December 31, 2007
Gutting a Patent Claim by Claim
Tom Evslin picked up my challenge to help invalidate the proposed patent in my post Have You Ever Coded a Progress Bar? Tom has prior art going back to 1987 ...
Outsource Your Manual Stuff
I didn’t listen to any voicemail in 2007. I got plenty of them – but I didn’t listen to any of them. Yet I got 100% of the information that ...
Finally – Nortel and Vonage Settle Quickly
It appears that Vonage had something in its patent portfolio that Nortel didn’t like. Several weeks ago Nortel sued Vonage for patent infringement. They just settled for a limited cross ...
December 30, 2007
Friend Integration – Phase 1 of 10
Facebook. MySpace. LinkedIn. Plaxo. Gmail. Email Contacts. Bebo. Every individual social networking software product that I use (Dogster, Shelfari, …)
Oh how I friend thee. Let me count the ways.
I’m already ...
December 29, 2007
Have You Ever Coded a Progress Bar?
Our friends at IBM are trying to patent the "progress bar." EDN has an article about it titled U.S. patent office looking for prior art on IBM patent application. As ...
Fuck The Packaging
I spent 45 minutes this morning desmegmafying three new Xbox 360 controllers, three new Wii controllers, a Wii charger, and a bunch of videogames. Thanks to everyone that suggested Wii ...
December 28, 2007
Patent Holders Against Software Patents
As my Quixotic adventure for abolishing software patents continues, I’m starting to come across essays, examples, and suggestions from software engineers that support and confirm my point of view.
Terry Gold ...
Just Gas
Creating companies from scratch is really difficult. Every successful entrepreneur knows the daily challenges and struggles that conspire against him. Sometimes the entrepreneur thinks to himself "there must be an ...
December 27, 2007
The Glue That Binds Things
The massive proliferation of web services, their corresponding APIs, and the notion that "the web is the platform" has caused me to spend a lot of time in what I ...
A Rant on VCs, Financial Models, and Experience
I love a good rant. I got one several months ago from Janet Stites in reaction to a post I wrote about financial projections. I asked her if I could ...
December 26, 2007
The Pain of Change
I’m looking for a new running log.
I’ve been using Cool Running as my log. They were bought by Active sometime last year. Last month Active discontinued Cool Running and migrated ...
December 24, 2007
Fundraising for Boulder Building New Orleans Completed
Amy and I are proud to announce that we’ve completed the fundraising for Boulder Building New Orleans. Our goal was to raise $50,000 to fund a high quality / low ...
Dog Toy Armageddon
One of Kenai and Brooks’ favorite thing to do is to destroy any dog toy we give them. Apparently Micah Baldwin’s dogs have the same tendencies (as does my brothers ...
2008 Tech Predictions are Stupid
Ah – it’s the 2008 tech predictions time again. Mark Andreessen has a hilarious post dissecting the Economists 2008 tech predictions titled When non-technologists write about technology … They’re so ...
December 23, 2007
Who Really Owns Your Email?
I’ve periodically engaged in the debate about who actually owns your email. The assertion that email sent from your corporate email address is owned by the company is a difficult ...