth in four years.
(full story
here)
<http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/us-gdp-revised-lower-06/
story.aspx?guid=%7B31B26C89-4FDB-4AFF-BB72-F5A8A0FA5FAB%7D>
.
Or, you might find small search hits like this:
White House sees 2007 GDP at 2.3% vs.2.9% earlier
10:00 AM ET, Jun 06, 2007
(non live
link at MarketWatch)
With the government quietly ratcheting things down, even as
Wall St. and the Fed are suggesting a strong H2 this year.
Here is another, similar look, again not actually accurate:

From
http://www.economagic.com/em-cgi/daychart.exe/form
--
And here is a verbal description of GDP figures from the
London Globe and Mail:
Business growth slowed to a 2.2 per cent
pace in the late summer, a much better performance than anticipated and an
encouraging sign that the housing slump hasn't significantly dragged down the
economy. ---
Gross domestic product measures the
value of all goods and services produced within the United States and is
considered the best barometer of the country's economic fitness. ---
The improvement, however, doesn't change
the overall picture of the economy's performance: It has been losing momentum
all year long.
In the first quarter the economy grew at
a blistering pace of 5.6 per cent, its strongest growth spurt in 2 1/2 years.
In the second quarter, though, growth slowed to 2.6 per cent pace, mostly
reflecting caution by consumers and businesses in response to surging energy
prices.
<
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/
RTGAM.20061129.wusgdp1129/BNStory/Business/home>
Can you find the figures that don’t match
between text and chart above?
Here are a few other hopefully useful
Questions for SNS Members:
1. In the various sources, numbers, and
charts above, can you identify all the discrepancies?
2. How could there be discrepancies in
something so important, and widely inspected, as the U.S. quarterly GDP?
3. Can you find any indication that the
final adjusted GDP for Q4 2006 was about 1.8%, as published in London this
March?
4. Many people feel that a dramatic
increase in energy prices is the single source of greatest damage to the U.S.
economy, with related inflation threat now causing market declines. Did you
know that Q1 2006 represented peak oil profits?
5. Can you find any sign, here or
elsewhere, that the Q1 2006 figures were subsequently revised downward?
6. Were you aware of BusinessWeek’s claim
this week that faulty pricing on imports represents more “phantom GDP” and
lowered productivity, causing the magazine to question the amount of
globalization’s benefit to the country?
OLED, at Last
For Sony, the timing seems to be perfect.
After all, the PS3 is running behind both its competitors, the old Silo Gods
(Ken Kutaragi et al.) have just been promoted up and or out of the company, and
nothing much is really going the right way.
What better time to bring out OLED TVs,
right?
Everyone in Japan has been waiting for
organic light-emitting diode technology to improve to the point in the lab that
will allow for a commercial TV launch, and it appears that Sony will be the
first out of the blocks.
The company unveiled the first OLED TVs at
the CES show in January, when it demonstrated 11-inch (28
cm, resolution 1,024 x 600) and 27-inch (68.5 cm, full HD resolution at 1920 x
1080) models claiming million-to-one contrast ratio and total thickness
(including bezels) of 5 mm.
Three months later, at an April Tokyo
display forum, Sony showed the 11-inch TVs again, supposedly with enthusiastic
response from attendees, who ignored much larger LCD and plasma displays to
gather round the Sony offering; one fan said the older techs “looked faded by
comparison.”
(SNSers will recall my comments on keeping an
eye on Toyota; Sony apparently has been doing so, and is launching this first
TV through a joint venture with Toyota called ST Liquid Crystal Display.)
Are they serious about this, given an
initial 2-3x price disparity with other flat screens?
“It won’t be easy for OLED TVs to replace
LCD TVs, but we would like to turn OLED TVs into a big new business,” Sony
Executive Deputy President Katsumi Ihara said at the show.
Technically, it should be possible to
actually produce OLEDs at lower cost than using prior flatscreen techs. Sony
is talking about only producing in the thousands to start with, but to realize
Ihara’s vision it will have to be ready to move into the millions pretty
quickly. That means, to me, that the company has done the math and figures to
capture the high-end, low-lying fruit before anyone else jumps into the fray,
before ramping up seriously and dropping prices aggressively. (Sony sold 6MM
LCD TVs last year, and is shooting for 10MM next year.)
