- Cycles
- Filtrbox is Hiring
- Lookery is in Boulder Tonight
- Palin in Church
- Metaphors and Defrag
- The Kindle and DRM
- Foodzie - Online Marketplace for Artisan Foods
- Early Stage Investing in an Uncertain Economy
- What Happened To The 4GL?
- Yahoo Finally Got Back Into My Daily Folder
- My Relationship With Apple Is Like My Relationship With The Republican Party
- Om, That's Actually "You Gotta Be Fucking Kidding Me"
- Mesa Falls Marathon
- Amazon Acquires Shelfari
- What A House Hit By Lightning Looks Like
Cycles - Top
Now that I'm 42 years old, I've been around the computer industry long enough to understand that it runs in cycles. I don't know how long the cycles are going to be, when they are going to reach a peak or a trough, but I do know that things will get better, will get worse, will get better, will get worse, will get better, ...
When I reflect on it, the long term trend over the last 42 years has been amazing. There are lots of formal and informal studies and articles on this that all link to Schumpeter's theory of creative destruction and Clay Christensen's ideas around disruptive innovation. As the cycles play out, great new companies get created around new innovation, some reach escape velocity, some get absorbed into other large incumbent companies, and some disappear.
Today's New York Times has two short articles - one in Bits and the other in DealBook - that reminded me of this.
Our good friend Microsoft makes a key appearance in both articles. Pondering the rise, fall, rise, fall, ... of each of these companies over a 50 year period - both at a macro company level and within specific product groups - is a fun mental exercise (at least for me.)
When I reflect on the various companies we've funded over the past year I get really excited about the stage of the cycle we are in with the new Foundry Group portfolio. Independent of who wins the upcoming election, I think the vector of innovation around software and Internet will be steep and many of the things we've been talking about for the past 20 years as science fiction are going to start to instantiate themselves as real products and services. The relationship between humans and computers is once again changing rapidly and the number of different amazing things that I can envision happening in the next two decades is extensive.
I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round.
Filtrbox is Hiring - Top
One of last year's TechStars companies - Filtrbox - is hiring. They are looking for a Java + LAMP developer and a Flash/Flex/RIA developer. If you fit the bill and are looking for a gig in downtown Boulder with a great early stage company, drop 'em a note at jobs (at) filtrbox.com.
Lookery is in Boulder Tonight - Top
The gang from Lookery is in Boulder tonight and having a publisher meetup from 6:30pm to 9:00pm in the TechStars Bunker at 1375 Walnut Street. I've started using Lookery on Feld Thoughts and am starting to collect a different set of analytics about you, oh blog reader.
Lookery is a user-targeting service and advertising network. They provide free analytics to promote to publishers, bringing them attention, organic traffic, sales leads, and partnership opportunities. They are looking for publishers who represent:
- as much Facebook app and consumer Internet page volume as possible , preferably attached to big registration databases, and
- as many online marketing services execs as possible.
Cool stuff - definitely worth hanging out and having a beer with them if you fit the description or think you might want to partner with them. Sign up on the Facebook page for the event.
Palin in Church - Top
I'm speechless. I don't think I even know how to process this anymore.
Metaphors and Defrag - Top
Eric Norlin - who runs the Defrag Conference - has a good post up today titled The metaphors we've outgrown. He riffs off of the Google Chrome announcement. At the end of it, he answers "what makes Defrag different."
People ask me all of the time what makes Defrag different? I kind of giggle and tell them that I’m proud that we’re not a conference loaded with case studies. Don’t get me wrong, that has a very useful place (in a nearly mature market). We’re just nowhere near that place. Defrag is about gathering to explore, imagine and build these new metaphors. The web should be getting smarter, more implicit, more enabling.
Let the rest of the world get mired down in economic uncertainty, productivity enhancement and cost reduction. There’s plenty of time for you to do that (trust me). Come to defrag and help us grow out of these metaphors. And then watch as the supposedly “pie in the sky” things you find at Defrag are suddenly “real world” things that you’re using and implementing everyday. Kinda cool, huh?
For all those interested, I'm still using Chrome - mostly enjoying it a lot but starting to notice the things it is missing, especially all those fun implicit web plugins I've been using.
