The Post Money Value

Working through the 'oops' part of the world 2.0

I love being on the edge. Forget bleeding edge, let’s talk hemorrhaging edge, way way out there.  Skype from an airplane, Skype from my car via an edge card and blue-tooth (more on that later), Slingbox on my phone, just rockin along.  All -n– all, being a geek that looks forward to crashed computers, locked up devices, and generally spooky results with Alpha/Beta software.

Except for pesky details like trying to call for a fire truck, ambulance, or the police.

From consumeraffairs.com :

“A Minnesota homeowner charges VoIP provider Vonage put him on hold when he called 911 to report his house was on fire. The home was a total loss.  Loren Velthamp of Chanhassen, Minnesota, said he grabbed the phone and called 911 when he realized a fire has started in his home. "I called 911 using Vonage broadband and they put us on hold," Velthamp told KSTP-TV in Minneapolis. “Unbelievable… your house is burning down, and you're put on hold by Vonage.”

Yep. Me thinks a nice dial up phone where I can yell, “Ethel! Call the fire department”, feels really warm and cuddly..

Poster for all new start ups

If ever there was a poster that will sum up the current fun and game of  “Web 2.0”, this is it.

Personally, this is being put on my wall and is my new business card.  Hugh, I bow to your excellent wit. Something to aspire to.

Update/Bonus Quote:

“The price, by the way, is high but not ridiculous yet.”

Michael Arrington, discussing Facebook turning down, $750 million. <sigh>  Michael wants to be the next Henry Blodgett, I guess.

Smackdown in Toronto

It’s challenge time. Robert Scoble thinks Werner Vogals, CTO, of Amazon sand bagged him during his talk at Amazon. Robert has challenged Werner to a “re-match” with respect to Amazon and the whole notion of blogging.

I have just the place for it.  Canada’s Web 2.0 conference, Mesh. This event takes place May 15th and May 16th in Toronto.

And, I’ll pay the airfare since I know both of you guys are on a tight budget, the Canadian dollar is on a roll, and Air Canada has great Tango fares from Seattle to Toronto.  If you contact Mathew Ingram, you can stay at his house…

Last one to agree gets the middle seat between two Mac users, listening to Ipods, while surfing Barnes and Noble.

This is actually a cheap plug reminding the rest of you to sign up for this conference and join some smart people in a lively conversation about where we are and where we are going. 

 

Werner's Mug SHot

Werner's Mug SHot
Originally uploaded by Werner Vogels.

By request (from Werner himself!)

The real smilin mug shot.

Sense a humor, that's what is all about!

Amazon Bad Boy - Werner Vogels

[Update: I fixed Werner's name, (traurig, Werner) and you should know that Werner did put an apology on his post; love is in the air.]

You’ve probably noticed that a bunch of big companies are getting this or that smart person to come by and chat with the troops on particular topics. Seth Godin was recently at Google, for example, and gave a great talk which is on Google Videos when you search for Seth Godin.

As well, we all know that Amazon’s good guy, of course is one each, smiling Jeff Bezos.

The company, generally, gets good marks for customer service, being responsive, etc, etc. Good people, all around, esp. given the size of the company and sheer number of moving parts/people/customers.

Enter Amazon’s bad boy one each Werner Vogels.

First, note the slight difference here. One guy is happy with a ray gun. One guy looks like he wants a real gun. But enough about them. Werner is Amazon’s CTO.  We’ll be back to Werner in a minute.

Shel Israel  (co-author Naked Conversations) has been making the rounds with his assistant, giving speeches/talks to various Rotary Clubs, Tupperware Parties, Chamber of Commerce Organizations as, surprise, Amazon. Amazon invites the boyz in to have a chat about blogging and, of course, Shel and that other guy, make the case about blogging being important to corporations, etc, etc. All good stuff, all worth discussing/debating, etc.

Well, you just have to know were this is heading.  The Amazon people ‘don’t get it’ was the general conclusion by Robert/Shel which you can read about here.  I encourage you to read all of Robert’s post as well as the comments. Robert was nice and polite to Amazon. Very nice.

