My interest in business or commercial activity first started when a work friend of my Mum visited our family. She brought a book on commerce which is what business studies would have been called decades earlier. I read the book and that piqued my interest.
At the end of your third year in secondary school you are allowed to pick optional classes that you will take exams in. this is supposed to be something that you’re free to chose.
I was interested in business studies (partly because my friend Joe was doing it). But the school decided that they wanted me to do physics and chemistry instead and they did the same for my advanced level exams because I had done well in the normal level ones. School had a lot to answer for, but fortunately I managed to get back on track with college.
Eventually I finally managed to do pass a foundational course at night school whilst working in industry. I used that to then help me go and study for a degree in marketing.
I work in advertising now. And had previously worked in petrochemicals, plastics and optical fibre manfacture. All of which revolve around business. That’s why you find a business section here on my blog.
Business tends to cover a wide range of sectors that catch my eye over time. Business usually covers sectors that I don’t write about that much, but that have an outside impact on wider economics. So real estate would have been on my radar during the 2008 recession.
Quietly, Japan as a power in aerospace industry | Ars Technica – really interesting analysis of Japan as a power aerospace sector. What people don’t realise is that Japan supplies key components to Boeing. It also has a set of indigenous plane designs to solve problems like being able to land on water or long range marine patrol. In addition, Japan as a power in aerospace also includes outer space; creating both rockets and payloads for the Japanese space agency
Asda beats Waitrose and Harrods in Which? mince pie taste test | Business | The Guardian – Having done a student job at Cereal Partners I realise how arbitrary taste tests can be. With many products, the same manufacturer might be making the same product for a number of different retailers, with only the boxes changing. It caused some amusement reading the taste test on cereal that was exactly the same, except for the box.
However the most interesting part of the article was the sub headline: Supermarket tops consumer group’s chart but general standards drop due to rising cost of ingredients. More related content here.
US newsreader Walter Cronkite narrates a 1967 programme on what the future held in the 21st century. The soothing voice of Walter Cronkite makes the future look less scary
An Unknown Enemy is a Mexican series on Amazon Prime that follows the rise of Fernando Barrientos, Head of the National Security Directorate, Mexico’s Secret Police in the late 1960s
The People’s Republic of Desire documents China’s online streaming culture that has developed over the past few years. The film financed by the Ford Foundation provides an inside view of the direction interaction between personalities and their audience. Young girls become online personalities funded directly by besotted fans. More interaction happens online than in real life. Of course, all this happens under the ever-seeing eye of the Chinese government.
https://youtu.be/auHtqCJV4Rw
Super-excited by an album of Smith & Mighty’s unreleased back catalogue from 1988 – 1994 being released this week. It is available via digital channels, double vinyl album and on compact disc. While the tracks were unreleased, there is no filler tracks in the collection, the quality is all top notch. Here is a taster.
Enron: even now is a byword for dodgy dealing and corruption. Back in the summer of 2000, Enron was a large respectable corporation. Three people came over from Portland, Oregon to London. They looked to pioneer a new way of thinking about broadband capacity and they came to Europe to do peering agreements and business deals. They were ‘Enron Broadband Services’.
The whole thing was moving at ‘internet speed’, which is a euphemism for crazy fast and with money flittered everywhere. So I ended up working agency side arranging everything from pre-paid mobile phones to a dinner for 150 internet geeks at The Hempel – a luxury hotel with a minimalist restaurant that used to be in Bayswater.
Enron acquired Portland General Electric (PGE) back in the mid-1990s. This was part of Enron’s play in deregulated electricity markets. With PGE also came an optical fibre network. The company had been dropping fibre into the ground every time it did reinstatements. Enron then built and leased optical fibre from the likes of Level3.
While I was trying to get these guys in front of the European telecoms press I was hearing from my media contacts that Level3 were actively briefing against them, saying that their business model was full of shit. They were right it was. Enron Broadband Services depended on their ‘Enron Intelligent Network’ a set of proprietary technologies that was supposed to prioritise traffic for quality of service and commercial traffic reasons.
Like many things at the time the technology was less developed than one would believe. Much of the functionality replicated existing technology such as MPLS. IBM developed their e-commerce offering on the back of ‘suckered’ customers like Boxman.com. Technology was a sketchy business at the time; but it seemed to matter less as the world was being changed. This was pre-9/11 and Gap was convincing many people that khakis were cool.
https://youtu.be/OLSjcGjLQ7s
In the case of IBM, they seem to be still doing similar practices two decades later; this time with their Watson machine learning offering.
The problem was that the ‘Enron Intelligent Network‘ was a relatively minor sin compared to everything else that was going on in the corporation.
What happened to the companies mentioned in the Enron slides?
ARC
Atom Films – Founded in 1998, Atom was bought in 2006 by MTV Networks, Google had considered buying it when it eventually purchased YouTube. Eventually it was absorbed into Comedy Central
Avici Systems – was hit hard by the dot com bust. It eventually pulled out of the core network router business and changed its name to Soapstone Networks
Ciena – Ciena still exists as a networking equipment and software company. It managed to ride out the dot com bust by diversifying its portfolio of networking equipment
Cisco Systems – continues to be one of the world’s largest companies in networking equipment
Compaq – never managed to fully integrate its acquisition of the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and ended up being acquired by Hewlett-Packard. In 2015; Hewlett Packard split into two businesses. HP held the PC, printers and related businesses. Hewlett Packard Enterprise contained business software (subsequently merged with Micro Focus), services business (merged with Computer Sciences Corporation) and a hardware business.
