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Didga the cat pulls off some sick tricks while riding around the streets Coolangatta, Australia on “Ollie”, a remote-controlled skateboard.

The Action starts when Ollie, a skateboard, takes his friend Didga, a CAT, for a ride around a beautiful beach town. On the way Didga “shows off” by jumping on, off, up and even over obstacles. One of those obstacles happens to be a large Rottweiler dog.

video & photo via CATMANTOO

via eBaum’s World, Daily Picks and Flicks

The problem with the old thin client model was the assumption that processing power was scarce. In fact, Moore’s Law and the rise of ARM has made the exact opposite the case – processing is abundant.

Data, on the other hand, is scarce – indeed, it is the scarcest resource in technology.

To be precise, I’m referring to personal data – my data, if you will – the opposite of “big data.” Were I to no longer have access to my various documents, pictures, emails, etc., I couldn’t simply walk into the store and pick up some more, and you couldn’t loan me yours. It’s precious, and it’s worthless, all at the same time.

Thus, over the last few years as the number of fat clients has multiplied – phones, tablets, along with traditional computers – the idea of a thin client with processing on the server seems positively quaint; however, in the context of our data, that is the exact model more and more of us are using: centralized data easily accessible to multiple “fat” devices distinguished by their user experience:

From “The (Alleged) 13-inch iPad and the Triumph of This Devices”. Click for the original article.

This is the niche Dropbox, which just raised $250 million at a $10 billion valuation, seeks to fill. In The Dropbox Opportunity, I argued that Dropbox’s business model gave them a key advantage vis–à–vis device/platform vendors like Apple:

Dropbox’s approach to my most important data is much more in line with the value I ascribe to that data: it’s available everywhere.

Not so for iCloud: data is available only on Apple devices, and it’s not exactly clear how to get it out…The only coherent strategy for Apple is a walled-garden of sorts that protects their vertical business model. A services-centric company like Dropbox, on the other hand, ought to pursue a horizontal strategy predicated on maximizing the number of interconnects with the layers above and below.

Today, though, I’m not so sure; Dropbox’s model makes sense theoretically, but it ignores the messy reality of actually making money. After all, notably absent from my piece on Business Models for 2014 was consumer software-as-a-service. I’m increasingly convinced that, outside of in-app game purchases, consumers are unwilling to spend money on intangible software. That is likely why Dropbox has spent much of the last year pivoting away from consumers to the enterprise.

There are multiple reasons why the latter is a more attractive target for all software-as-a-service companies, especially those focused on data:

• Consumers need to be convinced of the value of their data – Despite the fact that data is precious and unique to each consumer, the vast majority of consumers don’t know or don’t care. Backblaze, the online storage company, found that only 10 percent of people backup regularly; I would imagine anyone reading this who has tried to convince friends and family to buy a $70 drive for Time Machine or similar is nodding wearily. While backup is not the primary use case for Dropbox, the broader point remains: before Dropbox can get a consumer to pay for their data service, said consumer needs to value data in the first place.

  The situation is the exact opposite in the enterprise; data is what ties the entire operation together, and it’s difficult to imagine any company anywhere that is not intently concerned with its data even before you consider the various regulations around data safekeeping. It is much easier to sell something to someone who already knows they need what you have on offer.

• Consumers have multiple free options – As I noted above, Dropbox’s horizontal orientation aligns their incentives with my need to have my data available anywhere. Most consumers, though, are much less likely to consider such intricacies when deciding where to put their data. Instead, convenience usually wins, and it’s more convenient to use iCloud, SkyDrive, or Google Drive on Apple devices, Microsoft devices, and Google devices respectively.

  Enterprises, on the other hand, will never choose one of the free services offered by platform providers: the licensing terms are usually unacceptable, there is no guarantee of uptime, security is a significant concern, there is no top-down control, and there is no customization. Thus, while there may be competition on price within the enterprise space, that price will not be zero. It should be obvious that this makes monetization easier.

• Consumers are hard to market to – Reaching the sort of scale to profit from consumers requires converting millions; if you consider how few consumers even know their data is important, and the fewer still that are willing to pay, that means the top of your consumer marketing funnel must be exponentially larger. This then requires a huge amount of money for advertising as well as an advertising message that is sufficiently broad and non-specific to appeal to your addressable market.