Now back to Werner.  Rather then be polite to his guests, he heads to blog land and proceeds to blast the speakers.

“…they appear shocked that we used a critical voice to address their work. Welcome to life at Amazon, we set a very high bar for our own works and we expect anyone that comes to sell us an approach to actually be prepared to really defend their ideas.”

and

“…appeared shell-shocked that anyone actually had the guts to challenge the golden wonder boys of blogging and not accept their religion instantly. I have been a promoter of weblogging for a long time, so I didn't feel particularly bad to challenge these two authors”

and

“ I myself actually knew some of the answers to my questions, but I was surprised to see that these guys were not prepared enough to slap me around with solid answers.”

Shel responded with his own blog posting here.

“I was surprised again by Werner's post, who characterized our visit as something that sounded a bit like the old Buckley-Galbraith Firing Line. The Amazon people who prepped me for this meeting , had just said Amazon wanted to hear about blogging and why they should do more of it. I don't often avoid confrontations, but this felt pretty much like the wrong forum for butting heads with our host's executive officer who was behaving like he was locked and loaded for bear hunting.”

and

“I don't know how Werner treats his guests in his own home, but the way he behaved just isn't the way I treat guests in mine. Werner, if you want to have a public debate on how Amazon could improve its customer relationships with more employee blogs or corporate blogs, please name the time and place--as well as the neutral referee. I require only two rules.  (1) Let me have my say next time, without you interrupting, and (2) Let's both agree to the same agenda before we go public with it.”

I rarely go on what one person says or writes, so I contacted some internal Amazon people that I’ve known for years and, yep, ol Warner left his Miss Manners book on the shelf at home. Rude was the common theme from internal Amazon people.

Lessons for the start up to follow after a word from our sponsor INDIGO, your friendly bookseller with friendly Canadian executives.

Werner, cough up the apology, follow Jeff’s lead (smile already!) and leave the arrogance to the professionals.

It's offical - Web 2.0 Insanity Hits Canada

You have to stare at this clip for a few seconds to fully appreciate just where we heading.

Yup, a first. The public beta is releasing a public alpha. Albert, Albert, Albert…

Next phase: Just post your business plan and source code on the a web site surrounded by advertising.

But, wanting to show the (Canadian) flag, so to speak, it’s a great piece of  “alpha” software that you should try. The whole concept of Bubbleshare is brain dead simple for everybody and it works.

Alec Saunders has the full scoop here.

 

The great IPOD/MSFT debate

Steve Ballmer’s pronouncement in an recent interview has started the great debate.

The Quote:

“Do you have an iPod?
No, I do not. Nor do my children. My children -- in many dimensions they're as poorly behaved as many other children, but at least on this dimension I've got my kids brainwashed: You don't use Google, and you don't use an iPod.”

One of the comments out there comes from the good doctor, Paul Kedrosky:

“…it is typical of Microsoft that it would find no embarrassment in using edicts to dictate product use. It is, of course, reminiscent of certain declining North American auto makers that demand employees only drive their cars to work.”

Let’s take this apart in two pieces.

Ever since day one, Microsoft has been into “eat your own dog food” as a core business practice. People in the company live on crappy Windows CE,  Embedded Windows, and Windows Mobile products until they get it right.   Software or Hardware, it is a smart practice to have the people building it, eat it. 

With specific reference to the Ipod, it is the same as search or any other place where MS is seriously behind. Dr K. makes the (wrong) assumption that people are being told, you have to or else.  Should people working for Microsoft be supportive of companies that make products that use MS software? Absolutely.  But people getting fired or being told you must buy this or that, while a nice myth, is not happening. The auto makers analogy is also wrong.  The company isn’t demanding anything

There are some common sense “demands” tho, if you want to get technical.  For example, the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WINHEC) that is put on by Microsoft and, surprise, Microsoft employees are told no Ipods and no other non-windows based devices. That makes good sense when trying to get hardware guys to support Windows products.  The arguably silly stuff is trying to encourage people to purge the word Google and say MSN Search while walking around campus. But again, nobody is being told not to use something. In the case of Google/MSN Search, I’d hope that MS employees are using both and pounding on the internal search guys to get it right.

