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Tim Kersey shared an item on Google Reader

Passenger preference pane v1.1 · Fingertips

Friday at 9:41 am - Link

OS X System Preferences pane that will configure Apache and set up a local hostname for running any Rails application using Phusion Passenger. Getting your Rails app up and running is now a matter of seconds. - Tim Kersey

Tim Kersey shared an item on Google Reader

Appulo.us : The iPhone and iPod Touch Application Index

November 13 at 12:07 pm - Link

What is this place? The solution to what? As many iPhone and iPod touch owners have discovered, Apple's iTunes App Store has many flaws which render it useless to the common user. Apple has chosen to allow a multitude of ridiculous, worthless, poorly-represented applications through its "strict" screening process, nearly all written by mediocre programmers with a dream of getting rich quick. Many of these programmers game the reviews system, misrepresent their application in the description, and generally try to swindle the honest buyer. Applications generally do not cost much, but small fees add up. The iPhone/iPod community has wasted so much money on these programs, an epidemic has taken hold where people have simply stopped buying apps they aren't certain of so they don't find themselves purchasing yet another waste of a program. How does Appulo.us help that? Apple could quite easily solve this problem by implementing a sort of trial period for each application, but they do not.... - Tim Kersey

Tim Kersey shared an item on Google Reader

Pivotal Tracker

November 12 at 11:28 am - Link

Tracker is a story-based project planning tool that allows teams to collaborate and instantly react to real-world changes. It's based on agile development methods, but it can be used on a variety of types of projects. Tracker frees you up to focus on getting things done without getting bogged down trying to keep your plans in sync with reality. - Tim Kersey

Tim Kersey posted a link

Geek Pop Star

November 10 at 9:31 pm - via Bookmarklet - Link

"Malcolm Gladwell’s elegant and wildly popular theories about modern life have turned his name into an adjective—Gladwellian! But in his new book, he seeks to undercut the cult of success, including his own, by explaining how little control we have over it." - Tim Kersey via Bookmarklet

Tim Kersey posted a link

A Darker Future For Us

November 2 at 10:27 am - via Bookmarklet - Link

"Consider" - Tim Kersey via Bookmarklet

Tim Kersey shared an item on Google Reader

tribler

October 29 at 8:42 pm - Link

Tribler is an application that enables its users to find, enjoy and share content. With content we mean video, audio, pictures, and much more. - Tim Kersey

Tim Kersey shared an item on Google Reader

Arc Forum | Where are we going?

October 26 at 7:29 am - Link

The future of Arc - Tim Kersey

Tim Kersey shared an item on Google Reader

Orange Gadgets

October 17 at 10:03 am - Link

Introducing a FRESH LINE of products for the iPhone and the iPod touch. - Tim Kersey

Tim Kersey shared an item on Google Reader

SourceForge.net Repository - [transcoderredux] Index of /

October 15 at 7:54 pm - Link

source code to Visualhub (open source) - Tim Kersey

Tim Kersey shared an item on Google Reader

null

October 13 at 5:53 am - Link

OLO - iPhone Netbook - Tim Kersey

Tim Kersey shared an item on Google Reader

tiny living

October 9 at 5:18 pm - Link

in this 11/08 issue of ReadyMade - Tim Kersey

Tim Kersey posted a link

The "bailout" of the US financial sector - a knol by Knol Debates

October 7 at 12:40 pm - via Bookmarklet - Link

"Leading think tanks debate what comes next now that the emergency economic stabilization act is law. They want to hear from you so please voice your opinion through comments and suggested edits. The views expressed by participants in the Knol Debates are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of Google or its employees." - Tim Kersey via Bookmarklet

Tim Kersey posted a link

The Choice: Comment: The New Yorker

October 6 at 5:18 pm - via Bookmarklet - Link

Thats one of the most liberal things I've ever read. Not saying it isn't supposed to be, but still. - Chris Rohde

I struggled to read the whole damn thing. - Tim Kersey

Tim Kersey posted a link

2008 Presidential Election Interactive Map and History of the Electoral College

October 6 at 2:53 pm - via Bookmarklet - Link

"2008 Interactive Electoral Map Select one of the starting views below the map. Click any state to start customizing your map. You can split ME and NE votes. As you modify a state, the total Electoral Vote counter will update. If cookies are set, your custom map will be saved for future visits to the site." - Tim Kersey via Bookmarklet

Dare Obasanjo posted an entry on Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life

User Experience is ALL that Matters

September 28 at 1:51 pm - Link

accesine, Roney Smith, Pavan and 25 other people liked this

I think you think that Android was created to compete with the iPhone... - DeWitt Clinton

24 more comments

Nope. I think that Android is a smartphone OS just like Windows Mobile and the iPhone OS. So it competes with them both. - Dare Obasanjo

The user experience should be portable across devices and device types. Microsoft has not been able to achieve this. Apple is not going to try. - scott anderson

A better way to see it is as a way of competing with dumb phones. - DeWitt Clinton

DeWitt: I think you have started drinking your own kool-aid ;) People only have one cell phone. So any cell phone competes with all other cell phones. iPhone competes with dumb phones, and Android phones compete with the iPhone. Features and cost play a part, as they do with every other purchasing decision. Saying they don't compete is just expectation-setting, like the candidates telling the press how bad they are at debating before every debate. - Bret Taylor

Hehe. No, my argument is that now that there is an iPhone quality operating system available, open source, for free, there will be no excuse for every device not to be a smart phone. - DeWitt Clinton

Looks like Bret beat me to the punch. :) - Dare Obasanjo

Open isn't enough to win. It has to be good too. Note though that Android != G1, so even if you don't fancy that device, just wait.... there will be more. Did you read how companies are jumping in with Android? E.g. Motorola putting 350 people on it (allegedly). - Dion Almaer

