Self-Service Contextual Blohan Ads

skagged out wet pants
Originally uploaded by redbarren.

Feedster steps towards contextual self service RSS Ads. Expect 10 players and 2 superpowers (yhoo, goog) in this space within 12 months, care of Threadwatch post Rafe : "To complement the product, Feedster will also release a feed-profiling tool later this year. The product, Redlitz said, will profile a blogger's feeds using Feedster's index--and will deliver ads based on the overall content of the feed over time, not individual posts. For example, a blogger who writes about politics 80 percent of the time would still receive politically relevant ads the other 20 percent of the time when he blogs about, say, his cat." OK, i wont make any lindsay jokes about her transition from rager to sedated leather chic.

Feedster 500 vs Po-Lit

joanna not a sg
Originally uploaded by redbarren.

Ana Marie Cox. Joey Anuff. David Foster Wallace. Dave Eggers. Zadie Smith. Jonathon Safran Foerr + Nicole Krauss. VS
Robert Scoble. Dave Winer. Jeff Jarvis. Feedster 500 etc : At end of the day, I love the authors, and love the business builders. Blogs by themselves, without the business aren't to me yet a cultural statement like suck.com was years ago. As boring as I find wonkette.

Commoditisation and Stripping of Media Serendipity

jo angel flyer word up LA
Originally uploaded by redbarren.

Love the David Cowan stream of consciousness : "Syndicated content, enhanced by collaborative filtering, social networks and personalized ads, tells each of us precisely what we want to know. But all this technology carries a hidden price: the slow death of serendipity.

We all subscribe to the news stories, blogs, search results, and product alerts that we wish to read--fine tuning our feeds until our home pages perfectly reflect our individual values and desires. I already know the keywords of the news stories I'll read, the artists whose music I will hear, the authors whose books I will pre-order online, the opinions of bloggers I will follow, and the buddies with whom I will message. I'm not bothered by noisy, unfiltered content. I will know everything about what I already know, and my beliefs will only strengthen.

As my sights focus, I lose my peripheral vision. I find myself surprised to have missed important news developments (White House scandals, government coups, fad diets, Supreme Court decisions...). Increasingly I hear passing comments describing films, plays, sporting events, parties, concerts, speeches, festivals and TV shows that, had I known about them, I might have enjoyed."

How to win Google and Influence Engineers

Blogger. Dodgeball. Many others under NDA. I forget. This rare behind the Google burka of how deals are cut - Care of Brad Feld. Interesting. Arrogant. Interesting. Agree : phones are dead. Email Rules. Here's one quarter of The Rules !

Email Rules - Phones are very yesterday. Voicemail is so broken. Until someone can really make it easy for me to extract a number from a voicemail, file the message away for later, label it, quickly find it again, search over it, forward it, reply at my convenience, etc etc, I am going to stick to email. Email is awesome (especially Gmail). It allows me to ensure that I get back to you. It also helps me bring in all the folks within the company whose input would matter on your topic. So, please, please, please - email. If you insist upon calling, you will hear a message saying that I won't check your voicemail anyway. So, before you think me rude, I implore you to please send email.

Google is Bottom-up - That last point reminds me that Google buying/partnering decisions are made bottom-up. Meaning, product managers and engineers are your ultimate clients. Sure the deals may be signed by VPs, but they are just endorsing the recommendations and leadership taken by the PMs. Our executive team truly empowers folks here to get done the deals needed in their spaces. You want to partner with Google Talk? Our CEO is not going to drive that. The Product Manager for Google Talk will be your guy. So, my advice is to avoid shooting for a meeting with a bigwig and instead, know your audience. I assure you that your deal will get done faster.

Threats don't work - A surprising number of people write to me saying "If you do not act in 5 days I am taking this to Microsoft . . . " or "This note will be forwarded to Terry Semel . . . " I am very inclined to let those proposals go. To me, partnerships are as much about the partner as they are about the technology. I am not psyched about working with people who want to coerce me into action. Microsoft and Yahoo are both awesome companies, with solid engineers. They are both tackling big problems and having a lot of success with many pieces. I think each of us has our strengths, and, in the end, it might just be possible that one of them might make a better partner for you. While I wouldn't seek your exclusivity upfront, please give me a break on the threats. I would rather you spend that energy on explaining why Google is uniquely positioned to make a great partner for you. Thanks.

Don't assume we have thought about X already - One of the most entertaining things for me to do is read the blogs and see how much credit folks give us for our alleged next moves in a particular area. They presume we have a big honking master plan document somewhere and have the next few years set forth step by step. Truth is, we are constantly learning. We tend to launch early and launch often. However, this doesn't mean we have it all figured out. You have a killer idea for us? Are we missing the big picture? Can you help us? Fire away. For instance, you guys who have been thinking about VoIP for years and years, what would you do if you were Google, and how can you work with us to get that done?

Bottom line is that I/we want to work with you and your company! Partnerships are an essential part of our strategy and have been the impetus for massive value creation at Google. We humbly admit we can't begin to accomplish a fraction of what we would like to without teaming with others. That said, as you can imagine, we are beyond busy, so I beg your forgiveness if sometimes I am not able to get back to you on a timely basis. Hopefully keeping all of the above in mind, we will get more done together. So, send those proposals and let's do some cool deals! Thanks.

Esquire meet Wikipedia : Jessica meet Ben

ive been asked worse
Originally uploaded by redbarren.

Neat way to dress up a sales piece on Wikipedia. I like. Won't be long till school students stop paying tutors to write their essays and instead pay 'per P2P data packet' from a distributed expert model; "The idea I had--which Jimmy (Wales, Wikipedia's founder) loved--is that I'd write a rough draft of the article and then Jimmy would put it on a site for the Wikipedia community to rewrite and edit," Jacobs wrote on the page introducing the experiment. Esquire "would print the 'before' and 'after' versions of the articles. So here's your chance to make this article a real one. All improvements welcome."

Feeddigest Angel Round

zombie bride is kewl
Originally uploaded by redbarren.

