California Taxes The Net...Amazon Bails

File this under "How dumb can you be?"

This is what I call a "rupt", a catalyst that leads to a big wave.

California now requiring all online retailers to start collecting taxes from California customers.

And the result?

Amazon and online retailer Overstock.com Inc. told thousands of California Internet marketing affiliates that they will stop paying commissions for referrals of so-called click-through customers


Beginning Friday, Amazon.com and other large out-of-state retailers will be required to collect sales taxes on purchases that their California customers make online.

The revenue California expects to generate from this tax($317m) will be minor compared to the jobs they lose and OTHER tax revenue lost from affiliate revenue.

A bankrupt state implementing anti-business idea....not surprising. There are much better ways to get that $317m than to jeopardize hundreds, if not thousands of jobs.

I see border states getting an influx of new "friends".











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Group Buying Industry Is Definitely A Bubble

Yes it's a bubble without a doubt.

File this under "Are You Kidding Me?"

Groupon IPO proposed valuation is $30B valuation, and today the valuation for Living Social IPO is $15B.

This entire space is a commodity with no barriers to entry.

The two largest media/social sites, Google and FaceBook have launched their own group buying initiatives.

Prediction: Groupon will not only the fastest company to generate $1b in revenues, but also to hit $1b in sales and go bankrupt.

Am I missing something?



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Weekly Highlights

Highlights for the week. Things that will make you ponder.


Apple, Intel and others bid for Nortel's patents link

The trove of 6,000 patents cover key swaths of the high-tech world, including Wi-Fi, social networking and a fourth-generation wireless technology now being deployed called LTE.


Largest Internet real estate agent (GoDaddy) getting bought out KKR to buy Godaddy Incidentally IPv6 launches ad ICANN introduce new suffix for domain names. A busy week for the Net.

Black babies outnumber white babies for first time Whites lose majority among babies
fast-growing younger ethnic populations that could reshape government policies

Google uses behavioral targeting for ads link

IPv6 launches. An IP address for every physical object link

Genetic breast cancer test launched Brevagen launches breast cancer test

FDA approves first autologous filler for wrinkles link

A "reverse Groupon" site launches link Does group buying change?

BestBuy enters cloud space for music. Can this turn around dying retailer? link

Amazon enters tablet space. How will they incorporate their "one click" buy technology? link

Digital camera industry gets disrupted link

Mobile apps replacing mobile websites. What does this do to hosting business? link

DARPA funds cyber attack technology link

ICANN to introduce new domain suffix. What does this do to cybersquatters and the search engine optimization biz? link





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The End Of The Internet..Or Just The Beginning?

Imagine every physical object being connected to the Net.

Soon every Internet-connected device anywhere in the world will have its own IP address.

This month's World IPv6 Day served as a test run for a protocol that should dramatically increase how many devices can be connected to the Internet.

The new protocol will be crucial if many more objects—including light bulbs, kitchen appliances, and environmental sensors—are to have IP addresses, connect to the Internet, and send and receive data.

The new system allows for around 340 trillion, trillion, trillion addresses—nearly 50 octillion for every person on earth.



From Tech Review The End of The Internet






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Breakthrough Technology That Will Make Digital Cameras Obsolete

“Lytro’s breakthrough technology will make conventional digital cameras obsolete,” Andreessen Horowitz general partner Marc Andreessen said in a statement.


Lytro

full story


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Are Tech Valuations Ready To Explode?

Ben Horowitz, a highly successful VC, says that major technology cycles generally last 25 years, with the "bulk of the purchases" happening the last 5-10 years as late adopters sign on.

Using this as a frame of reference he says we are "poised to hit the major adoption wave for the Internet technology platform over the next 8 years."

Others are looking at valuations of LinkedIn, Groupon, FaceBook and are warning of a Tech Bubble

full story

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T-Commerce..Television Commerce Coming

The television is the next display to become interactive and offer plenty of ecommerce opportunities. An Internet enabled TV allows a consumer to purchase an item featured in an ad or on a TV show.

What will be really important?.....targeted advertising. Once the Net comes to your TV, delivering targeted ads will be more important than ever.

What company or technology enables links within a video?..there's your goldmine.

TV Meets eCommerce

Internet connected TV's will drive new commerce opportunities called "t-Commerce" or commerce through the television.


If we consider how much the Internet changed PC's and drove new businesses, new experiences, and new levels of social interactions, it is only logical to assume that the same will be true with connected and smart TV's.




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Personalized Medicine Has Arrived

What is the next big thing after the Internet?

What is predicted to be one of the biggest transformational changes, finally arrived today.

Scientists look for the causes of diseases that in turn might lead to new drugs or diagnostic tests.

