33 posts filed under this category.
Om Malik announced he is leaving Business 2.0 to found a new micropublishing company combining blogs and content-focused web services, among a few other things. Om’s new company is the first investment of True Ventures. Both Om and True recognize the new era of lean, agile startups, and planned the early stages of the startup accordingly. I wish my friend Om the best of luck in his new life as an entrepreneur….
In the summer of 2000 I became fed up enough with clueless recruiters calling me I decided to create a fake résumé to test how bad the industry had become. The résumé was not just slightly fake, it was over-the-top and obvious to anyone in the industry. I put the résumé up on Monster.com with my real name and phone number and a completely altered work history. I had calls within 20 minutes, including recruiters claiming to work for KPCB and Benchmark encouraging me to come work at companies such as BroadBand Office or Catapulse. I had so many calls…
The latest numbers about blogging terms reaching the mainstream masses have little interest to me based on the questions that have been asked. Asking people on the street if they can define RSS or podcasting is like asking about a PSTN or 802.11g wireless networks. It makes much more sense to focus on current uses of the technology to determine the pervasiveness of new ideas. I’ll use my mom as an example because she is afraid of her computer crashing if she changes anything, even plugging in a new keyboard. Some of the news she cares about the most is…
Stewart and Caterina from Flickr are on the cover of the April 3 issue of Newsweek for “putting the ‘We’ in Web.” The article introduces readers to the idea of a participatory web where small teams can enable millions of users to create their own site, community, and data interactions. My favorite quote is at the end of the article: The Living Web means that there may be plenty of opportunities to become the next Flickr, and hundreds of start-ups are trying to do just that. At Tim O’Reilly’s recent Emerging Technology Conference, it seemed that 1,200 people had…
UPN and The WB will launch a new network named CW this fall and shut down their existing channels. No word on how the change affects airing of Simpsons reruns. Tags: cwthesimpsonsthewbupn…
Joyent, a groupware product that launched six weeks ago, has just acquired TextDrive, a 18 month-old web hosting company. Joyent was struggling with its infrastructure and TextDrive wanted to become more involved in the hosted applications space so the acquisition makes sense in that context. The announcement definitely seems like a case of startup synergy from two cash-flow positive businesses. I host my sites at TextDrive and received a 1 GB bump in my storage allocation this morning. TextDrive offers cutting edge developer features including the latest versions of Apache, Lighttpd, MySQL, PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby, and Ruby on Rails….
It’s 5 a.m. in San Francisco and the Google/Riya story I blogged about on Wednesday night is currently the #4 story on Digg.com with 313 diggs as I write. My server is still holding up nicely under the load, but since there has been a lot of talk about Digg lately I think it’s interesting to share some stats. Unlike Slashdot which has posts listed in reverse chronological order, I believe a top digg can rise or fall over time since I am currently #4 on Digg yet the post has more diggs than #2 and #3. I mention the…
Dark chocolate M&Ms are hitting store shelves next week. The launch has a Star Wars marketing tie-in and a clever movie trailer.
I had a cheese sandwich for lunch today. It was yummy.
A new version of Internet Explorer will launch before Longhorn. A beta version of Internet Explorer 7.0 will be available by this summer. Gates made the announcement during a keynote presentation at the RSA Conference in San Francisco….
Katharine Mieszkowski of Salon discovered 43 Things has a substantial relationship with Amazon.com. 43 Things helps users set and track their goals such as reading “Code Complete” or take more pictures. Why hide it? Update: Robot Co-op responds….
Bill Joy is the newest partner at Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers. John Doerr of KPCB said “It’s our tradition every year end to ask Bill what innovations, what important ideas are just over the horizon. Last month we agreed we should work together.” Doerr added, “Whether the innovation is in internet web services, software, architectures, energy, material science, info/life sciences – or entirely new fields – Bill’s insights and relationships are respected and valued.” Big news!…
Lawrence Lessig was a guest on this morning’s The Connection radio show on WBUR Boston and NPR. He talked about the history of copyright law, Creative Commons, and how technology is changing copyright behavior. You can listed to the entire show in Real Audio. A good introduction to the copyright law and how Creative Commons is trying to help publishers overcome this complex world of fair use and remix. Callers addressed some of the key issues of the Creative Commons such as rights to a commercially published collaborative work, and what online publishing means for traditional media publishers….
Amazon allows customers to share its images of a product with the intention of helping buyers understand product features and uses. In the digital camera category customer images has become a high profile way to show off your work and be evaluated by other photography enthusiasts. Take a look at the customer images page of the Nikon D70 for a good example or view the top images in the camera and photo category. It’s an online portfolio hosted by Amazon….
