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December 2005 - Posts
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10:44 AM Friday, December 23, 2005
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The hype and rumors around Riya are perplexing to me. In fact, count me as skeptical. Some of the uber-bloggers, Robert Scoble , Om Malik , and Michael Arrington have been praising Riya, yet saying little about what Riya actually does. These guys are Read More...
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10:44 AM Friday, December 23, 2005
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Eight years ago Nick Whyte and our team at AltaVista invented multi-media search. We were the first with Image (picture) Search, Video Search, and Music Search. Seven years ago I joined the team at Napster where we invented P2P music search and file sharing. Read More...
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10:44 AM Friday, December 23, 2005
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As part of my job with Microsoft's Emerging Business Team I get to work with lots of innovative start-ups with cool technology. Dan'l Lewin wrote an Always On editorial Checked My List Twice highlighting some of those companies. I encourage you to read Read More...
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10:44 AM Friday, December 23, 2005
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23
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The headlines are screaming about the Alexa (Amazon) announcement that they will offer the Alexa index and computing platform as a web service for a fee. Monster Mash , Re-scramble of the search game , Alexa Offers Fee Based Vertical Search Service , Read More...
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10:44 AM Friday, December 23, 2005
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Cnet reported today that AOL, InterActiveCorp, investment bank Allen & Co., and The Hearst Corp. plan to invest $16.2 million in Brightcove . In addition, Barry Diller, CEO of InterActiveCorp, will join Brightcove's board of directors. Brightcove Read More...
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10:44 AM Friday, December 23, 2005
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Microsoft announced today the intention to submit the Office Open XML file formats for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to the European standards body ECMA International. This follows an earlier announcement that the next version of Office will natively support Read More...
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10:44 AM Friday, December 23, 2005
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23
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Ray Ozzie and the team at Microsoft is working on an exciting new innovation to RSS called SSE, Simple Sharing Extensions. There is a draft specification in place , and sample code will be ready soon. Microsoft has released the Simple Sharing Extensions Read More...
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10:44 AM Friday, December 23, 2005
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23
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The New York Times has another interesting article today " Putting the Napster Genie Back in the Bottle ". The story is about Shawn Fanning's new company Snocap. You might remember that Shawn was the creative genius behind Napster. Snocap is Read More...
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10:44 AM Friday, December 23, 2005
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23
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One of Google's gifts to the Internet is text ads. Randall Stross of the New York times has an interesting column today, " How Google Tamed Ads on the Wild, Wild Web ". I remember 6 years ago when I was at AltaVista banner ads and flashing animated Read More...
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10:44 AM Friday, December 23, 2005
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23
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Robert X. Cringely wrote a fascinating story today " Google Mart " about Google's plans for all their data centers and dark fiber they have been buying. Google has tens of thousands of servers, and over 50 data centers, scattered all over the Read More...
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10:44 AM Friday, December 23, 2005
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Dare Obasanjo has an interesting post titled Flipping Your Startup 101 . Dare references my earlier post Microsoft Will Acquire My Company which explains the logic the big players use when considering the acquisition of a startup. The "Flipping" Read More...
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10:44 AM Friday, December 23, 2005
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23
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I get lots of questions about the VC funding process, how to be successful, why it takes so long, what to expect, etc. Rick Segal of JL Albright Ventures writes The Post Money Value blog and had an excellent post Inside the Process describing how it works Read More...
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10:43 AM Friday, December 23, 2005
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23
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Ray Ozzie, CTO of Microsoft, has a new blog. It can be found at http://spaces.msn.com/members/rayozzie/ I worked for Ray for several years at Groove Networks. He is the smartest guy I have ever worked with, a true visionary, and a great guy. He writes Read More...
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10:43 AM Friday, December 23, 2005
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23
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Invention is the creation of a feature or technology that is totally new. Innovation takes a collection of inventions, combines them with existing products or technologies, and produces a commercially viable product. Both invention and innovation are Read More...
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10:43 AM Friday, December 23, 2005
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23
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Zink is a "zero ink" technology for high quality digital image printing. The technology was developed by Polaroid Research Labs. Zink is a newly formed start-up that acquired the technology and engineers from Polaroid. The initial target market Read More...
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10:43 AM Friday, December 23, 2005
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Entrepreneurs like to solve problems and improve things, which often leads to "solutions looking for a problem". It is important to remember the difference between Consumer problems and Enterprise problems. Entrepreneurs fall into the "solution Read More...
