Punk’s Posterous

 

On Real Estate

I attended a real estate opportunity seminar this morning to see what the industry experts have to say about where the opportunities are for the next 12 months and wanted to share what I heard and resounded with me. 

I talked about another major collapse in the real estate market during this summer that has yet to happen.  I'm not backing away from that prediction (for lack of a better term).  Economic activity in a capitalistic society is wholly dependent on consumers (you and me) consuming.  There was a 5 month rally in the stock market largely fueled by what look like companies rebounding on their overall numbers (showing flat to low growth) for the respective quarters and beating street expectations.  The key here is, if you dig into the numbers, those rise in profits were not from an increase in sales but rather from an collective increase in cost cutting (laying off workers).  So while a company showed better profit margins, it wasn't necessarily from selling more, it was from cutting the fat so to speak.  This is an unsustainable growth as companies can only cut so much.  The fact of the matter is, as was reflected in this week's stock lull, consumers still aren't spending any money.

With that, real estate (an investment vehicle where there is (typically) limited supply and almost always a growing demand) has the following trends (in each category) to consider.

Office Space 

There is far more inventory than there is demand.  With companies laying off more than they are hiring, there is going to be an increase in the number of empty office buildings.  Typically these are in the $10M+ range, but if you have the capital, you can literally buy large office spaces for dirt cheap as major portfolio companies look to dump these assets.  There are a ton in the valley. 

The strategy for office space is to convert a Class C to a Class B, a Class B to a Class A and a Class A to well a better [greener] Class A with the hope that when the market demand comes back you can bank on the appreciation of your asset + invest improvement.  The improvement capital can be written off in taxes and the depreciation schedule and property tax will be minimal given the low appraisals being put out right now.  TMG (The Martin Group) is the bay area king pin of this market.  [Note they offer a 20% return to their investors].  The CEO mentioned that these deals are not advertised in the [doomed local] papers but are almost exclusively relationship deals.

Retail Space 

All the experts recommended steering clear away from retail space as consumer spending is showing no signs of rebounding.  Historically consumers only start spending lavishly after a sustained period of economic growth.  They forget about the hard times.  No one sees the horizon on this and the general consensus is unless you're purchasing a grocery store or some other retail front that is essential to life, the worst is yet to come.

Condos 

With the number of new condo's in the city and the lowered overall prices, there are bargains to be had in this market.  The key here as with any private real estate is the management of it.  TMG calls private real estate labor intensive off setting any gains.  So from a business perspective, if you factor in time, miles and ALL the costs of owning the property it usually doesn't end up being as lucrative as one projects.  It was recommended that if you're looking for a place to live, this could be good, but as an investment property, proceed with caution.

Apartment Buildings

The panel was bullish on apartment buildings given the low supply and high demand.  One consultant is under the impression that the overall economic turnaround will first be felt in San Francisco, making it that much more attractive to pick up an apartment building.  There was some discussion on the costs of renovating and if the "liberal administration" does in fact mandate green initiatives, then the cost of owning one could be prohibitive with the retro fitting the old buildings.  I personally think someone can make a KILLING by pushing a modern window bill through local legislation.  The old windows are awful aesthetically and even worse from an energy conservation (not that I have an A/C or heater in the city).  But imagine if building owners were mandated to replace old windows...  The contractors/suppliers/distributors etc would make a killing in the city!

Private Real Estate

There was little discussion on single family homes as most of these guys don't look at them as investment opportunities.  There was one guy that is buying a house a week to build a portfolio to bank on appreciation when the market comes back.  But mostly everyone was under the impression that the bottom isn't here and even when it comes it isn't going to hockey stick back up, but rather we are in for a long flat portion for the time being.  At which time, cash is king.

Globally

I thought the discussion on China and India were pretty interesting.  In China, the equivalent of a city the size of Houston needs to be built every MONTH to sustain the mass migration of population from rural areas.  That number is staggering.  Basically everyone from the farms is trying to move to cities and there are premier cities, worker cities and slums.  You move up through the ranks with economic improvement.  Most of the investing dollars comes from the government so while its secure, there is really one way of getting into the business:  Connections.

