Sam Iles's Blog

CHANTIX (it’s stylised in upper-case, for inexplicable reasons), the miracle stop-smoking drug from American drug giant Pfizer has a wonderful (that’s sarcasm, by the way) success rate of 44%. However, it has made quite a storm in America. But, for me, the most entertaining part is the health notices which it carries on the homepage of its website (and said at double-time at the end of its TV adverts):

Some people have had changes in behavior, hostility, agitation, depressed mood, suicidal thoughts or actions while using CHANTIX to help them quit smoking. Some people had these symptoms when they began taking CHANTIX, and others developed them after several weeks of treatment or after stopping CHANTIX. If you, your family, or caregiver notice agitation, hostility, depression, or changes in behavior, thinking, or mood that are not typical for you, or you develop suicidal thoughts or actions, anxiety, panic, aggression, anger, mania, abnormal sensations, hallucinations, paranoia, or confusion, stop taking CHANTIX and call your doctor right away. Also tell your doctor about any history of depression or other mental health problems before taking CHANTIX, as these symptoms may worsen while taking CHANTIX. Do not take CHANTIX if you have had a serious allergic or skin reaction to CHANTIX. Some people can have serious skin reactions while taking CHANTIX, some of which can become life-threatening. These can include rash, swelling, redness, and peeling of the skin. Some people can have allergic reactions to CHANTIX, some of which can be life-threatening and include: swelling of the face, mouth, and throat that can cause trouble breathing. If you have these symptoms or have a rash with peeling skin or blisters in your mouth, stop taking CHANTIX and get medical attention right away. The most common side effects include nausea (30%), sleep problems, constipation, gas and/or vomiting. If you have side effects that bother you or don’t go away, tell your doctor. You may have trouble sleeping, vivid, unusual or strange dreams while taking CHANTIX.

So, there you have it. You know, I think I’d rather be addicted to smoking than take a drug that will make me suicidal and aggressive and apparently make all my skin fall off. And, not even just suicidal thoughts, but suicidal actions. I understand that drug companies have to cover themselves for headaches, sickness, swelling and the like, but, really – suicide?! No thank you, Pfizer.

Apple has a lot of cash in its bank account: $70 billion, in fact. And, this is relatively unusual even for a company of Apple’s size. Having this much cash can cause unease. Shareholders ask themselves why you won’t do a buyback to push the price up or why you won’t step boldly into a new market to give them some additional value. Plus, it can make you more of a target to takeovers (although, that’s hardly a concern for Apple).

Of course, piles of cash provides great benefit, too. You can easily brush off any misstep, for one thing. Imagine if the iPad would have failed miserably, costing tens of millions. That could be a disaster for a cash poorer company (relatively speaking, of course) like RIM or Nokia, but Steve Jobs can casually describe it as another hobby and move on.

But, at one point, Apple will have to spend some money. With $70 billion (and considerably more at their disposal if they wanted it) there is a lot they could buy. Let’s explore, shall we?

Take Adobe, for one. They would set Apple back by around $25 billion, by my maths. $25b and BOOM – Apple owns one of the biggest software companies around and can finally make a good Creative Suite version for the Mac and maybe even bring some apps to iOS. But, does Apple want some boring software company which makes Flash? Still, maybe…

Sony? I’ve heard that one thrown around a bit. They would set Apple back a measly $35 billion or so. Pretty cheap for such an ostensibly big company. TVs, stereos, phones, games consoles and more, all for Apple. But, how would Apple do such a thing? Apple doesn’t want to own a games console, surely? Isn’t that what the Apple TV will soon be for? And, what about the TVs? Apple wouldn’t even sell fifty SKUs of the same product… And, would they call them “Sony, Subsidiary of Apple Inc.” or just rebrand everything “Apple”? If you ask me, Sony is just too messy for Apple. Too many products, too much disorder.

A big phone network? This seems to be the favourite at the moment. Apple couldn’t afford AT&T (at around $200b, per my calculations) and probably couldn’t afford Verizon (although, they could at a stretch for around $120b) but, they certainly could afford Sprint (America’s third biggest carrier, at around $25b). What’s the benefit, here? Apple gets to be completely independent and make tariffs incredibly cheap while eschewing the carriers it apparently so famously hates. Win-win? Well, I don’t know. For one thing, this deal is unlikely to get regulatory approval (especially if Apple want’s to make iCarrier iOS-only, thereby leaving the US with just two carriers if the AT&T/Verizon deal goes through). But, then, Apple is one of the biggest lobbyists on The Hill, so could probably get it through with the right concessions here and there. The other problem is, of course, that Sprint (or the other US carriers, for that matter) are US only, which is hardly Apple’s style.

