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October 2004 Archives
October 29, 2004
Friday Watch: Military intelligence in action---happy 35th birthday to the internet!
The internet grew out of work on the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) funded by the U.S. Department of Defense. A key goal of ARPANET was to create a communications network that could survive a nuclear war.
If parts of the network were to be disabled due to nuclear blasts, messages could be automatically routed around damaged parts of the network to reach their destination. This continues to be a key capability of the internet, routing data packets across a variety of intermediate networks, to their destination.
It’s lucky that the DoD decided not to use the technology. Surviving a nuclear blast is one thing (cockroaches can do it)--surviving the script kiddies who send out worms and viruses is a lot more difficult.
October 29, 2004 |
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Friday Watch: "What you say on the Internet can affect your real life"
by Doug Millison for SiliconValleyWatcher.com
A blogger's nightmare come true: criticize the President, get the third degree from the Secret Service.
From the blogger's report on the frightening late-night knock at the door and subsequent interrogation:
A couple of weeks ago, following the last presidential debate, I said some rather inflammatory things about George W. Bush in a public post in my LJ, done in a satirical style. We laughed, we ranted, we all said some things. I thought it was a fairly harmless (and rather obvious) attempt at humor in the face of annoyance, and while a couple of people were offended, as is typical behavior from me, I saw something shiny and forgot about it, thinking that the whole thing was over and done and nothing else would come of what I said.I was wrong.
At 9:45 last night, the Secret Service showed up on my mother's front door to talk to me about what I said about the President, as what I said could apparently be misconstrued as a threat to his life. After about ten minutes of talking to me and my family, they quickly came to the conclusion that I was not a threat to national security (mostly because we are the least threatening people in the entire world) and told me that they would not recommend that any further action be taken with my case. However, I do now have a file with the FBI that includes my photograph, my e-mail address, and the location of my LJ. This will follow me around for the rest of my life, regardless of the fact that the Secret Service knows that I am not a threat.
Chilling.
Links:
a word to the wise, Live Journal blog entry from the target of the Secret Service investigation
October 29, 2004 |
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Friday Watch: X-Ray specs
by Doug Millison for SiliconValleyWatcher.com
At the back of the comic books I enjoyed as a boy, the two advertisements that intrigued me the most were the one for a body-building course that would make me the object of admiration for a bevy of beach beauties, and the "X-Ray" spectacles that promised to let me see through my admirers' bikinis.
I never did bulk up like the Muscle Beach boys, but now it seems the school-boy dream of X-Ray spectacles has come true:
A third party developer in Tokyo, Yamada Denshi, has developed an add-on to Vodafone handsets, intended to be used as a night filter to allow Big Red's customers to take pictures with their phones in the dark.Unfortunately, the night vision camera has an unexpected side effect - in the right circumstances, it allows users to see a lot more than they bargained for. As well as taking snaps in the dark, the Yamada Denshi infrared filter sees through people's clothes.
When attached to a high-end camera, the device can give the effect of seeing through some garments – it depends on how easily infrared can penetrate the fabric in question - and is reportedly particularly effective on dark bikinis.
Answering your next question, the device only works with one kind of Vodaphone handset available only in Japan.
Vodaphone is, incredibly, insisting that they would never put on the market a telephone with the ability to view other people naked.
I expect they'll come to a different, more profit-minded judgement, after the discovery percolates for awhile in Vodaphone's new product development and marketing organizations.
Link:
Peeping Tom filter lets phones see through bikinis by Jo Best, Silicon.com, October 25 2004
October 29, 2004 |
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Friday Watch: Technology moves fast but some publishers type slowly
Our good buddy Tom Abate at the SF Chronicle used to cover the tech beat in the early to mid-1990s before switching to biotech. And there was a wonderful billboard, in a very prominent position on highway 101—not far from Oracle’s Emerald City--celebrating Tom's talents.
It proclaimed in massive letters:
“Technology moves fast---Tom Abate types faster.”
It seems tech isn’t moving very fast these days. The publisher of the financial newspaper, The Daily Deal, and the magazine The Deal, recently announced it was launching Tech Confidential. A 32-page preview of the magazine has been produced with the press release saying:
"Tech Confidential is bound with the centerfold of The Deal’s November 1 issue…In 2005, Tech Confidential will be published every other month starting in May."
I can’t wait.
Tony Perkins, publisher of online magazine AlwaysON (and former publisher of the Red Herring), is also in no hurry to chase down the tech tortoise. He is launching a quarterly print magazine this winter:
"The AlwaysOn magazine will be a regularly-scheduled briefing on innovation in technology and media. The first issue will include breakout interviews with Bill Gates, Michael Powell, Jonathan Schwartz, Stratton Sclavos, and other top industry luminaries."
I can’t wait.
October 29, 2004 |
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Friday Watch: San Francisco flacks flocking south of Market
Much of San Francisco’s PR community seems to be moving to offices down by the SBC ballpark. Bite PR are celebrating the opening of their new office there soon. Outcast Communications are in the middle of moving to that area. And I recently heard that Sterling Communications is moving there too.
And it is not because Cnet’s News.com is near by—it’s simply because the rents are dirt-cheap. “We can get great office space for under $2 per square foot, compared to $30 or more elsewhere,” says Elke Heiss, vice president at Sterling Communications. “Also, it has easy access for our clients coming up from the valley, and cheap $6 all day parking.” She adds.
With so many other PR companies already in that neighborhood—it’s reader suggestion time! In the early 1990’s with the CDROM and multimedia “revolution” we had an area of San Francisco called “Multimedia Gulch.”
Maybe it could be called the “Flack District” ala the Garment District.
Or how about “Spin City?”
Your votes and suggestions please.
October 29, 2004 |
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Friday Watch: Earliest citation of Geek Beacon
I’m trying to get this term into WordSpy (see below) and into common usage:
Geek Beacon, the use of a bright display on a Treo or mobile phone to hail a taxi, or signal to others at night.And it works! I was using my Geek Beacon just the other evening and a taxi pulled up within seconds. The driver said that about six months ago he had picked up a guy that had been waving a device that flashed “taxi” using LED lights. This guy was from Chicago and was planning to market the devices for about $50 a piece.
That’s too bad. The Geek Beacon comes as a free standard feature on many “smart” phones such as my Treo 600.
Earliest citation: SiliconValleyWatcher.
October 29, 2004 | Permalink | Tag: Friday Watch
View blog reactions | RSS Feed | Subscribe to daily SVW Newsletter!Friday Watch: the earliest citation of the term “screenager.”
I was ego-surfing again, testing out a few of the newer search engines and I came across this blast from the past on a site called WordSpy, which tracks words and their origins.
"screenager (SCREE.nay.jur) n. A young person who has grown up with, and is therefore entirely comfortable with, a world of screens, particularly televisions, computers, ATMs, cell phones, and so on."As an example of its use, it quotes a December 2002 article by Michael Snider using the term screenager.
The earliest citation of the word is in 1994 by guess who, quoting guess who:
"Meanwhile, new magazines are rapidly being launched to target the home market. Oakland-based Blast Publishing Inc. is preparing to launch a major national magazine called Blast, which, according to Publisher Doug Millison, will be a "lifestyle magazine aimed at 'screenagers', teenagers and twentysomethings that have grown up with PCs and video games."
—Tom Foremski, "Homes are prime PC frontier," The San Francisco Examiner, June 19, 1994"Here is the full entry from Wordspy.
UPDATE: Doug Millison adds that "screenager" was actually coined by Dave Pola, sales and marketing honcho for Morph's Outpost, Inc. (which published the pioneering magazine for interactive multimedia designers and developers, Morph's Outpost on the Digital Frontier, from 1993 to 1995) and sister company, Blast Publishing, Inc. which published Blaster magazine. (The magazine was originally called Blast, but that was changed to Blaster, for intellectual property reasons, by the time the magazine launched.) Journalist, Doug Rushkoff, now a professor at NYU, helped to popularize the term "screenager," beginning in the column that he wrote for Blaster.
October 29, 2004 | Permalink | Tag: Friday Watch
View blog reactions | RSS Feed | Subscribe to daily SVW Newsletter!October 25, 2004
Cashing in on GOOG real estate through Google
By Tom Foremski - SiliconValleyWatcher.com
As I was researching a story on Google through Google’s search engine, I popped in the stock ticker GOOG and guess what turned up on the side sponsored link? An advert for a $2.2m home in Menlo Park, right in GOOG’s neighborhood. And the name of the realtor company? Cashin Company Realtors.
