Swedish ‘Big Brother’ rears it’s ugly face!

George Orwell must be turning in his grave after hearing that the Swedish Riksdagen has legalized the ‘penultimate’ decimation of western democracy. All content and communication, private or otherwise, emails, telephone calls, Facebook, IM,  are to be scruitinized by Forsvarets Radioanstalt (FRA), and suspected deviants of terrorism and sexual & financial depravity will be incarcerated without trial in the Swedish Archipelago. (did I say Gulag Archipelago (Russian: Архипелаг ГУЛАГ)  see Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn). Most telecom traffic through Telias’ network outside Sweden must transit Swedish cyberspace en route to  all other nations. I dare not risk  my private emails becoming the property of religious zealots in the Riksdagen, so I have cancelled my ISP service with immediate effect, and I am now forced to use my neighbours wireless LAN (with his approbation), until I figure out who will guarantee my privacy!. Per Kølle of DKHostmaster the national Danish domain registrar, has similarly warned all Danish Companies to avoid contact with Swedish ISP’s, or get a decent encryption capability. Who suggested  state sponsored industrial espionage is a falacy? Now I know why the Irish voted no to Lisbon- the real fear is that this social disease could spread to the bureaucrats in Brussels. Interestingly not one non-Swedish Government leader has openly castigated this incursion of human rights. However they have threatened 55.000 housewives (most farmers) for voting no. Note: This Blog is not available for Google aggregation in Sweden and China

Tony Blair and ‘Open’

I met the illustrious ex-UK prime minister Tony Blair yesterday at Børsens Executive Forum. As an Irishman, I was never enamoured much by Blair, but I must say he converted me! His proclamation that the World is going east and his conviction that we need to ‘open’ up our global world makes him one of ours. He does know how to bring split factions together as it is to  his credit, (together with the female appeaser Bill Clinton)that Northern Ireland is a beacon of human reconciliation for the World. His focus on ‘OPEN’ is a direct appeal to reorient our staid national ridden society to view our opportunities as a universal ‘web’. It is wonderful to see the ‘establishment’ finally ‘get it’. I hope his message rubs off on his fellow European politicians! We should not have to wait for them to retire  to see the light. Blair is worth his speaking fee.

The neural Tabscott

Don Tabscott of ‘Wikinomics’ fame told many of us today how the ’synapsis’ of neural progression for young people wired to the user ‘net generation’ are distinctly apart from the rest of us. The neural hardwiring is distinct for youthful homo sapiens. I wonder where he has that from? Yes, I know the kids multitask and blogger.com is garnering more attention than CNN! But to suggest that mental neural wiring for the young is somhow to blame for this media malaise is plain silly. I will continue my Tabscott analysis in the coming days

Is TV2 a public service?

Every private media company i speak to these days, mention little of the competition between themselves. Does Bonnier really compete with Aller? Do the newspapers compete with each other? Forgive me for saying this they don’t! Although there are 4 free daily newspapers in this small country of Denmark and just as many paid daily national newspapers, there is a sort of club between the old guard Berlingske og JP Politiken, while the renegade Icelanders and MTG Metro are just a nuisance to the established order, and no more than this. No my friends the real competitor to this collection of Magazine and newspaper publishers is in reality none other than TV2, a state owned and controlled public broadcaster.

 The broadcaster has a popular on-line presence with a subscription base(and advertising) and has among other things created TV2 sport with an exclusive partnership for MTG Viasat. It has launched a book publishing unit and a commercial radio 2 station. Now I wonder whats next, a magazine for the broad masses to complement content on-line? What about another free daily newspaper?

Is the company being fattened up at the expense of private media companies, in order for the government to make a sell-off to the same private contenders, and consequently double the revenue to the exchequer? Now whats wrong with that?

High Definition TV, What for?

High Definition TV is not for the Danes. The state has granted in its wisdom Kr 4.7 Billion (€626 million), for a new TV building that will most likely be viewed in low definition picture  quality by the Danes, at least until 2012! Around 1 million households have invested in flat screen high resolution devices that can not receive decent picture quality from the public Digital Terrestrial Network, unless of course they pay private Sattellite or Cable companies for the pleasure. I am one of them and subscribe to the Murdoch owned Sky network with Movies, Documenteries and best of all Champions League Soccer matches in Full HD 1080 quality. The odd thing is that I had to use my brothers address in West London borough of Harrow to access these services, as I was refused them with a Danish address, North of Copenhagen. For those of you who really want to understand the contorted logic of this situation you can follow the explanation in Joachim Sperlings blog today http://sperlingske.blogs.business.dk/2007/12/06/medieforliget-giver-darlige-tv-signaler/

Are PR people Spam?