Congrats to Peter Cooper - I'm a big believer that what Feeddigest is doing along with Nivi's feed splicing, and some Burton Pinging, with feedburner of course, is just the start : Where the search engine optimisation industry was in mid 90's. I also think its very astute angel investing (if it can obtain #2 position to feedburner even a discounted valuation would probably work) : price/deal dependent of course : "On average, we've been adding about 50 new customers to the service each day in spite of a limited operating budget supported by donations from our customers," said FeedDigest's founder, Peter Cooper. "In less than 12 months since our initial launch, we have over 13,000 clients who rely on our service to have fresh, relevant content delivered to their Web site automatically 24/7. With this investment, we intend to provide a world-class, supported RSS content publishing service to a mainstream audience." In spite of the incredible power of RSS as a persistent framework for updated content, NetRatings recently reported that 66 percent of respondents in a recent survey either do not understand the technology or have never heard of it. "We're bringing the concept of feeds and content syndication up to date and turning it into a user-friendly experience so that webmasters and media patrons outside of the tiny world of RSS can get the most out of this amazing technology. We're attempting to break RSS out of a tech-only audience, something few other technology provider are trying to do," said Mr. Cooper. The angel funding comes from a small fund called Curious Office, led by two Seattle-based technology investors, Kelly Smith and Adrian Hanauer."

VP Engineering - Google - Podcast/Presentation

Run like mad, says the VP of Engineering @ Google, in this very interesting presentation/podcast. Click it dude.

TV, Podcasting, BitTorrent 3WAY says Winer

Dave Winer's dead on here. Love it when he's talking about the relationships between 'technology leaders' and 'emerging technology' versus when he talks about people. Actually I lie, I love it when he gets irrational and bitchy about people, and justifies his argument through a good technology conspiracy ! (Google dark fiber links to John Doerr-Adam Curry (goog buys podshow) M+A etc note - i still get weepy at the gnomedex closing address when curry does his attraction/repulsion rationalisation thing to dave..) Like I'm sure he's pretty happy - as this AWESOME LA DAILY PODCAST IS for Adam Curry (his new wiki shownotes, more 'attention' freebies !') that he's a 2004/5 Top 50 Tech Trendsetters (around #13 i think from DSC this morning) - ahead of Steve Ballmer (who needs Linux !!!) : Anyway, from the Award Winning Nominated Blog, scripting news, by the non-Kleiner co-Podfather - "I missed this week's West Wing, so I fired up my BitTorrent client and downloaded the latest episode, and 25 minutes later I was watching it, without commercials. While I love the West Wing, and didn't want to wait for the rerun (to be aired months later) it's not right to get the show without commercials. So, why don't they offer a legal version of the show, for BitTorrent download, including commercials, maybe even special commercials for people who watch the stuff on their computers. Reading this article in BusinessWeek about the new company founded around BitTorrent, it seems like an obvious collaboration. BTW, I'd like to talk with the VCs who passed on this one, thinking that podcasting somehow obviates the need for BitTorrent. The two are very complementary, even essential to each other. The BT guys get that and are adopting RSS, but I gather that the VC-backed podcasting startups are missing this one."

Cliff Gerrish Nails 2.0 User Interface

hampton zombie bride
Originally uploaded by redbarren.

I'm tempted to selectively quote, as happens with 'memory', but the short, full 'feed' warrants reading - From Cliff Gerrish's OPML link - "Lot's of chatter about Web 2.0 these days. To me, Web 2.0 is about the user and the user interface. For years and years, actually since the beginning the backend, the operating system, the number crunching part of technology ruled. There was only a certain amount of computing power and capacity available, and the backend always won out.

To some extent, the backend is becoming commoditized. But the frontend, the user and the user interface has never been allowed to flourish. The Web needed speed and so the UI suffered -- smaller file sizes and simple interfaces were the most usable and popular. Usability ruled. Creativity was considered the enemy of the user.

Web 2.0 is making the Web better for the user. It's investing in the user and making things easier through RSS, OPML, Ajax, Flash, Laszlo, DHTML, Widgets, Gadgets, Contraptions. The new Web appeals to the senses of the user. We're still in a primative state with user interfaces on the Web. There's a lot to learn from what was done on desktop software, but Web UI designers skipped those lessons because they didn't apply to Web 1.0. Now we all need to listen to the people who built the classic desktop apps to learn the language of Web 2.0."

Firefox the New Netscape says KevB

angie vs gollum
Originally uploaded by redbarren.

Kevin Burton hits the Mozilla Sweet Spot, 8 iron in Kev. (now what's the scoop on Flock, lets intro-conf call btw) "You know.. I've been thinking about how Mozilla is making $45M a year (mostly off Google searches I'm sure). Does this mean that Netscape is back?..... Is the Mozilla corporation the new Netscape? Man. Serious Deja Vu going on here. Feels like 1995 - not 2005." - Totally agree with the dejavu, Ive been saying it feels like 1997 to other 2.0 y'locals... calm before the storm... (esp in Australia storm is in another continent and we just have a warning here) - Kevin Burton will come down under !!!

Nick Denton Soundbites

pamee iraq wear
Originally uploaded by redbarren.

Nick Denton in a great extended feature : “Father an academic, mother a psychotherapist”, “You have the gay, Jewish, atheist, surprisingly right-wing,”, “Or you ought to, from the clips.” - “I’ve stopped reading all the blogs about blogs,”. “I was crazy about Blogger,” “Tried three times to buy it.” “Most everyone at Gawker is a misfit of some sort,” : “rumored to have been fired … for being high on the job”; “never went to college”; “only wears 1960s clothes”; “notoriously unemployable.”. “My own personal mood is dependent on two things: how many times I’ve actually worked out, like gone to the gym, in a week. The other thing is traffic.” “I think it was Paris Hilton in March,” “I’m completely blanking on what the story was … oh, Jude Law …. That bump there was Kate Moss …. Political news, they had spikes for Katrina …. Geneva auto show …. ” ‘I’m a porn publisher.’

Meta-Real Estate + PacMan Game Theory

7
Originally uploaded by Bunny Lady.

Meta-shopping has been around forever : Most have been bought over the last year by ebay or yahoo etc. There's been some meta-travel action (mobissimo, kayak) Some of the search crew went to meta-classifieds (oodle) meta-jobs bubbled away big time (workzoo - acquired by jobster, simplyhired - high quality valley round, indeed - union square/NYT invested) and now meta-real estate (trulia - why visit 100,000 real estate sites) Everyone can guess what is next - cars. Then someone in one vertical will buy another vertical. The portals will swallow the leaders. Then the portals (as Yahoo is doing with HotJobs vs Careerbuilder/Monster + Google testing job search results) will compete against the leading classifieds players by going direct to advertisers with a performance marketing not fixed fee pitch (ie CPA, CPC etc) as well as additional tools (eg filtering tools for job applicants, sale boards outside your house, a car wash maybe ;) Oh, and of course the internationalisation of this meta-vertical-search-space hasnt happened. (with the trend and technology being very Californian based - except for Ziggy the Mascot Cat for South Africa, England, US, Workzoo, Jobster !!) Anyway, Im definitely throwing my scraping vertical - classifieds search at a local city level in Australia hand in the ring.... Now can someone give me the technology to implement please.

