Disqus - Latest Comments for agawley

Re: Randomness, Throbbers and the <canvas> tag

agawley — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 13:07:48 -0000

Sure!

Re: http://fredwilson.vc/post/1505576090

agawley — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 19:20:30 -0000

The future is very noisy...

Re: http://tumble.gawley.org/post/848574767

agawley — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 20:37:32 -0000

It is such a beautiful version.

Re: Android: It's a keeper. I have feedback though.

agawley — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 20:36:40 -0000

My bad - your profile says Peterborough. I missed the NH bit :-)
Sent you an invite.

Re: Android: It's a keeper. I have feedback though.

agawley — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 18:32:53 -0000

Gah - just realised you are in the UK. Rdio isn't live there. Try Spotify...

Re: Android: It's a keeper. I have feedback though.

agawley — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 14:29:17 -0000

Thanks Matt. Do you need an invite to rdio?

Re: http://fredwilson.vc/post/823585935

agawley — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 12:31:07 -0000

Wow, I really miss that place. There is a great store on the left hand side after you walk through the main entrance (in the second little hollow I think) that does the most amazing thick freshly cut bacon....

Re: Android Challenge

agawley — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 10:29:40 -0000

Thanks. Did you find a solution to easily sync your iTunes library?

Re: http://tumble.gawley.org/post/581789589

agawley — Sun, 09 May 2010 16:52:16 -0000

It is an incredible body of work. Especially the psychedelic period (Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt Pepper). I particularly like the way they effortlessly turn their hand to a new style and blow the incumbent leaders of that genre out of the water with a single song (think Paperback Writer and the Beach Boys at the time).

Agree they could have made awesome music with the advent of 'modern' instruments, but also feel like it would be 50:50 for them just being embarrassing granddads!

Re: Thoughts on the iPad

agawley — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 15:51:32 -0000

I seem to remember you use air mouse. have you tried pad mouse? It's the best (if most expensive!) mac remote ever. Also the epicurious app is gonna be a big hit in my house...

My wife pointed out what I see as being the biggest flaw of the device (if you ignore 'it's not a computer' and some of the physical funkyness) which is that it doesn't support profiles. I can't share it with her. If I'm logged into gmail she has to log me out. she like some apps that I don't etc. This seems like a big one to fix.

Re: Humanity's Pace of Development, a Good Visualization

agawley — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 11:41:05 -0000

Thanks. Will add it to my reading list. Do you use http://www.goodreads.com?
If you do, sounds like I should follow your reading :-)

Re: Humanity's Pace of Development, a Good Visualization

agawley — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 22:05:24 -0000

I loved this book and this visualization in particular. It's pretty extraordinary. Do you think the acceleration will continue inexorably? I can't think of a mechanism (beyond global catastrophe) that could slow it down. Maybe the twin energy and climate crises? That said, I think this sort of crisis is as likely to lead to increased innovation and change as to some technological dark age...

Re: Closed Systems Acting as Catalysts

agawley — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 21:31:20 -0000

Touche :-)

This is a pretty nuanced area and I think we're probably coming from a similar place with slightly different slants. I agree that the control (particularly of user experience) that goes with closed or semi-closed systems can give a major kickstart to a new technology. IMHO the very best example of this is the iPhone (it's always Apple!) which has basically brought innovative application to a mobile phone world which has been struggling to do that for years. Basically they did that through providing safety and security to both users (every app store app is vetted and won't kill your phone and works) and developers (every iPhone works the same way, the screen is the same size, oh and there is amazing distribution virtually for free). At the same time, the issues that Apple is starting to encounter (regarding app store delays and unfair denial of listing) is the same virus that eventually kills all completely closed systems. That said, it is, as you say, impossible to avoid the fact that Apple changed the game in Mobile, and that they did it through a closed strategy. I just wonder if they can hold on against the rising tide of the open mobile web and Android. We'll see.

So I think maybe I shouldn't disagree after all.

BTW, I do think the music industry (as it operates today - read: the major labels, a&r men, the top 10) is dying. Sales volumes tell that story - http://paidcontent.org/arti.... However, I believe strongly that music will not die. There's never been a better time to be a band without a label. You can distribute your music for free. You can engage directly with your fans. You can cut out all the middle men, and I think that over the coming years we'll see lots of ways emerge for you to get paid. All without the Music 'Industry'.

Re: Closed Systems Acting as Catalysts

agawley — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 18:17:34 -0000

I'm not sure I agree with your analysis.

First up, Windows isn't a closed system. In fact its success was in no small part due to its open-ness. Anyone could (and did) write .exe files that you could run on Windows in order to make it do all kinds of wonderful things. There was no gatekeeper or arbiter of what you could or couldn't install and there is a pretty vast array of APIs available to the average programmer on the Windows platform. Windows will run on a variety of computers made by different folks with different specs. The closed-system in the PC operating space (and it's still a little bit less closed than something like the iPhone / iTunes, given that anyone can write programs for it) is Mac OS. Windows was the Android of the PC world (except it was / is kind of expensive :-)) I agree that Windows was transformative for the PC industry, but not because it was closed...

