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October 2005 Archives

October 31, 2005

"Life is too short to click on an unknown" - No blind links on Blogs says Web Design Guru Jakob Nielsen

By Tom Foremski, Silicon Valley Watcher.com

Blind Links.jpg Earlier this year I was pestering Jakob Nielsen--the uber web design guru-- to do a study of weblog usability. Jakob was reluctant at the time because he said there was no money to fund such a study. It takes about $200k to do a full study.

Nevertheless, Jakob did just recently publish: Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes:

This is my absolute favorite:

4. Links Don't Say Where They Go Many weblog authors seem to think it's cool to write link anchors like: "some people think" or "there's more here and here." Remember one of the basics of the Web: Life is too short to click on an unknown. Tell people where they're going and what they'll find at the other end of the link.
Generally, you should provide predictive information in either the anchor text itself or the immediately surrounding words.

I'm always very pleased when Silicon Valley Watcher is linked by my readers in their posts. I'm even happier when the link is described as coming from Silicon Valley Watcher :-)

Will search become less important? The future of the online bot armies . . .

By Tom Foremski, Silicon Valley Watcher.com

My recent post on Battling the online bot armies of the search engine giants and startups brought out some interesting discussions.

Over on the VeriSign Infrablog, Michael Graves, 'techno-evangelist' wrote:

. .there are problems with crawling. Over time, the number of crawlers grows. There used to be just a handful that got broad coverage, now there’s a dozen or more. In the future, there may be a hundred or more. At some point, Tom Foremski’s argument will become undisputable, and crawlers will have to be managed much more carefully than they are now through the use of Robots.txt or some other means.

Michael goes on to propose full content pings as a solution to the crawler problem:

For example, if this post were submitted in full as part of the ping, Googlebot and the gang wouldn’t need to come fetch this post to analyze it for inclusion in their databases and indices. It would be available from the ping server directly. Search engines could maintain a high-bandwidth, always-on connection to the ping server, and have the full content of newly published articles in hand, without having to do any fetching at all from the origin server.

Full post: I, Robot

Veteran media entrepreneur Mitch Ratcliffe, at Ratcliffeblog notes:

What I see happening is what happens with any medium as it matures—people will stop looking for new content as much as they do at first and start settling into relationships with trusted sources. This conforms to the conclusion Tom Foremski arrived at, but I believe search will play a bigger role in the Web (hell, let's call it "Web 2.0" to separate it from the first decade's worth of Web) because so many more sources are introducing new content.
Long term, though, we're going to see the value of relationships, which are largely built on content. If, to reach the people I want to have relationships with I need to allocate a lot of bandwidth, I'm happy to do it.

Full post: Search engines add value, but that value is diminishing

And Niki Scevak over at Bronte Media checks my math: You Say Toe-mato I say Tomar-to

October 28, 2005

Weekend Wrapper : More thoughts on GOOG database; the drag on internet performance from the bot armies; and SVW readers get discount to upcoming Churchill Club Mossberg/Swisher gadget fest!

By Tom Foremski, Silicon Valley Watcher.com

The Google database is the logical next step in the creation of a second, proprietary internet. Upload your content to the GOOG, the planet's largest computer.

Why host your own site? Just dump it into GOOGbase, the search algorithms will organize it for you, and for your customers/readers/users.

Content owners such as craigslist, won't dump their content into GOOGbase. But many smaller sites will--because they are desperate for clicks and get excited when the GOOGbot comes around every three months. No waiting--just dump it in.

I've often said to the fine Search Engine Optimization folk out there: Let the search engines optimize themselves to find the sites, it's their job; concentrate on optimizing for your customers/users--not the bot.

Now, no need for the bot. And no need for the SEO most probably. Because the GOOG knows what is located where--if it's hosting and holding the content.

And this also is the best way to stop the masses of online scams and fraud. Google can argue that it can track every bit of the bytes that cross its network, from start to finish. (It is a shame AOL went open--the right move at the right time, again ;-)

The burden of search sites on the internet

But, do we still need GOOG? Search engines don't drive much traffic to sites--direct bookmarks do and those are the ones you want. This is repeat traffic. You get them by optimizing for the user not the bot.

Let me say again: you do not want to rely on search engines to bring you your traffic. That traffic comes from people that don't know where you live or what you do. You want repeat traffic, from people that know you, trust you and know where you live. They don't come in through a search engine. So optimize for the user-not the bot.

BTW, I would love to see how much the bots, crawlers, scrapers etc are using up in terms of internet bandwidth. I wonder if anybody has done a study of the amount of traffic and server performance degradation that they cause?

It would not surprise me if the number is gobsmackingly high. Can anybody do the math? Let me know...

In SVW's case, for example, the MSN and all the other spiders and bots, used up about one third of our bandwidth, and provided less than 4 per cent of the views. And degraded the performance of the site for others.

Coming SF Event:

SVW Readers get the member price. Please contact Julie Crabill for details: jcrabill at shiftcomm.com.

Tuesday, November 8, 2005

Making a List: What's Hot and What's Not in Personal Technology

Walt Mossberg, Columnist, The Wall Street Journal
Kara Swisher, Columnist, The Wall Street Journal

Sponsored by Cadence Design Systems, Inc.

Tuesday, November 8, 2005

Time: Registration/Buffet: 6:00 PM Program: 7:00-8:30PM

Location: San Francisco Marriott, 55 Fourth Street, San Francisco

Registration Members: $60 Non-Members; $75

October 27, 2005

The Google database is an attempt to accumulate a massive amount of content for free--just as the balance of power is shifting towards content owners

. . . the Google database will devalue all content

GOOG is devaluing the value of content by insisting the only value is in aggregation. People dump content or free into GOOGbase, but GOOG monetizes the index.

That's like saying the value of a book is in its index, not the content it points to.

