For the past two weeks the UN had been trying to revise a multilateral treaty that has been the official governing language of the Internet since the late 1980s. Many viewed this process as a way for authoritarian governments to assert control over Internet content, and late last week negotiations broke down. The United States […]
Huge news in the wine world broke yesterday. Robert Parker, founder of the Wine Advocate and the world’s most influential wine critic, announced plans to sell a portion of the business to three unnamed investors and to step down as editor-in-chief. (Here’s an interview in MarketWatch from last month with good background, with Parker’s assurance […]
There is so much market information available today that sometimes it can obscure the bigger picture, rather than illuminate. Not so with former securities analyst and current venture capitalist Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends report, released this week. Meeker was present at the creation of the modern day Internet while at Morgan Stanley in the 1990s, […]
Car and Driver just published its 2013 1o Best Cars list, and the new BMW 3-Series made the cut. The BMW 3-Series has done so an incredible 22 straight years. The editors sound like they really loved the previous E90 3-Series, because they snuck some qualifying statements into their descriptions of the F30. They weren’t […]
On Friday VeriSign (NASDAQ: VRSN) announced that it had secured renewal of its contract to run the .com registry for another six years. However, the stock immediately feel by 13 percent, after revealing that the Department of Commerce removed the right to raise wholesale prices. This came after the stock dove 20 percent near the […]
Recently Gabriele and I had dinner at Proof in downtown Washington. It’s a stylish, wine-centric hot spot that has garnered a lot of praise in the last two years, including a “100 Best Restaurants” from Washingtonian. I respect any restaurant that treats wine as seriously as Proof does. One thing I’d suggest would be to […]
Today’s piece is a two-fer, bringing together both Work and Wheels. I found an interesting article about turning an old BMW E36 into a weekend track car. The story was on the Hooniverse car enthusiast site, “hoon” being Australian slang for a reckless driver/gearhead. My 1999 M3 is an E36, so obviously I was the […]
I don’t work in online advertising any longer. But I was present at the creation (more or less), as a very early hire of Advertising.com. The pay-per-click, online advertising network ecosystem that company and others built almost 15 years ago needs to be replaced by something new. The creators of content, upon which everything depends, […]
My lastest WashingtonExec column published yesterday. I was invited to attend the opening night of Vino Volo, a high-end wine bar/restaurant in Bethesda, Maryland. Since 2005 the company has operated wine bars in airports and is currently in 18 nationwide, but the Bethesda restaurant is their first freestanding location. The Vino Volo approach stresses fun, […]
Recently a comprehensive B2B content marketing survey was produced and released by MarketingProfs and the Content Marketing Institute (CMI). MarketingProfs packs a lot of good info into their post, and the entire survey is available for download with free registration. MarketingProfs and CMI received responses from over 1,400 companies for this survey. So the findings […]
Last week BMW released its October sales numbers in the U.S. The 2012 numbers continue to be impressive, with October year to year sales up 20.9 percent, and year to date sales up 6.7 percent. (These percentages exclude the Mini brand.) Compared to the first two quarters however, the growth rate has slowed. As I […]
Online privacy and how consumer data is tracked online has been a recurring theme on this site. The current Internet economic model is driven by advertising, which is targeted by tracking the online behavior of consumers. In exchange, consumers enjoy free or very low cost services and applications. I call this the quid-pro-quo of the […]