Disqus - Latest Comments for Ryan Coleman

Re: I’m not an evangelist, I’m an arms dealer

Ryan Coleman — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 07:03:22 -0000

We've been building on the Microsoft platform for years and the first version on our product was all built in .Net but we switched to a Java environment for V2 last summer.

A big reason for our switching was being able to leverage services like Amazon's EC2. We just couldn't easily & cost effectively offer a SaaS platform if we stayed on the windows platform.

For licensed software we also started coming up against more and more prospects who just couldn't deal with us as they weren't allowed to run MS servers internally.

Re: Tech Week in Toronto is NOT for Technologists

Ryan Coleman — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 07:36:27 -0000

Not wrong. So tragically right.

“City hall didn't organize TTW last year. In fact they hardly did anything at all.'

I sat in the very ICT meetings where they outright said this was their approach. When suggested that a “Field of Dreamonomics” approach wouldn’t work it was immediately dismissed. Their entire plan was “Build it and they will come”

In addition to the EnterpriseCamp Tom put on a full BarCamp was organized and run on the weekend preceding the event. The response from the TTW organizers? They wouldn’t even list the event because it didn’t happen during a weekday (between 9 & 5), and they didn’t want any “official” events happening before Miller officially opened the week.

I think your investment of social capital in TorCamp and related events has already done far more than spending the rest of your days propping this mess up could ever do.

I’ve never gotten the impression there is any desire to change or consider a different tack at any level within TTW.

Re: Lussumo based in Toronto Saskatoon

Ryan Coleman — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 08:06:04 -0000

Had the pleasure of having Mark on my development team for the last year or so before he headed West. Was sorry to lose him but glad to see he's doing well and 'that forum thing' he was working on is gaining some traction.

Re: Leverage + measurement

Ryan Coleman — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 08:40:17 -0000

Great post Dave. (Actually good string of posts over the past week or so)

Getting restless? ;)

Re: http://www.rev2.org/2007/09/20/exclusive-25-beta-invites-for-xnobi/

Ryan Coleman — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 17:50:19 -0000

I'd love to give it a spin...

Re: http://www.rev2.org/2007/09/20/exclusive-25-beta-invites-for-xnobi/

Ryan Coleman — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 17:55:21 -0000

I'd love to give it a spin...

I'm most interested to use the features that let you quickly piece together conversations and extract attached files etc. I live & die by my inbox so this seems like a great tool to help me pull information from my email client a lot more efficiently.

Re: Why I won’t be on The Dragon’s Den

Ryan Coleman — Wed, 09 May 2007 11:07:39 -0000

Great post Jevon...

I liken Dragon's Den to going on a Blind Date. But on this date there are only two possible outcomes, you're going to end up married to her (and maybe some of her friends) or you're going to look like an idiot.

There's very few businesses that could benefit from the nature of the Dragon's investment/exposure. Ironically I think Jobloft.com was one of them as a few of the investors were in the right spaces for them but we all know where that ended up.

But as a non-retail oriented technology/software company... not a chance in hell.

Re: Could Netscape deal be a win-win-win?

Ryan Coleman — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 15:33:18 -0000

It will be interesting over time to see how this plays out.

On one hand it could encourage people to post/submit more to sites like Digg in the faint hope of catching the eye of Netscape to get a gig.

The real "publicity stunt" vs. "genuine concern" will show when Netscape starts getting it's own top submitters. Will Jason pay them too? And at then what's the threshold for who gets paid? Top 10? Top 20... how's 21 going to feel?

I think the mistake Jason makes in his whole rant is the assumption that these users want to be paid or expected to be paid. Sure some of them will take the money (an extra $1K for doing what you're already doing? sure!). I think the web has gotten so vast that in many cases just seeing your story, with your name as the submitter is enough for many people. Heck look at how everyone stumbles all over themselves trying to get their first "greenlight" at Fark...

Re: Is AOL to blame, or is privacy dead?