Very clever, I thought, what an excellent way to target those newly paper-rich Googlers who are checking on the GOOG share price through Google. But what surprised me even more was that there was only ONE sponsored link for GOOG.
Does this mean that Cashin outbid everyone for the adword link? Or does it mean that only one local realtor knows how to run a Google ad campaign? It’s probably the latter.
Which means there is way more room for Google to grow as people become familiar with running a Google online ad words campaign.
October 25, 2004 | Permalink | Tag: Friday Watch
View blog reactions | RSS Feed | Subscribe to daily SVW Newsletter!VC Watch: Google share surge could lead to VCs cashing out to avoid huge expiring lockup
By Tom Foremski - SiliconValleyWatcher.com
Wall Street’s delight with Google’s first quarterly financial report late last week led to a big jump in Google’s share price as analysts boosted their earnings estimates. This seemed a little worrying in that it reminded some of the internet bubble years when analysts were accused of hyping dotcoms with large upgrades…and we know the rest of the story.
It’s not quite the same this time around. The Google jump stems more from analysts getting to grips with Google’s business model and understanding the dynamics of the surge in online advertising. Analysts now have more information to make a better judgement on Google’s future performance.
The key for Google will be in how effective it is in managing Wall Street expectations—this is important to its stated goal of reducing the volatility of its stock. However, managing expectations is made harder if Google won’t talk about future financial performance—as it said prior to its $1.67bn IPO.
One interesting question right now is: when will Google’s VC investors time the sale of their stock?
Remember: a huge chunk was pulled out of the IPO auction by Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, who didn’t like the offering price. The two VC firms together held about 4.5m shares.
They must weight up the fact that there are about 243m shares coming out of lockup from November to February 14. It wouldn’t be a huge surprise if those VC firms decide to celebrate Valentine’s Day a few months earlier—especially since Google’s share price is now more than double its IPO price. That’s why they call it “smart” money.
But, they would also have to be “smart” in the way they sell those shares, which would increase by about 14 per cent the current 27m share float. The danger would be in depressing the share price if so many shares came onto the market at once.
In the last bubble (not that this is a bubble necessarily) the VCs took their money off the table when they could---while employees and small investors held onto their shares and suffered the consequences.
October 25, 2004 | Permalink | Tag: VC Watch
View blog reactions | RSS Feed | Subscribe to daily SVW Newsletter!Tech Watch: Intel invests in Clearwire
by Doug Millison, SiliconValleyWatcher.com
At least one high-powered Wall Street investment banker - an old buddy of mine who emailed me this morning - has his eye on Clearwire, a new company from cell phone empire-builder Craig McCaw... and so does Intel.
Intel Capital has made an unspecified investment in Clearwire, the company announced today, as part of a broader $150 million strategy in wireless technology.
Clearwire will use Intel chips in the nationwide network it is assembling to provide wireless broadband Internet and telephone service, using the emerging WiMAX technology, based on the IEEE 802.16e standard. WiMax is expected to compete with cable modems and DSL within a few years, and can link existing wireless Wi-Fi to fixed network infrastructure.
"McCaw is a smart guy," says my Wall Street friend, who knows where the skeletons are buried in some of the bond deals that financed the first wave of cellular phone networks in the 1990s, and the more recent wave of investment in wireless spectrum.
Clearwire has acquired dedicated spectrum for the new service from companies that managed to raise capital to bid on frequencies at US government auction, then went bankrupt before being able to roll out service. Another McCaw company, NextNet, is supplying technology to the project. In August, Clearwire launched its first broadband wireless network in Jacksonville, Florida. The network, using NextNet technology, is a precursor to upcoming WiMAX networks.
McCaw built the first nationwide cellular empire, McCaw Cellular, and sold it to AT&T for $11.5 billion in 1994.
Links:
Intel, Clearwire to Accelerate Deployment of WiMAX Networks Worldwide, Intel's press releaseIntel Capital, information about Intel's investment unit
Clearwire, corporate site
NexNet, corporate site
Craig McCaw's Secret Plan: His deals in wireless broadband have the telecom world buzzing, in Business Week Online, 24 May 2004
October 25, 2004 | Permalink | Tag: Tech Watch
View blog reactions | RSS Feed | Subscribe to daily SVW Newsletter!October 24, 2004
Silicon Valley Watcher Scoop! Intel beats out DHL for $20m deal to sponsor U2 tour
Silicon Valley’s love affair with the band U2 is about to expand into a ménage a trios, with Intel jumping into bed with the Irish rock band as sponsor of its world tour--reports our very own Silicon Valley Watcher, Jochen Siegle, also a contributing writer to the top German weekly news magazine, Der Spiegel, and Spiegel Online.
According to sources close to the deal, the value of the sponsorship deal is about $20m and Intel outbid DHL, the international package delivery company for the top sponsorship slot. It is part of Intel’s efforts to extend its “Intel Inside” brand into consumer electronics markets.
The deal expands on Silicon Valley's involvement with U2, and it signifies the growing importance of consumer electronics to the region’s technology companies and venture capital investments. Apple Computer is expected later this week to introduce a black iPod, pre-loaded with U2’s forthcoming CD release “ How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.” The songs will be available on Apple’s iTunes service about 1 month before they are released on CD.
U2’s lead singer, Bono, is working with Elevation Partners, a venture capital firm that includes Roger McNamee from Silver Lake Partners, Fred Anderson, the former Apple Chief Financial Officer, and John Riccitiello, former president of Electronic Arts.
The “Intel Inside” campaign has been extremely successful within the PC market. But now Intel’s focus is shifting to consumer electronics, where the Intel brand has less heft.
Intel has been trying to raise its profile in consumer electronics, where its XScale based-chips--based on designs by ARM, the UK chip company--and flash memory chips are used in some cell phones and other digital devices. It has also been heavily promoting the concept of the “digital home” where video, music and internet services can be freely shared within the home.
However, Intel’s cancellation of its large-screen TV chip last week, and prior short-lived forays into consumer electronics markets with its own branded digital music players and other products--are some of the challenges it will face expanding its brand into consumer electronics markets.
U2 could be a valuable ally in Intel’s brand building. U2’s audience includes plenty of people who grew up with U2 more than 20 years ago and now constitute a valuable demographic with plenty of money to buy expensive digital entertainment systems.
The sponsorship deal also indirectly associates Intel with Apple’s iPod music player--an association that sources close to the deal say was a key factor for Intel.
Hewlett-Packard is another large Silicon Valley company that has been keen to exploit the Apple iPod brand. Earlier this year it struck a deal with Apple to offer a HP branded iPod.
October 24, 2004 | Permalink | Tag: Tech Watch
View blog reactions | RSS Feed | Subscribe to daily SVW Newsletter!October 22, 2004
Friday Watch: Larry Ellison’s Favorite Paper? / Best in International Media & Public relations
The Pressclub of California hosted the First International Media Summit in Palo Alto last night (21 Oct.). Additionally, members of the Pressclub handed out the 2004 Awards for the Best in International Media & Public relations in the tech industry.
The Pressclub’s 100+ members, foreign correspondents from all over the world as well as numerous domestic reporters, voted “Best in International Media & Public Relations in 2004” the following:
1. Intel
2. Cisco
3. Sun Microsystems
Agnes Kwan (Intel), Ron Pivosan (Cisco) and Kristin Huguet (Sun) took home a good bottle of French (of course, monsieur) champagne. Cheers!
Named as the top 3 tech companies needing improvement in International Media & Public relations were:1. HP
2. Yahoo
3. Google
Apple received a special award: Simultaneously best and worst in PR. As several foreign correspondents have noticed in the last couple of years, Apple treats international reporters simply “not at all” or with arrogance. The local teams though (I can speak especially for the folks in Apple’s Munich office) are doing a great job. Too bad the key deciscions are made in Cupertino and not in Bavaria . . .
Another story on the side: Kristin Hollins, International PR Manager at Oracle, and also one of the Panelists on Moderator Tom Sanders' Panel on Best Practices in International Media Relations, mentioned what Larry Ellison’s favourite paper is: The Financial Times. Of course!
Enjoy the weekend!
