iBanana released; Chiquita sued by Dole – a hilarious piece by Anshu Sharma. Hey, I guess this proves that even Oraclers can have a good sense of humor …
Where’s my iPhone, I want to call everyone with the news…
Archives for January 2007
iSue
Posted on January 10, 2007 ·
Leave Your Dumb Speaker Agency
Posted on January 10, 2007 ·
Excerpt from the email I’ve just received:
“From the Desk of Jordan Steinberg
I’m looking to see if your group has a need for Keynote Speakers and/or Entertainment for your upcoming meetings or events.
My office books professional speakers and entertainers for Citigroup, California Assn of Realtors, Kraft Foods, National Safety Council, American Nurses Association, Abbott Labs, NH/VT Fairs, National PTA, Federal Housing Authority, Power Auto Group, Major League Baseball, UCLA, SHRM, Colorado Assn of School Execs, American Assn of Pediatrics and 3,500 other clients.
The Speaker Agency represents 5,000 of North America’s top speakers and entertainers. We have top people in all categories and budget ranges. Just let me know your dates, needs and budgets and I will find you perfect fits. “
The email came with thumbnail photos of several featured speakers. Out of respect for their privacy, I’m not showing the pic, but I have a piece of advice to them: leave this agency.
I’m not looking for any speakers, and even if I were, they would not be from this background. I don’t think the Speaker Agency knows that I am NOT Fortune 1000. Their email is not only spam, it’s just plain dumb – does not reflect well on the speakers they represent, IMHO. 
Tags: agencies, agency, speaker agency, speakers, public speaking, conference speakers, marketing, PR, spam
Let’s Not Spam MyBlogLog
Posted on January 9, 2007 ·
It certainly feels like every single blog is talking about MyBlogBlog’s acquisition by Yahoo. I think TechCrunch gets the “Best Title” award: Yahoo Buys MyBlogLog. No, They Didn’t. Wait, Yes.
Well, I am the exception, I am NOT writing about the deal
When I first installed it on my blog, I thought this was all about providing useful outbound stats (who clicked what..etc). Then the faceroll showed up, and before we noticed, MyBlogLog transformed itself into a social networking tool for bloggers. That’s all fine, I like it and use it.
But recently I am starting to get spammed. Probably not “bad” spam, just a network’s growing pains – contact notifications from people I’ve never before heard about. I went through this with LinkedIn, until I established my own “less is more” ground rules. Now, let’s recognize that LinkedIn is primarily for business, and by definition is more restrictive – online contacts there should really reflect one’s real-live network. I feel MyBlogLog is more open, there is room for creating new “friendships” online – yet I think it would be helpful to establish some protocol before contact-hunting escalates to far.
Making someone a contact is not the only way to network, and if we don’t already know each other, it’s certainly not the right initial step. That’s what joining each other’s blog communities and sending messages are for. But frankly, “interesting read!” is not a message – if this was a blog-comment, it would be borderline spam. Which brings up the other point – if you join someone’s blog community, supposedly you’re interested in actually reading the blog itself, will likely engage in a conversation through comments or trackbacks, and soon you will really know each other – that’s the right time to add them as a contact.
By following this simple protocol, we can keep MyBlogLog spam-free. What to you think?
Wetpaint Attracts More Funding
Posted on January 9, 2007 ·
(Updated)
Wetpaint, the “wiki-less wiki” received a $9.5 million Series B round in addition to its $5.25 million Series A in October 2005.
TechCrunch compares it to other wikis, especially key competitor Wikia:
“Wetpaint has a much more newbie-friendly user interface than Wikia, and is targeting a different audience. Frankly, it’s just a lot more pleasant to look at a typical Wetpaint site than a Wikia one, although the content on Wikia is often much deeper than the equivalent on Wetpaint.”
I’d take this one step further: Wetpaint isn’t really just a wiki, it’s a wiki – blog – forum hybrid. Even novice users can just happily type away and create attractive pages with photos, videos, tagging …etc. without the usual learning curve. These pages can be shared, other users can contribute, entire communities can grow and thrive – in fact that’s what it’s all about: online community creation.
Last August I issued a challenge to find another wiki just as easy to use with a comparably rich feature-set – the challenge still stands.
