Ray Ozzie’s day in the Mesh

April 22, 2008 By

Later today Microsoft will bring out the Mesh. They are being pretty cagey about the details (I learn more at an 8 a.m. meeting, and from what it sounds like they will embargo everything until around 9 p.m. Pacific Time tonight.

So, what is it? Well, there certainly is lots of speculation on blogs. I’ll stay out of that business until I get a look for myself.

One thing I’ve heard is that this is just the tip of the iceberg of what’s coming from Ray Ozzie’s team. Which is why Rocky and me are headed up to Seattle on June 10-12 (to get a closer look at Microsoft’s Internet strategies, and meet up with a bunch of startups).

Filed Under: technology industry Tagged With: , , ,

The coolest job in the world?

April 21, 2008 By

This dude has the coolest job in the world. He’s the audio engineer at Austin City Limits and has been for decades.

Anyone have a cooler job? It’s my goal to meet all the people in the world with cool jobs. I figure that’ll keep me busy for at least a few months. :-)

One way you know that they have a cool job? They don’t leave.

Filed Under: technology industry

Twitter: grabbing defeat from the jaws of success

April 21, 2008 By

Amazing, Twitter has been half down all weekend long. Dave Winer and others have been writing about it. The problems have been covered on TechMeme and other places where one looks for interesting tech news.

But, don’t miss what’s really going on: Twitter is handing FriendFeed a gift. A major one at that.

FriendFeed has seen HUGE growth over the past month (in the month or so that I’ve been on that service more than 7,000 people have friended my account). That’s faster growth than I’ve seen on Twitter.

Why is FriendFeed seeing this growth? Well, for one, it hasn’t gone down since I’ve joined it. It was built from the start to scale, which after I met the team I understood why: two of the founders of FriendFeed started Gmail and Google Maps, so I’m sure they’ve learned a few tricks about making sure services don’t go down from Google.

I’m also noticing another thing: many of my friends are answering Twitter messages in FriendFeed. That demonstrates to me that their behavior has changed in the past month. If Twitter keeps going down and/or having reliability problems it won’t be long before we change ALL of our behavior and just participate on FriendFeed without worrying about Twitter at all.

Of course, today I gave a talk to Stanford’s Sloan program (bunch of MBA students). Only a handful had heard of Twitter. That’s Twitter’s future growth. What if they hear Twitter sucks and that FriendFeed is where they should participate?

Hmmm.

Filed Under: technology industry

Hope

April 19, 2008 By

I didn’t know how I would be affected by a trip to Israel. I thought that maybe it might be some famous temple, some cultural experience, or maybe meeting one of Israel’s leaders or technologists that would have touched me.

I wasn’t prepared for what did: a pair of piercing black eyes that belong to “Michael,” a boy a little younger than my own son, Patrick, who is 14. I was asked not to share names or photos by the people who introduced us. See, Michael’s eyes told me they had witnessed things that young eyes shouldn’t witness.

He was one of a group of students from Darfur who were studying at the Rogozin School in Tel Aviv. Here’s an article (PDF, sorry) that talks about the school and its Darfur refugees. A remarkable school where kids from 29 different countries study together.

Michael told me about his studies, introduced me to his classmate sitting next to him. I asked him if he knew how to use a computer. I knew my few moments with Michael were ticking away, our tour guides had other things for us to see and I wanted to be able to hear more about his dreams. His future. He answered that he did, and knew how to use email and the Web.

This young boy’s eyes showed me deep wisdom that will serve him well later in life. They gave me hope for the future. I hope I live long enough to see Michael become a leader of a new Israel: one where Palestinians and Israelis and Arabs live together in peace. He’s seen that future already. In the classroom.

Don’t think technology is important? What will your answer to Michael be when he emails you and asks you to join the peace movement?

Will you leave those penetrating wise eyes wanting?

Not me, I gave him my email address. I hope he writes and tells me about the future. His future. Why?

It gives me hope.

Filed Under: Intel, technology industry

On my way home from Israel

April 17, 2008 By

I have a TON I will say about my Israel trip, but in the meantime I just wanted to shout out my fellow travelers who’ve already been doing awesome blogging and stuff about our trip. There are going to be spinouts for weeks from this trip. Heck, just look at the list of tools that alpha geeks use (which was produced on this trip).

I’m too exhausted to do any blogging. Might explain why I’ve been doing so much Twittering. It takes far less effort to write 140 characters at a time than to put together a cogent post.

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Israel: a country too far from Mike Arrington’s house

April 15, 2008 By

This headline is only a little in jest. But as I’ve gotten around to various tech companies here in Israel I’ve started noticing a trend: that the further away a tech area is from Silicon Valley the less respect that area will get. The headline is also a bit unfair to TechCrunch/Mike because he’s actually been to Israel and has a couple of writers covering the tech scene here, but if you’re a blogger and let the facts get in the way of a good headline you’ll never go anywhere.

I’ve noticed this when I visited MySpace: they were so excited when I visited because they say that tech bloggers never visit. I was thinking back to my own experiences. Yes, that’s true. Facebook employees regularly meet up with us at parties and dinners and conferences. We run into MySpace employees far less often. These personal connections turn into stories on blogs.

Same when I visited San Antonio. These were companies I never hear about in conversations in the valley. We don’t have personal connections to their employees. Ask yourself, have you ever heard of PerfTech? Kulabyte? Rackspace? Newtech?

Anyway, I’ve been all over to the world. Shanghai. Tokyo. Frankfurt. London. New York. Cork. Dublin. Hamburg. Geneva.

I’ve never seen the entrepreneurial spirit outside of Silicon Valley like I’ve seen here in Tel Aviv. The companies here are doing technology that’s deep, varied, and highly profitable.

Anyway, I’ll write more about this topic over the weekend, because right now we’re about to leave to see Jeruselem and meet with some Venture Capitalists to further understand what’s going on here in Israel.

In the meantime, go to TechCrunch and check out Fring’s new iPhone app. (Fring is headquartered here in Israel, and shows another trend that I’ve noticed here that Israel is WAY ahead of the United States in use of Mobile apps — another thing that’s surprising is how many iPhones you see here, even though there isn’t a single Apple store).

One other thing, Twitter has been where we’ve been having interesting conversations. It was amazing. The other day we were in a van between Haifa and Tel Aviv. Talking with Arrington back in California. Christineleu in China. GiaGia in London. All at the same time.

The advent of Twitter is one thing that’s bringing far away lands into the PR machinery that exists only in Silicon Valley.

I wish I had a month to spend here, so many startups want to get my attention, but I just can’t see them all. But there still is nothing better than meeting face-to-face over a beer to find out interesting stories about people, companies, countries.

For instance, last night several people begged me to write about the proposed Israel Censorship Law. Global Voices Online has already done that, but if it weren’t for being here I wouldn’t have known about the issues that they really care about.

Anyway, off to Jeruselem, stay in touch with us on my Twitter account.

Do you agree or disagree that people, companies, countries can get the respect and/or tech industry PR they deserve if they are far away from Silicon Valley?

Filed Under: technology industry Tagged With: ,
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