  This is another stark difference with the enterprise, where most marketing is still done to a small group of individuals in the senior leadership of the company, particularly the CIO. Influencing just one person can result in many thousands of users; more importantly, the ability to actually sit down and have a conversation lets you more effectively tailor your message and sell your product.

• For consumers, collaboration is an edge case – Most of the data that matters to consumers is for use by them alone; that’s part of what makes the data so valuable on an individual basis, but it also means collaboration and general sharing of files is only necessary every now and then. This reduces the perceived utility of Dropbox, making it even more difficult to monetize (particularly with the freemium option sufficing for any collaboration needs that do come up).

  In contrast, what is an enterprise if not a collection of people and the data they jointly create and consume? Data belongs to the corporation, and by definition requires collaboration. Collaboration features, then, are a necessity, and the quality and ease-of-use of them is of primary importance. Any service that excels in this area is meeting a real need (and, as I just noted, the direct contact entailed with enterprise sales lets you explain these features clearly).

• Building a platform for consumers is incredibly difficult – The natural evolution of a service like Dropbox – and one that justifies such a high valuation – is to be a platform on which other apps and services depend. The trouble with building consumer platforms is twofold:

  • The vast number of consumers necessitates a broad-based general-use platform, even as different consumers have specific use cases. The only way to overcome this is with massive developer support and mindshare
  • Many potential partners are not incentivized to support your platform. For example, the device makers may have a competing service; other partners, like say Gmail (for contacts), have different business models; still other partners may have your business-model but view the consumers dollar as a zero sum game given their general unwillingness to pay anything at all

  While building platforms for the enterprise is no walk in the park, both of these challenges are reduced:

  • Because you are making specific sells to specific customers, you have more latitude to build custom solutions that directly meet consumer needs, which may only entail a few specific partners for a payoff of many thousands of licenses
  • Potential partners are, just like your competitors, paid offerings as well. This better aligns incentives. This is particular the case of other SaaS companies, which often still see a benefit in promoting SaaS in general, leading to win-win offerings that expand the pie for all. For example, Salesforce has made cloud promotion a central part of their pitch; this makes them more amenable to partnering with a storage cloud solution (as opposed to, say Gmail contacts)

  Again, platforms are hard, but the incentives and obstacles in the enterprise are reduced; thus, the likelihood of seizing the potential upside is increased.

This is what is driving Dropbox’s pivot. Well, this plus the reality that Dropbox, according to the WSJ, only had revenues of ~$200 million last year, hardly enough to justify their 2011 Series B valuation of $4 billion, much less this weekend’s Series C valuation of $10 billion. To wit, over the last several months Dropbox has:

• Poached execs from Salesforce, VMWare, and Google to lead enterprise sales
• Hired an enterprise sales team en masse (take a look at Dropbox’s LinkedIn profiles; it’s hard to find a sales exec with tenure greater than six months)
• Relaunched Dropbox for Teams, which offered basic group management options, as Dropbox for Business which allowed dual business and personal accounts and slightly more fine-grained administrator control

Waiting in the wings, though, is the company most often compared to Dropbox: Box. Aaron Levie figured out a full seven years ago that enterprise was a far more attractive market than consumer. From a profile in the MIT Technology Review:¹

By 2007, Box’s user base had doubled 20 times over and annual revenue was around $1 million. But Levie felt uneasy. The price of hard disks was falling 50 percent every 12 to 18 months. As online storage became a commodity, what would stop Apple, Google, or Microsoft from giving it to customers free? He noticed that the customers who stuck around longest weren’t storing MP3s or JPEGs but Word, Excel, and PDF files. In other words, business customers. Moreover, their colleagues would follow their lead, generating a steady stream of new sign-ups. Levie decided to ditch the fickle consumer market and focus on serving enterprises, companies with thousands of employees, which would be willing to pay for a storage service tailored to their needs. He set about adding the capabilities required by large businesses: search, security, and the ability to create and delete accounts, manage file access, and grant permission to view, edit, or delete.

In other words, what we have here is one of the more interesting business experiments we’ve ever seen: is it better to have established a firm foundation in the top-down enterprise market that actually matters – i.e. Box – or to have built tremendous goodwill and customer loyalty with actual users – i.e. Dropbox?