The Kindle and DRM - Top
I have completely fallen in love with my Kindle. I've now read over 50 books on it and have another 50 or so queued up. I've been reading exclusively on my Kindle when I travel (I no longer carry books with me), although I do read from the infinite pile of books in my house when I'm home. As a mega-reader, Amazon has completely nailed it.
However, I have one problem with the Kindle. DRM.
I view the Kindle as a pure substitute for a book. The way a book works is that I can read it and - when I'm done - I can give it to Amy to read. She can then give it to a friend of her's to read. Or put it on her bookshelf.
I can't do this with the Kindle. I can read the book. I can put it on my bookshelf. But I can't give it to Amy.
Now, I don't have a problem with the fact that I can't copy a book and have it simultaneously on two Kindles. However, Amazon has already solved for this - it lets me store my books on either my Kindle or in my Amazon account. So, I'm one small step away from "sharing" my book with Amy where she could then download it and read it on her Kindle. At this moment in time, she'd have it on her Kindle but I wouldn't have it on my Kindle.
That's how books work. That's how the Kindle could work. I'd even be satisfied with having a limit on the number of people that I could share a book with (at least two; less than five) and would be ok with a permanent association between a few Kindles. Remember - share means that we can't read it at the same time.
It makes no sense to me that I can physically give Amy my Kindle to read a book on, but can't transfer the book to her to read on her Kindle. Oh - so very close.
Foodzie - Online Marketplace for Artisan Foods - Top
We've done TechStars for two years now. While I love every company involved, each year I've had a major crush on one particular company. This year it was Foodzie.
I liked Rob, Emily, and Nik from the minute I met them at TechStars for a Day. They came up to me and offered me chocolate. Brilliant. They then explained that they were creating an online marketplace for artisan food producers and growers. Their target customer are foodies. As a foodie (and major consumer of artisan foods - just look at my body shape even after running all the marathons I do) I totally got it.
They did a great job this summer honing their business, working out logistics and pricing, and getting their first few producers up and running. Are you a chocolate lover - give Seth Ellis Chocolatier a try. Popcorn anyone - how about Boulder Popcorn? And organic tea - try Tetulia Teas.
Having contributed to the very long list of potential artisan food producers that the Foodzie crew is testing (where "testing" means eating stuff and making sure it's really good) I can assure you that there is a bunch of great stuff coming.
If you are an artisan food producer - or know one - and want to get connected with Foodzie, drop Emily an email. If you love to eat, cruise the Foodzie site. And - if you like food porn, take a look at the Foodzie blog.
Early Stage Investing in an Uncertain Economy - Top
I'm on a panel on Tuesday September 9th from 5pm - 8pm titled Early Stage Investing in an Uncertain Economy. It's being sponsored by the Rockies Venture Club and is being held at the Denver Marriott City Center. If you are interested in attending, you can register here.
Since the Rockies Venture Club is largely targeted at angel investors and entrepreneurs it should be an interesting conversation. The TechStars Demo and Investor Day two weeks ago was packed and the 2008 TechStars teams are seeing very high interest in their early stage rounds. If this is a data point, it would indicate that the "uncertain economy" isn't having much impact.
As an early stage VC investor, I don't pay much attention to the macro economy. I've written about this in the past - some of our best investments have come during crappy economic periods (say 2001 - 2003). We are funding very early stage companies with an expectation that it will take them 5+ years to mature into a successful business. Lots can happen in 5+ years.
I'll save my snarkier remarks for the panel.
What Happened To The 4GL? - Top
On today, this day of endless blogging / talking (and hopefully downloading) of Google Chrome, I thought I'd go retro and write about my renewed hunt for the 4GL. But first, a little context on how this came about.
This summer I spent some time playing around with Google AppEngine to try and understand it better. It didn't take long before I realized I needed to really understand how to program in Python to do anything. So I spent some time reading about Python and ultimately realized that if I wanted to make any progress, I needed to spend a chunk of time actually learning Python. Fortunately, I found a nice MIT course titled 6.00. I took the equivalent (6.001) in 1984 when it was taught using Scheme; now it uses Python. Oh goody - I can re-live my 18-year old student self if I want.