Netflix is a popular one. At just $15b for Apple, it’s the kind of money they find behind their metaphorical American ‘couch’. But – OF COURSE NOT! Why would Apple ever buy some simple technology that they can make themselves in seconds and totally eradicate with the right content deals? There really is no reason for Apple to buy Netflix. (Remember, content deals become void if another company purchases Netflix, so they they aren’t the reason).

Nuance. At just $15 billion or so, Apple could own the King of Speech of Recognition. And, let me tell you, Nuance do more than just (cough the best app ever cough) Dragon Dictate – if you’ve used speech recognition in the last few years, chances are it came from Nuance. They are so incredible and have the most incredible piece of software here that you really could drive the next revolution in mobile (and stationary) computing better than anyone else. Just, do it.

Skype? Ooops.

Amazon? Well, you know, Apple could just about afford Amazon, giving it would cost them around $100b. In one fell swoop, they would own the eBooks market with iBooks and eradicate the only company in the world who could possibly build an iPad competitor. But, is Apple in the boring product retail space? I think not, probably.

Microsoft? Unfortunately, Apple couldn’t afford them. But, they could buy a division or two? I’d love to see Apple making an industry leading CRM product, wouldn’t you?!

AMD – now this one I like. AMD are actually the cheapest company on this list so far, costing probably $7 or $8 billion. Wouldn’t it be awesome to see Apple walk in and sweep the chip space? They could probably own the market in a few years. (Sadly, Intel is too expensive).

Nvidia. This would be just $15b and would be awesome. Apple could make some great graphics for their Macs and hold the PC guys to ransom, all the while getting a whole load of talent to work on stuff for their tablets and phones. I hope so.

Facebook. Apple could afford Facebook and would instantly make them the leader in social and arguably the most powerful company in the world. It would be a hard deal to do though, as they’d have to deal with a lot of individual investors, all of whom would probably have their own ideas of what the price should be. (Not to mention the difficulty in buying out the CIA, who do own shares in Facebook.)

Last option: just buy everything. And, when I ay everything, I mean all of the little companies. Anyone, anywhere who makes something cool and costs less than $100m – buy them. Control the market forever. OK, Apple already does this a little, but you could a little more, I feel.

This is where I get silly.

Ford! Oh, how I would love Apple to buy what is – technologically – the single greatest non-tech company on earth. Can you imagine if Apple made cars? And, Ford would only set them back around $70b. Pure cash, and Apple could be one of the biggest car companies overnight. Please, Apple, do this.

Virgin Galactic. Like Branson would ever sell it, but it’s still fun to dream. VG is the only company so far not public, so it’s hard to get an estimate here. But, it would be around $2 billion and Apple would become pretty much the sole player in the future – space. Once you look past the silly idea of LEO in a little plane for billionaires and realise what VG is really about, you realise it is the place to put all of your money. We’re talking flights from London to Australia in one hour. Apple – do space, please.

And then we get to the ideas that aren’t companies, but how Apple could still blow its money:

Robots. For God’s sake, Apple: make me a damn robot. I don’t want to wash things or clean my house or make my dinner anymore. I want a cool robot – like the ones from the conveniently named movie ‘iRobot’ (minus the apocalyptic murder, of course). Pop Asimov’s three laws in and we’ve got safe, helpful metal friends all with a glowing Apple engraved in their forehead. Pleaseeeeeee.

There you have it. I could keep going on forever. (How much would it cost Apple to instantly manifest itself into The Party and bring Ingsoc into being? Because I’d be cool with that.) Think about it: Apple could buy Nuance, AMD, Nvidia and Adobe all in cash. Four purchases and Apple becomes even more of a behemoth than now. But I doubt they listen to me. But, if they are, I’ve certainly given them enough options to finally spend some money.

Vaccines are an odd topic. I’ve briefly expressed some views before but thought I should write a blog post to explain them further.

Vaccines – basically – are good. They can eradicate disease and save lives.

They are also rather dangerous and are where drug companies make most of their money.