Viz "people only have one cell phone" that may be true in the US but from where I'm sitting I can see 2 of my mobile phones. In many parts of the world the number of phones is greater than 1. According to wikipedia this is true in 50 countries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M... - Adewale Oshineye

Agreed with Dion that open isn't alone enough to win. But open *and* a phone that is as good as the iPhone, and thus arguably at least the second best overall, and now you're talking profound. And there are something like what, 10 million iPhones, but almost 4 billion phones in existence. That's 99.75% of the market that can be upgraded, even if the end goal for Android isn't sales numbers (sales are upside for the carriers to realize). That's not Kool-Aid - that's a paradigm shift. - DeWitt Clinton

I've been quiet publicly so far about my enthusiasm for Android. But now that the covers are coming off I can say that I truly believe that Android has the potential to change the world. I think of it like this -- Google would not have have been possible without open source software, particularly the GNU tools and compilers and the Linux kernel, and the open web ecosystem to nuture it. What future Googles will Android make possible? I honestly don't know -- only time will tell, and that's why I'm excited. - DeWitt Clinton

There will still be a market for cheap dumb phones going forward. They can be made to run Android and customized by adding one or more Android apps locked into the device by the carrier. The software will be free to the carriers and the hardware commodites. I don't know if Apple and Microsoft will want to compete in the dumb phone market. - scott anderson

Android is a smart phone OS, not a dumb phone OS. Part of what makes a phone a dumb phone is hardware limitations. No one at Google has been talking publicly about putting Android on phones like the ones in the story at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04... and even then Symbian is more likely to make it happen given its popularity and maturity. Nice rap though. - Dare Obasanjo

True, to a point. But the dumbest of dumb hardware today is smarter than the smart hardware just a few years ago. A couple of years from now, just try buying a device without a capacitive touch screen, an 802.11 chip, a camera, flash storage, etc. And if you were building an ultra-low cost device for developing nations, wouldn't you chose the open source platform that was free of licensing fees? - DeWitt Clinton

And back to the original point, is no one else blown away by the fact that version 1.0 of Android -- the first public release -- is already being compared with the very best mobile OS, the iPhone OS? That Dare would even feel the need to write that post? - DeWitt Clinton

If Symbian is so popular and mature then why are they trying to steal the Android / OHA game plan? As far as I know Symbian will still have to cater to the OMA. That is a severe handicap for them. BTW, my definition of dumb phones would include a dedicated map device that you could talk to and a phone that only has a voice interface, something you would want to have while jogging, etc. You would operate all these devices over the same networks. - scott anderson

Dewitt, you should be a politician with your ability to switch positions so quickly. The point is that today Android is a competitor to smartphone OSes like Symbian, WinMobile and the iPhone OS. Of these Symbian is the most popular and iPhone has the most hype. So unsurprisingly the press is all about Apple vs. Google since is the Brangelina of trade press news. - Dare Obasanjo

Haha. I have the family name for it, too. : ) But I'll cede you the point. The Android OS *is* competitive with other smart phone operating systems, and maybe even to their market share. But what excites me is that the ecosystem -- the openness, the licensing, etc -- around Android is *nothing* like the other smart phone operating systems. Android is inventing an entirely new class there. So even if it failed against the smart phones (and I don't think it will) it will still change everything. - DeWitt Clinton

"That's not Kool-Aid -- that's a paradigm shift." ??? [reads packet of Google Paradigm Shift] hmmm... sugar, fructose, citric acid, calcium phosphate...Yellow 6 lake, Red 40 lake... artificial flavor.... What flavor? I honestly don't know -- only time will tell, and that's why I'm excited!!! Woo!!! - Karim

[grabs nearest passing stranger by the lapels] This drink has the potential to change the WORLD!!!!!! - Karim

Personally, I think we should be comparing the G1 to Apple's first phone, which was called the E1. You might know it as the ROKR: http://bit.ly/2062si . And just as Apple's OS and the phones that ran the OS got much better over time, so too will Android phones. With an open-source OS, anyone could write Exchange support. Dare, where are the docs on Exchange's APIs, just so people can learn about them? - Matt Cutts

Here you go - http://www.microsoft.com/about... - Dare Obasanjo

ROKR OS was not created by apple, not the slightest, Motorola made it look like the ipods of the time to add that extra oomph for the marketing department, but when everyone got to play with it they hated it. Not to mention the fact that it only came with 128 MB of ram out of the box. - Stepan Mazurov

have to agree with Stepan -- the ROKR E1 was basically a older Motorola E398 onto which Apple glommed a single application called the iTunes Client. (Which they then intentionally crippled to hold very few songs, so as not to cannibalize iPod sales.) You don't want to confuse a single app with an entire OS. [thinks about Chrome] Or *do* you? Muahahaha... :-D - Karim

Compare Mac OS 7,8,9 to Windows 3.0. Arguably, the former was way more usable. Guess which one achieved market dominance. The open system on an open architecture will beat the closed system on a closed architecture in the long run. (It wasn't obvious in 1989 that Apple was in trouble --- their profits weren't really affected until 1998 or so) - Piaw Na

Piaw, we're all dead in the long run. It seems pretty myopic to reduce the lessons of Windows vs. Mac and iPod vs. MP3 players to "openness wins in the long run". The best value for customers wins in the long run. Being able to run more apps on Windows proved to be more valuable to customers than whatever else Mac had to offer. This isn't the same dynamic in MP3 players (good luck waiting for openness to win) but it might be for cell phones. - Dare Obasanjo

One thing people seem to forget is that Google has so much cash flow that it frequently stakes out positions in markets with no immediate (apparent) strategic goal. The cost of developing Android has been miniscule for Google - perhaps Google just wanted to get in there with an iPhone OS competitor before someone else did. - Rob Sterling

Tim Kersey shared an item on Google Reader

Mac OS X, Eee PC, OSx86, & Dual Booting.