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10:43 AM Friday, December 23, 2005
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JJ and Jeremy Allaire started Allaire Corp to develop great tools, and later a platform, for web application development. Allaire Corp was a huge success, but they didn't stop there. JJ has an exciting new company called Onfolio which provides a set of Read More...
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10:43 AM Friday, December 23, 2005
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Fortune Magazine has a great blog devoted to innovation called Business Innovation 2005 . Fortune is holding a conference on innovation starting November 30th that looks very interesting. I just discovered this blog because they linked to my post of yesterday Read More...
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10:43 AM Friday, December 23, 2005
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Innovation is happening again...the way it did pre-Internet bubble. There are lots of great ideas emerging. Entrepreneurs are bootstrapping their ideas with their own time and money. They are building working code and web applications, and building a Read More...
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10:43 AM Friday, December 23, 2005
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My colleague, Cliff Reeves, wrote an excellent post, " Behind the veil, how the Microsoft Emerging Business Team works". We work with VCs and start-ups to help make them successful with Microsoft, and together build great products for our customers. Read More...
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10:43 AM Friday, December 23, 2005
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23
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The last chapter has not been written in the search game. Microsoft MSN Search is every bit as good as Google in terms of size, speed, and relevance. Microsoft has come from behind several times before. I wouldn't bet against them now. MSN Search is just Read More...
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10:43 AM Friday, December 23, 2005
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Innovation drives our industry, attracts the best talent, attracts VC money, and wins fame for its leaders. Innovation leaders burst onto the scene, win early market leadership, but sometimes can't sustain the pace. Why do "fast followers" often Read More...
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10:42 AM Friday, December 23, 2005
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Any application can be rewritten as a web based service. Salesforce.com is an excellent example of taking an existing client server application and rewriting it as a web based service. Hotmail is a web based email service. IBM is pushing hard with its Read More...
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10:42 AM Friday, December 23, 2005
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I spent the day with Microsoft IP Ventures group. This new group is focused on licensing out technology created in the Microsoft Research Labs that Microsoft product groups have no plans to productize. These technologies will jump start whole new companies, Read More...
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10:42 AM Friday, December 23, 2005
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An announcement is expected today from Microsoft, Palm, and Verizon introducing a new version of the popular Treo cell phone. Cnet reported on Saturday that "Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates is scheduled to join Palm CEO Ed Colligan and Verizon Wireless Read More...
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10:42 AM Friday, December 23, 2005
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InstaColl , short for instant collaboration, is a cool new product for real time collaboration on Excel, Word, and PowerPoint files. InstaColl allows you to co-edit files in real time with team members distributed across the world. InstaColl is also useful Read More...
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10:42 AM Friday, December 23, 2005
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Friendster , Spoke , LinkedIn , FaceBook , MySpace , and others are blazing trails in the social networking space. There is smart money and lots of smart people behind these companies so at least one of them is likely to be The Next Big Thing. Social Read More...
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10:42 AM Friday, December 23, 2005
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The investment market is driven by two things; fear and greed. Fear is temporary, greed is permanent. Markets over time always move up but there are periods of fear and doubt that cause investors to retreat. Greed takes over when investors see others Read More...
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10:42 AM Friday, December 23, 2005
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Steve Ballmer tells a story about the very early days of Microsoft and the partnership with IBM. Microsoft was a tiny company with 100 developers or less. IBM had 1,000's of developers and could have crushed Microsoft at any time. But, Microsoft was a Read More...
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10:42 AM Friday, December 23, 2005
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What happened to the good old days of the late 80's and 90's? The formula for making a fortune on The Next Big Thing was working well. Everyone was getting rich. Then the tech bubble burst in 2000 and changed everything. I was having breakfast with some Read More...
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10:42 AM Friday, December 23, 2005
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I spent the morning at the monthly Keiretsu Forum , an angel investor group in the Boston area. Keiretsu Forum in a nationwide organization of accredited angel investors with 13 local chapters. Other angel groups in the Boston area include eCoast Angels Read More...
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10:42 AM Friday, December 23, 2005
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I spent that past 12 years working for great software start-ups (Forte, AltaVista, Napster, Bowstreet, and Groove) delivering leading edge software. I learned that there is a natural evolution of software companies in terms of how and when they deliver Read More...
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10:42 AM Friday, December 23, 2005
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Newsgator is a blog users best friend. It is my principal RSS reader and I use it every day. The Outlook plug in is flawless, elegant, and intuitive in design. Anyone can use Newsgator in Outlook with absolutely no training required. If you can read email Read More...
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11:32 AM Monday, December 12, 2005
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CNET has an interesting story this morning entitled Can one man rep |
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