My first book – Social Machines (Wiley & Sons) goes on sale today. It’s an exciting moment – one that’s been in the works for nearly a year. Writing a book is probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. But now that it’s out it feels like it wasn’t so bad. Which must [...]
Author Archives: Peter Semmelhack
Data is the New Steel
Lots of people have been saying that “data is the new oil”. Data flows through networks, powers applications, lubricates markets – the analogy makes perfect sense. But it occurred to me recently that data is also taking on a more structural feel. Instead of data being simply a flow, it’s feeling more like a foundation. [...]
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The Everlasting Gobstopper Syndrome
Maybe I’m getting old and the lens through which I see life is starting to skew but I’ve noticed something recently and it’s starting to wear on me. The beauty, the promise, the implied immortality of “new” is just not cutting it anymore. For me, the last few years, Apple has been the model. All [...]
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How Wireless Carriers are Obstacles to Innovation
I won’t be getting any fan mail from the wireless carriers on this one but I feel it’s my duty to share what I think is the truth about wireless product innovation today. It’s too hard and doesn’t have to be.
Carriers are in the networking business – that is, connecting things together. And more and [...]
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Network Owners Face Daunting Choice
If you own a network today, of any kind, wireless or wired, you have some important choices to make. We’ve all heard the proverbial “we don’t want to be just a dumb pipe”. It’s the party line. But ask yourself, when was the last time your phone or cable provider did something truly innovative and [...]
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Good Nuff Electronics
The title proves the point. My spell checker squealed but you could read it just fine and understand exactly what I meant. Nuff was good enough.
Clayton Christiansen, in his famous book “The Innovator’s Dilemma” argues that disruptive innovations are often far from perfect products. In fact, they are so unremarkable that in many cases they’re [...]
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2011 Top Ten Predictions
1 – Mobile security – the mobile world is about as secure as the desktop world was ten years ago. If companies are going to start devoting real resources to exploring/exploiting mobile opportunities, this will need to get addressed. 2011 is the year this starts in earnest.
2 – Cars – Like last year I think [...]
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2010 Predictions – How’d I Do?!
Last year, I went public with my first ever “Top Ten Predictions” list. And now for the first time ever I get to grade how I did. All in all, I think I did ok. I rate myself on a scale of 1-10 below.
1 – Autos are the next “killer app” – ok, I probably [...]
Open Hardware Summit!
I am super excited to announce that my company Bug Labs will be hosting, along with partners Creative Commons, Maker Faire, Little Bits, eyebeam and NYSCI, what I think is the world’s first conference devoted solely to the open source hardware movement. We’re calling it the Open Hardware Summit and you are cordially invited to [...]
Snorephones
Boy Genius Report got it’s hands on the latest Verizon Wireless summer device catalog. It’s a beautifully produced brochure that lays out what VZW hopes will be a killer collection of hard-to-resist wireless gadgets. But the truth is, it’s not really a “device” catalog. It’s actually a cell phone catalog. And as such it’s not [...]
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