Back to the video itself, embedded inside: thought-provoking presentation on (buzzword alert!) “information shadows”, “the sensor web”, cloud computing, data collection, processing and presentation/ visualization, local marketing + micropayments, P2P credit-card payments, social network risk evaluation… and how all this is coming together to create new products and services that feed on the cloud and/or organize it. It’s still impossible to tell just how practical this is and who will make money from this, but it’s nice food for thought.

Highlights:

(i) kids are spending more time on books than 10 years ago, but much less on magazines and newspapers.

(ii) iPod/MP3 penetration went from 18% in 2004 to 76% in 2009 – no wonder growth rates have stagnated.

(iii) handheld video games rose more than twofold in usage since 2004.

(iv) Black and Hispanic kids spend much more time than White kids consuming media each day, to the tune of 4.5 additional hours each day.

(v) more media consumption is correlated with lower grades.

Links:

1) 27-page Presentation about the report – lighter reading than the full, 85-page report.

2) Webcast of the presentation

Documentary: Yes, there’s even a documentary:

And as we always stress: view it critically, play with the idea, try to contradict it or apply it in some other field(s). In this particular case it may be hard to do so, because Mr. Pogue’s delightfully terrible songs can really stick in one’s mind.

We don’t have any intention to be the “ultimate source for all things Buffett”, as a lot of people already do a great job at this and we thank them for uncovering these pearls. But this video is special. The parts on “moats” add up to some of his most detailed comments yet on the subject.

We don’t think it’s any exaggeration to say that Buffett has transcended the investment realm and that this is interesting for people in all walks of life. We’re certainly making backup copies.

One must remember that some seriously talented fund managers got burned shorting AOL at a P/E of 100, 200, 300 or 400 – only to see it climb to the now-absurd level of a 700 P/E ratio.

In paper, the business model seems great. What’s hype and what’s real? We’ll probably get to know this soon, since Zynga is supposedly preparing for an IPO. And whatever becomes of it, it’s a huge reminder that disrupting technologies don’t necessarily imply that the inventors will make the most money – in some cases, any money. For new and old industries, always look at the entire value chain, be it suppliers, service providers, etc.

Mark Pincus, Zynga’s CEO, has been in such a media blitz that’s hard not to believe the IPO rumors. Here’s a collection of articles and videos regarding Zynga or its CEO:

LINKS:

Update (Jan. 4th): The Interactive Entrepreneur – NYT, Jan. 3rd 2010 – Social media in Academia? Yes, but with a business twist: students have to come up with a business plan and present to VCs and whatnots. Some ventures have even taken off. It was inevitable, and as usual we’re skeptical, but if it serves as a shortcut for good ideas…

Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech blog filtered by the “Zynga” tag – the whole page is an interesting read.

Zynga raises $180mm – VentureBeat.com, Dec. 15th ’09 – it’s the same russian investor (Digital Sky Technologies) who had recently invested $200mm in Facebook.

Is Facebook the future of micropayments? – CNN.com, Nov. 12th ’09

Virtual goods start bringing in real paydays – NY Times, Nov. 6th ’09

Inside the App economy – BusinessWeek cover story on Oct. 22nd ’09 (includes the 3rd video on the list below).

Zynga hires seasoned games exec – Joystiq.com, June 30th ’09

VIDEOS:

1) At Charlie Rose, Dec. 29th 2009 (5 1/2 minute excerpt of the roughly 15-minute interview):

2) Two videos at CNN, Dec. 17th ’09:

3) At BusinessWeek.com, Oct. 22nd ’09 (annoyingly, this video loads a 15-second add that can’t be stopped)

The way MIT built its incentive system to recruit people to its “team” is part of the story, of course. They were clever enough to mix both “ego-boost” and “cold, hard cash” incentives (since they would donate some of the proceeds to charity). Other teams apparently had either just the feel-good or just the greedy incentives. Of course, the losing teams complain that they had been working for a while when the MIT Team came out of nowhere and, given the famous backers, got a lot of traditional press attention, giving them a leg up on recruiting “balloon spotters”. Well, it seems good media contacts do play a major role in this part of the challenge, so DARPA probably got a lesson from that as well.

Speculations abound on what DARPA could have learned from this, but whether this will help the US capture the “terrorist that can’t be named” is beyond our scope. What we’re interested in is the wealth of data on crowd-sourcing and information dissemination generated by this contest. We’ve posted before on the subject of Crowdsourcing and the implications on Media, Online Services, Search, Hyper-local advertising, Retailing, Services in general (links below). Here’s hoping the MIT Media Lab team will write a comprehensive paper on this challenge and shed some light on this trend.

LINKS:

With lure of cash, MIT wins Pentagon prize – NY Times (free registration required) on the contest winners – Dec. 6th ’09

“Crowdsourcing” revisited – Our own take on crowdsourcing and its potential shortcomings – Nov. 19th ’09

Netflix’s smart crowdsourcing initiative – Our take on the Netflix contest – Sept. 22nd ’09

MIT’s 2-day course on crowdsourcing – Classes in 2010 for this $2,600, 2-day course called Intelligent Organizations: Collaboration and the Future of Work.

Here’s the video, all 65 minutes of it: