I have argued in the past that we need an Internet Bill of Rights. If anyone doubted that, then they should look at what has been happening at and around the eG8 summit. There have been many great tweets from people there and around the world. The two that summarize the situation best for me are first Jeff Jarvis tweeting thatAt # eG8, government acts as if it should protect us from the internet. Instead, the internet needs protection from government.And then this wonderful response by Scott ...

I have argued in the past that we need an Internet Bill of Rights. If anyone doubted that, then they should look at what has been happening at and around the eG8 summit. There have been many great tweets from people there and around the world. The two that summarize the situation best for me are first Jeff Jarvis tweeting thatAt # eG8, government acts as if it should protect us from the internet. Instead, the internet needs protection from government.And then this wonderful response by Scott ...

I have written previously that given the huge scale of the Internet, services that might historically have been considered a feature can now be companies. There is a critical success factor though to achieving Internet scale that I think is being widely ignored: intentionally keeping a service “underdetermined." What does that mean? A service is underdetermined if it allows for many use cases including ones that were never possibly anticipated during the creation of the service. Conversely, a...

I have written previously that given the huge scale of the Internet, services that might historically have been considered a feature can now be companies. There is a critical success factor though to achieving Internet scale that I think is being widely ignored: intentionally keeping a service “underdetermined." What does that mean? A service is underdetermined if it allows for many use cases including ones that were never possibly anticipated during the creation of the service. Conversely, a...

Search will always be an important way of finding products when I know what I want. For instance, if I know that I need a manual bilge pump (a recent purchase), I will go to either a search engine or use the search function at an online marine supplies site such as WestMarine or LandfallNavigation (both in need of significant improvement). But I would never spend any time simply poking around these sites just to “discover” a product that I didn’t know I needed until the second I saw it. Yet, ...

Search will always be an important way of finding products when I know what I want. For instance, if I know that I need a manual bilge pump (a recent purchase), I will go to either a search engine or use the search function at an online marine supplies site such as WestMarine or LandfallNavigation (both in need of significant improvement). But I would never spend any time simply poking around these sites just to “discover” a product that I didn’t know I needed until the second I saw it. Yet, ...

This seems to be the week for legal blog posts. After trying a slightly revised version of COICA with new branding (now: PROTECT IP), Senator Leahy has come out with a very sensible piece of legislation, the ECPA Amendments Act of 2011. As the name says, this is is an amendment to the Electronic Communication Privacy Act of 1986 for which Senator Leahy was also the lead author. The proposed amendment brings the act into the 21st century by adding email, cell phone, private messages on social ...

This seems to be the week for legal blog posts. After trying a slightly revised version of COICA with new branding (now: PROTECT IP), Senator Leahy has come out with a very sensible piece of legislation, the ECPA Amendments Act of 2011. As the name says, this is is an amendment to the Electronic Communication Privacy Act of 1986 for which Senator Leahy was also the lead author. The proposed amendment brings the act into the 21st century by adding email, cell phone, private messages on social ...

The proposed PROTECT IP act is an improvement on COICA, but still makes the wrong trade-offs between protecting copyright holders and defending the integrity of the Internet. There are several major modifications from the COICA draft. The key ones are first that only the DOJ can initiate procedures against foreign web sites that would result in exclusion of these sites from DNS and second that for domestic websites the only type of injunctive relief available is financial (no advertising supp...

The proposed PROTECT IP act is an improvement on COICA, but still makes the wrong trade-offs between protecting copyright holders and defending the integrity of the Internet. There are several major modifications from the COICA draft. The key ones are first that only the DOJ can initiate procedures against foreign web sites that would result in exclusion of these sites from DNS and second that for domestic websites the only type of injunctive relief available is financial (no advertising supp...

Google’s announcements of Chromebook and subscription pricing offer a great opportunity to reflect on where we are in the history of computing. It is all too easy to think of this as something radically new, when it is simply the latest entry in a long historical settling down of the locus of computation. I started my ongoing love affair with computing at a fascinating time. In the early 80s businesses were almost entirely dominated by centrally controlled mainframes with dumb terminals while...

Google’s announcements of Chromebook and subscription pricing offer a great opportunity to reflect on where we are in the history of computing. It is all too easy to think of this as something radically new, when it is simply the latest entry in a long historical settling down of the locus of computation. I started my ongoing love affair with computing at a fascinating time. In the early 80s businesses were almost entirely dominated by centrally controlled mainframes with dumb terminals while...

Many years ago (during my consulting days) I was working on a project for a small German airline that was trying to compete with Lufthansa on a few routes. We quickly discovered that the company was hemorrhaging cash despite having relatively full flights. A further bit of digging took us to their Frankfurt location that was in charge of collecting revenues from other airlines and global reservation systems. There we were assured that everything was just fine, but just as we were leaving we n...

Many years ago (during my consulting days) I was working on a project for a small German airline that was trying to compete with Lufthansa on a few routes. We quickly discovered that the company was hemorrhaging cash despite having relatively full flights. A further bit of digging took us to their Frankfurt location that was in charge of collecting revenues from other airlines and global reservation systems. There we were assured that everything was just fine, but just as we were leaving we n...

Shapeways yesterday announced support for yet another awesome material: ceramics. Ceramics is a particularly cool because it it is food safe and thus unlocks the market for 3D printed dishwares. That includes my admittedly fairly lame chop stick holders, which I have immediately re-ordered in ceramics (also turns out that the first go around I made them too small). Of course, I also expect to see some fantastic sculptures in ceramics, as well as other art and fashion uses of the material. Joa...

Shapeways yesterday announced support for yet another awesome material: ceramics. Ceramics is a particularly cool because it it is food safe and thus unlocks the market for 3D printed dishwares. That includes my admittedly fairly lame chop stick holders, which I have immediately re-ordered in ceramics (also turns out that the first go around I made them too small). Of course, I also expect to see some fantastic sculptures in ceramics, as well as other art and fashion uses of the material. Joa...

As with the previous cycle, we are once again seeing the formation of many new incubators (Om has a post up which inspired my post). Having co-founded an incubator and having observed a bunch of others over the years, I have a theory about what works and what doesn’t. I believe that the only two versions that work are: accelerators, such as YCombinator and Techstars, and “foundries” (my attempt at a neologism), such as Idealab and Alleycorp. Let’s start with accelerators. These are characteri...

As with the previous cycle, we are once again seeing the formation of many new incubators (Om has a post up which inspired my post). Having co-founded an incubator and having observed a bunch of others over the years, I have a theory about what works and what doesn’t. I believe that the only two versions that work are: accelerators, such as YCombinator and Techstars, and “foundries” (my attempt at a neologism), such as Idealab and Alleycorp. Let’s start with accelerators. These are characteri...

Despite their best efforts to screw up the Mac client, I still love Skype both as a consumer service and as an independent company. Back when eBay decided to spin out Skype to private investors instead of waiting and spinning it out to eBay holders I was surprised (to put it mildly). Now I am equally surprised at the thought of Skype selling to Google or Facebook instead of going public. Does the team behind Skype have so little faith in their ability to be a meaningful independent company? S...

Despite their best efforts to screw up the Mac client, I still love Skype both as a consumer service and as an independent company. Back when eBay decided to spin out Skype to private investors instead of waiting and spinning it out to eBay holders I was surprised (to put it mildly). Now I am equally surprised at the thought of Skype selling to Google or Facebook instead of going public. Does the team behind Skype have so little faith in their ability to be a meaningful independent company? S...