January 2012
17 posts
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Tech Tuesday: HTTP
Today we are continuing on with the web request cycle. After the browser has parsed the URL and obtained the IP address of the server via DNS, the browser now has to communicate with the server. That is done using the so-called Hypertext Transfer Protocol or HTTP for short. The beginnings of HTTP go back to the early 1990s when Tim Berners-Lee first devised it drawing inspiration from Ted Nelson,...
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ReRAM: An Exciting Hardware Innovation
In my Tech Tuesday posts I have covered main memory and storage (by the way, coming up tomorrow: HTTP). If you have read those or otherwise follow hardware, then you will find this short piece from BBC Technology News on a new technology known as ReRAM quite interesting. Essentially, ReRAM holds the promise of providing non-volatile storage at the speed of memory.
That would provide a major...
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Thinking About Alternatives to SOPA/PIPA
With SOPA and PIPA shelved at least for the moment, it is time to start thinking about alternatives. It would be a shame if we limited our collective thinking here to slightly different versions of those bills instead of exploring what a different approach to copyright could be that doesn’t try to fight the characteristics of the Internet but rather embraces them, providing value for rights...
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Apple Is Slow Boiling Developers
How do you boil a frog? Slowly. Apparently the same is true for endusers and even software developers. That at least is what Apple seems to believe. And while this has been debunked for frogs (they do jump out as the water gets too warm), it’s not clear that the same is true for humans. We seem all too willing to trade off having a shiny device for accepting ever more restrictions on...
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Supermodularity And Service Bundling
This will be a bit of a wonky and short post with a longer and less technical one to follow some time soon. Google has just announced a coming update to their privacy policy which will essentially make it possible for Google to integrate all the information it has about a user across its many different services. This comes at the same time as the revelation that Larry Page apparently explicitly...
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Tech Tuesday: DNS
Today we are continuing with the web cycle that I outlined two weeks ago. After a URL has been parsed in Step 1, the browser needs to determine the IP address for the domain as Step 2. Reprising the previous example, let’s consider the domain name dailylit.com. How does the browser determine that in order to retrieve information from this domain it should access a server at IP address...
Why Software As A Service (A Personal Reminder)
I am in the process of migrating a bunch of stuff off an ancient server which has been up continuously for 5 years and is being sunset (the hardware is tired and RedHat is ending support for RHEL4). The migration process has been a potent reminder as to the many hidden costs of installed software. For instance, at the time that the old machine was set up I used Subversion for version control and...
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Some Quick Observations on MegaUpload
Yesterday an international police operation resulted in the shutdown of MegaUpload and the arrest of at least four MegaUpload employees in Auckland, New Zealand. This action resulted in a large scale DDoS attack by the group known as Anonymous on web sites including the MPAA, RIAA, DoJ and even the White House. While I don’t have time today for a full scale analysis here are some salient...
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The Day the Internet Stood Still
Yesterday (Wednesday, January 18), has a good chance as being remembered as the day that the Internet first truly showed its political clout in the US. So far we have largely pointed at events abroad when discussing the Internet’s potential to shift power. Web sites and services large and small (including Continuations) either forcefully alerted their users to the problems with SOPA/PIPA...
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Tech Tuesday: Anatomy of a URL
Last week’s overview of “How the Web Works” introduced the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) as the fundamental way things are addressed on the web. Before we pick apart some actual URLs, it is worth looking at the name itself. The promise behind “Uniform” is that this addressing scheme can be used across all kinds of resources and that explains why URLs are so...
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Covestor: Getting the Message Out!
Our portfolio company Covestor today rolled out a tremendous overhaul of their web presence. The goal was to dramatically simplify Covestor’s message to make it easier for that message to spread and to improve conversion. The team has done an amazing job with a process that used extensive quantitative and qualitative research into consumer reactions to inform the redesign. While...
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Moving Back to New York City and Homeschooling
In the middle of 2010 we started to seriously consider moving back to New York City. At the time one of the considerations was that it would be possible to experiment with homeschooling the kids. I am excited to report that we are doing both. We have a place in Chelsea that is a short walk from the Union Square Ventures office and almost as importantly around the corner from Murray’s...
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Presenting Option Grants to Boards
One of the nearly routine items at startup board meetings is the discussion and ratification of option grants for new employees and possibly refresh grants for existing employees. Too often unfortunately this information is presented to the board in a way that requires way more time than should be necessary because critical pieces are missing.
Here is what you should always include as a bare...
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Google Going All In
Last July I had predicted that Google would go all in by bundling Google+ aggressively with search and that is exactly what was just announced yesterday with Search, plus Your World. The “plus Your World” part right now refers “your world on Google” as only Google+ profiles, posts and shared images are included and not content from Twitter, Facebook or others. John...
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Tech Tuesday: How The Web Works (Overview)
As promised at the end of last year’s Tech Tuesday, we are starting this year with a cycle on how the web works. Just as a reminder, Tech Tuesday’s aim is to require no previous knowledge other than what has been covered before. So this overview may be trivial for some readers but I wanted to make sure to bring everyone along.
Let’s assume you have fired up your favorite web...
The Internet Is a Human Right
At first, I was surprised to see a New York Times OpEd by Vint Cerf with the title “Internet Access Is Not a Human Right.” But once I started to read I began to understand the point that Cerf was trying to make. It comes out clearest in the sentence “technology is an enabler of rights, not a right itself” which in modified form is also part of our investment thesis at...
2012
We are lucky to be starting the year with a few more days of family vacation with friends. In other words: the things that really matter. I have also been mostly off the grid for almost 10 days and will stay off for through the end of Thursday the 5th. I did the same last year and am happy with how it has let me reflect on the year past and prepare for next year. The regular scheduled programming...