Just read this piece from  NY Times ( now free of charge yesterday):

The gloves came off last week in the perpetual “hacks vs. flacks” battle after Chris Anderson, the executive editor of Wired magazine, chided “lazy flacks” who deluge him with news releases “because they can’t be bothered to find out who on my staff, if anyone, might actually be interested” in what they’re pitching. “I’ve had it,” Anderson wrote on his blog on Oct. 29. “I get more than 300 e-mails a day and my problem isn’t spam … it’s P.R. people,” 

Exactly the issue, wanton PR is rampant and destroying itself in the interactive age. PR is no longer an afterthought for a company that decides to promote postive things about itself. I get about 150 PR and spam mails daily and they all end up in my filter file. The PR industry has to move from merely spining stories and testamonials to becoming accolades for a cause. Quite honestly any leader of a company that is not articulate in his opinion and can convince employees, shareholders and customers of his value, should not be there. A spin-doctor is a death sentence.

Is Google positioning itself to buy Microsoft?

Heard on the street this morning…. Google is a phenomenon not a media company!

The phenomenon known as Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) is beyond remarkable. It defies almost any MBA course case study. This company was founded less than 10 years ago in 1998. The company went public in August 2004 and has already captured a market capitalization of $225.70 billion and commands a share price of $723.00. The company has delivered earnings and revenue consistency that almost belies logic. It has literally beaten every quarter’s estimates and yet provides little to no guidance. In the next five years, Google will be bigger than Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) in the most important metric: market capitalization.

Microsoft currently has a Market Capitalization of $344 Billion and its price per share has remained steady averaging just $32.05 a share price with 9.4 billion shares outstanding.

Google already dominates the Global search market with both Microsoft and Yahoo just barely keeping hold of their dwindling market share.

But where does Google go from here? With expected earnings per share this year ending December 2007 at over $15 and December 2008 earnings per share over $20 (that’s of course before Google beats the estimates and analysts raise them again), the next stop is $800-925.

Google has an incredible opportunity to race up to a $500 billion market capitalization within the next five years if not sooner, and it will be bigger than Microsoft

Joost up your life!

The two file sharing internet entrepreneurs, Danish born Janus Friis and his Swedish partner, Niklas Zennström have finally released JOOST, the much hyped  global IP TV streaming inititiative for the planet. Expectations are of an equivalent Skype order of magnitude of up to 100 million viewers in three years according to Friis this morning! Some going, and with a bit of luck,  just might make it. Afer all there are 6 billion inhabitants on the planet indicating the market target for JOOST is about 1.6% of mankind, roughly the price of a skype-out call in cents.

There are of course many other contenders for the prize, but then this was also the case with music file sharing and voice over IP. The reality is that YouTube has already passed this target for social video networking, and with the unflinching performance capability of file sharing in the video environment for professional broadcasting, the Skype and Kasaa dynamic-duo may have launched the next big thing.  They need it now that the bonus of $1.7 billion from eBay has dissapated into the sun. The question is how long will this continue before Microsoft follows in the footsteps of eBay and pays an extraordinary (over) price to join the JOOST party? After all that is what this is all about.

YouSEE TDC Kable TV

TDC Cable TV Network has henceforth declared that they shall for ever more be referred to as ‘YouSee’ to take advantage of the hip brand status attained by social marketing video giant ‘YouTube’ Of course Google owner of ‘YouTube’ is currently sueing ‘letmypeoplego.com for the subdomain ‘JewTube’.com. By the way ‘j’ is pronounced ‘y’ in this part of the world. McDonalds have on many occassions established precedence in winning any attempt to usurp the Mc title in association with any food marketing attempts by unwary innocent souls, even for the sale of sausages! Now we sit back and see what ’YouSee’ is what you get’ and hope TDC lawyers can win on this occassion.

Free video on your mobile

My colleague Neil Struther of Jupiter Research has discovered that forty-two percent of consumers have an interest in watching free, ad-supported video on their mobile phones. Now just think about it what an opportunity for the telecoms business to provide a mobile ‘you tube’. I wonder who will take a shot at that, TDC Mobile or Telenor, or both. Now just think about mobile video search as the next big thing.