Charlie Ergen's War

A third of the readers of this column are not in the USA and I can’t claim anymore that America is on the cutting-edge of all things Internet so I’ll just fall back on the argument that this is happening here and could just as easily be happening in your country, too. Which brings us to today’s story of Charlie Ergen’s plan to dominate the distribution of TV content to America in an all-IP, post-broadcast, post-satellite future. John Malone and Reed Hastings beware!

Echostar owns Dish Network, America’s second-largest satellite TV provider. Charlie Ergen is Echostar’s iconoclastic founder, CEO, and largest shareholder. Just as John Malone does with DirecTV, Charlie runs Dish any old way he […]

By |May 23rd, 2011|2011|58 Comments
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Collaborize, Rinse, Repeat

I’d been putting-off going to startups.cringely.com to finally read all 286 entries so far in this summer’s Cringely (NOT in Silicon Valley) Startup Tour.  But when I finally went to the site, I couldn’t get in.  The page timed-out.  This was not good.  Or maybe it was very good in that the site was so busy.  But even that’s not good because I don’t like turning readers away.  So which was it — good or not good?

Not good.

Twelve hours later, when I still couldn’t get in I called the CTO at the company that hosts that site — Democrasoft.  You haven’t heard about them, believe me, and I’ll […]

By |March 23rd, 2010|2010|72 Comments
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