tnl.net

Why the Boo.comeback makes sense

November 28, 2006

There has been much dis­cus­sion lately, most of it neg­a­tive (you can read more com­ments on Tech­no­rati), about the come­back of boo.com and once again, I find myself on the oppo­site side of the shared wis­dom. Before I go into rea­sons as to why I think a come­back by Boo.com (a boo.comeback?) makes sense, let me first go into my […]

Could Apple Solidify GSM in the US?

September 26, 2006

ThinkSe­cret reports that the much-rumored-about iPhone from Apple is com­ing and will be avail­able exclu­sively through Cin­gu­lar. If true, it would mean that Apple has decided to take a posi­tion on what phone stack it is will­ing to sup­port and has come out on the side of GSM. Under­stand­ing the mobile land­scape In a lot of ways, the […]

Characteristics of Virtual World Users

August 5, 2006

Hav­ing looked, in the pre­vi­ous entry, at the eco­nomic con­di­tions sur­round­ing vir­tual worlds, I am now turn­ing my atten­tion to the demo­graphic pro­file of those users. Over­all Num­bers The over­all pop­u­la­tion, accord­ing to MMOG Charts, is cur­rently about 12 mil­lion peo­ple strong. What is inter­est­ing, how­ever, is the growth rate: look­ing at the linked chart, one can […]

Economic Activity in Virtual Worlds

July 31, 2006

Over the last few months, I’ve been try­ing to get a bet­ter under­stand­ing of what is hap­pen­ing with the con­cept of vir­tual worlds. Let me go into more details as to why I think this phe­nom­e­non has some real poten­tials. In this first entry in a series, I will explore the eco­nomic activ­ity sur­round­ing this phe­nom­e­non. Size of the […]

Ruthless Efficiencies

July 8, 2006

As read­ers of this site know, I strongly believe that we are now in the mid­dle of a major over­all shift in eco­nomic trend that hasn’t been seen since the intro­duc­tion of the paper bill in late 1700s eng­land. Seen under this lens, I’m start­ing to think that there may be some truths to the claims that […]

Life After Net Neutrality

June 8, 2006

For the past few months, in the United States, a fight has been brew­ing over how the pipes that con­trol the Inter­net would be ruled. On one side, activists and large Inter­net com­pa­nies felt that access to the Inter­net should be neu­tral and that all sites should be accessed in the same fash­ion. On the other […]

Future Tense — Conclusion

May 16, 2006

What is inter­est­ing here is that a lot of the trends we will see over the next few years are about blur­ring dis­tinc­tions between online and offline world. I used to joke around that I lived online and went to the real world just for power sources but, as a new gen­er­a­tion that con­sid­ers online appli­ca­tions a given and fails […]

Future Tense — Always On

May 11, 2006

Read­ers of this site know that I’m a pro­po­nent of liv­ing an always con­nected lifestyle. My pre­vi­ous views on the sub­jects looked to appli­ca­tions that lived partly on the edge of the net­work and partly off it, a class of appli­ca­tions I called Hybrid Com­put­ing. As broad­band access to the net becomes more preva­lent, those appli­ca­tions will increasingly […]

Where Virtual and Physical meet

March 31, 2006

There has been a fair amount of talk recently about Sec­ond Life and mySpace, which has left me won­der­ing: what hap­pens when phys­i­cal and vir­tual space meet? What are the legal chal­lenges that those world will meet. In this entry, I try to ana­lyze what I sus­pect will become a big­ger issue down the road. Many of the ideas […]

Fatherhood

March 11, 2006

Intro­duc­ing my new son, Munro Wil­son Louis, arrived in the USA on March 9th. The whole fam­ily is fine but we’re still get­ting the hang of that parenthood thing.