Take me to the Moon Google, with NASA anyway

pinay_0455
Originally uploaded by zchendevlemh.

Mr Batelle speaking to Schmidt had asked "what was next for Google. He replied that the joke was "carbon nanotubes to the moon." Their latest deal "mentions Google's recent deal with NASA : "NASA and Google have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that outlines plans for cooperation on a variety of areas, including large-scale data management, massively distributed computing,
bio-info-nano convergence, and encouragement of the entrepreneurial space industry. The MOU also highlights plans for Google to develop up to one million square feet within the NASA Research Park at Moffett Field."

The 2.Out of Cash Jessica Alba Casting Couch

cash is king pamee
Originally uploaded by redbarren.

Fred Wilson puts his Wharton MBA Financing with DotCom venture experience and writes a great post about not being OOC as I was taught in my equivalent class : OUT OF CASH. For the startup Im doing Ive taken Brad Felds and Fred's comments about cost management (rather than necessarily perfect revenue forecasting - in the "build" stage anyway) as a critical ancillary skill. Pets.com. Kosmo. Etoys. Webvan. 3G Rollouts. “I think of Sid and Nancy, my pugs.” Alba said. More companies could still be around today with better capital management (“I could have chemistry with vinegar,” Jessica boasted.) From Fred : "The single most important financial metric for any startup company isn't revenues, margin, headcount, or profits. Those are all important, for sure. But the number that matters most is the cash balance. Because cash is king. I know that in some markets cash is trash, but in the venture capital business cash is always king. Alan Shugart once said, "cash is more important than your mother." That's because you can't pay your employees, your rent, or your suppliers with revenues or profits if there is no cash. And that's a very possible scenario."

And from the lovely Jessica Alba, about the casting couch said : “From a really crass point of view, if I just want to fuck somebody, I don’t really want to see him in the morning, much less every day on set.” “When you’re making a movie with an actor, either it’s someone you want to sleep with or you’re thinking of someone you want to sleep with or you’re thinking of your dog.

The Rules of Blogging + Social Networking

jemma art
Originally uploaded by redbarren.

From the 9'Rules Pres, Mr Scrivens, on the rules for his bloggers :

1. Writers will proofread and correct any spelling and grammatical errors in their entries before publishing to the best of their ability and will immediately provide corrections if an error is detected or reported.
2. Writers will not plagiarize someone else’s work.
3. Writers will cite every source from which they garner information or content for their entries/articles.
4. Writers will offer insightful commentary and opinions on every single one of their entries.
5. Writers will add their personality to their entries.
6. Writers will never sacrifice quality for quantity.
7. Writers are responsible for comments on their entries and maintaining a conversation with their readers.
8. Writers will never publish on weekends or holidays."

And then there was a sex robot post on MySpace :

"Hey there, how’s it going? I was just browsing around trying to meet some new, exciting people from around here. I recently moved to San Jose so I don’t know too many people. So how’s your weekend treating you? Any plans for this night?? Well I’ll keep this short until I know you’re interested. I’m just looking for someone to hang out and have a good time with….not looking for anything serious. I RARELY get a chance to check my myspace mail, so if you want to chat hit me up at carrie8543goats @ hotmail.com and I’ll send you some more pics. I hope to talk to you soon, hopefully:) Carrie..."

The Usual News Corp + Yahoo Media Suspects

mnislahi sg
Originally uploaded by redbarren.

I'm really enjoying the PaidContent coverage of media companies like NewsCorp going online and financial VC analysis. They get into the people and the numbers - nice1 : "News Corp. CEO Peter Chernin told WSJ's Julia Angwin the wake-up call for his company came from Yahoo: "We'd been reading all these comments from Yahoo about getting into the content business." In the last three months, News Corp. has made deals that will bring its traffic to a more than respectable 70 million uniques a month; more important, many of those uniques will be in the coveted youth demos because the traffic builders include MySpace.com, IGN and Scout. Also from Angwin's story, this gem of a comment from Mike Dolan, CFO-MTV Networks: "Last year's MySpace was Friendster. Now it's about as cool as yesterday's newspapers."

When is Big, enough ?

Orange Bikini
Originally uploaded by Electric3055.

Another GOOG story, and more here, then Im not mentioning them for a few days, just there are alot of non-RSS readers in Australia of this blog (who work in search - web 2.0 hasnt hit there yet if that is believable, and read these type of articles) : "Google says it is 1,000 times the size of the original index. As John Battelle quotes on page 77 of “The Search”, an email from Larry Page to Terry Winograd, dated July 15, 1996 : "I am almost out of disk space. I have downloaded about… 24 million unique URLs and about 100 million links… I think I will need 8 gigs more to store everything… Current retail prices are about $1000/4 gigs… I have only about 15% of the pages but it seems promising." Thus, 24 billion. 'Additionally, Google says it is “3 times larger than any other search engine”. Now, MSN had 5 billion last November. Growth should put it currently between 7.5-10 billion, which puts Google at three times that. Now, Yahoo has 19 billion (and Google with 60 billion seems kinda silly). Does this mean Google doesn’t consider Yahoo a real search engine, or believe Yahoo’s counts at all? Tough call, but it seems more of a diss than a boast."

Scoble links Wifi + Search

tattoo chest
Originally uploaded by Beautiful Things in the World.

