Startup Diaries

Experience Movies

For the second time of my life I went today to watch a movie in the London IMAX cinema.
For the second time, I went outside with a huge smile on my face.

I went to watch "Deep", a 3D movie exploring life under the sea. The 3D experience of the IMAX is simply amazing. You find yourself sitting with a stupid smile on your face. With risking sound like a commercial, you truly feel like you are out there taking a dive.

In times when cinemas are losing the people for DVD and Internet movies, I think the IMAX shows what you need to do in order to win us back - deliver an experience you can't get anywhere else. The best home video system today won't give you the ability to enjoy the movies as the huge screen and amazing sound system of the IMAX. This is truly a different way to watch movies.

I just have to wonder, when we will all be able to put 3D glasses and watch this cool movies also on our laptops...

Microsoft Surface

WOW. Since the iPhone first demo I haven't seen something that made me say wow and just smile like a small kid in a toy store.
On All Thing D conference, Microsoft will unveil their new hardware product - Microsoft Surface.
I actually seen an internal Microsoft demo of similar technology a few years ago, which tells us for how much time MS are working on that thing (which is understandable when you see the product).
The best way to explain it is just see it in action, but in general its a solution that makes any table top or similar surface to a huge innovative touch screen. You can even put your cell phone on top of it and automatically synchronize your photos, music, etc...
First customers will probably be hotels, restaurants and other points of sales, but the real fun will start when it will get into our homes. I can't wait to play with one of those.

Open Ad Network And How To Kill Google

Nice post By Sean Ammirati in Read/Write Web about the need for an Open Ad Network (like an open source project).

The idea is to develop an open source ad network that will let publishers get 100% of revenues from ads, and build a business model based on services.

Although the idea is interesting, I think there are two main problems with it:

1. Ad networks today generate millions (and billions) of dollars in revenue from taking a cut from each ad revenue. This model is so successful because it can scale up all the time.
   get more publishers to use your network - instantly get more money.
   whenever a publisher gets bigger and more successful, also your revenues from it get bigger.
   Compare that to a services model and you will see the big difference. There is a limit to how much revenue each publisher can generate for you.
2. The real issue here is also the ROI you give to advertisers. Today most advertisers go to Google because of the high ROI they can generate for them (because of their excellent targeting system).
   Where most of the advertisers go, most of the publishers will go.
   kind of a magic circle that is very hard to break

 

So where is the solution?
How do you come up with the Google Killer?
My answer to this is Video!

No one today (including Google) knows how to target ads to videos (although some companies are trying to do that - see AdBrite and ScanScout).
First of all there is the technical difficulty of parsing the video and get all the words (compared to text) out of it.
But I believe that it doesn't end here. We use words in video in a very different way than we use it in text.
In video we explain much of the things using pictures and sound. I think that in most videos, even if you parsed all the words out of it, you will still not be able to actually understand what the video is all about.

So what does it all means?
It means that in video, Google doesn't have any advantage on the next guy. This is the place where other players can gain momentum, gain publishers and advertisers by keeping to themselves a lower cut of the cake, and offer some new innovative products.

New Search Experience Wanted

I was looking into our use of caching in our NuConomy Studio platform, and wanted to learn more about web caching techniques.
I tried using Google again and again, each time chancing my search terms and strategy, and each time getting bad results.

This is not the first time I'm disappointed with Google search results. In the last year, the search results are just getting worse and worse.
I don't know the answer (and I hope there is an answer) but I would really want one of the new search startups out there giving us a fresh new way to search for things.

Welcome to the future - Microsoft Photosynth

I still can't imagine or believe it will ever be possible to really use it, but Microsoft new preview of Photosynth is still one of the coolest thing I saw recently.

Basically what Photosynth does, is taking tens or hundreds of photos of the same place, examine them, and build a 3D model of the place.
Now you can browse the photos in a really cool way, letting you explore the place and get the feel of how it really looks in reality.

You need a good video accelerator (and good bandwidth) in order to enjoy it, but I really recommend you checking it out.

http://labs.live.com/photosynth/