Are you dizzy yet? Abroad, T-Mobile is big and looking to be gigantic. In the US, that’s not the case. However, with their majority market share overseas, they could use that for aggressive expansion in the US.

Ah, but there’s more. T-Mobile is running on a GSM network while Sprint Nextel runs on the CDMA network. What gives? Hasn’t T-Mobile seen just how messy trying to merge networks can be with the Sprint/Nextel merger? Hmmmm…perhaps they have something else in mind. Maybe they won’t merge the entire user base and networks but rather keep them separate. Sprint has a good lead on location tracking using their network (think GPS but without needing the satellites). Maybe T-Mobile wants that strategic resource while also being able to say “we have this giant user base”. They could have both a big cellular consumer base and also the tracking user base suited more for enterprise.

This is all speculation on my part but it does make one ponder. It’s certainly got me wondering. Thoughts?

Seriously people…be HAPPY you can get two million dollars, especially now in this economy. While so many people (save from those AIG execs) make a modest living and live paycheck to paycheck. A few more put in a good day’s work and make a bit more. However, this being the celebrity-crazed, sports-loving, voyeuristic society that we live in, we love to see the football players with their multi-million dollar contracts, the movie stars that make $40 million per movie, the companies that are being run by college kids that are being bought for hundreds of millions. Time to come back to reality…

I was reminded that we need to come back down to earth as I was talking to a friend (and coincidentally a business partner from another company we co-founded and sold off many years ago) about one of his pet projects that we’re about to revitalize. Years ago we parted ways (on a good note of course! no speculation here people…we’re best friends and always will be) as he went off to law school and I continued on with my wily ways. As a Mac user he was having a frustrating time in a PC-centric world of law and education, thus he started up the site Mac Law Students. He was bound and determined to find solutions to his Mac problems (what time tracking software is there for the Mac? How can you take an exam that was designed for PCs? What’s the best solution for…) and report this to other law students who didn’t want to trade in their Macs simply to go to school and practice law. (In a funny random side note, my first real gig out of college was doing support for an IP law firm that was all Mac-based aside from the Netware server here and there). The site became fairly popular but as we all have time constraints he could not continue on with this after graduation. It’s been a while since that decision was made and he decided it’s time to bring it back.

So just what does this all mean? What am I rambling about? I start with billion dollar deals and then move on to a small niche site? Stay with me here…

We  have no illusions that doing this site will make anyone stupid rich. And ya know what? That’s ok. It’s kind of a fun project to work on and could bring some sort of notoriety down the road, but it’s just a fun thing for now that could help fund a hobby or two.

Or could it get bigger? Who knows. I mean, wasn’t that company Apple started in a garage? Did you know the first Apples had a WOODEN case? Or those other little companies (FaceBook, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc) started in dorm rooms or as small things that happened to get big? I believe so.

Not EVERY venture needs millions in seed money just to get off the ground. Take a good idea, some passion, and some hard work and you can succeed. Not only can you succeed, you can go nuts and thrive.

So if you’ve got a good idea that you want to try, just go ahead and do it. Maybe you’ll get rich. Maybe you won’t. However, if you don’t even try there’s a 100% chance you WON’T have something to sell off for a hefty price. At the very least, find something you enjoy doing and then you can have something fun to do. At the upper end you’ve got something you can possibly retire on. Think small and go big.

I don’t even know where to begin with today’s thoughts. I watched news blurb after news blurb yesterday as there was talk of Deutsche Telecom being interested in taking over Sprint. This would make T-Mobile the largest wireless provider in the U.S. as they beat out both Verizon (oh how I would love to see mobile’s greedy evil empire have to fight instead of insilling their will on poor hapless customers) and AT&T. However, there’s concern that this isn’t even a feasible merger because T-Mobile and Sprint are on two completely different networks (GSM and CDMA respectively). There’s also concern of a foreign company owning such a large portion of the wireless infrastructure in the U.S.

Next up was news that Sprint may spin off or sell Nextel. Widely regarded as a momentous failed merger for Sprint, this could possibly be a good thing as Sprint tries to right the ship. This was another blunder of two different networks (again, this makes you wonder about the DT/Sprint merger) that just couldn’t seem to get it right. Nextel had quite a following in the business world but that merger destroyed all that and you hardly hear the chirp of those phones anymore (honestly, I never really saw the appeal but I’m sure they had their place especially in the construction world). Sprint has been working hard to set things right. Cleaning house with stores and workers, new management promising to make changes, could we actually be seeing the fruits of all this?

After that I saw Qwest was ditching Sprint for Verizon. There goes another 800,000 customers. Not the best news for Sprint as they continue to have the highest churn rate and lose customers left and right. I’m trying to see the silver lining in this cloud but it evades me at the moment.