My only concern is that they appear to burn money faster than the other wiki-companies – but I guess if the investors are not worried, it’s really not my business
(And in fairness they have a different business model)
Update (1/9): VentureBeat comments:
“With Jotspot gone for now (presumably, Google will relaunch it in some fashion), and players like Socialtext increasingly focused on selling its wiki software to company users, Wetpaint is among the more convenient Wiki softwares for individual projects.”
As much as I like Wetpaint, I have to disagree. I’ve never considered it a project-oriented collaboration tool. It’s clearly geared towards community creation, and like I’ve hinted above, for that purpose it’s the friendliest platform avaialable today. Business -even small projects – requires a few additional features like document handling (attachments, version control..etc), email integration ..etc.
JotSpot was quite good for that, too bad it’s gone. Socialtext used to be quite ugly, but the new UI is quite nice – it misses a few features though. The new kid on the block is Zoho’s Wiki , (bias alert: I’m and advisor to Zoho) with quite a few features for an initial beta release. It already supports embedding documents, spreadsheets, presentations, videos..etc, and with improved integration to the full Zoho suite later this year it will be a killer combination.
Update (5/13/08): TechCrunch article on Wetpaint’s traction.
TechCrunch Did Not Build it; It Can’t Knock it Down Either
Posted on January 7, 2007 ·
(Updated)
Fred Wilson doesn’t like Mike Arrington’s deadpool:
“So I have to shake my head at the resurrection of the dead pool, which was made popular last time around by Fucked Company. Do we really need to celebrate when companies fail?”
No, we don’t, and I don’t think TechCrunch does. Let’s be realistic: TechCrunch did not build this boom. Yes, a well-timed review helps a startup gain initial traction, but Mike does not make those companies successful: whether they make it or not, they do so on their own. And when they fail, they fail own their own merits, too. Failures are part of business reality, and reporting on them only makes TechCrunch balanced. Without it Mike would be just a biased cheerleader (something he was accused of in the past).
In fact Arrington’s latest post, Bubble, Bubble, Bubble is optimistic, despite the title:
“But this doesn’t mean we’re in a bubble. In fact, I think the exact opposite. I think a few failures are direct evidence that we are not in a bubble and that the private venture markets are actually in the process of letting off a little steam to keep things rational…
…I also disagree that too much money is chasing too few good ideas … Remember that VC’s business models are designed to fail most of the time – the majority of their investments are expected to go belly up, and they hope that just one or two out of ten have a big return…
…So every time a startup dies, I don’t think it’s evidence of a bubble about to burst. I think it’s evidence of a market that is working exactly as it should. Most companies fail, but enough win to keep the whole ecosystem healthy.”
This does not sound like deadpool celebration to me. Au contraire, it sounds like realistic, but still positive market assessment.
Most companies in the “deadpool” are/were way overfunded for what they do. They, and their investors did not follow the model outlined in Fred Wilson’s excellent article, Web 2.0 Is A Gift, Not A Threat, To VCs. A must-read, IMHO.
Update (1/8): Our little discussion made it to The New York Times.
Under the Radar Office 2.0 Conference – Call for Companies
Posted on January 7, 2007 ·
I agreed to be on the Selection Committee for the next full-day Under the Radar event by IBDNetwork. The focus will be Office 2.0 and 32 emerging startups will present on March 23, 2007, at the Microsoft campus in Mountain View, CA. The categories are being finalized, but they likely are:
- Organize – Tasks, Database, Project, Notes, Bookmarks
- Collaborate – Groups, Wiki’s, Spreadsheets, Word Processing, File Sending, Document Mgmt
Track – Time, Expenses, Budgets, Accounting, HR- Publish – Blog platforms, Web publishing, Feeds/RSS, Content Management
- Communicate – Email, IM, VOIP, Voice, web conferencing
- Create – Presentation Mngr, music, photo edit/manage
- Personalize – Desktop, Calendar, personal organizers
- Search – vertical, social, create your own.
Although I’m a bit late (what a surprise
) there are still a few days left for new submissions, so if you know a startup in the above categories, please recommend them either in a comment below or by emailing me.
IBDNetwork’s criteria for selection:
- Unique value proposition
- Ability to monetize product/business
- Must be solving a problem
- Market opportunity
- Must still be considered “under the radar”
- Company must be a actual startup – not a new product from a large company.
