Posts from May 2005

Technorati Japan just entered beta. It's exciting to see the first of what I hope will be many country-specific Technorati sites unveiled to the world. Have you ever wondered what are the top blogs in Japanese or the most talked about books in Japan? Now you can! The internationalization process is really interesting and exposes a lot of details about your data structure but mostly how you look at the world. Every society and country has their own ways of using weblogs and Japan is no different. Recent legislation in Japan requires all personally identifiable data travel over SSL. Anonymity...

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Lately I have been giving a lot of thought to how theories of incentives apply to small groups and teams in startup companies. The employee base is relatively small (less than 50), the team size is less than 5, and the level of stress is mind-blowingly high. Our economy has experienced large gains from the always-on interconnected lifestyle of the last ten years, but employees are also increasingly mobile and volatile. I have yet to see good research studies covering this new work environment so I will offer some quick observations. It's mostly a brain dump because I am exhausted....

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The New York Times reports Accel Partners invested $13 million in Thefacebook.com, a social networking site focused on the college market. Jim Breyer, currently on the board of Wal-Mart and Real Networks, will join the company's board.Tags: thefacebook...

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The Wall Street Journal published some good quotes from this week's sessions at the D conference in Carlsbad. Mena Trott of Six Apart has a new self-described title of "chief egotist." Anna Marie Cox of Wonkette mentioned that people at the top will get commercialized but "there is always someone in the garage." Donald Graham of The Washington Post described the self-publishing nature of the blogging world as "one person who's Ben Franklin and 100,000 people who think they're Ben Franklin." Peter Kahn of Dow Jones thinks publishers in general have underpriced their products. "I don't think we were particularly...

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Yesterday Joi introduced me to Mitchell Baker, President of Mozilla. We talked about the Mozilla community, gathering feedback, and planning new products that build upon or extend existing features. Mozilla's two main products are Firefox and Thunderbird, used by millions to interface with the Web, e-mail, and RSS. Sunbird currently a community project but not a Mozilla product. The Mozilla Foundation has been very successful gathering the technical talent it needs to develop its open-source software. It is currently in need of good product managers to identify critical features and keep everyone on track to release a competitive and innovative...

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Apple is offering pre-orders for upcoming albums such as Coldplay's X&Y (planned release is June 7). You cannot preview any of the tracks on the album through the store even though the first single, Speed of Sound, is currently available for purchase. Apple is trying to get people to order digital music files for future delivery. The iTunes album includes a two exclusive pre-oder tracks, a digital booklet -- liner notes? -- and a video file. I presume iTunes will download the album the first time the application is launched on or after the full availability of the release. I...

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Movable Type allows you to easily publicize your blog by pinging Weblogs.com, blo.gs, and Technorati with each post. Movable Type administrators should view these three built-in services as default options that can be easily changed for each Movable Type installation. Think of the three checkboxes above as three variables: BlogsPingURL, WeblogsPingURL, and TechnoratiPingURL. These variables can be overridden in your Movable Type configuration file (mt.cfg) by adding a line with the variable name and value. Each replacement server must be a valid XML-RPC ping beacon similar to Weblogs.com. BlogsPingURL http://rpc.pingomatic.com/ Adding the line above to your mt.cfg file will send...

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I was just informed by a source within Friendster that employees were called into a conference room this morning and pink slips handed out. I will post more information as the details emerge about the size and the scope of the layoffs since early reports vary the number from five people to one third of the company. [Update 19:30] Seven or eight people were laid off due "headcount adjustments" I am told. Friendster has about 20 total employees and is based in Mountain View.Technorati Tags: friendster...

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Porsche is planning to introduce a hybrid powertrain in its Cayenne sports utility vehicle in the 2008 model year. Combined with the new Cayman it's obvious Porsche is trying to decrease performance and aim for the lower end of the performance car market. Porsche sales are currently divided almost equally between its Boxster, Cayenne, and 911 product lines. In my mind the 911 is the only true Porsche and I am definitely alone in this opinion. A Boxster is for someone who can not afford a real Porsche and the Cayenne is for someone that wants to feel sporty while...

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I received an invitation from KRON-TV, a local San Francisco Bay Area news station, to attend a blogger gathering on June 11 at their television studio in San Francisco. From the open invitation: We recognize the significance of the personal media revolution, and we want to listen to what you're saying. We think this is a good way to start. Sounds great! KRON is a local TV channel that was approached by NBC a few years ago but did not sell. They are still alive and kicking with local programming from parades or the back roads of local parks. The...

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