Archives for 2006

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Yahoo Switching to Low-fat Peanut Butter?

Posted on December 5, 2006 ·

TechCrunch seems to know that Yahoo is switching to low-fat  peanut-butter this afternoon, in a company-wide webcast.  The trimming is expected to be about 20%, and starts at the top…

Quiz: what’s wrong with my peanut-butter metaphor?

(Answer: peanut oil is one of the good fats, unlike Yahoo, you don’t want to reduce it…)

Update (11/5):  If you read this post before and clicking on the above link took you to a 404 error page – my apologies.  Apparently TechCrunch did the absolute no-no by deleting their original post and replacing it with a new one.

Update (11/5):  TechCrunch has a new summary post here, COO Dan Rosensweig is leaving.

Update (11/6):  I may have been wrong about that low-fat peanut-butter: Good Mornign Silicon Valley thinks Yahoo added some chocolate to the peanut butter. That would be … Nutella?

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Filed Under: Bay Area, Blogging, Business, Humor, Software, Technology ·
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Web Office Embracing MS Office While Microsoft Is NOT

Posted on December 5, 2006 ·

Perfect timing: I’m reading Richard MacManus’s post on Web Office APIs – Embracing and Extending Microsoft Office on the very same day we find out Microsoft isn’t embracing it’s own products.  

I guess Derek is right asking: Time to drop Microsoft Office?.   Especially when you can work on Microsoft files without Microsoft products.

Update (12/6):  Fred Wilson’s New Year Resolution: I am going to remove Microsoft from my life in 2007.

Filed Under: Business, Collaboration, Personal Productivity, SaaS, Software, Technology ·
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Things to Avoid If You’re Planning an Embezzlement Scheme

Posted on December 5, 2006 ·
  • Do not call your company VaporTech. In fact do not call it Vapor-anything.
  • Do not lease a Ferrari and a Mercedes at the same time
  • Do not hire a former prosecutor as a corporate officer.

Full story at the SF Chronicle.

 

Filed Under: Business, Humor, Misc, Startups ·
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SVASE: Alternative Exits for Technology Startups

Posted on December 5, 2006 ·

Startup activity is at an all-time high, venture funding has soared, but something is still missing… the huge exits.  The IPO market simply doesn’t exist.  What are the alternative exit strategies for all that venture capital?

  • Acquisition by Google / Yahoo/ eBay ..etc?
  • IPO on a foreign Stock Exchange?
  • Go public through a reverse merger?  (yuck…)
  •  or…?

These are a few of the questions our excellent panel will discuss at the Alternative Exits For Technology Startups event organized by SVASE this Thursday, December 7 in Palo Alto.

The Panel:

  • Peter Rip, Managing Director, Leapfrog Ventures
  • Robert Simon, Director, Alta Partners
  • Ungad Chadda, Director, Listings, TSX Venture Exchange
  • Curtis Mo, Partner, WilmerHale
  • Neil Weintraut, Partner, Palo Alto Venture Partners

Moderator: Stephane Dupont, Executive Vice President, National Venture Capital Association.

For details, speaker bio’s and registration link please see the SVASE site. 

See you there!Zbutton

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Filed Under: Bay Area, Business, Social Networking, Startups, Technology ·
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Bolton Gone Just as Expected

Posted on December 4, 2006 ·

John Bolton Resigns as U.S. Ambassador to U.N.   I’ve told you he would only last till January 2007 smile_shades

 

Filed Under: Politics ·
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Redesigned Web-sites: the Good and the Bad

Posted on December 4, 2006 ·

Some redesigns are good, others are just plain ugly.smile_omg

(Oh, and this is my shortest blog-post ever.)

 

Filed Under: Blogging ·
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Atlassian Founders Become Australian Entrepreneur of the Year

Posted on December 3, 2006 ·

My first thought was deja vu… I myself reported on Mike and Scott winning the E&Y Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award a few months ago. Then it hit me; this is not the *young* category; Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar won the real thing, Ernst & Young’s Australian Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

Now, if you first win the *young* category, then a few months later the *adult* one (not *that* way… ) does it mean you grew up quickly and are no longer young?smile_tongue

Joke apart, congrat’s to Mike and Scott, in fact the entire Atlassian team. They’ve built a remarkable company… when I first met them in the spring, they had about 50 employees, now it’s 70+, serving 5,000 customers in 65 countries. Their first hit was Jira, an issue management system, the second product, Confluence became the market leading enterprise wiki. Of course there are a number of ways to measure leadership, one being a feature-by-feature comparison, but at the end of the day, customers vote with their dollars, and Atlassian outsells their competition lumped together (including pre-Google JotSpot, amongst others).

Here’s a short video from the award ceremony.