- Series A or less in funding
- Beta and beyond – must have customers/users testing and/or using the product in the market
Thanks for your contribution!
Russian Rocket Falls on Denver, but it’s not WWIII
Posted on January 5, 2007 ·
In this tv report they still wonder if it’s a meteor shower, but now we now it was the remains of a Russian SL-4 rocket disintegrating as it re-entered the atmosphere.
More Excuses for Not Doing a PC Backup
Posted on January 4, 2007 ·
We now have Fewer Excuses for Not Doing a PC Backup says the New York Times. Do we? I really don’t want to do a backup. Which does not mean I don’t want my data safely backed up – I just don’t want to have to *do* it. I want it to happen without me ever worrying about – that’s exactly what some of the online backup services offer.
I think the NYT is a bit harsh on Mozy, (my life-saver) by saying:
“Mozy offers dozens of novice-hostile options like “Enable Bandwidth Throttle” and “Don’t back up if the CPU is over this % busy.””
Novice-hostile? Wow… let me try to translate it to really simple English: these are the best features, which allow someone to use the service without having to leave their computer on overnight. You don’t need to have a fixed backup schedule anymore, Mozy runs in the background, uses your computer’s idle cycles, but slows down when you are using your machine. It doesn’t get any better, IMHO: you’re always backing up, yet you never *know* about it. Invisible helper.
Not mentioning ProtectMyPhotos is a glaring omission, IMHO, especially as the author makes the point of not including “Web sites that are exclusively dedicated to sharing photos or videos, like Flickr and MediaFire.” ProtectMyPhotos is an interesting hybrid, offering many of Mozy’s features, yet allowing users to share, browse, manipulate photos online – see my review here.
Last but not least, TechCrunch has a good (albeit somewhat old) review of the online storage space.
The Face of Tomorrow
Posted on January 3, 2007 ·
“What is the face of London, New York, Paris? What does a Londoner, a New Yorker, a Parisian look like?
The Face of Tomorrow is a concept for a series of photographs that addresses the effects of globalization on identity.
The large metropolises of the world are magnets for migrants from all parts of the planet resulting in new mixtures of peoples. What might a typical inhabitant of this new metropolis look like in one or two hundred years if they were to become more integrated?
The Face of Tomorrow attempts to find this face by taking photographs of the current inhabitants and compositing their faces to create a typical face. What we get is a new person – a mix of all the people in that city.”
The above example is from Amsterdam. Click on the pic to see all the 100 individual photos that made up the composites. What’s striking to me is the resemblance between composites of Amsterdam, Sydney, Buenos Aires, London ..etc. Instead of different national characteristic, I see a lot more commonality. The Composite World Citizen .
Of course it has a lot to do with picking the location: Sydney, for example (not this one) has two sub-location, one being Sydney University, which, in the artist’s words is “a veritable United Nations. Out of about one hundred people I photographed there must have been over 30 nationalities including Ugandan, Chinese, Malaysian, Indian, American, Canadian, Bangladeshi, Egyptian, Greek, Italian, German and English.”
Here are the cities covered so far. If you have a camera and a little time, you can get your city included, just contact Mike, the artist.
What’s Hot And What’s Not For 2007 – SVASE Panel in Palo Alto
Posted on January 2, 2007 ·
• How much money is sitting on the sidelines, waiting to be invested?
• Where in the world will it go – Silicon Valley, India, China, somewhere else?
• How much will be available for seed and early stage investments?
• What will be the Hot market segments?
• What will be the Hot applications within these segments?
• Where will your money be going?
For answers to these and many other questions, join us at a lively panel discussion moderated by VentureBeat‘s Matt Marshall this Thursday evening in Palo Alto.
The Panel:
• Ken Elefant, General Partner, Opus Capital
• Rob Rueckert, Senior Investment Manager, Intel Capital
• John Steuart, Managing Director, Claremont Creek Ventures
• Erik Straser, General Partner, Mohr Davidow Ventures
• Ann Winblad, Partner, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners
Schedule:
6.00-7.00 pm: Networking and Hors d’oeuvres
7.00-8:30 pm: Panel discussion and Q/A
For additional details and registration, see the SVASE site. See you there! 
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