I hate the phrase Web 3.0. I’ve never really liked the phrase Web 2.0 either, but I didn’t notice that I didn’t like it until after it had become used in almost every conversation I had with anyone about what they were working on. As I started making new investments in companies that tried to deal with the TAR problem (such as Me.dium, Lijit, Collective Intellect, and HiveLive), I realized I wanted a name for this. I came up with the lame name “dynamics of information” as a placeholder.
I’ve been searching for a new name for this and my partner Ryan McIntyre came up with the phrase “Intelligence Amplification” which I love. It’s especially sweet if you catch the mildly ironic reference to “Artificial Intelligence.” While I still haven’t locked down this label as final for this theme of investing, articles such as “Applying Semantic Web Ideals” from the weblog The Intelligent Enterprise – in addition to highlighting my friend Nick Bradbury as having a major clue around this stuff – reinforce the chocolately goodness of this name in my non-silicon based mind.
In the “if you can’t beat them, join them” category, following is a hilariously ironic story by Mark A. Stein from the 11/19/06 New York Times Openers section.
“Tyson Foods, the world’s largest chicken producer and meat processing company, blamed high corn prices last week for its third consecutive quarterly loss. It said that the recent excitement over corn-based ethanol fuel sent the price of that grain soaring, raising feed costs and compounding the effect of a meat glut that depressed prices. “This is either corn for feed for corn for fuel,” Rich L. Bond, president and chief executive, lamented in a statement.
Well, if fuels are where the money is, Tyson will be there too. As Mr. Bond was releasing the disappointing results, Jeff Webster of the corporate strategy department was announcing a brand new venture: Tyson Renewable Energy. Its first task? Turning some of what the company described as its “vast supply of animal fat” – 2.3 billion pounds a year, Mr. Webster reckons – into a diesel-like biofuel.”
I wonder how – as a vegetarian – I’d reconcile pouring “chicken diesel” into my car? We know we are really in trouble when a single corn on the cob costs as much as a pound of nova scotia lox.
The Immortal Game inspired me to play some chess again. I was having trouble sleeping tonight so I hopped online to find an online chess game. Not surprisingly, I was completely overwhelmed by options. Any suggestions for good places to hang out and play online?
One of my favorite things about going dark for a week is that I get to consume a bunch of books. Since we’ve been back from Alaska, my reading pace has been slower than normal, so it was nice to have plenty of uninterrupted time to lay on a couch and read. I usually manage to read a book a day on vacation – this time I only gobbled down five. All but one was great.
I started off with The Cure. Every entrepreneur should read this book. I can’t remember who recommended it to me (someone at the Return Path board dinner?) – it’s the extraordinary personal and professional story of John Crowley, his wife Aileen, their three children (two of whom have Pompe disease), and John’s creation of Novazyme Pharmaceuticals – a company he created to cure Pompe disease in order to save his kids. While John steps firmly on (and possibly over) the lines of medical ethics, his singleminded focus helps make tremendous progress on this disease while creating a very successful company that was acquired by Genzyme for $137m within 18 months of being founded. An old friend – David Hendren – makes an unexpected visit in this book as the lead investor in Novazyme (David was the lawyer who represented Feld Technologies – my first company – when it was acquired by AmeriData.)
Hundred Dollar Baby: I need some mental floss next. Spenser (and Robert Parker) didn’t disappointment me (they never do.) If you are a Spenser fan, this is the latest – both Hawk and Susan play prominent roles.
Destined for Destiny: George W. Bush’s unauthorized autobiography was as disappointing to me as GWB’s performance as president. Scott Dikkers – the editor-in-chief of The Onion was the co-author – and I expected 90 minutes of hilarity. The first few chapters had me laughing, but the book stalled out and I ended up looking at the pictures and skimming. I guess that fits with the topic. Oh well. Unless you are a serious Bush-basher or Onion-lover, don’t bother.
High School Confidential: I love ethnography. My favorite course as a doctoral student was John van Mannen’s – we spent a lot of time understanding how to best do qualitative research using fieldwork. I’ve always fantasized about dropping out and getting “regular jobs” – I love reading books about people that have the courage to do this and then document it. Jeremy Iversen – at age 25 – spent a year as a high school senior in a school in the Los Angeles area. The book is superb – Iversen does a phenomenal job of having the other high school kids tell the story. The most remarkable thing to me was how similar things were to my high school experience (public high school in Richardson, Texas – J.J. Pearce in case you wondered.) While the language is a little different, the social dynamics, sex, teachers, drugs, parents, school administrators, and struggles seemed pretty equivalent.
The Immortal Game: Awesome book. I’ve always loved chess, although I’m an “ok beginner” and I’ve never spent the time necessary to study the game in order to get past “level 1.” Shenk does a superb job of explaining the history of chess, which mixing in a famous game (Adolf Anderssen vs. Lionel Kieseritzky – June 21, 1851, London – known as “The Immortal Game”) to highlight / teach chess and its notation. It’s an incredibly compelling approach to teaching the history of chess – I found myself unable to put the book down.
Overall it was an extremely bookalicious week.
I just gone done with my quarterly week off the grid. Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays – Amy and I spent it chilling out in Keystone. I had a little trouble disconnecting – finally shutting off all of my computers on Wednesday morning. Even though lots of folks took the long weekend off, a few of my portfolio companies pushed out some neat new stuff.
There were a couple of others (FeedBurner in Russia anyone) but those were the ones that caught my attention as I got caught up from my self-imposed electronic exile.
David Cohen has a great post up about the failure of one of his startup – iContact. Even though iContact failed, David and his partners still managed to return 78% of the investment to their investors. His two lessons: (1) control the distribution of your product and (2) start small and prove something before you start to scale up.
Scott Converse has an extensive post about his second board meeting. I’m a couple of months into my investment in ClickCaster and I’m very pleased with the progress Scott and crew have made. I’m particularly happy with how effectively Scott listens, processes feedback, and acts on it.
Nick Bradbury just released FeedDemon 2.1. It’s spectacular. I continue to use as many different newsreaders as I can get my hands on – FeedDemon is far and away the best for anyone with a large number (> 100) of feeds being monitored. Nick has plenty of details on his blog, but some of the new features include:
There are plenty more, especially for a x.1 release. Attention, search, and security – look for a lot more of this across NewsGator’s products.
When IE 7 and Firefox 2 came out, they both added a lot of RSS-related functionality. As part of this, they both implemented their version of “smart landing” pages for when a user clicks on an RSS feed link. While this is a nice idea, it broke cardinal rule number one of being “publisher friendly” – they both override any custom landing pages that a publisher (e.g. me – my blog) has put together.
Since I use FeedBurner to publish my feed, I’m used to all the nifty landing page features they provide. FeedBurner – through their “Browser Friendly” service, has always provided plenty of options for my RSS landing page. Suddenly – any IE 7 or Firefox 2 user no longer got “my” landing page.
FeedBurner solved this today with an upgrade to their Browser Friendly service. They’ll let you have it any way you want – browser native format, raw XML, or FeedBurner formatted landing page.