September 16 at 9:21 pm - Link

Complete Eee PC Info from MacEee.com for 901, 1000H, and More. - Tim Kersey

Tim Kersey shared an item on Google Reader

Big data: Welcome to the petacentre

September 10 at 5:40 am - Link

by Cory Doctorow - Tim Kersey

Paul Buchheit posted a link

Damien Katz: REST, I just don't get it

August 14 at 9:49 pm - via Bookmarklet - Link

Yuval Atzmon, Kevin Scott, Tim Kersey and 13 other people liked this

"I guess what I mean to say is just because SOAP is a disaster, doesn't somehow make REST the answer. Simpler is better, and REST is generally simpler than SOAP. But there is nothing wrong with a plain old POST as an RPC call. If its easy to make all your calls conform to the RESTful verb architecture, then that's good, I guess. But if not, then just use a POST as an RPC call, keep it as simple as possible and be done with it. And don't spend another minute worrying about being RESTful or not." - Paul Buchheit via Bookmarklet

11 more comments

I agree so much. Technical dogma is annoying. - Paul Buchheit

Agreed. - Ray Grieselhuber

support for intermediaries, distributed caching, payload as document *or* argument collection - as binary *or* text, dynamic typing via MIME, support for portable code-on-demand (ala javascript, applets, flash, etc), out-of-band authentication & authorization - by independent parties ... oh, yeah and PUT/DELETE, too? plus all of this extensible and outlined a decade ago. there may be a lot to "not get", but it's no dogma. it's the stuff that makes FriendFeed so possible. - MikeAmundsen

Mike, it seems that you're arguing that REST==HTTP, but then people write these blog posts saying "X is not RESTful" because they use POST instead of PUT, or some such silliness. I agree that HTTP is good though, in part because it's quite flexible yet relatively simple. - Paul Buchheit

Paul: you're right on it - "X is not RESTful" is dumb. REST is basically the codifying/documentation of how/why HTTP works so well. - MikeAmundsen

I blame the people who invented the REST concept, who waxed all philosophical about, well, representational state transfer, whatever the hell that means. If they had called it something like POHR (Plain Old HTTP Request) instead we would have been so much better off. Well, except that we wouldn't have a cute acronym. - ⓞnor

Roy Fielding had to was lyrical about it, it was his dissertation. That's what it's for. - Michael C. Harris

@paul "Technical dogma is annoying" +1. agree totally. how about trying to accomplish something useful first! - .LAG

As a winforms developer that does some web development on the side, the whole idea of webservices is overcomplex. The touchstone for any particular implementation of a web serice needs to based around mission critical capabilitie: There is no point using it if it does not work. - Roberto Bonini

With .NET the web services are so easy to develop that some people don't even know about the XML/SOAP/WSDL behind the scenes. They are so well abstracted behind the tools. REST support is getting all the time better, too, though. - Jemm

SOAP is a disaster and REST zealots are annoying, but something was lost when people started doing custom encodings for every web service, instead of having a standard way to rep structs, lists and various scalar types. we had this solved in 1998 in XML-RPC, the predecessor to SOAP, which is not a disaster, and widely deployed. It shows how powerful the idea is. - Dave Winer

Yes, don't worry about REST, and maybe don't worry about open data and dataportability and service interoperability either. The main reason I'm a REST fan is the fact that it makes service clients easy. You build a client and can use it to query Flickr and YouTube and FriendFeed and BaseCamp with just minor modifications. It's difficult to design RESTful web services, but it's better for everybody in the long run - Dragos Ilinca via twhirl

Dragos, no one here is arguing against standards, and REST isn't even a standard anyway -- it's a design pattern, one that's sometimes useful but often inappropriate. - Paul Buchheit

Tim Kersey shared an item on Google Reader

AirBed & Breakfast: Better Than a Cheap Hotel

August 11 at 10:28 am - Link

Stay with a local when traveling. - Tim Kersey

Dave Winer posted a link

Twitter will kick themselves for missing this (Scripting News)

August 3 at 9:39 am - via Bookmarklet - Link

cori, Charles Balazs, Sylvain Carle and 79 other people liked this

Imagine if the world of Instant Messaging had been under one roof, if one vendor had invented it, and had 100 percent market share. Further, what if that vendor had the foresight that there would be other vendors and that compatibility between their services would make a huge market, and that incompatibility would keep the market fragmented and relatively small. What would that vendor have done? - Dave Winer via Bookmarklet

21 more comments

Dave - I don't quite understand your argument for how Twitter could have been the NSOL of microblogging. Are you saying that Twitter should have been the site that binds every other micro-blogging service together? - Brian Daniel Eisenberg

I don't understand your question, sorry. All I get from it is your first phrase that you don't understand me. So neither of us understand each other. Oh well. Maybe someone else can bridge the void.. - Dave Winer

Love it Dave. We're having a meta conversation about microblogging. Maybe I'll go craft an old fashioned blog post of my own to try and elaborate/clarify :) - Brian Daniel Eisenberg

It's kind of like this Apple commercial. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... - Dave Winer

Exactly! - Brian Daniel Eisenberg

Another example, I read somewhere on FF the other day that people took a feed from a music room here and added it to iTunes and it knew what to do with it! I feel really proud of that cause it was made possible by some early foundation work I did with RSS, a long time ago, paying off now for users. Exactly the kind of foresight I would like to see Twitter do now. - Dave Winer

Now that I get. Thanks Dave. - Brian Daniel Eisenberg

Dave, yes you spot on (once again !). However, twitter doing it is basically like asking like asking water to turn to honey. Only a miracle can make it happen. The underlying architecture of Twitter, really can't support a framework of collaborative sharing of info with other 3rd party vendors. FB did a great job with creating the app that was actually a platform. FF seems to be like this, twitter is ouf of the window. - Peter Dawson