If I remember correctly, Robert Scoble’s kid owns lots of Non-Microsoft stuff as do a number of kids that work for MS employees. 

Being rabidly supportive of your start up’s product and services is a good thing. 

In general, comments like those of Prof. K. are better tossed into the pile of snarks vs. actual realities associated with competition. If you get super lucky, the mighty K here will send a little snark love your way.

And, to give all y’all a little fodder to shoot at; I faked my children into thinking Microsoft BOB was the next thing in computer science trying to be all supportive. They promptly moved out at ages 8 and 5, filed child abuse charges and I haven’t heard from them since.  Now, that’s dedication!

[Disclosure: I used to work for Microsoft and Steve Ballmer, at one point, was my second line supervisor]

P.S. Alec Saunders basically said the same thing as me here.

Ctrl-Alt-REBOOT 8

Reboot 8 is locked and loaded for June 1st and 2nd.  I’ll be there and would love to meet up with you.  It is a great gathering of very smart people wanting to explore lots of ideas in a city that is beautiful.

Sometimes just being nice is enough

Jeff Jarvis has an interesting post about Karen Hughes our country’s softer, gentler approach ambassador. Jeff makes the point that there is a certain level of cluelessness going on within the government about this problem. Given that she carries an official passport, rarely stands in line for anything, it is not surprising that ‘clueless’ would be the first thing popping in Jeff’s mind.

Jeff, make a few snarky comments about making the airport arrival friendlier. The snark’s are aimed correctly, but there is a small observation I’d like to point out.

I travel a lot. Much of that travel involves going across various borders.  Over the years, I’ve noticed something particularly nice about coming back to Canada.

Yesterday, as an example, I was in/out of Chicago for a one day (3 hr) meeting. You pre-clear U.S. Customs in Canada on the out bound leg. I got the airport at around 6a and the line up for non-US folks was long, pictures were being taken, fingerprints, etc. There was a line for US citizens and there were two agents working it with zero waiting.  The agent grunted and asked me what’s your business in the US. I said ‘excuse me?’ he looked up started to gear up for the billy bad ass routine, until something in that early morning brain kicked in and he said “Oh, you’re American, sorry.”  It was then stamp, stamp, off you go.  Attitude.

On the return flight home, I went through Immigration at Toronto’s airport.  All lines basically deal with everybody. I get up to my inspector, hand him my landed immigrant card (like a green card), my passport, and customs declaration. How was the weather in Chicago? Just a meeting? Bringing back any Pizza? Welcome, home.  More often then not “Welcome back” or “Welcome home” is the norm when rolling into Canada.

Yup, the border folks have a very tough job. Yes, security is important.

But I can tell you from personal experience that the little “Welcome back” comment does make a difference, does set the tone, etc.

Just being nice is a good start.

Airport observations

I'm waiting for the flight home from Chicago to Toronto. I got a pass into the Red Carpet club and thought I'd pass on some interesting stats.

This is the smaller one in O'Hare over by the MacDonalds and no that is NOT french fries on my breath.

There were 43 people in the room. 9 women in the mix.

Of the 9 women, 6 had Blackberry devices clicking away. 4 had laptops out and clicking away. Yep, one lady was one finger RIM and mouse on Laptop. All 4 laptops were, gulp Dell boxes.

Of the men, there 18 laptops and 7 blackberry devices. 3 guys had borg-like bluetooth headsets gabbing away.

Of the laptops, 5 were Dell, 6 Toshiba, 4 Apple (!), 2 thinkpads and one clone.

One guy was watching HBO. I asked, Slingbox? Naah, limewire from last night.