As I started digging around in Python, I instinctively compared it to the languages we used at my first company, Feld Technologies. We wrote business applications in the late 1980's and early 1990's and our language of choice was Clarion. We also wrote one large system using DataFlex and one with Oracle7, did plenty of work with dBase and FoxPro, ultimately adopted Microsoft Access as our 4GL of choice, struggled through some stuff on the Mac with 4th Dimension, and explored doing things with PowerBuilder right at the time that we sold the company. Some of these applications (including some of the larger ones) are still being used.
When I was playing with Google AppEngine, I kept waiting for the 4GL "aha moment." That's the moment I had using Clarion, DataFlex, Access, and even FoxPro where I realized how easy it was to do certain things. That moment never came during my exploration of Google AppEngine - the deeper I got, the more confused I got.
My plan for Google AppEngine was to write a very simply application to help me manage my art collection. I've searched long and hard for a web based application to do this - the closest I've come is a program called Yallery written by a local friend Jennifer Ross. Yallery is very cool and does a lot of things that I'd want to do, but like most applications it misses on a handful of very specific things I want, while adding lots of things I don't want. So - when AppEngine came out, I thought writing a simple art collection management system (ACMS) would be a great way to solve two problems: (1) really learn how AppEngine works and (2) get my little ACMS up and running exactly the way I wanted.
Like all good software developers, I sketched out a quick design. Like 99% of the software I've written in the past, the application is table driven - there is a simple data structure underlying all of the various screens that I'd want. I'd use the app via a few different modalities which would be accessed through a simple menu. The screens, menu, and underlying database describe 80% of the application; the final 20% is something any run of the mill report writer should be able to handle.
The optimal time to do this was when I was in Alaska in July. I try to take on a few new things each summer "to learn" and this seemed like a perfect one. I carved out some two hour chunks and went after it. However, two days in and I was completely lost. It was clear that whatever construct I had in my head about what I needed to do didn't map in any way to how I needed to do it in AppEngine.
Now, some of it may be me. I stopped programming around the time that people were making the shift from procedural programming to object oriented programming. C was the language of my day; not C++. The idea of "Object Basic" or "Object Pascal" was amusing. So - I've always struggled a little with object / method syntax. Oh - and at my core there are two languages that have influenced me the most - Basic and Scheme - which probably explains all of my weird programming predilections.
But something just seemed wrong to me. Clearly AppEngine wasn't the right tool to build my ACMS in. But, I didn't really know what the right tool was. I know what I want - something like Clarion that works in a web-browser world. Something that provides all the magic Ajax UI goodies for me without me having to really do anything other than specify what I want the screens to look like. Something that knows how to bind data fields to the screens and then to a table to a database and allow me to do all kinds of data entry, sorting, and reporting on them. Something that completely isolates error handling for me so I don't have to think about it. As I worked through my list of "wants" I realized I was defining what a 4GL does.
I know that there are some companies working on this. In an attempt to be trendy, this is now called PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service). But it's really the reincarnation of the 4GL. And I'm not sure I really want a PaaS - I think I just want a 4GL that works with today's web-based environment.
Yahoo Finally Got Back Into My Daily Folder - Top
The very first folder in my browser toolbar is called "Daily" and it's the folder I right click and choose "Open All in Tabs" first thing in the morning when I do my email / web / blog drill. For a long time my.yahoo.com was in there; I took it out about a year ago because I was getting all the information I wanted from other places.
Last week, Alan Warms from Yahoo sent me an email about the new Yahoo Political Dashboard. Fred already beat me with a blog about it titled Polls vs Markets but I totally agree with him - Alan and his team have done a dynamite job creating a political dashboard that I'll now look at every day. It's now the 11th item in my Daily folder.
My Relationship With Apple Is Like My Relationship With The Republican Party - Top
Scott Converse has a wonderful post up titled Is Apple a Republican? After reading it, I pondered my relationship with Apple and realized that it is just like my relationship with the Republican Party - there are some things that theoretically appeal to me, but endless deal breakers that push me away and head fakes that leave me cynical.