Do you think the problem lies in the fact that they are a Valley startup that needs to look like something Google or Yahoo would buy and put ads on. - Harold Gilchrist via twhirl

Harold, I don't think there's a "problem" -- they're overworked and head-down and faced with an enormous amount of opportunity. It must be hard to sort through it all, and to them, a missive like this from me probably sounds pretty shrill. "Oh there he goes again." I don't blame them for this, but I would be remiss if I didn't put my stake in the ground so we can play Monday Morning Quarterback in 2010 or so. (Murphy-willing, knock wood!) - Dave Winer

Network Solutions are the worst company ever, i don't know why you related Twitter to them. - Nicholas James

I suspect that the problems from this past weekend are only going to exacerbate the problem. http://tinyurl.com/5pkpjs Not only have they missed they opportunity, but poor communication and support are seriously eroding the customer base. That the victims of this weekend's situation included several strong Twitter evangelists has unfortunate potential. Even tho the folks involved seem to mostly still carry a fondness for Twitter, their followers witnessed the problems and were involved in the solution. - Patricia F. Anderson

"Imagine if the world of Instant Messaging had been under one roof, if one vendor had invented it, and had 100 percent market share." Wasn't that *mostly* true of AOL, though? Didn't AOL consolidate their position by buying up ICQ? Didn't they drag their feet for years and years on efforts to make their IM play well with others? By illustrating your point with IM, perhaps you have explained why Twitter *isn't* kicking themselves. Perhaps in this game, the tendency is for the dominant player to *not* cooperate. - Karim

Likewise, Network Solutions is an example of *abuse* of a dominant position: in 1995 they charged $100 to register a domain name for 2 years, which led to an antitrust lawsuit. They've also been guilty of domain name censorship, domain name slamming, subdomain hijacking, domain name frontrunning, selling WHOIS information, etc. ad nauseam. - Karim

I, for one, am glad their business model didn't become IP of a namespace - Ross Mayfield

I'm really surprised that this weekend's problems of account closings haven't caused more of a fuss. It seems to me that it would be such a big deal, it would be the final straw that would get most of the major twitter advocates to finally pay attention to the whole issue of federation of microblogging. Also: this is the umptyzillionth thing that's made the thought go thru my mind that they must be *trying* to fail! - Tegan Dowling

@Karim: While AIM is definitely the dominant IM standard here in the US, it doesn't even come close to being so abroad. People I know in India and Australia, for example, don't even know what "AIM" is. Yahoo and MSN Messengers are both the dominant IM networks there. I think that Dave's example very much reflects why Twitter would have done better in the long-term with an open model. - Mohit

It would be great to see FriendFeed run their own laconica service (identi.ca). - Dan Cameron

Isn't Identi.ca exactly what you're looking for? FriendFeed doesn't support multiple instances of FriendFeed, but I'm already party of multiple Laconica (the source of Identi.ca) networks via one seamless interface. There are some kinks, sure, but I'm bowled over by how much they've gotten done in a month. - Marina Martin

Marina, I am an identi.ca user. How do I follow a user on another laconi.ca server? How do they follow me? Please post a pointer to the docs. This is very important. - Dave Winer

Dave, when you are on the profile page of a user on another laconica server (such as mine: http://waka.me/wil) just click on the Subscribe button. It will then ask you for your profile URL (yours would presumably be http://identi.ca/dave) then submit the form. Your browser will do an OAuth redirect dance, after which you should be subscribed to me. - Wil via MojiPage

Mohit, the market is badly fragmented *now.* QQ is huge in China. Yahoo! and MSN started beta testing interop only in 2006. Google whipped out their checkbook and paid AOL a billion dollars for interop, and even that is lame -- AIM users can't see GTalk users from AIM. My point was that AOL *used to be* the dominant IM, just as Network Solutions *used to be* the largest domain name registrar. History is replete with dominant players abusing their position, sometimes to their ruin. It is NOT replete with examples of companies that, experiencing massive growth, decide to share the load (and wealth) freely with others, even if that kind of behavior has the greatest benefit for society at large. Not saying it can't happen -- just that it *usually* doesn't work that way, as is made clear by the two examples Dave gave. IM and Network Solutions are two examples of groups collaborating only if they are dragged kicking, screaming, bribed and lawsuited to the table. I'm not sure why we should hope Twitter would - Karim

(continued) be different. Maybe "We learn from history that we do not learn from history." -- G.W.F. Hegel - Karim

Robert Scoble posted an entry on Scobleizer -- Tech geek blogger

The Silicon Valley VC Disease

July 26 at 12:13 pm - Link

Casey, Franklin Pettit, Piaw Na and 66 other people liked this

I actually read the title as "The Silicon Valley VD Disease" ..and nearly jumped out of my seat !! :)- - Peter Dawson

60 more comments

I think the bigger issue is the fact that startups want to scale quickly. What happened to starting slow and small and letting the product naturally develop, grow a natural user base, before getting VC and super expanding? I guess it's not as sexy... - Johan

Johan: startups have this attitude forced on them by the VC's. The VC's only give you enough money to go a year or two. If you don't build a business by then you either have to convince more VCs to give you another two years of cash, or you have to have a business up and running and generating more revenues than expenses by then. And the VCs don't like it if you just sit on the cash. They are hoping you come up with some dramatic business success. - Robert Scoble

I hope it's not contagious - paul mooney

Good post - my phone is not used to connect to the web but to text message. I can't get a handle on the iPhone yet, though. My daughter loves it and that's good enough for me. - LPH™

