Disqus - Latest Comments for Jevon

Re: Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Jevon — Mon, 14 May 2007 10:41:16 -0000

We finally managed to pawn you off on someone else. Phew.

Re: OCRI is sour, grapes

Jevon — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 16:50:49 -0000

Having once been the President of an industry association and as someone who put a lot of honest effort and hard work in to trying to build a community through an industry association I can only say one thing: They are destructive, resource wasting, bureaucratic schemes that serve only to give access to (and control over) a platform with which to jerk themselves off.

I am suspicious of people who see a community and try to profit from it. I think that is part of the reason for the Toronto Tech Week backlash. The community is learning to immunize itself from opportunists and value-suckersâ&bdquo;¢ who don't know how to contribute.

It is pretty easy to spot someone who 'gets' it vs someone who is there to benefit.

A profit motivation is great, I encourage it, but sometimes it is also sad, especially when a few rag tag volunteers do a better job by each contributing an hour or two of their time.

The truth is, we all have a profit motive. Most of us want to get better at running our startups, so we have a huge motivation to be part of a community that can support that. Others have a motivation to improve the coding, UX or UI skills and so they have an interest in pushing that part of the community forward.

By first building a strong and resilient community, places like Toronto will no longer have to worry in the same way about the next downturn or even as much about how many 'successes' there are being produced here. During the coming downturn the Toronto community will only strengthen because instead of destroying the community, people will be able to turn to the community for support.

Industry associations or other groups will never have the incentives to see people through equally tough times.

I admit, I have always hated the 'toronto rah rah rah' center-of-the-universe crap, but this is a case of where I think something novel and worthwhile is finally happening.

Re: Joyent buys Textdrive

Jevon — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 01:38:39 -0000

I have a VCII account on Pendrell. I don't even use it anymore, you just can't rely on it. Too bad :(

Re: Joyent buys Textdrive

Jevon — Sat, 03 Dec 2005 14:00:29 -0000

I actually have a Sun Cobalt 550 sitting here under my desk as I did the opposite and stopped co-locating. But that was just because I didn't have the time anymore and my admin decided to change careers.

Re: Joyent buys Textdrive

Jevon — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 03:31:07 -0000

I have a backup account on PowerVPS now, and they are pretty great as well. The VPS is almost as fast as my dedicated machine, and so much cheaper.

Re: The Camp Factor

Jevon — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 09:15:30 -0000

Sounds like I will have to do the whole explanation of how I see this going down <del>- I thought the *camp tag was supposed to take care of that! ;</del>)

Re: The Camp Factor

Jevon — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 09:40:57 -0000

I don't think you're slow, I just think the idea needs work, which is what I was suggesting in the first place.

My offer of a discussion over beer stands. We may even decide the whole idea stinks, or that we need to do something different.

It's more about just getting people connected on some (any) level.

Re: The Camp Factor

Jevon — Sun, 22 Jan 2006 02:43:58 -0000

More of these, lots of everything. Looking forward to Democamp this week.

Re: The Camp Factor

Jevon — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 02:04:41 -0000

I see how MoneyCamp would work.

People who are focused on the business side of this world are interested in how the money part REALLY works. It works a little differently in each city, and even those of us who HAVE gone through the process and raised Angel and/or VC money shouldn't pretend like we know how it all works, or that it is all perfect.

I see good in putting heads together in a city like TO and getting real about the whole process. I think everyone who came would learn.

The idea is not 'come and raise money for your startup'. If that happens, bonus! But it is just as likely to happen at a BrainJam, or StartupCamp, or DemoCamp, or TorCamp or MashupCamp, or Summer Camp.

Re: New Emerging Technology Organization in Toronto

Jevon — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 10:50:00 -0000

Put together a small Council, incorporate as a non profit (if you have to… ?) and go to Government, Private Equity and successful TO tech companies and show them your track record with this stuff.

If they don’t understand that this is all a good thing (what has been happning here) and that if it really gets going, it will mean more opportunity for everyone, then they just really aren’t smart people.

It’s not a government program—they would kill it.

Nobody in particular is the host. Ideally, you will have venues competing to get these events.

