Disqus - Latest Comments for Nik

Re: Twitter

Nik — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 02:17:41 -0000

Congratulations Fred, CRV and the rest of the team. A great product and a great team of investors

Re: Twitter

Nik — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 02:17:41 -0000

Congratulations Fred, CRV and the rest of the team. A great product and a great team of investors

Re: Mike should lay off TechCrush — and Dead 2.0

Nik — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 16:27:26 -0000

PD: don't you have anything better to do? Your name comes up whenever techcrunch does, do you refresh technorati results all day?

Re: Mike should lay off TechCrush — and Dead 2.0

Nik — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 17:11:33 -0000

Ye ok, a bit offside - sorry PD :)

Re: How Seesmic will communicate with partners and users

Nik — Sun, 18 May 2008 02:21:01 -0000

You should frame the JS includes in an IFRAME so that if they dont load, they at least dont take down the host website

Re: The Microsoft-Claria deal: Read all about it

Nik — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 05:26:20 -0000

I believe they are buying Claria for Gain (a product). This gives them targetted advertising that can be used in MSN search or to provide a service similar to adwords. My attempt at trying to explain this:

http://www.perfected.org/archives/2005/07/01/microsoft-to-buy-claria-you-might-think-they-are-crazy-but/

Re: Going ape over MySpace; Browster’s new release

Nik — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 16:10:30 -0000

Sceptical, I don't see browster being more than a feature. There are free plugins that do similar (though you can argue differences):

http://ackroyd.de/googlepreview/

Re: SkyRider gets $12M more for aggressive P2P search engine

Nik — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 22:17:58 -0000

I see how it works - their own servers are masquerading as real users of the P2P network, and when somebody does a search they report back a result which is not a real result but an advertisement.

To get on the top of the list, they report back the highest number of sources for that files.

It's the nature of P2P networks that somebody is able to build an app like this. I find this very interesting, I think it is a brilliant idea and very well executed.

My questions would be around how valuable the audience can be - since they are searching for free movies/music etc. and also how long this can last before the networks and clients adjust to block them out.

Re: Omnidrive Officially Placed In The DeadPool…We Think

Nik — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 02:07:41 -0000

Thats awesome work Duncan. Just ignore that anybody can edit the page and mark a company deadpooled. Hey, I just marked Google dead, you gonna write about that too?

Re: Omnidrive Officially Placed In The DeadPool…We Think

Nik — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 02:12:39 -0000

and as an aside, we had a record traffic month in May, and that is without even having user registrations enabled

Re: Omnidrive Officially Placed In The DeadPool…We Think

Nik — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 03:52:17 -0000

Ye I believe it was one of the interns and yes it was an accident.

Re: Nik from the Gong

Nik — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 16:23:22 -0000

Hey James, been busy with the things the article talks about! We are coming up to launch so things are just getting crazier. See you at the TC if not before, Nik

Re: Congrats, TechcrunchIT

Nik — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 14:06:51 -0000

hey thanks john, hope we can come and see you guys soon and catchup again

oh and you are def head-deep and swimming in 2.0 now :)

Re: 2005/11/22/10-companies-we-should-build-for-techcrunch/

Nik — Thu, 24 Nov 2005 00:18:32 -0000

Hi Pete. We are in early alpha with an offering that meets the requirements of what most people expect from hosted storage. The service is called Omnidrive and it has been in development for close to 11 months now. You are right about the economics of such a business, but our method is that we are moving away from simple file storage to offer users a range of value-add services on-top of just storage.

To start, we are building interfaces for windows, mac, pocket pc and web. The Windows interface tightly integrates into explorer, the Mac interface into finder, PocketPC into the today screen and the Web interface is essentially explorer.exe online. So we are 'any platform' - much better than a chunky web-based Java client or simple web interface with upload form elements.

In addition, the local interfaces behave like any other local drive - you drop a file on and instead of sitting around and waiting for the upload you carry on working while in the background the agent will transfer to the server what already isn't there - it will feed you back the status of all uploads in the taskbar of explorer (or equivelant on other platforms). Each Omnidrive has 'private' (encrypted personal storage), 'shared' (for sharing between friends or your organisation) and 'public' (good old public access). You can RSS (even filter on file types), tag (even from within the local drive) and search (within files, etc.). Uploading a video file to public or shared will convert it and put it inside a nice flash player. Uploading a folder of photos will create nice albums. Uploading a Word document will give the user an option to view as HTML.

