Archives for July 2, 2007

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NetSuite IPO Will Soon Cost Me …

… my  #2 position on Google. smile_embaressed.  It’s actually quite amazing: fellow Enterprise Irregular Jason Wood and I had a good dialogue about NetSuite’s long-expected IPO, and voila! Jason’s post is #1, mine is #2 on Google. 

 I suppose it won’t last long with the flurry of news… but it’s a good change.  NetSuite has a good product, I’m happy for them. clap

Related posts:  Business Week, Between the Lines, CNET News.com, HipMojo.com , Tech Trader Daily, Techdirt.

 

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Your $1,500 iPhone – the Cost of iDay

Were you in line to buy the first batch of iPhones on Friday? If so, you’re probably the proud owner of a $1,500 phone … at least. The base price for the two models is $499 and $599, but you probably could you resist getting some accessories. Did you spend 5 hours in line? 10? A day and a half like Robert Scoble? How much is your time worth?

If we’re looking at $100 an hour (and frankly, almost everyone in the famous Palo Alto line is in a higher bracket) the real cost of an average iPhone purchased on iDay could very well be $1,500 or more.

But hey, you could have done worse… by buying a spot from this poor(?) fellow for $5,000 (photo credit: Engadget). (Oh, wait, it came with a free chair, what a deal…)

The real losers are those who stood on line all day in the hope of making a quick buck on eBay. Corey Spring posted an analysis of 933 eBay auctions, and came to two conclusions:

  • Half (52%) of the iPhone auctions expired without a single bid,
  • Those that actually concluded with a deal, yielded an average profit of $54.43 (yes, a lousy fifty bucks).

Factoring in the time they spent in line (or the average $15/hour some paid for their “stand-ins”), it’s probably fair to say that eBayers are at a net loss. And they did not have the experience, either smile_omg

Update: The cutest iPhone users 🙂

Related posts: Scobleizer, Good Morning Silicon Valley, Official Zooomr Blog, Guardian Unlimited, Thomas Hawk’s Digital …, B.L. Ochman’s weblog, Incremental Blogger, Feld Thoughts , CNet, Newsvine and Macsimum News

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Zoho Office on Facebook

Zoho Office on iPhone is yesterday’s news: today they are on Facebook, becoming the first Web-based Office Suite available on the new “platform”. You can browse, display and edit your Zoho Writer, Sheet and Show documents, or create new ones.

Quite frankly I’m still not sure what I am doing on Facebook. I’ve long considered LinkedIn my “home base” and resisted joining other networks, but since Facebook opened up to the world, and more importantly since publishing their API’s and becoming Platform Central, I’ve received so many invitations from my business contacts, I could no longer resist. Sounds familiar? smile_wink I still don’t know where this will lead – just read Fred Wilson’s post on Facebook’s Age Distribution. It’s still predominantly a college-age network.

Nevertheless, it’s a huge distribution channel for Zoho: discount or not, college students are not exactly known to shell out dollars for software, including MS Office, they live in a wired environment and tend to be online and collaborate a lot. Whether Facebook becomes a “businessy” network or not, just for the student market alone this was a smart move on Zoho’s part.

Related posts: Mashable, Wired, Between the Lines, Download Squad, All Facebook, Webware, Accman, Insider Chatter, TechCrunch, Venture Chronicles, Rev2.org, Techscape

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