Friday, December 02, 2005

Ben Barren: "That Dave Winer doesn't have any equity that I'm aware of, in Boku, or Podshow, for his contribution is pretty insane." Right-o.  

Here's a piece I wrote when it became clear that not only was Adam going to (try to) take all the credit, but he was going to take all the money too. Fact is, it's almost a year later, and he's never settled the account. I put a lot of creativity, time and money into building his business, and his (and Kleiner's) position seems to be Thanks for nothing. I really appreciate that Ben pointed this out, he was the first to notice (other than me, of course).  

And the utterly inexplicable thing is, that Kleiner has a deserved reputation for being generous with entrepreneurs. That's one of their keys to success. I had a long phone talk with Randy Komisar, a Kleiner partner, before they put the money into Podshow. I was very clear that the work that Adam and I did was a partnership, and our deal was a 50-50 split. They never bought me out of that deal and I never heard from any of their lawyers asking what I wanted for it. At some point it was going to come out, and I guess this is that point. It doesn't make any sense to me that Kleiner would have invested without this being cleaned up, but there you have it, it happened. Now what? 

In June I wrote People With Erasers about Wikipedia. Now after reading about the Seigenthaler affair, and revelations about Adam Curry's rewriting of the podcasting history -- the bigger problem is that Wikipedia is so often considered authoritative. That must stop now, surely. Every fact in there must be considered partisan, written by someone with a confict of interest. Further, we need to determine what authority means in the age of Internet scholarship. And we need to take a step back and ask if we really want the participants in history to write and rewrite the history. Isn't there a place in this century for historians, non-participants who observe and report on the events? 

Adam Green did a podcast of the story of podcasting by splicing together podcasts from Adam Curry, Dave Slusher and myself. Very interesting way to tell a story. 

Russell Beattie: "RSS just became the world wide defacto instant communication system overnight." 

Ernie the Attorney talks about visiting his friend in the Mississippi Gulf Coast who says he can't imagine the devastation. He says "I have learned how inadequate my imagination is." I want to visit New Orleans with my camera and see what's going on. But I've hesitated to discuss that here, because I'm not sure if it's insensitive or if an outsider's presence would be welcome. I can't imagine what New Orleans must be like now, but I do remember what it was like before.  

http://www.misternicehands.com/ (Did you click?)