May 2009
18 posts
7 tags
What A Day in Tech/Net News!
The frontpage of Techmeme is simply stunning at the moment. So many important things happening:
Google announcing an attempt to completely remake communication and joint document prodcution with Wave. See “Went Walkabout. Brought back Google Wave” on the Google blog.
Microsoft is trying to get back into the search game with Bing. It definitely looks like an attempt at a...
3 tags
Heyzap
Today we announced our investment in Heyzap. Jude and Immad are building some fabulous widgets, feeds and APIs to let folks put games everywhere. For instance, you can now find a few games in the right side bar of this blog. With Heyzap it took less than 5 minutes to pick the games and embed them. I started with some skiing games — my way of “staying in shape” during the...
The Stock Rally That Keeps On Going
Most of my friends who actively invest in public equities have been arguing that the current rally in the stock market is unsustainable. So have many professionals. Which makes me wonder who is doing all the buying as the indexes keep on shooting up. I am curious how the current trading volumes compare to historic volumes (something that is easy to research) and would love to know whether there is...
2 tags
Loving Inflight Wifi
On my West Coast trip last week I had wifi on my American Airlines flights both to and from SF. According to an article in the New York Times, by the end of 2009 the service will be available on 1,000 planes domestically and the target is 2,000 planes by end of 2010. I was struck by a few things:
The article made no mention that a previous attempt to equip planes with wifi had failed with...
4 tags
It Is Too Complicated (Pub/Ad Tech)
We have met with a number of companies in the online ad market recently. Every time I ask the entrepreneurs to chart how what they offer fits in with the networks, exchanges, data providers, ad servers, optimizers, agencies, etc. Inevitably, every one draws themselves in the center with the other players revolving around them. Also inevitably, the picture gets complicated rather quickly.
Then...
5 tags
Lost (in Data) and the Role of the Board
One of the great things about running any online business is the amount of data that it throws off. In fact, this is now true for pretty much any business, as processes such as supply chain, CRM, etc are all running through systems that collect tons of data. But I am also finding that it is far too easy to get lost in the data:
It is easy for discussions to get stuck in the data weeds, for...
3 tags
Give Me An Intelligent Mobile Command Line
In writing and talking about WolframAlpha yesterday, it occurred to me how much I like being able to get stuff done without clicking around. That’s especially important when clicking around is slow (because of latency and processor speed) and clumsy (because of tiny screen), such as is the case on phones. In other words, I want to go back to the beginning with a command line. The Unix...
5 tags
Computer, What Is WolframAlpha?
On Friday evening the much anticipated WolframAlpha launched publicly. It is great fun to play around with, not only because it has some hilarious easter eggs, but because there is a renewed sense of exploration. At least I found myself coming up with ever new queries to see what it knows (computes) and what it doesn’t. For instance, here are two queries that show off the range of...
3 tags
Social Media and the Piercing of the Corporate...
There has been a lot of online commentary on the social media rules imposed by the WSJ. For instance, Fred wrote how some of the rules conflict with what makes for effective online engagement. He got an interesting comment from Peter Kafka arguing that the rules amounted little more than a “think before you write - in any medium” — but then Peter added that “[this is] one...
6 tags
Learning from Google's Ability to Innovate
Google announced and released a number of innovations to their core search product this week, including search options and support for microformats/RDFa. What I think is most interesting about this is not so much the specifics of what they have done, but that they continue to innovate in core search. This contrasts with several other big names on the Internet, such as eBay, which for years have...
6 tags
Cloud Database Standards Panel at Glue Conference
In January I wrote a post saying that we need a standard for cloud databases. That post is now the #2 search result on google for “cloud database standards” and there are still no results that even hint at emerging standards. So it will be fun today to moderate a panel on this topic at the Glue Conference with Alex Iskold and Stu Charlton. I am planning on a lot of audience...
3 tags
Looking for Help in Starting Not-for-Profit
Last year I posted about my idea for Black Swan Philanthropy, which would be focused on funding projects aimed at preventing or coping with very low probability events that would have cataclysmic outcomes for humanity. The idea has taken on quite a bit more shape since then, thanks to helpful discussions with friends. As two examples, Fred suggested in a comment to the original post the ability...
3 tags
Risk Taking (Star Trek Edition)
Risk taking has been getting a bit of a bad rap with the banking meltdown. The psychologist Frank Farley coined the term Big T personality to describe people who actively seek risk (sometimes also referred to as thrill seeking). There is a neat little interview with Farley about Big T personality and the financial crisis as part of a longer article on TheWhyFiles about fear on Wall Street. In...
We Need an Open Kindle
Not really surprised by what the Kindle DX is and is not. I did not expect color or touch as both are only at experimental stages for eInk displays. It is also not that surprising that Amazon is continuing to get the device out there in a direct-to-consumer model. This puts pressure on the NY Times and other newspaper publishers to figure out quickly how to subsidize that via a subscription. So I...
4 tags
Swine Flu and Probability in the Rearview Mirror
I have a bit of an obsession with how much probability figures into our lives and how poorly we tend to understand it. Case-in-point is this column in yesterday’s WSJ titled “Swine-Flu Hysteria” in which the author shows a deep and dangerous confusion about outcomes versus probabilities. He is essentially making an argument that runs as follows: the last few times people warned...
4 tags
What and How I Would Pay for the Kindle++
Amazon will apparently make some announcement tomorrow (Wednesday) that has been claimed to be a new version of the Kindle aimed specifically at newspaper readers. Until it has an official name, I will call it the Kindle++. My personal wish list for the Kindle++ actually has nothing to do with size of screen. I find that the Kindle 2 already has sufficient real estate. Instead it has to do...
7 tags
Instant On Secret
On Friday at GEL 2009, I met Thomas Deng, a co-founder of DeviceVM which makes Splashtop. Then on Saturday, I noticed a ZDNet story on Techmeme about Presto. Both Splashtop and Presto are so-called instant-on solutions which are essentially miniature Linux distros that boot in a couple of seconds and give you a web browser with Internet access and a few other goodies.
My comment to Thomas was...
Engaging with Comments
This past Sunday Virginia Heffernan wrote a column in the New York Times magazine about the challenges with reader comments. She points to shortcomings of comment systems as one reason, which I believe is correct (and is why I love using disqus). But more important than that I believe is author engagement with reader comments. Funnily enough that is the first thing that many of the commenters on...
