You know your software has problems when you have to offer a tool like the Windows Service Pack Blocker Tool Kit. The WSPBTK, like its name suggests, stops Windows Update from automatically installing new service packs (and presumably entering into the endless Vista shut-down cycle in the process). Brilliant!
Hat tip to Ross for the pointer.
The thing about being the current platform of record is that all eyes are on you. So when you do something stupid, like co-opting information from around the web into everyone's Facebook feed without a user's explicit permission, you get called on the mat for it. Mark Zuckerberg had it right today in his apology for the Beacon debacle when he said:
Facebook has succeeded so far in part because it gives people control over what and how they share information. This is what makes Facebook a good utility, and in order to be a good feature, Beacon also needs to do the same. People need to be able to explicitly choose what they share, and they need to be able to turn Beacon off completely if they don't want to use it.
That said, the idea behind Beacon is a step in the right direction. It was the implementation that was wrong. Even the most dedicated Facebook users have lives outside of Facebook. In fact, most of what we do around the web has nothing to do with Facebook (at least it shouldn't, if you have a life . . . ). The problem is that if I want a centralized place to tell people about what I'm up to and to interact with them about it, I need to spend a bunch of time recreating stuff I've done everywhere else around the web back at my platform of choice. It's not efficient and it's a pain. In my case, I essentially never do it. It's that real-world problem that Beacon, despite its flaws, is trying to solve. For that, I say kudos to Facebook.
Perhaps it's too cliché to rag on Microsoft Vista, but indulge me for just a minute. Vista – you suck! You reboot my computer constantly and at seemingly any time of day, you don't work with any of my existing peripherals, you amuse yourself with your endless "i'm thinking now, please go away" circles and seem to revel in turning my inbox opaque and hanging up for minutes on end – especially when I'm in the middle of something important.
Today I bought my first Mac in 17 years (my last Mac was the Classic my parents bought for me when I left for college). It's too early to tell you exactly how much I like it, but so far it's a breath of fresh air. And while I'm not planning on completely giving up my windows machines yet, I think I'll enjoy a respite from them now and again with my new found friend.
For a much more amusing rant on this subject, check out this post from Ross Carlson, our Director of IT. Well put, Ross!
My friend John Kembal recently started a company - HiveLive - that facilitates communication between groups (friends, co-works, clubs, associations, etc.). The system looks like a social networking site, but allows you to upload more relevant information to your “Hive” and control better how you share it (i.e., its both a personal organization tool as well as a tool for communicating and sharing ideas across a group of people - kind of a cross between a blog, social network and wiki). They are in beta, but John has set up a site for VC Adventure readers to sign up - http://hivelive.com/join/vcadventure (click on the link and you’ll be taken to the sign-up page).
You can e-mail me or John with your thoughts.
Two stories hit my desk today
that serve as a stark reminder that the Internet as we know and love it is not
guaranteed to continue on indefinitely.
The first was the announcement
that the Senate Commerce Committee split their vote on proposed compromise
language on Net Neutrality (the idea that carriers should treat every packet on
the internet the same). Plenty has been
written on this subject so I won’t repeat the arguments here, but suffice it to
say that the failure to guarantee neutrality on the net is a huge loss to
anyone who cares about the future of the internet (and has a clue).
eBay jumped on the
AppExchange bandwagon with an announcement from their development conference
this weekend of a bunch of new APIs and development tools. This was a pretty broad announcement –
Shoping.com, ProStores and even PayPal (who had traditionally been relatively
closed) are participating in the effort – and expands their existing developer
efforts significantly (see their developer site for more information).
API’s are certainly nothing
new – they are common ways for companies to allow access to their systems – but
it seems to me that application exchanges are the new ‘it’ thing to do for
platform companies (Salesforce.com, Google, eBay, etc.). This is a pretty new concept – companies in
the past were extremely protective of their platforms and wanted to control almost
every aspect of access to their systems (in this paradigm “open system” often
meant ‘we’ll let you use our proprietary scripting engine to ‘develop’ to our
platform). Companies have loosened this
view in more years and moved to more open API’s (sometimes through a developer
program; more recently completely open to anyone who wants to access them). The AppExchange idea is the next logical
extension of this (the “Web 2.0 model for development”, if you will) and makes
perfect sense: open your system, give support and help to those that want to
develop extensions to it and give them a single home where users of your
software can find these extensions. Its
free development work, makes your platform that much more powerful and provides
a nice sourcing ground for potential acquisitions.