So where does that leave us? Perhaps the merger will be a good thing. With the telecoms moving to move to 3G networks anyway, maybe the fact DT and Sprint being on two different networks is a moot point as they choose a new one. And we still have yet to find out what the deal is with the whole WiMax deal. Also, Sprint seems to be taking cues that their phone offering is less than desireable as they move to add better phones (the Samsung Instinct being the most visible of the phones…often touted as a competitor to the iPhone). There’s also a move to bring more Java-enabled phones to the lineup and Sprint is also upgrading their Titan platform (the next generation Java platform for Sprint phones). Interestingly enough, this platform will allow developers to use the same set of codes and resources as the desktop developers use thus allowing for a much larger developer base.

It’s a wild world for Sprint right now. It’s exciting to see the company isn’t simply rolling over and dying. I must say I’m impressed with what management is up to. They’ll be criticized for a while, highly scrutinized and asked where the immediate results are but this isn’t an overnight fix. My head is spinning from all the recent news and I’m looking forward to seeing what the outcome is. Any other insights or opinions are greatly appreciated.

Anyway…I digress. PageFlakes fell on my radar over a year ago amongst other similar sites (Netvibes is the only one that comes to mind right now) and PageFlakes is the one that won out in my picky “I only have so much time to futz around” life. I still haven’t seen any advertising for it so to see it succeed with its grassroots movement makes me happy.

It also inspires me. I’ve still got a few ideas that I’ve been sitting on and need to get out to the masses. Knowing that a great idea can still become popular, not only amongst users but also investors, is the fire I need to get my ideas out of my brain and into the internet cloud.

Ok, so live TV viewing is out of the question. You either get an error screen that says they can’t pick up the satelite signal or you get a frozen bitmapped screen of something that at one time resembled a TV show. Time to check out the movies…

Five bucks. Really now…come on Delta. Are you THAT greedy that you have to try to milk a captive audience for five dollars to watch a movie on a screen that is tiny with no THX or surround sound? In this day and age, it’s ridiculous to charge that…especially with so many alternatives available to the traveler.

I looked around and saw maybe half a dozen people pay $5 to watch a movie (that of course kept getting interrupted every time the captain made an announcement). I myself grabbed the iPod and watched “Aeon Flux” on that. Usually I travel with my PowerBook and have anything from my DVD library available to me. Again…looking around I saw more people watching movies on their iPods, portable DVD players, and laptops than I saw paying $5 for a tiny screen with crappy sound that gets interrupted.

Here’s a thought (and it’s actually a good one Delta…pay attention). You’ve already got the captive audience. Instead of trying to milk us all for a film, make some extra revenue with advertising. If we don’t like your service, we bring our own (free) service. However, offer free movies to your flying customers and you can charge advertisers whatever you want as we sit and watch their commercials while waiting for the movie to start. I guarantee you’ll make more from advertising than you will with the $30 you made from renting the headphones or whatever per flight. It’ll be pretty damn easy to guage the metrics per flight also and offer these reports to your sponsors.

See how easy that was? Happier customers, a better revenue stream for you…everyone is happy.

So what’s next? First Microsoft announced that they were acquiring Danger. Danger is the company that designed the Sidekick phones. This morning I read that MS is letting go a number of executives. Ok, big deal. Companies do that all the time. Here’s what I find interesting though. They’re dumping some key execs. Then, in the midst of all that, Pieter Knook who led Microsoft’s mobile division said he’s off to pursue other opportunities and he’ll be replaced by someone who led Microsoft’s marketing efforts for their server and tools group.

Hm. Obviously Microsoft isn’t content with simply being an OS and office suite software provider. Their bid for Microsoft is still intriguing to me, but now this push in the mobile market makes me wonder where their next full-on battle will be.

Some interesting numbers I found. The Blackberry from Research in Motion has 41% of the smart phone market. Next is the iPhone (yes…the iPhone, which has only been on the market for half a year or so) with 28% and then Microsoft pulling in at 21% (I’m still pissy at Palm for screwing up such a good thing. C’mon guys…you’ve got a good platform…work with it).

Perhaps Microsoft is finding itself in unfamiliar territories and is in panic mode, choosing to go on a buying spree. The purchases are different this time though. In the past, Microsoft generally took over a competitor and wiped them out. This time…well, they aren’t number one in the search game (Google). Not number one in the mobile game (number three?!?!?). So it’s time to buy their way into the game and hope they can compete. I’m curious to see what comes out of it all.

I do find it kinda funny though…still going with the purchase route rather than innovate route. Has Microsoft become such a monolith that it’s easier to simply buy a new technology than it is to create? It’s all up in the air, and the web and mobile space is still the wild wild west.