This one has all the trappings of a potential debacle. Patent holding company targets Linux, files lawsuits against Red Hat and Novell.
As some superhero once said, “there are evil forces at large in the world.” Where is Super-No-Software-Patent-Man when we need him?
In his post 30 Thoughts At 30,000 feet, Fred Wilson referred to Alex Iskold as “a freak of nature.” Fred supports this by saying “He writes code, runs a company, and does amazing blog posts for Read Write Web that are better than most Gartner research reports. I’d ask how he finds the time to do all of that, but I know the answer. Full disclosure – Alex’ company, Adaptive Blue, is a Union Square Ventures portfolio company.”
I’ve gotten to know Alex over the past year (I’m also a small investor in Adaptive Blue) and I’ve begun referring to Alex as “the big brain.” Almost all of our communication is via email (I see him every now and then) and I’ve started envisioning him as a gigantic brain suspended in some funky liquid with a cable coming out of it that is connected to a computer (if I was a little better with Photoshop I might even draw you a picture of it.)
As Fred says, Alex “does amazing blog posts for Read Write Web that are better than most Gartner research reports.” I agree and read each of them carefully as part of trying to increase my cognitive reasoning functions around the theme I call The Implicit Web. Alex’s post today titled The Structured Web – A Primer is another excellent one. In this post Alex does a great job of linking together four things that I spend plenty of time thinking about – APIs, semantic information, microformats, and RSS.
Keep them coming Alex.
Scoble has a 20 minute interview up with Eric Norlin discussing Defrag and other conferences that Eric has helped start. If you haven’t heard of Defrag, it’s a new conference being organized by Eric taking place in Denver on November 5 – 6. The sound bite overview is:
Defrag is the first conference focused solely on the internet-based tools that transform loads of information into layers of knowledge, and accelerate the “aha” moment. Defrag is about the space that lives in between knowledge management, “social” networking, collaboration and business intelligence. Defrag is not a version number. Rather it’s a gathering place for the growing community of implementers, users, builders and thinkers that are working on the next wave of software innovation.
In short – “the Implicit Web.” The agenda and lineup of speakers is incredible. Eric has done an incredible job and has been blogging furiously about it.
Now that we are less than a month out, it’s time to register if you want to join us. The conference will sell out because we’ve capped the total number of attendees so sign up now and come play.
There are many great things about being married to Amy. One of them is that she reads piles of things – like Wallpaper – that never make it on to my pile. Not only does she read them, but she tears out stuff that she thinks I’d like.
An article titled Cuter computers showed up on my “from Amy” stack with an interesting article about the NextGen PC Design Competition. Microsoft and the Industrial Designers Society of America are co-sponsoring it. The website appears to be borked right now (e.g. “Due to technical difficulties, we are not able to collect submissions at this time”) – hopefully it’ll be back in submission collection mode soon.
Another great thing about Amy is that she doesn’t yell at me when I wake her up at 5:30am with a pair of dogs with porcupine quills in their snouts.
Semantic Web. Implicit Web. Web 3.0. Lot’s of happy new buzz phrases being tossed about. Of course, the academic one is “semantic web” – all the rest are made up trendy things.
While there are plenty of abstract ideas about this, and lots more simple instantiations that are tiny pieces of the concept, Alex Iskold of Adaptive Blue is going after the whole enchilada in a way even my father would enjoy. I’ve known Alex for a while via his writing and my small investment in Adaptive Blue and I love the way his brain works around a variety of topics, including The New Rules of Technology VC.
Jennifer Zaino interviewed Alex the other day in an article titled The Semantic Curmudgeon and nailed a bunch of stuff. If this topic interests you, it’s a good read.
I’m going to pile on to Fred Wilson’s post titled Web 3.0 Nonsense where he suggests that Jason Calacanis’s Web 3.0, the official definition is “nonsensical versioning.”
I’ve never liked the Web 2.0 label. I don’t like the Enterprise 2.0 label. I don’t like anything about the 2.0 label. I can’t even begin to think about wrapping my mind around the 3.0 label.
I was in a meeting with an entrepreneur the other who I like a lot. He’s got a neat company, is making great progress, has a good understanding of what he is trying to do, and is now out in front of customers with his product. However, his investor presentation had “2.0” littered through it. Web 2.0. Enterprise 2.0. Community 2.0. Marketing 2.0. After the meeting, I gave him a lot of feedback, including my allergic reaction to all things labeled 2.0.
Labels should be evocative. 2.0 might have meant something once – when the energy around the Web began emerging again out of the rubble of the Internet crash of 2001. But it doesn’t mean anything to me any more. Be wary of labels that mean nothing.
For the last 20 years the solution to at least 50% of my computer problems is “reboot.” Interestingly this is no longer a PC problem. While working on getting Amy’s Mac set up this weekend, I rebooted TWICE. I rebooted (turn off – wait 15 seconds – turn back on) my car this morning when the radio didn’t come on. I had to reboot my iPod this morning because it was frozen. My Garmin watch needed rebooting on Friday because – hell – I don’t know. The solution to the problem with my new Sony PS/3 – unplug it and plug it back in. Troubleshooting tip #1 on my new Dish HD receiver – turn it off and turn it back on. Don’t even get me started about my Vista boxes.
I put this in the category of “fucking stupid.” It’s not going to work to have to reboot my consciousness 20 years from now.
Brilliant moves by Widgetbox and Dapper (I’m not an investor in either company.) Both of them have released “development tools for building Facebook apps.” Widgetbox’s App Accelerator helps you turn Widgetbox widgets into Facebook apps. Dapper’s AppMaker helps you turn “Dapps” (Dapper Apps) into Facebook apps. Look for a lot more tools like this, but these first movers are both smart and neat.
As usual, Joel Spolsky has an excellent explanation of the Excel 100000 bug. (Thanks Rick)