July 2007
The Archives
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07.22.07Facebook turning me away (again)Fred's post had me laughing. He asked the same question I had from this morning: What happened to the "Skip This Step?" I was annoyed with this as well. Information that does not establish identity or serves some other necessary function should be voluntary. To force me as a user to supply more data than I want is an unexpected and concerning breech of an unspoken contract. "... maybe LinkedIn is the adult Facebook after all." Bingo. The noise level on Facebook is now only going to be acceptable to pre-professionals.
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07.21.07IBM’s corporate strategy in the NY TimesThis past week was my first week as a full-time employee at IBM. I had previously worked there for what amounted as 2 years as an intern. The 3-month summer gig where I stayed on for 2 years gave me a perspective of the company many people don't have. From my discussions with friends and family, the perception of IBM is that it is either on the way down and out but that it is a huge corporate giant and therefore a comfortable job (until you lose it to outsourcing). To that end, I would like to point everyone to a recent ...
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07.21.07Scoble talks to Big Blue about enterprise venturesI really liked Scoble's interview of Drew Clark who heads IBM's venture initiatives. Interesting to hear the enterprise opinion of the Web 2.0 (*shutter*) opportunities. Drew talks about how this is a good way into the venture capital game. After all, it sounds like the IBM guys leverage existing assets and manpower to partner with emerging business partners. In otherwords, there is a low risk, high yield potential. If anything, it gives corporate a suburb learning opportunity and inroads with these new ideas, technologies, businesses and industry leaders. There is a reason this company has been ...
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07.18.07Foxmarks makes bookmarking easyI received my new laptop today for work. Typically I do my bookmark management through del.icio.us/igudo and their wonderful Firefox Add-on. It allows quick and easy retrieval of links through simple text search and conveniently allows easy access via your mobile browser. However I do have some local bookmarks for frequent access. I usually only have the favicon on a toolbar to save space or a few icons in nested folders. Getting new hardware is always a double-edged sword. Yes you get a shiny new virgin toy, dripping with opportunity to become your workstation from heaving. ...
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07.16.07Why the NFL’s new media policy misses the markReading the Wall Street Journal in the airport today, I read an article about the NFL's ever evolving rules and restrictions on media coverage of NFL properties and game coverage. The league recently placed new restrictions on covereage. Outlets are limited to 45 seconds of online audio and video taken while on NFL property, required to remove such, material after 24 hours, and must include links to relevant NFL websites. Clearly, the NFL is trying to prevent their IP from spanning the vast tail of the net including sites like YouTube. They want to become the authority in providing this content ...
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07.12.07Facebook users do not understand applicationsHead on over to the petition to remove Trakzor from Facebook. Currently it is "signed" by over 2300 people. What I find interesting for developers is that many users still do not understand that applications are third-party. Some comments of interest: This is looking more and more like the comments on YouTube: Finally, there is some sensibility: This should remind the TechCrunch 53651 that you shouldn't assume your users know what you know; that means they can and do plead ignorance.
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07.12.07Facebook’s outrageous $6B price tagJohn Battelle asks what would justify a $6B acquisition price for Facebook, 200 times current estimated earnings of $30 million a year. It got me thinking. After all, in 2002, tons of folks were asking the same question. Why Google, why now, when there were dozens of other search engines out there? Last time, there was an easy answer: PageRank. Is there an easy answer this time? I don't see one. Do you? I think Facebook is clearly trying to get into the identity game. They are now farming out their R&D to developers via their platform while focusing on their core business of ...
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07.10.07Blogging on WordPress via emailSo if you have been around recently, you've noticed some posts with empty bodies. This comes from a WordPress bug that apparently can't handle leading periods added by my mail server. In case anyone else runs into this problem, namely when you submit a post and the body content fails to show, take a look at this patch for the solution. All that needs to be done is replacing lines 367-379 of <wp-installation-root>/wp-includes/class-pop3.php with this code: while ( !ereg("^\.\r\n",$line)) { $line = fgets($fp,$buffer); if (preg_match("/^\s+\S+/", $line) && $count > 0) { $MsgArray[$count-1] .= $line; continue; } if ((ereg("^\.\r\n",$line)) || (empty($line))) { break; } //Strip any extra leading periods and store the ...
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07.10.07The FCC to work toward open access?It looks as though the FCC finally realizes the need for open access to cell phone bandwidth. Very good for consumers and competition. I look forward to the day when you buy your phone as a product and your carrier as a service. Service providers should never control the device if consumers want the best, competition-bred, device - a la the iPhone. They should be dumb pipes, much like a net neutral ISP. Here is a good article.
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07.09.07Startup Weekend story sounds fimiliarI have been closely following the story evolving out of Startup Weekend. I did in fact stay up until 4AM in anticipation of the launch that never came. They are promising a release shortly available at VoSnap.com. I would look to participate in an event like this given an opportunity within close proximity. A recent post on the Startup Weekend blog discusses the failure to launch in a candid and cogent post. It sounds very familiar with the oft quoted software development problems such as those found in Dreaming in Code.
recent posts
- The Wallstrip Edge [Book Terser]
- How to name your own price
- Keep your worthless predictions
- The Definitive Book of Body Language [Book Terser]
- Terse Reviews
- Flatten; because users are lazy.
- P(recession) = 1, P(American is shopper) = 1
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