An interesting side note.  Did you know that the number of people employed by the communist party in China is...  You ready for this?  The total population of the United States!  Basically, if you have any level of education or economic pull, the communist party invites you to be in their club and receive the benefits of being attached.  So in order for China to go democratic, all the educated/rich people would have to convert, and we're not talking millions, we're talking 100's of millions.  There is literally no incentive for them to do that. 

The danger here (which no one brought up, but I was thinking) is, as we've seen, there is no such thing as a limitless growth cycle.  At some point there is inevitably going to be a downturn at which point, China could very well close its doors (as it did in the 50's) to foreign investment leaving anyone with vested money high and dry.  Its not really a matter of if, but when.

Most construction projects in Dubai came to screeching halt in Sept '08 when the developers realized that with the global economic crisis, they would be able to re-negotiate all their contracts.  They've just started to do that.  Abu Dubai has a population of 200K, yet has 9% of the world's oil reserves...  They are bullishly building to create an economy to last past the fossil fuel boom.

India is 10-15 years away from similar growth just due to the bureaucracy created by democracy and sore infrastructure.  India's government can't just create money to fund projects, it has to keep an active [publicly voted upon] balance sheet.


There were some notable quotes thrown out there with context that I think we should keep in mind:

"Be fearful when everyone is greedy, and greedy when everyone is fearfull."  --Warren Buffet

"Skate to where the puck is going to be."  -- Wayne Gretzky
 
There was extensive talk about not paying any attention to forecasts as well as they are "full of shit."  If hindsight is 20/20, there wasn't a single outlet (despite very clear signs) that there was going to be a market crash.  The CEO of TMG, said he went to a meeting where he had a sick feeling in his stomach.  Everyone at this meeting was cheering and fat from all the money they were making, all the way down the pipe.  Its just not sustainable, he felt, yet even he didn't have the wherewithal to start unloading assets fast enough. 

My closing thoughts

The rich are born in times of economic straits, not during booms.  It takes years and years of toiling to be prepared when the time comes to make money and unless you are prepared, you won't recognize it when the time is there.

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Rethinking Receipts

 

Most businesses now give you the option of whether or not you want to a receipt with your purchase.  Unless the purchase is substantial (where a record needs to be kept for tax purposes or to dispute a payment claim in the future) the actual paper receipt provides little to no value.  But an itemized record (not just the dollar amount to a store taken from a credit card bill) of what you purchase coupled with [available] meta-data for that purchase can have significant benefit to the overall analysis of your life.  

Applications that track personal statistics have only recently exploded garnering wide adoption into the mainstream.  Personal productivity, finance, fitness and nutrition applications are some of the best selling iPhone applications and happen to be one of the few pay for service portals that retain customers past a trial period.  Its not just the neurotic who find joy in improving themselves based on statistical analysis. 

The entry of data into any one of these applications comes from predominately three methods.  There is of course, the manual input that the user enters, devices that track statistics that upload their data for analysis, and information gleamed from other sources such as credit card bills or other tracking services.  

But because each application is independent of one another, the onus is on the user to update each application and make use of it.  This can be directly attributed to the iPhone's inability to run third party applications in the background.  This limitation makes it impossible for any given app to collect real time statistics and update itself.  Even the financial apps that take information from user authenticated credit card records are typically delayed 24 hours.  The tedium involved in updating all these different applications is the largest barrier to their usefulness.

And yet, all the information needed to statistically analyze your life is handed to you on a printed receipt every time you do something (which interestingly anytime you do something costs you money-- we'll save that for another post).  

Here is an example:

I recently flew to Nashville, Tennessee, where I took a road trip to the Smokey Mountains for a short Holiday.  I actually kept all the receipts over the course of the 4 day trip and came back with 26 pieces of paper documenting every step of my trip.  And this was a getting away from it all kind of trip.

