Valleywag is really dead with Nick Douglas gone – see for yourself:
Tags: valleywag
Archives for 2006
Eating Your Own Dog Food
Posted on November 16, 2006 ·
Entrepreneurs, Evangelists.. all should eat their own dog food, i.e. use what they make or praise … perhaps a lil’ less literally:
Tags: humor, eating one’s own dog food
What Sequoia Capital Should Look For in Startups
Posted on November 16, 2006 ·
Being the lazy guy I am, I enjoy when others serve up what to write about, I just have to connect the dots. Well, it doesn’t get any better than today, reading these two posts 3 minutes apart.
First there’s Valleywag’s story on how Sequoia’s investment in RockYou (service by NetPickle) turns more into a F***You (pardon my French
):
“Two months before Sequoia Capital, and a couple other investors, funded a Web 2.0 startup called NetPickle, the founders were accused of intellectual property theft by their former employer. They operate a photo slideshow service called RockYou; Iconix said the idea was developed while the founders were employed there; and a U.S. district court judge yesterday ruled against the Sequoia portfolio company.”
Next I’m reading VC Ratings via Paul Kedrosky on What Sequoia Capital Looks for in Startups:
Perhaps it’s time for Sequoia to add the 11th element: Clean IP Ownership. 
Update (11/17): Good chronology at GigaOM.
IdeaWins: Microsoft Contest for Innovative Small Business Idea
Posted on November 16, 2006 ·
I still don’t know if Microsoft’s Software by Parachute initiative was real or just a prank, but here’s another one: IdeaWins: The Ultimate Challenge – a contest for Innovative Small Businesses.
Software and techie types don’t get your juices flowing just yet: apparently “innovation” is limited to retail businesses, and the award is not only $100K but a year’s rent of a Manhattan storefront, too.
It appears MS released the site in a rush and not all components are ready, as for now submissions are by emailing a downloadable form, but starting November 27th there will be an “innovative” interactive way to enter.
Four Finalists will be selected who can submit a video and the winner will be picked by a public online vote. (digg it? 
)
This contest is basically a PR campaign to promote MS Office Accounting 2007 which is quite evident if you arrive to the IdeaWins Home Page: the FAQ is actually all about the Accounting package, and the contest terms are somewhat hard to find. If you follow my link from the pic above, you get right into the contest page, where there is a seconds set of FAQ, this time about the contest. Oh, and of course you’ll be prompted to download MS Accounting a few times along the way…
Tags: smb, sme, small business, small business software, small business accounting, ms office, ms office accounting 2007, ideawins, small business contest, microsoft, msft
Six Stages of Debugging
Posted on November 15, 2006 ·
I am not a programmer but even I can appreciate Charlie’s humor:
The Six Stages of Debugging
- That can’t happen.
- That doesn’t happen on my machine.
- That shouldn’t happen.
- Why does that happen?
- Oh, I see.
- How did that ever work?
Web Security: How to buy a 65” Plasma for $.99
Posted on November 14, 2006 ·
I have no clue if this is real: Edgeblog describes a way to change the price on certain shopping sites using the CartIt.cgi shopping app before the item is submitted to the server.
He than goes on:
Doing a simple Google search for cartit.cgi+plasma, I found a web site that sells plasma TVs (Which shall remain nameless to prevent being sued). The website thinks it is selling TVs for $7,599, but we can pay whatever we want by intercepting the POST and changing the price. If you think the company would catch this error, think again. Many companies outsource the fulfillment of orders, and never check the prices being charged. Note: I do not endorse e-shoplifting, so I did not complete the above transaction, but I know for a fact that the site will accept the order for $.99. Now, $.99 is extreme enough to *maybe* raise a flag. A simpler approach is to just move the decimal over 1 or 2 places. This way, if the company does notice, they will assume it was a processing error on their side. So maybe this article should be titled: “How to buy a 65″ plasma for $75.99.”
Wow. 
Zoli’s Z-life
Posted on November 14, 2006 ·
(Updated)
I’m living a Z-life.. quite fitting for a Z-guy. I’m a life-long Z-lister, writing this post in Zoho Writer and embedding photos from Zooomr.
I frequently use several other Zoho apps, especialy Sheets and Show, and am previewing a few more to come. (But no, rumors of me being renamed to Zoho Zoli are not substantiated 
)
I labeled Zvents Probably the Best Event Calendar in the World! and I think I was right, even though I use it less often nowadays. But that won’t keep me from joining the celebration party
Any other Z-apps I should use?
Update (12/16): I guess being a Z-lister comes with certain perks, Robert Scoble counts on Z-listers. 
Technorati Tags zoho,z-life,z-list,z-lister,zooomr,zoomr,zvents,z-apps
Microsoft Filters out Gmail
Posted on November 13, 2006 ·
ZDNet finds that every time they open Gmail, a warning is displayed telling the user they are infected with “BAT/BWG.A“.
A false positive sure to be fixed soon. Don’t get the wrong idea though: Microsoft is not biased against its competitor… they had done the same to themselves:
Sure, just remove Windows Explorer 
. After all, A Dead PC is a Safe PC. Or one that only plays the startup sound 
Valleywag an Eyesore
Posted on November 13, 2006 ·
Valleywag’s Nick Douglas is leaving. Nick *was* Valleywag. Not much to add here, it’s the top item on Techmeme:
Good Morning Silicon Valley, Mathew Ingram, Master of 500 Hats, Thomas Hawk’s Digital …, Things That, WebProBlog, Federated Media …
But WTF is this new design?
Frankly, it makes me want to puke… except that it looks like someone has already puked on it
18 Months to Develop, 4 Seconds Long, But You Can Kill It
Posted on November 13, 2006 ·
AP, Seattle: “Some musicians spend 18 months working on a whole album. At Microsoft Corp., that’s how long it took to perfect just four seconds of sound.”
That’s the Vista Startup Sound. Microsoft hired famous guitarist Robert Fripp for the job.
Originally, in a perfect demonstration of product-focused thinking ignoring users, Microsoft planned to make this sound mandatory (impossible to modify or even shut off), but when Robert Scoble leaked the news, there was a huge backlash eventually Microsoft gave in, making the sound optional.
So in the end, 18 months of effort went into 4 seconds that you will turn off anyway. 
Much ado about nothing… in the end, this is all that matters:
Update (11/13): I’ve only discovered after writing this post that you can actually listen to the startup sound by clicking Play under the photo in the AP article. Wow… is that it? The heavenly experience? 
18 months…. LOL. Several years and latops ago I had my new mail notification sound set to a 3-4 second harp piece from Franz Liszt‘s Les Preludes. It took me a good 30 minutes to cut/edit it. 
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