commbasics

Still trying to figure out who to vote for for Governor and Senate?  Want to know what you friends think? Give a look at this interview with a couple of nice Italian guys I met last week.  I'll be using them in the current discussion about innovation.  

Wow.  Judging from the response (in the blog comments, emails and phone calls I got) to the earlier post I think I hit a nerve.  Nobody in semiconductors or EDA likes to be told they are not innovating.  But the VCs that responded, as well as some people in EDA, where generally in agreement with me.  I think it may come down to the definition of the term. I did some looking and found a blog that actually puts it in a way that meets my definition.  It's called Broken Bulbs .  Simply put, it is the  "the profitable implementation of ideas." That's where I think the semi industry is missing it, because they have not been profitable in a long time.  The reason it isn't profitable, from the top end custom chip all the way down to the EDA tool, is because they are not concentrating on innovation.  They are patching holes and it may be time just to throw the cloth away. But let's look at the profitability iss...

You may have noticed that I have not been talking about marketing and media in EDA and semiconductors for a few months and I've been struggling with how to talk about it for some time.  It's finally reach a head, though, so I might as well say it. Innovation in the semiconductor sector is so rare now that it virtually does not exist.  That may be why no one in the semiconductor industry, outside of the giants, does any marketing.  But then, if you don't do marketing you won't know what needs to be innovated.  Vicious circle, that. I've had a love/hate relationship with EDA and semis for a long time.  I've always thought they were incredibly important sectors and a source of great innovation.  I've worked with some of the most innovative and groundbreaking companies in both sectors and I always hoped to be a part of it.  But in the past few months I've come to understand what the VCs, entrepreneurs, government agen...

Last week, I said that the real money and growth potential in location-based services is not in people telling the world where they bought their coffee, but with the ability of less public admission of involvement with community.   Most people are not really comfortable having their personal doing publicly broadcast, or at least not being able to control what goes out and who sees it.  This is the potential killer of social media growth.  They will, however, share lots of stuff within a small circle of people they know... and no one else.  This is the market that some social media startups are starting to exploit.   Location-based services are an outstanding way for individuals to support local businesses and non-profits without ever letting the outside world know it's happening.  Within their communities they can share what they support and even compete in game-play for community activism.  As I mentioned, DeHood is putting significant res...

  Social media is not a fad .  It’s here to stay.  But the current incarnation is reaching a saturation point.  Almost everyone who is interested in being connected to a social platform has done so to whatever degree they want.  What is creating a barrier to adoption is the issue of privacy .  Let’s face it.  People are overwhelmed by the amount of data coming at them now.  They are finding subjective and subconscious ways of filtering it out either by ignoring the information or by actively removing themselves from the conversation (e.g. closing a Facebook account) .  This activity, while nascent at present, is the golden-goose kiler for social media.  If people actually start walking away in droves, that’s going to be a problem for a lot of companies.     Now I’ve made it clear that I believe privacy is not really an issue .  It’s something anyone can control if they wish, but the fact is, most people want t...

This post was going to focus, primarily on Dehood , but since writing part two of this series, I fell into a new world of the Social Web companies from all over the world and I have discovered they fall mostly into 5 buckets: sharing stuff rating stuff measuring stuff organizing stuff selling stuff  All of that is great for marketers.  The more people participate in all of that stuff, the more information marketers have on the participants, so it's easy to sell stuff, which is the biggest part of the Social Web.  That's where it leaves a lot of people out of participation because there is so much emphasis on the latter, that the rest seems to be rather manipulative.    That's a big problem because the whole point of the web, in the first place, is to bring people together and the social movement has been co-opted by the sales departments of the corporate world.  If you pay attention to the big players in the Social Web industry -- Facebook...

Now that things are calming down to a dull roar I should be able to get back to my series on location-based web apps next week.  But today I just wanted to give you aheads up on an overall new direction for me and what I write about.   I'm working on several fronts with people that want to change the world.  I wish I could say that  that some of those people are in the semiconductor and EDA worlds but that is just wishful thinking.  I recently helped launch a new organization that is aiming at being a movement to change how start ups are launched and nurtured called the 12 Entreprenuers ( here's the NTP report ).  These are people from a handful of countries in Europe as well as US businessment, government representatives, angel investors and people who are thinking about things in new ways.  Here's a couple of snapshots. The first signers...   Me as the MC at the kickoff meeting... These vibrant people are working in online vi...