Now to update all my different information stores, I'd have to spend hours in different applications uploading what I ate (for nutrition), where I hiked (for fitness), what I spent on food (for food budget) and entertainment (for entertainment budget), as well as pictures and videos to share with family and friends.  For most people (myself included) the work involved outweighs the end value.  However, if this was all updated realtime with no effort from me, I'd be VERY interested in the results as I'm sure many others would.

Is the solution then to wait for Apple to allow applications to run as background processes, or for Palm to actually put out their SDK to developers?

Even in doing so, I'm not sure that'll provide a cohesive solution.

What would be interesting is if Apple (or Palm) had a background process that simply collected xml data from a variety of sources that upon an application being opened would parse this data store for information relevant to its function to give you updated statistics without any input from you.

For example, during the road trip, an obligatory glutton session at McDonald's was held to uphold road trip tradition.  Rather than receiving a paper receipt outlining my sins, if the register instead sent the information in XML format to my iPhone (that required no action from me; just sent a notification letting me know it was received), when puzzled at my weight gain later in the week, I open up Mint Nutrition which parses the data store, takes all the relevant food information and shows my eating habits.

The XML receipt in the data store might look like:

<Restaurant>Mcdonalds</Restaurant>
<Address>1304 Main Street, Chattonoga, Tennessee</address>
<telephone> 615-555-5555</telephone>
<timestamp>08:56</timestamp>
<date>07032009</date>
<food order><quantity>1</quantity>Big Breakfast</food order><price>2.99</price>
<food order><quantity>1</quantity>Hotcake</food order><price>2.29</price>
<food order><quantity>1</quantity>Egg Mcmuffin</food order><price>3.00</price>
<food order><quantity>1</quantity>Sausage Egg Cheese McGriddle</food order><price>2.49</price>
<subtotal>10.77</subtotal>
<Take out tax>0.75</Take out tax>
<payment>visa</payment>
***************** and all the transaction information

Upon starting my iPhone Mint Financial application sunday night as I do my finances, this information is read in and factored into my food budget.  When I start my nutrition application to reconcile weight gain in the AM, this same information is read in and does a calorie count for this particular breakfast (which in this case would be atrocious).  And when I started my fitness app before a run, it would take this information and let me know how far or how hard I'll have to run to balance this intake.

None of these applications need to be run as a background process because part of their purpose it to take the XML information that is inherently stored and make use of it based on the app's speciality.  Of course if there is an XML receipt for a new widget I purchase, the nutrition and fitness app would simply ignore it.

This would be great for the consumer, but what is the incentive for a business to provide this service.  One might argue, for McDonald's this might actually deter customers.  There is obviously a significant cost associated with printing receipts.  Take a look at the following analysis:

http://discoveriesoftheunemployed.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/receipts-waste/

Current
Average receipt length    12    inches
Roll of receipt tape    2640    inches
Cost of receipt tape roll    0.9    dollars
Receipt printer ribbon    1.92    dollars
Ribbon head print capacity    20000    receipts

Average # of receipts per roll (roll length/receipt length)    220
Average # of receipts per day (# of transactions * # of stores)    177,000
Receipt tape used per day (receipt length * # of receipts/day)    2,124,000
Receipt tape rolls used per day (receipt tape usage/length of roll)    805
# of rolls used per year (rolls used per day * 365)    293,659

Cost of rolls per year (rolls used per year * cost of roll)    $264,293.18    Dollars
Average # of printer ribbons used per day (# of receipts per day/print capacity)    8.85
Average # of printer ribbons used per year (ribbons used per day * # of printers used per day)    3230.25
Cost of printer ribbons per year (# of printer ribbons per year * cost of printer ribbon)    $6,202.08    Dollars
Cost of printer ribbon + rolls per year    $270,495.26
# of Harris Teeter Stores Globally    177
Cost of printer ribbon + rolls per year globally    $47,877,661.34
Potential savings by reducing receipt printing by 5%    $2,393,883.07

# of rolls per printer ribbon    90.91
# of transactions per day per store    1000

Most stores already have some wireless infrastructure, but even if there is a margin of discrepancy with this analysis, a compelling ROI could be made for any additional technology that would need to be purchased for implementation.

