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Re: Stuff

vruz — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 19:12:05 -0000

A famous writer of my country used to say that since he started using a PC and the internet, he always tries to be precise when he refers to "texts" (electronic or otherwise) to tell them from the ones that are only delivered in a "book" medium. I think more of books and ebooks as instances of the text. You may love a book, or the text, or both, but they're not necesarily the same thing.

Re: Stuff

vruz — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 19:19:33 -0000

guess we're in agreement then
:-)

Re: Rolling Your Own Mini Feed

vruz — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 23:02:02 -0000

looks like iGoogle :-)
looks like Excite circa 1998

Re: Rolling Your Own Mini Feed

vruz — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 01:55:53 -0000

BTW

http://dilbert.com/comics/d...

Re: Rolling Your Own Mini Feed

vruz — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 06:56:36 -0000

Well, actually it is not the same thing, it's a lot easier to retrieve your user state from Twitter
If you need to mash your state up with other external data, you're out of luck using FB. (but you can do it with Twitter).

Put simply: Twitter user state management is a superset of FB state management.
In that tiny tweensy lil' narrow (but rather important) market, Twitter is the king and will allow you to do anything with your state that FB allows you too. (I'm away ! I'm here, I'm back !) but you can't do with FB everything you can do with Twitter. (update your status via texting)

Facebook should fix this, because it's broken, users who love Twitter want to update their state using Twitter, not the generic FB status. FB should let applications update the FB status.

Re: Read It In A Blog Post

vruz — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 11:13:06 -0000

Make that twoMachiavellis:

"The innovator makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old order and only lukewarm support is forthcoming from those who would prosper under the new."

Re: The Cell Phone Empowerment Act of 2007

vruz — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 19:38:46 -0000

If it's a regulation that places more power on the individuals, why not ?

Re: AIR

vruz — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 23:35:12 -0000

OR both !

hehe

Re: AIR

vruz — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 23:37:05 -0000

I should probably keep that in mind :-)

Re: AIR

vruz — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 00:58:22 -0000

glad to help !

Re: AIR

vruz — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 01:04:11 -0000

That's correct, that's why AIR will piggyback on the Flash Player.
It works like this:
1) You have Flash 9 installed
2) Flash 9 is 1.1Mb, but has a built-in transparent installer for AIR
3) Flash 9 is initially associated with .air packages
4) The first time you attempt to run or install an AIR application, Flash detects this and helps you to download AIR automatically if you haven't done so alredy.
5) AIR is installed, it's some Mbs more, but it got installed transparently, and it even includes a real web browser and a Gears-like API
6) Run your app, you almost didn't notice what happened behind scenes

Re: AIR

vruz — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 01:06:17 -0000

No need to package AIR *with* Flash, it makes more sense to piggyback AIR.
See my reply to Don Park below.

Re: AIR

vruz — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 01:12:48 -0000

Agreed, for many apps, except when you need to work offline.

That being said, if you use a certain distributed app frequently, the experience of having a specific purpose network client like Snitter is impossible to ignore.

There's a XULRunner wrapper for Google Docs for example, which makes Google Docs behave almost like a desktop office suite, whilst savvy users may prefer running everything from the browser, the desktop metaphor may map better for the minds of some less-than-savvy users. (the vast majority)

Re: Doubt

vruz — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 01:25:16 -0000

When you have a power to decide on the lives of so many people, especially the ones who already died in service, humilty and doubt are a must.
But I'm afraid irresponsability is too soft of a word to describe it.

Re: Andreessen on Platforms

vruz — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 19:31:29 -0000

I disagree with Marc.

I would like to have all 3 ways !!
Some applications work just fine in Facebook the way it is designed, some others would clearly benefit from a L3 kind of platform/infrastructure.
Also, if I were to design an application to run atop Ning, I would still want to have L1 capabilities.
Those levels as presented by Marc are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

But really, who am I to disagree with the billionaire programmer ?
:-)

Re: Research Recap

vruz — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 19:08:01 -0000

do you get Lindsay with that too ?

:-)

Re: Close, But No Cigar

vruz — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 08:35:04 -0000

the proverbial Pink Floyd quote:
...
Come in here dear boy
Have a cigar
You're gonna go far
You're gonna fly high
You're never gonna die
You're gonna make it if you try
They're gonna love you
...

except, of course, that the recent counterbalance of digital
democracy in power has changed who should be getting the cigar.