That used to be the case on the internet because we couldn't figure out the business models online. But we are figuring that out--and that is not good if you are just an index. The balance is shifting to the content-owners, because search and scraping is easy to do and thus of little value. Creating content is hard, but the human labor expended results in something of value.

Dumping content into the GOOGbase and making it free devalues the labor of people and rewards machine-based content production: Google's index pages. imho.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/10/rumor-of-day.html

October 26, 2005

A Momentary Publishing Incident in the Blogosphere

...must everything be embedded in the permalink concrete?

Bat Signal.jpg By Tom Foremski, Silicon Valley Watcher.com

Dan Gillmor and I were involved in what could be described as a momentary publishing incident just a little while ago. We had both published posts on a particular story starting to make the rounds.

I had requested a Dan Gillmor bat signal to be shot into the muddled brown smog of the San Jose sky, because I needed advice from Dan. Dan is like the Pope of this new media world, and I value his advice.

It is not usual for "standalone journalists" to do this; but we had a chat about it , because we both felt it required a second look. It was the way in which the information was leaked to us that looked a bit strange, and warranted a fourth and fifth look.

Because Dan and I were able to swap notes and step through the timeline of the leak, we both felt uncomfortable; and Dan said he was immediately pulling his post down for further review.

I was about to leave and run down to the Peninsula; but I started thinking about the post, and I felt uncomfortable publishing it too, even though it was in a questioning format. So I took it down. I want to chat more about this with Dan and other buddies in the SV hack pack.

This incident of momentary publishing is interesting, because it is unfolding right now as I type. It might provide a lesson for the future practitioners of this artful craft--at least it provided me with an interesting point to write about.

Standalone journalism does not work

And this is also why teamwork in this new journalism is very important. Standalone journalism does not work, you need a team. I have an editor, Mike Faden, old school and very good. He edits for clarity and errant late night great ideas :-)

And I have an illustrator, Chris Dichtel; and I also have a head geek, Nick Aster, when he is able to surface from under the the heavy load of his his green MBA studies. I could do with more people--especially a business manager and a lawyer on the business side, but also people on the editorial side.

Working with other journalists is the best way to keep the juices flowing, and also to swap notes and be able to double check each other. Working in a editorial team is the best way to maintain consistent editorial quality.

In my profession we've been producing news sheets/newspapers for more than 400 years; and in many cases, there is no need to reinvent the wheel in terms of best practices. If we can take what we've learned from the centuries of news journalism, and apply it to this incredible medium without legacy issues standing in the way--then that is a killer combination.

That's my goal in a nutshell: use what we have useful from the traditions of journalism, and then technology-enable-it with tools such as blogging, wikis and a whole slew of what I call two-way media technologies.

Dan's BayoSphere

Craigslist: Battling the spider and bot armies of the swarms of VC-funded search-and-scrape startups . . .a chat with ceo Jim Buckmaster

By Tom Foremski, Silicon Valley Watcher.com

The complaint filed against Oodle by Craigslist is fascinating. Oodle, an online classified ads aggregator/scraper was recently asked to quit aggressive scraping of Craigslist and it complied.

(See: SVW Oodles of lawsuits--the battle over content will escalate)

I had an interesting chat with Jim Buckmaster, ceo of craigslist, about this issue. Jim said that Oodle was the most aggressive in checking its listings and this was slowing things up for users.

Jim showed me a chart of craigslist traffic and how much traffic Oodle was bringing, and you could barely see Oodle's red line graph coming up off the x-axis, while the blue line of craigslist was flying high up in the logarithmic realms of the y-axis.

"We try and be fair and reasonable but aggregation sites like Oodle put a big strain on our infrastructure," he said. "We don't want our users suffering because of this."

Oodle and all the other google-like search-and-scrape sites insist that they bring traffic to the original content sites such as craigslist. They provide much needed distribution, is their line.

But the data shows that the cost of the tiny amount of traffic driven to craigslist is massive because of the huge amount of bandwidth and server load caused by repeated hits and scrapes of its data.

"I'm sometimes asked how much benefit we derive from a site such as Oodle, and I estimate it is about a minus 0.5 per cent because it slows up overall performance," Jim said.

With more than 3 billion page views each month, 0.5 percent drag on performance is severe--it means about 15m page views are sucked up by Oodle.

Oodle claims it sent 1m page views to Craigslist in September. That is about a 15 to 1 burden that craigslist has to carry, and its entire community has to bear because of slower system performance.

I told Jim my take on all of this: Companies such as Oodle says classified ads customers want as wide a distribution online as possible, but that is NOT true. If customers wanted wider distribution they would have taken wider distribution because there is nothing stoppong them from advertising on many other web sites, including Oodle!

VCs are targeting craigslist

In my view, craigslist acted fairly and responsibly because it is protecting its community from resource-hungry bots that give back a fraction of what they take.

The VC community continually salivates at ways of creating a craigslist. Or better yet, creating businesses that can syphon-off and commercialize craigslist listings. One VC told me about all the money craigslist leaves on the table by refusing to monetize all its traffic, (collecting revenue just for job listings.)

"We are constantly being approached by other organizations to partner in some way or other. But we feel we don't have any responsibility to help other companies become profitable, the only responsibility we have is to our users," Jim said. "And we don't want to be a target for every new startup that wants to be in the classified ads market."

The problem ahead is that creating a search-and-scrape business is easy, and the oodles of googles coming online funded by massive amounts of VC money are going to be hitting and scraping craigslist at an ever increasing pace and scale.

And it is not just craigslist that is the target *ALL* news/blog sites are being targeted--see next post.

- - -

Here are some blog posts from Craig Donato co-founder and CEO of Oodle, who appears mystified by craigslist's complaint.

. . .for consumers trying to sell items. They want to reach the biggest audience so they can get the best deal. Services like Oodle, that help bring prospects to a consumer's listing, are helping them not hurting them.