The other term for this: Short-sightedness. - Eric Florenzano

ok I jumped off the seat and now back w/beer. :)_ yeah but if you have the right product and appliations , you dot need to shop for VC funds in the first place. The issue is that too many startups are in the markets and nothing really is getting innovated. VS are in to make money. Show me the money and I'll show you my term sheet. Simple investment talk. DOnt waste our time - Peter Dawson

+1 for Peter's "Silicon Valley VD Disease" .... LOL - Mitchell Tsai

Unfortunately VCs are not the best investors. Most are running scared. Even with their efforts, 85% of their investments fail (50% for the top firms). Creates a me-too mentality evident also in the Pharmaceutical industry. Real break-throughs may have less than 1% success rate. That is too scary for most VCs and pharma companies. - Mitchell Tsai

And you can only imagine how frustrating this is for biotech (and explains the lack of funding). Takes 10 years to see some results, 3-5 if you are providing services) - Deepak

Thanks for writing this post, Robert. You're saying better than a lot of us what I'm sure some of us are thinking. It's unfortunate that this kind of thinking can actually prevent innovation and seems counter to the original American entrepreneurial spirit. We all lose when a good idea doesn't get funded to grow as well or as quickly as it could. - Cathryn Hrudicka

There's also the ROI and IRR disease in the VCs. Typical businesses have maybe a 50% success rate (where success is not the VC - 5X my money in 5 years, but includes I-just-want-to-pay-my-salary companies). The VC pressure to provide decent returns pushes many companies to failure. Rule of thumb: If you aren't willing to take out a loan at 40% annual interest (because your company's opportunity is so big & needs fast speed), don't ask VCs and smart angels. "Inexperienced" angels is ok. - Mitchell Tsai

P.S. I'm sitting on a lot of worthless pre-public stock. It's tough to be an investor too. - Mitchell Tsai

the home-run, quick-hit mentality is a disease, sorry ... softer, slower, wider is the way to grow the future we all want ... - Gregory Lent

basically VC are getting funding via the global Hedge Funds bowl, w/multi legged swap options. so they (VC's) need ROI's to ensure that they can pay back what they took and make a profit at the same time. They win some and lose some, its a gamble.. Follow the money trail for dynamics of this landscape - Peter Dawson

VCs want companies to make money so they can recoup their investment and it's called a disease? The sickness is that many of the companies that get funded get funded when there is no hint of a business/revenue plan in place or even on the horizon. If more VCs had a strategy to invest in companies destined to actually make money of course there would be less SV whiny minor millionaires and more real business. - Brian Sullivan

VC/Angel is the "lottery for the rich": (A) ~15-20% annual returns (B) lottery chance to make $25 million on your $25,000 if you hit a Netscape, Yahoo, or Google. Most mathematicians who make a profit at Vegas gambling move on to stock markets, futures/commodity trading, financial derivatives, hedge funds, etc... - Mitchell Tsai

+1 for Brian: In the VC biz, that's called "pressure to invest". Not enough good ideas & teams to invest in. Conservative VCs won't find enough investments, thus the "pack" disease of VCs all funding hard drives at the same time. Much more fun chasing pictures on the internet. :-) - Mitchell Tsai

Brian: the companies that get funded that have no obvious business model (PodTech and Twitter, for example) are part of the VC Disease of go for a home run. They were hoping that PodTech would turn into the next YouTube and that Twitter turns into the next Google. Remember, Google didn't make money for the first four years of its existence, and, in fact, were almost shut down because they weren't paying their bills at Exodus. - Robert Scoble

Liking mostly because you say not to listen to Dave Hornik. I think I might actually be starting to like you, Robert. - Cyndy

Echoing Robert: Google burned through $26 million before finding profitability with Bill Gross's (IdeaLab) http://idealab.com/about_ideal... sliding-scale ad fees http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... I would have been too chicken to put that much money into Google. The sliding-scale ad idea of Goto.com wasn't a "proven" revenue model either. "In November 2001 Gross defaulted on a $50 million personal loan he had taken from the Bank of America to invest in Idealab". - Mitchell Tsai

Using Google as an example of a company that didn't have a business plan but ended up a big success is getting tired as an argument for support of investment of clueless "businesses" and their founders. Investors in Google and the founders won the lottery -- that doesn't justify investing in the lottery as business strategy. Investing in Iphone apps in my mind would also be a waste of money (maybe not quite as idiotic as investing in Facebook apps though). Iphone will not be the winner in the mobile computing sweepstakes- in my mind it is destined for the same scrap heap as the beta tape format. Investors really should be looking outside the SV echo chamber for potential investment successes. - Brian Sullivan

VCs have to see a deal in this way: 3-5 years to get to 10X return. They can't wait 10 years for a payback, their fund is usually only 10 years as far as I know. So they can't fund things that are too far out. Although it seems clear that the iPhone can create opportunities that fit in this framework of 3-5 years to 10X return, so not sure why Hornick was down on it. Nice, controversial post to get us thinking... I think the disease is more like "groupthink" than it is "lack of long-term vision" - Elliott Ng

+1 Brian - Cyndy

Interesting post Robert. May be what Dave is saying is that when a company has proven their concept on the iphone is ready to scale to other platform, then the time is right to actually go after a bigger VC round. I think that both people like Jeff and Dave are key to the entrepreneurship ecosystem: they just target different stages of the company lifecycle. Another way to prove that is that 1) raising too much money on day 1 is the best way to loose the focus necessary to survive and 2) traditional VC firms can not scale to manage 100 x $1-2M deals. - Edwin Khodabakchian

Brian: when I went to Israel a high percentage of developers there proudly showed me their iPhones. And there's not even an Apple store in the country. I HAVE GONE outside the country. Tons of the best iPhone apps are from outside of SV. I also totally disagree about iPhone not being the winner in mobile computing sweepstakes. At least not as the market is today. But I hear Nokia is coming out with something cool in January, so we'll see. And Microsoft told me they are bringing out something cool next year. - Robert Scoble