October 22, 2004 | Permalink | Tag: Friday Watch
View blog reactions | RSS Feed | Subscribe to daily SVW Newsletter!PR Watch: Outcast dinner party Part II -- bits and bites…
Let me rush through the dinner highlights:
Margit and Caryn took the stage to welcome the guests, and they both looked fabulous. They attempted a joke about how Margit, being from Germany, did not know the term “home plate” and thought it was a type of food plate. It’s quite understandable—Margit seems to be on some kind of super Atkins—so she might get a little hungry occasionally.
. . .
I was delighted to find that Gary Reback, Silicon Valley’s top lawyer IMHO, was seated at my table. In the 1990s, Gary helped to set in motion the antitrust complaint against Microsoft, which led to the government winning the case. He has just finished with the PeopleSoft court case, is working on a book, and is looking for his next challenge.
He’s very concerned about Washington D.C, and that the legislators do not understand the technology business. This could lead to problem regulations or ineffectual legislation. Gary is not one of those lawyers that chase after the dollar—he really wants to make a big contribution on large issues.
When I was at the FT, I had the scoop on Gary’s comeback into the law profession. During the dotcom boom Gary founded a communications technology startup company called Voxeo, and became its chief executive. “I wanted to have the business experience of running a startup, but, as CEO, managing teams of software engineers was a lot harder than I expected. And as for dealing with our lawyers....I can understand why lawyers are often so disliked.”
. . .
The indefatigable Tony Perkins, founder of AlwaysOn, Red Herring, Churchill Club, etc, etc, was at the party. I mentioned that he seems to have a ton of stuff going on right now with AlwaysOn. He is launching a quarterly magazine, there is a blog magazine, conferences, etc. “I feel that we’ve come to a stage now where we can monetize our efforts,” he said. Monetizing content is a huge challenge and I hope Tony figures things out—because then we can all benefit from examples of successful online media business models.
. . .
I had an interesting chat with David Helfrich from Garnett & Helfrich Capital. David made his money the traditional Silicon Valley way by working at startups that were then sold for large sums to larger players. This put him into the venture capital business for several years. His focus now, however, is not VC investments, but on financing deals with private, medium sized companies. He says such deals can be very complex---which keeps out the competition.
Mr Helfrich said he got out of the VC business because it hasn’t changed in years and it is not producing the value it once did. He said there are too many VCs living off the very generous fund management fees and doing little in return. I heartily agree--if you have a $1bn fund and the management fee is 2 per cent, the VC team doesn’t need to worry too much about eating, or finding a roof over their heads—or risky investments. I think the investment landscape has changed tremendously in Silicon Valley, yet the VCs are still doing business the old fashioned way. They are still following a herd mentality and seem bereft of good ideas.
It is networks of Angel investors, such as TIE and Silicom Ventures that are going to be the major beneficiaries of the changes occurring —but more on that topic later…
. . .
In the Redwood room later on, it was always a pleasure to chat with the very tall Cory Johnson, Silicon Valley business reporter for CNBC and a familar talking head to many. (I’m hoping he can introduce me to Maria at some point!)
I didn’t hang around too long—although I do remember demonstrating the inherent instability of a Manhattan cocktail to Joe Fay, US editor of Computerwire, using part of his shirt in the demo. BTW, Joe might be leaving Computerwire soon, which would create an internal power vacuum, one that the young but ambitious Kevin Murphy, Computerwire reporter, would like to fill.
October 22, 2004 | Permalink | Tag: PR Watch
View blog reactions | RSS Feed | Subscribe to daily SVW Newsletter!Friday Watch: Fantastic Voyage
Mike Langberg puts the "embedded" back into journalism in his San Jose Mercury News column, with a first-person tale of adventure that, well, made my skin crawl.
I'm rolling up my sleeve, ready to get injected with the VeriChip. That's the device cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration earlier this month as the first implantable electronic identification tag linked to a person's medical profile.Langberg's entertaining column explores the privacy and medical safety concerns of the device and offers five guidelines for federal laws he hopes will be adopted to avoid abuse of the devices.
As I was reading it, I couldn't help remembering one of my favorite, cheesy sci-fi flicks of the '60s, day-dreaming about riding inside the VeriChip, with Raquel Welch in a 21st century remake of Fantastic Voyage.
After all, it's Friday.
Links:Under my skin by Mike Langberg, San Jose Mercury News, 22 October 2004
October 22, 2004 | Permalink | Tag: Friday Watch
View blog reactions | RSS Feed | Subscribe to daily SVW Newsletter!Friday Watch: Voodo Goojoo!
Some playful Silicon Valley types are, no doubt, planning their migration north for next Friday's can't-miss event: Anon Salon's Voodo Goojoo!
Voodoo Goojo! is fruit of Mark "Spoonman" Petrakis' twisted mind. (Petrakis put together a mind-blowing evening's entertainment for the Morph's Outpost Art Teco conference that marked a beginning for the emerging San Francisco interactive multimedia community back in '94.)
Just reading Petrakis' invite for next week's party wore this old codger out, but I'm confident the youngsters are on the beam, ready, willing, and able:
ANON SALON
oozes sum
VOODOO GOO-JOOB!
Cult of the Paranormal Hell-O-Ween
Sordid favors and human sacrifice!
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2004
@ Anon Gallery
285 9th Street (@ Folsom)/ SF
9 pm - late
$10 b4 10pm
$15 after 10pm: Possessed
$20: Neither here nor therehttp://www.anonsalon.com/hello04
Featuring...
BonEWiCkED GraveYard
• OBADAYO (ANON SALON)
• ALIA (13 MOONTRIBE)
• GARTH (WICKED)
• JENÖ (WICKED)CaVE of the sNeAKy MoNKEy
• LATE NIGHT SNEAKY (Illuminated Live Funk w/ Vocals)
• LUX (aka Rodman) (Laptop Loo-ping)
• STARLIT (Live Drum-Driven World Mix)
• SPACED COWBOY BREAK-FEAST (Kirk & Chip)
• RANDOM AMBUSH COSTUME CONTEST
* GOBLINS A GLO-GOPaGAN REz-ErEc-TING-LE
• HAUNTED GALLERIES/ FALLEN ANGLE INNER SANCTUMS/
• FRIGHTENINGLY TALENTED ART ATTACKS!
• DR. SPOOK / MAD VISUALZ
• VOODOO DOLL TRANS-FEARS
• 99¢ BRAIN OPERATIONS
• PAST LIFE READINGS/ EDITED FOR THE JUICY PARTS
• DIY POLI-TRICKY HEX-A-GRAM (Exorcise the White House)
(Pin the Bush on Laura)
• MICHAEL'S LIGHT TOYS
• DARK HEART TAROT W/ ANAHID
• RE-ANIMATOR MASSAGE
PLUS SPIDERWEB ROOF GARDEN
(RESPECT THE NEIGHBORS! NO DRUMMING, PLEASE)
* NEON PLUSHY ROOM / SECURE COAT CHECK
& more..
YR ANON-M-US HOSTS:
Joegh "Cadavah" Bullock & Mark "GrueSumSpoon" Petrakis
Link:
Anon SalonOctober 22, 2004 | Permalink | Tag: Friday Watch
View blog reactions | RSS Feed | Subscribe to daily SVW Newsletter!PR Watch: The Outcast CEO dinner party part 1: The Silicon Valley Hack Pack turns up...
Outcast Communications, the public relations agency, has been doing very well lately and that showed clearly at its 3rd Annual CEO dinner at the Clift on Wednesday evening. The place was full of Silicon Valley luminaries, including much of Silicon Valley's Hack Pack of leading journalists. I picked up some great stories, (however, I also picked up a hangover and forgot some of them!)
Outcast was founded by Margit Wennmachers and Caryn Marooney in 1997 and I've been a fan for a long time because of the "startup" culture of Outcast. It has outgrown its “boutique” image by winning some large corporate clients such as EMC’s software group, and Dell’s Enterprise group. (More on Outcast next week...now back to the party.)
Fortunately for the many baseball fans amongst the hundred or so guests, Outcast had set up a large TV outside the dining room for pre-dinner cocktails. And there was a large and lively crowd following the game.
I preferred the TV-less lounge area, where I could catch up with fellow reporters, such as Constance Loizos, a lead reporter for Dow Jones Venture Capital Analyst: Technology newsletter. This is also where Andreas Kluth from the Economist was hiding out. I was complaining that I hardly see him, “that’s because I hate driving over the bridge and into the city,” he said. And that is how you know that an event is worthwhile attending if you see that Andreas is there.
