Disqus - Latest Comments for jnolan

Re: Power Line - Report from Morrisville

jnolan — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 01:27:18 -0000

Murphy is a veteran, which means he is eligible to use a true single payer government run healthcare system, the VA... yet he opts for the private plan provided by his employer.

Re: The Burden of Transition

jnolan — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 14:16:13 -0000

"North America does not have new natural gas deposits." True, nobody has new deposits, just newly discovered deposits which may be the case in the U.S. if companies were allowed to look for them in places like the California coast. Then there is the issue of moving the NG to where it is needed... and the LNG terminal projects in Ventura County, LAX, and Long Beach abandoned b/c of political pressure should serve as a call for action among those who want to see the American economy shift to LNG and CNG.

The two greatest disappointments for me when it comes to energy and California are our willful shunning of diesel despite it's advantages and our arrogance about consumption of energy as long as it is produced somewhere else.

Love your series on these topics, keep it up.

Re: Power Line - Minnesota: It's Not Really So Bad

jnolan — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 10:24:54 -0000

no kidding, for a post about the benefits of living in Minnesota I was surprised to see a not-so-great California beer on the table. C'mon, it has a too much bitterness and not enough hopps on the front end and an aftertaste that is hard to get away from... if you want a truly great California beer, and there are many, I can't think of anything better than Bear Republic's Racer 5.

Re: Facebook reverts to old terms of service, working on a better new version

jnolan — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 10:32:15 -0000

Seems like the problem for Facebook is that too many people understood the language of their ToS.

Re: Local yogurt store tells Scoble that Steve Jobs is “in great health”

jeff nolan — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 13:12:23 -0000

Fraiche really is excellent and for the record I have also seen Jobs sitting on the steps adjacent to their front door eating frozen yogurt. He's also been spotted at La Strada... time for a "Where's Steve" facebook app... c'mon McClure, this is right in your sweet spot.

Re: The Slow Money Movement: Demassifying Retail

jnolan — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 12:31:47 -0000

All good points Stowe. To be honest, I wrote parts of this post over a month ago and keep adding/subtracting from it while trying to figure out where I was going. This is rare for me, I usually write and shoot with very little time to dwell or edit.

While not the best "average consumer" to model from, I do try to glean insight from my own purchasing behaviors and what this reveals is that like most people I am a complex consumer trying to balance many motivations. Case in point is my grocery shopping over the weekend, my wife can be counted on to bake a few pies for Thanksgiving so I made sure to pick up some apples while at the local produce market (Segona's). I was pleased to find a very broad selection of apples, but the ones sourced from Gilroy not only met my needs in terms of type and visual quality, were pesticide free, and best of all, the least cost option. Furthermore, the farm had several varieties of apples I had never even heard of, so I was "upsold" in the process with additional apples I didn't plan on buying. This one example encapsulates the complexity of local retail: quality, variety, price, and extended attributes.

A couple of months ago I wrote a post about how reduced spending power could drive consumers to once again value quality, suggesting that our grandparents generation had to save in order to purchase and therefore valued the purchase more as a result. I think there is an element of that in play here as well.
http://jeffnolan.com/wp/2008/09/29/why-do-consu...

Re: Bush and Cheney must resign (Scripting News)

jeff nolan — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 20:20:51 -0000

Can we make it a package deal and demand that Sen Dodd and Rep Frank resign as well? How about going back and getting retroactive resignations from Pres Carter and Clinton, HUD Secretary Cuomo, Fed Chief Greenspan, Comptroller Ludwig, and Rep Rahm Emanuel. While we are at it let's go after Franklin Raines, Jamie Gorelick, and Jim Johnson too. In addition to Sen Dodd, at the top of the list for Fannie/Freddie lobbyist money, Senators Kerry, Clinton, Obama, and Rep Kanjorski round out the top 5 list of money from Fannie and Freddie.