I dont think Google has any GANT driven masterplan, other than what Schmidt tells the Street and Doer the OC. Engineers do 20% FTE projects which as Messr Burton points out is cheap VC for google. They put the Stanford geek screen on it, then in unison "DODGEBALL" approval. Sometimes it creates adsense, google news, gmail. Bastard childs like orkut also pop-out and the majority are pre-alpha stillborns that go into the g-bin. Its nonlinear. Is search and wifi connected to one another at google at the 'operational strategy level' ? I dont think so. Could they be connected ? Well g-duh, yes. And while there is a fundamental problem with unsecure wireless, the real HUGE problem Google has that connects the two is - Lack of 'user sign in data' - They dont have registered members or paying customers, they have anonymous unique users. I worked for a multi-billion commercial search business with the same problem. Wi-Fi is good as you have to hand over your G-creditcard. I still think its post-rumour rationalisational. Google have to acquire hundreds of millions of signed in members and customers/subscribers to get to where AOL/YAHOO is. Wi-Fi is part of that equation (not to mention tapping into the more competitive, larger, different technology - market of wireless telecommunications. Will Google's Founders PHD on PageRank help solve the wireless questions of the world ? Or is the 20% rule (times PHD's hired eg 3200 engineers hired last quarter / divided by failure %) the key to the supply of new GOOG ideas ? I'll have to reread pre-ipo playboy interview). I'd like to see more precision around the development of these ventures (they could buy McKinsey i guess), just as venture capital firms focus on particular segments or technologies. Maybe Dave Winer is right and they will redefine the connections between Free Starbucks Wifi, Dark Fiber and Google. With the G-Factor you never know; I dont think they will be as successful in telecommunications as internet search and text advertising, but their position their should help some nice trailing commissions : As for the bigger more PC /Web based Emulate and Extend the G-WebOS strategy... WIFI has got the Scobe's thinking :

"I fear Google's WiFi for a whole nother reason: I fear they are using their Wifi to build a better search engine.... Now search engine designers and developers are trying to find "the next algorithm." What they really need is more metadata... Using what users are actually visiting and clicking on... If one engine can get more attention data than another engine they'll win in the relevancy scores... if you are trying to make things better for 100 million people, you don't need to track 100 million. You only need to track a very very small number. Certainly if you could get only 5 million to give you their attention data then you could get enough data to really make a new kind of search engine... if you own the last few yards in between people and the Internet you can really learn a lot. You can watch everything those people click on, what pages they visit, what browsers they use, how often they turn on Skype, and a lot of other stuff... Anyway, it sure has me wondering what kinds of things they are going to learn from folks who sign onto Google wifi stations."

Wikis are Red Hot

jen4
Originally uploaded by .....nathan!.

Until you go there you'll never know. I've used Jotspot for clients (and we are using it for our coming round of Web 2.0 Dinners in Melbourne with Aussie Podfather Cam O'Reilly), which is like building an intranet or website without knowing HTML. Instead you use WikiWords. (create hyperlinks by using CapitalLetters with no space ! supported by tens of SME applications in jot's case eg crm, project management, sales pipeline, recruitment - then you can upload files and receive updates through RSS - very kewl) : SocialText did a VC round the other week (SAP I think funded) and now Jotspot come out with a very kewl collaboration feature. Jot love a 1 business day hackathon. This is why Scoble still doesnt get why Office 47 doesnt get THE AWE FACTOR as its BORING. Loving Jotspot - great execution guys. From SiliconBeat - "JotSpot's new JotLive service just officially launched today. It's a slick little wiki service. It offers real-time, online document editing by multiple users. By real-time, we mean that when a person updates a document, the changes show up immediately in the other person's browser, without them having to refresh the page. It's wiki-meets-IM."

Live, group note-taking. Five people in a meeting? Take one set of notes instead of five.

• Everyone types on the same web page
• End "versionitis" — take one set of notes
• See changes as they happen
• Publish instantly — stop e-mailing documents
• Everything's stored securely on the web

JotSpot Live allows you, your colleagues or clients to take notes together on the same web page at the same time. Imagine everyone simultaneously typing and editing the same Microsoft Word document and you'll get the idea.

Would Kramer Drink Responsibly from the Web 2.0 Cup ?

Web2MemeMap
Originally uploaded by Tim O'Reilly.

I like his 'Positively 10th Street' family podcast, esp when getting his children to explain the Jack Johnson summer camp hip factor or Rolling Stones NY Live set; I respect his scraping and tagging 2.0 investments and I love this line, from a post he made 6 months ago about Bubble 2.0. If only it could be bottled and distributed (responsibly) like Kramer and his Calvin Klein 'The Ocean' Line :

"If you were at the first party, then you should never forget how it felt when it was over. Drink responsibly this time."

53. The Pick :

Elaine is humiliated when she accidentally shows a bit too much on her Christmas card photo, that she has sent out to everyone she knows. Jerry has a date with the model from the plane, she later dumps Jerry because of "The Pick." George tries to reunite with Susan, but realizes it's a mistake, and uses "The Pick". Kramer goes to Calvin Klein to complain about "The Ocean," a fragrance they stole from him, and is asked to pose for a risqu� underwear advertisement.

b: 16-Dec-92 pc: 413 w: Larry David s: Larry David and Marc Jaffe d: Tom Cherones

Discussion (14) |

"Subscribe" the answer

rss
Originally uploaded by orangejack.

Forget 'Web Feeds' or 'RSS' I have briefed developers since Gnomedex on exactly the same point. Newsgator also do enterprise media implementations for newspapers like Denver Post with no mention of RSS and use of "Subscribe' stoopid. NOW, already. As Dave Winer says : "The button should be white on orange and it should say, boldly, SUBSCRIBE."

If you are on the Red Carpet...

ishackimage8vn
Originally uploaded by life@24fps.

Click here. KanyeWest inspired, not related, stereotype analysis. His record is selling heaps supposedly. Brothel Lesson : dont show your credit card according to TechDirt : "Okay, while there's still no proof that any of today's cameraphones have been surreptitiously used to steal someone's credit card number, there is some evidence that holding up your Red Cross issued debit card to a news photographer might not be the smartest idea. A Hurricane Katrina victim received just such a debit card from the Red Cross, and held it up to an AFP photographer -- with the number clearly displayed. Apparently, soon after the photo was posted, the card's balance had dropped to zero, and plenty of cash advances and other purchases were attempted. It's not clear how quickly all of this happened. One report says minutes, another says eight hours, and doesn't list out the same list of frauds attempted on the card. Either way, if you're ever in that situation, perhaps you're better off keeping the numbers on the card to yourself."

The Highest CPC doesnt equal Highest Love

(love them)
Originally uploaded by kH@N.

