Posts from February 2006

Sony Ericsson announced a new lineup of mobile phones today with Google integrated as a blogging and search platform. Sony Ericsson's new K800 and K790 phone models include a 3.2 megapixel camera with a xenon flash and the ability to upload photos and text to Google's Blogger service. Google will become the default search engine on all Internet-enabled phones from Sony Ericsson. A Google search bar will appear as a part of the default browser but hopefully won't take up much space on the small 2" screen. Tags: sonyericsson...

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FeedBurner unveiled a new look for their statistics package today and a few new features for premium members. It's the second major update in FeedBurner's two years as a company and affects all of FeedBurner's 140,000 publishers. Paid members can now track more information about individual entries such as popularity of a post by day and active readers vs. feed downloads (reach). Members utilizing the free service will notice better graphical data plotted over time, JavaScript tricks that allow you to easily dig deeper into a specific user-agent, and a separate display for user-agents not in the FeedBurner database as...

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Search company Ask is dropping the Teoma brand name in a further move to roll all of its brands into one. Jeeves, longtime mascot and search butler, was dropped from the site earlier this month. The Teoma team has been a part of Ask Search Technology since Teoma's September 2001 acquisition. Paul Gardi, formerly VP of search for Ask Jeeves and Teoma, is now leading IAC's Advertising Solutions business. Teoma has powered Ask's backend search since 2001 but the Teoma.com front-end always provided more advanced features than Ask. Teoma features have now been rolled into the Ask engine. I'm...

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In this week's episode of Om and Niall PodSessions we talk about newly popularized methods of interaction within web applications. JavaScript, Ajax, and Flash have all seen a huge surge in demand and mindshare over the past year. What is the current state of the technology and is there enough talent to step up and fill the demand? JavaScript developers need to account for a variety of different implementations and parsers across browser platforms. You need to apply special tricks and hacks to the interaction experience consistent and dependable. I'd prefer to develop for the latest version of Firefox only...

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I am enjoying the blog of Harvard Assistant Professor Noam Wasserman and if you are a founder, entrepreneur, or venture capitalist you may appreciate his research into founder frustrations. He covers economic concepts of stewardship theory and agency theory from a startup's point of view. Past topics: Founder-CEO succession Co-founder issues Hiring and scaling challenges Communicating with investors Building a board of directors Entrepreneurial compensation Case studies Graphs, charts, hard data, and real stories. Enjoy! Tags: startups...

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MC Hammer is now a blogger and podcaster. He signs off each post with "--Hammertime." Video on demand will allow you to see my art, my life and work on demand and without the infection of those who have hidden agendas. This is the revolution and it is on demand. There is no stopping this movement and you can't contain it. The music was built from the vibrations and the call of the people.We will dance. Hammer talks about his huge dance pants and plans to launch instructional dance videos. The videos and blog posts had me laughing in...

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I was walking around Google tonight after a party and noticed Udi Manber, formerly of A9, working late. A few offices down from Udi was Andy Hertzfeld. That's just one hallway in Building 43 but I'm sure there are seriously smart people all over the place. I kept an eye out for Guido but no luck....

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Linuxcaffe is a small Toronto café with free WiFi, organic food, and lessons in Python and Ubuntu with a view of the park. You can burn any of over 80 linux distributions, rent a laptop, and become a member of the café with benefits such as hard drive backup privileges and web hosting. It's serving the community in unique ways and has become a geek tourist landmark. I especially like the membership features of the café similar to what I proposed in my elements of an ideal café blog post a few months ago. Photo by mtl3p Tags: internetcafe...

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As Silicon Valley debates the worthiness of Ajax vs. Flash and the best new way to add tagging everywhere, my parents' VCR still blinks 12:00. My mom listens to her favorite music and radio stations on a $40 clock radio because she can never figure out the complex home theater system. In our quest for the latest and greatest technologies we may be overlooking the masses of users waiting for technologies to enrich their lives. My mom's a blogger but doesn't know it. She passes along chain mail and jokes to family and friends on an almost daily basis. Each...

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The first SF Tech Sessions is less than a week away! Joyent, Kerio, and Zimbra will each present their groupware product and introduce their company to a room full of 100 bloggers, journalists, and small business owners. It all starts at 6:30 p.m. next Thursday, February 23, at CNET headquarters in San Francisco. More details are available on the SF Tech Sessions blog. Tom Bridge is flying in from Washington D.C. just to attend the event! The event competes with a billionaires dinner alongside the invite-only $5000 TED conference in Monterey. After you see Einstein the talking Parrot at TED,...

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