Disqus - Latest Comments for Tom Purves

Re: Why Early Stage Venture Investments Fail

Tom Purves — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 09:50:02 -0000

Thanks for this post Fred.

It seems to be there is an interesting contradiction between "Most venture backed investments fail because venture capital is used to scale the business before the correct business plan is discovered. " and the fact that 2/3rd of your successful businesses changed direction *after* being funded.

So how does this affect your investment decision. Do you go with the entrepreneur who has total confidence in a specific direction for the company, or do you do you go with the entrepreneur say with a great idea but who admits to not knowing yet the best direction (at the risk they might never find it, or just aren't ready for VC yet).

Or how else does this apparent dilemma affect your thinking when considering a deal?

Re: Why can’t my computer and stereo system talk to one another?

Tom Purves — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 15:54:33 -0000

Because home electronics makers are batshit stupid?

Why every single hometheatre amplifier doesn't have a wifi card built in and a simple web-based admin screen, as easy to use (and cheap to engineer) as any wifi router has had for 10 years now, is absolutely beyond me. Instead, no wireless connectivity, unfathomable remotes and cryptic blinking lights and buttons.

utter stupidity.

It's like the question about why the auto industry has yet to clue in to the existence of the ipod (helo where have you guys been this decade?) and far too many of them can't figure out to put in a $0.50 aux-in jack on your car stereo. but i digress/rant

t.

for your problem, I have often looked at complicated and expensive solutions (and best buy actually does sell a wireless "rocket fish" rear speaker kit for home theatres) while I have found that a "really long wire" from computer to stereo in another room actually works really well, really reliably (no wireless interference or dropped signals), and costs about $12 at active surplus on queen st..

Re: Why Early Stage Venture Investments Fail

Tom Purves — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 09:50:02 -0000

Thanks for this post Fred.

Or how else does this apparent dilemma affect your thinking when considering a deal?

Re: Local grub and why mobile matters

Tom Purves — Wed, 27 May 2009 09:58:35 -0000

Check ebay as another option for best of both worlds. You can get some very lightly (or unused) ultralight notebooks at some pretty nice discounts. Done it a few times now. Just don't get a sony in french. The dell d430-ish line is nothing pretty to look at but can be had for <$700 on ebay and is cheap, light, capale and wildly better than a netbook. 1.33/1.4 Ghz ULV core 2 duo works, is good, fast enough. 1.6Ghz atom is not.

Re: Clouds gathering

Tom Purves — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 10:07:23 -0000

Ha. Good point Colin. I think that a bookstore is the leading provider of cloud computing says more about the state of innovation in the space in the recent *past*. One wonders what exactly the big guys were doing with themselves the last eight years or so. Anyway it's nice to see that msft is at least now working at creating some forward-looking and user-centric software (on all kinds of fronts) after what, from a user perspective, felt like a looong nap from them.

Re: All innovation is driven by…

Tom Purves — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 10:40:26 -0000

Dave, I await your next big innovation with, um, some trepidation.

Re: Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Tom Purves — Sun, 13 May 2007 13:14:12 -0000

Congrats Dave! Microsoft is lucky to have you.

Re: [Training] Web 2.0 and Your Organization

Tom Purves — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 01:02:23 -0000

Oh hey, this site is still here.

Shouldn't you be on Windows MSN LIVE Spaces by now?

;)

Re: MS Surface in Toronto

Tom Purves — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 12:12:32 -0000

cool! I’d like to play with one of these.

Re: Toronto Geek Girl Dinner with Leila Boujnane tonight

Tom Purves — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 09:37:50 -0000

What's this no geek girl sponsor? I though surely Aoife would be coding in rails by now? (er, or visual basic?)

in any case Michele and I will represent like the pirates and bruisers we are.

yARRR
T.

ps was a good democamp the other day.

Re: Founders & Funders – Toronto

Tom Purves — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 07:21:45 -0000

Congrats on selling out the dinner, very much looking forward to it.

Thanks for the hard work organizing and the sponsoring Dave!

Re: Best of Independent Toronto

Tom Purves — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 04:00:48 -0000

If there's not 5 winners to this contest I'll be pissed.

Thanks to all of you guys for an awesome year in the Toronto tech community. We've come a long way.