A franchise like Subway might use this as a marketing opportunity as their overall healthy alternative brand so much so your own fitness apps will prove it. 

 

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Woah, you have a Moblin USB, can you unleash me? Please?

I'm about 2 weeks into netbook immersion.  I started off really skeptical, carrying my MBP with me in case my netbook didn't suffice.  At this point, the keyboard isn't too small and the screen is perfect for browsing.  I'm sold.  I didn't get a 3G wireless plan because I'm hopeful tethering will become a reality off my smartphone, but I'm already tempted.

The first thing I did was create 4 partitions and put all the different available OS's on it to try each one.  Moblin is easily my favorite, though the beta release has some issues.  Ubuntu Remix is stable and nice, but doesn't have any built in web widgets making the browser the central application.  Windows is awful.  Its easy to hate on windows, but really did anyone there even try to use Windows on a netbook?

Market adoption for Operating Systems is still very much in the air, although Mircosoft, through their extensive OEM relationships, is claiming 80%.  Anyone that is serious about having this be their primary device is going to want something different.  Since Netbooks are primarily being marketed to college students, Moblin should burn 10000 bootable USB sticks dropping them into select college campuses and launch a viral marketing campaign that makes it cool for students to share the stick to "unleash their netbook and share the favor."

The key to success is for the installation to literally be, reboot with USB stick, quick easy setup for social networking services and its ready for use.  Its too complicated right now.


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Airing out the Netbook

The latest report sums up the market momentum of the Netbook as:

"Netbooks are just beginning to gain market traction; about 13 million were sold worldwide in 2008, with 10 million of those sales coming in the second half of the year, global economic crisis notwithstanding, notes Cristiano Laux, Manager of Consulting at Pyramid Research and coauthor of the report. "Bundles of these machines with Internet access are set to become a bread-and-butter offering for operators in developed and emerging markets alike, exceeding sales of notebook computers in the operator channel by 2010," says Laux
."

http://ubmtechnology.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=2426

The market for netbooks is dominated by the under 21 demographic most of whom are students.  With no set leader set in the Operating System for these devices there is quite a bit of foundation that needs to laid in terms of application development.  These worldwide numbers (in their infancy) eclipse those of hardware sales of the iPhone and offer a much larger, richer market for inexpensive application purchases by the owners of these devices.

While the OS could play a pivotal role in the Netbook's capabilities, there are already a number of runtime environments that give you the ability to develop rich applications that mashup existing web services.  Adobe AIR along with their beta release of Flash Catalyst brings together an extensive toolkit that allows non-technical rapid development of applications that will shape the real estate of how Netbooks are utilized.

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Information by the people for the people directly to the people

A funny thing happened yesterday, I found myself in an old book store in Russian Hill while waiting for my friend to arrive.  Since purchasing the Kindle I haven't physically bought a book in months and actually having moved from suburbia only recently to the city, I haven't been to a non-corporate bookstore since my days in East Village, Manhattan.  They are few and far between in suburbia.  The great thing about spending any amount of time in a bookstore like this is, I always end up looking at books that I'd never normally think would be interesting.  There is definitely thought put into the organization of the material, but it is clearly not commercially driven.  The Dan Brown books with movie posters aren't glaring at every corner.  There is no special shelf specifically for Oprah's book club selections.  The layout has not been analyzed to maximize revenue.  Its just a hodge podge of books, mostly used and read.

I find the lack of organizational analysis for maximum monetization allows me to visually peruse hundreds of titles in various subjects indulging my subconscious.   I go down thought trains that otherwise would never be explored.  This is how I used to broaden my horizons.

Today broadening my horizon means googling a keyword and subsequently jumping links.  Yes, I do subscribe to a number of news aggregation sites, and was sort of intrigued by stumbleupon for a while, but for the most part Google is it.  The issue with this is Google has become a revenue driven corporation.  It had no choice, even with the best intentions and the brightest minds, once you have shareholders your vision and strategy are to increase marketshare to make more money.  There is nothing wrong with that, its the natural evolution of every successful company.