One Lady was using a sprint mobile card doing a Skype conference call with people in China and Poland. I only know because she introduced each person outload to the club and said Skype was awesome . She had a headset on and was using the boom mic built into the laptop.

Big shock, 3 card games happening on the laptops.

Out at the gate, a few more Dell laptops, a couple of folks using edge/evdo cards and a bunch of kids going nuts on the cell phones. A few were watching video and lots were tapping out messages.

All -n- all, lots of interesting people and technology watching while heading home.

Robert Scoble should be fired

and fired yesterday so I can get em into a start up.  Heh, provocative enough?

Okay, there is a larger point I’d like to make in the wake of all the current bad Robert/good Robert blog noise. 

First, as goofy as it may sound, you need more Scoble, not less. In fact, you don’t really need guys like me blabbing all over the net, it’s far more valuable to you, the start up, to hunt down these type of guys and listen. Now, stop laughing for a second, and hear me out.

The human voice you see is required, warts -n– all, in order to give big lumbering companies a voice. In addition, the good that comes from all this stuff far outweighs, in my opinion, the ‘bad.’  You, as a start up, benefit from Scoble passing you hundreds (at last count) of inside pointers, thoughts, ideas, etc, with respect to what’s going on inside the company.  You benefit from this guy’s approach. 

Here’s a little side story. I was invited to Shel and Robert’s book signings by Robert’s lovely wife.  At the signing in Redmond, what was most striking was not the number of Scoble groupies hovering around, rather the full time Microsoft employees wanting to get Robert and his Channel 9 crew into this or that product group. That translates into more data for you. More knowledge on what’s going on inside the company, more product people jumping in and blogging and speaking directly to customers/developers/you. 

You can write it off to egos and other things but the net of it is, lots of people inside Microsoft are providing more data to you as a direct result of Scoble, rants included free.

When Scoble blows a gasket about the Vista re-write report, you see it transparently, vs. the old days of corporate blather  With respect, I disagree with Nick Carr’s corporate blogging rules, to the extent that I rather see companies tell employees use common sense, then dive on some rule book. For the most part, Scoble self corrects, apologizes when he goes overboard and posts a tirade. He then goes back to adding value (until the next blow, heh..).  Again, with respect to Mr. Carr’s position, I’ll take an occasional BS, typed in all caps, then the endless dribble coming out of PR departments.  And, in a strange way, it makes Scoble slightly more credible.

I’ll be the first to admit, the ol boy can be quite the lightening rod but when the history chapter is written on this, I suspect Robert and those like him, will be viewed, overall, very favorably.  Let’s be careful out there. Civility anyone?

Memo to BigCo, Shut Up

Over the past several months, I've started to see a really bad trend with respect to Big Companies doing the dance with little companies.

It seems to be all the rage these days to send little MBA monkeys out to tell little start up how you are all hot to trot to potentially buy em and then basically leaving them hanging.

The most recent that I watched was a young MSN type hanging out at SXSW pumping up some small start up. Yeah, we love little guys like you. Yeah, we're buying em up. Yeah, we would be interested in buying you. Weeks later, no return phone calls, no return emails, nothing. As a favor, I stepped in, dug around and, surprise, it was the beer talkin....

Company was dumb enough to run around saying MSFT is buying me and some wise ass MSN putz sprinkled toxic pixie dust on these people. Goofs all around to be sure.

And that's just one of a number of examples that I've watched unfold in this insane frenzy around Nutsy 2.0.

As a start up, sober up. Unless you have a written offer signed by big company (with a little 'legal ok' stamp on it) don't drink the kool-aid.

I used to work for MSFT so telling me MS is gonna buy us, act now, is not the best way to excite me.

As a BigCo, train the monkeys. Personally, if I witness this again, I'm going to go seriously public, naming names, posting emails and make Valleywag look like the Wall Street Journal.

And, to be clear, Google and Yahoo have cages of these MBA monkeys as well; it is not a microsoft only thing.

