Forever is a long time
May 15, 2011
On the Internet, the past isn’t that old.
#140 Independence
July 2, 2010
The declaration of independence as tweets.
Dotcom crash was 10 years ago
March 6, 2010
A quick take on my recollection of the dotcom era and crash, 10 years ago.
The Cloud Wars
July 9, 2009
The cloud wars will pick two camps against each others: on one side, advocates of applications running on the desktop; on the other advocates of applications running in a browser.
Coins to QQ at Web 2.0
September 19, 2008
From barter to grain to metal and paper, and eventually to electronic money, currency has a long history. In this talk, presented at the Web 2.0 Expo conference, I give a quick summary of that history and present how more recent trends could highlight some hypothetical futures for currency.
Is Techmeme myopic?
June 2, 2008
I’m a big fan of TechMeme, a web aggregation service that provides, at a glance, a few of what’s being discussed in the technology-focused part of the blogosphere. It has allowed me to unsubscribe from a large number of RSS feeds that were providing me with redundant information and I’ve long hoped for a version of TechMeme that would provide me […]
Standards as social contracts
June 7, 2006
Looking at the efforts Dave Winer is undertaking in terms of getting OPML to become yet another standard, I’ve been thinking about how formats get adopted. The key insight I came up with is that standards are actually a form of social contract and increasingly, data formats is following the same path. Looking at the history In order […]
Microsoft Loves RSS
June 23, 2005
The blogoshpere is buzzing about Microsoft’s announced support for RSS. Here’s a quick history of how they got there, and the good and bad on what they are adding to the standard. How we got there? Microsoft is not really a new player in the syndication space. With the release of Internet Explorer 4.0, in 1997, the Redmond […]
Reality sets in
February 24, 2003
Finally, investors are starting to realize that not everything is dotcom land is rotten and are starting to compare dotcom businesses to more traditional ones. If you consider the old axiom that only one in five business start-ups succeed, you may come to realize that the 90s were not necessarily as bad as some have […]
Double Trouble for Deja.com
October 22, 2000
“For sale, Internet historical documents and legal trouble. Call Deja.com for details.” This is not exactly the way Deja.com presented themselves but ultimately, this may be what transpires from their recent attempt to put the Usenet archives on sale. Usenet History For those of you who have never heard of Usenet, here’s a quick definition from the […]
