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1. Posted by aweissman

   Jul 5th, 2008

   

   “So back to the original question I posed at the beginning of this post. Can you build a business on browser extensions? Although a few companies have gotten into the market via extensions and gotten sold for good money, I think the answer is largely no. A browser extension is a smart way to enter the market, particularly if you want to reach power users early on, but you need to figure out how to build a broader service offering with your technology in order to reach a mainstream audience if you really want to build something big and sustainable.”

   Fred Wilson

2. Posted by aweissman

   Jul 2nd, 2008

   No Idea How to Call

   “There’s a phone next to my desk. I don’t know the extension. It usually says “Incoming Call :002”. I have no idea what that means.

   If you call, I won’t hear it, because I wear headphones all day. I won’t see the blinking light, because the phone’s not important enough to be placed within my field of vision. I don’t know if I have voicemail service, but if I do, I have no idea what you’ll hear as the outgoing message, and I don’t know how to retrieve messages.

   I have no idea how to call the office from outside. I don’t know the phone number. I’ve worked here for 2 years and have never needed it.”

   — Marco

3. Posted by aweissman

   Jul 2nd, 2008

   tinydb.org

   Wow I just lost 45 minutes thinking about and playing around with Kortina’s latest joint, Quickerly.com:

   The app is called quickerly.com and it’s just a quick way to send someone a song that you want them to listen to. I use it to tweet about songs that I’m enjoying. What’s cool about the app is not really the app itself, but the way it uses tinydb. The entire app is written in javascript. It’s served off a plain html page and uses a little swf to play mp3s. Quickerly uses the seeqpod API to search for tracks and yahoo pipes as a proxy. When you click the share button, javascript writes song data and handling instructions to tinydb. Tinydb holds data about the song location, artist and track names, and instructions on where to redirect and what javascript method to call after redirecting.

   Since tinydb uses json and circumvents crossdomain, quickerly can both read and write to the datastore without having to proxy or open new windows. I’ve already found quickerly pretty useful, but by no means is it a great app. I just hope people can take a look at the source code and realize the kinds of cool stuff you can do with tinydb, without having to worry about deploying any server side code. You can literally host a tinydb app on tumblr or blogger. I hope to see way cooler things built on tinydb in the future.

4. Posted by aweissman

   Jul 2nd, 2008

   Structure

   VC Mike:

   The user generated content (UGC) revolution is in full swing. And, I am a big believer.

   As the wave builds, though, a few basic problems are being exposed.

   How do you make UGC searchable and discoverable?

   How do you make the UGC cacophony consumable and intelligible?

   And how do you make it monetizable?

   The answer to all 3 lies, I believe, in structure. And, more and more I am seeing smart folks aiming to bring structure to UGC ab initio. I think they are spot on.

   Good questions, potential answers from betaworks:

   Summize

   Bit.ly

   Tumblr

   Outside.in

   Lotame

   Lookery

   Switchabit

   Snaptalent

   Songkick

   etc.

5. Posted by aweissman

   Jul 2nd, 2008

   

   What is Twitter?

6. Posted by aweissman

   Jul 1st, 2008

   Pricing

   Interesting way of selling limited runs of stuff, from 200 Nipples:

   The Deal

   Our shirts are screen printed onto the finest pre-shrunk 30 single cotton blanks available. They’re super soft, won’t fall apart in the wash (I’m looking at you, Cafe Press), and they have a “tagless tag” for comfort. Each shirt is custom-printed on the size and cut specified by the buyer. We’ll only print 100 of any design; the price of the shirt equals the number in the series. So, #1 is $1, #100 is $100, and everything in between. Once we’ve printed the full run of a design, the prepped screen is destroyed; it will never be reproduced.

   

7. Posted by aweissman

   Jul 1st, 2008

   

   “So you can see that there are three categories of twitterers: those who use it for its original purpose, by following and being followed by a small group of friends; those who use it for marketing, by broadcasting to many but following none; and those who recognize the asymmetry, and are followed by many, but follow fewer.”

   Tim O’Reilly

   (pic Julian Cash)

8. Posted by aweissman

   Jun 30th, 2008

   What is whoisi?

   Christopher Blizzard, in how a simple twist of functionality can lead to whole new types of applications:

   “This flips the usual model of the social networking site on its head. It’s up to followers to keep track of their friends and the accounts they happen to have. I tend to say that most social networking sites these days are organized around accounts instead of people, and tend to have all of the pain that requiring accounts creates - you have to convince your friends to participate and set up accounts, remember another password and then they have to come to the site often. It’s a system that creates winners and losers because there’s only so much attention available in the world. Whoisi tries to avoid that whole problem by using a different model. In this sense, whoisi is very different. And is really an experiment. I have no idea if people will like this model or not or how they will react to it.”

9. Posted by aweissman

   Jun 28th, 2008

   

   Mike Hudack, blip.tv

10. Posted by aweissman

    Jun 28th, 2008

    

    Charlie O’Donnell