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Wattpad’s Continued Re-Imagining of the Book
Albert Wenger – Jun 6, 2011
This week is Book Expo America which is the biggest book trade show in the US. That's a great moment for reflecting on how the book is being transformed in the age of the Internet. Mary Meeker in her slide [...] Read more
Groupon Revisited (with Echos of Kozmo.com)
Albert Wenger – Jun 6, 2011
The filing of the Groupon S1 has resulted in a lot of discussion about Groupon’s business model. Most of the comments were negative, going as far as calling Groupon a “Ponzi Scheme,” although there were a few defenders, such as [...] Read more
Help Me Understand Bitcoin (and Possibly Earn Some Coin!)
Albert Wenger – Jun 1, 2011
Like many others, I find myself fascinated by bitcoin. Not only is it a wonderful example of the real world catching up with science fiction, but it also shows off the incredible power of the Internet to disrupt existing institutions [...] Read more
Internet Bill of Rights and eG8 Summit
Albert Wenger – May 25, 2011
I have argued in the past that we need an Internet Bill of Rights. If anyone doubted that, then they should look at what has been happening at and around the eG8 summit. There have been many great tweets from [...] Read more
Make Your Service Underdetermined To Achieve Internet Scale
Albert Wenger – May 24, 2011
I have written previously that given the huge scale of the Internet, services that might historically have been considered a feature can now be companies. There is a critical success factor though to achieving Internet scale that I think is [...] Read more
The Unbundling of Product Discovery from Commerce
Albert Wenger – May 20, 2011
Search will always be an important way of finding products when I know what I want. For instance, if I know that I need a manual bilge pump (a recent purchase), I will go to either a search engine or [...] Read more
For A Change: Some Sensible Legislation on Privacy
Albert Wenger – May 19, 2011
This seems to be the week for legal blog posts. After trying a slightly revised version of COICA with new branding (now: PROTECT IP), Senator Leahy has come out with a very sensible piece of legislation, the ECPA Amendments Act [...] Read more
The PROTECT IP Act (COICA Redux) Is Still a Bad Idea
Albert Wenger – May 16, 2011
The proposed PROTECT IP act is an improvement on COICA, but still makes the wrong trade-offs between protecting copyright holders and defending the integrity of the Internet.There are several major modifications from the COICA draft. The key ones are first [...] Read more
Ceramics on Shapeways
Albert Wenger – May 13, 2011
Shapeways yesterday announced support for yet another awesome material: ceramics. Ceramics is a particularly cool because it it is food safe and thus unlocks the market for 3D printed dishwares. That includes my admittedly fairly lame chop stick holders, which [...] Read more