Three consecutive entries in my spam folder:
- Viagra for You!
- How does Cialis work?
- Beware of Fake Pills.
Oh, boy… what to do, what to do? 
Tags: spam
Archives for 2007
Confusing Spam
Posted on April 9, 2007 ·
Atlassian is Hiring a VP of Marketing
Posted on April 9, 2007 ·
I don’t typically broadcast job searches, but I’m breaking that tradition now for a few reasons.
1: Cool cartoon 
2: Atlassian is a great company, that I wrote about quite a few times. Being “great” means not only $ucce$$ful, fast-growing, but also a good team to be part of.
3: Transparency. I just wrote about this recently, and Atlassian President Jeffrey Walker proves it again, by sharing his thoughts on the hiring process. I agree with almost all his points, except #8, the backup plan: Executive Recruiters. I think Atlassian is still at a size where they are better off finding the right candidate through their personal network – or they may face situations like this.
So while it looks like they are well on their way finding the right person, if you, or somebody you know are the candidate they’ve been waiting for, contact Jeffrey NOW. Somehow I think the beer-test might be relaxed this time.
But be warned: great company as it is, it’s also a dangerous bunch! 
Bloggers’ Code of Conduct vs. Free Market
Posted on April 9, 2007 ·
It never ceases to amaze me how the knee-jerk reaction to deal with problems is to create regulations: Governments, Municipalities, Homeowners’ Associations..etc – they all think the best way to reach harmony is by regulating everything. No, thank you. Free Markets are a superior mechanism to sort most issues out. Be it real, tangible markets, or the market if ideas.
Tim O’Reilly’s draft Code of Conduct stems from the ugly attacks against Kathy Sierra, and is an attempt to bring civility to the blogosphere, which in itself is a nice, albeit naive idea. I actually (almost) agree with the first point:
1. We take responsibility for our own words and for the comments we allow on our blog.
We are committed to the “Civility Enforced” standard: we will not post unacceptable content, and we’ll delete comments that contain it.
We define unacceptable content as anything included or linked to that:
– is being used to abuse, harass, stalk, or threaten others
– is libelous, knowingly false, ad-hominem, or misrepresents another person,
– infringes upon a copyright or trademark
– violates an obligation of confidentiality
– violates the privacy of others
Personally, I can’t accept some of the subsequent points. I will not commit to:
- always connecting privately before responding publicly,
- taking up arms when someone is attacked,
- banning anonymous comments.
Not that I like anonymous comments, but my current blog platform has a somewhat awkward registration process, and without it, providing information is optional. Besides, if commenters want to hide, they will, just registering with bogus credentials. Which is the weak point of this entire Code of Conduct concept: only the bloggers who already act 
accordingly will embrace it.
This will NOT stop trolling, hate speech, personal attacks, libelous posts. There will be some who proudly display the opposite “anything goes” badge, but the real trolls and slimebags won’t. Their style has never been “shields up”.
But my biggest issue with the Code of Conduct is the underlying philosophy. We don’t need regulations, most of us (?) prefer/enforce civility, although we have our own definition to what it actually means (my blog is my castle…) – let the Market Forces sort out the rest. Readers, commenters have a choice, and protection is as easy as “unsubscribe“. Blogs that don’t follow basic civility rules will become magnets for trolls, and it’s probably fine with them. In the meantime, my own comment policy is:
- I prefer named comments, but won’t disallow anonymous ones
- I allow debate, disagreements, criticism
- I delete hate speech, extreme attacks – most of the time. The exception may be to leave it when I make it a precedent.
The road to police-state (and blogosphere) is paved with good intentions. The danger is that we rarely notice when we first step on it.
Update: This is becoming the hot issue on TechMeme. Mike Arrington, Robert Scoble, Mathew Ingram, Jeff Jarvis, Kent Newsome won’t wear the (Sheriff’s) badge, amongst others.
See other related posts: Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim, Connecting the Dots, Guardian Unlimited, Smalltalk Tidbits …, 901am, WebProNews , Digital Common Sense, robhyndman.com, rexblog.com, Worker Bees Blog, IP Democracy, The Blog Herald, duncanriley.com, Mark Evans and Blogspotting … the list grows as I type. Check TechMeme.
Update: The tribe has spoken: bloggers (almost) unanimously have vote the Code out.
TrashCrunch: TechCrunch CrowdSources Writing
Posted on April 5, 2007 ·
After losing hired guns writers left and right Mike Arrington decided the smartest way to get us all work for him is crowdsourcing. In fact, why not get it all free? So he came up with this bogus theme:
“I want you to tell me how much we (occasionally) suck. Sometimes our predictions are, with the benefit of hindsight, way off. Or they had no logical basis to begin with. Or perhaps we got some crucial fact wrong. Whatever it is, I want you to dig out the worst post in TechCrunch history and write about why it’s so bad.”