Ryan Coleman — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 14:22:35 -0000

I think the biggest misconception about privacy online is the mistaken assumption by many people that anyone actually cares about what they've been searching - except maybe marketers. And what are marketers trying to do? Understand what your likes/dislikes and concerns are to present you with products and services that may be more interesting to you rather then blindly pumping shotgun style advertising at everyone. And even then - this isn't some new online "thing" - I'll guarantee you a store like WalMart could tell you everything I've ever bought from their bricks & mortar store. I remember a couple years back a few stories too about Best Buy weeding out unwanted customers from their mailing lists based on credit cards and purchase histories too.

Re: Does FOO Camp matter?

Ryan Coleman — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 13:13:05 -0000

I don't really get his point - these credibility of these camps etc. are entirely founded on relevance. If Tim O'Reilly wants to have a closed conference that's his choice. The risk he runs if they're only getting people who share their views is potential death by echo chamber.

This is why events like BarCamp (and the various *Camp offspring) came about. I don't see the risk for Web 2.0 because last I checked the community was alive, talking and interacting quite actively (Look at BarCampEarth last weekend - 10+ cities having simulatneous camps). I'm sure Dave would be more then welcome to come to his local Camp and do a session on "Why O'Reilly is doomed to Fail" or whatever else he is concerned about at the time.

Sounds more like a case of someone's invite getting "lost" in the mail.

Re: Is Google flirting with the e-word?

Ryan Coleman — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 08:39:31 -0000

I can sort of understand the uneasy factor about this type of solution. I personally go back and forth. I guess, as long as it's tied to my PC only, and used to serve me ads that I'm more likely to be interested in I don't have an issue.

If, however, I search "Volvo" one week and then the next get piled with physical junk mail at home from Volvo because Google has tied my PC w/my Google account (which has my address through my AdSense profile) Then yeah - over the line.

Re: Is Robert Scoble stealing or marketing?

Ryan Coleman — Sun, 05 Nov 2006 19:17:55 -0000

"To Scoble, however (and to me as well), it seems more like helping"

I have to agree - I realized recently (belatedly) that I had, in a sense, become a "human aggregator" for several friends and colleagues. So rather than continually emailing people links and what not they all got one email the other day that basically said "Here's my shared items - anything interesting will be there"

I can see if someone was sharing every post from another person's blog that might be a bit much but the odd article here and there is well within the realm of "fair use" etc.

Re: Social media gets duped, just like old media

Ryan Coleman — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 13:01:07 -0000

The "social momentum" has always been a concern for me with sites like Digg.

Earlier in the year I had a problem with my Gmail account and did a blog post about it - at first I thought it was a bug.

Of course the prospect of a Gmail bug got "Dugg" - 1 hour and 4,000 hits later (it hit the front page of digg in about 20 minutes) I realized what the issue was (It was not a bug but rather a - i think - stupid feature). By that time the damage was done though and there was no mechanism aside from my one vote to undig & bury the story to do anything about it. I edited the post to correct it and emailed digg admins but at that point all I could do was sit back and watch. It eventually got force buried by the admins but it's still on the site. Even after the post was corrected & numerous comments were made saying it was incorrect it still kept getting dugg at a furious pace (almost 900 total) - people just didn't seem to care or read it, they saw Gmail, Bug and Dugg it.

(Heck it got slashdotted two days later even though it had been corrected for over 48 hours - so clearly they don't even read the stories sometimes)

I don't know why they would have outright deleted the story though , doesn't make any sense... unless Sony's lawyers had a word about them. Those Diggs, even when buried still get found all the time (I still get 10-20 hits a week via that link)

Re: Turn here for some cool videos

Ryan Coleman — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 10:21:27 -0000

Great link Mathew... so much for a productive morning. ;)

Re: Yahoo buys MyBlogLog — but why?