Brian, maybe the iPhone will wind up like the Atari, who knows. And I would add that many times investments are at least as much due to the people than to the initial technology. However, the iPhone is a game changer. I find that I'm using it more and more to read news, check the weather, etc--some which is new behavior for me, but also some of which I used to do on my notebook. The iPhone is winning out. Is it perfect yet? No. I want more, but there's a systemic change going on here. - Loren Heiny

Loren: the problem with people who don't own iPhones is they just don't see how big a game changer it is. I wish I could get Brian to carry around the four phones I currently have to see how bad these things all are compared to iPhone. The iPhone isn't perfect, either, but it's years ahead of the others. Of course, back in 1989 the Macintosh was years ahead of everything too and see what happened... - Robert Scoble

Deepak: Agreed, look at Amgen and Genentech as classic Biotech examples - Sally Church

Scobles , are yo sure that iPhones are just not hype ? - Peter Dawson

Mr. Scoble - I'll tell you... this disease causes Myopia too. There are SO many fine business opportunities being pitched right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Wichita... Sevin Rosen Funds has a guy here in Tulsa. EARLY stage oriented. Pre-money oriented. Why KPCB or Charles River (or whoever) doesn't grab some initiative and park a good couple of partners in middle-America and work some new land is beyond me. - Gerald Buckley

You'll get little disagreement from me on this one, Robert. But it's not just VCs, it's inertia. OTOH, Brian Sullivan a few comments up makes a great comparison...iPhone (and Facebook for that matter) are heading the way of BetaMax and MiniDisc, and MemoryStick. I may not use MySpace, but they're the VHS of the Social Network game right now. What we need is for someone to invent the DVD. - Andrew Feinberg

Robert: I have absolutely no need for the Iphone (or any "smart" phone) and certainly would not pay the ridiculous prices some people are paying to use them. These products and their supporters are making a couple of fundamental assumptions that I think are flawed: that most normal people are like California geeks that feel the need to be connected at all times and that people will continue to commute and move about daily and have waste travel time to consume using these devices. That may make me an apparent Luddite (or maybe I am a generation removed from understanding the need)but I am still offended by people that answer mobile phones in the middle of a person to person conversation and am equally offended by people at a "real" social gathering with their eyes glued to a 3" screen and thumbs/fingers flailing wildly. - Brian Sullivan

Peter D. define "hype"? I can't be sure that iPhone will "win" the mobile space (I seriously doubt it given current pricing). But they're bound to be closing in on their 10 million units worldwide goal, and especially given the price, that doesn't strike me as hype. - Robert Seidman

I completely respect yet disagree with this post. Most designers are not businessmen, VCs help in other ways than a chequebook. You bring the skills and the idea, they teach you how to squeeze money and create revenue. Great ideas change the world but they're not always profitable. VCs are there strictly for the money and you have to respect that. - Cains

What's wrong with investing in Facebook apps, if you get the exposure it's like advertising on Taxi wheels (I've seen this one). As for the iPhone, it has changed the way people are surfing on mobiles and this advertising market is just at the beginning so i see many companies getting inside. The only question i ask myself is either the company can generate money within 3-5 years or not and should i put my money in as if it was after the bubble burst. - Nir Ben Yona

Brian, here are a couple non-California uses of an Internet connected device like the iPhone. Imagine you're in Nebraska in the spring. A storm rolls in. Tornado sirens blare. If you've got your iPhone with you in the closet or basement or wherever in anticipation of a tornado, you've potentially got access to an Internet radio, weather radar maps, 911, etc in your iPhone. Another example: You're visiting friends/relatives you haven't seen in years. The cameras in the car. You take a pix with your iPhone, email it to family/friends that moment. All of this can be done with other devices, but the iPhone does it in one. - Loren Heiny

Great post. I see no excitement surrounding any other phone. People I know who use Windows Mobile phones have to in order to have access to corporate email. Maybe that will change with Apple licensing AciveSync. - Brett Nordquist

Peter: I'm absolutely convinced that iPhones are not hype. Brian: mobile didn't get hot in California first. You really need to visit Europe or Japan or Korea. There we look pretty stupid in our usage of mobile. As for "needing" stuff, you probably 10 years ago would have told me you don't "need" a cell phone, but today I can't name a single person that I know who doesn't have one, except my baby. You need to travel more and watch what people do when a plane touches down. Everyone starts up their mobiles. - Robert Scoble

Has anyone decided if Apple's implememntation of ActiveSync is any good? - Andrew Feinberg

I guess I'm glad I can have whatever phone I choose, and no need to worry about syncing anything, as I'm not tied to a corporate and all the associated bloatware that goes with it... - Ian May

"First, our society’s most valuable audiences are getting iPhones." Really our most valuable audiences? Archeticts are these type of people? What about doctors, nurses, firemen, policemen, etc. They are way more valuable then any single architect in LA. Get over yourself.... That comment alone made me snort my coffee. I know 4 people who iPhones, neither of them would be somoen who i would define as society's most valuable audiences. - Jonathan Jesse

@Loren Heiny I have a co-worker who used his Windows Mobile device in a Tornado to upload video of the tornado, let people know about that he was safe via email all w/o an iPhone. and from the hotel's bathtub which was the safest place. - Jonathan Jesse

@Loren Heiny: when my son was born i used my windows mobile phone to take pictures and email those pictures to everyone i know from one device.... from a windows mobile phone - Jonathan Jesse

@Brian Sullivan: I completly agree.. I have a Windows Smartphone from work, it is also the only cell phone I have. try taking a vacation when you get constantly reminded that work needs you through emails. I am amazed about how rude it is for people to interupt converstations and text/sms/email/twitter whatever instead of talking with the person face to face in front of them. this is something that i am strugeling with as my phone is always "buzzing" with someething new. - Jonathan Jesse