Check out the post and its comments section :-)

The lie of distribution--search engines return very little value to news/blog sites yet hog bandwidth and increase server loads

. . .or is it just me?
By Tom Foremski, Silicon Valley Watcher.com

Search-and-scrape sites such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, and oodles of others claim they bring traffic to web sites. And they do--but at what cost? It was a question I asked myself following a chat with Jim Buckmaster, ceo of craigslist, and its recent complaint that Oodle was scraping its listings way too aggressively and slowing down the entire system.

I took a look at my server stats from mid-October.

The search-and-scrapers sucked out one-third of my bandwidth and provided just 3.7 percent of the traffic!

Microsoft is by far the most egregious of the lot. Over the past three weeks it sucked out 4.6GB or 18 per cent of my bandwidth and returned...275 page views--0.0007 percent of the total!!

It is news/blog/original content sites that are being targeted by these over-zealous bots because they provide fresh content, and without fresh content the search-and scrapers have nothing. And the more often you post fresh content the more attention and visits you get from the bot army.

And lets not talk about the masses of cached pages out there that are hit and viewed but do not show up in the server stats--yet are counted and monetized by the search-and-scrapers.

It is inevitable that content owners will increasingly choose to glue down their content. You can only get it here and you have to come here to get it--will be the mantra.

Why do you think Yahoo is trying to scramble as quickly as it can into producing original content ;-). It knows the writing is on the wall.

Tell me what your AWstats are showing...

October 24, 2005

Runnin' the Corridor: 2 Weeks On the Digital (and REAL) Highway

by lucaso
onelucaso@gmail.com

Damn. Weekly column and I already skipped my second week! I’ll try to make up for it by sharing some of the primo spice from my amazing two weeks of nomadic adventure. (yea, I shoulda been mobloggin’, but I’m not hooked up like that yet) .

The west coast corridor is bad ass. The beauty of the tribes matches the beauty of the landscape. Having grown up in the east, I’m blown away by it all. I still love a stint in NYC, DC, New England and, of course, Philly. But, really now, ain’t no Catskill, Blue Ridge, or Whitey gonna stand a chance next to the mighty Shasta, Hood, or Whitney.

Anyways, two weeks of travel through my network of digital tribes (and REAL mountains) begins now:

REWIND. San Fran two weeks ago for Web 2.0.

I walked into the hotel lobby at the end of the day to see the post-show deals being worked out. Folks were hunched over cocktail tables conversing in hushed tones, the glow of laptops reflectin’ in countless pairs of eyeglasses. Yea, not exactly my scene (where’s the DJ? Yes, we CAN close deals while listenin to killa’ grooves, y’all).

My one question: where’s web culture 2.0? Ya know, the stuff that happens when you’re not geeking out? This is the leadership of the next generation of innovation. Where is the creative culture that goes with that innovation? What is the culture of our creative class?

BOOM! Off to the afterparties.

First stop: Yahoo RSS party (As an RSS guy, I had to get the new RSS metrics in person) Nothin’ too funky, of course (it’s yahoo afterall), but the numbers were good to see. Bottom line: lose the RSS! It’s time to stress what this technology can do for people, not what it’s called. Leave the geekspeak to the geeks and let’s cross the chasm and get people using these amazing, emerging technologies. Yea, old topic

MOVING ON: Time to shake the tech off and get physical. Off to the SF BM decompression party to get down with the cutie from Santa Cruz, dancing the night away with Ka’nal.

HOME for a little biz in God’s country: Portland, OR:

I got to sit in on the FreeRange board meeting (damn, they got vision... and its MOBILE. Bad ass!) I ended up betting the new head of Apple Germany that Apple’s big announcement would be the vidpod (and, thanks to Tom, I won! Heeheehee… now I have a sponser!). Then it was back to the arts world to start rehearsals for a performance piece I wrote, “Under the Harmony of Heaven” (based on Maxim Gorky’s “The Lower Depths”) We will perform it Nov 4th for “Suono Angelica: The Language of Harmonics.”

Whew… breathe….

BAM! On the road again:

This time travelin south to LA for the Beverly Hills art fair with my good friend (and amazing sculptor)Taji. We were very blessed to be accompanied by the beautiful, sassy, and sultry painter Lily Noches. Taji rocked the show, earning third prize in sculpture and selling four sculptures, while Lily kept me sharp as I interviewed some of the more striking artists there: John Hung Ha and Gabe Leonard

And if all that wasn’t enough, I still found time to stroll Venice, boulder Joshua Tree, and party with a super lawyer who sues giant corporations for posioning you and your children. Yea, bad ass.

The ICING ON THE SPICE:

A stop at the Light Space Gallery in Venice to visit with the lovely and talented Star Simone and have a chat with gallery head and uber-talented artist Dean Chamberlain.

HOMEWARD BOUND:

Two weeks of a vagabond existence, filled with incredible inspiration and amazing encounters, and now it's time to get home. Autumn in the NW is divine and I'm looking forward to soaking up the earth energy before headin' out again, next time makin' dat mobloggin’ thang happen!

Holla'atcha next week (or two ; ) !

-lucaso
onelucaso@gmail.com

A few bits and pieces...on Six Apart, Oracle's email sorters; Is Corante next up for the lipstick? PodSmash or Reality Smack for vid-pod users?

...a few cryptic quickies and all in just one post!

By Tom Foremski, Silicon Valley Watcher.com

Look for Six Apart to announce an interesting partnership on Tuesday to do with something that takes advantage of the latest and greatest from Infinity Loop in a looped way :-)
. . .

Oracle's email takes forever to be sent out, you'd almost think it was being filtered, flagged and read by humans :-)

. . .

Is Corante the next one up for the lipstick and tutu?
. . .