But just as a Barnes & Noble or Borders feels too commercialized, Google searches have long lost that raw edge where your discovery feels original (even if its not).  The search results are dominated by results that corporations have paid money for.  Much like a book publisher cutting a deal with Borders to have every corner of the store to remind you about the upcoming Harry Potter book.  

Then along came Twitter.  I have absolutely no qualms about Twitter becoming a revenue driven corporation like every other company before it.  Like I said its the natural evolution, but until then we have a way to find information by the people (not corporations) for the people (anyone who knows how to search) to the people (with no ads or tricks).  I read an analogy that Twitter is much like a stadium full of people all shouting.  Well, I wager that there are far more interesting things being said (by sheer magnitude) then what all the major companies say in hopes of driving revenue. 
 
I did a google search for Grandma's apple pie recipe and all the search results were professional pages (food network, allrecipes, americanapplepie.com).  I did a twitter search for grandma's apple pie recipe and came up with nothing.  So I tried apple pie recipe and got 30 links out of some 45 tweets.  All of the links went to personal looking blog pages that had some variation of an apple pie recipe.  All of the tweets had some form of praise for how it turned out.  None of the tweets matched google's top links.  Among the tweets were ways of making the apple pie vegan, or doubling down with cranberries, a recipe from a Godfather off a car racing site, an apple chocolate chip pie, etc.  Wow, when was the last time you did a search and said, who would've thunk?
  
Excellent.

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A free lesson from the best

In an effort to elevate my golf game I took a video of my awful swing and compared it to a Tiger Wood's YouTube video.  You can do a pretty sweet analysis to see precisely what you're doing wrong.  


What was once something you'd pay an expert to do, or have to purchase expensive software for, unless Nike invites you up to their R&D center, can be done with a cell phone video camera and a YouTube video. 

Now when is there going to be an iPhone app for this?

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To do or not to do: Tell me when I wake up

Despite having to do it every single day, most people find waking up is hard to do.  There are no shortages of remedies for ways to ensure that at the sound of your alarm clock, you will pop up.  Most notably, from a great mind at MIT, a mobile alarm clock that at that fateful hour turns itself loose forcing you get out of bed to chase it down, thereby reducing the likelihood of crawling back under the covers.  My favorite example of the resilience to wake-up gimmicks was an ex-girlfriend, who put her alarm clock near her feet, such that she'd have to get up to turn it off.  It was only a matter of weeks before she had trained her toes to peek out from the blanket to reset the snooze for another 15 minutes, this was a multiple button operation mind you, which she could do with her toes all without shifting position. 

It is the moments after your alarm rings that makes it so easy to snooze and forget about the day ahead.  Typically you wake up in a dark environment that takes time to adjust to, its always a little bit colder and your purpose for the day isn't set (if at all) for a while upon rising.  What is it again, we're getting out of bed for?

In thinking about design and function, alarm clocks do little to entice us to wake up.  While there are many variants, most emit a loud almost irritable sound forcing yourself to make it go away as quickly as possible.  There are alarm clocks that will play the radio or selected music, but is random noise the best marker for the brain to start itself off to?  Even selected songs become monotonous to our will to get the day started.

In thinking about what to wake up to, wouldn't a list of things you'd have to accomplish by an encouraging voice be ideal.  If your life is such that you have nothing to accomplish on a daily basis, well, the reminder in the AM might entice you to to try to do more with your day.  Think about how Tony Stark got up, is that that far-fetched?

I'd certainly pay for an iPhone app that synced with my google tasks/calendar (our outlook tasks/calendar) that upon my set time of waking up prompts me with (in a female voice):

"Good Morning Pankaj, It's time to wake up.  The weather is going to be sunny with a high of 75 and low of 60.  You have a busy day today, 

At 8:30 you're scheduled to meet with a client in Palo Alto
At 10:30 you're hosting a WebEx session with John and Sara about Technology
You're having lunch in San Francisco with Mark at Holy Grill
At 2:30 you need to be in Redwood City to be at the Partner office.