Jason Maynard, software analyst at Merrill Lynch was also in the lounge area. I asked him if he had been following Salesforce.com at all. Interestingly, Jason said he had not yet initiated coverage of Outcast's largest, and oldest client--Saleforce.com--led by the colorful Marc Benioff.(I wish the valley had more Benioffs BTW.)
Jason and I listened to the delightful Julia Blystone from Outcast tell us about Halsey Minor’s new $50m “On Demand” venture capital fund. It targets “On Demand” investments. It was announced earlier in the month but I missed it.
I asked who else is funding the fund and was told it is all Halsey. And why not? Halsey has shown a Midas touch and has done very well. He did very well on his Cnet stock, selling a big chunk before the bubbles popped. And more recently, he has done very well out of his buddy Marc Benioff’s Salesforce.com IPO. Halsey was an early investor in Salesforce and had a nice chunk of that deal. And he is also pushing hard with his Grand Central Communications web services company.
As an aside, I found an interesting link to a webinar conducted jointly between Halsey and Jason Maynard. Next time I see Jason I’d like to ask him how this type of thing is set up. For example, can I hire a Merrill analyst to do a webinar? Or is it a customer type of thing, say, if I kept my IRA at Merrill?
From a posting on WebServices.org:
“Enterprise Software in an On Demand World - Webinar, 17th June, 10am PSTJoin Jason Maynard, Software Analyst for Merrill Lynch and Halsey Minor, Founder of Grand Central Communications for an executive webinar to learn how "On Demand software could lower overall cost of deployment by 5x-10x compared to traditional implementation models, effectively changing the way customers buy, vendors sell and investors invest".
http://www.webservices.org/index.php/ws/content/view/full/5080
And this is the press release announcing Halsey's new venture fund. You’ll notice that Halsey’s buddies provide unbiased testaments to the power and insight of his investment skills ;-)http://www.grandcentral.com/news/press_archive/OnDemand_100404
Part II of the Outcast Party report...
October 22, 2004 | Permalink | Tag: PR Watch
View blog reactions | RSS Feed | Subscribe to daily SVW Newsletter!October 21, 2004
Tech Watch: Further evidence of Microsoft's tunnel vision....(Bill, that is not a light--it's a train!)
Steve Ballmer has been talking about the need for an entry level $100 PC in developing countries. This is not because Mr. Ballmer wants to bridge the digital divide. He thinks a $100 PC would help stem software piracy because people would then have money to spend on Microsoft software.
Mike Ricciuti, from News.com, wrote an excellent story on this topic:
"ORLANDO, Fla.--What's one of Steve Ballmer's biggest headaches? It's not Linux or security breaches. It's piracy, the Microsoft CEO said Wednesday."The biggest problem we have right now is that people who should be paying for software aren't," Ballmer told an audience of technology executives at an industry conference here sponsored by market researcher Gartner."
Is Mr. Ballmer saying that the hardware producers should cut their margins so that Microsoft can reap the benefits of its dominant position in software markets? It seems that way. Yes, Microsoft has cut some of its software prices in developing countries--but the piracy of Microsoft and other software in those countries is not a threat to its future revenues. Microsoft should be looking closer to home.
I know lots of people using inexpensive word processors, free web browsers such as the excellent Firefox, using Linux on their PCs, etc. Whenever a viable alternative to using a Microsoft product comes around--it gets a lot of support. For example, I've been playing around with TextPad, which is an excellent shareware word processor, that does everything I will ever need to do.
And the server-side applications are getting better and better. For example, I wrote this entire piece not on Microsoft Word, or TextPad, but within Movable Type blogging software, which sits on a server located somewhere in the "cloud." All I need is a browser window and I can use any computer, even my Treo (another plug for the Geek Beacon!) to input text. The server that runs my Movable Type application uses Linux as the operating system--a choice made not by me, but by my hosting service.
These trends are not favorable to Microsoft. It seems dead in the water these days. Its pipeline of products has been reduced to a trickle. And it is battling huge security issues around its software--deploying many thousands of its programmers to patch security holes instead of developing new products. And it is bereft of any good investment ideas, which is signified by its announcement earlier this year that it would give away a large chunk of its cash mountain to investors.
Is it Microsoft's fault that it needs to deal with these security issues? It often portrays itself as an innocent victim, that its security issues are because of its success, that its dominant position in software markets has made it the number one target for malicious hackers.
But, if it hadn't used illegal means to develop that market dominance in the first place, it would not have been such a large target. There would have been many targets for hackers if other software companies had survived. It would have been too much work for hackers to port their viruses to other platforms and we would have a smaller problem.
Instead, Microsoft used illegal means to drive competitors out of business and now PC users are paying the price in lost productivity due to a plague of viruses, worms, and security exploits.
Mr. Gates and Mr. Ballmer should have taken a lesson from agriculture. If you have a monoculture--you are far more vulnerable to pests and diseases and you need to protect your crops with herbicides and pesticides. Microsoft wanted dominance but it wanted it without impregnating its software with the defenses needed for a monoculture of software products.
Isn't Mr. Gates the Chief Software Architect of Microsoft? Shouldn't he have foreseen many of these security problems? After all, viruses and worms have been around for a long time. The first computer virus spotted in the wild was in 1981--on an Apple II computer. This was when Apple dominated the PC market and its operating system was the largest target around. Shouldn't Mr. Gates have made sure that there were strong defenses against viruses and other security exploits in Microsoft software products from the very beginning?
But, Microsoft is cloistered in the soggy North-West and I strongly believe that this insulates it from critical thinking and the mish mash of ideas and challenges that being in Silicon Valley provides. Microsoft's partner in the PC business, Intel, for example has benefited tremendously from its presence in Silicon Valley. This makes it easier to make tough decisions, such as Intel's big change in its roadmap for future microprocessor designs. Intel, BTW, has done far more to force down the price of PCs than Microsoft. And its strong support for Linux is another indication that it understands the trends and undertows of computer markets far more than Microsoft.
Life in Silicon Valley is hard and often brutal. Companies have to compete in so many ways, for skilled engineers, for markets, for capital, and most do not make it--but this is where the innovative juice is, Bill. Move your HQ down to here; compete on level terms in global markets.
If you can't handle competition, that's fine--give away your ill gotten gains to your investors--but if you can compete you are golden. It is competition that drives you on. Intel knows it, everybody here knows it. Microsoft doesn't IMHO.
News.com story--Ballmer: We Need a $100 PC.News.com story--Microsoft plans to return up to $75 billion to shareholders over the next four years.
The first computer virus in the wild.
October 21, 2004 | Permalink | Comment on this post | Tag: Tech Watch
View blog reactions | RSS Feed | Subscribe to daily SVW Newsletter!PR Watch: The place to be on Wednesday evening was Outcast's 3rd annual CEO dinner at the Clift...
There was a who's who of industry luminaries, top journalists, and excellent conversation. And I picked up a ton of great gossip and items that I'm dying to share with my loyal readers.
But--it will have to wait for Friday because I have to run out and be a reporter. I'm off to yet another glittering event. This one is in San Jose, the annual Awards banquet hosted by SEMI, the trade group. The event celebrates the massive--but long suffering--chip equipment industry.
October 21, 2004 | Permalink | Tag: PR Watch
View blog reactions | RSS Feed | Subscribe to daily SVW Newsletter!October 19, 2004
Media Watch: Partisan hack journalism
Substitute "President Bush" or "John Kerry" for "iPod" in the current rash of stories about an upcoming announcement from Apple and media critics would be screaming about partisan hack journalism.
I've got nothing against Apple - have been a proud Mac user for years - or the iPod, but these stories illustrate one of the worst aspects of technology business journalism: the myopia that leads some journalists and publications to amplify new product announcements into major news events.
In the grand tradition of TV tabloid shows like Entertainment Tonight singing the praises of the latest "breakthough" TV sit-com , Ina Fried's story on CNET today breathlessly announces, "In an invitation to the event, Apple said only that 'Steve Jobs, Bono and The Edge invite you to a special event.' "
Note that the Apple press invite hasn't even been rewritten, it's reproduced without editorial intervention.
Fried goes on to note that "Bono and The Edge are members of the band U2, whose song "Vertigo" is featured in an Apple commercial and is also the top-selling song at Apple's iTunes Music Store."
Where Fried speculates the announcement concerns a special U2 edition of the iPod, pre-loaded with the band's songs, Tony Smith, in The Register, digs deep and trumpets the rumor that the new iPod will be - stop the presses! - black.