I was on a panel presentation about blogging and RSS at the Boulder Software Club recently along with Walker Fenton from NewsGator and Howard Kaushansky from Umbria. Very fun time (hey – what VC doesn’t enjoy an opportunity to share their opinion); plus I got two beers out of Brad for managing to say “fuck” twice – both completely in context I might add.
What struck me most during the presentation is how much more power the technology which is RSS has when you explain it in terms of what it does rather than what it is. RSS is pretty meaningless beyond a relatively small group of techies and frankly no one really cares about the underlying technology – they all care about what they can do with it.
Those of us who spend a lot of time talking about RSS/Blogging/Feeds/Aggregators/etc do a shitty job of separating out useless concepts to most audiences (“RSS” or “XML”) with useful ones (“this stuff helps you do xyz"). Speaking in jargon solicited blank stares; giving examples of what people were doing with RSS to further their business solicited engagement and follow up.
As a community of technologists, we should be better at this.
Newmerix CTO Niel Robertson has an excellent (and amusing) post that tries to decipher all the spin coming out of Oracle about their Fusion platform (they are 1/2 way to completing it towards a release date in 2008, although with the PR energy they are putting behind their recent Fusion "update" event in San Francisco you'd think they actually had some real news to share . . .).
Here's a link to Niel's post - I pity the fool.
Note: you know this because they are listed in the sidebar on my blog, but just in case - Mobius is an investor in Newmerix.
I did something this morning that falls into the category of ‘seemed like a good idea at the time’ but which upon reflection (or more accurately, upon understanding reality) falls into the category of “you dumb mother-fucker”. Put another way, I unleashed Plaxo on all my contacts this morning as I calmly sipped my first cup of coffee sitting comfortably in my pajamas at my kitchen island - oblivious to the hell I was setting free.
I’ve been waiting years to do this, but something always held me back. I finally broke down and decided that I really did need to clean up my contact database (I keep a lot of contacts and its helpful to know what’s up to date and what’s not). So if you are in my contacts and I have your valid e-mail address, this morning you received a cheerful note from me asking you to update your information.
THIS WAS NOT A GOOD IDEA.
While I got some useful information back, there were some second order effects that I had not thought about. Here’s a few:
1) I basically just spammed my entire contact list. I wasn’t really thinking about this as spam at the time, but that’s essentially what it was
2) I got several hundred e-mails from Plaxo itself, clogging my inbox as people updated their information (fortunately Plaxo lists people in groups, so one notice would have 20 or 30 updates announcements in it - so I suppose it could have been even worse).
3) I got a bunch of e-mails from people telling me they hate Plaxo (mostly because they don’t trust it) and then giving me their contact information in e-mail form (which I had to enter manually – pretty much what I was trying to avoid).
4) Plaxo errantly sent some update requests to a few mailing lists that I’m on (and have permission to send to) – that was a bit embarrassing.
5) I reached out and touched a lot of contacts at one time, which resulted in a lot of people reaching out and touching me – I now have about 30 ‘catch-up’ lunches/coffee/meetings scheduled over the next month as a result (don’t get me wrong – I’m happy to catch up with these people – just not all at once)
6) I have a long list of contacts that couldn’t be reached. While this is what I was looking for when I set out on my Plaxo mission this morning, seeing them all listed out makes me wonder exactly what I though I was planning on doing with all this information in the first place (perhaps ignorance really is bliss)
What I should have done was install the program and not sent out the update request (Plaxo has a reasonably nice way to manage your contacts as e-mails come in) – this would have gotten me about 98% of what I now realize I was looking for without any of the annoyance.
To everyone I Plaxo’d today – sorry.
I’m an idiot.
I won’t do it again.
I wrote a post last year about conveying information effectively in which I talked about how difficult it is for someone to guess a song that you are tapping out with a finger (but how easy is feels like it should be when you are the one doing the tapping). Its a true phenomenon, although I meant it as a metaphor for (or perhaps just an example of) how easy it is for people to overestimate their ability to clearly communicate their thoughts/ideas with others.
The internet being what it is, however, someone has actually put together a website that lets you tap in a song with your keyboard while it tells you what song you are tapping. Its designed for people who have a song stuck in their head but can't remember what it is, although its pretty fun to play around with even if that doesn't describe your current condition . . .
Thanks for Charlie for sending this to me.
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