If you stay in bed any longer you're not going to have time for a morning run or breakfast"

Of course all of this information is merely pulled from applications where this information is readily available and by prompting you of it, you have a mental map, almost in subconsciousness, of the day, when you're defenses are not as apt.

Everyday would be different, because every day on my schedule is different and every day I'd wake up to knowing what it is I have to do for the day.  Who knows, if after a week of listening to what I have to do everyday of my life, I can't believe what my life has become, I'd be that much more compelled to change it.  Of course, if I had Tony Stark's garage, chances are I'd never go to sleep in the first place.

This simple app could make a world of difference in productivity.   At least for me.

Comments [2]

A rebuttal: What if a plumber built your house

In HP's latest post filed under Trends in Blade Server infrastructure, HP contends that should one choose to commission plumber to build a custom house, the end result would be a very expensive showcase of the waterworks and little else.


http://tinyurl.com/d7xxhf

Its safe to assume that HP is likening a company's data center to a custom home and going after Cisco's industry reputation as a network plumber whereupon they argue, Cisco is not who you'd want to be your builder.  While Interesting, this analogy isn't a true representation of what a data center represents and actually bolsters Cisco's story.  A custom house is purpose built to live in, often with the idiosyncrasies of the owner showcased.  Its rigidity with the customization makes it hard and expensive to change and the very nature of custom homes is to ones liking, not necessarily for the use of many.  This representation of a data center is from the early years, a lot has changed since then.  Gone are the days where a data center houses a very expensive mainframe whose compute access is severely restricted and business is a function of extensive consulting for a custom solution whose viability is tested only when its complete.

Businesses move more quickly now and as such, the supporting infrastructure needs to aptly adapt.  Software revisions for products are now weekly (or even nightly depending on the product), not quarterly or yearly.  Customers and employees expect to be able to access their data from anywhere, anytime and on any device.  

To employ a simple analogy, today's data center is like a water tower for a community of homes (custom homes for the sake of argument).  Where water represents compute and storage and each homes represents a business function for a company.  The water resource and accompanying infrastructure is supplied by the company to the homes for sustainability.  The water tower doesn't just supply a single home, but has a vast network and thus needs to prioritize and be able to meet the changing demands in real time.

Previously, each home would have to dig their own well or water tower to maintain their supply.  Which might mean one home whose utilization is less, may have an abundance, while another may be running dry.  By collectively pooling the water, each home receives the exact amount needed and the company maximizes its resource investment.

This is akin to Cisco's Data Center Strategy.  The network is more than just plumbing, it is the computer.  Now who have you already trusted to lay the initial groundwork?

Comments [0]

The Feedly Platform: A revenue model for content micro-payments

Recently the rhetoric around micro-payments for content has increased exponentially.  As is the case with any adoption of technology, baby steps are necessary for users to become acclimated with the idea.  With the significant drop off in the ad revenue, and users becoming accustomed to paying for software and music, the market for paying for content is ripe to explode.  The logistics of profitability have yet to be hashed out however a platform where it could make sense has finally emerged.  Feedly is amazingly good at presenting content you subscribe to through RSS feeds.  It leverages your existing RSS feeds and while there is currently no subscription fees associated with the service, micro-paying for content read is a logical next step towards monetizing the service.


Google Reader, as is the case with most RSS readers, takes the meta-data (text, pictures) from existing sites and presents it in a drab inbox so to speak.  While a powerful source of organizing news sources specifically interesting to you, there has clearly been little thought in the actual presentation.  So much so that the use of RSS feeds still remains largely a techie phenomenon.  Feedly can change that.  By taking the feeds and organizing them into a magazine like format, thats intuitive and adding relevant youtube videos as well as additional related articles, it takes the things your content you subscribe to and builds it into a real-time magazine that updates as you read it.  Its simply brilliant.