Thanks to you Dave for the seed that started it.

Re: Groundswell: Application to Gauge Social Networks Attitudes

Tom Purves — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 06:35:48 -0000

When I first read that headline I thought it said Application to *Gouge* Social Networks

file under the social graft/graph/gaffe etc. ;)

I like this ladder model but I think there's one key factor that's missing and that's the tone of contributions. What are the quality and not just quantity of participation. How much snark/trolling/bashing is there relative to constructive contribution. It's hard to measure that empirically. Or maybe not?

Maybe best you could do is some automated Godwin metric? community godwin-index = avg thread length / first accusation of somebody being a nazi etc.

Or perhaps some clever bayesian algorithm to index exactly how closely any given contribution resembles the average YouTube comment.

What percentage of of outbound links do not actually point only to rick-astley-related video content? (twitter would score low...)

Re: Community Platforms

Tom Purves — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 13:27:51 -0000

Learnhub.com embodies some of these elements. Like expertise ranking of members relative to specific subjects and mini-communities.

It's almost overkill while they still have a small base, but will be interesting to watch as it scales.

Re: Rogers and the iPhone

Tom Purves — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 05:15:41 -0000

My theory for the iPhone in canada here: <a href="http://wirelessnorth.ca/2008/02/28/i-phone-in-canada-expect-it-as-early-as-this-summer/

" target="_blank"><a href="http://wirelessnorth.ca/2008/02/28/i-phone-in-canada-expect-it-as-early-as-this-summer/

" target="_blank">http://wirelessnorth.ca/2008/02/28/i-phone-in-canada-expect-it-as-early-as-this-summer/

Canada will come after iPhone2 is out. No Canadian carrier has much clout with global equipment makers, our National carriers are too small. China Mobile or even T-mobile globally, moves more devices in a week than Rogers does in a year.

It all comes down to high prices, low competition, low penetration.

In the UK average penetration is 1.6 phones per consumer, in Italy 2.0, in Canada more like 0.7

Re: The Church of BarCamp

Tom Purves — Thu, 25 May 2006 10:01:02 -0000

Count my $20 in for a shirt Dave. Save me one if you're distributing at Democamp, size M ;)

I'd love to make it democamp next week but I'll be a little, um, busy <a href="http://boattrip3000.com

" target="_blank"><a href="http://boattrip3000.com

" target="_blank">http://boattrip3000.com

cheers,
tom.

Re: 28 days later and 90 days in the life of…

Tom Purves — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 11:06:17 -0000

Wow still alive and employed. what possibly can be in store next for our brave protagonist?

anyway, good work on both counts. see you later tonight. try to keep ticking this time.

Re: BarCampEarthToronto happening this weekend

Tom Purves — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 04:20:25 -0000

sigh, too bad it's on weekend in the city, in the summer, otherwise I'd be in for sure.

btw, any word Dave on scheduling for democamp9?

Re: Wikinomics – A spark of openness

Tom Purves — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 14:30:57 -0000

My coattails are blushing ;)

Re: Value to the audience

Tom Purves — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 01:25:27 -0000

David, I believe the fund-raising issue and the quality issue are two valid problems that I think are going to be hard to solve the same stone.

Pay to play to me would seem to make your quality problem worse. Why would you pay to present unless you had an agenda (eg. pitch) to get across in order to make the money worth it?

I still prefer the idea to let the community vote on presentations digg style in advance of the event. The community may still not always get what they were hoping for but – they will get what they voted for.

Re: More Thoughts On Facebook Spam Filtering

Tom Purves — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 10:02:05 -0000

I wrote a post on this on tuesday and the related/supposed exodus of facebook users to twitter in which is partly an excuse to work in a phrase like "...as though seized by a grand mal craptileptic fit in spam factory" into a sentence (as describing this same facebook problem as it happens)

http://www.thomaspurves.com/2008/02/12/facebook...

But it looks like facebook understands the problem and is making (some) progress to put "some of the bad bits of the toothpaste back in the tube"

Re: The Joys Of Music Blogging (aka The Rural Alberta Advantage Is Awesome)

Tom Purves — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 15:24:53 -0000

Cool! RAA rock. One of my top picks from 2008 as well.

