December 2011
13 posts
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Public Parts by Jeff Jarvis (Book Review)
In Public Parts, Jeff Jarvis tackles the incredibly challenging and important topic of the impact of the internet on privacy and publicness. Jeff calls himself a “publicness advocate” in contrast with the often nameless “privacy advocates” who are cited whenever there is a discussion about a change in how Facebook works or the WSJ goes on an anti-cookie bender. As you can...
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Tech Tuesday: Survey Says!
Thanks for everyone who participated in the Tech Tuesday survey. I learned a lot. First off, not surprisingly, my audience overall is fairly tech savvy with 2/3rds knowing at least how to code up HTML and over 1/2 having done some programming.
Second, I was happy to find that the level of difficulty was about right and that if anything I should maybe add some harder “bonus”...
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ALF Yourself: Tracking Your CO2 Footprint Via AMEE...
Last week I was in London to spend time with the team from AMEE. On the flight to London, I read an article that provided a potent reminder of the importance of measuring CO2 emissions. The Independent had a big story on Methane gas being released from the Arctic sea floor off the coast of Siberia in far larger quantities than previously feared. Methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas (20x...
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Louis CK and the Future of Paid Content
Comedians get to say what most of us think but don’t have the courage or circumstance to say. Louis CK has a fantastic new special out (warning: if you are easily offended this is definitely not for you) that is full of hilarious but also poignant observations about the human condition. That special also marks a critical breakthrough in the future of content: it is a paid direct to...
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Tech Tuesday: Asking for Direction
So I got up earlier than usual this morning to work on a post about more details on how CPUs work and some actual assembly language. In particular I was planning to introduce the notion of registers and maybe the stack (all of this using a neat web-based 6502 emulator).
But then it occurred to me that I really don’t have a good sense of whether this is what folks want to read about. So I...
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Patents and the Growing Anti-Commons
The patent wars have really been heating up. For some time now Apple has been going around trying to get various Android devices off the market based on patent claims. Now the shoe is on the other foot as a court in Germany has found in favor of Motorola Mobility against Apple based on a patent. Of course Motorola Mobility is in the process of being acquired by Google so that its trove of...
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The Courage of Big Changes
As soon as your new startup has some actual endusers a fear of changes sets in. What if people don’t like it? What if they start to protest? I sometimes meet startups with only thousands of users that are firmly in the grip of this fear. That’s why it is so awesome to see companies such as Facebook and Twitter with hundreds of millions of users still make big changes to their...
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Edmodo: Adding Greylock and Benchmark
After yesterday’s Twilio announcement, this will make two funding posts in a row but that’s just how it worked out: Edmodo today announced that the company has raised $15 million in a round led by Greylock and Benchmark. Reid Hoffman and Matt Cohler will be joining the Edmodo board. We are super excited about how this allows Edmodo to continue growing and deliver on their vision of...
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Twilio: Fueling Up for Growth
Twilio has been growing rapidly in the US and they recently launched in the UK for voice with text coming soon. In addition to geographic expansion, Twilio has also been adding awesome new services such as Twilio Client and Twilio Connect. We are excited to be supporting Team Twilio together with the fine folks from Bessemer with a $17 million Series C financing. Congrats to the entire team on...
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Tech Tuesday: Programming (A Start)
Maybe I should have started the whole Tech Tuesday series with a post on programming since that’s why computers were created in the first place! In fact, thinking about programming in many ways precedes the availability of actual computers to carry out those programs. At the time that Babbage was dreaming up his Analytical Engine, Lady Ada started to formulate how a general purpose machine...
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Let's Kill the Quiet Period
Much of the regulation that we have in the financial markets (and other markets for that matter) predates the Internet. While there has been the occasional patch here and there, too many anachronistic concepts remain that should simply be eliminated entirely. My favorite example is the “quiet period.” As even the SEC notes on their own web site, the quiet period isn’t even...
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SOPA as Prohibition (Darknets Are Bad For Society)
I am probably not the first to come up with this analogy (and I am on a flight without wifi, so I can’t look it up either) but it just struck me that there are big parallels between SOPA and Prohibition. How? In that the unintended consequences will far outweigh the benefits, especially when it comes to crime. Prohibition didn’t stop the consumption of alcohol. It just drove it...
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Negotiating a Term Sheet
There have been many great posts about the various terms that go into a termsheet for a venture investment. As a result entrepreneurs are much better informed which is a good thing all around. I am still puzzled at times though at the approaches taken by both VC firms and entrepreneurs when it comes to actually negotiating a term sheet. Here are a few things that I have learned.
For VCs (I...