Re: Fear and Loathing Is Not A Great Brand Image

Jevon — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 10:07:26 -0000

I am starting to wonder when we will all make the move to Ubuntu or something similar. I have a lot of friends who are switching to it from Vista, and a lot of musicians are using a specialized version of it that is great for audi editing, etc.

The experience and app availability on Linux is now easily where it was with OS 10.2 or 3, and it really is even more stable and open.

At the very least, I am stopping my kneejerk reaction everything apple comes out with something. I am not going to just buy it the way I seem to now.

Re: Fear and Loathing Is Not A Great Brand Image

Jevon — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 12:12:00 -0000

There is also one big, looming, reason you can't be very long on AAPL: http://socialwrite.com/2006/01/16/buying-apple/

Re: Scandals In The Age Of Social Networking

Jevon — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 08:32:11 -0000

It is Tumblr that is really going to be up. http://ashleyalexandradupre.tumblr.com/

Re: The Difference Between Wordpress and Facebook

Jevon — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 07:34:00 -0000

I think one of the appeals of Facebook so far has been that it is closed and feels "safer" than being out there in public with a blog, twitter, etc.

Eventually though, I think people make the mental leap. They see the value of being as open as possible in the safe space of Facebook, but the slippery slope eventually has us wanted to be as public as possible, and then the distinction between private and public really starts to go out the window, as Jeff blogged yesterday: http://jeffnolan.com/wp/2008/04/16/oh-yeah-ever...

Eventually, Wordpress will overtake FB in terms of reach and sustainability. There is also the issue of resiliency. The revenue model for WP might not be as "fat" up front, but the operations side is so much leaner. Wordpress could weather a 5 year storm while Facebook couldn't handle a couple years (guess).

Re: Convenience Beats Quality

Jevon — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 23:47:25 -0000

Nice! I wrote a bit about this a while ago too: http://socialwrite.com/2008/02/06/the-death-of-...

This actually has a lot to do with how you want to look at some markets, where the incumbent seems to be dominating based on quality of the good/service, but that is not the case at all.

Re: Losing A Phone - A Social Media Security Breach?

Jevon — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 12:59:41 -0000

I use a keypad-lock password on my iphone. It is easy and fast, I think the n95 has an option to do that as well. It is sort of a catch-all for this kind of thing.

Re: Celebrating Aggregation

Jevon — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 19:17:58 -0000

Aggregation and applying interesting filters to that aggregated content is one of the really unique things we (by that I mean,.. everyone) are experimenting with right now on the web. Blogs vs. Newspapers, etc isn't such an interesting change, because it is arguably incremental. Blogs are cheaper newspapers in some ways, especially blogs that emulate newspapers.

Aggregation however is not incremental and it is not derivative, it is new. That might not seem like a big deal to most people, but it is interesting to me because we don't yet understand it's full impact and what sort of market will grow up around it.

That's part of why I like what @howardlindzon is doing with stocktwits. If he was simply creating a place for people to write their thoughts about a stock, then they would not have been creating anything really new., what he did though was let people create that content elsewhere (it could be anywhere, it could be right on stocktwits as well) and instead focused on building a really smart aggregation and markup system, which is where the value really gets created.

Push publishing models are getting boring, Pull aggregation models are where there is an opportunity to do really new, and potentially big, things. It's where value gets bundled up. Network effects are no good if you can't identify them and use them, aggregation is where you can do that.

Re: Celebrating Aggregation

Jevon — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 22:53:27 -0000

Another aggregation model that is working is in Travel. Aggregators like Kayak.com are adding a lot of value for users.

It might not seem like an analogous concept to content/media aggregation like you are talking about, but there may be more parallels than are immediately obvious. The main one being that as many airlines and hotel companies can be aggregator to fulfill a travel need, many content creators, editors and curators may ultimately be needed to fulfill an information need.

Re: Celebrating Aggregation

Jevon — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 09:07:04 -0000

Just be happy that Howard doesn't change his name to Cramer and make stocktwits one big video blog.

Re: http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/05/thoughts-from-25000-feet.html

Jevon — Sun, 10 May 2009 21:48:41 -0000

If you really want to feel like you have left the continent (and still eat some great food), try Quebec City. There are loads of great hotels and you will hear even less english.