Dan Gillmor is leaving the San Jose Mercury News in January to work on a citizen-journalism project. Wow! I better finish reading We the Media and tune in to what will surely be an interesting project….
Associated Press: “A National Guard F-16 fighter jet on a nighttime training mission strafed an elementary school with 25 rounds of ammunition.” The firing range is three and a half miles from the school….
Today is election day in the United States. While the presidential election receives the most attention, I spent most of my time reviewing local and state propositions. 31 propositions ranging from a position on the war in Iraq to children’s hospital funding. Time to elect a President, Senator, House member, school board, and more. If George W. Bush wins today’s election I expect San Francisco to erupt in riots….
Japanese manufacturer Kameo is now offering a $77 Boyfriend Arm Pillow. (via engadget)…
Bag Borrow Or Steal is an online handbag exchange that brings some features of Netflix into the fashion world. Monthly fees start at $20 and are as high as $99 for access to the nicest handbags. You can borrow up to 5 bags at a time but each swap will cost $10 to cover shipping. If you like your borrowed bag enough you can buy it. (via BoingBoing)…
Geographer Ulf Erlingsson believes Ireland is the island of Atlantis referenced by Plato in 360 BC. Ireland is the only major island of the world with a plain in the middle. He believes Dogger Bank, an isolated shoal in the North Sea, provides the story of the sinking of Atlantis….
The Simpsons Season 4 DVD set is now available. 22 episodes from my favorite Simpsons season. Selma’s Choice (the Duff Gardens episode) is my favorite episode….
A lucky office worker had his cubicle remodeled in aluminum. The perfect setup for an aluminum PowerBook!…
The trailer for Michael Moore’s new movie, Fahrenheit 9/11, is now online….
Reuters: In Sweden, “amorous couples can call the telephone number 696969 and a white van featuring a large red condom with wings as a logo will deliver them a packet of 10 prophylactics.”…
Jerry Lerma and Terry Hogan have a map of The Simpsons’ hometown of Springfield. (via Slashdot) It even includes the Matlock Expressway!…
Donatella Marazziti of the University of Pisa in Italy found that new lovers adjust their testosterone to more closely match each other. “[M]en and women in love have considerably higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol.” “Men who were in love had lower levels of the male sex hormone testosterone – linked to aggression and sex drive – than the other men. Love-struck women, in contrast, had higher levels of testosterone than their counterparts” “[W]hen people look at their lovers, the neural circuits that are normally associated with critical social assessment of other people are suppressed”…
Ryan Grim of Slate writes about the decline in use of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). The Drug Enforcement Administration claims it reduced the LSD supply by 95 percent with the arrest and conviction of Clyde Apperson and William Leonard Pickard in rural Kansas in November 2000. The article also mentions the correlation between Grateful Dead and Phish tours and the use of LSD. (via BoingBoing)…
Saul Hansell writes about phishing scams in today’s New York Times. Brightmail of San Francisco, which filters e-mail for spam, identified 2.3 billion phishing messages in February, 4 percent of the e-mail it processed, compared with only 1 percent of its messages as recently as September. Phishing got its name a decade ago when America Online charged users by the hour. Teenagers sent e-mail and instant messages pretending to be AOL customer service agents in order to fish, or phish, for account identification and passwords they could use to stay online at someone else’s expense. After AOL switched to a…
Bathroom Mania has a new urinal, Kisses, “shaped like a woman’s mouth, dolled up with red lipstick, wide open and ready for business.” Fashion Wire Daily reported on these new additions to the new Virgin Airways Clubhouse in New York’s John F. Kennedy airport….
Ben & Jerry’s has a new ice cream flavor for everyone caught up in the Atkins craze: Chocolate Carb Karma Ice Cream. It uses Sucralose (Splenda® Brand) instead of liquid sugar, more water than milk, and adds polydextrose, sorbitol, glycerine, carob Bean Gum, acesulfame to its ingredients list. Sounds very scientific and not the natural Vermont’s Finest I am used to….
NY Times reviews a new Encyclopedia of Economic History….
NY Times article today about cheeseburger fries, the beef industry’s way to get more beef into snacktime. A beef industry R&D document shows the full ingredients and prep info. Sounds nasty, but I am curious to try one….
Glad to see so many people concerned that I haven’t updated my Web page in a while! I passed my Sun Certified Programmer for the Java 2 Platform 1.4 exam yesterday. Athena did really well in her trial runs! I have achieved Competent Toastmaster and Competent Leader status in my Toastmasters club. I bought a Sony Ericsson T68i. My old Nokia 8200 got caught under a leaking air conditioner on my flight to London last July. It is nice to have a phone that actually works now. AEOsports is still going well….