Now you have to go to the show ;)

Re: 10 Small Canadian Tech Companies to Watch

Tom Purves — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 08:42:57 -0000

Either that Jevon or you should be raising your prices ;)

Re: Weblo Raises $3M - Brooklyn Bridge for Sale

Tom Purves — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 22:36:28 -0000

Jonas, I think this should be your theme song:

"This is a great idea and the next internet with the ease of use!"

I wish I had a t-shirt with this on it.

Re: » StartupCamp Waterloo - This is just getting started | StartupNorth

Tom Purves — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 12:24:46 -0000

Thanks for the writeup Jevon, sounds like it was a great event.

Amazing to think that DemoCamp is fast coming up to it's 2 year anniversary, and what we've learned along the way.

Re: » Finally, Wireless Competition Explodes in Canada | StartupNorth

Tom Purves — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 15:44:05 -0000

Certainly there are risks that any new entrant may behave no differently than their predecessors. A competitor like Quebecor does have their own entrenched media interests to look out for as well before they get too disruptive.

Notheless, I don't think we've heard the last of who will be bidding on the spectrum. As well, a little game theory suggests any new entrant has a lot less to lose in terms cannibalizing revenues from an existing install base, and lot to gain from attempting to differentiate themselves from the entrenched incumbents.

Lastly, tacit price collusion is harder to maintain with a larger number of players than fewer which is hopeful (not that the big Canadian banks haven't generally succeeded in this amongst the 5 of them).

We didn't get anything like Google's 4 principles of open services, networks, devices etc. but what we did get, at least should be interesting.

And it represents a show of strength by the government that they are willing to step in if they don't perceive the market as behaving in the best interest of Canadians. Sometimes just the credible threat of greater regulation is as good as the real thing in terms of keeping a market operating orderly.

Anyway I am optimistically optimistic at this moment in history. The possibility space for the wireless industry in Canada just got a lot bigger. It's back to a newly opened market now to see what happens next.

My biggest fear is that a regional carrier may buy up the spectrum but under-utilize it outside of a narrow geography. Looking at Quebecor's balance sheet lately, this could be a genuine concern.

Re: » Founders and Funders Toronto Kick Off Questions | StartupNorth

Tom Purves — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 13:00:15 -0000

No, you are right Jevon, DD is the face of entrepreneurship in Canada ... in exactly the same way that American Idol is the face of modern music:

It's appalling cringeworthy, completely disconnected from every new venture/artist that is meaningfully important, it's "entertaining" like a car accident ... and it's exactly the first thing that springs to mind for any of millions of Canadians when you say "I am an entrepreneur".

Maybe together we could start to try and change that.

Re: » Canada Needs to Realize The Technology Business is a Race | StartupNorth

Tom Purves — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 08:29:27 -0000

Michele just blogged about a great example of a idea/project we could and should be importing to Canada. What a great way to sponsor and develop targetted early-stage innovation (whether it be public broadcasting or any other industry)

http://shotfromthehip.wordpress.com/2008/01/21/...

Re: » Lift08 Venture Night: 5 Panelists and one MC and 8 pitches | StartupNorth

Tom Purves — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 01:24:20 -0000

Flavio Quaranta writes StartupNorth:

"You might have missed it but Holistis that you mentioned on your last article and that was presented at The Lift Conference tonight, was mainly developed in New Brunswick, Canada. Holistis is a spin off of IC-Agency that was co-founded in Geneva in 2000. I moved to Canada in July 2005 in order to set up our R&D dept. and make this great idea we had years ago happen. You can proudly claim that Holistis is a Swiss-Canadian project!

Holistis already won an important prize in Paris, France, last December at LeWeb 3 and has been noticed by ITpro UK as one of top 5 companies to watch in 2008."

cool!

Re: » Angel financing - Term sheets (part 2) | StartupNorth

Tom Purves — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 10:09:57 -0000

Great post Craig. So here's the question, on convertables what are the typical numbers for interest rate and discount percentage?

For a tech startup raising their first angel round of a few hundred k, what range would be reasonable or typical?