Mapping someone's genetic code to create personalized medicine.

The key thing to remember, using gene mapping to create personal medicine will not just treat a disease, but CURE it.

Personal Genome Map Solves Teen Illness

U.S. researchers are reporting one of the first examples where mapping someone's genetic code led to better treatment.

Doctors could not tell what was causing 14-year-old Alexis Beery's breathing problems.

Then scientists at Houston's Baylor College of Medicine discovered a gene flaw. That led to a new prescription that has her back to running track.

Want to know what company owns patents to over 95% of the genome?

If any company wants to breed a better tomato, design a better drug, or do ANY type of genomic mapping on ANY living organism using 95% of the genome, they will have to pay this company hidden from Wall St. a fee. Fortune 500 companies have already started to license the use of this database.

To find out who this company is, email me. (subject line 95% genome owner).




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What Happens To Utilities When Consumers Can Create Or Harness Their Own Power

Is the utility industry the next major industry to become extinct?

What happens to the power industry (utilities) when consumers are able to "create"/harness their own power?

The newspaper industry started to die as soon as TV branched out to more than 13 channels. The knockdown punch came when the Internet arrived. People had an infinite dynamic choices to get their news.

While there aren't an infinite amount of options for power (yet), solar and wind options will take away some of the utility industry's monopoly.


Brad Tirpak, Managing Partner at the private investment fund Locke Partners made the case that:


electric utilities are as woefully unprepared for the coming disruption of cheap, distributed solar power as newspapers were unprepared for the disruption of the internet in 2000

His conclusion?

Regulated utilities should be able to handle the imminent changes to the industry brought about by the implementation of solar energy and other renewable sources.

Electric Utilities Today Like Newspapers in 2000



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SPDY About To Make The Web A Lot Faster

How long does the average user give a website to load before leaving?

Welcome To A Faster Web

SPDY, a protocol Google revealed in late 2009, dramatically speeds up Web page loading by changing the way that browsers communicate with servers.

Website optimization company Strangeloop has built SPDY into its flagship product Site Optimizer, software that sits in between a website and its users, and adjusts the site's code to make pages load more quickly.

Strangeloop's customers will have the ability to turn the protocol on easily; in tests, the protocol has sped up websites by 10 to 20 percent.


More on SPDY here

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Has Interest In Facebook Peaked?

Just a blip or the start of something bigger?


Facebook sees big drop in traffic

"overall growth has been lower than normal for the second month straight"

"This is the first time the country has lost users in the past year"

Facebook shares have recently fallen in the private marketplace, even after LinkedIn's wildly successful IPO.

What is Facebook losing traffic to? Another networking site or is this just a typical summer (outside enjoying the day not sitting at a desk all day) normalcy?

Have people become inundated with the posts from hundreds of their "friends" and tuned out? Facebook is really like an RSS feed of your friends.Have people started to unsubscribe?

I have noticed a slowdown in my friend's posts on my Facebook feed for several months. I would love to see a chart of average number of "friends" each user has, and per each age group/sex. I think that would be a better stat.

As you get older, you realize time is a very precious commodity. Maybe people are doing some "friend" spring cleaning.





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Biggest Creation Of Wealth In History Of Business

That headline got your attention.

Seeking Alpha has a nice summary cloud computing phenomenon.

According to analysts, this investment opportunity will dwarf the internet and tech boom of the 90s.

the cloud could literally eliminate the need for personal computers. The cloud and its applications will most likely make handheld smartphones the computers for the vast majority of the world.

I am compiling a list of my nanocap (under $100m mkt cap) cloud computing plays.

More on cloud computing.





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New Messaging Applications From Apple And Google Threaten Carriers Cash Cow

Looks like one of the walls is coming down on the garden.

This week, Apple Inc. showed off an application that will allow iPhone and iPad owners to bypass carriers and send text messages over the Internet to other people with Apple devices.

Google Inc., whose Android software is the most popular operating system on smartphones, has also recently worked on a messaging application , a person familiar with the matter said.




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The End Of Moore's Law?

With the transformation of cloud computing coming and all of the "processing" to

take place on the Net, will PC speeds matter any more?

Or because it will take a while for the mobile phone to shift to cloud computing, will chip companies place their focus on making faster chips for mobile?



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Should CEOs Be Required To Get Certified?

You need a license to get married, practice law, drive a car, fly a plane and even go fishing.

A license is even required to sell securities(stocks) to the public. But there is NO requirement to run one of those companies.


In order to run a publicly traded corporation, the S.E.C should require some type of certification.

I am seeing too many CEOs that think they own the ship and have forgotten their job is to steer it.



