2 Robots

Apple seems to be getting a lot of negative press on its recent SDK announcement. Much of the criticism seems to focus around two issues: That not all functionality of the phone is accessable via the SDK, and that Apple controls the distribution method to the phone. I’ll adress the second point first. Some perspective on the history of apps on cell phones will do a lot to put this in perspective, and see why these decisions were made as tradeoffs, and actually strengthen the position of the iPhone as a leader in custom applications.

So, SpaceX launched their Falcon 1 rocket one day after my previous post. The Falcon 1 is a 2-stage, completely reusable rocket. On launch, the first stage worked flawlessly, getting the Falcon above the atmosphere. Unfortunately, The second stage was not able to completely get the Falcon 1′s payload into orbit.

Since being outpaced by HP in total sales, and knocked down from it’s #1 spot in new computer sales, Dell has launched IdeaStorm, a website where users can suggest ways for Dell to make money better cater to its customers. This is actually a great site. You can create suggestions, and then vote on which suggestions you think are the best. With over 50,000 people voting so far, Dell gets a pretty good idea of what people are interested in, and can tune their product line accordingly.

Something too prevalent in the marketplace today is the complete lack of innovation which seems to plague some companies. On the one hand, you have companies like Apple and Nintendo which truly bring something new to the table; from product packaging to human-electronic interfaces. On the other hand, you have companies like Dell and Sony who just keep pushing out more of the same. Yet, the latter seem more likely to hold big press events and tout their “next big thing.” It seems as if they don’t even know that their products are “me too’s” instead of market leaders.

Best Buy opened up a “Best Buy Mobile” store in Manhattan recently. I was there a few days ago, and my first impressions were: “what are they thinking?”

So of course, the financial news world is buzzing with Larry Ellison’s announcement that Oracle will be selling their own flavor of Linux: Unbreakable Linux, which they freely admit will be pretty much stolen from Red Hat and sold for about half the price at the entry level. Here is why investors are wrong, and Red Hat really has nothing to worry about.