This practice of hype the kids, give em the SHITS (Show High Interest Then Stall) is offensive and needs to stop.

Mark Roberti, Come On Down!

Mark Roberti, yer the next contestant on SPAM king be me.

For the longest time, Tony Perkins of “Always On” remained my favorite professional Spammer. Despite Tony’s protests to the contrary, the company that Always On uses to send out the almost unending notes about this or that conference, fails to take people off the lists and, in my office anyway, can be shown to be beyond true permission based as our Info alias and other alias addresses are now receiving Tony’s spam. 

Unfortunately, in this latest round of Tony mail flying around the internet, he talks about one of our portfolio companies up for an award, so Tony is now a brilliant marketing mind and I reject any notion of Tony’s effective, insightful, and meaningful messages being labeled as Spam, nope, gourmet beef with a fine wine but not spam.

But I digress

Let’s give a big welcome to Mark Roberti of RFID Journal fame who wants to take SPAM to the next level, Voice Mail Spam. Yep, nothing new, I know.  I’m bringing it up just to point out to you, kind start up, just how really annoying it is.

I was with a group of folks today going over some, surprise, RFID stuff. Different states, provinces, etc, about 12 of us in all.  9 out of the twelve of us got the call and/or voice mail on our cell phones and 7 people had the message on the voice mail systems back at the office. Caller ID is blocked so it comes in as “unknown caller” and if you happen to say hello, you get “Hi this Mark Roberti, of RFID journal wanting you to blow off the Always On conference and come to mine.”  Okay, not exactly word for word.  And people were talking about actively ignoring anything from RFID Journal, etc. It was not well received.

On the one hand we have Chris Anderson who runs TED. TED sells out a $5000k invite only, cash now, conference a year in advance and has been doing it for years. He sends mail to the “Tedsters” which include the CEOs of this/that, assorted former Vice Presidents, and nobody types like me.  For anybody else, go get the blog feed. Period. No Spam, sellout crowd, lines around the door, etc.  High cost, high touch, no Spam of any kind.

On the other hand, we have Mark, who is targeting fairly technical people, resorting to the same stuff that “hi you’ve won a free trip with some steak knives” types do. Dumb, to say the least.

Given the really negative response that I saw from the 12 people today, my advice is stay far far away from this type of marketing activity.

Maybe Mark and Tony could get together for some bulk discounts on Fax Spam as I don’t think I’ve seen either of them in between the toner cartridges and discount travel faxes.

[Note to self – Get Hugh Mcleod to make an official, as only Hugh can do, Spammer badge/cartoon/award. Nice Wiki with Spammer hall of shame, etc, etc..]

Bessemer - The high watermark of transparency

In the VC world, I would suspect Bessemer Venture Partners stands on top as being the firm many hope to emulate.  Probably one trait everybody should seek to immediately emulate is transparency.

If you haven’t seen the Bessemer “Anti-Portfolio”, you should take a peek.

From the intro page:

“Our reasons for passing on these investments varied. In some cases, we were making a conscious act of generosity to another, younger venture firm, down on their luck, whom we felt could really use a billion dollars in gains.”

The list is pretty funny:

Google
Cowan’s college friend rented her garage to Sergey and Larry for their first year. In 1999 and 2000 she tried to introduce Cowan to “these two really smart Stanford students writing a search engine”. Students? A new search engine? In the most important moment ever for Bessemer’s anti-portfolio, Cowan asked her, “How can I get out of this house without going anywhere near your garage?”

The rest is here. 

Showing you the money

The Canadian Venture Forum for 2006 is going to be held May 10th–12th  at the Marriott Eaton Centre Hotel, here in Toronto.

You need to be here, presenting your companies, your ideas, etc, so your friendly VC community can show you the money.  It is a great event, one spot where you can get in front of all the top VCs in Canada as well as few US guys looking for deals up north.  And if all those folks are busy, there is always me.

In short, it is well worth your time to try and get selected.

The web site is here and you will find the application. You have to be a Canadian start up, folks.

