I have listened to NPR every day that I’m in the car on my way into work for as long as I can remember. I have fond memories of hearing Morning Edition in the car as a kid whenever my dad drove me in the morning (which was very rarely – my bike got a good workout.) Last year house Republicans tried to kill funding for NPR and PBS – it was defeated.
They are trying again this year. Stuff like this always baffles me when I see what our tax dollars are being used for. If you are like me and are a NPR (or PBS) fan, here’s an easy way to sign a petition to tell Congress to save NPR and PBS again this year.
I occasionally hear things from people about how “spam is on the decline.” This always entertains me because immediately after receiving an email like this, I get a 200 message comment spam attack on my blog and three IM windows pop up in Trillian with random people I don’t know saying “Hi” with a link to what I’m sure is something truly evil.
Yesterday, Postini announced that instant messaging attacks had increased by 500% in May. They are dealing with large enough numbers and a diverse enough sample size for the numbers to be statistically significant. Here are some interesting ones for you.
Instant Messaging
If you like stats, Postini has consolidated ones across their entire system. IM (what I think of as “Spim”) is clearly on the rise.
Spam in the blogosphere has continued to accelerate unabated. Why – oh why – do people think that I want a comment that says something like “I haven’t been up to much today. I’ve just been letting everything happen without me. Basically nothing seems worth bothering with. I’ve just been hanging out doing nothing. I just don’t have anything to say right now. More or less nothing happening.” on my blog with an associated link? At least my filters are working on the porn ones now.
Just when you thought you’d never hear from me and Jason on 409A again, we received the following missive from a lawyer friend of ours:
(The) IRS is now saying that drafting final regs is too hard and that they won’t be out until late summer/early fall. That translates into September/October in my head. Apparently they’re having issues with putting together startup valuation rules.
Well, at least we don’t feel so stupid now thinking that complying with 409A is an almost impossible task. As previously stated in our 409A series, the idea of coming up with any “real” private company valuation is, at best, a shot in the dark. Nice to see the IRS struggling with a monster of its own making.
We can’t wait to see what guidance they come out with.
Fortune had a really good article on how MySQL is building a commercial open source company. However, buried in the article is a typo that I expect was introduced by Fortune’s editors.
It’s not as if MySQL workers get some perverse kick out of catching colleagues goofing off, though. They know how common it is for e-mail or voice messages to be misconstrued, so they watch what they say. Fire off a dumb question to one of MySQL’s mailing lists, and you are likely get back the terse rebuke “RTFM” – read the freakin’ manual.
Dear Fortune Editors: RTFM means “Read The Fucking Manual.” Even Wikipedia says it, so it must be true, although they seem to assert that “Read The Freakin’ Manual” in an acceptable substitute to avoid using the expletive “Fucking.” But seriously guys, everyone knows that Freakin’ = Fucking in this case – why mess with one of all the all time great initialisms of the programming universe?
NewsGator announced today that it has partnered with GMO Internet Group to provide a localized, hosted version of NewsGator Enterprise in the Japanese market. I’ve been impressed with GMO – they’ve also partnered with FeedBurner on the Japanese version of FeedBurner.
Geographic expansion, especially for young fast growing companies, especially in Asia, is tough. After spending time in Europe last month, I heard the same thing over and over from the VCs and entrepreneurs that I spoke with – namely “the biggest weakness of US companies is they come over here thinking that everything works the same way, but it doesn’t.” This wasn’t just aimed at “US is different than Europe” – it was a bigger statement – namely even thought there is an EU, each country is different. I’ve heard this for a decade, seen the downside of this many times, and believe it continues to be a very true statement.
Now – this conversation is nothing new in the world of VC-backed companies. I’ve been through the “let’s expand to Europe and Asia immediately” cycle, capitulated in the delightful 2001 – 2003 time frame (Europe / Asia – where are they again?), and now am faced with “The World Is Flat – we’ve got to go to Europe and Asia.” While I don’t resist the “we’ve got to go to Europe and Asia”, I’ve learned from my experiences (good and bad) that the “how” is what is important. In the case of NewsGator, a big part of the how is with partners, including VNU in Europe and GMO in Japan.
This announcement also has another little nugget – the product that GMO and NewsGator will be releasing together in the Japanese market is a hosted version of the NewsGator Enterprise product. Geographic partners usually know their market entry strategies best – it’s important to listen to them.
Since I promoted my mom yesterday, I’ll help my friend Jeff Clavier promote his wife Bernadette today. She’s been involved in the Stanford Center for Social Innovation and has just launched a podcast called Social Innovation Conversations. According to Jeff,
The purpose of “Social Innovation Conversations” is to be a collaborative online platform for experts, community leaders, and scholars to share their knowledge across sectors for multi-disciplinary learning. The Center will offer conferences, faculty lectures, speaker events and expert interviews. In addition, leading professional and other academic institutions will be invited to contribute content to the channel to raise public awareness about the grand challenges of the world.
If you want a place to start, Zach Warren’s “Laughter in a Time of War” is a good one.
I kept telling myself I wouldn’t do this, but I just can’t help myself. It’s 6:06am (according to my computer) on 6/6/06. The Omen is in theaters today. FeedBurner is ranked 666 on Alexa. 666 is a hot tag on Technorati. You can watch 666 videos on YouTube. People are wishing the anti-christ happy birthday on the web and reminding us that evil is just live spelled backwards. Hell, Michigan is having a big party today. There are 128 photos on Flickr about 06/06/06 (of course, 128 is a really pretty number also.) Google came out with a spreadsheet today to help you play with numbers.
My mom, who happens to be my favorite artist in the world, is having an exhibit at The Dairy Center for the Arts. The exhibit – called American Landscapes: Two Views – features Cecelia Feld and Maureen Burkhart.
The opening reception is Friday, June 16th, from 5pm – 7pm at The Dairy Center for The Arts, 2590 Walnut Street in Boulder, Colorado. I’ll be there – come say hi, hang out, and look at the art (please make sure you say hi to my mom.) Yes – there will be food.
NewsGator announced today Spencer Stuart, one of the oldest Executive Search firms in the world, has deployed NewsGator’s Enterprise Server product. Todd Berkowitz has a nice explanation of how Spencer Stuart is using RSS in the enterprise, including leveraging NewsGator’s API.