Computer Generated Tennis Highlights
Working with my friend Hemanth — we developed a system for “watching” a full 6 hour match and converting it into, in this case, 6 minutes of highlights. I think you will be impressed at how good the highlights are — remember this is fully a machine deciding where to cut the video - no human massaging of the output.
The trick in this case: Use the audio signals. We actually don’t use any image analysis / processing here — we use the audio track from the video footage.
The major reminder being — someone somewhere has done the math you need and wrote about it in a paper 20 years ago. We found some excellent papers that detail how to look for patterns in audio and we used those algorithms along with our input to focus on signals like: clapping, cheering, silence and ball hitting to pull out the “best” plays from the match.
Robert Iger - The Ride of a Lifetime
I highly recommend this read, it is light, fast, fun and informative.
Robert Iger, in his own telling, comes off as the consummate executive. I’m most impressed with his clear vision for Disney in terms of widening Disney’s moat by growing and owning new characters and new worlds — as it is Disney’s creation of characters that have a strong emotional connections with their audience that drives success and their entire product portfolio.
Tech is write software once and sell it a gazillion times with zero marginal cost — but tech has limited retention in comparison to the emotional connection/lock Disney develops through their amazing stories.
A few other thoughts:
I’d like to learn more about Cap Cities leaders Tom Murphy and Dan Burke
I’d love to read more about the failures — this book is really just a highlight reel of the good times.
I perceived much of Iger’s approach as finding and paying for the best talent / teams / content — and that it worked because they were able to model if and how Disney could better monetize the assets than the current owner and hence take advantage of what I will call a price or value discrepancy.
IBM’s OS/2 vs Microsoft's Windows
Read the full thread: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1098019578997760000.html
The key quotes:
6/ Bill Gates: “Some argue IBM should have kept the PC architecture proprietary… [They] are missing the point. IBM became the central force in the PC industry precisely because [of] its open architecture.” [quote from Bill's book "The Road Ahead"]
7/ What IBM didn’t understand is how powerful independent clone makers would become once the positive feedback loops were created based on the open PC standard. IBM’s reaction to its failure to have control over the PC was the root cause of its decision to create OS/2.
Thoughts:
It’s never as simple / easy as it looks in hindsight (MSFT was at risk and faced IBM squashing them)
IBM didn’t understand the implications of the open PC standard and positioned their business incorrectly.
IBM’s missteps created the opportunity for MSFT. So, Step 1 is you have to be in the game / in the running, Step 2 is wait for an opening.