New York Times reporter David Pogue, while testing out the latest vid-pod walked smack-dab...into a steel girder! Please see An iPod worth keeping an eye on

As such incidents become more common, will they be commonly known as a pod-smash or maybe a reality smack?

Many heard the call of the Rooster...the response has been astounding

Barnyard Rooster1.jpg

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher.com

We've had a wonderful response to the Call of the Rooster, an idea to create a debate society in San Francisco to serve "north Silicon Valley"--twenty years on from the founding of the Churchill Club in Palo Alto.

[Please see The Call of the Rooster...]

The rooster club idea seems to have found a large hole in the zeitgeist, and one that seems more than ready to be filled. The response was so good that it might have had something to do with losing our server Friday for a few hours.

Take a look at some of the responses.

Let's hear from the rank and file not heat-seeking PR missiles says Sun's former comms chief Andy Lark

Great idea. Evenings are such a drag. I would also encourage you to only go off the beaten track in terms of speakers and content. I'm tired of the AO crowd and VCs. I'd like to hear more from the people changing the Valley and doing the work. Not the heat-seeking, PR missiles.

http://andylark.blogs.com

Charlene Li, Forrester's super star internet analyst says rooster club can reach out to SF's super smart women, a group that needs more inclusion in the valley.

I think the name is not nearly as important as the outreach to women. It’s pretty depressing to go to events like Syndicate, SuperNova, and Web 2.0 and see such an overwhelming number of men compared to women, in both the attendees and the speakers. There’s no better place to reach out to smart, techie women than in SF and I’d like to make sure that the word gets out to them.

http://blogs.forrester.com/charleneli

Bruce Lowry Novell's comms chief says count me in

I completely agree, Tom. As a North Bay type, I particularly like that you added the North Bay. There are some important tech companies up here - Autodesk being the biggest - but also a lot of startups doing interesting things (Mindjet comes immediately to mind). I like the Churchill Club events, but getting down the Peninsula is tough. Doing things in the City would be much better. When Churchill does do gigs in the City, they're always well attended. And, as a nascent corporate blogger, I'm a fan of the blogging component, too. Now if I could only come up with a good Rooster metaphor.
So count me in!

Debbie Landa, CEO of under the radar events firm IDB Networks is a big fan of the rooster

Tom, you know I'm a fan of this. Actually, many of our IBDNetwork members have been asking us to do events in the city again. Our events are definitely different from the Churchill Club, and there is always a need for the dealmaker events, but I'd be into the Rooster Club too.

Cisco's fast tracker Ron Piovesan says a more cutting edge discusion suits San Francisco's style

I like this idea. What is cool, I think, is that Churchill Club focuses on more established names. I think a "Rooster" club in SF would be good if it focused on new ideas, business models and so on (not that you can't find that in established names, mind you.) I think a more cutting edge discussion suits the personality of the city more as well.

Chris Dichtel notes that the rooster is often vane...but points in the right direction

Plus, a rooster is a common adornment on weather vanes, giving you that steady indication of which way the winds are blowing.

And there are a ton of emails to go through...

I'm going to move the rooster discussion to its own place but in the meantime, I'm tagging rooster related posts and will publish your rooster pieces if you'd like to email them to me: tom at siliconvallewatcher.com. I will also update the Call of the Rooster post, adding more metaphors and guiding principles sent in by our readers.

How about: Don't scratch at the door of the future--come into the henhouse and help make the future--join the rooster club! A salon of peers rather than podiums.

Oh, and I just realized that I was born in the Chinese year of the Rooster.

Here is the genesis post: The Call of the Rooster

Emasculate the Rooster but keep the cojones-No unproductive reproductive organ discussions please :-)

October 23, 2005

The Rooster Club: Dealing with the divisions of gender, class and race...and the rise of the nomadic digital societies/tribes

By Tom Foremski, Silicon Valley Watcher.com

In proposing the rooster club, twenty years on from the birth of the Churchill Club, I chose the rooster as a symbol of gender-neutral qualities that are admirable, that describe our times, and can be applied to all people.

[Please see: The Call of the Rooster...]

Yet we live in a society that is still divided along gender, ethnic, economic, and other lines. Those divisions are being dealt with in many ways, through many organizations and the vast goodwill of many people.

I'd rather not drag those divisions into the rooster club which is a place to focus on meritocracy, a salon of peers-not podiums. And meritocracy is a key element of the unique culture of Silicon Valley that should be highlighted.

Mobile, fragmented, and unrooted

These days our culture is becoming more mobile because we have a vast torrent of mobile digital devices and the infrastructure to allow us to be more mobile, to become more nomadic.

We are no longer tied to the desktop PC, nor to the laptop; and we will soon have access to our digital lives from any device anywhere, anytime and anyplace. We are becoming digitally-enabled mobile/nomadic peoples.

We are also more mobile in our thinking, more able to spot the obstacles to progress that gender, ethnic, and economic divisions create.

But we live in an increasingly fractured world because we belong to distinct groups/tribes defined by our employer, our friends, our professional associations, our ethnicity, and our sexual preferences.

Hopefully the rooster club will be a meeting place, online and offline, that can bridge our fractured worlds.

A return to our nomadic roots?

The first human cultures emerged from the nomadic tribal communities where it was common to celebrate the qualities of an animal, its spirit, its qualities, its energies.

We seem to be going back to our roots and becoming nomadic peoples again--or rather "nomadig" people: living in digitally-enabled groups but not necessarily *technology* focused in the same way as when the Churchill Club began 20 years ago.

And this time around, we are no longer tied to a particular geography, and nor is our thinking. Much of the culture of innovation is no longer tied to Silicon Valley, there are centers of innovation all over the planet.

We are mobile and seemingly in constant motion, travelling thousands of miles in a day, in a week, in a month, yet we remain rooted within our online worlds as if we hadn't budged an inch. Our physical address changes more often than our online address.

