The future of online video advertising

See this on the original website. The way it synchs with the pages around it is pretty incredible. Click here

“And Then There Was Salsa” from Frito Lay Dips on Vimeo.

30 most important innovations in Medicine

The 30 innovations chosen on the basis of articles published in The Journal of the American Medical Association and the New England Journal of Medicine in the past 25 years. 225 physicians who graduated before 1980 were surveyed based on several factors. The ranking of the 30 medical innovations in the study are as follows:

1. MRI and CT
2. ACE inhibitors
3. Balloon angioplasty
4. Statins
5. Mammography
6. Coronary artery bypass graft
7. Proton pump inhibitors and H2 blockers
8. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and new non-SSRI antidepressants
9. Cataract extraction and lens implant
10. Hip and knee replacement
11. Ultrasonography and echocardiography
12. Gastrointestinal endoscopy
13. Inhaled steroids for asthma
14. Laparoscopic surgery
15. Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and COX-2 inhibitors
16. Cardiac enzymes
17. Fluoroquinolones
18. New hypoglycemic agents
19. HIV testing and treatment
20. Tamoxifen
21. Prostate-specific antigen testing
22. Long-acting and local opioid anesthetics
23. Helicobacter pylori testing and treatment
24. Bone densitometry
25. Third-generation cephalosporins
26. Calcium channel blockers
27. Intravenous conscious sedation
28. Sildenafil (Viagra)
29. Nonsedating antihistamines
30. Bone marrow transplant

The Digital Music Industry isn't music to anyone's ears

I just finished reading an interesting article about web-based models (Daily Deal). Thought I'd post the most important points here and my personal views

My predictions:

Give me easy ways to find stations. Pandora's hardware might do better than its software.

- The global music industry has gone from $31Bn to $18Bn
- Apple sells 25 percent of all US music, Walmart sells 14 percent
- It costs a penny to play a song (you can start your own co today) so the more successful you are, the more cash you burn (remember Netzero!)
- There are 350 digital music cos (good grief!) And $1 billion has been invested
- Pandora, which raised $50MM is profitable with $40 million in revenues but very few paying subscribers
- Spotify (Europe) also raised $50MM
- There have been 2 exits. MySpace acquired Imeem with 16 million listeners for $1 million; CBS paid $250MM for Last.fm but its reportedly not doing well
- Interesting models: Ecast (digiral jukeboxes for clubs and bars), Jamendo (selling rights-cleared music to businesses) and Rhapsody (first-mover streaming subscriber but only has 700,000 subscribers)
- 95 percent of digital music is still illegal.
- Getting label approval is a laborious process; nothing is standardized
- Venture units of both Sony Music and Universal Music have been dismantled

My predictions for the next 3 years

- First the obvious ones. Most of these cos will dissapear and most VCs won't make a dime
- Old musicians may be found bagging groceries as their retirement rapidly dries up. There will be many more tours, videos with product placements and merchandising so bands can milk the few good years (anyone remember Britney) - and more recent bands will play at Yahoo and Google !
- Labels will standardize distribution, even adopting common platforms (e g an Amazon equivalent for distributing all major labels might emerge and anyone will be able to contract from them and stream the music)
- Local radio advertising prices will drop off a cliff
- Cool hardware will have unpredictable success, but there will be a resurgence of cool radios in the home with retro designs but till the big consumer cos like Bose step in, these will be niche businesses with unpredictable sound quality
- Cable will go outside the box. They will l sell hardware that will pick up the Internet based stations from the set-top box and and give us more control. The radio on cable will finally get significantly better with more controls to users (though TV sounds won't hence the need for a wireless-enabled radio)
- The more lawyers a label hires and the longer it takes to strike deals with these 350 startups, the slower will they be to get online, and the less likely they are to survive.
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