Disqus - Latest Comments for John Wilson

Re: Reversing the appointment process

John Wilson — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 17:54:36 -0000

Dennis

I've recently adopted www.timetomeet.info, which is a web app, to arrange my apointments. It synchronises with Google calendar or any ical calendar, highlighting bookings already in your calendar.

From within timetomeet, you visually select on a calendar the times/dates you wish to offer others for a specific meeting. It supports multiple attendees and multiple time zone conversions. You select whether to send the invitees an email with a link from timetomeet or generates a link for you to embed in your own email.

The link takes the invitee to the calendar where they can see the times you've offered and they can select the times they prefer or add their own times. Thereafter timetomeet identifies mutually agreeable times for you to select (or add more times).

I've found this preferable to publishing my calendar for all to see for several reasons
- Most importantly, I will often wish to control the slots people can take so that my meetings are clustered together in time and location.
- Some meetings I have are confidential and I don't necessarily wish to impart who I am meeting. At the very least it's discourteous to your invitee as well.

Sadly my own online calendar app (www.airset.com), which is excellent in most respects, can't be configured to disclose whether slots are simply free/busy in a public calendar. I think that google calendar has the same problem.

I've found timetomeet invaluable in saving time arranging meetings, particularly involving more than one other person. Furthermore, its FREE and your invitees are not required to sign up as users (a practice I detest in other apps).

A similar app, albeit in private beta, is www.timebridge.com

I blogged on it here http://greatapps.blogspot.com/2006/12/easier-wa...

Re: Radio airplay is “a form of piracy”

John Wilson — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 07:29:26 -0000

You may think the notion that radio should pay for playing music is crazy, but as mentioned above the US is perhaps the exception. It's been established practice in the UK for many years that radio pays for playing the music, regardless of the benefits the artist enjoys from having their product played to a large audience.

Clearly both sides benefit from the arrangement of music being played on radio [fills airtime with content that listeners want and musicians get their product publicised]- what is at issue is who should be paying who and in what proportion to the overall benefits received.

Re: UBS, Merrill-Lynch and others hit start-ups with securities mess

John Wilson — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 17:38:22 -0000

9.1% unsecured loan to a start-up with relatively little by way of assets and no track record. Hmmmm. The VC complaining has evidently lost touch with reality of the money market.

Not sure why such ventures merit sub 200bps over Libor when default rates for such firms would historically be high and most companies are finding borrowing rates rising.

Moreover, the bank would have to take a high regulatory capital charge for such lending, which is a further factor in setting the interest rate. Whilst the start-up might offer the ARS by way of collateral, it's not an asset a bank is going to rate highly given its illiquidity and the potential credit risk associated with the issuer.

Given that most VC funds aren't fully invested, why doesn't the whinging VC [fund] offer to lend to the startups at slightly less than 9.1%, thereby getting their investors a better rate on the univested funds and helping out a cash flow issue for a portfolio company that might otherwise go bust. Or is it that they don't wish to take on any additional risk from these startups?