Peter Yared's Musings

This post was also published on CNET and VentureBeat. Taking your site mobile is a technology minefield. Here's how we're doing it at CBS Interactive. The mobile technology landscape is incredibly confusing. There are numerous choices, ranging from new HTML5 technologies, native app development methods, and all sorts of content management systems. At CBS Interactive, we have numerous mobile solutions, including native apps for CBS.com, CNET, and "60 Minutes," along with mobile-optimized Web sites for GameFaqs and global properties like ZDnet. At first blush, it seems problematic that various properties have picked completely different architectures for mobile delivery. A technologist's initial inclination is to have everyone run a consistent architecture across all of our properties. Yet it actually makes sense to run a variety of architectures to support mobile delivery. The biggest issue to address is the ongoing tension between HTML5 and native. Most

This post was also published on CNET and VentureBeat. For the scope of this article, I am leaving all of the commentary on SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, and such aside for others much more well-versed than I to discuss. A lot of people have been asking me the same question lately: Just how do sites like MegaUpload--recently taken down by an international collection of law enforcement--make hundreds of millions of dollars a year and fund lottery-winner style lifestyles that include mansions and private jets? It's actually pretty straightforward. These sites use the same techniques as legitimate Web sites: search, social media, ad networks, and online payment processors. Sites that feature links to illegal videos optimize for the keyword "links," and users that seek such videos have learned to search for "links." Generally, providers of legal content are not trying to land in searches for links; they are trying to land in searches for the word "videos." So s

This post was also published on CNET and VentureBeat. For all the naysaying about Facebook, that it's a flash in the pan and such, there are very few that say that "social" is going away. Facebook has defined the social era of computing--and the companies that defined the previous eras of computing each command market values of $200 billion or more. Facebook should get there, too. IBM kicked off the mainframe era of computing and to this day is the leader in big enterprise computers and services. Microsoft was an early leader in personal computer software and now dominates microprocessor based desktops and servers. And after joining the scrum at the tail end of the dotcom boom of the 1990s, Google emerged as the leader of the Internet era of computing, amassing huge market share and most of Internet advertising's profits. Coincidentally, those three companies--each of which dominated an era of computing--are now each worth roughly $200 billion. While man