Posts from June 2005

I've been reflecting on Gnomedex for most of this week. It was a very different conference than I have ever been to before. The entire place was full of content producers. Text bloggers, audio bloggers, video bloggers, cartoonists, rockers, photographers, journalists, publicists, marketers, and venture capitalists all mixed into the same room. Everyone I met at Gnomedex created new things and publicly made available their own view of the world. We had so much to share even two T1 lines could not hold our stream of thoughts. "I read your blog" was a line of introduction. "I like you, I...

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Guess what? There will be a new version of Movable Type sometime in the future. Six Apart will talk about some of the new features in the latest version of their software sometime between now and when it's released. They are sure you will enjoy the upgrade. Yep, that's a summary of a real announcement from Six Apart. No big surprise that there is a new version that will contain new features so I'm not really sure the point of the announcement other than admitting the versioning of the next release. Tags: movabletype...

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The New York Times reports Microsoft is currently in talks to acquire Claria for $500 million. Claria, formerly known as Gator, is known for its software installed on Windows computers to track browsing behavior and serve personalized advertisements based on this acquired user behavior. The article reports MSN is very interested in personalization technologies and the increased advertising revenues they provide and is pursuing companies in the space in an attempt to close the gap on Google. I am not a big fan of the methods used by Claria to deliver personalized listings. I think MSN could accomplish similar tracking...

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MySpace, a popular online social networking and blogging site with nearly 20 million users, is moving from ColdFusion to .Net. MySpace received over 7.5 billion page views from 15.5 million unique visitors in May according to comScore. Looks like the site will continue to use its CFML code as native .Net web applications. Seems like a big win for Microsoft! Tags: cfml, coldfusion, dotnet...

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Social search is here. Yahoo! introduced My Web 2.0 beta this evening, the first step towards personalized and social search online. I have been exploring the new service for the past half-hour and I am impressed. Personalized search and extending that search to a network of friends is an intensive computational operation and I am surprised Yahoo! has pulled it off. What can you do with My Web 2.0? Each search is limited to your saved bookmarks and the bookmarks of your friends my default. Every bookmark has an option for one or more tags and Yahoo! will suggest tags...

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Many geeks are in town for the O'Reilly Where 2.0 conference this Wednesday and Thursday. I'm planning a geek outing for Friday if anyone is staying in the area and would like to see some sights and unique things, leave a comment and I will announce more details soon. We can do some geolocation-specific things like GoCar or Segway tours, visit the Lucas Letterman Digital Arts Center in the Presidio, walk the Golden Gate Bridge, or many other things. I liked my Seattle experience of a group breakfast followed by group excursions. Let's plan for a 10 a.m. breakfast at...

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I had a good time in Seattle with all the geeks at Gnomedex. There were more people podcasting and videocasting than I had ever seen before and 400 people armed with laptops managed to clog the 2 T1 lines coming into the conference center within minutes. I had breakfast with Robert Scoble and about ten other bloggers at Pike Place Market and watched Argentina beat Mexico in a Confederations Cup semifinal soccer match in penalty kicks. Scott Beale and I decided to spend the rest of the day wandering around Seattle and the surrounding area on a photo safari. Our...

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On May 18 I saw Jeff Hawkins speak at Stanford. Full video of Jeff's talk is available on Stanford's website if you are interested. Jeff referred to entrepreneurship as "a tool of last resort." An entrepreneur is not a thing to be, it is an intermediary thing. If you succeed as an entrepreneur you transition out of that job into a success. Jeff became an entrepreneur out of desperation because he could not accomplish the things he wanted to accomplish with his current employer or an existing major player. In 1987 Jeff decided to not take the entrepreneurship route when...

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I am sitting in my hotel room in Seattle researching all the sites that used my photographs from yesterday's Microsoft announcement in violation of my Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial license. I broke a story with high-resolution photographs and commercial websites decided not only to use my content without attribution but in one case a site was selling prints of my photographs. Breaking news is very competitive and everyone wants the scoop in their search for full and in-depth coverage. Unlike a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge or something artsy I feel like these sites already have benefitted from...

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I am currently attending Gnomedex in Seattle where there are many product announcements happening. The big announcement of the morning is Microsoft's integration of RSS into Longhorn at the platform level. Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of Internet Explorer, admitted Microsoft is "trying to get on the Cluetrain." Microsoft's marketing message for its RSS integration is "Browse. Search. Subscribe!" They distributed jackets to all Gnomedex attendees and expect to see this message at PDC in September and other marketing venues. RSS is again being used as a generic term encompassing all feed formats including RDF and Atom. Dean demonstrated Internet...

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