Re: » Tip of the week . . . | StartupNorth

Tom Purves — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 14:04:55 -0000

Ha I've got you beat, my enabling web2.0 collaboration via FAX startup is long in production, closing on major financing... any minute now... :)

Inspired by, from the archives: http://tinyurl.com/57ovbc

as a hosted social faxing service that would be blogging + fax = flaxtr.net or floggr.com ?

now how would the details work, you can upmod any inbound fax by writing +1! on in thick pen and faxing it back to an 800 number?

Re: U.S. gets Google, we get Ottawa

Tom Purves — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 13:21:10 -0000

there's the catch, it would make sense if they also win the US spectrum. Would be pointless if they don't.

In the U.K., google has claimed they aren't interested in spectrum.

Re: Greasemonkey Script Nests Threaded Discussions In Twitter Pages

Tom Purves — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:40:26 -0000

Thanks for the tip. I like it, but I wish the replies were expanded on demand instead of always shown by default. Some @replies are a lot less interesting than others.

Hey are you in Geneva?

Michele and I are sad to be missing LIFT, we're hosting a LIFT themed fondue party in Toronto tonight...

Re: Firestoker at DemoCamp 11 - Addressing My Critics

Tom Purves — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 15:36:22 -0000

Thanks for you comments Aaron!

to someone like yourself (and other campers) with long experience in blogging and other web2.0 stuff, nothing we're doing should be tremendously surprising. What should only be surprising to all of us, however, is how all these tools like blogging, social media and web2.0-ish media that are so clearly useful and familiar to us have still yet to penetrate organizations and business outside of our world of web2.0 communities. We know that the potential is there for tools like these to help alleviate bureaucracy, make better/faster decisions and generally make large organizations more human.

But to get there the tools themselves still need more work and organizations need help too to manage change and it's in these combined challenges that we specialize in.

We've been doing this for almost 3 years now and even working with some (previously) very traditionally-minded organizations. And all that experience we've now been putting in to the design of our newest rebuild - though the build we showed was only a matter of weeks into development. Of course like new parents we were/are fiercely proud of even these early ultrasounds and anxious to show the world – even though there's still a lot more to come.

So from the pure tech perspective, you could be right. Maybe it was too early to introduce ourselves at DemoCamp or, this time out, maybe we just didn't explain ourselves so good (or both could be true!). Nonetheless we absolutely welcome your commentary. We're excited that you and others who've written share our passion for the ultimate potential of what we're trying to do.

And this stage we are eager for all the criticism and feedback we can get

Cheers and continued best of luck to all of you on the B5 team

(and next time you are in town, drop us a line, we'd love to grab a beer and talk some more)

Thomas Purves

Co-founder, CEO Firestoker
http://firestoker.com
http://thomaspurves.com

Re: Will mass collaboration change religion?

Tom Purves — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 15:09:40 -0000

Well religion is *supposed* to be lofty is it not?

And yes, religion 2.0 is not too far off:
http://remarkk.com/2007/02/25/tales-of-the-unex...

Re: It’s a brave man who advocates against R2P at the U of O…

Tom Purves — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 15:26:19 -0000

R2P == responsibility to protect?

Re: 10 Small Canadian Tech Companies to Watch

Tom Purves — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 08:42:57 -0000

Either that Jevon or you should be raising your prices ;)

Re: Weblo Raises $3M - Brooklyn Bridge for Sale

Tom Purves — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 22:36:28 -0000

Jonas, I think this should be your theme song:

"This is a great idea and the next internet with the ease of use!"

I wish I had a t-shirt with this on it.

Re: StartupCamp Waterloo - This is just getting started

Tom Purves — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 12:24:46 -0000

Thanks for the writeup Jevon, sounds like it was a great event.

Amazing to think that DemoCamp is fast coming up to it's 2 year anniversary, and what we've learned along the way.

Re: Finally, Wireless Competition Explodes in Canada

Tom Purves — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 15:44:05 -0000

Re: Founders and Funders Toronto Kick Off Questions

Tom Purves — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 13:00:15 -0000

Re: Canada Needs to Realize The Technology Business is a Race

Tom Purves — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 08:29:27 -0000

Re: Lift08 Venture Night: 5 Panelists and one MC and 8 pitches

Tom Purves — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 01:24:20 -0000

Re: Angel financing - Term sheets (part 2)

Tom Purves — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 10:09:57 -0000

Re: Tip of the week . . .