Re: Web Startups Are A Commodity

vruz — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 13:57:40 -0000

The problem with Graham is we don't like noodles :-)

Re: Web Startups Are A Commodity

vruz — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 14:08:40 -0000

What's so bad about 25K applications ?
Wouldn't offer and demand still work ?
Business models are destroyed and invented all the time.
Aren't those in charge of taking decisions prepared to face difficult problems and solve them somehow ?
Then maybe we're better off without those who aren't prepared.
It's all good stuff as far as I am concerned, and it's not because we're lacking competition !
I know I can do better than most applicants, it's only fair VCs should do the same.

Re: Web Startups Are A Commodity

vruz — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 14:11:44 -0000

the difference may be some hackers can actually build something people want, now they have a motivation.

Re: Web Startups Are A Commodity

vruz — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 16:46:47 -0000

there's something better.... mashups.

mashups work because startups don't need to licence code, use the same programming language, or agree on standards other than the readily existing web technology.

it's frictionless. publish the API. use the API. that's it.
no administrative overhead. you don't want administrative overhead, unless you're an administrator !

what else do you think would be necessary ?

Re: Is Flock The Social Media Living Room?

vruz — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 17:55:53 -0000

Whilst Flock does indeed seem to get some things right, I can't really see it taking off as it is today, for many different reasons.

1) Flock doesn't do anything that Facebook, Flickr, Twitter etc. (collectivelly named hereupon as "the services" :-) don't do themselves via their web interfaces or alternative 3rd party clients.
It does sign you on automatically yes, but I get that with Firefox already, it does have a Twitter sidebar yes, but I have that already with Twitbin on Firefox.
In economic terms, Flock attempts to be a substitute for the services clients.
Even if running properly, efficiently and conveniently arranged -which I assume it does- it doesn't really add value to what is already in place elsewhere, and there's obviously no room to compete in price when $ 0 is the standard price tag for all of the services clients.
I'm not even getting to discuss where they will get money from.

2) It's not really a mashup. Flock does the integration work for you, but other than that, it's a monolithic application. It's Firefox plus widgets and a convenient user interface. There's no platform for third parties to develop on top of it. There's no community to support it , they don't run any of the services they consume, and there's no social network around it. It runs detached from the Mozilla community that provides 90% of the code.
Again: not even getting to discuss where they will get money from.

I could see something like a Flock2 -but not the current Flock- helping people create mashups, interconnecting applications and services to create something *NEW*. Now that would be creating some actual value.

I really believe the future of the web will be an organic, evolutive way of mixing apps together.
Flock isn't organic, and its evolution depends solely on the Flock development team, as it stands now all the pieces together aren't more than the sum of its parts.

But there's plenty of time ahead, let's see what they come up with next :-)

Re: Is Flock The Social Media Living Room?

vruz — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 03:45:53 -0000

um.... how is this *future* different from what I said ?

I don't think we have diverging views, though we're certainly focused on different things.

The bigger part of my comment focused on the current product as it stands today, whilst you decided to focus on that future I didn't even try to talk about.... because the comment was about *this* product review.

You're believing in a future that is not here yet, certainly not in Flock 1.0, and possibly... maybe one day in a later incarnation of Flock, which we're still unable to review right now :-)

Re: Tumblr

vruz — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 21:07:24 -0000

I'm curious about how Tumblr (tumblelogging) is different or -after some evolutionary work- can afford being different from Twitter (microblogging).

If you start adding features to one or the other the line starts to blur, for example... add trackbacks posting and blog scraps to Twitter and you get a tumblelog.
Add a friends timeline to a tumblelog and it becomes a microblogging system like Twitter.

Also curious how does the VC manage his/her expertise so that no startup gets some sort of unfair advantage over the others, you know the fine little details that one of the startups gained through blood, sweat and tears could be a meme too easily contagious to be spread among the other startups in a portfolio.

As I see it from the distance, there must be a tension between the interests of the startups and the interests of the VCs who may want to do everything possible for *ALL* of the startups in their portfolio to succeed.

I'm cautiously skeptical in this regard, but I thought you might want to share some insight on this, I find rather important to the survival of a startup.

Re: Tumblr

vruz — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 10:46:04 -0000

sounds like a sensible approach, that's some good insight

thanks !