Hannah Montana Mania

If you have daughters of a certain age (say, 6-16), you probably know about Hannah Montana .. a hugely successful show on the Disney Channel about a young singer. Turns out, she actually does sing, and is now in the midst of a hugely successful tour.

This is part business story (Disney is undoubtedly printing money thanks to Hannah mania), but it's also a lesson in technology. Loads of parents, who haven't bought tickets electronically before, are learning that "goes on sale at 10am" means, "good luck actually getting tickets online." Yes, brokers are ruling the concert ticket game, and while Pearl Jam earned my respect by trying to help the masses a few years back, it's still very hard for you and me to snag tickets to a popular show.

Enter StubHub. This is the aftermarket ticket seller, recently bought by eBay. Ironically enough, if you see Hannah tickets for, like, 400 dollars each on eBay, it's StubHub that will advise you to hold off and wait.

Wait, because, as I've been told by StubHub itself, people will drastically lower prices on hot tickets as the show gets closer. This we may know from the physical/scalper world .. turns out its true online as well.

So, marvel at the high prices now, but wait a bit, and Hannah tickets will come back down to earth. At least, that's what they tell us.

The "Halo" Effect

Every company looks for a "killer app," some way to not only sell a ton of whatever it makes, but a way to change the entire market. For video games, we're likely to see that tonight, when Microsoft starts to sell its third "Halo" installment.

The Halo series has already been a huge hit .. now, with Halo 3, Microsoft expects sales that would make Spider Man & Harry Potter green with envy. On top of big sales, Halo 3 is likely one of those game-changing products, with ripple effects to be felt among several companies.

For example, sales of Microsoft's XBox 360 have been sluggish lately, but that's expected to change as gamers decide to upgrade their systems to go along with their newest game. That means more new hardware, software, and chips to satisfy consumer demand.

Will this be as big as, say, a new Windows release? Probably not. But .. for gamers, it's the next big thing, and the ripples should spread soon.

Tech & Redemption

We get to meet lots of impressive people on the tech beat .. tonight at 6, you'll meet one you won't soon forget.

You may actually be familiar with the story of Bob Pack. He and his wife lost their two children in a horrible car accident, and it got a lot of press. What stood out to me when I saw those stories was how remarkably strong the Packs were. They stayed together, persevered, and are now starting a new family with a new child. A wonderful chapter to a story that I've followed for some time.

I was surprised when Bob Pack called the other day to tell me, modestly, that after dropping out of the tech business, he'd started a new company. He's giving us some time today to talk about his vision of where we go (and search) from here online.

A search company, you say? Taking on Google is quite a challenge. Then again, this comes from a man who has seen the kinds of challenges none of us should ever see.

Software Wars

This is a huge day for software, even given that we've been talking and writing about software a lot lately (VMware, viruses, etc).

Just today, IBM and Google both came out with free software products aimed at the biggest software company of them all, Microsoft. It would be somewhat ironic if these free products made a dent in Microsoft's dominance, given what it did to Netscape (and others) several years ago.

Also on the software front, a company called Contactual. They offer "insourcing" software. As in, don't let your customers call a stranger in a strange land to handle his or her technology question .. let a Silicon Valley company handle it. More on these guys at 6 o'clock.

Is Infosys shaking in its boots? Probably not. But as today shows, software is still huge .. but it's getting really cheap, and that's good news for the consumer.

$pam for Sale

Online identity theft is still big business. When computer security giant Symantec came out with that news in its annual report today, you could almost hear the crickets chirping. Tell us something we don't know.

So, they did. And this one is a surprise.

Turns out hackers are selling how-to-spam code to middlemen, who then spread the malicious stuff to you and me. And, they make money doing it.

So it's not enough to know that spam is heading our way from hackers. Now, we find out that it may also be comong our way from people who just want to make a few extra bucks by making our lives misearable.

And what do we do about this?

I'll let you know tonight at 5 & 6.

Until Next Week ...

The VMware interview went well. This is a company that still has a lot of business coming its way. Judging by the VMworld convention today, lots of companies want a part of their software.

Meanwhile, I'll be out of the blog world until next week.

Thanks,
scott

We Spell H-O-T .. VM

It's the hottest company since Google, and today, we finally get to hear what VMware has to say.

Emerging from its post-IPO quiet period, VMware plays host to its virtualization software-fest today in San Francisco .. giving us all a chance to learn a) about virtualization software, and b) how VMware plans to follow up its amazing stock success.

And that success is impressive by any stretch. Already up more than double its IPO price, VMware stands as the second most valuable software company in the Silicon Valley, next to Oracle. Seems hard to believe that VMware is worth more than Adobe Systems (and who knows how long that will last) but it makes me realize the power of the technology IPO .. it's still alive & potent.

In fact, on this day that we remember the losses of 9-11, here's one way to know that America, and American business, is still strong .. investors, willing to take the risk of investing in a new kind of technology .. creating new jobs, new wealth, and new confidence.

Going "Big" Online

If it seems like everyone you know .. and every organization you know of .. is on some sort of a social network, it seems that way to me, too.

The online "meet-up" world just got another client this morning - the Big Brothers/Big Sisters of The Bay Area. Now, Big Brothers and Big Sisters, volunteers who help young people, have a social networking site of their own as well.

Full disclosure here .. I was a Big Brother for 13 years, many of them here in the Bay Area.

As for the website, the organization has kept it pretty simple .. a way to meet other volunteers, a way to learn about how to help kids, and a way to raise funds for the organization. If it helps lure a few new volunteers, too, all the better. They need them.

If you want to check it out - maybe even help out, it's at www.bbbsba.org.

Happy networking.

Watch Yourself

Cataphora is a company you probably don't know about...and they don't mind.

Just make sure they don't know about you.

Cataphora is a software maker that, to make a somewhat complext story simple, investigates people and companies. They know how to find patterns. Not just keywords in an e-mail that could come back to haunt you, but patterns .. why we do what we do, and even why we suddenly do something different.

It's effective. So much so, that Cataphora is profitable without any help from Venture Capitalists. And their low profile? That might go away soon, because of one of the firm's recent clients.

Cataphora is now helping the case of the so-called "DC Madam." Depending on what they find, this is a company that could go from no-sign-on-the-front-door anonymity to nationwide notoriety.

You'll meet the CEO tonight at 6. You might get to know the company even more in the weeks to come.

Cheaper, Sexy, Cool

It's once again Apple Day .. lots of news today ..

New iPods first: the new iPod "Touch" is the next in line when it comes to iPod evolution .. super thin, touch-screen display. Super cool, although at 8 gigs of storage (and I feel greedy saying this), is that really going to be your main music holder?

No .. which is why Apple still has the big one .. to go along with the tiny Nano, which you can now use for watching video. A gradual, yet amazing evolution, not just of the iPod itself, but the way we carry, buy, and treat our entertainment.

Oh, and by the way, the iPhone just got cheaper. Yes!

We'll show this all to you tonight at 5 & 6.

Hacked iPhone?

You probably already know about the hacking of the Apple iPhone - plenty of stories and blogs about that already.
But now a group of people who were able to break into the new phones (but are keeping themselves anonymous for now) says they will put a version of the iPhone on sale tomorrow .. a version that will work with carriers other than AT&T.
No need to line up for this just yet, though .. there will likely be lots of legal issues surrounding these new phone, and the phones themselves will nto be sold directly to users like you & me .. only through resellers.
It will, however, be worth keeping an eye on these phones. If it all works out, could this not be the beginning of the end of exclusive phone company contracts?