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Posts: Open Source Strategies

Yahoo Pipes: A Hero's Weapon (BETA)

Last time , I asked if Yahoo Pipes was a web 2.0 hero 's weapon -- a tool that could be used to reconstruct the web in a way that increases returns on investments of attention. I tested it out. There are two problems: 1. It's not brain-dead simple enough. I have to think too much to use...

Are You Prepared to Make the Most Important Decision of Your Web 2.0 Career?

That decision is which content management system (CMS) you use to manage your web properties. We can sit here and talk all day about strategy and the edge. I can even lie to you and tell you the world is being inverted and that the key to marketing is superheroes and that there is an...

The Apple Problem

Can Apple ever achieve a level of dominance comparable to Google or Microsoft? No. As Seth Godin and Jeff Bezos already know , the paradigm is this: the higher you want to rise, the lower your prices must be . Don't get me wrong: Apple can, and does , earn quite a bit of cash. But those...

Open Source as an Underdog Strategy

Fred Wilson drops this bit of truth : AOL used to be the top dog. Top dogs use lock-in to control their market position. That used to work for AOL. Now it works for Apple, Google, and possibly Yahoo! But AOL is not a top dog anymore. Underdogs use open systems to undercut the top dogs...

OpenBusiness Interviews Tim O'Reilly

Fantastic interview. Here's a killer quote: So when I started seeing comments by Ballmer saying Open Source is an intellectual property destroyer and it’s taking all the profits out of the system, I thought this is just what had happened before. We’re seeing the commoditization of...

Community-Based Marketplaces

Threadwatch , an online marketing community, is contemplating launching a marketplace. See the discussion about it . In my opinion, we're going to start seeing a lot more of this. The community is essentially a platform for starting a business; it will provide you with the opportunity to make...

Great Quote from the Million Dollar Adsense Guy

I just found this great quote from Markus, the guy who made a million bucks off adsense in 3 months , on this GenuineVC blog post . Here it is: There is a massive paradigm shift going on right now. The cost of developing and growing a site to massive sizes is growing to 0. The big talk...

Why Google Should Go Open Source

Unfortunately, market leaders are resistant to change -- even when such change is obvious and inevitable ( RIAA being the quintessential example ). And I'd argue that with respect to the Internet search industry, Google, the market leader, is experiencing the same problem: as the web...

$100 Laptop as a Textbook Disruptive Innovation

On Wednesday at the UN Summit in Tunisia, a prototype for $100 laptop, developed primarily by MIT, was unveiled. BBC has the scoop. This has all the makings of a textbook disruptive innovation: It is a price-based innovation. The laptop is still a computer, but at $100, it is significantly...

Open Source And Emergent Innovation

This is just brilliant. Business Innovation 2005 points to this article by Jeff Vail on open source as an emergent innovation strategy that manifests ideally in a network economy. Key quote: The polar opposite of the structure of hierarchy is rhizome, a network of independent and...

Open Source Takes on the iPod

The iPod's reign of tyranny may be coming to an end, as Neuros announces plans to create an open source mp3 player . As was expected the open source movement continues to grow -- Babak Nivi reported on open source hardware not too long ago as well, which is another sign that the iPod may be...

Should Companies Create Commons to Foster Innovation?

From OnTheCommons : The point is that even industry needs a robust and open public domain in order to innovate. That’s a key reason why so many software giants are turning to open source software, and why IBM has made dozens of its software patents available to competitors (while...