Looking back at the five factors I identified above:

• Box has focused on enterprises – who value data – a full six years longer than Dropbox. This means they have a much more full-fledged offering when it comes to features like user permissions, centralized control, etc.
• Box has long been focused on paid accounts, not freemium
• Box has an experienced sales team that has been an integral part of the company for years; Dropbox is catching up in sheer numbers, but not in cultural or product competency
• Box has only ever been concerned with competing with paid options; Dropbox has a legacy freemium business to be concerned with
• Box has spent years building up its platform capabilities; Dropbox has a nice hold on small scale developers but little else

On the other hand, Dropbox has a significant lead in registered users: 200 million (at last report) versus 20 million for Box, and many of those users are intensely loyal.

Box itself raised a new round of financing late last year – $100 million at a $2 billion valuation. The question, then, is if I had $10 million, would I prefer to invest in Dropbox or Box?

The decision is a close one:

• At the most recent valuations, $10 million will get me 0.1% of DropBox, or 0.5% of Box.
• Dropbox has a lot of retrofitting to do; in the consumer space, security and downtime concerns are of relatively less importance. You may lose customers, but they’re not very valuable on an individual basis. In enterprise, though, your uptime is usually guaranteed contractually, and data integrity is a precondition. I am very curious what this means for Dropbox’s reliance on Amazon S3 and shared files
• I’ve previously argued that The Consumerization of IT is Overstated; consumer and enterprise products are increasingly similar, but business models aren’t – and business models matter

Thus, if I had the $10 million, I’d invest in Box. Unfortunately, I don’t, which gives me the luxury of sitting back and observing which matters more: consumer headway in a market where enterprise pays, or enterprise capability – and business model – with a smaller base.

May the battle begin.

1. Interesting ad, no?

The post Battle of the Box appeared first on stratēchery by Ben Thompson.

A NFL without extra points? It could happen.

The NFL and the competition committee make small changes to the rules every year, but this year, one of the potential changes would eliminate extra points entirely. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said there are proposals to eliminate extra points and the league could instead adopt a new scoring system.

"The extra point is almost automatic," Goodell said, via NFL.com. "I believe we had five missed extra points this year out of 1,200 some odd. So it's a very small fraction of the play, and you want to add excitement with every play."

Super Bowl XLVIII: Seahawks vs. Broncos

Be sure to bookmark SB Nation's complete coverage of Super Bowl XLVIII. Everything from the build up, to live coverage and reactions after the big game, all in one beautiful package.

Under one proposal, a team would be rewarded an automatic seventh point on a touchdown, if they choose to accept it. Score a touchdown, take the extra point and that's that, seven points. Teams, however, could instead opt to to forgo the automatic extra point and instead go for two. The two-point try would be the same as it is currently. If converted the team would receive eight points with a failed try netting six total points.

Goodell said there are still some issues to work through with the proposals, including the question of whether or not a team would be less likely to go for two. That doesn't seems to be a significant issue as extra points are close to automatic as is. According to NFL.com, 99.1 percent of extra points have been converted since 2004. Teams would still have the option of going for two when they need to late in games, which is when the majority of conversion attempts in the NFL happen.

While the change would be a significant one if it happens, it would likely have a minimal impact on the game itself and could help shorten the length of the television broadcast.

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• SB Nation's complete coverage of Super Bowl XLVIII

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NEWS: I’m going to be drawing pages for X-MEN #25, guys. PROOF HERE


Additionally, I’ve been getting a lot of requests for certain things to show up in my work, so I’ve decided to….

*~*~*OPEN COMMISSIONS~*~**~

Ta-da? Okay, so, this is for ORIGINAL ART. Email me at m@maxwittert.com for requests. A pricing sheet is below, but if you have special requests, let me know.

——————————————————

-One-page comic (black and white): $125

-Multi-page comic (black and white): $100/page

-Colored character art: $80 for a single character (add another character $40)

——————————————————
**Please note that any work I generate for these commissions cannot be reproduced, posted, or displayed publicly without my explicit consent.

Uh… Okay. I guess that’s it. Let me know if I missed something.