Tom Purves — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 14:04:55 -0000

Re: LIFT’07 Social Networking Map Experiment

Tom Purves — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 22:49:57 -0000

It was a pleasure to meet you a Lift this year Stephanie!

til next time...

Re: I’m Starting a Company

Tom Purves — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 16:54:30 -0000

Fantastic Stephanie! congratulations. Perhaps by Lift you can tell us all about it? :)

Re: Announcing Going Solo

Tom Purves — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 14:08:22 -0000

Congrats and best of luck Stephanie!

Re: Good bye Switzerland

Tom Purves — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 14:44:10 -0000

It was a pleasure to meet you Robert, greatly enjoyed your keynote which really did well to tie together themes of the conference. And i hope, i trust that cory gave you a hard time about those signed drivers on Vista...

perhaps we'll catch Amina in some microsoft pr someday soon? ;)

safe travels.

Re: Dave Winer: how RSS can break through

Tom Purves — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 15:17:40 -0000

[at lift as well] and yes geoff, there was also a significant portion maybe didn't want to admit that had no idea about RSS until earlier that day? i mean you don't want look dumb at a geek(ish) conference.

That said, scoble in his speech made a passionate case as to why we're all crazy not to be using it more exhaustively in our lives. I believe that will come. but there is a huuuge gap between the alpha geeks and the rest of world on this one. first thing first, we need to lose the acronym "RSS". acronyms and screenfull of xml are pretty good way to terrify joe/jane average user. RSS will take off once everyone can use RSS without even *realizing* that they are using it.

Re: Why don’t you use a memetracker?

Tom Purves — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 16:29:33 -0000

Sigh, it's true if big media didn't exist, it Would have to be invented. When there is no scarcity of content it’s the filter that creates value not the content creators. Google created value by the results it *doesn’t* return. But this has been true forever, content creators have long been in the business of controlling the channel (manufacturing hits), not the business of making media. It’s all about controlling the top 40 rotation (and not more than 40) it’s all about constraining what gets distributed. The prize is massive, see that research piece linked to in boingboing, Slashdot today (http://www.boingboing.net/2006/02/09/our_music_...) “Popular music gets that way because we're social animals who follow the leads of influential people and/or the crowd, liking what others like because they like it.”. but today, hooray! Big media control is crumbling to be replaced by?…

See doc searls again today http://doc.weblogs.com/2006/02/10#theSourceocracy and his long post on the tyranny of the Alist gatekeepers of the blogosphere. And memes become popular because they make the Alist, the become popular because they are popular

And so we have digg, memorandum etc. to give mob logic a chance to compete.

But will the mob compete? Is our new memeocracy any more meaninfully meritocratic? Will the mob tell us as much want we *need* to hear any more than what we just *want* to hear? Or will it too slip down the slope to superficial info-tainment well slid by mainstream media these many years?

Are we better off with the internets and with internets 2.0? I’d say so

BUT - until we can all upgrade to owning multiple brains were forever at the mercy of the limited capacity of human attention and –therefore- those who filter our top 40

The short tail is dead, long live the short tail.

It’s new name is the memeocracy

Re: Megite working on personal memetracker

Tom Purves — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 13:34:28 -0000

What I find entertaining is (at the moment) scoble's number two link is for "Breast Shaper" ;)

"Listen up ladies and those who abuse steroids: get those breasts in shape with the Bust Doctor. It is an aid for misshapen breasts and includes... "

clearly a lot of bookmarks scoble's bookmarks must be relating to the shapelyness of his bosom? perhaps ones personal meme page isn't something we should want to make public?

reminds me of Gmail's webclips, while emptying my spam folder today, the webclips were trying to interest me in recepes for "spam linguini" at recipes.com...

by which i mean, machine intelligence may have come so far and yet so far to go...

Re: Penny Arcade wonders why Halo is only on Vista

Tom Purves — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 16:34:24 -0000

So which is it Scoble? is there *really* a performance issue here or this just a smoke screen for some trusted computing shenanigans? TC/DRM being supported more strongly by vista than XP?