And our digital technology is disappearing into our surroundings, becoming embedded and almost invisible; as the word "digital" is embedded and almost invisible in the word "nomadig."

The call of the Rooster

In the time-honored tradition of when the first nomadic tribes adopted animal spirits and celebrated their unique qualities, I ask you to join me in the rooster club, and let us celebrate the rooster's best qualities--not its gender.

Do you dig? I know you that you do :-)

Look out for the roo-star sign up sheets...coming very soon!

October 22, 2005

Oodles of lawsuits--the battle over content will escalate

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

Craigslist's recent request that Oodle stop scraping its content is just the tip of the iceberg to the coming raging battles over content and its ownership.

Content is valuable, whether it is job listings or news. It is unique content that attracts attention.

And content owners will increasingly start to glue their content down. What happens to the Oodles of Googles out there will be interesting. Content will be king, imho:-)

Here is an interesting discussion at Silicon Beat.

---
BTW, the Oodle-type argument that companies posting job ads want as wide distribution as possible is bogus.

If employers want wider distribution they can go place ads in all sorts of places. The fact that they choose Craigslist, or any specific job site, is because they want to target that unique community.

October 21, 2005

Churchill Club 20th anniversary event: The call of the Rooster...

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

Twenty years on, Silicon Valley has expanded way beyond its birthplace in Palo Alto, it includes San Francisco and I would say it even reaches the outskirts of Santa Rosa, in the North Bay.

It would be fun to have a sort of "new" Churchill Club up in the city, where there are plenty of people interested in Churchillian type events but they can't get down to Palo Alto at 6pm because they are working until 8pm.

So, I've been floating the idea for the Rooster Club SF--[a salon of peers rather than podiums] over the past couple of weeks, here on SVW and elsewhere.

I mentioned it to Raymond Nasr, the new Churchill Club president who liked the idea. And it's not competition to Churchill Club, it's an SF affiliate. It is not either/or--but an and.

I've no idea how to pull such things together, Raymond and his team have plenty of experience.

I think that if Silicon Valley is going to make a comeback--and it is making a slow comeback--it has to have new institutions, new media voices and new organizations that represent and reflect these times.

And they have to come out of all this media disruption, this blogging movement.

And that is why it should be called the Rooster Club, imho, because the Rooster is a perfect metaphor for the blogger. Take a look:

-The Rooster crows away on its little patch of the farmyard, look at me, look how fine I am, my voice carries far and wide.

-The Rooster is all puffed up, all feathers and air, yet the Rooster is always the first to see the faint light of the future, the dawn of a new day, and proclaim it for all to hear.

-The Rooster always wakes you up way too early--and you curse the Rooster for it--but you can always fall back to sleep.

-A Rooster has to have cajones, by definition. But that is not a gender reference, it is a balls reference;-) because men and women bloggers have to have the balls to put their ideas and writing out into the blogosphere, into a public arena where they can be challenged, ridiculed, and attacked.

-This is the Chinese year of the Rooster.

. . .

Let me know what you think, we'll pass around a sign-up sheet very shortly. Also, send me some of your Rooster/blogger metaphors, we can compile them here :-)

SVW scoop: iSuppli proves that we got the scoop on video ipod to use Broadcom chip earlier this year

This is what iSuppli, a chip market research company found when it took apart the new video iPod:

"iSuppli Video iPod Teardown Reveals a Key New Supplier for Apple"

"El Segundo, Calif., Oct. 21, 2005-A dissection conducted this week by iSuppli Corp.'s Teardown Analysis service of the new video-capable iPod reveals an important new supplier among Apple' s semiconductor partners: Broadcom Corp., which is providing its new BCM2722 VideoCore Multimedia Processor to handle the video functionality."

"The Broadcom chip and other integrated circuits account for 17 percent of the $151 total Bill-of-Materials (BOM) cost for the 30Gbyte iPod, according to iSuppli. Other key cost drivers include the hard disk drive and the display, which together account for another 70 percent of the BOM."

Also:

Display supply troubles looming?
Other key cost drivers for the newest iPod include the hard disk drive and the display.
Apple has two sources for the drives: Toshiba Corp. and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. However, Apple uses just a single supplier for the display, according to iSuppli sources. In comparison, Apple has three suppliers for the nano' s display, which has had some well-publicized quality issues. This sole sourcing, along with possible supply constraint for LED backlights, might result in shipping delays.
"Once again displays may be a source of heartburn at Apple," noted Andrew Rassweiler, manager of iSuppli's Teardown Analysis service.

Apple' s challenge There is a lot on the line for Apple. Once again the company is attempting to redefine a market pioneered by competitors. Other companies like Archos, Creative and Samsung have marketed video-capable players for some time. But none of those companies can match Apple> 's strength in content, which is key for the growth of video in a market better known for its connection to digital music. By leveraging iTunes, its deals with content providers and its leading market position, Apple may reshape the market. " We used to say that video-capable PMPs were a subset of the MP3 player market. But by 2007, we' ll be saying that audio-only MP3 players are a subset of the PMP market," Crotty said. The iSuppli teardown analysis of Apple' s iPod includes a complete BOM, cost data, photos and descriptions of key components. A similar analysis is also available for the iPod nano and the iPod shuffle.

Churchill Club 20th anniversary event:The radical nature of online news...more than ten years ago

It was a pleasure to see Tom Waldrop, director of Intel's worldwide press relations. And it was interesting to hear Tom chat about the early days of Cnet's News.com, which is more than 10 years old.

Tom said that many in Silicon Valley weren't sure how to deal with News.com's writers, were they really real journalists?

We forget how reading news stories on the internet, from a media company with no print publication, was a strange thing to do. And it wasn't all that long ago.

