Month: March 2006

Several years ago I had an opportunity to meet Marc Fleury at a VLAB event where he talked about the JBoss vision and his own story about his role in helping to build the company into what it is today. He was one of the most interesting, colorful, and controversial people I have had the […]

Read More “BW Article on JBoss”

This is an exceptionally long post. This is what happens when I sit on a topic for a really long time. The views in this post were influenced by having read two other blog postings related to this topic in the past month or so: Deal or No Deal (David Hornik) WTF (Russell Beattie) And, […]

Read More “Start Charging Users for Services – Please”

I was reading this article on MobHappy about how “Mobiles Will Kill iPods and Video Cameras” earlier today. I agree with some (but not all) of the issues raised in this article. As the owner of a Sony Ericsson W800 phone, I can say that the device has reduced the amount of music I consume […]

Read More “Music Phones are to iPods as Blackberries are to Laptops”

I have started to carve longer posts into short snippets and long body portions to make it easier to wade through some of these longer postings. I started playing with the Riya public beta last night and I am left feeling like I am missing something. I know that they are early on and are trying to build up the database of recognized faces and such, but my early thoughts are that the service asks a lot from me as a user and doesn’t necessarily give me a whole lot in return at the moment. I also worry about the privacy issues. That being said, I can see the potential for more value being created down the road.

**Update**
I got a very nice email from someone at Riya clarifying a bunch of the questions that I raised — I am glad they found this post and were kind enough to respond. I think they have an interesting product and I poked it pretty hard because I think it has the potential to be really useful once it is integrated with more of my existing tools. It’s clear that they are working on a lot of the things that I want. The challenges of being an early adopter *sigh*.

I will keep an eye on Riya as it develops. It sounds like they are pointed in the right direction.

If you want to read more, just click on the continue reading more section. I wrote this late at night, so sorry if it rambles.

Read More “Early Thoughts on Riya Public Beta (Updated)”

I really like the e-commerce market — I think it’s the easiest business model to understand. I heard about uSwitch getting acquired and was inspired to see how much this space has created in terms of exit value. Here is a quick summary of what I could pull together in 5-10 minutes of work: Shopping.com […]

Read More “Comparison Shopping — Now There’s a Market”

I am a big fan of PC-based VoIP products like Skype, Google Talk, etc. I find them really useful. However, I have found relatively modest adoption among my friends because you really need to have a decent USB headset to make the experience worthwhile. Why haven’t some of these providers (Plantronics, Logitech, etc) gotten together […]

Read More “Spurring PC VoIP Adoption – Are Headsets the Answer?”

After 18 months of trusty service, I finally retired my Blackberry 7100t. I recently acquired a new Blackberry 8700 for work, so I saw no reason to carry two Blackberries (even I have my limits). I decided to finally break down and get a phone that was more focused on entertainment. I was also curious to find out the current state of the art for entertainment phones, given that I have not owned a more entertainment-focused phone for quite some time. My overall verdict is that this phone is not nearly as great as advertised for edge case users such as myself, but that it is a really strong offering in the mobile entertainment space. There is still plenty of room for innovation, improvement, and enhancement.

Read More “Sony Ericsson W800 – Overrated, but Still Good”

Somehow I was fortunate enough to have my thoughts on Web 2.0 published alongside the thoughts of people who are a lot more impressive than I am. The article, called “Web 2.0: The Internet subset formerly known as the Web” is available onlinehere. Lots of interesting commentary from some web 2.0 heavyweights.

I saw this brief blurb on Om’s blog talking about the upcoming launch of MySpace’s IM application. My guess is that this thing will be a hit and it is just another example of how MySpace is really moving away from being a simple hub to being a more complete “lifestyle” application for the demographic […]

Read More “MySpace Messenger”