Like many others, i'm having trouble buying the performance argument. One things for certain, in the past, new OS's tend to be significantly *slower* on existing hardware esp when they incorporate a lot of new chrome, animated widgets and whatnot. this was true for OSX, WinXP, Win95... and so forth

Re: How Christopher Coulter reads my blog

Tom Purves — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 16:58:27 -0000

credit to you on how you handle your detractors Robert. The internet is a cruel place. Don't let it get to you. since you're linking to penny-arcade today, that reminds me of they once neatly (hilariously) summed up this related phenominon:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19

Re: PivotTable this video

Tom Purves — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 09:44:57 -0000

thanks for the video robert, glad to get a peek and office 12. In the future though, it would be more convenient if the videos were (at least) half as long and, say, twice the resolution

(it takes 9 min before we get to see screens and then they are almost entirely illegible)

Re: Maps keep getting richer

Tom Purves — Thu, 25 May 2006 10:32:23 -0000

and what about the terrible name "windows live local" a name shoehorned in to the microsoft branding scheme that makes no sense for this product. are they taking any of your hints on naming scemes?

windows live local sounds like some way to connect my home computer to those of my local neighbours to, I dunno, share windows apps or something -- not even slightly like a global web-based mapping service

that said, hey it found my house (this is how everybody tests it the first time right?). And I like that you can add pushpins (sortof) easily and email them out.

Re: Download Windows Vista

Tom Purves — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 13:45:36 -0000

only 50%? heh, souds pretty reasonable to me. He does work for the company after all.

Re: Peter says podcasting is inefficient

Tom Purves — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 17:36:24 -0000

Yes podcasting I'd argue is a very american and especially californio-centric idea. Where else do so many people spend so much time in long commutes stuck in their cars? I'd argue that in most other cities and countries a far great percentage of people spend less time commuting or commute by other means, for instance on trains where reading interfaces often work quite fine, or by bike where headphones (or reading too, heh) would just likely get you in an accident.

Re: Money issues (or lack thereof) behind Unbooming?

Tom Purves — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 09:34:59 -0000

Hmm Andrew is still has himself scheduled to speak at CaseCamp in toronto on friday. I wonder if he'll still make it and what he'll say. would be his first public appearance after the split.

Re: Who will take Rocketboom over?

Tom Purves — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 09:48:36 -0000

My vote is on Amber Mac. Had the pleasure to meet her a few times. That woman rocks. And I know her and Andrew have met before, for instance at Mesh earlier this year picture

Re: Money issues (or lack thereof) behind Unbooming?

Tom Purves — Sat, 08 Jul 2006 02:30:25 -0000

Andrew broke his silence at CaseCamp Toronto today link It was amanda that walked out on the negotiations. rocketboom is going on. he's confident the audience will come back. he put on a brave face but you can tell he's nervous as hell about this monday's show.

yes there is a show on monday.

Re: New idea for RSS aggregators: Drama Filter (and code blogs)

Tom Purves — Sat, 08 Jul 2006 02:42:12 -0000

oh rocketboom is going live on monday. andrew announced it tonight but he wouldn't say what was going to happen... link

she won't be there but this could be rocketboom's most watched episode yet. As for the drama the poor guy was fit to bursting for the chance to tell his side of the story but his family and peers have been holding him back for his own sake. It's been pretty ugly though all the dirty linnen that's been aired so far.

Re: Four little links say volumes at Dell site

Tom Purves — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 17:01:58 -0000

It never really mattered that their desktops were ugly when you could just take them under a desk. But having to be seen with those gray shabby looking notebooks is such a shame. just when there new line is starting to show some impressive features: integrated wireless broadband, high resolutions, integrated SD card slots on some (oh why doesn't every notebook?) and up to 4GB of memory (though 4GB option currently going for hilarious prices).

Re: Four little links say volumes at Dell site

Tom Purves — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 17:21:12 -0000

It's apple among others that's stealing share these days. the macbook is (shockingly) a good deal for what's inside and they've obviously one a sweetheart deal with Intel for priority on next-gen chips. And you notice Dell the jilted lover turning to AMD (watch for more annoucements).