I was in a meeting today with an up and coming Public Search Engine in Australia, and the topic of "modelling" Web 2.0 + CPC's came up. (separately i think ;) Mainly in terms of some established high value verticals where merchants and consumers trying to sell "expensive" products (6 figure jobs, beemers, google' vested pads in mountainview) are being ripped off by classifieds sites with fixed fee listing prices : Either fixed amount per listing (eg $100 per job for 1 month) or fixed CPM's / Sponsorship Fees for Ad Placements (which can be linked back to an indicative CPM and contractual obligation to deliver set impressions etc) Anyway, if I think of Search in its traditional PageRank sense, I'd rather drive around Australia and make ends meet than consult to clients on SEO strategies. It's Yesterdays Web by definition (how many people have ever linked to you etc as the basis for the search algorithm vs recency + popularity measures for rss behaviour in last 12 hours for e.g) But speak to me about RSS Syndication Strategies. Its like the SEO industry in 1995. Clients who ask "How do I get my RSS Feed out to the highest amount of people at the cheapest cost in the quickest time ?" A. No client has asked that, really, not in Australia yet. B. Mention Scoble, Tablet PC, Shock + Awe, and switching from Windows to Mac - if you work for a competitor and do it in a non-advertorial way) and that will help drive traffic according to ScobesSnr himself.. C. All of the Above.. Anyway... Thats different (cue : if u want a cheap way to hire me - talk 2.0 stuff then make me do 1.0 things !)

Nice "message board" (how 1.0) on WebMasterWorld, which I admit was one of the few sites (along with internetnews.com) I read during the early 2000's crash. (man danah has me thinking about the web 2.0 crash after her post) The context was about Google blocking sites (I wont even mention my ajax scraping tool that would strip the content/rss from what u r reading and integrating it "blog this" into your blog platform ! : "Google *should* be aware that blocking in fact DOES increase income for many of us, hence the official blurb is misleading, and innacurate. It's interesting that they are admitting that they don't target ads based on bid price - something that has been said in this forum repeatedly. Many people believe that Google targets the highest bidding ads. Google don't seem in too much of a hurry to correct this misunderstanding. The other point is that the data they use on ad performance is how the ads perform ON THE NETWORK AS A WHOLE and NOT how they perform on your site - a massive difference IMHO. The difficulty that Google's targetting algorythm causes is that it often removes ads it thinks are low paying, and replaces them with ads it thinks are high paying. These decisions are based on performance on OTHER WEBSITES - not yours! If your website is about bright orange widgets with stripes, then logically ads trying to sell bright orange widgets with stripes would be the obvious choice. However, as they don't perform well elsewhere on the network the chances of you seeing them are lessened - despite the fact that they may perform very well on your site! And if you DO see them, the chances of them being removed and replaced by something irrelevant are high! Many of us here have highly focussed websites, and many of us here are experienced webmasters that know where our traffic comes from, why they come and what ads might or might not appeal to our visitors.

We know that having ads that are highly irrelevant will not work for either advertisers or us. However, the target bot gets it spectacularly wrong quite often. For example, my website is aimed at middle aged family men, and Goole has been targetting acne cream adverts. Therefore we block wrongly targetted ads. So what ads do Google replace the good payers that work on YOUR site with? Yup, you guessed it - scrapers mostly. Scrapers do have a higher CTR than genuine advertisers selling goods and services, therefore they do well in the quality score. However, they are of no use to anyone because they don't pay well. They can't! What they are trying to achieve is siphon traffic off cheaply, and get visitors to click on more expensive ads on their site. Ever noticed that scrapers very often block other scrapers from appearing on their sites? Google's algorythm allows them to do this by placing their higher ctr ads instead of real advertisers selling goods and services. They did it to me again yesterday. One of my regulars was removed and replaced with a site having an adsense block, an adwords block and another adsense block just to make sure! In addition, it had a big ebay ad offering new and used vasectomy reversals. Content? Scraped. These ads DO NOT pay well - remove them. What Google aren't saying is what the long term effect of allowing their chosen placements of scrapers does. EPC will slide, and smartpricing will downgrade your site for the good payers too. Therefore, an advertiser that is willing to pay well for a quality lead THAT YOUR SITE IS PROVIDING THEM WITH only pays marginally above minimum. By keeping scrapers off, my EPC has risen sixfold over the last two months since I have been blocking some of the stupid placements and all made for adsense sites. Bottom line income is up by 30% plus and rising. I'm seeing genuine advertisers, and although they don't have such a high CTR as the scrapers, they pay WAY more, and smartpricing now thinks my site is worth a lot more than it did when it was carrying the scrapers and junk adsense chose to place."

Doc Searls Meta-Coverage

Reaching
Originally uploaded by halp_carlisle.

Yup. Another favourite of mine while i go through my 'OPML' file (ive never had a blogroll) : "Contrast this with armchair fact-checking, theorizing, posturing. I was offended by how quickly the whole discussion went meta. Bodies yet to be retrieved & buried, folks hanging from their own rafters holding onto life, literally, by their fingertips -- and pundits, bloggers and media types were already well on their way to converting the storm into a object lesson for their own rhetorical strategies. Hijacked our suffering for their own stories." It also rings true that The Tsunami faced by Indonesia 9-10 months ago was an order of magnitude worse than this, in physical damage and people killed, but that elicited very little media and blogging response. These things should be analysed.

Danah and her students on Web 2.0

arianna95
Originally uploaded by nicknotned.

Always enjoy her sociological slant on this passive and active attention we have to web 2.0 stuff whatever we call it : "Most of what is marked as Web2.0 technology is nothing new - glorified javascript, newly packaged publication tools, explicitly acknowledged openness. There's no technological shift happening but there is a very noticeable business shift... Yeah, javascript and amateur publishing have been around but in the last two years, we've seen genuinely mass adoption because of AJAX and blogging tools. Of course, the funny thing is that i keep seeing adverts for "Web2.0 Developers" but i still haven't seen an advert for "Web2.0 Social Scientists." We are still working in an advertising economy which means eyeballs matter and acquisitions have shown that adoption matters. So why not hire people who understand people's needs? Anyhow..."

That's selective quoting not that there is anything wrong with that SM;) But here comes the academic crescendo underpinned by realism and a longitudinal tracking study of a quant signif' sample : "So what will Web2.0 be? Right now it's hype that's motivating innovation. Should it be slowed down for fear of another crash? Or should it be encouraged because innovation will occur? How do we keep greed from running the innovation ship aground? How can academics provide valuable frameworks and how can academia and industry learn from each other? How does business innovate on a social level without just simply trying to hoc their wares? How is law going to try to slow this down (remix is definitely playing with fire)? How will it support or disrupt hegemony? How can this innovative energy move beyond a few regions? I know a lot of folks who don't want to engage because of the hype. (It's funny - business gets energized by hype; academia gets cynical.) For me, i think that everyone who cares about the next 5 years of technological innovation and techno-social culture needs to be involved and help move the big ship in a positive direction. Otherwise, it will collapse in the hands of business rather than pursuing its potential to affect people's lives for the better." - Go Danah. Burn the Berkeley Yahoo Man.