Successful millionaires or not (Atlassian is self-funded), these guys remain humble and likeable; just read Mike’s post here. Oh, as for the likeable part, they hosted the Enterprise Irregulars, a few analysts and their own competitors to dinner, and did NOT use the opportunity to pitch us smile_shades

All that said, I have to warn anyone thinking of joining them … they are a dangerous bunch. smile_wink


Filed Under: Blogging, Business, Collaboration, Enterprise Software, Software, Startups · Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,
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Paul and Ringo Together Again

Posted on December 3, 2006 ·

 There is no English source yet, jut this Italian language interview in the La Repubblica, but if it says what I think it does, the remaining two Beatles will perform together again.   Here’s a rough Google translation, but frankly, it only proves the point I made several times: machine translation is way too unreliable yet. smile_sad

It provides entertainment value, though.. here are a few gems:

“Of sure I will salt on the theater box with Starr. Perhaps a lot soon”

“On purpose of concerts, it does not believe has arrived the moment launch a beautiful message playing with its ancient partner Ringo Starr, the only one remained of the clamorous adventure?
“Yes, the task, is in agreement, and it she is also Ringo. We have said many times to make it, indeed, was in order to happen in the last one tour of Ringo, the slid year, but it has not been possible because I was engaged elsewhere. But of it we speak often, it would appeal to to us very, and of sure it will happen, perhaps also a lot soon”.”

Oh, well, machine translation still has room for improvement…  but back to The Concert, I know how to make it full (well, sort of).. having (a) Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr play together:

Dhani Harrison did a decent job playing at “The Concert for George”, and both Sean and Julian Lennon are musicians in their own right ….

 

 

 

Filed Under: Misc ·
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SupportMagic: Running Out of Support, Waiting for Magic

Posted on November 30, 2006 ·

OK, I admit, that’s a tacky title…  I just couldn’t resist smile_embaressed

Seriously though, here’s a weird post on VentureBeat:

CRM company, Support Magic, for sale on VentureBoard

“Support Magic, out of Bangalore, is the latest company to put up a for-sale sign at VentureBoard.”

OK, let’s check out the VentureBoard listing:

“Launched on 09-November-2006, SupportMagic (www.supportmagic.com) is an on-demand customer interaction management solution that enables companies to deliver an exceptional customer experience online.”

Launched 3 weeks ago and already for sale? Wow!   Let’s clarify it on the company’s site:

Public BETA launch on 09-November-2006.

Gotcha.  Let’s check out the blog:

“Some are asking “Where can I download SupportMagic?”
Well, you can’t.
SupportMagic is an on-demand (remotely hosted) solution that runs on our server. There is nothing to download OR install. Register with us, follow the instructions we send you & simply map your “Support URL” to our application IP and you are ready”

Hm .. why would anyone want to sign up for a hosted application by a company already up for sale?  Oh, well, let’s now go back to the for sale ad:

“Competitors: RightNow, LivePerson & Talisma.”

Wow…wow…wow… 3 weeks into beta and competing with RightNow, a $100M company? Give
me a break smile_angry

But hey, that’s the ad, put up by the company itself. They may be full of it, but probably learned from #1 that in the CRM space you need a big mouth.smile_tongue   However, VentureBeat repeats the same statement in the front page story:

“Support Magic, out of Bangalore, is the latest company to put up a for-sale sign at VentureBoard. It is an on-demand customer interaction management software company that competes against RightNow, LivePerson & Talisma…”

Matt, I really like VentureBeat – this kind of fluff does not belong there… it dilutes your brand. smile_sad

   

Filed Under: Blogging, Business, ERP / CRM, Marketing / PR, SaaS, Startups ·
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Zoho Releases MS Office Plug-ins, API’s and Desktopized Web Apps

Posted on November 30, 2006 ·

Zoho releases product updates more or less weekly, and I don’t normally write them – frankly, I can’t keep track. (I do know, however, that Zoho Sheet that was just a cute but limited editor when I first looked at it is by now way beyond my average spreadsheet needs.)

Today’s announcements, however, fit the theme I laid out  in the previous post about Microsoft Office, specifically about getting released from Microsoft-prison. They way to get there is to be able to easily work with Microsoft documents (spreadsheet, presentation) formats without the need for bloated and overpriced MS software.

Directly opening/writing to MS formats was the obvious starting point; in the previous post I mentioned Zoho Quickread, a plug-in that allows opening of any MS Office files directly from the browser (IE, FF) without first importing/converting them. 

Today Zoho adds plug-ins for MS Office, which allows users to save their work online to Zoho directly from within Microsoft Word and Excel:

By the same token Zoho documents and spreadsheets can be opened directly in MS Office:

 

The first version of Zoho’s open APIs are also released today. 3rd party applications can now easily be integrated with the Zoho Suite. A good example is when online storage  services (OmniDrive, Box.net …etc.) open the documents directly in Zoho and even save them back to their own storage system using the APIs. 

Desktopize ( I kind of liked the previous name, Bubbles, as long as it’ wasn’t referring to Bubble 2.0 smile_tongue) is a good example for productive partnerships.   When Desktopize is installed, it creates Zoho icons on the desktop, allows users to click on them and work in Zoho without the browser as if it was a desktop application, close the window and have it minimized to the systray:

The pic above shows me editing this very article in the desktopized version of Zoho Writer, the Zoho icons in the lower left corner, and the Zoho writer icon in the systray.  Desktopize also allows drag-and-drop uploading from your files directly to Zoho Apps.

These are just one day’s worth of Zoho updates; to keep abreast, check out the Zoho Blogs.

Related posts:

TechCrunch, 

VentureBeat,

CyberNet Technology News, Digital Inspiration, The CIO Weblog

(disclaimer: I’m an advisor to Zoho)

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Filed Under: Collaboration, Personal Productivity, SaaS, SMB / SME, Software, Technology ·
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