CountryCool.com – started as a country music site and seems to have morphed into an analogue of Comedy Central
The Drew Carey Show – ABC situation comedy that finished its run in 2004
EasyStreet – ISP that is still going, mostly reselling other vendors products
Epoch Internet – was the first tier one ISP on the west coast when it was founded in 1994 and played a crucial role in some of the first commercial peering points. It was eventually acquired by MegaPath in 2004. MegaPath in turn is owned by Fusion Connect, who were recently acquired by Birch Communications Inc. as part of a further consolidation of business ISPs in the US
Firstworld
FlashNet – FlashNet now only exist as a legacy domain that AT&T supports for customers. FlashNet Communications was founded in 1995 as a Fort Worth, Texas-based internet service provider. It had an IPO on the NASDAQ in March 1999 and was acquired by Prodigy Communications in November that year. Prodigy was acquired by AT&T in September 2001
FYINet.com – FYINet was a Houston, Texas based company that provided training materials on CD ROM about networking technology. They then moved their content to the web and promoted their 3D animation and interactive design capabilities. They seem to have disappeared sometime around 2002.
GST Telecommunications
GTE Internetworking – GTE Internetworking became Genuity when its parent company merged with Bell Atlantic to found Verizon. It was eventually acquired by Level3, which was in turn acquired by CenturyLink 2017
Inktomi- Inktomi was one of the leading providers of web caching for both content and streaming. It became a key provider for early content delivery networks. It was eventually acquired by Yahoo! in 2003. Yahoo! was acquired by Verizon and merged into Aol as part of Oath
iStream TV encoding – iStream continues to provide solutions for both video on demand and live streaming. Turner acquired a majority share in the business during 2015
latinsoccer.net – Mexican based site that covered Latin American football news. It featured both video and audio which wasn’t the norm for the time. According to Archive.org’s Wayback Machine, the site didn’t survive the dot com bust
Lucent Technologies – acquired in term by Alcatel and Nokia
MShow.com – Chicago-based Mshow provided interactive broadcast services. It was founded in 1986, had one round of funding in 2000 and is no longer in business
NetRail – provided backbone networks and hosting to ISPs. It was acquired by Cogent Communications Group in 2001
NextVenue – specialised in video and audio streaming, it was acquired by iBEAM Broadcasting – a satellite networking company. iBEAM went under in 2002, its assets were acquired by Williams Communications LLC. Williams is now owned by Level3
Oracle – Oracle remains a leading provider of enterprise software
OrcoNet.com – was a US ISP, eventually filed for chapter 7 bankruptcy in California
pdq.net – was an ISP. It was acquired by Internet America. Internet America was acquired by JAB Broadband and folded into Rise Broadband
Q4i.com – defunct online brokerage with video component for independent brokers
RCN – Boston-based ISP that has gone on to become the sixth largest cable and broadband provider in the US
rmi.net – Rocky Mountain Internet was an early provider of dial-up connectivity. It moved into e-business for SMEs and eventually became part of EarthLink, which went on to consolidate with Windstream
showdigital – provided broadband to the hospitality industry. Its assets were acquired in 2001 by STSN
Sun Microsystems – Sun Microsystems never managed to recover from the dot com bust and was eventually acquired by Oracle. Oracle now sells its own brand of hardware that can run Solaris UNIX – Solaris is now owned by Oracle who continues to maintain it alongside a distribution of Linux
Sycamore Networks – Sycamore Networks was wound up by its shareholders in early 2013. During the internet boom it had a market capitalisation of $44.8 billon. It was worth just $64 million when wound up.
TeleCommute Solutions – Atlanta based ISP that specialised in providing workforce connectivity to companies. Crunchbase lists it as closed
Telescan – founded in 1982 as a provider of stock charting tools, it eventually became part of TD Ameritrade’s Thinkorswim
TotalCricket
USWest – one of the original ‘baby Bells’. It merged with Qwest in 2000. Qwest was acquired by CenturyLink in 2011
Verio – founded as an ISP in Denver. Acquired by NTT of Japan in 2000
VillageNet – small Canadian ISP which is still running
Apple reportedly shifting more iPhone XR orders to Foxconn from Pegatron, says paper – Pegatron’s production has been affected by a lower-than-expected yield rate and shortages of workers at its plants in China – the manpower issue at Pegatron is very interesting and implies a possible rift between the factories and local government. Historically local governments have gone out of their way to facilitate large Taiwanese employers China has just begun to see a decline in worker numbers overall in its population. Pegatron used to be part of ASUSTek. When that business reorganised its OEM manufacturing business became what we now know as Pegatron.
Deepfakes web α | Generate your own Deepfakes – Japanese currency denominated service to create your own deep fakes. This service looks as if its designed for the curious, rather than virtual revenge porn creators, the accessibility of this capability brings with it a variety of issues
Smart cities — too clever by half? | Financial Times – hell is other people’s technology. Smart cities don’t have the attendant ethical considerations because that would dull their ‘smartness’. In addition law enforcement would prefer to have maximum choices on data. It was interesting that China Mobile’s key use case for 5G was urban crime fighting in the first adverts that they ran.
FOMO in China is a $7 billion industry | Marketplace – the Chinese payment for knowledge Podcast business dwarves ad funding and Patreon-like services. Many of knowledge podcasts are like bank analyst type reports as audio books. There is also a demand for knowledge podcasts looking at foreign affairs and current affairs. More related content here.
CTS – conserve the sound – a German project that preserves what would have been familiar sounds of now obsolete technology. Most are interesting, though the Krups coffee grinder sounds exactly the same as my more modern model