DISQUS

So just to be clear - you are allowed to insult everyone who does marketing or PR for a living, but Scoble isn't allowed to insult entrepreneurs? Quite a double-standard Loic...

While I think everyone would agree the comments often exceed the posts in regards to the points being made, quality, etc. But how does this get tracked? Who judges a "good" comment"? I think this is certainly beyond the capabilities of TechMeme.

Perhaps the onus is on the blog poster themselves to call out good comments? Or maybe Disqus/Friendfeed will enable this. I don't think it belongs on Techmeme though, just as a great op-ed never makes the front page of a newspaper.

Thank goodness you didn't make this a Top 38 list!!

39 FTW! YES YES YES!

:)

Counterpoint: Back in the 80s and 90s Sony was the utterly dominant brand in consumer electronics (and in most categories, still is today). As both the digital camera and MP3 player markets were glimmering on the horizon, Sony could easily have licensed or acquired technology to win either or both category. Instead we have Canon and Apple, NEITHER of which were dominant in virtually any category when the opportune moments occurred. Sony's game to lose, and lose they did.

I *so* hope this happens. Save Our Bluths! (psst, you can skip to ~3:00 in the video for the AD part). They really should think about having a tape recorder and just listening to themselves at the end of the day...

Unlikely. :)

mmmm... lamb....

no slacking off!!!

Great post. I think the aspect that infuriates me is the "serial entrepreneur with no successes and no cares in the world". I don't know who funds these guys, but I can't figure out why they do. In my eyes, three strikes means "you aren't good at this", whereas it seems a lot of people view it as "well you must be getting better"!

That plus the smugness which practically oozes of the uber-young entrepreneur sitting on HALF of an idea. Spending someone else's money, no true vested interest....

And by the way, please don't misinterpret my comments as a blanket writeoff of every entrepreneur! They ain't all the same, ppl!

the 600K guy is... not eligible.

that's a LOT of TP!!!

I dunno... he looks fairly content with the 1st gen unit... like "there's poo in my pants" content...

Regarding "happier" I'd say No, they aren't explicitly happier than others. I've met and worked with plenty of miserable, negative entrepreneurs in my time. Entrepreneurs who run companies that meet their passions tend to be happier, as they are living dreams - but the truth is they are on the rarer side...

Also, I do like your comment about 'personality disorder' - especially in context of the flawed thinking these days that anyone/everyone SHOULD go start a new company. Entrepreneurs are special folks with certain odd desires that aren't quite common.

I think your generalization here is off. I 100% agree with you regarding social problems and technology, but in this case it's not the point. The government spent the money trying to build the tech, NOT exploring solving the problem through any means. In this instance, Bug was a perfect fit to lower the investment.

I've seen company after company throw money in the toilet chasing social problems with technology solutions. When we built the first-generation Slingbox we ran into a situation we had to solve: what if someone was at home controlling the TiVo while someone on the road tried to do the same thing? how could we communicate this? what "remote control blockers" should we build?? The answer we came up with was: two people who share a household should be able to communicate with each other and mutually pick a show to watch.

Disclosure: I do marketing for Bug Labs.

Good for you Dave! But maybe now you can get rid of some of them text link ads? I accidentally moused-over the word "home" and it popped up a video!!

:)

I also can't figure out why SO MANY people are covering this topic?!?! 2 startups that are effectively unknown outside of the 94xxx zip code (yourself not included Mathew!) are all over the place today... bizarre.

I think the "messy area" is free services in clearly unsustainable industries. Services that host a tremendous amount of data - for now, are problematic in my opinion. I don't know if I'd go so far as to say "ruin" but they certainly cast a pall on "why should I pay for that?" services.

One could make the argument that the radical quantities of free news and content on the Internet has caused as much hurt as gain... But then again, who doesn't love free? :)

Hard to find? HARDLY. It's very easy to find. Just don't look to TechMeme for it (nothing wrong with techmeme, but it's not about finding original thought, that is explicitly not its purpose)...

considering we're ahead of the definition of the term "bug" (either computer OR insect), it's pretty cool!

he never took credit for creating the Internet either... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore_and_inform...

Duncan,
As a fairly neutral guy here, not knowing either you or Louis, I have to say I think you are picking fights you don't need to pick. Each time you've responded to anything negative, you've been lowering the bar. For example, by calling Mathew a member of some "Gray cheersquad" you are turning a deaf ear to his points, and making it personal yourself.

I think your original TC post had a pretty fair point. I think Louis' response did include some "personal" items but was not exactly a vicious attack. Your response on your personal blog was quite vicious, and I think Mathew reasonably called you out for it.

You can go anywhere you want with all this, but I'd suggest a hearty "deep breath" then think about what you really care about before lashing out further.

Best,
Jeremy

ps As a Canadian+American, I am both unbottling it, then declaring war on a small country somewhere as a distraction to the problems I have at home, but in turn, feeling quite guilty about it.

Bijan - interesting point, and there's clearly a need. The question I'd raise is to how many people does this problem apply? I too have slightly too many storage destinations which creates synch challenges, but I am also of the opinion that this is a sub-20% problem, not an 80-plus% problem...

Looks great man!

Good post Fred. Every time I read about the "death of journalism" and how traditional media is upset about blogging, I think about examples like these. The part that amazes me is the lack of research being done across the industry, by either bloggers or journalists.

The unfortunate reality that I'm starting to accept is the majority of readers/viewers/audiences care a bit less about facts and research, and a bit more about sensationalism and fancy headlines. So if we think about it from a reward perspective, the audience is incenting headline-making, not fact-finding. The question is - can this be changed, or is it innate?

There's a lot of difference between the two. At the end of the day, journalists are tracking topics, etc via the press release channel. Requiring them to subscribe to dozens, hundreds, or thousands of blogs for updates is pretty much a non-starter. I run marketing for Bug Labs, here's a post I wrote on my blog describing why we issued a press release to complement our blog+ communications strategy: http://www.stagetwoconsulting.com/explaining-wh...