News Links: “Little Startups Are Ridiculously OverFunded”

Sean Parker: "Little Startups Are Ridiculously OverFunded" | TechCrunch It’s gotten so bad that, says Parker, "Now institutionally-backed venture funds are backing other venture funds in order to stay close to the dealflow." (Hmm, sounds familiar). "And it will end very badly," pipes in VC Jim Breyer, who is also onstage with Parker. Chinese TV

Walt Mossberg reviews the Kindle Fire

Walt Mossberg takes a look at Amazon’s new Kindle Fire tablet. How does it stack up against the iPad and the new Nook Color

Class Warfare and Revolution (Circa 1850)

By Rick Bookstaber In a recent post I discuss six policies that spurred the Industrial Revolution in England – opening up immigration, weakening the guilds, investing in infrastructure, privatizing agricultural land, forcing a move to new energy sources, and policies for bringing capital to the new, capital-intensive technologies – and suggest that these policies have

Nonlinear Thinking: Robot Run Warehouses

Here’s an interesting video clip that reinforces our view that almost all new innovation and technology is labor saving/destroying and that U.S. unemployment is much more structural than most perceive (click here to view video). Even the military, with the advent of drones and robots, is moving to a smaller “boots on the ground” force

Facebook Ads

Here’s a spoof video of how Facebook is monetising its site. Genius

Video: My Blackberry is not working

Stuff like this is a very bad sign for Research in Motion as their share of the mobile handset market has plummeted to 9%. Shares are at a seven-year low

Input Costs of the iPhone

Great graphic constructed by Mobile Phone Tracker coming to us via Nicholas Jackson of The Atlantic. We were surprised that only $7.00 goes to Foxconn to manufacture each unit. Here are some of Jackson’s favorite “facts and figures” of the iPhone’s input costs

Wish You Were Here

Apple: Can it stop the Amazon menace?

For Amazon, they are always willing to introduce loss leaders to build volume. I anticipate they will be successful here yet again. That is a wonderful story for their Kindle book sales, music sales, video sales and for their App store sales as well

What’s Up With Micron?

Smells like Kentucky Fried Takeout to us. Yes, we’re talking our book, but for good reason. Nevertheless, keeping both hands on the ripcord

Workers of the world, good night!

Rick Bookstaber argues that the rise of the super-elite is not a product of educational differences, but rather a result of the new capitalism which creates bigger winners, and does so much more quickly than in the capital-intensive capitalist era. Less capital is needed, it is applied for a shorter period before the results are realized, and because less capital is required, the entrepreneur captures more of the value of the enterprise. The result is an accentuation in the very wealthy

Scoble: Problems at Twitter and Facebook give Google+ opening

Influential tech blogger Robert Scoble talked to Bloomberg earlier in the week about the social media scene. The main message I took away is that he believes Google+ is a successful product for Google which could spell trouble for Facebook and Twitter