Re: WrapMail: Making Email More Viral

Jevon — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 13:41:08 -0000

Viral? Where the fuck is the viral in this?

Dear god. It is more noise injected in to a relationship (business<->consumer) that is already so noisy and messy that most of us can't bear it.

Re: NPR radio debate (Scripting News)

Jevon — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 21:41:40 -0000

Some people swear off coffee, or smoking or drinking. . .

Re: Interview with Scoble (Scripting News)

Jevon — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 12:20:51 -0000

The "just call up and start asking questions" format rocks,. Including the ring at the beginning really sets the tone.

Re: What’s wrong with Dave Winer

Jevon — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 12:09:19 -0000

You can't really have an "opinion" about how certain things were invented. If you were watching when it happened it was obvious what was going on. While his conspiracy theories might not help his cause, I think the facts are pretty simple on who invented RSS, OPML and Podcasting.

Re: 2009…The Year of Financial Chaos?

Jevon — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 11:27:30 -0000

2009 is the year to eat your Wheaties and get strong., Just keeping existing investments on track will be a full time job

Re: Amazon Will Buy Twitter…

Jevon — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 12:05:20 -0000

My money is on $CSCO picking them up.

Re: Amazon Will Buy Twitter…

Jevon — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 12:41:40 -0000

$CSCO builds messaging systems with massive scale, and they want their hardware to be the messaging bus for not just networks (IP packets), but machines and people too...

Re: CNBC Banned from Stocktwits

Jevon — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 22:45:16 -0000

I enjoy a good vendetta. I think it is healthy.

Re: CNBC Banned from Stocktwits

Jevon — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 23:48:34 -0000

... and you never forgot it

Re: OS X, Ubuntu and Other Fun Stuff

Jevon — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 19:35:21 -0000

Really funny that you bring this up. My Leopard install went bad 2 days ago and a reinstall didn't seem to fix it,. so I did a fast download of Ubuntu and ran it off the live CD,. Since everything was backed up I decided to just go ahead and install it on the machine.

I have been amazed at how good it is. Sure there are loads of stupid things that linux distributions should just standardize (like the dozens of window managers), but things were really easy for me overall.

I think part of the reason is that I am running it on a MacBookPro, which is a known configuration that Ubuntu seems to have gone out of its way to support well. Pretty much everything, including the function keys "just worked".

I was the most blown away when I plugged in my ipod and a media play popped up, downloaded a bunch of codecs and just started playing.

I am no linux guru by any stretch, but this has been good fun.

As for AWN, I installed it in all of 15 minutes, but ended up just using the built in Gnome panels.. I like having a few buttons, etc on there.

Re: Round 10: Auction Chaos Visualized

Jevon — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 14:56:17 -0000

Beautiful. In its own way.

Re: Who will blink first? auction hits 1.8B and climbing

Jevon — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 12:16:32 -0000

Cheers to that. I am enjoying them as well. The papers, etc are sorely lacking in decent coverage.

Re: iPhone 3G hits Apple.ca store, is priceless

Jevon — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 15:21:15 -0000

*thud*

Pricing would have been great. Considering the $199USD maximum price, I wonder just how creative Rogers will get to get more revenue out of this device.

Re: Breaking News: Rogers to revamp data pricing (is that up or down?)

Jevon — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 13:01:49 -0000

Nice!, this early signal might get Telus and Bell to start acting like the competitors they are supposed to be.

Re: Rogers flexes new blackberry data plans, roaming still a killer

Jevon — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 14:09:42 -0000

I think everyone took it at face value. I did at least.

Re: Is it me or is the Blackyberry flip phone fugly?

Jevon — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 13:24:09 -0000

Looks like a Moto with a beer belly.

Re: Need out of your iPhone contract? $1100 please

Jevon — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 10:19:41 -0000

Yieks. I will test this with mine today. That is scary.

Re: Need out of your iPhone contract? $1100 please

Jevon — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 11:16:13 -0000

It just says "to a maximum of 400", not $400. It could mean 400 months ;)

Re: Bell jacking TXT messaging fees

Jevon — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 21:29:10 -0000

In Canada, 2 makes more than a trend. ;-)

Re: Bell jacking TXT messaging fees

Jevon — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 21:34:45 -0000

Well, they do have to truck those bits from one place to another. Why do you think your TXT message can be so delayed sometimes? (90 minutes for me today a few times)

Re: You can’t help yourself, you will get an iPhone

Jevon — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 22:50:10 -0000

I think saying you are clarifying facts here is being a little generous. I appreciate the comment,. I do,. but I figure I will respond, at the risk of sounding like an asshole.