Ok its not hype.. but with over 715Million users of Mobile technology in China alone. What does a 10M unit sold slice in terms of market penetration to these segments ? Just asking.. So you can see how thin of a slice that iPhone really has in terms of market share. A prodcut may have all the bells and whistles on it, but if major user base is not buying into it. then it could be some real issues. - Peter Dawson

I think the whole VC model is broken. We don't need millions of dollars for our startups anymore, we need $25k or $50k. When I hear about companies getting millions of dollars, I always think, what the hell are they doing with it!? - Dawn

To add scale to the 10M figure, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... roughly 70% of those will be changing their phone within 5 years. ChinaMobile signs up almost 10M subscribers per month! - Cains

I'll offer this, just me speculating. I'm not sure that the price point of the iPhone is the biggest factor these days. I think we're more bottled by the thought of paying ridiculous prices for sub-par mobile web. I mean seriously, what the heck is with the current rates for cell phone plans. Also, the thought of paying for SMS in 2008 is just silly. It should be included in all plans. Not for the purpose of cutting profits from our providers but rather for American's to catch on to the technology. - Ben Pettit

@ben I vaguely recall Mr. Scoble interviewing someone (was it the FCC commissioner conversation maybe) that had the US basically foregoing SMS and being off & onto the next big thing. SMS won't really stand a chance against what's coming is what I heard. Robert...? Care to put that in better context for us? - Gerald Buckley

Dawn: $25K, $50K, $100K These are the lower-price points for qualified angel investors, who work the lower levels below the first tier of $500K-$3M VCs. One VC person can maybe manage 10-20 investments, so you can divide the size of fund by the number of active partners (x10-20) and figure out what size investments are in a VC-fund's sweet spot. Complicating the issue are some micro-VC funds, angel-type funds, and $5-20K Y-combinator-type-groups. - Mitchell Tsai

Scoble: Great post. Hornik is a very smart guy, but he is hamstrung by the current VC model. VCs need a huge upside because the model dictates that they need to put in a ton of cash on the front end. Most of today's web startups don't require the kind of cash that VCs are used to putting in. That's why Hornik doesn't want to invest in iPhone apps. He wants to invest in companies with hundreds of millions in near-term valuation, not tens on millions. Imho, that is the VC disease -- in SV or out. - Christian Anderson via fftogo

Robert, I left a long comment on the post with my thoughts. I appreciate that some investors don't have the patience to bet early and let an idea run its course. That said, I don't think I am a good poster-child for that problem. August Capital has a long history of betting early and supporting our companies for as long as it takes to create an interesting business. - David Hornik

@cyndy Curious what I said or did to deserve your comment? - David Hornik

David: thanks, I just wrote a new post about this new world where people like you help us arrive at the truth by participating. Appreciate that a lot. - Robert Scoble

Gerald: SMS is seeing some pickup here, but, really, look at Twitter, which is what my son is using now increasingly, or Facebook. If you have an iPhone both of those are a lot better than SMS. Also, my phone is increasingly getting SMS spam, which will really piss people off and keep them from adopting that system. - Robert Scoble

This is not too dissimilar from the Innovator's Dilemma concept by Christensen. The "right" business decision ("right" as in profit-maximizing) would be to invest in big, rich markets: that's precisely why there is an opportunity for disruptors to enter the market. - Tito Costa

+1 for Michael Sheehan. - Mitchell Tsai

None of this seems like rocket science. Valley VCs want big returns in short amount of time. Asking them to invest in small slower-growing but sustainable markets is like going to Ford Motor headquarters and asking to buy a windshield wiper. It isn't the scale that they're working at. - Michael

While you make some valid points, Robert, I don't it is fair to call it a disease. Looking for investments with a short-term return potential is certainly a legitimate investment strategy. I can't fault them for opting for perferring lower risk, quicker payoff investments, rather than longer-term (and thus higher risk) investment that *may* payoff huge in 10 years. That said, there are other types of investment strategies out there -- I think your post highlights a void that needs to be filled. - Mark Carey via Moopz

I still think, after reading the post, the follow up and this thread, that a VC is perfectly entitiled to pick and choose investments based on the return. And I'm sure there will be a few start-ups that have a Walmart business plan - take two asprin and call me in ten years. Because thats the way it is in technology (not just SV). The issue here is that we don't hear form these companies. We may well get the next Google, Microsoft, Sun, HP, etc from there. - Roberto Bonini

I thing this disease is more of a symptom of greed and ego vs. making a difference in the tech world. But then again, isn't that what business is about? It is very hard for traditional business to grasp this concept, and is why real innovation wont be found there. - Venson Kuchipudi

The problem with VC's is not that they have a disease but that there is no quality control. I am sure the good ones are very good but most of us never get to work with the good ones. On the other hand, I believe many Entrepreneurs (in the Silicon Valley) are in fact infected with a disease which is that they think the only way to start companies and generate net worth is with VC money. VC's are like "former" mother-in-laws. They cease to be a problem when you stop sleeping with their daughters. - Denny K Miu

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Robert Scoble posted a message

“I just received Jason Calacanis' first email "blog." I'm very saddened that he decided to go back to email for a whole number of reasons. Let's talk about them.”