If you are a long time reader of this blog, you know that every six months or so I try again. I go to the Apple store and buy whatever shiny new Mac toy there is. A G5 - yeah. A MacBook Pro. Sure. An iPhone - definitely. A MacBook Air. Yeah, this will be the one. After tens of thousands of dollars spent on Apple products, the only three I am using today are my Apple 30" Cinema Displays (I love them), my G5 in my office (which I'm running Vista on), and my iPhone 3G (which has now lasted three weeks notwithstanding the endless dropped calls and lack of Outlook Task synchronization.)
The Republicans promise me smaller government. Oops. Better fiscal policy (e.g. no deficits) - double oops. Distribution of power to state and local government. Um, yeah. Equality for all. Patriot act, immigration policy, wars, anyone. The list goes on. I've always described myself as "conservative fiscal policy, liberal social policy" where theoretically a "moderate Republican approach" would work for me.
Wrong. The big deal breaker for me is abortion. I couldn't ever vote for a pro-life president. Stay with me, you'll get the Apple analogy soon. There are plenty of others - war, immigration, protectionism, religion - but I still fantasize about that enlightened "conservative fiscal policy, liberal social policy."
Ironically, my friends the Democrats have always had the liberal social policy down and now appear to have a much better handle on the conservative fiscal policy side of it. I was a Reagan youth, but have voted Democrat ever since. And while many think I'm a hard core Democrat, I'm actually an Independent.
About the time I voted for Reagan, I had an original Mac. My first computer was an Apple II. I even had an Apple III for a while. My Mac had one floppy drive and 128k. I loved it even though it was basically useless. When I got my first IBM PC (two floppy disk drives, 64k) and started writing software on it (and making money with it) I became a PC / Microsoft user. My Apple fantasies continued unabated - every few years I'd buy another one and end up discarding it after a few weeks to go back to my PC. There were always "deal breakers."
The deal breaker for me with Apple for the past few years has been Microsoft Exchange support. Entourage 2004 was so inadequate that it never became an option for me and Entourage 2008 disappointed me so much that I punted. I don't really want to run Entourage - I want native Exchange support in all the Mac products. ActiveSync anyone?
I tried with the first iPhone - I really wanted to like it - but it just didn't get there for me. Remarkably, after resisting for many years, Apple finally licensed ActiveSync and integrated it into the iPhone 2.0 software. Voila - I dumped my Dash and am still using my iPhone 3G several weeks later.
But - Apple forgot one thing. Tasks. Apple syncs Mail and Calendar with Exchange, but not Tasks. For anyone that is a hard core Outlook user (like me) that manages to a zero inbox, Tasks are important. It's kind of like being pro-choice but being against birth control. Weird. Limiting. And intensely frustrating.
Third party apps are starting to appear that try to sync Tasks, but they are all weak. KeyTasks from Chapura seems to come the closest so far, but it's not server side sync (with Exchange) - you have to have a client side agent running. And of course, it doesn't have categories ("Category support coming soon.")
Theoretically wonderful, but always comes up short with a deal breaker. We didn't even get into religion yet, but ponder that as you think about the Cult of Mac vs. the PC / Microsoft.
I definitely have too much politics on the brain. I can't wait until 2009.
Om, That's Actually "You Gotta Be Fucking Kidding Me" - Top
Om Malik discovered that Microsoft has received a new and exciting patent on "page up and page down." It was issued on 8/19/08. I just read the summary and this is truly a ridiculous patent. The USPTO must have gotten confused by the fancy math included in the patent (e.g. "{[(p-1)/c]h}+r") that is included in claim 1.