It's unfair to single out Fried and Snow for this sort of thing; they appear to be thorough, hard-working journalists published by reputable publications.
What they do in these stories has been common practice in business journalism - both general reader publications and business press - for all of the 20+ years I've been covering Silicon Valley, and it wasn't new when I got here.
"But it is news," the journalists and their editors will respond, "People are interested in the next new iPod."
Indeed. And there's a good place for it: in the New Products section, or Industry Rumors.
It's also true that this kind of story makes technology business journalists, and publications, look like cheerleaders for the companies they write about.
Combine this perceived boosterism with paid advertisements from the companies thus featured in these "news" stories and you've got a recipe for planting the seed of doubt in a reader's mind about whether or not she's receiving objective news, or just product announcement press releases regurgitated to guarantee a continuing flow of ad sales dollars.
No wonder blogs, with their reputation for unvarnished facts and straight talk, are enjoying a boom, winning a level of trust from readers that business journalists lost long ago.
Links:Apple event could bring iPod news by Ina Fried (with assistance of John Borland), CNET, 19 October 2004
Apple preps 'black iPod' U2 limited edition promo by Tony Smith, The Register, 19 October 2004
October 19, 2004 | Permalink | Tag:
View blog reactions | RSS Feed | Subscribe to daily SVW Newsletter!October 18, 2004
Tech Watch: VCs searching for search engines in all the wrong places
VCs are pouring money into any search engine company they can find but they are missing the point about Google’s success. Google is not a search engine company.
It seems that almost every venture capital firm I meet with has a search engine investment or two in their portfolio--or is searching for one or two.
I met with Raul Valdes-Perez, president of Vivisimo recently. This Pittsburgh-based company has a search engine product that uses a very interesting technology that can generate a taxonomy-on-the-fly. This means it can quickly group search results into folders representing different subjects. It recently introduced the search site Clusty.com as one demonstration of its technology.
“We’ve got about forty VC’s chasing after us,” Mr Valdes-Perez complained. “We don’t even need the money.” Vivisimo is far more interested in partnering with Silicon Valley companies that could use its technology. But VCs are desperate for any search related company. (And you thought the mistakes of the bubble years, with the herd-like behavior of the VC community, were a thing of the past...)
The VCs are missing the point when it comes to understanding Google. It is not a search engine company but an extremely efficient advertising delivery network. It already derives a significant share of its revenues from non-search web pages through its Adsense service.
Search is merely an application for its advertising delivery technology.
In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Google might one day decide to outsource search. If say CompanyX built a better search engine—so what? Google would offer to sign it up as an advertising partner and CompanyX would accept.
Why? Because Google would be far better at monetizing that search engine because it has this enormous advertising delivery network.
I could tell VCs what kinds of companies they should be chasing (BTW it’s not advertising network technology companies ) but I'll wait a bit...
Here is a link to Vivisimo and Clusty.com.
October 18, 2004 | Permalink | Tag: Tech Watch
View blog reactions | RSS Feed | Subscribe to daily SVW Newsletter!October 15, 2004
Tech Watch: Intel doubles the fun in roadmap change
Joe Fay, US Editor at Computerwire has penned an interesting analysis of the changes in Intel’s microprocessor roadmap. He asks how Intel will produce chips twice as large and sell them for about the same price as current products?
These forthcoming dual core microprocessors are large chips yet Intel says it will sell them at similar price points to its single core microprocessors.
It’s going to be an interesting challenge for Intel. I’ve covered this company for more than twenty years, and they have become a chip manufacturing powerhouse—accelerating down the Moore’s Law highway ahead of almost everyone(IBM is up there with them).
The way Intel will deal with such a challenge is the way it always does--with its core competency: manufacturing. It will open up the faucet on its 300mm production lines and push toward smaller geometries. The use of larger wafers and smaller geometries should allow Intel to reduce production costs faster than the growth in the size of their chips.
There is a lot of drama here.
Can Intel make the jump to the next shrink of chip geometries?
Will it be tripped up with a design issue as these chips become so huge and complex?
Can it maintain yield levels, since larger chips are more prone to contamination and the dustbin?
On that last one Intel should be fine. The new 300mm factories are a lot cleaner than the older generation of fabs, because they got rid of the main contaminant—people.
The bunny suits and gloves and goggles that semiconductor workers wear are not to protect the person. The bunny suits are there to protect the chips.
Even in bunny suits and goggles, people shed huge numbers of microscopic particles, and just one can spoil a chip—it will block out part of the wiring. The new 300mm wafer fabs, dinner-plate sized silicon disks, are processed in canisters that are too heavy to be carried by people from one process step to another.
The latest generation of chip fabs are more highly automated than ever, to limit exposure to humans. With fewer people working the fabs, I wonder why some communities try to lure large chip makers to build fabs in their region, with large tax incentives and other material benefits.
A local job boom from such ventures would seem to be short-lived and shrinking over the long term--along with the die shrinks.
October 15, 2004 | Permalink | Tag: Tech Watch
View blog reactions | RSS Feed | Subscribe to daily SVW Newsletter!Friday Watch: The Geek Beacon wins (or steals) the taxi cab…
Here is some more testimony to the power of the Geek Beacon (the light from a Treo or smart-phone). I was trying to find a cab Thursday night on Geary. So I pulled out and turned on my Geek Beacon.
Most of the taxis were full but within a few minutes an empty cab pulled up. As I got in, I noticed that I had inadvertently “stolen” the taxi from a couple, who had been standing 10 yards ahead of me, trying to wave down a cab.
Alas, those people were Geek Beacon-less, and still standing on the curb. I was riding downtown, and feeling only lightly guilty--more of an "oops sorry," but what can you do? They had witnessed the simple effectiveness of the Geek Beacon and its mesmerizing effect on taxicabs. Try it.
October 15, 2004 | Permalink | Tag: Friday Watch
View blog reactions | RSS Feed | Subscribe to daily SVW Newsletter!October 13, 2004
Tom Watch: Lost in the world of server side software, php, css, templates, and MT modules
Watchers of the Silicon Valley Watcher site might have seen some (momentary) strange displays of our entries, sidebars, ads and other unusual things, over the past couple of days.
I’d like to say we were experimenting with innovative publishing formats, but that was not the case.
It was me tinkering around and seeing what does what and trying to map out in my head how various things interact.
I do speak a little Geek. I had worked as a software engineer in a past life and it was a much simpler life then. Today, developing web services and combining them into different applications is way more complex. Things are nested within each other and point to code on different locations on the same server, and on servers all over the internet.
When I worked as a software engineer, I worked on a mainframe, I would “point” my code to go fetch data from a known and trusted location on that same computer. The data flow is way more complex these days, and this is the opportunity and the challenge. The opportunity is in crafting sophisticated web services applications from either free, or very low cost software components, such as Linux, PHP scripts, etc. The challenge is doing it in such a way as to make it easy to make changes on the fly, and those changes are instantly reflected across an entire web site, or collection of web sites.
In Movable Type (MT), the trick to being able to use this publishing tool in different ways is understanding the interaction between the main index file, and the many different modules and templates—which are then defined in cascading style sheets.
It is interesting to see how sophisticated much of the server side software components have become. However, there is still an amazing amount of integration that has to be done between the tools available. You need a good-sized “box” of tools to do the work. For example, I would love to point and click and drag and save and rebuild and open and delete and undo, and other stuff—server side, as easily as I can do client side today on my laptop.
Playing around with MT was an engrossing, fun, and often frustrating experience, and I managed to wipe out a bunch of modules I had been working on. Fortunately, my colleague Doug Millison was feeding the blog here at “the watcher” with excellent entries. You’ll see more of Doug when we launch Silicon Valley Media Watch in the next couple of days.
October 13, 2004 | Permalink | Tag: Tom Watch
View blog reactions | RSS Feed | Subscribe to daily SVW Newsletter!October 12, 2004
Tech Watch: Yelp!—PayPal co-founder pops first venture out of incubator
As reported here nearly a week ago, Max Levchin, the hugely successful co-founder of PayPal, has launched the first startup out of his MRLV incubator.
I would describe Yelp as a type of “ Friendster Yellow Pages” in which you can ask friends, and friends of friends, for a good recommendation on a restaurant, plumber and other such stuff.
Personally, I like to keep a lot of that info to myself, or as Yogi Berra once said, "Nobody goes there anymore--it's too crowded."