Some tips.

– I’m on the selection committee and, for sure, I am the only person blogging, heh, so I’m using that as an advantage.

– Even if you don’t think you need coin now, do it anyway, it is good practice to tell the story and start getting to know the financial community.

– You actually get two shots. The committee and the show itself, so lots of people find out you are out there.

– Fill out the application and when you get asked who referred you, put me down. I’ll know it was a faithful reader and we will show all those non-believers, the power of blogging, etc.

A nice show full of “JLA companies”, yeah, has a nice ring to it. Plus there are some really good prizes. Over 1billion dollars has been put into companies showing at venture forum since 2000. Even in Canadian dollars, that is not chump change.

This show always fills up, we always end up with way too many applications and have to turn companies down.  So fill out the application now to avoid being disappointed.

Now, Mark Evans and Mathew Ingram, link love, boyz, let’s get lots of companies showing off in our town.

Dark spots at 34,000 feet

This is both the scariest story you will ever hear as well as the most inspirational event I can think of for Hugh and cartoon glory.

I’m currently at 34,000 feet working away. IM, Skype, Email, Slingbox all humming right along.

I get a bit sleepy and doze off a bit. Just close my eyes. 

I sortta hear the pilot come on (Lufthansa flight) in a German accent talking about a problem and having to restart the system.

I then half open my eyes to the monitors and screens all over the airplane, rebooting windows. Oh and, absolutely, you know turbulence starts right up as the boot text is scrolling by.

I bolt up, start looking around an realize it’s the WinCE based entertainment system that has been restarted.

I can only say that being in a half sleep state thinking the pilot just ctl-alt-del the aircraft is quite possibly the most horrific nightmare I’ve ever had. 

It also pointed out a very sound reason for not checking baggage.

Excuse me while I go change my underwear and clean this seat.

 

Just in Case

When I was working on the Chapters (now Indigo) web site, I was “in charge.”  Lots of people during the time of the Internet bubble took this “in charge” stuff very seriously. For the founders of some start ups, being ‘in charge’ was a ticket for some serious ego explosion.

When we gave out baseball jackets to the founding group, I had this put on the back of my coat vs. the President stuff.

From time to time, people will come up to me and ask about it. I tell people, it was a reminder not to let much go to my head. I still wear it as an ego control reminder while the web 2.0 hype machine is cranked up to maximum settings.

Just a small reminder to keep some perspective because, you never know how all these things work out. Keep your sense of humor, don’t worry about titles and enjoy the ride.

Just in case….

Lift off - MusicIP

www.musicip.com is now live and the fun is beginning down in Austin. Being in Germany, I’ve raised a beer in toast to the team for an outstanding job getting  ready for the show.

If you own a bunch of music on your computer, want to maximize the enjoyment of you collection and discover new music, please down load the application. Let me know what you think.

If you are an artist, you will find that MusicIP is a great way to get your band/music into the system and discovered by more fans.

If you are building music applications and need an excellent source of music identification, try the open source fingerprint services.  MusicIP has teamed up with Musicbrainz, the open source music database, folks to provide services in an open source fashion.  It’s a great service and available today at musicdns.org.

Fun stuff.

The Larry and Shelley Story

In few minutes or so, MusicIP, a company that we’ve invested in, takes the wraps of a ton of work at the SXSW show in Austin.  I’m pleased that all the team’s hard work will be paying off.  I’ll let the company do all launch stuff first and point you to some interesting things as they go public.

This entry, tho, is about Shelley Powers and Larry Borsato, two interesting folks that managed to cross paths here in the virtual world of blogging. 

Way back in September of 2005, I wrote a post about getting in the game where I basically said “just go code something”, blog about it, and get going.  Got some smiles, rah rah, etc, etc. 

I also got a comment from Shelley Powers which simply say “What a crock.”  After finding out who she was, author, cat owner, and interesting person, I blogged the comment, made some nice nice about her stopping by and left it at that.  I got all the “that’s Shelley” emails, etc, but it bugged me. 

