Wired: Top Stories

I Sense a Disturbance in the 'Star Wars' Canon

These aren't the nit-picking details you're looking for: Clone Wars leads to the creation of a new level of reality for George Lucas' storied franchise, and some fanboys are not amused.

15.08.2008 22:38:00 - Wired: Top Stories

Bigfoot Hunters Fail to Produce Creature's Corpse

A high-profile press conference raises more questions than it answers about two Georgia men's cryptozoological claim to have found a Sasquatch.

15.08.2008 22:36:00 - Wired: Top Stories

Sign Up for OpenID With Chi.mp, Get Free Domain Name

Identity-management service Chi.mp offers new users a free, personalized domain name they can use to host their OpenID credentials. Along with the identity tools, users also get a life-streaming service that pulls in updates from all their favorite social networks.

15.08.2008 22:00:00 - Wired: Top Stories

First Paris, Now This: Jackson Browne Sues John McCain

Another celebrity has taken on John McCain, and this time he's bringing his lawyers. Jackson Browne, the famously left-wing singer-songwriter is suing the presumptive Republican presidential candidate for using his iconic rock classic "Running on Empty" in Ohio campaign commercials without his permission.

15.08.2008 21:37:00 - Wired: Top Stories

Hacker Reportedly Kidnaps, Tortures Informant, Posts Picture as Warning

Computer crime gets tough, as a Turkish hacker who specializes in selling ATM skimmers allegedly exacts revenge on an informant who was helping the media and police.

15.08.2008 21:05:22 - Wired: Top Stories

Stream Your iTunes MP3s to Your iPhone with Simplfy Media

This free software application lets you stream the songs in your iTunes library to any computer on the internet. But the real jaw-dropper is the iPhone app, which we put to the test.

15.08.2008 20:30:00 - Wired: Top Stories

Apple vs. Google: How Will They Stack Up in the Future?

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Apple is worth more than Google. Huh? This doesn't make sense to me.

Let's start with the obvious: Google makes more money than Apple does. It had earnings of $10 billion over the past 12 months, compared to $8 billion for Apple. And while both companies' earnings are growing fast, Google's are growing faster.

But here's the clincher: Google's earnings were on less than $20 billion of revenue -- that's what I call a profit margin. Apple, by contrast, needed more than $30 billion of revenue to get its $8 billion of gross profit.

Of course, when it comes to stock valuations, the present doesn't matter nearly as much as the future. So what does the future hold for these two franchises?

They're both strong technology giants with very large "moats." But Google is stronger, and its moat is bigger. It owns search, certainly in Europe and the Americas, and it's making strong inroads into display advertising as well. Sam Gustin might be kvetching about "the toll being inflicted on Web advertising by the slowing economy," but the growth rates are still pretty torrid for what is now a reasonably mature industry:

19% market growth? I think Apple would be very happy with that. And remember that Google is increasing, not decreasing, its share of total online ad spending. Over at Apple, by contrast, the iPod/iTunes duopoly can't help but see its market share eroded going forwards, as DRM-free online music stores start competing on price, the record labels try to cut Apple down to size, and the marginal utility from buying your fourth or fifth iPod starts to decline.

Apple's phone business looks great right now, but the industry is notoriously cutthroat, Apple doesn't have the degree of control it's used to elsewhere, and in any case handset margins are never going to be as big as margins on iPods or MacBooks. Yes, the iPhone app store is a very promising business model -- but it's going to be quite some time, if ever, before it makes a significant contribution to Apple's bottom line.

And then there's the computer business. Macs are selling well, at very high margins. But Google's muscling in on the computing business too: over the long term, it makes sense to do all your computing in an ever-improving cloud than it does on specific, individually-owned pieces of hardware which always, eventually, break. The more important the cloud, the less important the computer, and the less important the computer's operating system, too.

Howard Lindzon, by contrast, thinks the stock market is right, and that Apple should be worth more than Google. Two of his arguments are weak: that "social search" will make Google obsolete (I'll believe it when I see it), and that "MacBooks are getting cheaper" (no they're not: Apple's entry-level laptop has been priced between $1,000 and $1,100 for years, and it's going to stay there).

Howards best argument is that a falling Google share price could become self-fulfilling: "if the stock lingers between $500 or worse yet, drifts lower, you will see a brain drain of epic proportions," he says. Google's competitive advantage has long been that it was smarter and richer and one or two steps ahead of the competition. As it matures, it might not have the same ability to attract the very best and the brightest.

But if Google has job risks, Apple has Jobs risk -- which is much bigger and probably just as imminent. No one at Google is even as important to the company as Jonathan Ive is to Apple, let alone Steve Jobs. If I'm holding a stock as a long-term investment (which is the only sensible way to hold a stock) then I don't want to run the risk that the company will founder the minute the CEO exits.

And talking of the long term, the option value of all those crazy Google projects which never make any money is huge. There's a good chance that, eventually, one of them will take off in a big way, and if it's energy-related, it could make Google's present business look positively puny.

Google stock is volatile, just as the founders said it would be in their prospectus. But if I was going to sleep today to wake up in ten years' time, I'd be much happier with Google stock under my mattress than Apple.

15.08.2008 16:00:00 - Wired: Top Stories

With China Rising, Detroit Needs Engineers ASAP

China has 10 times more engineering students than America does. That does not bode well for Detroit, which could soon see the best automotive innovations stamped "Made in China."

15.08.2008 14:22:00 - Wired: Top Stories

NBC Laughs All the Way to the Bank (Take That, Bloggers)

NBC may be taking lumps in the blogosphere for its decision to provide so much of its Olympics coverage exclusively through traditional channels, but they have provided advertisers with an increasingly elusive commodity — a large, captivated -- and captive -- audience.

15.08.2008 14:21:00 - Wired: Top Stories

Court Says Copyrights Apply Even for Free Software

A federal appeals court has ruled that giving away software you have written doesn't mean you given away your right to control how it is used, a crucial win for the open source movement. Essentially the court has affirmed the "play nice" underpinning of ope source: attribute and disclose modifications.

15.08.2008 13:36:00 - Wired: Top Stories