The biggest disadvantage for most of the current crop of offerings is that to open a file, you need to download it first, you cant save back directly to your online storage - Omnidrive lets you do this. The other disadvantage is that if you are offline you can't access your files - Omnidrive synchronises locally.

So as you see, we are providing more than just 'online storage' so comparing it to what Google have with GMail is not just - GMail is a much more cumbersome interface, with file size limitations.

I don't want to talk too much about our planned business model, but we will have a free consumer offering that for us will be sustainable. At the same time though the users of the free offering will have incentive to pay a reasonable annual fee to get the most out of Omnidrive. The business-grade offering will be based on a subscription model but run on redundant and higer-grade dedicated servers.

We have opened up for registration for the beta program which will be made avaliable around christmas time. Any feedback would be appreciated.

Re: 2005/10/04/wanted-ruby-on-rails-developers/

Nik — Thu, 24 Nov 2005 00:44:15 -0000

Hi, for those of you who are avid rails developers and are still looking for a partnership to develop a commercial service feel free to contact me on nik@nik.com.au.

I have an experiment that I wish to conduct - three people (myself being one, and two developers) developing and commercializing a web-based application that is profitable in a month. If you are interested then please feel free to contact me.

Re: 2005/11/22/10-companies-we-should-build-for-techcrunch/

Nik — Thu, 24 Nov 2005 19:03:11 -0000

Hi Pete - I saw your request come through, we are looking forward to releasing the beta and I am sure you will enjoy it. We are trying hard to distinguish ourselves from the current crop of providers since there is a stigma associated with online storage because of the number of 'free' providers who became non-free overnight (xdrive being just one).

Re: Openomy, OmniDrive and AllMyData - Online Storage Just Got Interesting!

Nik — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 00:17:09 -0000

Interesting post Pete, 3 very different approaches and I believe that all 3 have their place in the market. The good news is that the online storage space just stepped up a notch!

Re: Openomy, OmniDrive and AllMyData - Online Storage Just Got Interesting!

Nik — Sat, 26 Nov 2005 22:45:02 -0000

Jim,

Webdav is the primary protocol used in Omnidrive. We have extended the API to support some functionality that Webdav does not (like telling you your total storage usage, quota details etc.)

Re: 2005/12/20/mybloop-online-storage-and-sharing/

Nik — Sun, 25 Dec 2005 03:53:33 -0000

C'mon Pete you know we are going to make it work with Omnidrive ;). I am not at all that shaken by the latest batch of offerings, they are all 'me too' players who are approaching it the same way - its like they haven't learnt from 7-8 years of similar offerings failing.

Re: 2006/06/30/filemobile-photobucket-meets-youtube/

Nik — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 22:43:32 -0000

Hi Pete, your comments on positioning are very true. There are good reasons why sites such as PhotoBucket don't try and do everything at once, its so that the value prop to the user is simple and easy to convey. I am sure that FileMobile will eventually work out who their customers are and who they want and will tune the message and features around that. 'blog this' is pretty cool but bloggers already have far too many options when it comes to media and I think we are all a bit *yawn* about it.

Re: Megite working on personal memetracker

Nik — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 14:25:01 -0000

I see nothing special here, just a list of the latest posts from your OPML file. How is this different to just having an aggregator? I see nothing that tech.meme offers such as relevance or filtering topics.

This is just latest posts with items missing and no real logic to it - not to mention the feature seems to only be open to a few people

personalised memetracking does not scale and just doesn't work (yet)

Re: Megite working on personal memetracker

Nik — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 15:19:46 -0000

Robert: you have 857 feeds and at the moment the relevance rating seems to be only 'most recent' - if you keep clicking through that list you will see *Every* post.

That was my whole point about relevance ranking - it is much harder when you have 10-100 sources. Even with thousands of sources, memeorandum gets very boring in quiet times. The blogosphere is not as big as we think it is, especially when our only measure of relevance is links.

Mathew memeorandum lets you take part in those popular conversations so your thoughts can be aired. I guess if people find what you say to be worthwhile they might hang around your blog or subscribe etc.