I asked Michael Dell himself (speaking at the Rotman business school) about this very subject a about two years ago and pointed out Intel's failures with P4 and the long stagnation in performance/clockspeed we've seen in the CPU market (relieved only just now with the coming core2 architecture) and how strategically he could grow his business against these conditions esp. given the all-intel position at the time.

Dell visibly blanched a little the question and recovered by saying these periods of transition happen all the time in the semiconductor industry, wait for next year and dual core pentium 4's that will fuel the industry he said. Nope not quite looking at poor Dell's recent stock performance.

finally though, it looks like the turnaround could be in sight for dell inc.

if only they could design themselves out of those damn grey boxes.

Re: Four little links say volumes at Dell site

Tom Purves — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 22:10:27 -0000

not nobody. I use a tablet. Fujitsu pure slate tablet no less. And a Motion before that.

though i think more and more of trading it in for a sleek little macbook...

Re: The one with the most stickers wins (and learning from the students)

Tom Purves — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 16:21:28 -0000

Ha ha I think Cory Doctorow for one has had you beat for some time now... http://www.toweringflat.com/2005/11/corys_ibook...

Re: My favorite conferences: Northern Voice and LIFT

Tom Purves — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 15:26:19 -0000

Glad to hear you're going back as well. Last year was a wonderful event, was just catching up last night with a new friend I met there last year, and how that event and the experience has changed our lives in unexpected ways in the year since. There was something special about the particular mix of people, the ideas and the context last year. kudo's to you laurent and let's hope you and all can pull it off again.

see you both again in february 07 en Suisse...

Re: Did Calacanis just call me fat?

Tom Purves — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 06:51:56 -0000

this blogger is exactly six foot

and 155Lb

he could probably stand to put weight on

a little exercise might do the trick in this case as well

Re: Thanks Ze Frank!

Tom Purves — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 13:01:45 -0000

Ha! that's a great picture.

I'll miss Ze's show too...

Re: Kudos to Microsoft on IE8’s ACID compliance

Tom Purves — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 09:41:10 -0000

Hooray, this is good news. Could IE8 be the first really good MS browser since IE4/5?

would be about time.

Now if someone at MS would just fix Windows Media Player...

Re: Valleywag getting crap for posting my phone number

Tom Purves — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 15:54:14 -0000

I've had my number posted on my blog for years, and while I don't have the huge traffic Scobble has, it's still funny to me how rarely anyone thinks to call.

On the occasion someone does call however, it does have a tendency to be something actually worthwhile like a request for a press interview etc.

Re: Namedropping at Davos

Tom Purves — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 12:11:01 -0000

Sounds like a wonderfully inspiring event. Keep up the blogging and coverage Robert. Looking forward to hearing your stories when you get to Geneva.

See you at Lift!

cheers,
Thomas Purves

Re: Can anyone stop this man?

Tom Purves — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 09:38:08 -0000

There's also the PATRIOT act problem for global companies hosting customer data on US soil. That data, when it pertains to non-U.S. citizens is exposed to the risk of seizure by the US government with recourse, notice or judicial oversight. This exposes global companies to either violate US law or the Laws of protection of privacy / consumer data of the countries where their customers are resident.

Amazon should host some data in centers outside the U.S. Canada would be a good choice.

Re: The story of the Alta Vista party at SXSW

Tom Purves — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 19:33:44 -0000

Ha is that Johannes in that picture?

sigh for snowy Toronto. sxsw sounds like a blast this year.

Re: Flickr’s fourth birthday “adults only”

Tom Purves — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 05:09:46 -0000

Sorry to hear you didn't make it in, would have liked to say hi.

Actually, the cupcakes at the flickr party were fantastic. Don't slag the flickr food.

Though hardly dinner. We also went for sushi later.

Re: Does Microsoft have a speed problem?

Tom Purves — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 10:46:22 -0000

Gmail aggressively optimizes for speed.

Microsoft? sluggish user interfaces is microsoft's middle name.

Vista anyone?

Why does it take seconds of latency to open a volume slider in any version of windows? I have no idea.

Re: Why Early Stage Venture Investments Fail

Tom Purves — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 09:50:02 -0000

Thanks for this post Fred.

Or how else does this apparent dilemma affect your thinking when considering a deal?