b.cognosco
Where leaping to conclusions is my primary form of forward motion.
Most Popular
- Historical Yearly Average Gasoline Prices
- Outlook 2003 Message-ID Insanity
- Real-time Sand Animations
- Adobe Acrobat 7
- Adobe Announces Name Change and New Product
- Largest Technology Boondoggle in Public Education History
- Yahoo! Buys del.icio.us
- Skype - Disruptive, Not Compelling
- Aluminum Christmas Tree Museum
- Network Printing Hell and windoze XP
Book Reviews
Recently
Theme Design
IT Support
Hosting
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Need Creative Commons Counsel
My friend Matt Mower is doing some interesting stuff with digital identity over at PAOGA. The company's mission is to give us - you, me, the 'consumer', the real person - control of our data. Data that is now spread across, on average, nearly 1,000 different computer systems around the world. It's a big challenge. A revolutionary idea. An idea that needs to be championed and pushed and grown.PAOGA is almost ready to beta test an early version of their PAOGAPerson persona management system. They'd like to work with Creative Commons to develop appropriate licensing for this application. It seems clear that there is a need for licensing. After all, the whole purpose of controlling our own data is to control the how and where of its use.
But so far Matt's inquires to the CC organization in London have gone nowhere. Can anyone offer assistance or a good CC contact?
Posted by: 
Terry Frazier at 12:00 AM
| Permanent Link
| Trackback URL |
Categories: Business & Finance, Copyright
Terry Frazier at 12:00 AM
| Permanent Link
| Trackback URL | Categories: Business & Finance, Copyright
Thursday, August 10, 2006
What Not To Do
Someone has no doubt spent millions developing this beautiful, and utterly unusable, digital book interface. (hat tip to Ernie.)
Posted by: Terry Frazier at 12:00 AM
| Permanent Link
| Trackback URL |
Categories: Books, Business & Finance, Future of Print, Publishing
Terry Frazier at 12:00 AM
| Permanent Link
| Trackback URL | Categories: Books, Business & Finance, Future of Print, Publishing
Thursday, February 9, 2006
Antergy
What’s the opposite of Synergy? It’s Antergy. Oligopoly Watch coins a new term for the cyclic stupidity of the corporate world. And, as is always the case, CxOs and consultants make beaucoup bucks on both ends – buying up things that don’t work together under the pretense of synergy, later selling them off on the pretense of releasing value. One metaphor for this is the human body. The body takes in various foodstuffs, holds onto them for a while, strips out the valuable components, and excretes the remainder. Somewhere in the process energy is created and we, the owners of the body, benefit from the process with health and life. So it is with corporations, except the CxOs and consultants are the ones who absorb all the energy in the form of bonuses and fees. The customers, employees, and shareholders often get only the excrement that comes out at the end.
Time-Warner sells book unit
One day after we note the frantic rush by the media oligopolies to spin off non-core assets then it happens once again. Time-Warner, under heavy pressure from a small group of determined investors, announced it has sold off its book division, to France's Lagardere, in a $538 million deal.
This is no big surprise. Time-Warner shopped around the book division three years ago, but has not until now found a buyer at an agreeable price. Reports are that the book division had a record year in 2005. Imprints owned by Time-Warner include Warner Books; Little, Brown & Co.; Arcade; Back Bay; and Bulfinch Press
Time-Warner was a second-tier player, #5 in the US publishing industry, considerably smaller than Bertelsmann (Random House) and Pearson (Penguin). That industry shows little added growth, making opportunities for growth without acquisitions unlikely.
Lagardere is best known for publishing magazine like Elle, Car & Driver, and Paris Match through its Hachette Filipacci division and books through its French-based Hachette division. The company has some online and newspaper interests as well. It also has minority holdings in such unrelated industries as aerospace and cable TV. It will become the #3 book publisher worldwide after the deal. Lagardere bought British publisher Hodder Headline in 2004.
For Time Warner it's yet another sell-off of a division. The company has sold off the Warner Music Group, its share of Comedy Central TV station, and some sports teams. It entered into an alliance over AOL with Google, and rumors are always strong that it will sell off the whole AOL division (if it can find a buyer). In addition, it recently combined its WB network with Universal's UPN in a 50/50 split.
The Time-Warner proxy rebels led by Carl Icahn have announced they want the company split even further, into four new firms, namely Time-Warner Cable, motion pictures and TV networks, magazine publishing, and AOL. As with Viacom, the idea is to "release" a lot of pent-up value, the very opposite of synergy, namely antergy.
Posted by: Terry Frazier at 12:34 PM
| Permanent Link
| Trackback URL |
Categories: Business & Finance, Strategy
Terry Frazier at 12:34 PM
| Permanent Link
| Trackback URL | Categories: Business & Finance, Strategy
Syndication
Contact
Presence
This Page was last updated: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 22:06:57 GMT
License: Unless otherwise expressly stated all original material, of whatever nature, created by Terry W. Frazier and included in this website, its related pages and archives, is licensed under a Creative Commons License, some rights reserved.
Disclaimer: This is a personal website. The views expressed here are those of the author and no one else. This is also an experiment in thinking out loud, so there are no warranties as to the reliability or accuracy of anything presented here. Source material -- references, citations, quotes, photos, and other elements -- are gathered from publicly available materials and some of it may be restricted. Any trademarks used are the property of their respective creators or owners. All are reproduced under the principle of Fair Use.