Kicking back the Real Estate Commission

The Wall Street Journal reports on a realtor who returns a part of the exorbitant commissions which he is entitled to. A sign of what is to come

Google Music Trends

This is a cool resource for music discovery...

Radar Networks - Primer on today's Semantic Web

These guys are baking real-world semantic web apps with RDF/OWL. It will be interesting to see their products launch in the near future. These types of technologies will unleash the 'Intelligent Web' where we can see applications and services which are far more usable, useful and which people are willing to pay for.

What's missing in Web 2.0?

From Early Stage VC Peter Rip "I am not alone in observing where the world is going. The hard problems in the vision of a true web-as-platform involve all the usual hard computer science issues. How can we normalize information from disparate sources to make it interoperable? How do we get to a lingua franca without waiting for moribund standards (think CORBA and SOA)? How can we then manage the transition of legacy information and services into this world of interoperability?". THIS IS RIGHT ON!

Scoble's rant is getting broad coverage

The rant last week by Scoble on the lack of success by Microsoft on the Search, Internet and Advertising space and responding to Ballmer's speech at Stanford biz school where he declared 'We're in this to win', is getting a fair amount of buzz. It seems like a good thing, because someone needs to point out he obvious. Microsoft cannot use the same tactics that they did against Netscape (I'm sure they know this) and they will need to have a very aggressive strategy to go up against the momentum, market cap and minds at GOOG.

Biden senate address on Iraq policy failure

Senator Biden should be running for president. His passion, intelligence and conviction exceed the current crew. He also has the best plan for solving the Iraq quagmire.

Google Drive

In case you aren't sure if Google wants to replace the traditional desktop... Google Drive is your hosted desktop.

Twitter Vision

This seems cool, but I'm not sure why....? I still don't get the Twitter attraction.

Roughtype - Thoughts on Saas and SAP

Software as a Service is penetrating the enterprise and with the focus of Google I would imagine a lot of enterprise application and service providers are quite nervous.

Bill Richardson - Legalize Marijuana Use

Bill Richardson could prove to be the most honest and refreshing presidential candidate to come along. This country needs to move beyond the legalization of marijuana and stop wasting money on eradication, incarceration and policing for this innocous plant.

Ms. Dewey - Very, ummmm... Interesting

Microsoft has created this stealth search interface, which is very cool in that if they combined it with some true intelligence (inference engine) that could actually advise you about finding what you're looking for instead of presenting a list of results, they would have transformed search.

I would imagine that Microsoft sees this as one potential approach toward a more sophisticated search interface. I would imagine that Google has a lot of things like this in house.

What would make Ms. Dewey really cool is if you could select your own persona and it would evolve based on the types of searches you performed.

Clayton Christenson - Finding the Right Job for your Product

Insightful article on ways to rethink market segmentation.

Valerie Plame testifies before congress

It's amazing to me that this is not taken a lot more seriously by the public and by congress. I would think that it borders on treason, to out a CIA operative in war-time. The fact that it was done for political reasons should only make it more contemptible and I would think that Republicans/Conservaties would see much more offense than Progressives. It does speak to how incredibly unethical and arrogant the Bush administration has been.

Scoble on Microsoft "In it to win?" w/ comments

This post by Scoble on the future of Microsoft is right on. They are at a cross-roads, despite record profits and sales. How they could have so under-delivered on Vista and have no clear advantages in the webspace (search, hosting, development) is a bad sign. The comments posted regarding Scoble's musings are worth reading as well.

Product of the Year has a problem

What a great problem to have. Nintendo is unable to meet the demand for it's Wi product line. I love the fact that Nintendo did an end-around on the whole game system market. The Wi is going to create a whole new market market for video games and re-invigorate Nintendo.

Soros Partner see's coming Real Estate crash

50% declines in bubble areas and a big impact on world markets says guru Jim Rogers. Of course without a crystal ball he is in conflict with a lot of prominent economist. Bob Brinker, who I have a lot of respect for does not see an emerging liquidity crisis, so I'm not selling my house or stock.

Ken Burns New Series - The War

David Viancoly, of Fresh Air interviews Ken Burns on his new upcoming series on WWII 'The War'. He says it's the best documentary Burns has created, which is an amazing statement considering he's referring to the producer/director of the Civil War series. It's going to be a long wait until September, when the new series will air.

An amazing example of federal over-reaching is that the FCC is going to pressure Burns to censor four obscenities spoken by veterans describing their service over fifteen hours of broadcasting. At the same time programs like '24' on Fox can broadcast excessive amounts of violence and torture during prime-time and it's not a problem.

NPR takes on RIAA

Apparently NPR is going to be required under new RIAA rules to pay 20* existing royalty rates on music which they stream as a part of their programming. Since NPR has a public service mandate and plays ecletic music by musicians who probably love any sort of public exposure, this seems to be an unfair application of the new RIAA rules. As a huge NPR fan I hope they win this one.

Web 2.0 Awards

Pretty decent list of 'Web 2.0' sites...

Comments on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Top 200 Albums

These comments regarding the 'Rock and Roll Hall of Fame selections of Top 200 albums of all time' are fun to read.. Clearly the top 200 list is ridiculous with Kenny G and the Top Gun Soundtrack ahead of Fleetwood Mac 'Fleetwood Mac', not to mention many other strange ratings. The comments include a lot of suggestions for music to listen too, in case like me you need new sources.