July 13 at 11:31 am - Link

David HC Soul, Alex Barbara, Mathew Packer and 44 other people liked this

Push model of communication vs. conversation? - Sprague D

99 more comments

Maybe you could start listing the reasons you know - Brian Sullivan

Email seems so closed off - it prohibits growth. At least, that's how I see it... - George Smith

I just received Calacanis' first email newsletter. Which is really his replacement for not blogging anymore. He makes several great points. 1. That commenters have destroyed blogging. 2. That Nick Denton's style of paying for page views instead of smart ideas has destroyed blogging. 3. That he seeks out a more intimate conversation. 4. That email is it. - Robert Scoble

Robert: Please forward them to post@posterous.com. Heheh. : ) - Erhan Erdogan

I am saddened because all of this is true. Except by going back to email he's taken us back to the 1990s where I can't share his ideas with others (he only will accept 1,000 subscribers, he says). He also is cluttering my email stream which is cluttered beyond breaking. Imagine if everyone did email newsletters... - Robert Scoble

I don't know about you folks, but I just don't need any more email. I can't keep up with what I already have. I've started replying to my co-worker's emails with Office Communicator, in an attempt to ease the deluge. You'd think IT folks would know that it's not always necessary to hit "Reply All." - MiɳiMagɘ (Sexy Scimitar) via NoiseRiver

I think it harkens back to the glory days of yesteryear when there were email lists like the lockergnome. Maybe it's just nostalgia. I don't have a problem with commentors on my blog, but then, I don't have the numbers that Calacanis or Scoble have either. He says he has a problem and that an email list will alleviate those problems. We'll just have to see what happens and see if his experiment does work. - Jason Shultz via twhirl

Here it is: http://robert_zrxrc.posterous.... -- he already has 1,100 subscribers. - Robert Scoble

FF is the answer, possible a FF' room. Once FF becomes mainstream as a sharing and communication tool bogging activity will decrease significantly: if not FF will become the de-facto “bogging” platform. - Joao

"I'm very saddened" ? what makes you sad and why ? - Peter Dawson

that's one looong e-mail - Dobromir Hadzhiev

Robert - Jason hasn't taken anybody to the 90's except maybe himself. The whole thing smacks of ego anyway. I think better just to ignore Jason (I mostly did that before as well so not much change for me). - Brian Sullivan

Peter: because what Jason says is true. It's why I've slowed down blogging lately. Blogging used to be about discussing ideas. Lately it's been about getting on Techmeme. I share the blame in that part of things. But even while that's been going on I've tried to read many times more stuff than what I write. It's why I still read hundreds of RSS feeds and participate here on FF (I like many, many, many times more items than what I start). But I hate his choice of media. Email is just the worst place. - Robert Scoble

The remark on commenters is disingenuous -- he regularly turned off commenting on his blog when he didn't want to deal with blowback, unlike Robert who rarely disengages. For a guy who made $25 million off blogging, turning his back on the medium seems like bad faith, to me. - Sprague D

funny the other day his max number of "subscribers" was going to be hard and fast at 750 and now it is 1,000 ... as usual he can't seem to make up his mind [edit] now I see it is up to 1,100 - Steven Hodson

I think the cap on subscriptions is interesting. Pushing the scarcity button ("Act now -- supplies are limited!") is considered a fairly low Jedi Mind Trick. [waves hand] Wasn't the cap 500 at first? Then 750? Now it's 1,000? Because you can only have an "intimate conversation" with 1,000 people? hahahahahahah... - Karim

He *is* blogging -- after a sorts. Commenters haven't destroyed blogging, but many comments are noise and add no value. This is where the site owner needs to put on big boy pants and function as an editor. I can't fault Denton for paying for views. How does this affect Calacanis' site? Seeking Intimacy? Oh, the burdens of popularity ... ;-) - Chris Baskind

Brian: I agree with that. I subscribed, but with my luck the newsletter will get thrown into my spam folder. Interesting that many bloggers started out with newsletters (Chris Pirillo and Dave Winer both had famous email newsletters before they moved to blogs). - Robert Scoble

I don't like it , if you limit the communicatin to just who gets your email. Then it's a monologue not a conversation - Kim Landwehr

Another place Jason is right? The need to have one-to-one smart conversations. If I didn't have those every day and just did my blog I'd be one sad puppy. It's the smart conversations that matter. Most of which I don't have an audience for while I'm having them. - Robert Scoble

Robert: Will you go on forwarding these on posterous? : ) I subscribe your posterous. ; ) Thanks for sharing. - Erhan Erdogan

@robert , "Blogging used to be about discussing ideas. Lately it's been about getting on Techmeme." Agreed, but you can't solve a problem with the same mindset that created the problem and that goes to all the A-listers too.. They have always fought / jostled , manipulated the SM streams to get to their way to for google juice, page views/hits. etc Now all of a sudden, its like wait.. whatever happened to the original idea of exchanging ideas ? Whatever happened to passion and integrity ? - Peter Dawson

Erhan: I'll forward them when he has something smart to say. (and I remember to do it). :-) - Robert Scoble

Peter now you know why I've focused so much of my energy on FriendFeed. I'm having a lot smarter conversations here than other places. - Robert Scoble

I'll take the contrarian view: This email was the most relaxed, best, most enjoyable, insightful writing I've seen from Jason in a while. I'm an old school McLuhanite wrt the medium being the message. But sometimes, the message is the message. Sometimes the author is the message. Gotta let an author choose the medium. If this change boosts the quality of Jason's output, I'm glad he did it. - Michael Markman

Scoble: I think you're wrong about blogging being all "about getting on Techmeme." As a blogger in a niche community, I can tell you that the VAST majority of bloggers out there don't care about or plan to get on techmeme. This particular problem (and all of the problems that you mention) lies in a very small subset of the blogging community--the "A-list", as it's put. - Eric Florenzano

Robert: Calacanis's new official blog: http://robert_zrxrc.posterous.... : ))) You may change its name to "calacanissbug.posterous.com" : ))) - Erhan Erdogan

Robert, BUT BEWARE - the same thing is happening on FF too , the platform has changed, however the attitude is the same. http://friendfeed.com/e/2edaf6... - Peter Dawson

Robert, the one thing e-mail is severely lacking is the ability to thread a conversation so late comers don't jump in and ask the same questions that were already asked - or make the s