1- Sure,. the numbers have looked similar on both markets.
2- I did not make a link between the petition and the stock market. I just pointed out that it has dropped since they announced the iphone plans. If only an online petition had that influence.
3- my point exactly. ... oi.
4- New entrants will not be live in that short a time span. This is irrelevant to my post.

Re: You can’t help yourself, you will get an iPhone

Jevon — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 22:51:18 -0000

The HTC touch was all this a long time ago. This is not a new plan, it is MORE EXPENSIVE than the 7$ plan they were offering with the touch. That is what I think is pathetic. Nothing new or creative to compete, just a price bump and a device from a new maker (a device that nobody cares about to boot)

Re: You can’t help yourself, you will get an iPhone

Jevon — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 22:54:54 -0000

This is NOT unlimited data,. Bell is very clear about that,. this is unlimited web browsing through the browser they provide. Same as the HTC deal, just more expensive.

Re: You can’t help yourself, you will get an iPhone

Jevon — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 23:35:56 -0000

Hah,. I like that idea,. the sort of Red Green version of the iphone.

Duct tape anyone?

Re: You can’t help yourself, you will get an iPhone

Jevon — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 10:29:25 -0000

I think a lot of people feel this way, 3-years is just so painful, and I think a lot of people have memories of signing 36 month contracts and wanting to go to a new plan or carrier in the last 12 months, but being stuck.

Re: You can’t help yourself, you will get an iPhone

Jevon — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 16:56:47 -0000

Meh, I think I'll leave it. I wrote the post yesterday.

Re: Thinking “Bigger” about the Election

Jevon — Mon, 07 May 2007 22:57:17 -0000

It's so great to see some of this conversation getting blogged finally Todd -- hopefully more will follow in your footsteps.

There are so many projects I can see for the election -- my mind races. Can't wait!

Re: Oh…. Rex.

Jevon — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 23:31:57 -0000

hah! A lifelong hero of mine

Re: More on how I was right - Facebook is dead as a platform

Jevon — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 12:07:23 -0000

You can believe those rumors all you want, but a lot of purported "revenue" numbers from FB developers have been debunked in the last year.

Re: Montreal 2007: What and where to eat?

Jevon — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 10:24:38 -0000

ChowHound has fantastic tips for Toronto ( http://www.chowhound.com/boards/23 ). Try Lah Wah Heen for the best upscale dimsum you can imagine.

Anyway, give me a call or drop a note and we can get a drink when you are in town!

Re: A Rebels Answer to “VC or Bootstrap?”

Jevon — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 08:32:34 -0000

Everyone likes to simplify things to a point where it is blog-friendly. 37signals is definitely no exception.

The idea of a lifestyle business makes a lot of sense for certain people. What I don't understand is why a 20-something team of a few developer would be at all happy with a 200k or $1million idea.

When you are in your 20s, 30s, single or at least don't have kids and are oozing with raw talent, you are worth way more than just a few bucks a month.

Like anything, you have to stay open to all options. If you hit on an idea that is big, then it can be a lot of fun trying to hit that homerun.

Didn't 37s take money from Bezos? They never mention that.

Re: Beating Social Media’s 90:9:1 Rule in the Enterprise

Jevon — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 14:22:03 -0000

Looking at actual metrics from the wiki software is far more useful than asking a room full of people about their own behavior. We've tried it a few times and people have wildly divergent definitions of "used" or even "edited".

A great value-add for a company like Atlassian would be to allow their customers to upload anonymized usage data and get a comparison generated that shows relative levels of participation in relation to other Atlassian customers.

Re: Beating Social Media’s 90:9:1 Rule in the Enterprise

Jevon — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 14:22:03 -0000

Re: Pitchfork interview with Tom Waits

Jevon — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 15:57:05 -0000

What a great album. You are in for a treat with discs 1 and 2.