Max believes his team has spotted a huge business opportunity. Although Max is chairman of Yelp, he says he doesn’t want the Max brand to obscure the achievements of the Yelp team. “The vast majority of the people involved are close and long-time friends of mine,” Max said. They are also mostly former colleagues of his at PayPal. Jeremy Stoppelman, who heads up Yelp, used to run the engineering group at PayPal.
Here is the Yelp pitch:
“Yelp! is a simple online tool for people to ask their friends for quick help in finding restaurants, dry-cleaners, and any other local service. This is already exactly what happens when you ask friends for help via email, all we've done is taken it to an entirely new level.
The process is made much more effective by adding friends of friends into the mix, and much more convenient with features that enable faster, more complete responses, caching previous answers, and making the whole process very 'single-click.'
What we are doing to the 'hey, does anyone know a good...' type email is the same thing Evite did to email party invites."
The revenue model? Grabbing a chunk of that fat Yellow Pages market, and the billions local businesses spend on local advertising. The competition? I would say damn near everybody. Google, Yahoo, and a lot of other online companies, such as Ingenio, are trying to get a piece of the "local business" pie. CitySearch, for example, has had a very similar service in place for a long time.
[My venture also seeks to target local people and local businesses through media based products and services--such as this web site and others.]
Those trying to profit from this “local business” market are approaching it from different directions. Yelp has taken the social network approach of Friendster, Tribe or Linked-In.
But what is to stop those already established social networks from adding such referrals as a feature of their service? Nothing at all. In fact, Tribe yesterday offered a $25 gift certificate to its San Francisco based members if they would take on a role of referring their friends to products and services.
I wouldn't write off Yelp too soon. Success is all about execution--not being first to market. Coming late into the market enables a company to learn from the mistakes of others, and figure out how to do it cheaper and better.
And Yelp has a very simple user interface--hugely important to the success of any consumer online service.
Check it out at Yelp.com.
October 12, 2004 | Permalink | Comment on this post | Tag: Tech Watch
View blog reactions | RSS Feed | Subscribe to daily SVW Newsletter!October 11, 2004
Tom Watch:I have rarely met a thought I didn’t like at 3am in the morning…Perils of Blogging #1
I have a problem and an opportunity in that I can publish at any time of the day or night.
I’m sure everyone has had the experience of sending an email to someone when on further reflection you would rather have not. My fear is that I will publish something I would rather have not.
I’ve fallen into a geek engineer coder schedule, which is 10am to 3am. The late night hours are quiet and a good time to write. But my judgement at that late hour has always had a spotty record.
I constantly remind my colleagues to edit my late night entries as soon as they awake. And edit them for clarity and stupidity. But if I file after 3am, they won’t see this for a few hours at least, and thus won't be able to delete potentially embarrasing copy that has already been spidered and seen by millions(potentially!)
Which means I should probably stay away from 3am posts.
October 11, 2004 | Permalink | Tag: Tom Watch
View blog reactions | RSS Feed | Subscribe to daily SVW Newsletter!Tom Watch: I have a confession to make, I’m not a stand-alone journalist--but I do perform all my own stunts
I’m not really a stand-alone journalist, as some like to call bloggers. And I’m not sure if I am a “blogger” either, since I have people working with me some of the time. Bloggers, I think, are supposed to work on their own.
I continue to work as a news reporter, I try to get out and about as much as I can. I interview people, I file stories, I write columns. And I know that journalism requires a team of people, performing various tasks.
Journalism has always been a team effort and this has not changed. In fact, I don't know any top blog sites that are not a product of a team effort to some degree. And that’s because most of the top blog sites are written by professional journalists--they know the value of a great team.
My first collaborator on this project is Candida Kutz--she asked me not to call her the “Bianca Jagger of the IT world,” and I will respect her wishes :-)
Candida is setting up the software infrastructure for the media projects we are developing. She has a huge amount of technology and editorial experience. Her intimate knowledge of the editorial production process--combined with her technology skills in web site publishing systems, search engine optimization, running online advertising campaigns, etc,--are rare to find in one person. Yet this is precisely the kind of skill set that is essential to the success of any online media venture these days.
Candida was one of the project leaders on the very first large multimedia hypertext project from Apple Computer and Whole Earth Review. She was my managing editor when I was publishing the SF newspaper, “The Street -- A View from the Haight.” We were among the first to adapt emerging newsletter desktop publishing technologies to publishing a newspaper.) She was a book editor at Matthew Bender for many years, and did her stint in senior content management positions at various dotcoms.... more bio details on the way plus personal introductions to the rest of my growing band of collaborators.
October 11, 2004 | Permalink | Tag:
View blog reactions | RSS Feed | Subscribe to daily SVW Newsletter!October 9, 2004
Update on Craigslist--the movie
Unfortunately, I couldn’t make it to the premiere of the documentary of “24 hours on Craigs list,” I had to take care of some family stuff.(No--I was not at the B'man decompression event in the Mission, where a lot of geeks had gathered Sunday evening.)
If anyone saw the Craig's List documentary, could they send in a review? I'll publish the best ones...
October 9, 2004 | Permalink | Tag:
View blog reactions | RSS Feed | Subscribe to daily SVW Newsletter!Friday Watch:San Francisco celebrates 1st Craigslist Day Sunday October 10
The local Geekerati will out in full force Sunday evening for the premiere of the documentary about the web site Craigslist.org, called "24 Hours on Craigslist."
I’ll be doing interviews live from the red carpet outside the Jewish Community Center. I hear that Craig will be wearing a Paul Smith suit and an original Blogger.com t-shirt (pre-Google), while his companion Eileen will be in a backless original Gianni Versace.
Larry, Brin, Jerry, and some of the up and coming geek princes of the Odessa Posse are expected. There will be a full report on the post-party here on Silicon Valley Watcher.
On August 4, 2003, a day chosen at random, eight film crews set out to record a day in the life of the Craig's List community. The following description, from the web site of the documentary about the web site, promises to reveal a side of San Francisco that challenges conventional stereotypes of the city:
“An Ethel Merman drag queen searches for the perfect backup band for her Led Zeppelin covers. A suburban professional woman assembles a diabetic cat support group. A couple seeks the perfect rabbi for their marriage. An aging, would-be mother finds her ideal sperm donor. Doors for sale, one night stands, compulsive roomates, transsexual erotic services. The mundane and the sublime, the ridiculous and the profound, all come together to paint a portrait of a thriving, humanistic community in the midst of an ever-accelerating culture."
Damn that ever-accelerating culture . . .I keep spilling my chai tea.
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October 9, 2004 | Permalink | Tag: Friday Watch
View blog reactions | RSS Feed | Subscribe to daily SVW Newsletter!Friday Watch: A reader taunts Catholic God...lightning bolt expected
A recent item here, on The Watcher, happened to mention that the term for a group of priests is a "pontification of priests."
Dave Carpenter, a loyal reader, pointed out my mistake. The correct term he says....
...is a "pederasty of priests."
And Dave ought to know, as he produces a handmade book, written and illustrated by himself, all about groups. It's aimed at kids, and no, "pederasty of priests" isn't in it. See here for ordering info.
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October 9, 2004 | Permalink | Tag: Friday Watch
View blog reactions | RSS Feed | Subscribe to daily SVW Newsletter!October 8, 2004
Friday Watch: Nerdy club pickup routines...and other tales from the Geek Life
It’s about 10pm and I’m in the South of Market Fluid Lounge about a week ago, hanging out with geek engineers, late 20s. They are just starting their day, they’ll be coding at a local incubator until about 6am. But right now, they are having a cocktail and talking about how to meet women.
“What you do, is you leave an ATM receipt on the bar, and it has been faked to read as if you have millions in the bank -- that’ll impress the girls,” one says. The other one, spotting a monetization opportunity, says, “Yeah, and we can sell them on eBay for like, twenty bucks a piece!” They even figure that they won’t have to fake the ATM receipts, because their boss is worth hundreds of millions -- they’ll just fish out his ATM receipts from the trash can, iron out the wrinkles, and they’ll be the most popular guys in any club.
How are these hot women going to get a look at “your” ATM receipt? And if your ATM receipt shows you have millions in your checking account, you are showing yourself as a foolish manager of your money. Do you think that’s attractive, I asked?
“Well, you could ask someone to look at your ATM receipt because…you forgot your glasses at the office,” one suggested. The issue of the large amount of cash sitting in the checking account was less well addressed, but, hey, being dumb and rich has gotten a lot of people laid anyway, was the conclusion.