Therein lies the problem. Vaccines are for making money and many companies will stop at nothing to make that money.

There are some crazy conspiracy theories out there. My favourite has to be that the government puts RFID chips into vaccines and uses it to track humans. This is entirely within the realms of the scientifically possible. But I don’t believe it.

What I do know, however, is that vaccines are unlike any other product in existence. If I plan to buy something, I research first and make an informed decision. Vaccines are different. Parents get their children jabs because they are told to by doctors (who in turn tell the government (or, vice-versa, a cynic might say…)).

It is so easy to pay a doctor to say something. Very easy. This is well documented as happening within every industry, because people always blindly trust science.

(A few months ago, for example, a group of scientists released a report saying chocolate was healthier for you than fruit. The mainstream media ate this up (pardon the pun) and all ran stories on it. A few days later, it was discovered that said report was financed by Hershey’s – the world’s largest chocolate manufacturer. Needless to say the media didn’t report this revelation at all.)

If science says you need a vaccine – you get a vaccine. Study after study (all financed by the companies who made the vaccine) conclude the vaccine is essential and safe. The government blindly agrees.

We also know that vaccines are the most important product to drug companies. They all openly admit in their investor information that this is the case. Take Alzheimer’s. 500,000 people in the UK have it. So, if I make a drug to cure it 500,000 people buy it from me. If, however, I make a vaccine – then all 65 million people in the UK buy it. This is obvious. And, it’s not a bad thing. It’s just worth understanding why vaccines are so important.

Vaccines safety is also dubious at best. There are many reports of vaccines making people very ill (such as the recent emergence that the miracle vaccine for the dreaded swine flu plague causes narcolepsy).

Vaccines don’t require anywhere near the same safety testing rigmarole regular drugs experience. A normal drug takes years of testing before it’s approved but vaccines take just months.

And – perhaps my favourite facet of vaccines – by decree of the Supreme Courts of the United States of America (and, soon the United States of Europe, I’ll wager) companies can’t be sued if the vaccine kills you or doesn’t work. Literally, they can’t be sued.

Imagine the protection this offers them: the can literally fill a vaccine with water or arsenic and nothing will go wrong for them.

My point is simply this: vaccines are not inherently a scam or evil. Just think about this: vaccines are perhaps the only product in the world which has a potential customer base of six billion, people blindly buy without knowing what it is and a product which carries complete legal immunity (pun, sorry). I just find it fascinating that a product can command such a high number of users because the company who makes it tells you to. Vaccines are literally the best product in the world – from the company’s point of view.

On Monday I started work on a new website. Like most websites I make, this one was born out of desire. I thought this kind of website would be really cool. If I’m honest, I didn’t take to Google to see if it existed already. I just took to paper and drew what I wanted. Then I coded it. I think you can always have a better service if you build it yourself. That way, it’s exactly what you want (hey, even if nobody else uses it at least you have something you can use).

Anyway, the service is called Rejuncture. It is like a daily diary, but it designed to be quick and small. Every other diary type app or service I’ve seen does too much. It gives you a task manager or a calendar or a million other things you don’t need. Rejuncture is simple and clean.

A juncture is defined as a critical moment in time. An important moment worth remembering. Rejuncture (a word I obviously made up) is about capturing, remembering and reliving those moments (hence the ‘re’ part).

You log into the website and are presented immediately with all the fields needed to make a ‘Juncture’ (that’s what I’m calling the individual entries). You give the actual text you want to record and can add a location, tags and people. That way, you can easily search all of your Junctures made in Paris or referencing your girlfriend.

The length of text is up to you. You can write short, 50 word entries or you can write a long form piece each day where you divulge all of your thoughts and feelings.

At the moment it is very simple and still a beta product. Coming soon will be the ability to: Link relevant photos or tweets to Junctures Add Junctures by other means (mobile, email, etc) Export all your Junctures as zipped plain text or CSV Required interface features like sorting, editing, deleting Multiple language support Much more!

I’m launching early to give you a taste of the site and let you try it out. Hopefully, it will become much more robust and useful, while remaining as streamlined and simple as it is now.

There you have it: Rejuncture. Head on over to rejuncture.com to try it out now!

‘If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.’ – Reid Hoffman, Founder of LinkedIn

I read this quotation recently and it really resonated with me. I broadly agree with him. Here’s why.