A Reuters story recently listed other competitors
in the field as Seiko Epson, Canon, Samsung, and a Toshiba/Matsushita Electric
Industrial JV. But it would be foolish to somehow not list Kodak, given its
large patent portfolio on the technology; most likely it, too, will show in a
JV.
OLEDs have a few very promising native
attributes vs. prior flat-screen techs, including brightness and the ability to
print the organics with systems such as inkjets onto flexible substrates.
Colors are deeper, reaction times are much faster (a good qualifier for
large-screen video), and power requirements are less.
In fact, just as LEDs are considered a
natural replacement for incandescent bulbs, OLEDs may be even better, once
production costs are in line.
So, it matters. The world has been
waiting, since their initial discovery in the early 1960s, for organics to make
it into commercial television production; this appears to be the year. And, as
happens with nearly everything technological, intense competition and high
production runs (guaranteed in this market) will lead to rapid price
deceleration.
The screens’ final attribute? Not just
thin, but really thin. Sony showed a 2.5” flexible OLED screen two weeks ago
that was .3mm thin.
This introduction, even as limited as it
sounds, will revolutionize the $35B flat screen business, and many of those
businesses around it.
Does it make sense for Sony? With the cash
cow faltering, and the clock running out on Howard Stringer’s reign, Sony needs
a major hit. Not only that, but consider how terrifically and embarrassingly
late the makers of the Trinitron were to the flat-screen TV party, and you see
how perfectly this fits the company’s sense of self and destiny, as well as
survival and finance.
Why doesn’t Stringer buy a house in Japan,
vs. living in a hotel? Good question.
Hydrogen Solved?
While most of us have moved on to the
idea that electrical cars are the answer to the world’s current problems in
transport and greenhouse gas emissions, it is only with the caveat accepted
that production of electricity must become the focus of money and will to the
degree that we clean up utility stacks.
The theory is simple: it’s easier to clean
up centralized point sources than millions of mobile ones.
Those still working on hydrogen fuel cells
for transport are faced with the question of whether the hydrogen is not just
an energy currency, with the real energy production happening elsewhere -- say,
at utilities -- where water would be split into hydrogen and oxygen
(hydrolysis). Hydrogen as currency is just not as exciting as either hydrogen
as energy source, or electrons as currency.
And, of course, the whole hydrogen
transport thing conjures up visions of large-scale explosions.
I included this item because, if you have
not heard of it, you have to.
Enter Purdue professor and National Medal
of Technology recipient Jerry Woodall, with a proven technology that solves all
these problems.
Woodall received the Medal for his
(accidental) discovery that you can mix liquid alloys of aluminum and gallium
with water, resulting in aluminum oxide and hydrogen gas, with the gallium
apparently working as a catalyst.
Get it?
All right, here is The World According to
Jerry:
1. Put about 350
pounds of aluminum/gallium alloy beads into your gas tank.
2. Fill your tank
with as much water as is needed for immediate demand.
3. Draw off the
hydrogen and burn it in your engine.
4. Waste product:
water.
That’s it.
The end of OPEC, and the beginning of a
heck of a rush on gallium.
The only catch Woodall sees is the
per-pound price of aluminum, which is over $1 per pound, bringing the
equivalent mileage cost to something over $3 per gallon-gas equivalent.
Woodall suggests simple recycling at
centralized utilities, making the AlO(3) now the currency, and H(2) the fuel.
Nuclear, or wind or solar, stations could convert the oxidized aluminum /
gallium muck back into an elemental state, and the pellets are ready for the
car again.
This round path cuts the price per mile by
quite a bit. Woodall claims that, using fuel cells and pure hydrogen (which is
75% efficient), the price is then competitive with gasoline today -- even if
aluminum prices rise some. At that point the issue becomes fuel cell
reliability vs. that of an internal combustion engine.
The patents for this process are held by
Purdue Research Foundation, licensed exclusively to startup AlGalCo LLC.
Woodall has been frustrated in trying to
get funds from the US DOE for development on the project. Maybe one of our
members will step in and help out.
Here is Woodall on the DOE: “If Einstein
had been a professor at a university in the U.S. today and put in a proposal to
develop the theory of special relativity it would have been summarily
rejected.”
We know he’s right on that one.