Showing a top-level view of what is good in your subscriptions is a job for your aggregator - and having worked on this problem in the past I can tell you that it is not easy for a few reasons. The first is because of the lack of links in general, relevance needs to be more than that. Second is that it does not scale, you can not compute a mini-blogosphere relevance rank for each user and hope that you can scale that.. it's why you don't have personalised google results :) but kudos to the guys tackling problem, just be aware that it is a well-worn path

Re: Megite working on personal memetracker

Nik — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 17:44:43 -0000

I am still interested to hear how the new megite scoble vertical is different from just an 'all posts' view in an aggregator ;)

Re: Megite working on personal memetracker

Nik — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 18:51:09 -0000

Greg I just uploaded my OPML into Findory - it seemed to work but looking at the results I am wondering how you decide what is relevant, because looking at the same feeds in my aggregator and looking at other memetrackers Findory is telling me that other stories are more relevant than what really is.

Richard this is what I was talking about earlier, this is computationaly expensive.

Re: Megite working on personal memetracker

Nik — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 20:14:44 -0000

damn it then please 'unclick' all the times I clicked on Chris Pirillo's posts I was just testing it out and I don't want more of them showing up ;)

Just kidding, good service!

Re: Megite working on personal memetracker

Nik — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 20:53:46 -0000

"It's not available to the public yet - I haven't had time to work on a few scalability issues yet"

That is where the fun begins ;)

Re: The brrreeeport report

Nik — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 03:39:46 -0000

"UPDATE 2: Technorati finds 39 posts, same as Google’s blog search at 11:09 p.m."

in conclusion, Google is scraping Technorati

Re: BillG is on Channel 9

Nik — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 20:16:54 -0000

C9 along with all the bloggers makes Microsoft one of the most open large companies out there. Good stuff to track

Re: BillG is on Channel 9

Nik — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 20:17:46 -0000

also interesting to hear that BillG reads the blogs and C9 to keep track of what is happening in his own company. cool.

Re: Windows Vista delayed

Nik — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 13:38:59 -0000

Robert it's not the first 'slip up', they started the project again at a time when it was due out - so this slip up is the 4th that I can recall. Worst of all it's an indication to the public of what is happening within Microsoft. Big big big mess.

Re: Windows Vista delayed

Nik — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 13:42:28 -0000

Oh and I wonder if Jim Allchin will now need to stay on a bit longer

Re: The new unconference: EC’s (ExperienceCons)

Nik — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 03:32:49 -0000

"For instance, today at Makers Faire there was a guy who had been blowing bubbles for 30 years."

Was it Michael Jackson?

Re: Why did Boeing’s wifi service die?

Nik — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 01:42:40 -0000

The solution is to just let us use our phones, you can at least get coverage some of the time (spending the take-off, landing taxying time online would be enough for me). Seems too logical (there is no real threat to in-flight systems, if a phone can take down a plane then they wouldn't be letting us board with them, considering now that even water is banned)

Re: CNET hosts new Crave videoblog

Nik — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 22:11:14 -0000

Robert, the 14c you are paying for bandwidth is very very cheap, considering what you are getting (a content delivery network that is very very fast). If your traffic isn't big enough at the moment where you can justify using a CDN, then just fall back on regular colo and pay anywhere between $1k to $2k per month per 100mbit. It works out to be around 3.5c per GB xfer.

You can buy that bandwidth in 10mbit chunks and scale it up to what you need (you will need crack-hot server guys though to keep everything running).

Once you have your model working then you can migrate up to a CDN - CacheFly is 10-20 times cheaper than the other players in that market (Limelight, Akamai, etc.)

Another tip would be to sell your sponsorships as just that - a sponsorship, not on a CPM basis. This is what most startup blogs/vlogs do and it means they achieve an effective CPM that is very high but don't need to sell it that way.

Your other option is to host ScobleShow on Omnidrive - we are launching at web 2.0 and would be happy to host the video's for you (at much less than what you are paying now)

Re: Another hot thing from Web 2.0 Summit: OmniDrive

Nik — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 15:50:10 -0000

Hi Guys, I am the founder and CEO of Omnidrive. Omnidrive does a lot more than just store your files, it allows you to aggregate all your files from your web apps (eg. flickr, zoho etc.), instantly share any file, publish files in one-click (see our 'Tip of the Day' from today on our blog.

