AT&T is cutting the price on I-Phones

AT&T is cutting the price on I-Phones. Which is good because I don’t think I phone should cost anyone nearly $400. AT&T is preparing to subsidize $200 of the cost of a new iPhone, bringing the price down to $199 for customers who sign two-year contracts, the source says. Apple is expected to have two versions of the new iPhone, an 8-gigabyte-memory and a 16-gigabyte-memory model with price tags widely expected to be $399 and $499. It is said that at $200, the iPhone would be within reach of a much wider consumer market and give AT&T a strong magnet to pull lucrative customers away from rivals like Verizon Wireless , Sprint and T-Mobile . The $200 rebate would be limited to AT&T customers and not available through Apple’s stores. The new iPhone sold by AT&T will likely be locked or programmed so buyers can’t take the cheaper iPhone to another phone service. Looks like AT&T is trying to better deals than the other companies. Most customers search for the best phone; myself I’d rather have the best service and plan. In my personal opinion would be AT&T anyway. This new phone is due to be released on June 27, which is the anniversary of the original I-phone. A few weeks prior to that Apple is planning to stop supplies of the older model I-phone, which should help the demand for the new device. The iPhone will also have a GPS chip for navigation and other location-based services. I like phones that have GPS systems in them. I’m sure there will be some many people who don’t know about this half price I-phone and will continue to pay $400 for one..

Microsoft

This week is beginning to shape up to be the big one in Microsoft’s almost 3-month effort to gain Yahoo. Microsoft software maker has set a Saturday deadline for Yahoo to come to the bargaining table or else other actions will take place. Yahoo reported it’s numbers on Tuesday and Microsoft is set to releases their numbers on Thursday. Those reports are said to be more important in that Microsoft’s bid is half stock. A large earnings report from Yahoo will likely put pressure on Microsoft to up its bid; meanwhile a negative one might increase the strength on Yahoo to sell. Yet other players are discussing that there is still talk of Yahoo partnering with AOL. And they are still continuing an advertising test with Google.
Microsoft is beginning an automatic distribution of Windows Vista Service Pack 1; this is the first major update to the year-and-a-half-old operating system. The company will start sending it to Vista users who have Windows’ automatic update feature turned on. The company has cautioned that not everyone will get SP1 immediately. Vista SP1 was made available to customers last month. Service Pack 1 doesn't add much in the way of new features, but rather is a collection of changes designed to fix bugs and improve performance, as well as address competitive concerns raised by Google over Vista's desktop search system.

Sun Microsystems

Jonathan Schwartz, the CEO and President of Sun Microsystems was the guess speaker on the GigaOm show this week. He helped the company earn $3.615 billion in revenue for 2008 fiscal Q2. This was an increase of 1.4% compared to last year’s second quarter results of $3.566. Sun is a company who address networking marketing. Known as open office and Java, or a systems company. Java reaches billions of people and is a very simple model. He compared Pets.com, which is a former dot-com enterprise that ceased operations in November of 2000. Sun was a hardware or box company but they aren’t a box company. They basically want to expand by touching millions of people, if you touch them once then you can reach out and serve them with other products. They are a systems company, which basically means they have to worry about the client’s side, as well as the networks side of the system. Sun provides Amazon type programs. He makes it clear that they are not a server company they are a systems company.
ZFS, which is a system for managing files and data. Zettabyte File System, which was given away for free to gain customers. Jonathan mentioned how in 2007, Sun spent 14.5% (2.0 billion) of its total revenue on research and development. Innovation goes were people can make money. The U.S, online advertising market is expected to reach $50.3 billion in revenue by 2011. There is less innovation going into the networking. Sun basically allows the customer to get the product of choice, if you like it then you purchase it if not then you return it.

Seesmic The video blog

On the GigaOm show the guest for the week was Loic Le Meur. He has a successful history of four Internet startup companies and making millions. He is currently working on his newest startup Seesmic, Seesmic that is a video micro blogging web application in the alpha stage. His plan is to make video uploading easier for those using web cams. Seesmic made its debut called the “twitter of video”. There is a downfall the conversations won’t take place in real time. This service now has about 20,000 users, with 70,000 viewers per month. This program is basically removing anonmious traditonal bogs. Seesmic’s videos cover a lot of different topics. The company doesn’t have a high overhead cost. A lot of browsers are overlooking this site due to the low quality of direct video recordings with web cams. He is a Frenchman who came all the way across the Atlantic to start his new business Seesmic. In 1966, Loic Le Meur founded his first company, interactive agency B2L, which was sold to advertising agency BBDO in 1999 for an undisclosed sum. Seesmic is basically a video conversation site, and is open to 25 countries. These are global conversation.

