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Evangelism: "RSS 2.0 has a neat feature that allows an item to link to comments about that item. Content tools and aggregators can support this feature, allowing people to comment directly from the aggregator."  Fredrik Lundh's Python RSS reader supports the comments feature described above. Excellent. NY Times: "The Senate voted today to bar deployment of a Pentagon project to search for terrorists by scanning information in Internet mail and in the commercial databases of health, financial and travel companies here and abroad."  Our man in Davos, Joi Ito, is nervous. Here's a word of advice. If you aren't nervous you won't be any good. Butterflies are a good sign Ito-san.  News.Com: "The market for XML-based content-lifecycle products -- software and services that allow content to be easily reused in a number of formats -- will grow tenfold to $11.6 billion in annual revenue by 2008, according to a report released Thursday." JD Lasica: "Instead of the hunt and peck of Web surfing, you can download or buy a small program that turns your computer into a voracious media hub, letting you snag headlines and news updates as if you were commanding the anchor desk at CNN." JD does something extremely cool, on his weblog he provides full transcripts of the interviews he did for the piece. Much more interesting. Very nice. Someday all reporters will do this. Hey maybe they'll skip writing the polished piece, esp when the article isn't appearing in print. Let's have a weblog that covers identity theft from the point of view of an honest person wanting to be as safe as possible. I read an article somewhere that common criminals are turning from violent mugging to identity theft. Less messy, less work, less risk, higher yields. We also need a weblog about how to get good health care in the US. The weblog should be a collaboration between users and medical professionals. I got excellent responses to yesterday's rant. I hope we can get some of this energy to flow through the public Web.  Yesterday, talking with Bill Hambrecht, I asked how they do finance in the movie business, where they routinely raise tens, even hundreds of millions of dollars for highly speculative projects. I remarked that software can't raise that kind of money these days, really never has, yet the western economy is built on software more and more (that's why identity theft is such a pervasive problem). He said that the distribution system is where the money comes from. The movie theaters! Why? Because they need a flow of new products, or their industry dies. So what's the analogy in software? The big software companies. Microsoft. Adobe. Macromedia. Oracle. IBM. Apple. SAP. BEA. Network Associates. Of course. That's the system we all figured we'd be part of in the early 80s. That's the system we started to build. We lost our way somewhere. We've been getting the money from civil employee pension funds and university endowments, which have little stake in the success of our industry, and are highly risk averse. That's why the venture capital industry seems so crazy when technologists look at it. They're backed in a contradictory way. Everything was fine as long as they were delivering obscene returns like clockwork. Hit a glitch, the whole thing falls apart. More to think about. I'll blog it all.  After my meeting with Bill Hambrecht I went to see my old friend Dave Jacobs, who worked at Macromedia and Marimba. The conversation turned to Marimba, where I was friends with the founders and their backers as the company was rolling out. They have $20 million in cash. After the meeting with Hambrecht, I knew what to do. Kim is still their best sales person. Of course. So use the money to create products for Kim to sell. Make deals with every geek in the Valley. Spread the money around. Buy up rights. When you get a winner, put Chairman Kim on the road. Make money. Do it again. A new product every quarter. Simple. Mary Jo: "Microsoft may find itself on the wrong side of the sneaker-wearing partner in Boies, Schiller & Flexner."  Condoleezza Rice: "Countries that decide to disarm lead inspectors to weapons and production sites, answer questions before they are asked, state publicly and often the intention to disarm and urge their citizens to cooperate." I find it striking that the meeting of Middle East foreign ministers, to avoid war in Iraq, is being held in Turkey, not in Davos. What a difference a few years makes. When I was there in 2000 you'd stumble across hallway meetings between high-level US, Israeli and Palestinian reps, and the show closed with beautiful ceremony with Yassir Arafat and Shimon Peres. "Peace is hard work," Peres said. Lance's report, not from Davos 2003. NY Times: "Until the Golden Gate Bridge and Bay Bridge eclipsed ferry traffic in the 30's, the building was the crossroads of San Francisco." Seth Dillingham: "If I was a spammer, I'd think this was a gift!" |
 
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