Tom said that very soon people realized that the online news stories were just as good as the printed news stories from the established publishers. And the News.com journalists became an accepted part of the Silicon Valley media community. And Intel was also an investor in Cnet, which provided very important validity to the fledgling online news companies.

It's interesting to hear that story because I hear the same questions from many companies today, how do we deal with bloggers and with the blogosphere? Are bloggers journalists?

Howard High, a senior exec in Tom's team at Intel, introduced me to a meeting of the Semiconductor Industry Association in June, saying that when I left the Financial Times to become a blogger, that's when Intel knew it had to take blogging seriously and try to understand what is going on. It was because I was the first journalist to leave a prominent position at a major newspaper to become a blogger. [I didn't think of it at the time, but...]

So, are bloggers journalists? I tell people, "If you read something that looks like journalism, on a consistent basis, then it most likely is journalism." Yes, some bloggers are journalists.

I'm sometimes introduced as a former journalist, when I'm really a former FT journalist. It's always a slip of the tongue, but it is also an indication of the confusion over the new new media, and how to deal with it.

I'm still a journalist and I still work and write as a journalist, on pretty much the same topics and companies and people that I wrote about at the FT.

I still get pitched by the same people and companies; and I am invited to the very same media events as the print press. So, yes, I am a journalist and engaged in the traditional journalistic pursuits of scoops, exclusives, analysis and people.

But I often dress in a suit--so as to reassure people that bloggers are not a wild and unruly sort--they are just like you and me :-)

Next up at 11.11am--Churchill Club 20th anniversary event: The call of the Rooster...

Churchill Club 20th anniversary event:.Thank you founders Tony Perkins and Rich Karlgaard

It was just twenty years ago that the Churchill club was founded--two decades of podiums filled with Silicon Valley's luminaries and legends.

Rich Karlgaard, co-founder of the Churchill Club and publisher of Forbes magazine, said Robert Noyce, Intel's co-founder and first CEO gave the first Churchill Club address, a forgettable performance. For the 20th Anniversary dinner Paul Ottelini, Intel's newly appointed CEO will provide the speech.

The topic 20 years ago was the urgent need for tariffs against Japanese memory chip imports--something which did occur. Intel used to be a big memory chip maker, and one of the most strident lobbyists for import duties on Japanese memory chip competitors.

I remember writing about those times, I had arrived in San Francisco just one year prior to the founding of the Churchill Club.

Not long after Mr Noyce's Churchill Club speech, Intel abandoned memory chips in favor of the fat margins on microprocessors.

And forcing Japanese chip makers to charge more for their chips backfired on the US, because it sent boatloads of capital from the US to Japan.

In today's times the thinking would be: cheap chips equals good; because you can make digital products cheaper which grows the overall market. [As long as you can scramble up the value chain fast enough.]

If Japanese competitors were dumping chips below their cost of manufacture, then that is a good thing--it subsidizes the end user market and will eventually kill them.

Intel and the other US chipmakers moved into higher margin products, which is the natural scheme of such things. And the cash-rich Japanese chipmakers fell behind in chip making because they funneled their investment capital into other industries.

Later in the evening TP waxed lyrical on two of his favorite subjects Bush, and Wall Street Journal Editorials. At one point, he called the Economist magazine "Ecommunist" which, I thought, was quite a witty twist, but Tony said it was just a slip of his tongue.

Next up at 10.10am--Churchill Club 20th anniversary event:The radical nature of online news...more than ten years ago.

Churchill Club 20th anniversary event:How Raymond Nasr's mother found out he was leaving Google...

Raymond Nasr, ex-googler and Eric's right hand man, is the Churchill Club's new president. Raymond mentioned that his Aunt Edna reads Silicon Valley Watcher and she is 81.

About a week ago, Raymond told me that my scoop on his leaving Google, caused him all kinds of embarrasment and he had to explain to his mother,and his work colleagues; how did I get that so right, he asked?

What can I say? I can't reveal the secrets of journalism--they can only be acquired through many years of struggle and search for the truth--but I can say that I'm delighted Silicon Valley Watcher has the reach to reach Raymond's dear mom and aunt(!)

I also realised that I, and my colleagues within the rapidly deconstructing news media community, all provide a very valuable content contribution to the internet, and to many fine internet companies such as Google. Let's see a machine create that kind of content. Those pages and pages of harvested links that the Googlebot collects and publishes--eventually have to point to something original, otherwise they are pointless.

Up next at 9.09am--Churchill Club 20th anniversary event:.Thank you Tony Perkins and the Forbes guy
..

October 20, 2005

Silicon Valley goes to Washington D.C...Network Appliance visits the Hill as Data Protection laws are debated

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

I got a call from NetApp [NTAP] founder Dave Hitz and team, who are in Washington D.C as part of an East coast tour to visit with large financial services customers and legislators.

Dave Black from Voce fills in the background:

Congress is now considering the Personal Data Security and Privacy Act, and 8 other pieces of legislation designed to impose privacy, notification, and handling parameters on the storage of personal data -- in part due to high profile cases such as ChoicePoint and Mastercard. 30 other states are simultaneously considering similar legislation, and many of these laws actually contradict one another. If the federal government does not pass pre-emptive legislation, we'll soon have 50 slightly different state laws pertaining to data security -- expensive and painful for corporations.

Mr Hitz says he has been impressed by the legislators and their aids and with their understanding of the issues involved.

It is a complex subject because it requires creating best practices policies on storing, safeguarding, and destroying mountains of data that are required to be kept for up to seven years as a result of Sarbanes-Oxely and other regulations.

Silicon Valley is increasingly realizing that it has to deal with Washington D.C and get involved in the conversation--otherwise bad laws will be passed. Joe Kraus, of Excite/JotSpot has warned in SVW, about how other industries can use the law to limit what types of innovation can be done.

Easing on SOX?