Omnidrive isn't just another place to put some files, it sits in between all the different places you have files, both desktop and web, and brings them all together. We have a lot more coming, as well!

Re: Why you should get AppleTV

Nik — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 02:00:24 -0000

You can see the difference between 1080i and 1080p when you are watching a fast-moving film or playing video games, since p is basically double the refresh-rate of i

Re: Oscars tonight and other link blog items

Nik — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 17:41:43 -0000

They left out therapists, lawyers and drug dealers :)

Re: All Hubble data on 120 new Seagate hard drives?

Nik — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 11:46:16 -0000

At Omnidrive, we moved to the Seagate 750 drives shortly after they were released (after thrashing them with testing) - we eagerly await the release of the 1TB drives!

You can't think what you can do with just one, well, I say that within a few months of release we will buy *hundreds* of the 1TB model

Re: Adobe opensources Flex (Exclusive Videos with Adobe)

Nik — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 02:37:05 -0000

Ok so finally Flash developers get to do what Win32 platform developers have had for decades. great.

Show me the runtime! hehe

Re: It lives up to every bit of hype

Nik — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 06:10:03 -0000

our whole web world watched along scoble. this was web 2.0's moon landing :)

Re: Who’s going to iPhone Dev Camp? (UPDATED)

Nik — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 11:12:30 -0000

I never thought I would see the day where the host of a Barcamp (well, Barcamp-related event) would require all those attending to sign an NDA.

I was about to sign up since we have done a lot of iPhone dev in the past week, and also to cover for Techcrunch. There is a good reason why the NDA is a deal-breaker for me, and that is because it is too vague and encompasses any information that Adobe does or could consider sensitive.

There are probably things that I know about Adobe right now that nobody outside of the company is supposed to know - if I sign this NDA, then in a few months time just happen to mention any one of those things in a blog post, they would be able to pin me, even if I knew the information before this event and I didn't pick the information up at the event.

I don't see how you could sign it either Robert, as I am sure that somewhere in your head there are a few tips on Adobe you have received that aren't supposed to be public information.

Surprisingly I have yet to see a single blogger fuss about the NDA requirement

Re: Who’s going to iPhone Dev Camp? (UPDATED)

Nik — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 12:43:26 -0000

Robert: I am aware of those, but this agreement seems to be a bit more aggressive and broader than most. Specifically since Adobe can tell you *after* you find something out that it is confidential (eg. in that scenario you had where you stumble into a room and find something out - you don't know it is confidential until afterwards). This means that it can also apply to the situation I described in my last comment

The question really is, would Adobe sue a blogger who has signed this NDA (eg. they have entered the Adobe building at some point) and has revealed information that Adobe consider sensitive. the answer is probably that they wouldn't (especially you Robert ;)) and which is why I might have been a bit quick to jump to my guns in the last comment

I guess they would sue if it was a super-big-deal though, something that hurts the company financially or reputation-wise in a big way.

Regardless, I would like to think that they could waive the NDA admission requirement for iPhoneDevCamp since this is a non-Adobe event, is on a weekend and they could just partition out an area open to all

Re: Adobe Chief Software Architect has an iPhone, says “ask Apple” about Flash

Nik — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 20:48:13 -0000

Caching will not save you on the first request, only subsequent requests. Browsers and HTTP have long supported local caching even for flash objects, if implemented correctly you should never have to re-download an applet if it hasn't changed (but with only the slightest changes you do)

the iPhone might not need AIR, but it sure does need flash. The reason why it isn't there now is because the first iPhone flash app would be music streaming, which is something that Apple probably don't want

Re: Bubble? Ning! Bubble? Ning! Bubble? Ning! Bubble? Ning!

Nik — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 20:54:59 -0000

Jeremiah: 60 companies tells me that it is a big market with even bigger potential

you should be worried (or curious) when $44M gets invested into a space that nobody cares about

Re: The “Participation Premium”

Nik — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 21:06:38 -0000

Mike has an important point there Robert, considering you are a person who has switched domains/homes online a few times - these services need to be portable and stuck to a home the user owns, otherwise the value you are building is for FriendFeed, not you

Re: Twitter

Nik — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 02:17:41 -0000

Congratulations Fred, CRV and the rest of the team. A great product and a great team of investors