I agree with Dave Winer...

arianna69
Originally uploaded by nicknotned.

Dave's right. Steve Gillmor's writing style rocks. I mean if you work at Yahoo you dont want to move to Santa Monica because well LA would find you out. People f**k supermodels there. They work in hotels while waiting for the 'break'.. Heck, wifi is something their employer offers. But Steve Gillmor is the type of Californian stream of consciousness I want to read. Like when Hunter S Thompson wrote for Playboy : "It's all about the Articles" - or in Adam Curry's case the Vegas Jermaine Dupri party.. (i was going to link to curry.com but it is always down)

Reservoir Dogs did Rock...

arianna96
Originally uploaded by nicknotned.

Before quentin supersized the yayo the dogs was the bomb, heck jackie brown was good, pulp i liked alot more 2nd/3rd/4th time.. but it was the Short Tail : Decreasing Returns after his first film breaking from that LA Art House video store. Still, from Quentin to Robert's Austin digital black Sin City, aint seen any noir on film I liked more. I guess Carnivale on HBO doesnt count. Man Jessica looks young, and all the hotter, Ohmigod, Im 31 and OLD. From BlogCritics : "Last night, for the first time in a good long while, I watched Reservoir Dogs. Like most movies I really like, I'd begun to take it for granted that it was a great movie and no longer gave any thought to what made it so. Seeing it again (for the first time), I realized that, other than a weirdly sloppy deep-focus shot about three quarters of the way in, the movie is basically perfect. I'm of the opinion that, generally speaking, acting in a movie is not quite as important than most viewers think it is. Above all, film is an artistic medium; it is a marriage of picture and sound in which the actors are little more than another of the director's tools. I can’t say for sure whether he was aware of it at the time or not, but Tarantino made a brilliant move by completely subverting this notion and actually making Reservoir Dogs about performance.

In addition to serving as a showcase for marvelous acting jobs by all involved, the film's story is itself about acting. None of the robbers participating in the heist know each other, so they're all trying to act as tough as possible in order to impress one another. Acting. Additionally, they're all going by fake names in order to preserve the secrecy of their identities. They are each pretending to be Mr. White, Mr. Pink, Mr. Blonde, or whatever color it is they've been assigned. Acting. On top of that, Mr. Orange is an undercover cop, so he's doing twice the acting that everyone else is. He's pretending to be a criminal who's pretending to keep his identity secret. For this role, he rehearses, learns lines, and otherwise works to get into character.

At no point is this element of performance more clear than during the episode surrounding the commode story. Orange's boss makes him memorize "an amusing anecdote" about a drug deal that he can repeat to the criminals he's trying to win over and the manner in which the film illustrates Orange's process of learning and then recounting the story is nothing short of brilliant. Orange's boss, with all his idiosyncrasies - his penchant for bandanas, communist iconography, open vests, and oddly colorful meeting places - and his flair for the dramatic, seems much less like a law enforcement officer and much more like a theatre person. Like a true director, he molds Orange into the perfect actor; the story becomes so real to him that when he finally tells it to the group of criminals he's has infiltrated, he can actually see himself in the story, acting out the words that he's worked so hard to memorize. When he describes his emotions, however - something that takes time in the process of the storytelling, but in the real-time of the story takes less than a second to act out - it's the Mr. Orange in the story that takes over the narration, describing his "character's" emotions to the other fictional characters in the story. In this move, Orange embodies the character of the film; he makes the story more real for himself by actually making it about his performance rather than the events of the story."

I WANT 2.0 Famous - Yahoo

127_2800
Originally uploaded by life@24fps.

Maybe we should rebrand her T-Shirt Mr Father of Web 2.0 Mr McManus.. Anyway PaidContent summary from NYT about how Yahoo's new 'content dude' (my words) The "We are the Ex-Presidents" (Swayze/Keanu reference - the Byron Bay 50 Year Swell) who bought us 'Lost' on TV but was sacked by Eisner, then picked up by Semel, they (tried) to move to Santa Monica, but geek culture dont move much off that highway b/w Stanford, San Hill Road and San Fran.. and hey - I live in Australia. No wonder I was long AOL months ago.. um derrrrrr.... now where is David Faber when you need him...

"Yahoo sheds its confused messaging on original content and comes out with plans on developing more and more original content. Among them, sitcoms, dramas, talk shows, even a short daily humorous take on the news much like Jon Stewart's "Daily Show" are in the works, writes Saul. There will be elaborate attention-grabbing events and video-heavy programs in nearly every category of content Yahoo offers, from sports to health...and the recent Kevin Sites hiring is a step in that direction. CEO Terry Semel wants Yahoo to be seen as more akin to Warner's parent, Time Warner, which mixes content like Warner and CNN with distribution, like its cable systems. Yahoo is both of those and a lot of software, too.... Meanwhile, Yahoo media's head Lloyd Braun's job is straightforward: invent a medium that unites the showmanship of television with the interactivity of the Internet. Find a way to combine the best of Hollywood's talent with the voice of the masses. And do it all before the biggest media and technology companies get there first."

It Ain't all 2.0 Ajax Love

I'm loving Paul Kedrosky, Infectious Greed blog, who also likes comparing dotcom vs web 2.0 (my favourite sociological exercise) and dud vs good ajax applications (2.0 capitalism screening techniques) He uses Desktop.com - another app I had forgot about pre-Long Tail and google scrip.. Paul says : "So, what was wrong with Desktop.com? I’ll start by naming three things:

• Performance. Waiting for Desktop.com to send all the relevant code to my desktop was deathly, like being in an airplane’s row 25 at 11pm at night and waiting for everyone in front of you to disembark.
• Apps. Desktop.com had a nice desktop, no surprise, but it didn’t have apps. It wanted people to use it as an o/s and build apps for it, which forces developers to make bets that most developers don’t want to make.
• Money. The Desktop.com people had no idea how they were were going to charge for the product. At least as importantly, they had few (no) examples they could point to of comparable products that people paying for as a service.