Wikipedia's Jim Wales on the GigaOm Show

Jimmy Wales the founder of Wikipedia and Wikia talks on the gigaom show when he talks about the social networks. They talked about the g file, which you can purchase for more storage. This software is known as the Google Get Set and G Drive. According to Gartner, Inc the worldwide sales of mobile phones to end users in the third quarter of 2007 reached 289 million units, a 15% increase from last year. Jimmy Wales from Huntsville, Al, he studied game theory. He talked about his Wikiapedia, which is a very straight forward when doing a research. Wikia is basically like a traditional library. It gives the tools people will need as if they were at the library. He wants his program to be a free source and open source, he is using existing sources. He planned to collaborate with different people to find out what is redundant. They talked about how there are more social adoption for blogs than wikis, basically because communities tend to come together. People usually go where there’s already action, and its hard to build a community. The trust metric is a measure of how a member of a group is trusted by the other members. Armchairgm which allows you to write a story, others can come and blog, but can still be edited. Different people can post and there is a vote for who gets the front page. A lot of people on wikipedia that edits there own bibliography, which they are not suppose to do.

Second Life (GigaOm Show)

Phillip Rosedale is the founder and CEO of second life. They talked about HULU is now open to the public. It’s an easy way to watch some of you favorite TV shows. Second life is said to be worldwide. Second Life has more than million registered accounts, although many are inactive, some residents have multiple accounts, and there are no reliable figures for actual long-term consistent usage.
Second Life is considered a 3-D virtual world created by its residents. It opened to the public in 2003, it has grown a great bit, and today has millions of residents.
Wagner James Au (in second life) is the GigOm editor and author of “The Making of Second Life.” Second life is basically an online world, which the people who are there build everything. Second life is now about five years old. It started out with about sixteen severs. The size then was about the six of a few area blocks, and could be explored in about an hour. Now Second life has grown so rapidly there are almost, 18,000 servers. Second life continues to develop, it’s expected that all of second life will not be consumed. They talked about an island which they were currently at, they lady who created this digital ecosystem, profiting from donations left due to frustrations with second life. The question of if second life will survive, it’s now over a half billion dollar economy over a million dollars a day. Phillip Rosedale has stated that his goal with second life is to demonstrate a viable model for a virtual economy or virtual society.

Buzz out loud 675 Piracy

As most know, the MPAA has been claiming that piracy is killing the industry. Actors and Actresses are soon to be losing jobs and indeed the whole movie industry itself is being crushed by piracy. The MPAA just reported it's largest profit ever in 2007, $9,630,000,000 or 9.63 billion dollars( in case you lost count of the zeros). Piracy is obviously not keeping people out of the theater, and as the Buzz Out Loud crew suggested, piracy may even be good to a certain extent. Piracy promotes business as people who see the movie online usually end up buying it or going and seeing it in the theater. The ones who pirate movies and do not buy them would not have seen the movie otherwise, but they will still talk about it, and perhaps others will be interested and actually pay money to see the movie. Also, people do enjoy the whole theater experience of seeing the movie on a much larger screen than any television could provide.
Regardless of rather piracy helps or hurts the movie industry, one thing should be obvious; the MPAA is stretching the truth. Pirating is bigger now than it ever has, yet somehow the MPAA manages to earn more than ever before. One can not help but believe the MPAA might be exaggerating some of their statistics. Actually one does not have to believe as the MPAA has been caught exaggerating the affects of piracy in a 2005 report on collegiate piracy. The MPAA originally stated that the collegiate file sharing contributed to 44% of movie losses to piracy. Later however, it was discovered that collegiate piracy equals about 15% of movie losses! Obviously, someone made a minor error in their calculations. The MPAA will never receive wide-support, regardless of how people feel about piracy, if it does not use legitimate tactics to prove its case.