I was at a board meeting recently where the board and management was discussing the company’s market position. This is a strong company that leads its market and, as a result, one of the board members stated that we were “the 800 pound gorilla in the market.”  In my world view, the market was still relatively small so I suggested that we were the 12 pound gorilla.  While this got a chuckle, it was instructive and moved the conversation down an interesting path.

If the 800 pound gorilla comment had stuck without any discussion, I expect the management team and board (me included) would have leaned back in our chairs, smiled, and indulged ourselves in a moment of self congratulation.  And it’s warranted, as this company has been… Read more

A month ago, NewsGator released TapLynx – their framework for building iPhone apps.  They took the core code of NetNewsWire for the iPhone, abstracted it out, and built a really powerful and easy iPhone app development system as an SDK.  A month later, the iPhone apps built on top of TapLynx are starting to appear, including All Things Digital, Variety, Discovery, TechStars, and the amazing and entertaining Foundry Group iPhone app.

You can download the TapLynx SDK for free to evaluate it.  You only pay if and when you deploy your app to production.  The license price for the TapLynx framework is $3,499 – when you consider the amount of code it includes and the time it’ll save you… Read more

I’ve been to my share of tech conferences that either don’t have any music playing or have some horrible mix that the hotel supplies turned up either a little to much or not quite enough.  In contrast, I know that Eric Norlin obsesses over every aspect of his conferences, including the soundtrack.  He knows his audience well and nailed it this year.  He’s published the soundtrack on the Defrag blog. 

I’m now looking forward to the Glue Conference soundtrack (and conference).

Last week I did an hour long interview with Jon Hansen on the Startup Visa Movement titled Diminishing Prospects: How U.S. Policy is Undermining Entrepreneurial Vision. The interview is embedded below and Jon has a longer post up on his blog titled Snakes in a Playpen: Why U.S. Policy Regarding H-1B and EB-5 Visas is Outdated and Ineffective.

I haven’t done any long form interviews on this topic yet.  I thought Jon did a great job of steering the conversation, pulling out some important perspectives, and helping cycle back to make sure the appropriate points were covered. If you are interested in this topic, I’d love to hear your reaction to this interview… Read more

You may be thinking “what do these things have to do with one another?”  Well – they are all in my browser this morning after I returned from my run with Reece Pacheco of Overtime Media.  And in case you are wondering, Reece is an ex-lacrosse star who is now running Overtime – which makes HomeField.  They are a young company, but are working with about 200 sports teams at colleges across the country to get the video of their games online.  Reece met me at the NY Entrepreneurs Roundtable Event that I spoke at on Monday, sent me an email about running, and off we went this morning.  Reece – thanks for making sure I got out of the hotel to get my run in.

Back… Read more

I had a 19 hour day yesterday – it started when I woke up at my hotel at 26th Street at 5am and ended when I hit the sack at midnight.  I had a bunch of meetings, a few scheduled phone calls, was on a panel, and stayed on top of my email throughout the day.  I even managed to keep my FishVille fish fed and got my Cafe World food served before it spoiled.

When I crawled into bed, I was toast.  However, when I woke up this morning, I had this deep happy feeling from yesterday.  As I took a shower, I remembered four great things that I did in the midst of a very busy day.

The first was a thirty minute tour through the Guggenheim Museum… Read more

Over the weekend, I read what I think is going to be my “best book of the year.”  It’s Zeitoun by Dave Eggars of McSweeney’s fame.

Some people just know how to write.  And Eggars is one of them.  Wow.

As I ran around downtown Manhattan this morning thinking about how radically different my run today was from my typical runs around Eldorado Springs and Boulder, I couldn’t help drifting back to Zeitoun.  It’s a stunning story about one man – Abdulrahman Zeitoun – and his family before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina.  But Katrina was only the foreplay for the book – the real story is what happens a week after the storm when Zeitoun disappears.

I won’t ruin the book by… Read more

I’m in NY all week with a jam packed schedule so I thought it would be a good week to talk a little about how I use Gist since I’ll use it every day to help me deal with a shortened daily information routine.  As you probably know, we are investors in Gist and I’m on the board so – while this is fanboy stuff – there are also a few other goals of this post including (a) helping you understand the promise of Gist, (b) enticing you to give it a try, and (c) eliciting feedback from those of you that have given it a try and want more / better / different (e.g. feedback of any kind is good).

I’m going to start with the Dashboard… Read more

Another awesome APOD photo.

I wonder how evil and scary the blue horse looks when backlit like this.… Read more

I spent the last two days at the Defrag Conference.  It was awesome on so many levels including the content, the venue, seeing a bunch of great friends, and meeting a bunch of new people.

The conference originated out of an email exchange that Eric Norlin (the amazing guy who puts on the Defrag and Glue Conferences with his even more amazing wife Kim) and I had as a result of a series of blog posts that I wrote in 2006 starting with There Is A Major Software Innovation Wave Coming and Intelligence Amplification.

Over the past three years there has been an incredible amount of innovation around this theme (which we originally called the Implicit Web.)  While lots of it is still messy, sloppy… Read more

My amazing day at the Supreme Court continued to bounce around in the back of my mind all day yesterday.  I was at a board meeting for a company that I’ve been on the board of for almost a decade – it was the best (as in most productive) board meeting we’ve had in a long time. 

I’ve written about The Best Board Meetings in the past.  One element of the best board meetings is a prepared mind. This is the powerful lesson from the Supreme Court. On Monday (at the Supreme Court), I saw eleven very smart people participate in a very complex discussion that they were extremely prepared for.  In one hour they covered an amazing amount of ground.  I attribute this to the work… Read more

The Boulder Camera highlighted a few CU Boulder students and their newest project in the article CU-Boulder students create Pac-Man Roomba game.  For anyone that played Pac-Man as a kid (as I did) or anyone that loves robots, it’s sheer brilliance.

Information about the entire project is up on the web at Roomba Pac-Man.  Now they need to do a Ms. Roomba Pac-Man – that would be a nice marriage of technologies.… Read more

Sorry – I couldn’t help myself.  I doubt this will be repeated anytime soon.

I know it’s a little self-referential for me to put this on my blog, but it is my blog after all.… Read more

I had an incredible experience yesterday.  My friend Phil Weiser, who is now the Deputy Assistant Attorney General at the US Department of Justice, Antitrust Division (I prefer to call him America’s Top Cop on Agriculture) invited me, my partner Jason Mendelson, and my wife Amy Batchelor to attend the Supreme Court Oral Arguments for re Bilski.  A rare tie sighting ensued as a jacket and tie is required to attend.

For those that know about my fervent anti-patent bias with regards to software, Bilski is an important case.  Depending on how the Supreme Court rules, it could open the door for both the invalidation of business method patents as well as begin a serious discussion about the validity of software… Read more

I continue to love the Astronomy Picture of the Day. 

As a result of looking at it first thing in the morning, I insure that I’ll learn at least one thing each day.… Read more