Mr Hitz also mentioned that "there is a growing realization that Sarbanes-Oxely is an expensive burden for many US companies and there is talk of possibly easing the burden on smaller companies."

That would be a good thing--it's a tax on innovation, imho. But it wont happen unless there is a visible champion--a captain of industry confident enough to take the heat and the scrutiny. Any takers? John? Andy? Eric?

SVW readers get a discount to Under the Radar November 16! I'll be one of the moderators along with Steve Fox, chief editor at Infoworld and Michael Copeland from Business 2.0

The lovely ladies of IDB Network have organized another Under the Radar event, in which startups parade their pitches in front of jaded judges from the VC community. Can their passion convert some of the Simons into Paulas? (I know at least one on the list that can.)

Just mention Silicon Valley Watcher and you'll get a "friends" discount. Here is a link to the secret discount site ;-)

I'll try to be as disruptive as possible while Steve and Michael will represent the traditional media--good cop/bad cops style--or, maybe not. Either way, it'll be good to see you there, on the Microsoft Silicon Valley campus.

Here is a link to main page, remember the secret discount link is here ;-)

And here is a list of companies and judges:

http://www.ibdnetwork.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=146

MODERATORS AND JUDGES

Michael Copeland, Senior Writer, Business 2.0
Lara Druyan, General Partner, Allegis Capital
Kevin Efrusy, Partner, Accel Partners
Tom Foremski, SiliconValleyWatcher
Steve Fox, Editor-in-Chief, Infoworld
Michael Jung, Principal, JPMorgan Partners
Mitchell Kertzman, Partner, Hummer Winblad
Lisa Lambert, Managing Director, Intel Capital
Gary Little, General Partner, Morgenthaler Ventures
Jeff Nolan, Investment Manager, SAP Ventures
Wes Raffel, Advanced Technology Ventures
Evangelos Simoudis, Partner, Trident Capital

PRESENTING COMPANIES

Abrevity

TrueDemand
Trusted Network Technologies

Zimbra

I told IBM they should buy SAP-- Kleiner's Ray Lane says...

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

Ray Lane.jpg I've become quite impressed with former Oracle president Ray Lane and his analysis of the enterprise software industry. From his perch as a VC with Kleiner Perkins, he has developed interesting insights into the sector.

A few weeks ago I managed to chat with Mr Lane at a dinner for Virsa, possibly the fastest growing private software company today (it provides SOX compliance).

Before the dinner, Mr Lane made it plain he did not want to hear about how the enterprise software industry was now dead because of Oracle's acquisition of both PeopleSoft and Siebel. "Nothing has changed that wasn't the case before the acquisitions," Mr Lane said.

Which is true; but the acquisitions just reinforced and underlined the fact that two companies control all innovation and buyouts.

Here are some of the highlights from the dinner:

Please also see: Peoplesoft and Siebel considered merging but leadership issue blocked the deal.

Lots of M&A activity ahead

Mr Lane foresees a lot of M&A as thousands of smaller software companies try to acquire, or be acquired, as a survival strategy. Also, there are still thousands too many software startups that "won't ever produce significant revenues and should be closed down."

IBM should buy SAP

Mr Lane is convinced that IBM should acquire SAP. "Earlier this year I told Sam [Palmisano] that IBM should acquire SAP," Mr Lane said. But the IBM chief rejected that advice.

I pointed out that IBM makes more money out of SAP than SAP, because about one in ten dollars is spent on license fees, the rest is for implementation--the IT services that forms about one-half of IBM.

But Mr Lane believes that IBM needs applications on top of its middleware stack. I pointed out that IBM was terrible at enterprise applications and abandoned the market in 1999. "Well, Oracle was terrible at apps too," he said.

I covered IBM for a long time when I was at the Financial Times. Steve Mills, IBM's software chief, has been executing a strategy that has worked well and makes good sense. IBM found growth in providing middleware components to apps vendors, and not competing with them directly.

Mr Lane believes that if IBM had apps, it would be in a better position to sell more of its middleware components, which is probably true.

I would argue that IBM doesn't need to be in enterpise apps because it can let the developers create apps on its middleware platform and then use its massive IT services group to set it all up for its enterprise customers--that's where 90 per cent of the IT spend goes in such things.

A New Rules Car Corp.

I discussed with Mr Lane my description of what the new type of very successful dotcom organization would be, what I call a new rules enterprise.

These are small, highly agile, first mover companies, whose first rule is that they are new--no cultural battles to fight, and no legacy thinking and infrastructure to carry, etc.

Mr Lane agreed, "I think there is a lot to be said for a new rules enterprise. For example, if you were to build another General Motors today, it wouldn't look like GM. In fact, I think it is a great time to start a car company.

You can read more about the rules of new rules enterprises here:

These are the new dotcoms of the new rules economy...]

JotSpot and low end apps tools

Mr Lane said he was a big fan of JotSpot and other types of software that allowed people/small groups to easily create personalized applications. He also said that Kleiner wanted to invest in Joe Kraus's JotSpot when it had an opportunity, but an administrative snafu lost the deal.

Why should startups take VC funding?

That's a question I like asking, because in my view, VCs were needed when startups needed significant infrastucture, such as data centers. Nowadays that infrastructure is already in place, on demand over the web, at low cost. Today it's all about knowledge capital. You just need to have a small team willing to throw their credit cards into a bowl and work for six to 12 months.

Mr Lane says there is still a role for VCs, and that the VCs provide valuable advice. Well, I can see that having Ray Lane on the board of my software company would probably be worth the 50 pounds of flesh; but otherwise, it's an expensive way to get expert advice.

And I come across an astounding level of animosity towards VCs. Too many entrepeneurs have experienced the shenanigans that go on in the VC sector; and they won't seek funding until they've built up their valuations as far as possible through other means.