I’d worked for Microsoft so I know all about hoards of angry people, being yelled at, name calling, etc. But it bugged me.  It ground on me for months. I have lots of empathy for guys like Doc Searls, Dave Winer, Robert Scoble, and others who are 1000x more popular/famous then me. They get Shelley like snarks all the time, yet, this nothing nit still bugged me.

Meanwhile, our friendly Canadian, Larry Borsato goes off and codes up an offline blogging tool called Bleezer. Works on all platforms, multiple blog engine support, free for the trying, etc, etc. Excellent.  Larry makes some reference to Segal said go code something so I did, which gets my attention. I have the product, use it, like it, etc.

Back at MusicIP, things were getting a bit hairy, coding reinforcements were needed.  I call Larry. Doesn’t matter that he wasn’t up on the exact stuff we needed. Doesn’t matter that he was in Canada and the core programmers are in California.  All you had to do was read the guy’s blog, check out his code, and you could get a reasonable idea of what he could do. And after you meet the guy in person your expectations are exceeded.

After a quick call/phone interview, we flew Larry out to California for an intense 15 day get up to speed, code quick, learn fast, adventure. Larry dived in and I am using a freshly coded version of something he coded as I type this.  The guy is a rock solid professional and, for bonus points, a super nice guy.

As a result, we have some new products and a trusted member of the MusicIP team. Larry makes a good recruiting poster for getting in there and “just coding something.”

Here’s what I learned. Patience. At the time, I wanted to dump all over this snarky Shelley Powers person and didn’t. Instead I decided to just work the theory, find some case studies and make the point. Larry Borsato is case study one. I am delighted to tell you that I have others working in investee companies which says to me that it is a whole lot easier these days to get in the game then ever before.

I also learned, there are lots more smart people out there, lined up and ready to get in the game. What are you working on? I’d like to hear from you as I’ve got lots of time for smart people wanting have some fun, change the world, and get into the game.

If you are looking for some interesting tech books, review Shelley’s stuff.  If, on the other hand, you’d like a hands on, live case study of a successful person to emulate, save your money and talk with Larry. He is worth listening to. Well done, Larry, well done.

Flame Warriors

[Live from 34,000ft]

Via a friend, Kevin Speicher, head on over to the home of Flame Warriors.  If you’ve ever been in a screaming, all caps, mine is bigger, war in email, the comments section, or any forum, you will recognize all of these people.

After looking through the mud pit that is Robert Scoble’s comment section, I’d say Mike Reed has nailed em pretty good.  Well done, Mike, well done. One example:

Furious Typer’s combat strategy is to drown her adversary in a tsunami of angry verbiage. She is absolutely immune to subtlty and ignores all but the barest essentials of any argument. After breifly appraising the gist of her opponent’s counter attack she puts her head down and rapidly fires off long rambling messages replete with grammitical and factual errors. The typical Furious Typer lacks endurance, however, and if the other combatants can weather the initial assault she will quickly exhaust herself and retire from the field

Lots more on Mike’s site.

(Nobody is awake up here.. shhhh, time to sneak up front..)

Airborne Items - What is working

From 34,000ft, over Salt Lake City,  here is what is running/working, etc.

Skype – Calls work kinda. Latency, obviously, is an issue but I can get a connection and, for the test, had somebody stream some music so listening on a conference call, for example, could work, sortta.

Slingbox – Works, small size, but I’m watching HBO as I type this.

Video IM – Lame, not surprising. Reminds me of the 1968 worlds fair picture phones, but it is coming.

Connectivity to my Exchange server over http, no problem.

Downloads zipping right along, etc.

Overall, this is excellent and well done. This is the third flight I’ve done with wireless and each time, I’ve been very pleased with the service. 

Live from LH 457

I’m on the flight, with power and wifi.  $26, all you can drink internet. I just walked the plane. I am, so far as I can tell, the only person using the Wifi.  