Re: Two steps forward, one step back

jeff nolan — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 21:17:15 -0000

I feel your pain Tom. Media companies are a strange species indeed. I

Re: Tenessee man arrested for "unlawful photography" after photographing cop on public highway

Jeff Nolan — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 21:01:30 -0000

Did the police officer have a video camera in his cruiser? If so this fact absolutely negates any assertion of privilege by the officer, as having his picture taken would now be considered a normal part of his job.

Re: Why Saul Hansell is wrong on AP

mathewi — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 08:03:05 -0000

Excellent point, Jeff.

Re: Why Saul Hansell is wrong on AP

ianbetteridge — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 03:06:50 -0000

Dialogue is not bargaining. Bargaining would turning round to the AP and saying "ok, in return for this, you get that". DIalogue is turning round to them and saying "We firmly believe under legal advice that our usage meets the criteria for fair use. Now, why don't we talk about ways that our fair use can benefit your business?"

Re: Why Saul Hansell is wrong on AP

jeff nolan — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 23:58:32 -0000

Anyone suggesting that the AP can be bargained with misses the point that to undercut Fair Use by creating a side deal with AP sets a precedent that effectively undermines speech on the web. Furthermore, AP's idea that there is an organization that can determine such use restrictions on behalf of all blogs is simply an outrageous suggestion.

Re: KnowNow winds down — RSS for enterprise not as easy as it looks?

jeff nolan — Tue, 20 May 2008 13:14:04 -0000

Scott makes a really good point. I am clearly biased because I work for NewsGator but having a long track record of publicly railing against traditional enterprise software and the disconnect between IT and business users, I am not hesitant about reinforcing Scott's point. This is also why we have taken a split approach of selling a big-bang enterprise server approach and offering an incremental add-on approach to something that already exists, Sharepoint. It's working for us.

Re: Triangulating For Insight

fredwilson — Wed, 14 May 2008 02:06:02 -0000

Jeff send me an email and we'll set something up

fred

Re: Triangulating For Insight

jeff nolan — Tue, 13 May 2008 14:56:45 -0000

yeah that's a good point but the cost of building a community, audience, customer base, etc. is still dominated by the costs not related to technology. Are there any Ning communities that you would point out as exceptional in their size and trajectory?

I was going to quibble with you about calling my post a rant but being included in the same company as Winer and O'Reilly certainly left me with little to complain about. :)

BTW, I will be in NYC on June 16/17, would look forward to an opportunity to finally meet up.

Re: Triangulating For Insight

fredwilson — Tue, 13 May 2008 06:01:02 -0000

Jerry colonna once said, when its doctorsthatscubadive.com, you know we are
in trouble

But I am not sure that's true anymore

Because there are some doctors that scuba dive and there are platforms like
ning that allow an entrepreneur to serve them without much capital
investment

fred

Re: Triangulating For Insight

jeff nolan — Mon, 12 May 2008 19:41:12 -0000

There's a story about a sanguine VC at the tail end of the 1990's who said "now it's not just socks.com, it's kneehighsocks.com... at some point you have to ask the question 'who gives a shit?' ". I was making an observation about Silicon Valley sentiment at the moment, that it was negative is a consequence of the prevailing attitude at the moment. I wish I could remember who made that great socks quote, classic.

Re: Should You Hire Workaholics For Your Startup?

Jeff Nolan — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 00:32:02 -0000

@Ben the best employees are motivated by a combination of working on something intellectually stimulating, working with smart people, and making money... in that order, based on my experience.

The rewards angle is interesting to consider, but I believe that the best employee satisfaction strategy is to constantly remove barriers that get in people's way. Google is really good about this with their engineers, they create an environment that is as friction free as possible for people to exercise their creativity, while at the same time working in concert to execute on google's mission.

Re: Should You Hire Workaholics For Your Startup?

Jeff Nolan — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 23:18:50 -0000

Ben,
I wrote a post that keyed off something that Calacanis wrote, but wasn't purely reactionary either. Managing any group of people to optimal performance is not something that can be boiled down to a single sentence, something I have learned the hard way over the years. Similarly, I have learned that hiring people is the easier part of the equation, it's keeping the good ones that is hard.