___________________________
SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION
If you are not a subscriber, the prior Strategic News
Service item has been sent to you for a one-month trial. If you would like a
one-year subscription to SNS, the current rate is $595.00 U.S., which includes
approximately 48 issues per year, plus special industry alerts and related
materials. Premium Subscriptions, which include passworded access to additional
materials on our website, are $895.00 per year. Subscriptions can be purchased,
upgraded or renewed at our secure website, at: http://www.stratnews.com.
Conversion of your trial to full subscription will lead to thirteen months of
SNS, no matter when you convert.
VOLUME CORPORATE SUBSCRIPTION RATES: Below half price, upon
registration with SNS for a minimum of ten subscriptions at $2950.00. SMALL
COMPANY (10 employees or fewer) SITE LICENSE: $1495. TEACHERS' GROUP RATE:
(five teachers): $295.00.
STUDENT and INDEPENDENT JOURNALIST RATE: $295.00 per year.
This service is intended for strategic thinkers who depend upon
business technology planning. The SNS charter is to provide information about
critical computer and telecommunications issues, trends and events not
available to managers through the press. Re-purposing of this material is
encouraged, with proper attribution. Email sent to SNS may be reprinted,
unless you indicate that it is not to be.
If you are aware of others who would like to receive this
service, please forward this message to them, with a cc: to Mark Anderson at
sns@stratnews.com; they will automatically receive a one-month free pilot
subscription.
--------------------------
About the Strategic News Service
SNS is the most accurate predictive letter covering the computer and telecom
industries. It is personally read by the top managers at companies such
as Intel, Microsoft, Dell, HP, Cisco, Sun, Google, Yahoo!, and Ericsson,
Telstra and China Mobile, as well as by leading financial analysts at the
world's top investment banks and venture capital funds, including Goldman
Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Kleiner Perkins, Venrock, Warburg Pincus and 3i. It
is regularly quoted in top industry publications such as BusinessWeek, WIRED,
Barron's, Fortune, PC Magazine, ZDNet, Business 2.0, the Financial Times, the
New York Times, the Wall St. Journal, and elsewhere.
About the Publisher
Mark Anderson is president of Technology Alliance Partners, and of the
Strategic News Service(tm) LLC. TAP was founded in 1989, and provides trends
and marketing alliance assistance to firms leading the convergence of telecom and
computing. Mark is a Seybold Fellow. He is the founder of two software
companies and of the Washington Software Alliance Investors' Forum,
Washington's premier software investment conference; and has participated in
the launch of many software startups. He regularly appears on the Wall
Street Review/KSDO, CNN, and National Public Radio/KPLU programs. Mark is a
member of the Merrill Lynch Technology Advisory Board, and is an advisor and/or
investor in Ignition Partners, Mohr Davidow Ventures, Voyager Capital, and
others.
Mark serves as Chair of the Future in Review Conferences, of Project Inkwell,
and of The Foresight Foundation. He is also President of Orca Relief
Citizens' Alliance.
Disclosure: Mark Anderson is a portfolio manager of a hedge fund. His
fund often buys and sells securities that are the subject of his columns, both
before and after the columns are published, and the position that his fund
takes may change at any time. Under no circumstances does the information
in this newsletter represent a recommendation to buy or sell stocks.
On June 13th Mark will be discussing who
assassinated JFK on KZOK’s Bob Rivers’ Show, Seattle’s top morning radio
program. On the 15th Mark will be participating in the EdNet
teleconference panel on technology in education, featuring SNS Project Inkwell.
On June 23rd he will be speaking on technology trends and
globalization, at the Tamarind Conference at the Villagio Inn in Yountville,
CA. And on July 11th, 12th and 13th Mark will
be hosting the SNS Project Inkwell Steering Committee and Working Group, and
Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, at the Stein Eriksen Lodge, Deer Valley, Utah. On
September 13th he will be hosting the Second Annual SNS West Coast
Dinner, at the Mark Hopkins Hotel, San Francisco.
In between times, he will be looking out for J, K and L pods, the southern
portion of the only “resident” killer whales in the world, returning to the
inland waters of Puget Sound - and to the
front deck view of the Beach Palace Hotel. Now if only the
rain would stop for awhile ---
Copyright 2007, Strategic News Service LLC
"Strategic News Service," "SNS," "Future In
Review," "FiRe," and "Project Inkwell" are all
registered service marks of Strategic News Service LLC.
ISSN 1093-8494