Have the above three things changed? Yes, more or less. Performance is far better for Ajax apps than it was for Desktop.com; Ajax apps are apps, not an o/s; and people are more comfortable paying for software as a service. Does that augur in favor of a new generation of Ajax apps? Sure, but the naive mistake people make is in thinking that I want a word processor, spreadsheet, or a presentation program that is the same as the one that I currently have, but that uses Ajax under the hood. Well, I don’t. Matter of fact, I don’t care about that any more than I care whether my Hyundai Santa Fe (there, I said it) has a Wankel rotary engine. I just don’t care, and nor do most people. What I really want from Ajax apps is for them to do stuff that it’s too hard to do with binary apps. I want them to be sensibly integrated with online resources; I want them to support realtime collaboration. I want them to do different stuff from Word/Excel/Powerpoint, not just do the same thing with a different engine under the hood."

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IMG_1715.JPG
Originally uploaded by phreak125.

Speaking of Google...

shes a bond girl
Originally uploaded by redbarren.

From their blog and the programmer of the year award they run : "Last year we thought we hit it big what with 7,500 software coders from all over competed for top prizes in our annual Google Code Jam. We didn't know what "big" was until this year's competition, which concluded today. Not 7,500, not 10,000, but 14,500 programmers hailing from Belarus and China, Venezuela and Sweden, Macedonia and Spain - among plenty of other places, 32 countries in all - limbered up and got coding in the multi-round programming competition.

The field narrowed over successive rounds since August 22, and today we hosted 100 finalists in a final showdow at the Googleplex for more than $150,000 in prizes. Now that the dust has cleared, our second and third place winners, each of whom receives $5000, are Erik-Jan Krijgsman of the Netherlands, and Petr Mitrichev from Russia. And the grand prize of $10,000 goes to Marek Cygan from Poland, who is a student at Warsaw University. We were amazed by the talent and energy we've seen here. Congrats to Marek, Erik-Jan, Petr and all the Google Code Jam participants. We're already looking forward to next time."

Google 20% VC Rule : Expensive VC

ms biel has the eyes
Originally uploaded by redbarren.

You think that Kleiner and Sequioa investing $12.5M each for a $4.2B return was expensive in GOOG, well according to Kevin Burton they are returning the high valuation love. We all know Kev has the best blog about next gen RSS incl the TechCrunch BBQ Thurs (guys ill be there for syndicate in december get ready for paaarty !), and I love Kevin's comments about Google, who have brainwashed the next generation of aspiring programmers. Just like Microsoft was when I was younger, hence why I got a job there (only as a Product Planner) : I also love that JessicaCoen is beautiful, snarky and only half a decade younger than me..

"Last night at the Techcrunch event it dawned on me that if you were to consider Google 20% time as angel/VC funding then they're the most expensive VC in the valley. Google engineers only see an ROI in their already vesting stock. If you have an idea that can't be commercialized then go ahead and build it at Google. Otherwise you're just making Larry and Sergei even richer. The dynamics are changed here a bit of course. For example Google can take your product and release it to millions of users overnight. You can't do that in a startup."

5 Steps for Moving to the Valley

leaning or yearning cowgrrl
Originally uploaded by redbarren.

I empathise with non-coding non-Palo.Alto brought up aspirees : Being from Australia, and non-MSc myself I empathise: "It's not the work that is exhausting, it is the navigating myself around in this new life. I went from one extreme to another. From a very corporate and traditional marketing world in Canada to the center of the open source/wikified/folksonomy universe here in San Francisco. My wide-eyed wonder and country girl charm doesn't go far in The Valley of young geniuses. And, when I stumble (as I have quite a bit), I have to work really hard to not be so hard on myself, while trying to learn as fast as I can from each experience. Lessons learnt this week:

1. Shut up about shit you don't know about...you know better than that

2. Stop trying so hard to 'fit in'...you won't, but that's okay, you'll find your own place here among the boy geniuses and the rest of the people who have seen it all

3. Pick your battles...you can still have the notion to change the world, but you have to be smarter about it

4. Admit when you are struggling with something...you can't be great at everything. Use your strengths, instead to find solutions

5. Have patience with yourself...beating yourself up doesn't solve anything, learn and move on

Don't get me wrong. I love my work. I love California. I'm meeting amazing people and having a great time doing it. My blog stats are going through the roof (yay!) and people recognize me from my photo and from the mention of Ojos or Horsepigcow. Very positive, indeed. But it's one of those things , you know... You can get 100 shining compliments, but then you'll get one critique and it will negate everything else that is said. You start to doubt yourself and the work you are doing. Or maybe it's just me... However, this is where Lesson #5 comes in: Stop beating yourself up! Ac-cen-tu-ate the positive. Learn from mistakes and move on...."

What a Day - Bill Gates

oops keira did it again
Originally uploaded by redbarren.

One day - you can almost taste it. Some hard work. A tweek there. It's yours. The art that is. The Secret Sauce. The X Factor. Ephemeral. As Bill Gates said at PDC - "Those CLR objects, live objects in memory, that's going to be important. But then being able to persist and exchange that stuff as XML is going to be important. I think in a way that's -- this is just me, personally, I'd be interested to see how Anders would react to this -- but that's one of the big breakthroughs recently is that you get the loose coupling through XML, and then when you want to build an application, you get the rich behavior through things -- in our case, CLR-type objects. And to really benefit, both of those things need to work, and you draw boundaries in your application where you're mostly working with XML. Certainly once you get to connecting to another company, as the extreme case, you can work in this XML approach. And the thing that's invariant across a huge system is much more the XML, and the thing that's invariant across many, many, many versions is the XML. But, when you're writing this neat little application wanting to get code reuse, that's where the objects come in. I think the world was way -- taking the object idea, the runtime binding idea, and trying to use that to solve software componentry, and that created really big versioning problems." The Napolen Dynamite Bill Gates video is tres funny.

Ben Cousins wins the Brownlow

he won it fair n square..mmm bacon
Originally uploaded by redbarren.

Sorry US friends, or people who look for hot bootie + 2.0 stuff here, Ben Cousins this year won the AFL footballer of the year in Australia.

Ben Cousins 20 votes - West Coast
Daniel Kerr 19 Votes - West Coast - took ben cousins sister to the brownlow
Luke Hodge 15 votes - Hawthorn

The last time for a quinella was 1926 when MelbourneFC who I go for won 1-2 in brownlow (and MFC went on and won Premiership)

Well I just scooped the official AFL.com.au site which is still leading with stories from last weeks results.