I think that it's just a few bad apples in the VC community--but then again, I don't know.

Ray Lane Bio

http://www.kpcb.com/team/bio_detail.php?frm_id=10

Putting the cart before the horse: more thoughts on community and technology

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

I think "tribes" is a better term than community because is provides some granuality and acknowledges the different self-interests within a community.

Tribes are communities, or groups of people with an allegiance and a self-interest and a specific look, and a distinct culture. That is a more honest way of portraying yourself in context. Using the term "community" implies a unity that isn't real.

The term Tribes was very much in vogue five or so years ago, but it felt too hipster, too foisted, too orchestrated by the Hippie tech philosophers such as Stewart Brand and ilk. So when Tribe.net, the online community formed in 2003, the term already felt spent.

But now it is coming back, and for all the right reasons. It is coming back from the grassroots, from the groups, the cultures that run under the radar (rather than in the underground ;-)

And with the term, Tribe.net is coming back too. Lucaso, SVW's newest and youngest contributing editor has been showing me how his mid-20s-and-up groups of friends are using digital technologies to communicate, organize and meet. For example, instead of business cards, when they meet people they tell them their Tribe.net avatar name: Luke is Lucaso, Amy is Amyliscious, Dawn is MsZigzag...

And it is these artistic and creative groups that are best described as tribes, and they are thriving and creating new cultures; and the technology is an enabler, it is in the background rather than in the foreground. Technology disappears into the tool kit, and into the walls, and environment.

The creativity of human endevours is what becomes the focus, rather than the technology. Finally, the cart is before the horse :-)

October 19, 2005

Let's kill the sacred cow of "Community" and reveal the hidden commercialism

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

Tuesday evening I was trying to find my way to a class room in South Hall, a building on the massive, meandering UC Berkeley campus where Quentin Hardy, a senior editor at Forbes is teaching a journalism class.

Quentin invited Dan Gillmor, John Shinal from Dow Jones' CBS MarketWatch, and myself a former mainstream journalist, to speak to his class about the new online media and how it affects our sense and understanding of self.

There were about 30 students and we chatted about a lot of things, and the word "community" kept cropping up, and up and up; not among the students, but from my fellow panelists.

It reminded me of my dislike for the term "community" because it is charged with an almost sacrosanct cultural meaning, to such an extent that it defies and discourages challenge. It is a revered word/term/concept and it is one that has become broadly appropriated by commercial interests, and deliberately so.

In the blogosphere and the larger mediasphere, community is used in ways that clouds meaning and cloaks commercial enterprise.

During a chat after class, Quentin noted that he heard the word community constantly at the recent Web 2.0 conference, where the $2800 per seat audience applauded "community" business models and services from the $30K per vendor pitches.

I think this sacred cow needs to be slain and we should not use highly charged words or terms unless we mean them to be used that way.

We should use more culture-neutral terms which don't engage society's sensitivities.

Here's my contribution to slaying the cow: I pointed out to the class that commercial interests love online communities, because they are an aggregated blob into which you can more cheaply throw marketing messages.

And let's not forget the "conversations" of the online communities, which are collected and diced and sliced and packaged and sorted and sold. By Technorati, Feedster, and a gazillion others--because it is all out in the open, in the commons.

Commercial interests are acceptable--after all, everyone has a landlord or banker that needs to eat--but cloaking commercial interests behind sacrosanct terms and ideas and concepts is beyond the bounds, imho.

October 2005 Archives

October 31, 2005

"Life is too short to click on an unknown" - No blind links on Blogs says Web Design Guru Jakob Nielsen

Will search become less important? The future of the online bot armies . . .

October 28, 2005

Weekend Wrapper : More thoughts on GOOG database; the drag on internet performance from the bot armies; and SVW readers get discount to upcoming Churchill Club Mossberg/Swisher gadget fest!

October 27, 2005

The Google database is an attempt to accumulate a massive amount of content for free--just as the balance of power is shifting towards content owners

October 26, 2005

A Momentary Publishing Incident in the Blogosphere

Craigslist: Battling the spider and bot armies of the swarms of VC-funded search-and-scrape startups . . .a chat with ceo Jim Buckmaster

The lie of distribution--search engines return very little value to news/blog sites yet hog bandwidth and increase server loads

October 24, 2005

Runnin' the Corridor: 2 Weeks On the Digital (and REAL) Highway

A few bits and pieces...on Six Apart, Oracle's email sorters; Is Corante next up for the lipstick? PodSmash or Reality Smack for vid-pod users?

Many heard the call of the Rooster...the response has been astounding

October 23, 2005

The Rooster Club: Dealing with the divisions of gender, class and race...and the rise of the nomadic digital societies/tribes

October 22, 2005

Oodles of lawsuits--the battle over content will escalate

October 21, 2005

Churchill Club 20th anniversary event: The call of the Rooster...

SVW scoop: iSuppli proves that we got the scoop on video ipod to use Broadcom chip earlier this year

Churchill Club 20th anniversary event:The radical nature of online news...more than ten years ago

Churchill Club 20th anniversary event:.Thank you founders Tony Perkins and Rich Karlgaard

Churchill Club 20th anniversary event:How Raymond Nasr's mother found out he was leaving Google...

More stories than you can shake a stick at--part 879: Two decades of the Churchill Club --[published as an hourly series as an experiment.]

October 20, 2005

Silicon Valley goes to Washington D.C...Network Appliance visits the Hill as Data Protection laws are debated

SVW readers get a discount to Under the Radar November 16! I'll be one of the moderators along with Steve Fox, chief editor at Infoworld and Michael Copeland from Business 2.0

I told IBM they should buy SAP-- Kleiner's Ray Lane says...

Putting the cart before the horse: more thoughts on community and technology

October 19, 2005

Let's kill the sacred cow of "Community" and reveal the hidden commercialism