Open Source Blogging

Sarah Lacy, tech journalist for Business Week, has a post that demonstrates well why I am really trying to get off of the PR bandwagon.

See, on Sunday night a ton of blog posts all went up. Most of which were pretty congratulatory and hopeful that there was a “Google competitor.” Tech journalists desperately want there to be a competitor to Google. Why? Monopolies are boring to cover. The best tool a story teller has is when there’s conflict. I like to tell people this world is just like high school. Think back to high school.

In your high school, did … Continue Reading

…you believe Microsoft is actually going to have a completely rewritten Operating System before Bill Gates dies (which might be 20 to 40 more years).

Unfortunately journalists, like this one in Software Development Times, love to make it seem that Microsoft is working hard on a new, completely rewritten, operating system that will solve all the world’s problems.

Let me assure you they are not. At least not one that’ll be productized before my 10-month-old son sees his 10th birthday.

So, what is the Midori team doing?

Well, THAT is an interesting question that I’d love to ask Eric Rudder.

Here’s my theory: it’s … Continue Reading

People have been talking about Microsoft’s “Mojave Experiment” all day. What did they do? They demoed a “future operating system” to end users, got their feedback, usually positive, and then told them it was actually Windows Vista.

This is the first marketing in some time that made me think Microsoft’s marketing department had a clue about how to deal with its perception problem. Amazing to me that it took so long.

But when I see other Microsoft advertising, why isn’t it aspirational? Why doesn’t it just SHOW something cool you can do with Vista? Or with any of its other … Continue Reading

If you haven’t checked into FastCompanyTV lately, we’ve been posting up a storm of innovative people.

David Allen, best-selling author of Getting Things Done, tells us how to get more done.
Buzz Bruggeman, CEO of ActiveWords, shows me how to use Mind Mapping software and tons of other tools to become more productive.
Philip J. Kuekes, computer architect on the quantum science research team at HP Labs shows me how they are finding new ways to make processors and memory a lot smaller and power efficient. Does he make you feel like you are a few brain cells … Continue Reading

Every morning now I start out by reading FriendFeed. This morning there was a post by Steve Spalding called “the Web’s dirty little secret” which is about how small the audiences are here in the tech blogging world.

Back in May Dare Obasanjo wrote a post about early adopters and how software developers should discount them.

I’ve been doing a bunch of thinking about both of these things. How can entrepreneurs reach both passionate and non-passionate audiences? Do both matter? When? (Clearly crossing the chasm requires going from the passionates to the non-passionates, or the early adopters to the late … Continue Reading

FriendFeed search for “earthquake.“
Twitter search for “earthquake.“

Interesting how we compare experiences in the live web now.

It’s a 5.8 5.4, centered near Chino Hills.

Go here to read the rest:
Earthquake in Los Angeles

If you use any of this work, … Continue Reading

Tonight a new search engine showed up. Techcrunch has the details. So do tons of other blogs. Search engine guru Danny Sullivan has a great post about the new engine, Cuil, (pronounced “cool”). I wasn’t pre-briefed or anything. Like I said last week I’m trying to get out of the PR game and try to get back to what made me like blogging: sharing information with other users.

So, has anyone figured out a good way to quickly test search engines? I haven’t. Everyone has their own search terms that they use to judge whether or not an … Continue Reading

At last week’s Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference I was on a blogger panel where some members of the audience brought up ye olde “bloggers aren’t as good as ‘real journalists’ because bloggers don’t get it right” argument. The audience cheered when the host made the point that magazine journalists go slower to “get it right.” I played the part of the blogger and took the point on the chin, despite also now writing for a magazine and having to work with the old-school editing system of fact-checkers and pre-publication editing.

I tried to make the point that blogs self correct very … Continue Reading

Yesterday at the Mobile Web Wars event (here’s video of that), held right before the TechCrunch party, David Hornik, partner at August Capital (he’s the host of the TechCrunch party) told the audience that he would not invest in pure iPhone apps because the iPhone had too small a market share and that anyone who wanted to get big in the mobile space should go after all phones, not just the iPhone, which, while it’s hot with early-adopter types and is seeing people waiting in lines to buy around the world, hasn’t yet made a dent in, say, Nokia’s … Continue Reading

It has rolled over the sands of Israel. Kept my computer dry in the middle of a New York downpour. Been dragged through more than three miles of the snows and mud of Davos, Switzerland. Held my laptop and a loaf of bread in Paris, France. Kept my computers safe in the Red-Light District of Amsterdam, has visited many other cities and countries around the world. Been to dozens of airports and overhead bins. Its wheels have seen so many miles that … Continue Reading