1. In a computing environment, a method comprising: displaying at least one page of a document that has multiple pages, at least one of the multiple pages, and the displayed at least one page including a first page displayed beginning at a starting point offset from a top of the document and from a top of the first page; calculating a height of at least the first page; calculating a row offset of the starting point of the first page; calculating a vertical offset at the starting point of the first page, wherein the vertical offset is calculated according to a formula of the form {[(p-1)/c]h}+r, where p is equal to the number of pages in the document, c is equal to the number of columns of the document which are simultaneously displayed, h is equal to the height of at least the first page, and r is equal to the row offset of the starting point of the first page; receiving a command indicative of a whole page-based incremental scroll request related to changing first content currently being displayed in the at least one page; determining a whole-page increment for scrolling from first content to second content, wherein determining the whole-page increment includes calculating a vertical offset at a second starting point in the document, the vertical offset being calculated according to the formula V.sub.1.+-.(cr), where V.sub.1 is the vertical offset at the starting point of the first page; and changing the display to display second content, by replacing the at least one page of the document with at least one other page, the display of the at least one other page beginning at the second starting point.
I think this used to be exercise #4 on problem set #3 in 6.001 at MIT. You used to have to write this in Scheme, which I'm guessing is a lot more elegant than the Microsoft C# implementation.
Mesa Falls Marathon - Top
On Saturday I ran the Mesa Falls Marathon. I've now completed a marathon in 12 of the 50 states - almost 25% of the way there. My co-conspirator for this one was Matt Blumberg, who ran the last half of it with me and wrote about it in Half as Long, One Third as Hard.
This was a small marathon - my guess is around 150 people ran it. My goal was to finish in the top 200 which I accomplished comfortably. My serious goal was to break 4:45. My official time was 5:02, although according to my Garmin 305 my running time was 4:52. I can confirm that I lost about 5 minutes to a bathroom break at mile 10 and another 5 minutes at the half way mark and on a few pee breaks. So - I was close. However, I finished much stronger than I had two months ago at Grandma's Marathon in Duluth so I'm pleased with the progress of my training under my new coach Gary Ditsch.
Mesa Falls was a beautiful marathon. The first 10 miles are on a dirt road in the middle of no where. Tranquil, quiet, and wonderful. I had trouble getting into a rhythm - my shoes were too tight, I had to pee, and then around mile four I got an upset stomach. There was a porta-potty at mile 6 but I felt better so cruised by it. Predictably, at 6.5 miles, I had to go. For a brief moment I considered turning around, but powered on to mile 10 where I took a delightful 5 minute break.
We immediately turned onto a road and I totally kicked ass - covering the next 3 miles in 27 minutes. It was a decent downhill but I felt much lighter. I stopped for 15 seconds right at mile 13 to look at the incredible view at Mesa Falls and then stopped again at 13.1 to meet up with Matt, make the "Uncle Spike sign", have Amy take a few photos of us, and change my shirt.
It was huge to have Matt join me. The course had a brutal uphill between mile 17 and 20 that Matt towed me up. I marched through to mile 23 where I finally slammed into the wall. I don't really remember the 25 minutes that it took me to run mile 23 and 24, but Matt said I was pretty calm. I got a seventh wind at mile 25 and covered the last mile in under 10 minutes.
Thanks to everyone who supported me on this one, especially my sponsors Return Path, Pixie Mate, NewWest, and Bill Flagg who made an extra generous contribution to Accelerated Cure. And of course - my sherpa Amy and my friends the Blumbergs.
Next up - Mount Desert Island Marathon in Bar Harbor, ME on 10/19/08.
Amazon Acquires Shelfari - Top
Congrats to Josh Hug and the gang at Shelfari for joining the Amazon.com family. I was an early angel investor in Shelfari and have been a long time avid user of the service. Amazon was an investor in the first round and the two companies fit naturally together.
I invested in three vertical social networks in 2006 - Shelfari (books), Dogster (dogs and cats), and Enthusiast Group (sports). So far I have one win (Shelfari) and one loss (Enthusiast Group). Dogster is doing great and looks like it'll be a nice winner also. I made these as small angel investments to learn about the dynamics around vertical social networks. I've learned a bunch from Josh and from Ted Rheingold at Dogster. It also looks like I'll have a nice "aggregate financial outcome" for my investments in this area.
Well done Shelfari!
What A House Hit By Lightning Looks Like - Top
The parents of a close friend just had a direct lightning strike on their house. It immediately burned to the ground and everything was lost.
The simple advice from my friend if this ever happens to you is "get out fast and not go back for anything that is not a human being." She also suggested that you check your home insurance to make sure you are covered for this.