-Max

_{parker + donut}

sometimes i connect with Parker on a spiritual level

Chinese commentators have been in a frenzy this week over reports that Japan’s ruling party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), has removed a promise to “never to wage war again” from the party’s campaign platform. The LDP, which voted Jan. 19 on the platform, has not confirmed the reports, but a final draft reviewed in early January eliminated the phrase.

Any changes wouldn’t immediately change Japan’s pacifist constitution, in place since the end of World War II, but prime minister Shinzo Abe has called for taking a broad interpretation of the document’s relevant passage, article 9, which states:

Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order,the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.

Last year, Abe called for Japan to employ “active pacifism” that would enable it to use its “self defense forces” to help an ally under attack. Abe said this month he is pushing for amending the constitution itself before 2020. Japan, whose navy is already four times larger than Britain’s, was one of the world’s top five military spenders in 2012 and has long had the technology to build nuclear weapons. A new nuclear-fuel reprocessing plant for civil use in northern Japan is capable of producing nine tons (8.16 tonnes) of plutonium or enough to produce up to 2,000 bombs a year (paywall).

Despite the furore over the “no war” clause in the party platform, there are even broader changes afoot in the LDP’s platform that could have a chilling effect on Japanese society.

What would change if the constitution is revised, according to critics, is the the protection of Japanese civil rights, specifically free speech. The LDP’s draft proposal for the constitution, published in 2012, includes measures that censure protected rights like freedom of expression and assembly. To article 12 of the current constitution—which says: “Freedom of assembly and association as well as speech, press and all other forms of expression are guaranteed”—the LDP proposes adding, “Notwithstanding the foregoing, engaging in activities with the purpose of damaging the public interest or public order, or associating with others for such purposes, shall not be recognized.” (Here’s an abbreviated version in English and a complete draft in Japanese.)

Already, late last year, Japan  unveiled a law granting the government sweeping powers over what it can deem a state secret and who can be convicted for leaks—a measure that could damage press freedom and whistle-blowing. Other revisions proposed by the LDP include giving parliament authority to declare a state of emergency across the country and replacing fundamental human rights with those that “reflect the history, culture and tradition of Japan.”

A strong strain of anti-militarism among the public has been an important brake for Japan’s more aggressive officials. An erosion of the Japanese public’s voice may be the true danger to peace in the region.

“The competitive environment has changed again here in the fourth quarter, and you can expect us to respond accordingly.”

Those fighting words from Verizon chief financial officer Fran Shammo on an earnings call this morning have spooked investors. Shares in the behemoth US wireless carrier are currently down about 3%, wiping about $4 billion off its market value, despite a solid set of quarterly results.

Why? There has been a lot of talk about a nascent price war in the industry, driven largely by a resurgent T-Mobile. Price wars are great for consumers, but terrible for investors, because they can obliterate profits across an entire industry. The comments suggest Verizon might be preparing to respond to T-Mobile’s recent aggression.

As we’ve recently discussed, T-Mobile, led by the flamboyant John Legere, has been winning customers at an unprecedented rate in recent quarters, after introducing simplified plans that, among other things, separate the cost of a device from the cost of calls, texts and data. They also include free international roaming (albeit at limited speeds).

Verizon seems not to be much worried by these plans: Shammo said he doesn’t think they are that much cheaper overall, just that costs of a device and wireless access are being shifted around. ”Really when you do the math, there really isn’t much of a price decrease here. It’s just a shift of how it’s marketed into the consumer market.”

But T-Mobile’s recent move to pay customers’ early termination fees of up to $350 (and a further $300 for a traded-in device) if they switch over from another carrier is a different matter entirely.

AT&T has already blinked. It’s offering T-Mobile customers $200 in credits if they switch to join AT&T’s service. Maybe that’s because most of T-Mobile’s recent customer wins have come at AT&T’s expense. The chart below from Macquarie Equities shows how many customers Verizon, AT&T and Sprint have each lost to T-mobile (TMUS):

So far, Verizon, the industry’s biggest player, hasn’t followed AT&T’s example. While it has more customers than anyone else (and hence more to lose), it has shed the fewest to T-Mobile.