Re: Snag’d A new Job!

Jeff Nolan — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 11:40:32 -0000

Lou,
This is great news, congratulations! Also, I think this is a really good fit for you so best wishes going forward.

Re: Some More Thoughts On Pro Bloggers

fredwilson — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 18:16:04 -0000

Good point jeff and I agree on the latter point 100pcnt

I do give away all the blog revenue to charity

Fred

Re: Some More Thoughts On Pro Bloggers

Jeff Nolan — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 12:55:44 -0000

"So I'll just call the bloggers who are making money doing this full time 'professionals' and people like me 'amateurs'."

That distinction may be hard to defend considering you are running banner ads, FM and Google, in your sidebar and use your blog to promote and enhance the value of your investments, which is just another way of saying you have a degree of economic incentive not directly dependent on advertising alone.

Re: Too Late for NewsGator

jnolan — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 01:54:30 -0000

Eric,
Google Reader doesn't work for a significant percentage of the enterprise market, our core market, because you can't subscribe to a feed behind a firewall with any web-based reader. We have a pretty defensible position with our Mac and PC apps, and the mobile applications for Windows Mobile, Blackberry, and iPhone (all of which sync subscription and attention data).

We already have a significant enterprise server software business around our NGES product and the Social Sites product, an add-on to Sharepoint that provide a "facebook for the enterprise" experience, in fact it's no secret that the bulk of our revenue is generated from enterprise software. This move is really about supporting the enterprise business in terms of lead gen and feature buildout.

My point here is that you focused heavily on Google Reader, and that simply isn't something we spend a lot of time worrying about. Sure we have an online reader, one of the first, but our focus has been and will remain on enterprise server software, rich client interactions, and our media syndication (widgets) business.

BTW, we already have a Facebook application called NewsFriends, as well as an Open Social app called Didja Hear that enables sharing of images, video, and audio.

Thanks for taking the time to post.

Re: A Can of Worms

jeff nolan — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 15:20:45 -0000

Marius,
Thanks for your last comment, I apologize if my response to you was heated.

Re: A Can of Worms

jeff nolan — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 21:48:54 -0000

Jake,
I appreciate that you are in a spot between your own marketing organization and a group of vocal bloggers. I do want to make one clarification that is important here: at SAP I covered air fare and hotel accommodations.

I can't speak for Vinnie, but if he was asking for anything other than his travel expenses to be covered I would be surprised. At SAP we never paid anyone a fee over and above the expenses I highlighted above, an arrangement that has to my knowledge continued without modification after I left.

In fact, for the recent TechEd event that I attended, SAP paid for my air fare and my stay at the Mandalay Bay, but I paid for my in room wifi and taxi cabs.

The reason why I paid for blogger expenses is that these bloggers are not professional bloggers, other than Dennis by the mere fact that he is a journalist by profession. I just don't think it's fair to tell these bloggers to give up their day jobs for the time they were at my event, and by the way, pay your own expenses to boot. Dan Farber from Cnet paid his own expenses because they have a policy about this, but again, Dan is a journalist by profession.

The best disinfectant for any perceived bias is sunshine, which is why I never attempted to hide the fact that I was paying for their expenses. Would you agree to disclose what journalists Oracle covered any expenses for? How about every analyst who's services you subscribe to? Maybe put a disclaimer on every press release featuring a Gartner or AMR quote that Oracle is a client...

Marius, you are way off base in suggesting that I paid for bloggers the way that Walmart did. Before you make such a claim you had better be prepared to back it up with any blogger that will assert that in exchange for their travel expenses being covered that they agreed to promote anything about SAP. In fact I can point out more than a handful of posts generated by the bloggers at an SAP event that were critical of something the company was doing. Lastly, when don't put your full name and a link to your comment I think you are the one abusing the tools and talking out of your ass.