Feedback is critical to any product. Especially on the web. Websites are so easy to tweak that making a mistake doesn’t matter. But, if you spend a year writing code and taking your product in one direction which isn’t actually what people want then you’ve wasted your time. Feedback from users telling you what’s good, what isn’t and what they’d like to see is so important. Even if you have a handful of users, feedback is still invaluable. Even if “feedback” isn’t words, but just usage metrics it’s still important.

I always try to launch early. I figure that the sooner I have code in people’s hands the sooner I can build a user base and the sooner I can get tangible feedback. Sure, some users will be dissuaded from using your service if they can’t handle the pre-perfectly-designed version, or need some features or can’t deal with a bug or two. But, in the long run, developing a product with constant feedback will always make a better product.

This incidentally, what I intend to do this week. I started making a website on Monday and I am going to get it out this week. It will have the basic features and the basic design and we can go from there. If I can get half a dozen people to use it and offer the occasional comment then I can direct development far better and hopefully make happier users as they see their ideas and thoughts being realised.

So there we have it. A short post to add my thoughts to Reid’s: launch early, iterate often, make a better product.

Cross posted from the Deverous blog

There’s a lot of talk about a second Internet bubble around now. The theory goes that there are more and more Internet companies around which are getting huge amounts of investments and huge valuations when they might not be worth it. Especially when many of them don’t have a business model yet.

Where there is a business model, it tends to be ads. This introduces a problem unto itself. If money doesn’t go into the system, there isn’t enough advertising money to go around. Of course, this is a simplistic view, as there are real world companies (that sell real products) which advertise online. But, if there are one billion websites online all trying to advertise with each other, where does the money come from. This was how the first bubble happened: lots of people rushing to invest in the web and then realising they didn’t have a way to make their money back.

So what does the web need? People to pay for its services? I think so. But, I don’t think the traditional way of paying $39.99 per year is needed. That’s fine for a few services, but few people would want to spend more than even $50 per year online.

So what about micro-payments? I think it would be a great way to introduce a lot of revenue into the system. People are happy to pay for a $0.99 iPhone app. So, why not a $0.99 web service?

Take, for example, Twitter. Let’s say they charge you one dollar to make more than one thousand tweets in a month. Or, Facebook charges a dollar if you want to upload more than one hundred photos. Same for Flickr. Or all these great web services we use for free can charge tiny amounts for a few services. Think of it as in-app payments for websites.

The problem with this approach is the cost. No small (or even large) web company can charge such small infrequent amounts to credit cards without being landed with enormous fees. So, someone needs to help out. Let’s say it’s Google: they say that their checkout service can be highly integrated with websites and easily and profitably accept small amounts, so you just log in as simply as on the iPhone with your iTunes account. A company like Google that did something like this well could make a huge impact and gain huge traction.

Small card charges are possible (think single song purchases on iTunes) but they take the clout of a major company to make them happen. A startup with one guy in his bedroom couldn’t go to a huge bank and try to hammer out some kind of deal.

And the frustrating thing is that these card transactions actually cost very little – if anything – to make. If you think about it, when you make a card transaction online, all that happens is the processing company takes your numbers, sends them to your card company who confirms them and then informs the bank of the amount which needs to be taken out. Thanks to the Internet, this whole process takes a microsecond and doesn’t incur any tangible costs. But, each party involved adds their small fee and it soon builds up.

But, imagine if a company could make this work. Make a great service with a great API and have a minimum of $0.99, with a 10% charge or even 5% (in contrast to Apple’s 30%). There are ways – I am certain – to make money like this. By working with banks, grouping payments over a week or two and pricing low for volume, someone could really clean up. (And I think that service could be Jack Dorsey’s Square). Even the 30% that Apple charges wouldn’t be that awful on the web.

And this is what I think could be great for the web. Small charges for bonus features. Not a yearly fifty dollar subscription that people would only give to one website each year, but to spread it around those websites.

This is how you get money into the system and avoid teetering on a dangerous precipice of swapping limited ad dollars from company to company. But, will this ever happen? Will any company ever work out a way to make this work financially? Only time will tell.

People are making something of a fuss at the moment as it has emerged that Barclays pays little corporation tax on its profit. In fact, it paid £113m in corporation tax to the UK in 2009, or 2.4% of its £4.6bn global annual profit. The main rate of corporation tax in the UK is 28%, meaning Barclays is paying around ten times less than it should.

