$1000 Virtual Bling: Harry’s coverage of the $999.99 glowing ruby app is pretty balanced. Some folks, like Dan Frommer at Silicon Alley Insider, think it simply obnoxious. Personally, I think it’s “really, really f*ing brilliant” (to quote Bono) - would probably work even better if it were a limited edition. Seems to me that most people protesting this secretely wish they had thought of it first.

$1000 Virtual Bling: Harry’s coverage of the $999.99 glowing ruby app is pretty balanced. Some folks, like Dan Frommer at Silicon Alley Insider, think it simply obnoxious. Personally, I think it’s “really, really f*ing brilliant” (to quote Bono) - would probably work even better if it were a limited edition. Seems to me that most people protesting this secretely wish they had thought of it first.

We have three kids in elementary school and yesterday I spent nearly 2 hours at Staples together with a bunch of other dazed and confused parents. The ritual of buying school supplies may have nostalgic value to some, but I find it appallingly inefficient. The ideal solution would be for the teachers to simply go ahead and order the supplies online and have them delivered to school. I suspect that if our entire school district signed up we could get a nice break from Staples. Short of that, i...

We have three kids in elementary school and yesterday I spent nearly 2 hours at Staples together with a bunch of other dazed and confused parents. The ritual of buying school supplies may have nostalgic value to some, but I find it appallingly inefficient. The ideal solution would be for the teachers to simply go ahead and order the supplies online and have them delivered to school. I suspect that if our entire school district signed up we could get a nice break from Staples. Short of that, i...

Official Google Blog: More transparency in customized search results: Lest anybody think that I am anti-google based on my previous post, here is a great example of google doing the right thing by increasing transparency on how they customize search results. Now all that would be needed is an opportunity for endusers to opt out of geo and recent search tracking on this information screen.

Official Google Blog: More transparency in customized search results: Lest anybody think that I am anti-google based on my previous post, here is a great example of google doing the right thing by increasing transparency on how they customize search results. Now all that would be needed is an opportunity for endusers to opt out of geo and recent search tracking on this information screen.

Jason Calacanis takes google to task for becoming a content company and competing with publishers. While much of what Jason writes may seem clear to folks who have been competing with the content parts of google, I have come to believe that it is far from clear to googlers themselves. This is based on a number of conversations I have had with googlers on various inititiatives. Most of them seem (a) blissfully unaware of the awesome power that google wields and (b) genuinely convinced that the...

Jason Calacanis takes google to task for becoming a content company and competing with publishers. While much of what Jason writes may seem clear to folks who have been competing with the content parts of google, I have come to believe that it is far from clear to googlers themselves. This is based on a number of conversations I have had with googlers on various inititiatives. Most of them seem (a) blissfully unaware of the awesome power that google wields and (b) genuinely convinced that the...

Planning to turn this into a top ten list, but here is a start. The order may take some work too.Your name becomes used as verb or noun. Biggest success here in recent memory is of course “google”, but it was nice to see a “Hail to The Twitterer” headline in the New York Times this weekend (print edition, online the article has a different title). Your friends’ grandparents are using the service. Your friends’ parents are using the service. Hackers and spammers are targeting your service. Her...

Planning to turn this into a top ten list, but here is a start. The order may take some work too.Your name becomes used as verb or noun. Biggest success here in recent memory is of course “google”, but it was nice to see a “Hail to The Twitterer” headline in the New York Times this weekend (print edition, online the article has a different title). Your friends’ grandparents are using the service. Your friends’ parents are using the service. Hackers and spammers are targeting your service. Her...

At OSCON, I listened to a bunch of talks about distributed file systems (including HDFS) and scalable databases (including hypertable). What is intriguing is that both need to solve a similar problem at their core because they store stuff across machines: they need a way of tracking where stuff is. In HDFS that’s the job of the namenode and in hypertable the hyperspace – which in both systems at the moment are single servers. The approach at the moment is to build the scalable DB on top of th...

At OSCON, I listened to a bunch of talks about distributed file systems (including HDFS) and scalable databases (including hypertable). What is intriguing is that both need to solve a similar problem at their core because they store stuff across machines: they need a way of tracking where stuff is. In HDFS that’s the job of the namenode and in hypertable the hyperspace – which in both systems at the moment are single servers. The approach at the moment is to build the scalable DB on top of th...

Dell Trademark: Cloud Computing: There is something broken in the trademark process when a company can get a mark on a term of art that is already well established. Dell filed this application in March of 2007 when “cloud computing” was already in use. For instance, by simply googling for “cloud computing 2006” the first result is an article in ZDNet that has “cloud computing” in the headline. As several blog posts point out, a previous application by someone else had been rejected in 1998. F...

Dell Trademark: Cloud Computing: There is something broken in the trademark process when a company can get a mark on a term of art that is already well established. Dell filed this application in March of 2007 when “cloud computing” was already in use. For instance, by simply googling for “cloud computing 2006” the first result is an article in ZDNet that has “cloud computing” in the headline. As several blog posts point out, a previous application by someone else had been rejected in 1998. F...

Clickable announced their Series B funding today. David Kidder blogged about it and this is the company’s official press release. I am traveling but will provide more information and commentary when I am back.

Clickable announced their Series B funding today. David Kidder blogged about it and this is the company’s official press release. I am traveling but will provide more information and commentary when I am back.

Scobleizer — The Silicon Valley VC Disease: Interesting discussion about the question of whether the iPhone is a separate market, including a great comment by David Hornik.

Scobleizer — The Silicon Valley VC Disease: Interesting discussion about the question of whether the iPhone is a separate market, including a great comment by David Hornik.

For some startups partnerships are essential to execution, for instance by giving access to an audience, a technology, or a process. In those situations I have a rule that is based on a fair bit of experience: try to avoid partnering with other startups (David) or the biggest players in the respective market (Goliath). Partnering with other startups is problematic because they may change direction and wind up competing with you, or dropping whatever it is that you are relying on, or possibly ...

For some startups partnerships are essential to execution, for instance by giving access to an audience, a technology, or a process. In those situations I have a rule that is based on a fair bit of experience: try to avoid partnering with other startups (David) or the biggest players in the respective market (Goliath). Partnering with other startups is problematic because they may change direction and wind up competing with you, or dropping whatever it is that you are relying on, or possibly ...