Posts from Sony

May 6, 2011

Revenge Of The Nerds

Sony has a mess on its hands as a result of the numerous hacker attacks on their services. When thinking about this situation, it bears stating that companies and governments ought to be careful messing around with the hacker culture.

As I understand it, celebrated hacker George Hotz hacked the PlayStation 3 and Sony's lawyers went after him hard. What we are seeing now is the revenge of the nerds against Sony.

I am not saying what George did was right (although I am very sympathetic to hackers opening devices like the iPhone, the Kinect, the PlayStation, etc so that developers can build on them). I am not saying that Sony's lawyers weren't in the right when they sued George. This is not a post about what is right and wrong, legally or morally.

This is a post about the realities of the world we live in. Hacker culture is strong and getting stronger. Companies and governments should not underestimate the power of hacker culture to extract revenge on institutions they feel have wronged them. Unfortunately, it looks like Sony did just that and is now dealing with the repurcussions.

#Web/Tech

Oct 20, 2010

TV and The Digital Living Room

Mark Suster wrote a long investment research report on the "The Future of TV and Digital Living Room" opportunity on his blog last night. I don't know how he has time to crank out these amazing blog posts on a regular basis. But he did it and it is very comprehensive. You should read it.

We've got a horse in this race with Boxee. I spend a lot of time thinking about where this sector is going. And I agree with almost all of Mark's analysis and conclusions. This is an investable space with big outcomes. But you have to swim with sharks (content owners) and walk at the feet of elephants (Google, Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Samsung, etc).

The Internet has mostly been a level playing field where the best product wins. That has not been the case in the world of big media and CE. Money talks loudly in that world. So it is still unclear whether Internet economics will work in this sector. But I am hopeful. If it prevails, this will be a very interesting market sector to invest in for the next decade (at least).

Yesterday I was at Sony's offices in NYC and got to play with the new GoogleTV powered big screens. Here's a screen shot of my twitter stream on the Sony GoogleTV (with the tweet I wrote on it on top).

Sony has some cool products coming out that are powered by GoogleTV including big screens like this one and blu-ray players that double as GoogleTV boxes. If you are working in this sector or are interested in seeing where all of this is headed, you should go to a store and play around with them.

I don't think AppleTV, GoogleTV, and Boxee are yet what they can be and will be. There is more high quality streaming content available every day. These software/services for managing, navigating, and discovering it will improve a lot in the coming years.

But I do believe that the old model of TV and Film creation, distribution, and consumption is changing rapidly. Mark's "report" outlines how and why. And with change comes opportunity. In this case big opportunity.

#VC & Technology #Web/Tech

Jul 23, 2010

Sony Dash

A couple months ago, my friends at Sony sent me a new device called the Sony Dash. I brought it home and gave it to the Gotham Gal. She is using it as a bedside clock radio and not taking advantage of very many of its features. But my son expressed an interest in having one on his bedside table and so I got another.

He set it up to do four things; tell him what time it is, tell him what the weather is, give him his ESPN fix, and give him his Facebook fix. The clock rotates through sports news from ESPN, and photos and status updates from his friends on Facebook.

Here's the clock showing sports news from ESPN:

And here is the clock showing status updates from Facebook (sorry about the blurry photo):

In light of all the buzz about Flipboard, which I still can't connect to Facebook and Twitter, I think we are seeing an important new development. Social media clients are moving beyond the desktop, laptop, and smartphone onto new kinds of devices like the iPad and the Dash.

I was skeptical about the Dash when I first used it. It is a bit clunky to set up. The UI could use some serious simplification. But once you set it up, it's largely a "set it and forget it" kind of thing. And every time I walk into my son's room, I learn something about sports and his friends. It is actually an excellent user experience for a bedside clock, at least it is for my son.

You can connect the Dash to much more than ESPN and Facebook. It does Twitter, of course, and YouTube, and a ton of other web services too. It's a bit pricey for a bedside clock, but I expect the cost will come down pretty quickly for devices like this and we should be looking at sub $100 price points in the next year. If you are into gadgets and the web, this could be for you.

#Web/Tech