In other words, he wants us, the 350K readers to find his biggest blunders. Why? Since so far he’s been largely positive on all-things-web-2.0 the worst blunders will likely point to business failures. Arrington’s biggest coup will be when he finally reveals that his April Fool’s Joke wasn’t such a joke after all: he really acquired FuckedCompany. Now all he has to do is pluck in the hundreds of submissions he receives from his loyal subjects readers, and voila! – he has FuckedCrunch up and running, edited by us, the Crowd.
Update: I can now declare TrashCrunch. the absolute winner. Why? First, what better URL for the trash-TechCrunch contest? Second, the secret sauce: dynamic content. I can redirect it to whatever the winning entry is.
Update: Oh, boy, a really angry man actually takes me seriously and quotes me as reference for his ridiculous speculation. I wish he found his sense of humor. And a large dose of mouth-wash.
Launch: Silicon Valley 2007 – Call for Startups
Posted on April 5, 2007 ·
Startup Entrepreneurs who did not make it to the recent Under the Radar event, here’s your second chance: join us at Launch: Silicon Valley 2007, co-presented by SVASE and Garage Technology Ventures.
In fact it will be more than a second chance: while the UtR event focused specifically on the Office 2.0 space, Launch 2007 is designed to uncover and showcase products and services from the most exciting of the newest startups in information technology, mobility, security, digital media next generation internet, life sciences and clean energy. The inaugural Launch event was in 2006, combined with Guy Kawasaki’s Art of the Start conference.
Are these events worth attending? The startup CEO’s who got their “breakthrough” at last year’s Launch certainly think so:
Faraz Hoodbhoy, CEO, PixSense, Inc:
”Since L:SV (November 8, 2006) we closed series A with Innovacom and ATA and have gone on to win large customer deals across the Telco and mobile social networking world. We’re growing significantly and are now looking at closing a new round of funding as well that we will announce sometime early next month.
On the team side, we’re up to well over 50 people and are looking to be over 120 by end of this year across the globe. We currently have people on the ground in Santa Clara, Beijing, Karachi, Tokyo and soon to expand to Hong Kong, Paris, London, Dubai and Bombay.
So things are going quite well so far. Thanks much for giving us the opportunity to present at L:SV; it was indeed a very good show for us.
Sincerely, Faraz”
Vajid Jafri, Founder & CEO, cFares:
“Launch: Silicon Valley was an extremely valuable event for cFares, as it was there that we met the firm that subsequently became the lead investor in our latest round of finance. We would not have achieved as much progress as we have without Launch: Silicon Valley.”
So if you are building the Next Great Business in the areas mentioned above, are (almost) ready for launch, meaning that by June 5, 2007 you will have a product or service available, but have not been out in the marketplace for more than a few months, then by all means send an Executive Summary of no more than 2 pages to Launchsv@svase.org. Submission deadline: May 3, 2007. Last year over 150 companies from New York, Colorado, Finland, New Zealand, Australia, Spain, and the UK, as well as from the West Coast of the USA applied, so clearly the presentation spots are in high demand. (Garage Technology offers a useful Writing a Compelling Executive Summary guide)
Every Executive Summary will be evaluated by at least 2 members of the Advisory Board, composed of leading members of the Silicon Valley investment community. Following these evaluations, up to 30 companies will be invited to present at the Launch: Silicon Valley 2007 event on June 5 at the Microsoft Campus in Mountain View, California. Presentations slots are 10 minutes, running in 6 sessions of 5 companies each. Each presenting team will also be assigned a cocktail table in the Networking Room where they can meet with interested audience members one-on-one to answer questions and explore possibilities.
CEOs of the companies voted “most promising new company” in each of the six sessions at the event will also receive invitations (for two) to attend the prestigious Ernst & Young “Entrepreneur of the Year” Gala Dinner on June 29 at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco.
On the evening on June 4, the presenting companies, registered audience and selected bloggers and media will be invited to a Pre-Event Party at a prestigious location in Palo Alto, providing a further opportunity for networking with Silicon Valley’s movers and shakers.
Guy Kawasaki calls Launch: Silicon Valley “the poor man’s Demo” and recommends you get in. SVASE proudly wears that badge, since we’re bringing this event at a price that won’t keep any startup away. It’s your turn now: send in the Executive Summary and launch with us in June.
Update (4/12): AlwaysOn: If you launch your product and no-one notices…
Tags: SVASE, Garage.com, Guy Kawasaki, Art of the Start, entrepreneurship, startups, silicon valley, social networking, business events, venture capital, vc, vc funding, startup pitch, launch silicon valley, product showcase, demo, utr, under the radar, ibdnetwork, dealmakermedia, sdforum
Japanese is the No. 1 Blogging Language
Posted on April 5, 2007 ·
The biggest surprise (at least to me) from Technorati CEO David Sifry’s The State of the Live Web, April 2007 report is the fact that the most popular blogging Language is Japanese – by a long margin.
