Services for the first one have been around since the beginning. There are 3 or 4 instances of such web services, most notably http://useqwitter.com
The idea of service+username@email.com subscription is utilized by many admins who run mail servers and demand granular control over whitelists. I do it with couple of my domains that have catch-all.
Here's my idea you guys could steal. I'm giving it away for free. A social network where you connect people with their friends and relatives. Now go build it!
Unless it's a company that cures cancer over the internet, your startup isn't enriching anyone's life. "Capture eyeballs, monetize later" mantra has failed in almost all cases, save for few select companies who are just breaking even on momentum alone.
Media and publishing business are dying. What a strange example to illustrate a point.
As one of those 75,000 subscribers, I'm happy to say that's not correct. To state the obvious, if the product or service weren't enriching people's lives, why do you think they would choose to subscribe to it?
I think there are various ways to approach this. One could argue that, for instance, watching TV for 6 hours per day does not enrich a particular person's life, no matter how convinced they may be that it does.
Your second sentence is a type of an argument I've encountered numerous times, but I can't seem to recall what it's called. I may get back to this later.
Unless it's a company that cures cancer over the internet, your startup isn't enriching anyone's life.
We have different definitions. I feel many things enrich my life from literature and magazines to cars and restaurants or walks in the park. And - drum-roll - even Hacker News ;-)
Media and publishing business are dying.
Some are. Many are thriving and growing, including mine.
Just because something is in high demand doesn't prove anything. There is high demand for homeopathic sugar pills and suburban shamans who charge $100/hr for consultation.
All those companies you've mentioned have huge problems which points them directly at the revenue streams they've bet on.
Facebook is taking a beating because they can't monetize the fastest growing mobile sector.
Google is desperately working against the clock to beat the bubble by branching out in all kinds of industries unrelated to AdSense
Yahoo has been bleeding money for a decade
Twitter is in the same position as Facebook sans the stock market pressure
...and Pandora has been charging monthly fees for a service because they've seen the writing on the wall.
No company on that list is doing anything exciting or disruptive that's tied to ads. It's a dead end.
Same was said about Sega. Controlling hardware consoles and nurturing brand new ecosystems is no longer a winning proposition in today's market. There's too much competition and title lifespans are shorter. By the time Nintendo releases a new gaming console it's already obsolete. They need to ship games, not cling to outdated models.
Are you saying Sega is a model for success? The same Sega that was so bankrupt after going software only that it was bought by a pachinko machine company (Sammy) that eventually gutted the game development teams to right the sinking ship? That Sega? I can't tell if your comment is meant to be sarcastic.
Nintendo needs to be an Apple (which it arguably already is), not a Sega. Keep the hardware software vertical integration. It's Nintendo's most valuable asset.
This is a Michael Dell "sell Apple and return the money to the investors" moment. Nintendo isn't the most profitable company in the world for a quarter and it's time to give up and start share cropping? Ridiculous.
this is a solved problem - the PCIe interconnect for desktop graphics and MxM for laptop graphics give an extremely tested and viable way to upgrade graphics cards.
Hell, even the latest Sony Vaio Z comes with an external graphics card (http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/sony-vaio-z-with-external-graph...)
It is completely viable to create an upgradable platform that does not obsolete itself by the time it is released - the problem is not technology itself, it is the console manufacturer management notion that it is a good idea to have planned obsoletion every 3 years or so to get people to buy new hardware.
Give me an upgradeable PS3 with an SSD and Steam (rather than the 10 times slower Bluray) - and tell me that it wont kill desktop gaming.
It won't kill desktop gaming. Upgradeable consoles have been tried before and they don't work. When only a percentage of your customers upgrade you just fragmented your market. Can you imagine how difficult it would be to buy PS3 games if you had to check the box to see which of 3 different graphics cards were supported?
this is accepted practice. All games come with an indication of minimum system recommendations ("nvidia 9800 or greater").
Customers already accept that they cannot play certain games (Crysis?) if their system is not upto mark. Windows 7 has the notion of a graphics "score" as well to figure out whether to turn on Aero.
The only reason why this is not done is forced obsoletion - the customer behavior has existed for a decade or more.
Actually, Nintendo's old cartridge-based games already did this to some extent. You were simply plugging in a circuit board, which could, and often did have additional processors, memory, etc on it.
Usually they didn't. Zelda was the first NES cartridge with battery backed memory for save games, which was unique at the time, but all games still had to run on the 6502 processor.
The Wii, X360 and the PS3 have been around for 5+ years, and will be around for at least 1-2 more. They've all sold a crapload of units. Remember all those articles about Nintendo selling a bazillion Wiis? They made truckloads of money.
Obsolete in 5-7 years is a pretty good product life time.
It remains to be seen if the app store model can support games with the kind of production costs a game like Zelda incurs. So far it looks a lot more like flash games for $1.
They could start with porting their existing games like Square Enix and others did. But the question is whether they want their titles to remain exclusive.
I think if they want to remain a giant, they'd continue with what they do and strive for a next breakthrough. Whether they will succeed is another question.
If they give up the exclusivity of their own titles and move on to software-only like Sega (or maybe a combination of their own hardware platform + publishing to other platforms), they might still be great in the industry, but there'd be many alongside them.
Following the Sega path would not be a good idea IMHO.
They would be like you said one game editor among many, wouldn't have control over the platform and loose intimate knowledge of the system games runs on.
And last but not least, they'd loose media coverage and brand power. There are only three big console brand, they get free media coverage when they sneeze while Sega happened to be talk about from time to time, when someone remember they still exists.
Sega had no choice, it reconverting or die. Nintendo don't have to (yet) and I hope they won't. IMHO, it's just typical handwaiving of greedy short-sighted investor that want a higher ROI, now, regardless of what's better for the company. Yeah the mobile game pie is larger then the console one but would the marketshare achievable by Nintendo's game be bigger than on an exclusive console ?
I think the app store can definitely support games that are $20 or $30. Already Square has released several titles approaching $20 in price, and they have been very successful.
Nintendo is leaving money on the table because of NIH (not invented here) syndrome and their shareholders have a right to be disappointed.
Calls for Nintendo to produce for iOS sound like those criticisms of Apple in the 90s where pundits suggest they ship Windows machines.
Nintendo is all about their franchises, and millions buy their consoles just to play Zelda or Mario. They'd dilute their brand and cannibalize their console sales if they began producing for iOS.
Count your blessings if it only bricked a handful of phones and forced users to fiddle with their devices to get them working again. At least it didn't install Windows Phone 7 Genuine Advantage.
Your request should really be "Please get rid of share buttons from websites"