So, be warned, if anyone asks you to look at an ATM receipt … be very suspicious—or just play along.
How much for that Blogger t-shirt in the window?Buck is chatting with a guy, and Buck says he has an original Blogger t-shirt, in brown, and with no Google logo on the back (Google bought the publisher of Blogger.com). It's probably worth a lot, Buck says. The other guy agrees but trumps Buck, says he has an original Blogger hooded sweatshirt in blue from 1999. And it came from one of only three cartons of this type ever made (geek trivia note).
What would you let that Blogger t-shirt go for, I ask Buck? “I don’t know…..sixty bucks I guess.”
Sold say I! I reach out to shake on the deal, while my other hand reaches for my wallet. But Buck pulls away--and is now hesitant.
“Well, I didn’t say I would sell it…I just said it was worth a lot,” he says. Okay, okay, seventy five bucks, I say, it’s my final offer. But no dice, Buck has taken it off the market. And now he has changed the subject to RSS, and that because his company helped develop it, they are building a lucrative business around it, etc.
I’m half listening and wondering: what is an original Blogger t-shirt worth today? From early 2000, no Google logo on the back, in brown, with yellow lettering?
Damn, I used to throw a ton of that promo stuff away, or use the t-shirts to clean the car. I should have kept that stuff.
And I don’t blame Buck for not selling. I would not sell an original Blogger t-shirt for sixty bucks. This stuff is history, part of Silicon Valley lore. I’d sell it for seventy five though. (Buck--call me, it really is a good price.)
October 8, 2004 | Permalink | Tag: Friday Watch
View blog reactions | RSS Feed | Subscribe to daily SVW Newsletter!Tech Watch:Dave Galbraith’s penthouse party off Alamo Square was the place to be the other night
Mr GigaOm himself was there (although I missed his Om-ness, he had left by the time I’d arrived, fashionably late of course.) And spotted in the corner, on the patio was Evan Williams, the founder of Blogger, who had just left Google the day before, (acquired by Google in early 2003) “I’m just going to take some time off for now, take it easy,” Evan said.
Dave Galbraith, co-founder of MoreOver, just finished up a project with Max Levchin, former CTO and co-founder of PayPal. Dave’s not talking about his next venture just yet, but I’m working on him.
As for Max, he’s has been busy with his MRL Ventures incubator, and I’m hearing rumblings, and it’s not Mount St. Helens.
The first rocket is on the launch pad, and it’s going to be an interesting project.
At PayPal, Max really understood how to leverage the power of viral marketing, and the first launch out of the incubator, I’m hearing, is that it will use viral marketing techniques in a similar way. More will be revealed soon…
I met Max earlier this year, I interviewed him for a Financial Times article on what happens to a company that is taken public, he gave me some great quotes:
What did you do to celebrate PayPal’s IPO? “A few of us went off to a Palo Alto diner and had a bubbly burger, it’s a $100 cheese burger,” Max said.
Damn, a hundred dollar burger? “Yes, it’s a regular cheese burger that comes with a bottle of Dom Perignon.”
Various leading VCs have been seen dropping in on Max in his South of Market incubator, from time to time, just to say hi, ask about his dog (a beautiful dog by the way.) And also try and sneek a peek at his whiteboard, offer to wax and clean his car, take his dog for a walk.
Hey, Max is just 28, and he isn’t finished yet, I'm not surprised the VC's want to hang around. He landed his PayPal bounty when he was just 26. And as co-founder, the $1.5bn sale of PayPal to Ebay, has set him up nicely.
Stay tuned, more on Max, more on MRL, more on Galbraith penthouse party…and how much is an original blogger T-shirt worth? (I’m feeling like a society gossip columnist for the geek elite!)
October 8, 2004 | Permalink | Tag: Tech Watch
View blog reactions | RSS Feed | Subscribe to daily SVW Newsletter!October 7, 2004
Tech Watch: Maybe why Ballmer doesn't get it...
All the fuss over Steve Ballmer's recent comments about iPods filled with pirated music is an example of some of the thinking that comes from living in the Fortress of Solitude.
If you hole yourself up in the damp Northwest, away from the hustle and bustle of Silicon Valley's clamouring ideas and people, your thinking will get as soggy as the weather. IMHO.
October 7, 2004 | Permalink | Comment on this post | Tag:
View blog reactions | RSS Feed | Subscribe to daily SVW Newsletter!Tech Watch: Applications you never knew you would never need…
My good buddy Mark Osborne, Editor of the very fine Semiconductor Fabtech magazine, spotted the following recent press release :
"Imagine seamless continuity of your favorite video between your home theater DVR and your car’s backseat entertainment system. Imagine pausing a song as your car arrives at home and, as you walk into the house, your home stereo picks up the song at the same spot. Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. (NYSE:FSL) and IMEC are currently in the process of helping you realize this vision of seamless mobility.”
Now I understand why Ed Zander wanted to go ahead and spin-off Freescale from out of Motorola...
October 7, 2004 | Permalink | Tag: Tech Watch
View blog reactions | RSS Feed | Subscribe to daily SVW Newsletter!October 4, 2004
PR Watch: A pontification of priests...let’s bring back the concept of the salon
Sunday evening was a lot of fun because I had dinner with Susan MacTavish Best and a couple of dozen of her friends. And I also bumped into a few people I hadn’t seen in a while.
The food was delightful, but it was the people and the conversations that made the evening. Yes, Susan is a PR professional, but this was not a public relations event. It felt more like a family and friends Thanksgiving dinner, as we sat on chairs borrowed and begged from neighbors, and sat scrunched together in her modest apartment.
The mix of people was wonderful, and I realized how much I missed this kind of salon-like event that is more common in larger cities, especially on the East coast, and in Europe. Here, most of the natives go to bed early and they rise early, which is probably why many of the people left at Susan’s dinner party after 10pm, were East coasters, or those of European backgrounds.
I’ve tried to introduce more of this type of event myself, with occasional dinner parties, and the Friday Blackout Salon. There are so few social events that aren’t industry related, that it’s always a pleasure to be among people that have many different backgrounds and jobs. It’s very much in the tradition of the salon concept of the late 1800s and early 1900s, in which a host invited a broad mix of people, artists, industrialists, writers —- a format designed for mixing ideas and people.
Susan’s dinner/salon was the first time I had the pleasure of meeting and chatting with Craig Newmark, yes, Mr. List himself (BTW, Susan’s partner is Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craig’s List, our co-host that evening.) And let me tell you, Craig is a true geek. He loves to talk about his Linux box, and is also an avid reader of science fiction. Craig’s companion Eileen, entertained our table with a list she found that described the name of groups of things. For example, most are familiar with “a gaggle of geese,” but probably not with the term, “a barren of mules” or “a pontification of priests” (my personal favorite.)
I also had the pleasure of meeting again, Gil Gershoni and his partner Amy, of Gershoni design studio and who regularly host one of the best salon-type events around. Chris MacAskill is another interesting person, co-founder of SmugMug (a very interesting photo sharing web site that is growing like wildfire, mostly by word of mouth.) Chris was also co-founder of Fatbrain.com, which Barnes & Noble picked in a stock and cash deal valued at about $64m, four years ago.
And I ran into Alex Gove, of WaldenVC. I hadn’t seen Alex in years, probably the last time was at one of the many dotcom networking parties of yesteryear. Oh, and let me thank Vlad for that excellent tip, my readers will be very grateful when that one comes out.
Then there was some guy called Gary Rivlin (http://www.garyrivlin.com/aboutme.html. Anybody know him? Claims he works as a reporter for some sort of Manhattan based newspaper? I had to break it to him gently -- that on the West Coast, few people read newspapers. Not because we don’t have the literacy skills, but because we don’t have a large community of commuters using public transport, as on the East coast. (Also, being caught reading a newspaper at work can lead to disciplinary action.)
Gary has been in town just 4 months, and although he likes San Francisco, he is a touch homesick, pining for the Norwegian fiords, or rather, the deep, majestic canyons of Manhattan.
So, if you run into Gary, give him a big California-style hug, it might help to help him feel better.
October 4, 2004 | Permalink | Comment on this post | Tag: PR Watch
View blog reactions | RSS Feed | Subscribe to daily SVW Newsletter!Tom Watch: Self-obsession in the blogosphere
The other day, my ex- said I was self-obsessed because I had created a category on this site, called “Tom Watch.” I tried to explain that this had nothing to do with my ego, or that I was developing an unappealing personal characteristic. It was all to do with “blogging.”