Now, 1% lead may not look like a huge lead (Japanese: 37%, English 36%) until we look at the demographics.
Japanese is spoken by about 130 million people, while English has 380 million native speakers and 600 million total. It’s probably fair to assume many who speak English as a second language will use it for their blog, expecting to reach a larger audience (yours truly included: my native Hungarian is spoken by a grand total of 13 million).
Looking at those numbers it’s probably fair to say that there are 4 times as many potential English language bloggers as Japanese, so in light of that the Japanese are by far more active in blogging than English speakers.
We Will Be Assimilated. Resistance is Futile.
Posted on April 4, 2007 ·
“In the future we’re all going to become gofers for computers.” – says ZDNet’s Larry Dignan on the new Amazon patent for a “Hybrid machine/human computing arrangement.”
Nick Carr describes it as a cybernetic mind-meld a’la Mechanical Turk.
The patent covers “a hybrid machine/human computing arrangement which advantageously involves humans to assist a computer to solve particular tasks, allowing the computer to solve the tasks more efficiently.”
Humans assisting computers, not the other way around.
This ain’t no Turk anymore Nick. It’s The Borg.
We Will Be Assimilated. Resistance is Futile.
Fox News Out-Foxed Themselves
Posted on April 4, 2007 ·
This is hilarious: Fox News ran an April Fools’ poll to see who “the most foolish American” was.
They announced the winner… drumroll: Britney Spears, with 33% of the votes. Too bad they forgot to cover the the real winner: President George Bush, leading the pack with 40%. Watch it on .. where else, but Youtube.
Saved Search Counted as Link on Technorati?
Posted on April 4, 2007 ·
Here’s another tidbit to the recent Technorati discussion: I think Technorati now *incorrectly* counts the results of a saved search as a link. Look at the second link below:
It looks like a saved citation search from Bloglines. Pete Cashmore wants to see all references to Mashable where he is not the author, and he excludes the major aggregators – in other words, he is looking for original citations. He probably saved the search for convenience, but that does not make it an original source, so it should not be counted as a link by Technorati.
The good news is that Dave Sifry is really good in discovering anything tagged “Technorati” really fast, so I’m sure this glitch will be fixed soon.
Update: As the comments show, Dave picked up the issue 2 1/2 hours after I posted, and another half an hour later it’sa fixed. That’s pretty good response in my book. 🙂 Now … have I just got my Technorati Rank reduced? 🙂
FireFox Flocked: Feature Glut vs. Performance
Posted on April 4, 2007 ·
Mozilla has released the scoop on Coop (sorry, couldn’t resist), a product that will incorporate social networking right into the FireFox browser.
This cannot be good news to social browser Flock 
(originally built on Mozilla) says TechCrunch. (Flock is another story on it’s own right: pre-release over-hype, underwhelming early beta, still waiting for a 1.0 product). Not everyone thinks Flock is .. well, *flocked*, for example Matthew Ingram and Mark Evans think the more competition the better.
But there is a bigger story here. The initial reaction on TechCrunch is almost unanimously negative – and it’s not the typical Arrington-bashing pile-on.
- “I hope they offer a version without. I want a browser, not a social network.”
- “I’d rather see them address the resource-hogging issues in Firefox. If social-networking features cause it to use any more system resources, I’ll need a freakin’ dedicated server just to browse the web.”
- “It does sound exciting but why does Mozilla want to add further memory hogging features in firefox.”
- “I don’t want anything more in Firefox until they stop it consuming 98% of my CPU cycles.”
- “Firefox is still a resource hog. I’d rather see that fixed before it becomes a social browser.”
Clearly, users want their browsers to work reliably, fast, without becoming a resource-hog. I’ve said before, performance is a feature, and apparently it’s becoming feature #1 for many – yours truly included. I must be getting old, not getting this social “networking 24×7” – heck, I don’t even watch Justin.tv 
Now, to be real, I’m sure (?) Coop will be an optional add-on, so those who don’t want it can continue with a more lightweight browser. But this mini-revolt at TechCrunch is a good reminder that the memory-hog issue has been present and largely unaddressed by Mozilla for years. I think it also offers a lesson to any software company: even your most religious fans/users can easily jump ship if either something better comes along, or you “flock” up badly.
Related posts: Startup Meme, Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim, Infocult, Techscape, mathewingram.com/work, Mashable!, Mark Evans, Compiler, franticindustries, 901am, CenterNetworks, Between the Lines, The Social Web and more …
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