Common Paradox Tech Blog

Legend has it that when Cortes landed in Mexico in the 1500s, he ordered his men to burn the ships that had brought them there to remove the possibility of doing anything other than going forward into the unknown. Marc Andreessen has the same advice for old media companies: “Burn the boats.”

Yesterday, Andreessen was in New York City and we met up. We got to talking about how media companies are handling the digital disruption of the Internet when he brought up the Cortes analogy. In particular, he was talking about print media such as newspapers and magazines, and his longstanding recommendation that they should shut down their print editions and embrace the Web wholeheartedly. “You gotta burn the boats,” he told me, “you gotta commit.” His point is that if traditional media companies don’t burn their own boats, somebody else will.

Rupert Murdoch is bringing a Wall Street Journal app to the iPad the media mogul confirmed in his own paper:

“In fact, we’ve been allowed to work on one, and it’s under padlock and key. The key is turned by Apple every night. But we will be on that with The Wall Street Journal.” [...]

Wall Street Journal, GQ, Vanity Fair, Wired, New Yorker, Glamour, Penguin Apps Coming to iPad is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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Hey, have you heard the news? Apple’s making a tablet, and it’s going to be awesome. It’s going to have a touchscreen, and it’s gonna be a tablet. And it’s going to be awesome!

Confused? Then you haven’t been listening to the Maximum PC podcast. But Gordon’s rant notwithstanding, Apple really is making a tablet (we think), and according to the Wall Street Journal, HarperCollins Publishers is currently hammering out a contract with Apple to provide electronic books for the upcoming tablet.

Like everything else surrounding the Apple tablet, details are fuzzy. It looks as though HarperCollins will set the prices of the e-books, and that they’ll come with some additional features, but it’s anyone’s guess whether they’ll be sold in a new e-book store or via the iTunes Store.

Either way, HarperCollins is turning the heat up on Amazon, which currently rules the e-book kingdom, at least until Apple finally starts shipping its long rumored tablet.

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, Dell plans to slash 16 percent of its 4,500 workforce in Malaysia, which breaks down to 700 pink slips by the end of June 2010. About the same time the job cuts were announced, several price mistakes began appearing on Dell’s website. Coincidence? Perhaps, but as a modern day Spock would say, that s**t ain’t logical (NSFW – language).

The pricing SNAFUs inevitably ended up on deal sites like SlickDeals.net, including a 3.2GHz dual-core Xeon 5060 processor for $10.99, Xeon E3110 for $16.99, Xeon E5450 for $39.99, and a Xeon L5340 for $12.99. We’d go with the Xeon 5060, or maybe one of each at those prices.

Not all of the pricing mistakes worked to the consumers advantage. For example, Dell’s website listed a 120GB SATA HDD for a Dell Studio 1735 at $21,000, a laser mouse at $4,000, and an Inspiron AC adapter for $710. Not a big deal if you’ve ever shopped at an Apple Store.

So what do you think, an honest mistake (several of them), or scorned employees? Sound off in the comments section below!

How Should AT&T Fix Their Network?(polls)

AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega has told the Wall Street Journal that despite what he said back in October and earlier in December:

“We have not made any decision to implement tiered pricing.”

Which is a weasel-wordy way of saying, contrary to previous statements that suggested they [...]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

AT&T Has “Not Made Any Decision to Implement Tiered Pricing”

When Sony announced the Reader Daily Edition back in August, they hadn’t confirmed which newspapers would be offered alongside the ebooks. It’s just News Corp titles for now, with The Wall Street Journal and New York Post being confirmed.

A daily news summary will be on offer for WSJ readers, in addition to the digital version of the paper. The digital copy of the paper will sell punters back $14.99 a month, with the daily summary another $5, and the New York Post will cost $9.99 a month, exclusively sold on the Reader Daily Edition.

On sale sometime before 2010 (that’s 13 days, then), it’ll cost $399.99. [WSJ]

MySpace, The Wall Street Journal and the World Economic Forum have announced their second annual contest to send a citizen journalist to Davos, Switzerland.

The user will be a special correspondent at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2010. It’s important to note, however, that only users from the United States and the United Kingdom may apply.

If you’re keen to experience some of that high politics glamor (and visit Switzerland), here’s what you need to do: First, you must explain why you deserve to be a reporter at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos. Second, you must answer (in video form) one of the questions below:

· Name two issues — one global and one local — in which you’ve been actively engaged over the past year. What have they taught you about your impact in the world?

· Which country caught your attention most this year? What are the primary issues facing its citizens and how would you resolve them?

· What pressing global issue has been underreported? Why is the international community neglecting the topic? How would you draw attention to mobilize support?

For more information on the “MySpace Citizen Journalist” contest, visit www.myspace.com/myspacejournal.

Tags: citizen journalism, myspace, wall street journal

Once again, MySpace is partnering with The Wall Street Journal, which are both owned by News Corp, to send one MySpace user to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January. Dubbed the “MySpace Citizen Journalist,” the contest will let one lucky winner, who is chosen by a panel of correspondents, join the Davos press corps.

The winner will have to use the MySpace platform to report on conference news. And MySpace will expand the contestant pool and accept entries from users in the United States and the United Kingdom this year. Details are here. You choose one question to answer and record a video with your response to one of the questions below:

Here’s a new one. As Facebook continues to grapple with the negative press over its privacy overhaul, it’s now suggesting a new way to protect your personal information: lie about it. At least, that’s what Barry Schnitt, Facebook’s Director of Corporate Communications and Public Policy, told the Wall Street Journal in an article this evening. From the story:

Facebook also made public formerly private info such as profile pictures, gender, current city and the friends list. (Mr. Schnitt suggests that users are free to lie about their hometown or take down their profile picture to protect their privacy; in response to users’ complaints, the friends list can now be restricted to be viewed only by friends).

Of course, this directly violates Facebook’s own Terms of Service, which stipulate that users may not provide false information.

At the end of last quarter’s financial results conference call, many analysts were taken aback by Palm’s prediction of lower sales for the quarter that is now drawing to a close. Palm’s stock has dropped some 30% in the last two months after strong launches by competitors on multiple networks, but now it’s looking like Palm’s expectations for their Q2 2010 results were mostly spot on.

Shaw Wu, a senior analyst at Kaufman Brothers, says that his checks through Palm’s supply and retail chain indicate that they’ve sold around 670,000 handsets in the past three months. Those 670,000 units include the Palm Pixi, but considering that launched just a few weeks ago, most of the 670,000 units are Palm Pre phones. The Pre’s higher price (Palm’s price to carriers, not the price charged by retailers) makes it the more lucrative of the two, and while Palm doesn’t break down their sales numbers by device, we expect they’re happy to have the Pre still selling well six months after its launch. While we aren’t certain what affect either event has had, the continuing price cuts for the Pre and the European launch on O2 no doubt blunted the expected US sales drop.

According to the Wall Street Journal, their survey of analysts revealed an average anticipated revenue for the quarter of $265.7 million. While that amounts to an increase of 39% over the same quarter last year, it still results in a projected loss of 32 cents a share, or $45 million total. Though any loss is not a good thing, it is considerably better than the 73 cents a share loss that Palm posted this time last year.

Where Palm goes from here results in mixed calls from analysts. Wu believes many investors have been “overly negative” and that Palm’s expansion onto new carriers in 2010 will help bolster the company’s success. On the other end is Tim Long of BMO Capital, who thinks that pressure from Android and poor response in Europe and to the Pixi “are creating challenges to Palm viability as a smart phone contender.” Who is right? We’ll find out on Thursday.