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Internet Traffic To Grow 4 Fold In 4 Years

Cisco, in its fifth annual Visual Networking Index forecast, also said that the number of network-connected devices by 2015 will reach more than 15 billion, or about twice the world’s population.

Cisco says the increase in traffic from 2014 to 2015 alone will be 200 exabytes, more than the total IP traffic generated in 2010.

Some other staggering stats:

Mobile Internet traffic will increase 26x

Video traffic will increase 14x

The highlight of the article.... "Wi-Fi devices will for the first time use more bandwidth than wired devices in 2015"

"Wi-Fi will take up 46.2 percent of all IP traffic in 2015"

What companies and products will be winners/losers from this?

full story



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What Happens To Internet Traffic With iCloud Service?

What does Apple's iCloud service do to Internet traffic?




Cell providers are already pushed to their limits with the iPhone but the iCloud service could force them to offload traffic to WiFi networks.


iCloud, a service that means music, photos, and documents saved onto an Apple device will soon appear almost instantly on any other Apple product that a person owns.


(Here's the key part)
When an iCloud user takes a photo or saves a document with an Apple device, that file is instantly uploaded to iCloud over either Wi-Fi or the cellular network.

That person's other Apple devices then automatically download the file as soon as possible. That means someone taking a day trip can take photos on an iPhone and then flip through them on their iPad as soon as they return home.

Does that mean EVERY time you take a picture with your phone it automatically pushes it to iCloud?

As the cameras take higher resolution pics, the amount of data being sent will grow too.

Apple Puts The Cloud Into All Of Its Devices


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Groupon Gets Into Pawn Business

Apparently the founders of Groupon saw the writing on the wall and have backed the next big thing in ecommerce, pawn shops.

Lightbank run by the founders of Groupon led a round of financing for Pawngo

The Pawngo business model, as CEO Todd Hills explained it, is aimed at people who need between $1,500 and $15,000. They send in information about items they wish to pawn and Pawngo’s valuation lab in Denver returns an estimate within an hour.

How about creating or funding a site that provides a secondary market for groupons?

You have to wonder how valuable the Groupon email subscriber list is and what other "deals" they could offer.

Story from All Things Digital





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Recommended Reading..

Books For Pondering

I read a lot of books but these are the books that have torn pages and have provided much pondering.

Please suggest any you think should be added to the list.

Millionaire Fastlane  M.J. DeMarco (probably the best on the list for deciding on what kind of business to start)

Nail It then Scale It   Nathan Furr & Paul Ahlstrom (Once you found your idea, the necessary steps to grow rapidly)

How To Build A Billion Dollar App George Berkowski (all of the necessary steps for creating a successful app)

The 4-Hour Workweek

Probably the best book for the entrepreneur. Loads of great ways to build a business. This should be required reading for every college student.

Choose Yourself James Altucher (how to think of ideas for businesses)


Get Rich Click

If you want to make money online, this book is invaluable. Marc offers plenty of ways to use the Internet as a commerce platform. Required reading for ANYONE that owns a website.

Zero To One Peter Thiel Notes on startups, or how to build the future



The Gorilla Game Geoffrey Moore
Crossing The Chasm  Geoffrey Moore
Inside The Tornado  Geoffrey Moore

Trend Commandments

The Tipping Point
Malcolm Gladwell highlights how concepts and new technologies become accepted and the new norm.

Stock/Investing Books


 Trade Like An O'Neil Disciple

If you have ever wondered how some investors are able to generate 1000% plus percent returns, this is the book. Using William Oneil's CANSLIM guidance, this book shows you how to find your big winners (and big losers for shorting).

There is one rule in the book that I have used for years that MUST be followed. (email me if you want to know)

Insider Buy SuperStocks Jesse Stine

Trend Following Michael Covel

 ChangeWave 2.0

Ex FOX News anchor Tobin Smith (Bulls and Bears regular) highlights how to spot a "Changewave", or as others would call it, a trend. Like any wave, trying to ride it too early or late will be unsuccessful. The book also discusses how to determine how big a wave will be and how to find the companies involved. Want to spot the "next big thing"?..this book will show you how.

Misc.

Data and Goliath Bruce Schneir

The Third Wave Steve Case




What books have inspired you and should be required reading?

Google's ChromeBook...The End of the PC?

When Google launches their Chromebook it will disrupt the personal computing industry.

Why would anyone need a PC? You wont.

All of your data and computing will be on the "cloud", not on the PC. It will have NO programs, everything will be web based.

Do you know which industries and products will now face extinction when this device is introduced?

(Update Sept '11)
Coming soon..the end of the media player too. The company with the "playerless patent application" has some media players concerned.


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