But that was before T-Mobile introduced its latest offer to pay termination fees. Verizon’s whole strategy has been built on having the best network, and charging the most for it. Shammo’s words about a change in the “competitive environment” on this morning’s call might signal a shift in its strategy, which would alter the telecom landscape dramatically. Consumers are likely to benefit—but not anyone owning telecom stocks.

The acclaimed opera singer will be performing the national anthem at the Super Bowl this year.

The NFL has confirmed that opera singer Renee Fleming will perform the national anthem for the 2014 Super Bowl in New Jersey. The national anthem performance will be televised on FOX as part of the pregame festivities.

Super Bowl XLVIII: Seahawks vs. Broncos

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Nicknamed "The People's Diva," Fleming has received acclaim for her soprano voice. She's a four-time Grammy winner, recently winning the 2013 award for Best Classical Solo Vocal. She performed at numerous major events around the world, including the Diamond Jubilee for Queen Elizabeth II, the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony and the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Last July, President Barack Obama awarded her the National Medal of Arts, America's highest honor for an individual artist.

Fleming's selection breaks a long streak of contemporary pop artists performing the anthem. The previous singers included Alicia Keys, Kelly Clarkson, Christina Aguilera, Carrie Underwood and Jennifer Hudson. Bruno Mars has been chosen to perform the halftime show, with the Red Hot Chili Peppers opening for him.

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Long before Russell T. Davies revived Doctor Who he wrote Dark Season, a 1991 children’s sci-fi drama about an evil mind controlling computer. The screen shot shows some of the kids breaking into the system telepathically in episode 2.

Some ARM assembler being listed to the screen, perhaps it’s something to do with font kerning? The reflection in the centre of the screen is a 15 year old Kate Winslet.

jgc says: “Given the date of release of Dark Season, this is very likely to be an Acorn Archimedes showing part of the code of RISC OS.”

thalassarche:

vortexanomaly:

swan disguise

yes hello fellow waterfowl I am not paparazzi I am here to do swan things

(…And all the other waterfowl are down at the other end of the pond whispering to each other: WORST. SWAN. EVAR.)

pi4nobl4ck:

More from this cat: 1  2

carmem:

1cara-bonito:

vacilam:

tb queria saber 

tb queria saber Vol.02

pois é

The Detroit Lions haven't won the NFC North since 1993, but now you can get a shirt signifying that they tried.

It has been 20 seasons since the Detroit Lions won the NFC North -- so long the division was the NFC Central then. Twenty long, long seasons. One of those seasons, they didn't win any football games. Some of them, like this past season, they nearly won enough to win the division, although they nosedived by losing their last four games. Some of those seasons, they actually made the playoffs, but they've lost every time during the playoff drought.

It's the second-longest division drought in the NFL, behind only the Cleveland Browns, who haven't actually existed as a franchise for the entirety of their drought. Therefore, Detroit fans have been unable to buy any celebratory merchandise whatsoever relating to their team.

Thanks to Detroit-based funny T-shirt company Alternative Hero, that problem has been solved.

Love the guys @AlternativeHero, who made a Detroit Lions “Conference Participants” T Shirt pic.twitter.com/OlfLZ5wbtq

— darren rovell (@darrenrovell) January 21, 2014

That's right, Lions fans, you can get yourself a Detroit Lions "Conference Participants" T-shirt! (Well, not actually the Detroit Lions, since this shirt isn't NFL-licensed, but a shirt with a more kitten-like lion rampant.) Can't you feel the excitement emanating from those models who didn't know they were modeling this shirt? They earned this by playing in 16 football games. A lot of people couldn't do that!

No, it's not a division championship T-shirt like the ones the Packers can get or a conference champions T-shirt like the one the Seahawks can get. But, um, it's still a shirt! And do you really like your chances to be able to purchase one of those other shirts in the near future?

starsaremymuse:

sagansense:

An orrery is a mechanical model of the heliocentric solar system illustrating the relative positions and motions of the planets and moons. This one (above), produced by Ken Condal. View it in real-time to watch this beauty in motion, HERE. Love to zerostatereflex for sharing.

I’ve always wanted one of those

Here's a thoughtful series on working with PDFs from Chris Robert:

Collecting

Annotation

Processing and Storing

Reviewing and Finding

Maybe it's my academic years, but I'm a sucker for long posts with a conclusion. It's kind of like the classy version of TL;DR.