Ryan Coleman — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 13:25:37 -0000

The way I see it MyBlogLog is the ideal stats platform for integrating into their Flickr & Del.icio.us properties - especially Flickr. I find more and more that I want more detail from how my Flickr stuff is being viewed and it just isn't there. When you look at Flickr, most already have an account, those with accounts have pictures. With a common Yahoo! ID suddenly all the Flickr users could easily have MBL accounts and start to show up in the widget all over the web. I think it's a win-win acquisition for Yahoo! adds value to an existing property and potentially creates more value in the new property. (provided they bother to integrate them all :/)

Re: Yahoo buys MyBlogLog — but why?

Ryan Coleman — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 20:56:33 -0000

Rub it in why don't you :)

Nice job Scott (and team)...

Re: MyBlogLog goes after spammers

Ryan Coleman — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 15:50:58 -0000

I've noticed the spammers and got a co-author invite over the weekend. Kudos to MBL the "community" was gone by the time I received the email and went to the site wondering WTF?

As for spammers - I've just X'ed them off the list anytime I notice them, a pain but I peek at the MBL ticker periodically so not a big amount of work to simply click an "X", ideally MBL will figure out a way to suspend accounts if they register and quickly gather a large number of X's.

Re: Hey Ma! They got TV on the Internet now!

Ryan Coleman — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 09:31:37 -0000

Funny how they winge and moan about all the money they're "losing" due to sites like YouTube then they turn around and spend millions upon millions to reinvent the wheel...

Re: Now those are some geek dads

Ryan Coleman — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 22:59:19 -0000

I've been amazed at how much content they've got and how good (great?) it tends to be... great blog.

Re: Should Twitter be afraid of Facebook?

Ryan Coleman — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 21:30:58 -0000

I think Twitter has one key spot where it can survive Facebook shifting its weight into their space.

If Twitter could deliver something that would expand their existing functionality so that it could update MSN, Skype, Facebook etc. status messages as well then they'd actually have something useful on their hands.

Re: Facebook coffers go Ka-ching

Ryan Coleman — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 10:07:01 -0000

"is what the heck is Facebook planning to do with that $400-million?"

Are you kicking in the extra $100M personally Matt? ;)

Re: LinkedIn and Facebook: Collision course?

Ryan Coleman — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 09:57:48 -0000

"I think it does, although like my friend Mark Evans I rarely use it. "

Yeah, there's certainly certain contexts where LInkedIn either makes loads of sense, or none at all.

On our end we use it all the time as we're a heavily partner centric business. If we need to get an in-road with a specific vendor the first place we go to is usually LinkedIn to see who we know at the company, or closely connected to it.

It's created a lot of conversations for us that would have otherwise taken months to get started.

Re: Global by Design: Banned in China

Ryan Coleman — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 13:46:24 -0000

Hey John,

I had this problem as well last year - a solution I found was recommending feedburner to people. Feedburner will automatically render your RSS feed in a browser friendly way if you don't use a newsreader to view it.

If 'they' haven't blocked it yet then people can go firectly to your feedburner link and see the stories there.

Re: Why I won’t be on The Dragon’s Den

Ryan Coleman — Wed, 09 May 2007 11:07:39 -0000

Re: Have the Data Wars Begun

Ryan Coleman — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 11:48:56 -0000

Couple of thoughts:

1) It's not like Facebook has suddenly changed the rules or some data policy. They've always been an information roach motel - this is nothing new. To now decide you don't like the TOS is fine but you can't slam the company because you no longer agree with their rules.

2) Yes Scoble's intended use was personal/not spammy but how is Facebook supposed to be able tell the difference??? At the end of the day Scoble tripped a system that was designed to PROTECT the user data from unwanted uses. If he'd scraped everything he could have easily posted "I just swiped all your data from Facebook & they did nothing"... and we'd all be off down a different privacy shit storm direction...

This is one of those cases where a company had a pretty clear TOS and they're well within their rights to invoke the "if you don't like it, leave" clause.