You would think AFL.com.au would "BLOG IT LIVE" - I'm guessing sportal are as "RESTRICTED - genetically and by client" as normal. Heck I would blog it live for $15 an hour. Or for free, and let Ansearch monetise it 4 times more than any other Australian players !

Dave Winer on Web 2.0

grainy yellow flashdance
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Um Brooke, Dave, the Semantic Web and Machine to Machine communication that mimics human interaction, mmm, yum open API's, flickr. From the RSS Godfather : "The Web is real. The Semantic Web is an idea and Web 2.0 is a marketing concept used by venture capitalists and conference promoters to try to call another bubble into existence. The hype is treating "Web 2.0" as more and more real, and the hypesters are getting further and further out on a limb."

Microsoft's Planned Support for RSS

fishnet me brooke
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Scoble after not getting Dave Winer a ticket to PDC - maybe as payback for Winer getting Junior involved in Skanking (skype prank calling) Dawn and Drew the other week, anyway the below is interesting - A numbered summary from Scoble about where he sees Microsoft supporting RSS :

1) In the OS itself as part of IE 7.

2) In the OS itself as a gadget on the sidebar.

3) In the new Outlook as a reader.

4) In the new Sharepoint (it'll spit out all of its stuff as RSS). We discuss RSS, blogging, and the new Wiki functionality in this video.

5) In the new Start.com where the aggregator is getting more and more sophisticated.

6) RSS was driving all the plasma screens at the PDC. In fact, if you added your photo to our PDC05 Flickr site within about a minute that photo would start appearing on the screens all around the hall. All other information on the screens was also delivered via RSS. It certainly demonstrated very clearly how RSS can be used for far more than just subscribing to blogs.

2006 : The Year of Microsoft or Not

Friday is full of fun and activities.
Originally uploaded by ahmedzahid.

It reminds me of when a football team has had the same coach for too long. But I would take 30% of Microsoft anyday vs 100% of Google, ANYDAY. I used to work there and hear whispers, but not much more. Brad Feld, shepherding his Newsgator investment, certainly thinks so. This line from Post Money Value is why MS should be worried :

"I spoke to a number of people who complained that they didn’t need to show up, all the content was free and anything really important, Scoble was blogging it and doing a Channel 9 video. This is a big, big mistake."

I remember Scoble's best post of the year, asking Bill Gates a few months ago for a new office suite that covered blogging-podcasting-rss and a range of other 2.0 categories. Would you go to Godfather 12 ? Now Scoble's trying to say Office 12, Ajax, API's etc is a 'Shock and Awe' effort. I'm not arguing its not ultra impressive, comprehensive software. I'm just waiting for the BIG NEWS, whose revenue/profit impact will probably be alot less than anything announced at PDC.

Start.com for instance, small team (3 people or so ?) - Its neat. Uses Ajax. Yup. Nothing new there. I can import an OPML file, then read each feed and item. Heck, I can choose to view weather in Beverly Hills, same as Google Personalised Home Page. Feels like 1997 to me. My criticisms of Microsoft are at a very narrow industry segment viewpoint (new cool 2.0 consumer stuff, and some crossover enterprise apps) I think they will have a great 2006 irrespective of Web 2.0.

Let me reiterate though - I'd take 30% of Microsoft over 100% of Google anyday. Im sure now Mary Meeker is back, she (like Jim Cramer does) will have Google a buy. I mean why did they just raise another $4.2B. Um - Maybe because it was the right time to raise money relative to its price ? Go on Microsoft, close AOL ! Lets see how Messenger/Windows Mobile 5/ICQ can destroy G-Talk and create parity in the search space !!! Hunt the Hunter !

If Mark Pincus was CEO of Yahoo

look at her nod off
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

I've been a big fan of the city by city rollout of oodle.com, taking an all of classifieds scraping at a city level approach - with RSS subscription standard for all your purchasing needs (a smart unique funny other half, miami vice pad, dough to fund ventures, wireless nano) Mark Pincus, applies some of his learning working with John Malone @ TCI (Rupe's sparring partner) and talks about the 1% rule (any initiative should increase market cap/create value equivalent to 1% of company's value eg in Yahoo's case that would be $470M new value creation for any venture to be approved) Mark has a great riff on how Yahoo should dominate the meta-classifieds space, pioneered in an organic way by Craigslist/Ebay, then scraped at a city level in the last year by Oodle. Could this be Y's-eequivalent to Google's late entry into blogsearch ? -

"I'd love to take yahoo classifieds and turn it into an anchor tenant for an open classifieds marketplace. i'd make it a web service, allowing any player to pull my listings feeds into their own (with full attribution back to me). i'd encourage a bunch of existing and new players from local papers to tribe.net, oodle and others to build their businesses on top of mine. i might go even further and pioneer a new open source ebay, which might work like DNS where everyone's listings are replicated all over the network so that anyone could get in the listings business and achieve scale. why would i do this? becuase as the biggest player, i would have the biggest share of the combined database which means that i would get even more traffic back. every player from sj merc to tribe would be ultimately sending their traffic to me for free. i might even develop value added services like user ratings and dynamic pricing that i could offer back to all these players. i'd have an advantage in building these new services fastest too. this might also increase the entire market size as classifieds suffers from continual fragmentation. if there existed a single market that all listers tapped into there would be an immediate network effect topping even ebay in power to lister and responder. to do this, yahoo would merely need to...

1. identify and publish open standards for meta data
2. crawl, aggregate all other data. (oodle would be a good place to start) and then normalize and tag that data
3. and then offer that data up to the world

Given yahoo's bold, impressive moves towards the new open web, i'm sure they are close to executing these or similar ideas. it will be fun to watch, even more fun to find new ways to participate."

Skype Founder : Brilliant or Boring

worth 30m pounds conservatively
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

From Paul Kedrosky - "There were entertainingly conflicting opinions in an FT piece yesterday on Niklas Zennstrom, the newly-monied co-founder of Skype.

Wayne Rosso (ex- of Grokster): “… talking with [Zennström] is about as exciting as watching paint dry”

Tim Draper (of Skype backer DFJ): “…[Zennstrom is] exciting, revolutionary, brilliant and heroic”

PKedro : "You have to love Tim Draper. In a previous life the guy must have run a carnie sideshow — which may yet turn out to be a crucial skillset in the rapidly-changing world of venture capital."