Eisner's new venture - Vuguru

This seems like a very winning direction for Michael Eisner. The demand for original content intended for distribution on the web will be enormous and the ability to focus on the content development without the overhead of distribution is a great business. However, I don't see the idea of 90 second episodes as sustainable and more of a blip in the transition to content developed and delivered specifically for web. Is there a market for the ADD crowd of media consumers for serial programming? I imagine that the market will divide up between home web television and mobile device viewing. I suppose on your mobile device it might be stimulating to watch a short program, but 90 seconds?

Washburn WG587 7 string Electric Guitar

I just bought this $1000 guitar for $99 shipped. It has a very high rating and review on the guitar forums. Very exciting.

The New Yorker Upgrades Site - Finally!

My favorite thing to read is The New Yorker magazine and their website has been dismal until a few days ago. Finally a face lift worthy of the print edition. Also, they've thrown in some web specific features like animated versions of the cartoons and videos, RSS feeds and online specific features.

Bravo!

NY Times - Danny Hillis new venture

Danny Hillis always is up to something interesting, though not necessarily a highly marketable product. This might prove to be the exception. Metaweb Technologies, intends to provide a searchable repository of data with semantic tags which allow for intelligent search results, instead of a list of links. This is something that is definitely missing from search and will require some degree of 'intelligence' at the front-end to enable, both in terms of determining what a user is seeking and the best way to gather and present their result. I'm sure that developing something like this is part of research at Google, if not Yahoo and Microsoft.

One thing this points to is the precariousness of Google in its dependence on search for revenue. If Freebase, the name of the intended product from MT, were realized it would provide a totally disruptive new search which many people would migrate to overnight.

I'd be curious to know if Hillis plans to leverage any of the work done by Doug Lenat at Cycorp. He's spent the last twenty years organizing human knowledge in a highly structured way.

From the description in this article this seems to be a very ambitious undertaking and one worth following.

Jeff Hawkins Presentation - On Intelligence

'Prospects and Problems in Cortical Theory'. Hawkins intends to create a platform(software) to emulate how the neocortex works and ultimately package a development system to build products. He describes it as an inference engine currently focused on visual learning. The applications would range from problem solving for physics, meteorology, markets, geology and robotics. This is truly exciting stuff as we are beginning to see a re-emergence of AI theory.

Drink your own kool-aid?

NYTimes on Microsoft Tech Fest and Search

Microsofts investment in research has not yielded the kind of results which have allowed for differentiation in search at this point. Currently they are playing catch-up to Google and since it's core to Google's business they will be hard pressed to surpass them. This NYTimes article outlines some of the research which Microsoft is pursuing to try and make a difference. I would imagine that AI is going to prove critical to maintaining a strong position in years to come. Consumers will need more intelligent interfaces and user experiences to find the proverbial needle in the haystack. I might learn more when I have dinner tomorrow night with my friend Matt MacLaurin who is a research at MS.

Jet-Man - This is cool

It's a bird, it's a plane... it's, it's Jet Man!

Nextflix - Watch Now

Netflix new 'Watch Now' feature is in my opinion the future of television. Combine the wonderful online user experience that Netflix provides with on-demand downloads and you have what we've all been waiting for since the original interactive television trials were conducted in the early nineties. I can't figure out why Netflix founder and CEO Reed Hastings was quoted last year as saying that it would be many years before Netflix offered downloads. Maybe he was trying to mislead the competition or maybe he 'got it' sometime since that quote.

Frontline - News Wars

Frontline's series on the changes in news reporting, dissemination and consumption was some of the best television reporting I've seen in a while. The final installment focused on online news and the LA Times struggles to stay a player. The program emphasis on the problem of how news organization content quality is being compromised by focus on the bottom line and the stratification of the audience indicates a sea change in news creation and distribution. The next five years should be an incredible ride as the deck is shuffled.

No Shortcuts to the Top - Ed Viesturs

I just finished reading the wonderful 'No Shortcuts to the Top' by Ed Viesturs. This is his auto-biography covering his successful summitting of the worlds 14 8000 meter peaks without supplmental oxygen. I saw him interviewed on Charlie Rose a few weeks back and was excited about picking up the recently released book. Having done a fair amount of climbing in my past and considering taking up alpining, I was easily lured by the books focus. After reading the book I can say that it will be appreciated by anyone with an interest in adventure and exploration, as it is very well written and an exciting read.

NY Times on Social Networking and OpenID

It seems like a lot of this technology is truly in its infancy, particularly the OpenID aspect where providers will have more flexibility in their designs and users greater ease of use. OpenID has been a much needed technology for some time. and now it seems to be getting momentum.

Very Interesting New Online Service

Give or get unwanted usable items in your community.
Using Gigoit is free, easy, and good for the world.

AI, is it coming soon?

Jeff Hawkins, the founder of Palm wrote a book which I read two years ago entitled 'On Intelligence', http://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Jeff-Hawkins/dp/0805078533/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/105-1358683-8424466?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1172895213&sr=1-1 which outlines his theories on how the human brain works. He is now running a startup which is focused on creating software which can mimic human intelligence. This is probably one of the most ambitious undertakings in science and business right and one that Eric Schmidt at Google indicated that they are pursuing as well. It's exciting to think of how solutions from the research done at both companies will effect society and roll-out as products which we can use. I would imagine that the most immediate practical application will be in making online search a lot more powerful and useful. I'm imagining the computer working with me in my search to help me find the best results. Longer term I'm sure we'll see machine intelligence which can perform problem solving which will displace current human endeavors.

Read more at wired http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.03/hawkins.html

The Pundits will Bash and Praise Gore

interesting reading by Media Matters on Maureen Dowd's treatment of Al Gore now and while running for president in 2000.