Blogging is many things, and among those many things, it is also about the blogger. It is a form of communication/journalism, in which the author is clearly identified, his opinion is tightly bound to his name, and it also provides a vehicle for a remarkable range of flexibility in terms of subject matter, form, and delivery.
In writing Silicon Valley Watcher, I quickly realized that there are many types of content I wanted to publish. Some of the content might be more like an essay/thought piece to encourage discussion and debate. Some of my content would be more like a news story, feature, or column. Some of my entries would cover specific industry sectors or types of companies. And some of my entries would be about me, my daily experiences, my efforts to make a living, to recruit a team of colleagues, to launch a venture, etc. Thus I started labeling my entries as Tech Watch, Media Watch, etc.
By publishing a Tom Watch entry, I ask that my readers not think of me as self-obsessed, but that I am merely attempting to guide them to entries that they might enjoy, or would rather avoid.
October 4, 2004 | Permalink | Tag: Tom Watch
View blog reactions | RSS Feed | Subscribe to daily SVW Newsletter!October 1, 2004
Tech Watch: The Geek Beacon spawns third party apps market!
The Geek Beacon, the use of a Treo or cell phone with a bright screen to hail taxis, is really taking off. And I’m already hearing about plans for third party applications around the Geek Beacon concept (I’m not kidding...)
I spoke with a software developer on Thursday who wants to produce what could be a killer application, one that would take the Geek Beacon concept a whole stage further! I’m under NDA but, I promise that you, my loyal readers, will be the first to hear all the details when it is ready.
October 1, 2004 | Permalink | Comment on this post | Tag: Tech Watch
View blog reactions | RSS Feed | Subscribe to daily SVW Newsletter!
Comments
Pagan Patty on Friday Watch: All Dogs Go To Heaven . . .
All photoshoping journalists go to heaven where they join dogs, rocks and even those who don't get why rocks make aboslute sense.
MILES on Friday Watch: All Dogs Go To Heaven . . .
I'd be pleased if my dog started to crap outside, let alone gets into heaven.
The fact that we can easily call into question whether or not dogs go to heaven only confirms that I can just as easily question god/heaven in its entirety.
kiwifella on Friday Watch: All Dogs Go To Heaven . . .
The scriptures clearly state that to be in Heaven we must be without Spot
does this settle it ??
gaylord on Friday Watch: All Dogs Go To Heaven . . .
riiiiiiight....
still funny, regardless of it's fakeness
jo on Die! Press release! Die! Die! Die!
I was side tracked into this while I was doing a research about social media release with busby seo test site, and to tell you honestly, it was a bit unsettling for a reasonably idealistic (or much better said as “traditional”) person like “me”.
I wasn’t sure anymore how to give justice and support to my learned knowledge base on my researches that press release is “plainly” designed to be sent to journalists in order to ENCOURAGE them t
Alicia V. Nieva-Woodgate on Yahoo CEO Search: Here's My Pick . . .
That's a great choice!
Tom Foremski on Microsoft Tries Blogger Outreach But How Serious Is It?
Geva: You are probably right :-)
Andrew: Having some of the comms team present as observers is perfectly OK. If they were moderating the discussion that would be different.
It is going to be difficult for the MSFT executives to continue the "conversation." After all, they don't even have time to read our blogs or leave comments! How are they going to continue with these relationships?
Also, some of the bloggers don't even write about the enterprise space, I'm puzzled why t
Andrew Kisslo on Microsoft Tries Blogger Outreach But How Serious Is It?
Tom -
Thanks again for joining us on Monday. I wanted to weigh in a bit since I sponsored the event. Geva is right with his first post that our intent was direct conversation with the group. We felt it would show our eagerness to have the most open dialogue possible.
It's great feedback for us if you feel lack of PR firms in the room inadvertently sends the signal that it was somehow half-hearted. The spirit of the gathering was quite the opposite. We tried to balance feedback
Bluescatman on Friday Watch: All Dogs Go To Heaven . . .
Everyone knows that all dogs go to "Doggie Heaven", unless of course you believe as some native Americans do, that when a person dies, he goes to the "happy hunting ground". Hmmm, I wonder if dogs are hunted there. Then again, if we believe certain "Eastern" religions, then we all were probably a dog (or other animal) in another life. On the other hand there's always Roy Rogers' horse !!!
Geva Perry on Microsoft Tries Blogger Outreach But How Serious Is It?
Tom -- Well, maybe they don't trust their own PR people...
Geva
Jesus Rocks on Friday Watch: All Dogs Go To Heaven . . .
DUH! Does no one read the bible any more? Have we forgotten that God made creatures (dogs, cats, giraffes, lions and tigers and bears - oh my - ) BEFORE He created man and woman? This is a God of order and not of the random. In the last book of the bible (Revelation) it speaks of the lion lying with the lamb - to mean that there will be peace restored in creation. I take it that there will be dogs and cats,lambs, lions, tigers and bears in heaven. Oh my.
Jack on Friday Watch: All Dogs Go To Heaven . . .
God and heaven don't exist. It is an irrational belief to believe there is a space god who is all loving but still allows for suffering and sends his only son which is actually also him to earth to suffer for maybe 18 hours (from the time he was supposedly in the garden, sweating blood) when real humans today suffer for much longer periods of time in much more agonizing ways, to somehow save us from our guilt for a sin we didn't even commit. To eventually go to some magical paradise where no
kenekaplan on Microsoft Tries Blogger Outreach But How Serious Is It?
Tom.
Many of us have been benefiting for years from your work here on SiliconValleyWatcher and from your ability to be in so many places each week, each day! That's why we asked you to join the Intel Insider program.
Prior to starting our Insider program, several from our communications team worked with you when you were at FT and believed in your bold step into the blogospher. That team sponsored your new efforts, and you helped us try out new things like: having our tin
DaveBave on Friday Watch: All Dogs Go To Heaven . . .
Well, I guess it depends on what Dogma you follow! HAha! But seriously, all dogs do go to heaven. Except for dogs that have urinated on my leather jacket. That one is definitely not gonna make it.
ANA MARIA LLOPIS on Nobel Peace Prize Winner Mohammad Yunus Challenge to Silicon Valley and beyond: Let's Put Poverty Into A Museum
Ana Maria to Tom
I had the privilege of listening to him last July at the Del Pino's Foundation in Madrid, and it transformed my life.
I suggested him the stock market of social enterprises and he did not say he already had thought about it, and that this concept was in his book, he was a gentleman. I bought his book after the conference and read it during the summer. After listening to his words, I wanted to change the world in a different way with the democratization of ideas,
Tom Foremski on Microsoft Tries Blogger Outreach But How Serious Is It?
Geva: I think it was a mistake not to have their comms team present. They can still interact with bloggers in a natural way. There is a lot the comms teams could have learnt from the event without interfering in the process.
Nancy on Friday Watch: All Dogs Go To Heaven . . .
Dogs have souls, because they have breath-life. Gen 2:7...."And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man become a living soul." Anything that breaths has a soullife. However, animals do not have spirit, the direct connection between God and Humans. It is the failure of our Spiritual "leaders" to properly interpret the Bible that leads to this ignorance of God's Word. I will see my dogs and cats in Heaven.
Geva Perry on Microsoft Tries Blogger Outreach But How Serious Is It?
Tom -- At some point one of the Microsoft guys said that they intentionally didn't have any AR/PR people actively participate. They wanted the product and business line people to interact directly and authentically with the bloggers. I think that actually shows they were more serious about it than just making it a "marketing program".
Regards,
Geva
Lollie Dot Com on Friday Watch: All Dogs Go To Heaven . . .
No matter what any bible, church, agnostic or atheist says - facts are facts. Any heaven without dogs is missing one of earth's greatest joys. Or in other words, any heaven without dogs is kind of craptacular. So I guess this means no cats, squirrels, butterflies, no giraffes, no lions so friendly they lie down with lambs.
Everyone who wants to spend eternity in crapworld raise their hands.... Oh look, no one. Duh. Either build a better heaven or I don't wanna go.
This is ex
Matt on Friday Watch: All Dogs Go To Heaven . . .
An atheist and a believer are like 2 people searching in a pitch black room for a black cat that isn't there, yet they both claim they've found it! BTW; Dogs rock!!!