Magazines have long since enjoyed the royalties of loyal subscribers.  Feedly allows you to build your own, and that in it of itself is something worth paying for.  But because, they do not actually create any of the content, a micro-payment for the meta-data (from other sites) should be employed to create a revenue stream.  For example, if you read a full a article from some site, you are charged some nominal fee.  If you start reading an article but lose interest, you are either charged nothing or some minimal amount.  As a thought experiment, assume if you read 75%-100% of what is posted, you are charged what would equate to a monthly subscription fee (lets say a magazine subscription would cost $24 [it could be less or more] to make the math easy, thats $2 a month).  If you read 50%-74%, you are charged half ($1), and below that you aren't charged anything.

As an example of how this might work, I looked at the trends of my own usage of Google Reader to see what I'd end up paying (see my usage statistics above).  Feedly doesn't have any trending tools (that I could find) so I used the ones available from Google Reader.

I have 203 subscriptions.
I actively read over 75% of the posts on 17 of these subscriptions:  17 * $2 = $34
Beyond that, I read just over 50% on 2 additional subscriptions:        2 * $1 = $02
My total would be $36 a month.  

Thats really not that bad.  I could easily spend that amount picking up magazines in any book store.  And that example is VERY simplified.  Clearly, a subscription to "Silicon Alley Insider" where I've read 660 articles can't be monetarily equated to "Sandhya Photography Blog" where 10 articles were posted.  A tiered model would have to be introduced, further reducing the cost the overall cost.

Lets say, if a subscription yields over 100 articles of which over 75% are read in 30 days, $2 is charged, and between 50-100 articles (with the same percentage read), $1 is charged.  In this same model, any percent between 50%-75% read with over 100 articles is charged $0.50 and under that nothing is charged.  Further below 50 articles with over 75% read, $0.10 is charged.

My monthly bill would be:

9 (subscriptions w/ over 100 articles where over 75% were read) * $2 = $18
0 (subscriptions w/ over 100 articles where between 50% - 75% were read) * $1 = 0
12 (subscribtions w/ under 50 articles where over 75% were read) * $0.10 = $1.20
The total = $19.20

These are VERY simplistic models and yet they are totally palatable for an end-user (at least me).  Now if Feedly takes a percentage for presentation and actually pays the content providers for articles read, an eco-system of self-reliance will form where one will promote the other in cooperative marketing.

One might argue, if complex billing systems are introduced that value different articles at varying rates, the user will refuse the model as they won't know what they are paying for.  This could very well be the case, however, if the total amount is low enough most users won't bother digging into the payment rates.  Could the system be cheated?  Of course, but the convenience of paying minimal amounts (as is the case with iTunes) will out weigh the gains of abusing the system.

Thoughts?

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Palm's Foleo: It's time for a proper resurrection

 

Palm's initial attempt at the NetBook, seen here was well before its time.  The Foleo came out in May of 2007 just as smart phones had started proliferating the mainstream.  The idea of carrying around a limited functionality laptop was far fetched at the time as application usage was still for the most part in the form of fat installs and not in the cloud.  Today, most applications are delivered seamlessly through browsers making a fully functional operating system on a laptop a luxury not a necessity.  

Since then the market for NetBooks is starting to mature as many hardware manufacturers are releasing their flavors.  Analysts now predict that Netbooks will make up 50% of computer purchases by 2012.  Google has its eye on this market with the release of its Android OS as does Microsoft with Mobile Windows both of which will work on a variety of manufacturer's hardware.  Apple's Tim Cook has alluded a lack of interest in the market, so its up to Palm to deliver an amazing seamless experience including touch on their WebOS in a sexy rendition of the Foleo.

The Foleo needs to look less like a laptop and more like a tablet PC with multi-touch capabilities.  It needs to be cool enough to warrant grown men to carry it in a bag smaller than a laptop bag; a murse so to speak.  This is an important barrier that can only be broken by the sheer excellence of the product.  Its not an easy task, but success in creation would put Palm back in the players club.

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