Second, it's not obvious to me that the iTunes / iPhone / iPod situation is the panacea that folks think it is. I'd say that it was inevitable that someone would come along and fix the digital music space at some point. Apple were an attractive partner to the labels I'd guess for a few reasons:

1. The labels understood Apple's closed, proprietary positioning (as they are complete dinosaurs). It made them feel safe. This wasn't the wild west of the open internet or file sharing. This was folks buying stuff from a store in Cupertino that they could only play on a few devices and they definitively could not share - yay!
2. Apple was a bit part player in this space. They had a 5% market share of PCs. The labels could deal with them without fear of giving away the crown jewels. These guys were also-rans (oh, how they were wrong).

If the labels had a little more imagination or another company had gone for this positioning (which at some point they inevitably would have) then the iTunes breakthrough would have happened without Apple. On top of that, I'd argue that what Apple helped the labels to do was simply to 'digitise the status quo'. The real cutting edge of online music is in streaming, not downloads. The music industry is still dying. Apple just gave them a shot of morphine to make it less painful.

As to Kindle, we'll see. But I don't think the 'closed-ness' is it's unique feature.

I think the Internet is the obvious counter example to this hypothesis. It's as open as you can get and it fosters innovation like no other medium in computing history...

Re: First day in California

agawley — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:34:13 -0000

That was Pippa posting by the way (pretending to be me :-))

Re: Ten Thoughts On The President's Speech Last Night

agawley — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 19:36:21 -0000

I love the image of the auto cos as (failing) portfolio companies. Obama sure does have a big ol' fund and I think he could do a lot worse than applying a bit of venture logic to his investment choices.

Re: louisgray.com: Is Requiring a Firefox Plug-in Akin to Designing for IE Only?

agawley — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 13:01:38 -0000

Hey Fraser. I see where you are coming from, but because I use a combination of FF, Safari and Chrome (no evil IE for me :-)) I just can't really get hooked to a service that ties me to one of them.

Maybe being an FF extension will give you guys a great playground for working out all of this semantic / social stuff, but I'd be surprised if it was where you ended up hitting the big time.

That said, it's a tough problem to crack for your kind of service. A bookmarklet is neither rich enough in functionality nor able to deliver the 'push' experience you need. A code snippet for website owners doesn't get you coverage as fast as you'd like (especially on amazon etc).

In the end I suspect you'll use all of these approaches and more, but for now (sadly) I have totake a back seat.

Re: louisgray.com: Is Requiring a Firefox Plug-in Akin to Designing for IE Only?

agawley — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 06:03:44 -0000

Fully agreed. Extensions should be aboit exteding the functionality of the browser (think foxclocks), not extending the functionality of your website. Have avoided firefox extension dependent services too (glue is the latest example for me of a cool service I just can't get excited about). Bookmarklets FTW! However, it might be nice if browsers developed (together) a few open standards that help bookmarklet development. All of that character escaping and monstrous single lines of code drive me nuts.

Re: Twit This?

agawley — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 13:10:24 -0000

Strange that you have to log in to Twit This. I would have thought they could do this with simple redirects to Twitter. I hate giving out my Twitter password all the time :-(

Re: louisgray.com: Some Things Are Worth Paying for Online and Others are Not

agawley — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 10:21:03 -0000

One additional thought. I wonder how efficient (in the economic sense) the app store market is. My experience is that it is hard to discover good apps and that in particular there is not a _lot_ of direct competition for each app. When / As these two things start to change I wonder if prices will start to fall?

Re: louisgray.com: Some Things Are Worth Paying for Online and Others are Not

agawley — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 09:32:31 -0000

This is a great post Louis. Really well thought out and structured. Made me think, so thanks.

I think there are a bunch of other reasons that the App Store is successful but a big one (actually enabled by the locked down nature of the platform) is ease of purchase. The safe, seamless and simple way to purchase apps on the iPhone is great. The iTunes wallet asset (generated over the last few years on the desktop) is going to be massive for Apple in the Mobile space. Combine that with 99c purchase prices and you made parting with my money for software easier than it's ever been before.

Compare the buying experience on an iPhone to the buyong experience you ever had for web-downloaded PC/Mac software and you'll see what I mean. Not one iPhone app asked me for a registration key yet :-)

Re: Fred Wilson Dot VC

agawley — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 07:41:11 -0000

i don't get why this is such a big deal either. mcain during the debate seemed to suggest that conversation == endorsement which is absolutely wrong. right now, not speaking to Achmadinijad probably gives him more power than speaking to him...

Re: Fire Eagle - Where's The Mobile App?

agawley — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 08:17:24 -0000

The app should be a single icon. When you hit it, it gets your location from the best available source (gps or cell tower triangulation) and sends it to fire eagle. If your feeling open you could confidure it to do this automatically every x hours. That would be sweet.

Re: Fred Wilson Dot VC

agawley — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 11:23:30 -0000

"We're sorry. This album is unavailable for download in your country (United Kingdom) at this time. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause."

This happens way too often... That's why I'm going to have to cancel my emusic subscription (which is sad)

i hope you have previous spiritualised in your collection Fred. Pure Phase and Ladies and Gentlemen are majestic albums...

Re: A Secondary Market For Private Company Stock

agawley — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 04:49:48 -0000

Interesting to hear about these facebook transactions.

In terms of developing this secondary market, I'm not sure where it would end up sitting. If it remains small (illiquid) and largely accessed only by corporates then I'm not sure how it differs from the current Venture / Buyout markets. If it grows to become more liquid (through increased access) wouldn't it just resemble the public market (and hence all the same regulation and issues that surround that?)

As I was writing that sentence above it occurred to me that one potential area for this secondary market is the Corporate Venture you were talking about recently. That could be a good fit...