Side note. On the plane, they have “Hotspot” signs that look like the new RSS orange thing/icon.

See you in Germany.

World Exclusive - WallWiki

These days everybody seems to believe you have to get Michael Arrington to gush about your product in order to be ‘in.’ We even are seeing “Exclusive” slapped on his posts for things. Right. Web 2.0 this 2.0 that. Com’on, Michael, where’s the real scoops?

And even Robert Scoble is taking it easy with only 300 emails behind and staying up to just 1a for Orangensaft or Origami or something.

But fear not, gentle readers, I have found a world exclusive scoop that missed the eagle eyes of Captain Arrington and slipped under the carpet of the Redmond warrior.

I present to you to WallWiki version 1.564b recently out of private beta and now shipping.

This is a screen shot, exclusive to this blog, says it all:

As you can see, it is the unlimited version. Anyone can come by and update, change, move, items with no knowledge of computers! This is operating system independent, browser independent and, wait for it, WALL independent.

The company has received three term sheets and are in talks to be acquired by Google. This will be, of course, renamed GWall, all your notes belong to us, should that occur.

Travel and Such

I’m here in LA (Monrovia, actually), spending some time with MusicIP, helping them get ready for the upcoming South by Southwest show in Austin. Actually, I’ve mostly been a pain in the butt to the CEO, CTO, and marketing folks but they are too nice to do anything other then smile.  The countdown has begun. They (and I ) are pumped about the show.

Here are some travel updates for those of you that would like to hook up, no harm no foul meetings, as well as get the first round on me.  Email is always best as it comes to my blackberry. rick at jlaventures dot com.

I will be traveling from LA to Frankfurt on Thursday. The flight is supposed to be wireless joy which means slingbox heaven. I’ve used it on overseas wireless flights before as well as Skype, IM, and the usual suspects.

Friday I am in Frankfurt all day.  Saturday/Sunday, I am at the CeBit Tradeshow so if you see something cool, email me and I’ll go take a look. Grabbing beers and wurst, I’m there.

Monday, I am en route to Toronto, again, wireless flight.  Tuesday, I am in Toronto for an extremely important set of meetings, sorry, nothing available.

Wednesday, I am flying to Dallas, then driving to Austin. I’m in Austin from Wed – Sunday for the show and would be delighted to meet up with folks going to the show. Go by the MusicIP booth for a ticket to a great party, tell them the suit sent you.

Safe travels and let’s meet up. Canada is open for business.

 

Daughters and Dads during Web 2.0

Technology is a wonderful thing. In this day and age, you can keep in closer touch with family members, share pictures and generally enjoy the blessings having wonderful children provide. Especially daughters.

What’s particularly awesome is that while technology marches on, the basics of being “The Father” do not change.

Offered up for you consideration; Terence.

Working for a high tech company can be time consuming, stressful, and will eat into your social life. So, when you see an opportunity, you have to work up the courage and go for it. Terence took a deep breath and went for it, business card in hand. 

Email from me to Terence:

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From: Rick Segal 
Sent: Saturday, March 04, 2006 12:21 PM
To: Terence [name removed, I have a heart]
Subject: Biz Card

Terrence,

Life's funny. Imagine if you are a dad and you lend your daughter a car.  When you get the car back, you see a [xxxx] Director's business card down in the windshield well. It gets even funnier when I recalled that [xxxx], is a Board member is somebody I work with.

How can I help you?

>R<

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You have to admire, tho, this response:

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From: Terence
Sent: Monday, March 06, 2006 10:47 AM
To: Rick Segal
Subject: RE: Biz Card

Hi Rick.  Thanks for the note. Hmmm let’s see…how can you help?  Do you have a remedy for embarrassment?  Life gets funnier.  Imagine you’re a guy and you take a chance, do something out of the ordinary on a whim; leave a note for a woman on her car only to be retrieved later by her father.  Couldn’t have written a better script…

Terry

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Web 2.0, it’s not just for kissing on the porch anymore.