Business Development Diary

Tomorrow the Supremes hear an argument on whether a cable modem is an "information service" or a "telecommunications service." As reported in Forbes this is a fight over who gets to interpret the statute. The FCC, despite a terrible track record in the Ninth Circuit, thinks it's an "information service." The Ninth Circuit agrees with Brand X (the ISP that brought the case) that cable modems are telecom services - with the implication that consumers should be able to use their cable modems with someone other than Comcast as their ISP.

The notion that ISP service is somehow different than the IP transport from the cable modem to the first node on the network is just one more insanity of US telecom regulation. It's high time that this system be overhauled. My prescription - abolish all regulation, just like the CAB and the ICC were eliminated by the Carter administration. Sure a lot of airlines went bankrupt, but now I can fly for $299 round trip to New York even with oil prices at a record high.

An entertaining article by Daniel Engber on Slate on that quirky unit of measurement. Most interesting is the mention that in 1860 (around the time of the first drilled oil well) prices were as low as $5 per barrel. So even at today's rate of $55 per
barrel, buying and holding an oilfield would have been the worst real estate investment out there, returning less than 1.8% a year (not accounting for inflation).

Check out this interactive price graph. Also there's an interesting annotated history here.
Or lifted straight from Forbes Magazine:

Crude Oil Prices 1861 - 2005

Have you ever been in for real surgery? Next time make sure they have the right information on the chart. A friend of mine was about to be fully put under when her mother read her chart - and noticed that it showed the wrong blood type. AB- instead of O-. A blood transfusion would have killed her. Wouldn't it make sense for you to be able to review your chart pre-op over the web?

So guess what? W's cousin Jonathan S. Bush is now pitching technology to make Web-based medical records "a workable reality."

Bill Burnham opines on why rarely do VCs give you an explicit "No" - instead they string you out, or worse steal your ideas for a competitor of yours they've just funded.

This hack courtesy of Dark Roasted Bytes. Tired of sending the handset back to the manufacturer so that you can download your own app to the phone? Here's the secret menu hack for Moto Vxxx phones:

1. Enter Main menu, then, immediately, press 048263*
2. Answer the prompts: Opcode - enter 47, Field1- 50, Field2- 1, Field3- 67, Field4- 1, Field5(D)- 247
3. The result screen at the end should say “Results F1:0″
4. Reboot the phone… Done!

Joel Spolsky gave a speech arguing the iceberg view of software:
"90% of the program is the guts which sits below the surface. This is where programmers spend most of their time. Customers (and often managers) concentrate on the 10% that sits above the water. They look at the drop shadows in your graphs and the bevelled edges on your windows to decide whether or not your software is good."

Joel is right. All too often development-led teams concentrate on the guts, leaving too many rough edges that make the product unsellable. Like Joel suggests, we should all aim for iPod like beauty in product and software design.

Neustar and Verisign might be the beneficiaries of the latest security threat - VoIP Identity Theft:
"Some Internet phone services allow scam artists to make it appear that they are calling from another phone number -- a useful trick that enables them to drain credit accounts and pose as banks or other trusted authorities, online fraud experts say."

How long before we all get digital certificates to replace those totally outmoded social security numbers? I for one am going to close my BofA account because it was too easy for me to get into iit AFTER I had forgotten my account ID and password.

Inc. Magazine advises a frustrated VP of Sales at a tech startup on How to Stage a Coup and remove & replace the CEO. Their ingenious answer? A poison pen letter. Surely there's got to be a better way.

HBS Working Knowledge: Marketing: Cell Phone Ads that Consumers Love: "Cell Phone Ads that Consumers Love
February 28, 2005 "

alarm:clock: "Ray Lane: Am I Hot or Not?"

Microsoft claims an edge in search bid :: AO: "
Microsoft claims an edge in search bid
MarketWatch

NewsTeam | MarketWatch [MarketWatch] | POSTED: 03.16.05 @08:42
SAN FRANCISCO -- In its bid to challenge Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. at their own game, Microsoft Corp. says its entry into online advertising technology will offer marketers a 'one-stop shop' that's far more comprehensive than rival services.

At an advertising conference at its headquarters in Redmond, Wash., Microsoft is expected on Wednesday to unveil its system dubbed adCenter, which will be tested in France and Singapore over the next six months.

AdCenter, which has been in the works for the past year-and-a-half, is designed to be a centralized technology and platform that advertisers can use to manage multiple advertising campaigns, from paid-search to banner and video ads to promotions on its Hotmail service.

'This is about a one-stop shop for our advertisers,' said Karen Redetzki, a product manager for MSN, Microsoft's online portal.

-- ADVERTISEMENT --


MSN, with a 16 percent share of the paid-search market, is in third place behind industry leader Google , at 35 percent, and Yahoo , at 31.8 percent, according to research firm comScore Networks.

In January, MSN's search market share grew by 0.1 percent compared to a growth rate of 1 percent for Yahoo and 2.6 percent for Google."

Phones need simplicity before cool stuff, CEOs say | CNET News.com: "NEW ORLEANS--Mobile telephone services need to be far less confusing to consumers, the heads of top U.S. wireless operators said on Wednesday, even as they talked up complex features such as Web surfing or video on phones."

Open-source programmer alleges Linux misuse | CNET News.com: "An open-source programmer stopped by the CeBit trade show in Hannover, Germany, this week to tell Motorola and 12 other companies he believes they're using Linux in violation of the license that governs the software."

TheFeature :: P Diddy As An MVNO: Mobile Content's Savior Or Lead Lemming?: "P Diddy gave a speech at CTIA today that left some scratching their heads, but which clearly laid out the way entertainment companies view mobile content. That might not be such a good thing."

TheFeature :: Psst! Voice Is Still The Killer App: "While the focus remains almost entirely on data, some people may be forgetting that voice is still the killer app for mobile communication -- and there's plenty of room to grow.
"

This week Cringely has really interesting article where he points out that:

"As the phone and cable companies begin offering their own VoIP services in real volume, they plan to 'tag' their own VoIP packets so that at least within their own networks, their VoIP service will have COS (Class of Service) assignments with their routers, switches, etc. They also plan on implementing distinct Virtual Local Area Networks (VLANs) for the tagged packets.

Tagged packets get both less restrictive rules for passage and a private highway lane to drive on. The net effect is that any packet that isn't tagged will only get 'best effort' service, which means whatever is left."

Legal, and scary for the likes of Vonage. There is no legal basis (yet - who knows what Congress might to) for common carriage of packet data traffic. Cringely mentions that the opportunity lies with the hyper-innovators, like this little genius company from Canada: TheSwitchboard. I won't tell you what they do. Check out their site for yourself. I bet you they got 20 reverse pitches from VCs wanting to fund them today.