People have been protesting outside of Barclays branches today in some attempt to make them pay more money.

But, here’s the thing: what they’re doing is entirely legal. It isn’t even the kind of “creative accounting” which you might imagine, like when companies sell stock to themselves for millions of pounds. Barclays is reporting all of its earnings and doing exactly what they should be. Their tax bill just happens to come out as 2.4% because of the international nature of their business.

So, why then, get angry at Barclays? Sure, it may not be nice to see a bank (who most people see as the cause of the financial bother we’re in now) paying so little tax when the government is cutting billions of pounds from its budget, but it really isn’t their fault. I mean, they are just doing a sum and getting a figure out. A sum which is dictated by the government.

So, my question is, why do you protest the company which pays its tax, when it is your government which creates the rules? Barclays has shareholders to answer to and, as such, can’t just write a cheque for a fairer amount to the Treasury even though they don’t have to. The government, however, doesn’t answer to shareholders – it answers to you.

Let’s a little closer. Recently in The City of London (which, curiously, isn’t a part of London at all, it is a separate area with its own police force and politicians and – most curiously – own tax laws) people got a little excited when the government announced the biggest and crudest corporate tax cut in the memory. For some reason, the media has barely reported this at all and it has pretty much gone unnoticed by the Barclays protesting public. Allow me to explain.

Currently, tax laws make sure that companies who are headquartered in the UK don’t pay tax on the same earnings twice. In other words, if you make £100 profit in the USA and pay them corporation tax, you don’t have to pay it to the UK. Which is, of course, fair. But, let’s say the corporation tax in the USA is 20%, whereas it’s 28% in the UK. In this case, you pay the difference of 8% to the UK government. Again, this seems fair and is how it should work.

The new government, however, is changing this. They are scrapping that rule entirely, meaning that if you pay 20% in one country, you don’t have to pay the extra 8% it in the UK. Naturally, a company just find a country with an extremely low corporation tax rate and filter all their money through there. This will make the UK one of only two countries in the entire world that does this (the other being Switzerland).

That’s not even the end. The Tories have also pledged to lower the main rate of corporation tax from 28% to 24% over the course of their rule. This will give the UK the lowest corporation tax rate of any western country.

There is no perversion of the system: this is the system. This is law and this is how political parties make their money. Just look at donation records for the big parties and the individual candidates. The committee set up by the government to look at corporation tax is run by representatives by many major UK companies.

Unless the UK makes major changes to its policies regarding tax and legal evasion, people will be protesting outside of a different company each week.

One of the big changes ever in food is consumer driven. It’s organic, free-range and fair trade. Customers pay more for these products because they are better for the environment, [supposedly] better for the animals, and better for the people that make them. This was driven by knowledge: people learning that current methods are not good enough and wanting more.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about Foxconn. There have been multiple suicides there and people think this has something to do with the conditions. Whilst I think these thoughts are groundless: there are hundreds of thousands of people living at Foxconn, they’re like giant cities and if someone told you 11 people commit suicide in San Francisco every year, you wouldn’t think anything of it; and the workers are treated very well, they have cinemas and swimming pools, etc.

Regardless of whether the problem lies in the conditions at any 3rd world manufacturing company it raises a whole other question: are conditions and pay fair?

Workers in these manufacturing companies that make phones and laptops and Xboxes, et al, are paid extremely low wages and work long hours. But whose fault is this? Is Apple reducing labour costs to increase it’s margins? No. Consumer demand for cheaper products is pushing down labour costs. Do you think Apple could build a $500 iPad in the USA? Because they certainly couldn’t.

So it’s consumers fault. We want cheap clothes and technology so we go to India and China. But, is that what all consumers want? Clearly, not all consumers want cheap sugar or chocolate, because they buy fair trade.

But, would they pay an extra hundred dollars for their iPad if more money went to the people that make them? If Apple creates two price points for the iPad, one cheap and one fair trade, they effectively say “Oh, yeah, you’re right, Foxconn workers are treated horribly…” Which I can’t imaging Apple or Dell or any company doing.

But, it worked with sugar. People know that one sugar is good for people, the other is bad. It doesn’t make them resent the sugar seller.

Would fair trade work in other industries? I don’t know. I, for one, would pay more for my products if more went to the people that made them. But I don’t know if everyone else is like me….