April 2010
16 posts
2 tags
Please Make it Hard(er) for Me to Cause (Email)...
Unix has some very powerful commands available. For instance, the simple combination of “rm -rf” if invoked by a superuser at the root would pretty much delete every file and directory on the system. Because such power is available systems are often configured to provide for some measure of protection from accidental disaster (e.g. thinking that you are in some directory way down the...
1 tag
The Right Tool for the Job
Anyone who does mechanical work appreciates the impact the right tool can have on a job. For instance, the other day I needed to open up a cover that was held down by six screws. I first tried a screw driver. The screws were so tight, they didn’t even budge. But because the screws had shaped heads I was able to use a wrench instead. Minutes later the cover was off and I was examining...
USV Hiring Update #3
This week my blogging is likely to be lighter than usual and my email responses slower than usual. The reason is that we have move to the phone screen stage of finding candidates for the two positions at USV. If you are interested / have applied, you can read a more detailed update on the hiring process.
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The Web of (Social) Objects and People
At USV, we have long believed in “Social Objects.” In the real world when people talk they often form a connection around objects, such as sharing a common interest in a movie. That was our thesis behind investing in GetGlue. Alex and the team there have done an amazing job delivering on that idea. When you have the Glue extension installed in your browser, you can connect with...
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Fighting for Openness (Hint: It's not FB or even...
I have spent most of this morning reading reactions and thoughts about Facebook’s “Open Graph” via Techmeme, Tumblr, Twitter and comments to my post and Fred’s post. All of it has me convinced that the power of the web will be stronger than any one company. That is with one important caveat: what we can do on the web has to stay as open as it is today! This is why I...
6 tags
Facebook and the Net
Hats off to Mark Zuckerberg and the entire team at Facebook. They are managing that most impressive feat of innovating at scale. They are also incredibly ambitious in what they want to accomplish. The goal seems nothing short of one identity and one graph to “rule them all.” With over 400 million users worldwide and a sign on system that is being widely adopted this ambition...
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The Real Trouble with Financial Engineering:...
A good friend of mine was one of the early practitioners in Europe of complex financial engineering for large corporate clients. I vividly remember a conversation with him on a vacation some 20 years ago, when he told me about a deal that was meant to remove energy cost risk from a company and sell that risk off separately. At the time he made the argument that this allowed for better hedging on...
Awed By The Potential of Google Books
So I know that there are lots of problems with the Google book settlement. But yesterday I got to experience the power of digitized books firsthand and it was awesome to behold. My son had to do a project for school where he described five different professions from Colonial times. There were quite a few resources available on the web, but many of them lacked any kind of source attribution for...
iPad and Kindle in Harmony
I have both a Kindle and an iPad and don’t see the latter replacing the former. They solve different problems for me, at least so far. I use the iPad primarily for browsing the web. Around the house (eg breakfast table, in bed) it is much nicer for that than having a laptop open and the Kindle is a non-starter for browsing. When it comes to reading books though the Kindle will remain my...
On Seeking Advice
It turns out that seeking advice is one of the hardest things to do - at least it was for me for the longest time. Here is what I have learned from my own mistakes.
First, it is critical to have some people you really trust. People who have good judgment. Who understand you as person and who care about your emotional and spiritual well being (not just your commercial success). There are a great...
“Since all Promoted Tweets are organic Tweets, there is not a single “ad” in our...”
– From Twitter’s announcement of Promoted Tweets - together with a quality resonance score for tweets this is completely native to the service!
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We Are Hiring at USV
We just announced on the Union Square Ventures blog that we are hiring for two positions: an Analyst and a General Manager of the USV Network.
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Rio (Brazil)!
Last week we took a family vacation in Rio de Janeiro! We went to visit friends who had lived just up the street from us here for the past eight years but moved back to Rio (where they are from) a few months ago. I was excited because it was my first time in the southern hemisphere, my first time in South America, and my first BRIC country visit (Brazil, Russia, India, China — planning to...
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Quick Thoughts on OS4 Announcements
The big news of course isn’t multitasking, or unified inbox, but iAds and GameCenter. These are aimed squarely at making the iPhone (and iPad) a monetizable and viral platform to rival Facebook. Still this strategy seems flawed by being tied entirely to Apple Hardware. What percentage penetration of the handset market can Apple possibly achieve? Facebook on the other hand can reach any...
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The Price of Internet Freedom Is?
I have blogged in the past about threats to the open web and what to do about them. It is easy to be dismissive of concerns about Apple’s philosophy of control which necessitates a partially closed system. But there is a real danger in being so seduced by the sleekness of a device and its user experiece that one does not reflect on whether the trade-offs in terms of restrictions are...
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The iPad and Apple's Lacking Cloud Strategy
We were on family vacation through Sunday, so when our iPad arrived via UPS on Saturday nobody was home, which meant that we had to wait until Monday for it to be re-delivered. I wish I could share first impressions this morning, such as Bijan did this morning, but we frankly didn’t get that far. The iPad appears as a beautiful physical object, but when you turn it on it greets you in a...