Graeme Thickins on Tech

Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Category: Innovation (Page 67 of 77)

Return With Me to Those Halcyon Days of the Internet ‘Summit’

November 7, 2006 / / 0 Comments

Did you hear the Web 2.0 Conference kicking off today in SF just changed names to the “Web 2.0 Summit”? Web20summitlogo That’s to sufficently differentiate it from the “Web 2.0 Expo,” dontcha know — which debuts next spring (and will also be produced by O’Reilly Media and CMP).

Harkens me back to the days of the former “Internet Summits” of the late ’90s, produced by The Industry Standard and hosted by John Battelle — same cohost as this week’s conference. I was reminded of those heady events when I saw a guy quoted yesterday in the WSJ who was one of the many good people I met at those awesome Summit events that Battelle produced. That was Peter Cobb of eBags, which is one of the better e-commerce survivors from the dot-com era; he was part of the very interesting story on Google’s newspaper advertising test. Rock on, Peter!

Those dot-com era Summits were a $4000 ticket, not this week’s bargain(?) $3000 tab. [That must mean it’s not a bubble yet?… 🙂 ] But don’t try to buy a ticket to the Web 2.0 Summit — every VC and recepient of VC from here to China sucked those up quite a while ago. [Yes, just like the pre-bubble days.] Your best bet (only bet?) is to watch for some of the breathless blogging that will be emanating from The Palace Hotel for the next few days. Or else just hang out in the lobby. [My friend Steve Borsch secured a pass and will be one of those capturing some of the action on site. But just type “web2con” into any search box you can find, and you’ll have way more to read than you can handle.] Myself, I’m at a private Sony event in LA the next few days, and will only have time to take a glimpse of the online action occasionally during downtimes.

Meanwhile, Elsewhere in Conference-Land
An event that I wished I could have taken in last week was Startup Camp in Mountain View, sponsored by Sun. Looks like it drew 400 attendees, who are listed here.

I also heard from my former Conferenza editor in SF, the intrepid Gary Bolles, that another one of the MuniWireless events he helps produce, this one right here in Minneapolis in recent weeks, was a big success. He said they had some 300 attendees and three of our local mayors spoke, including tech-savvy R.T. Rybak of Minneapolis (a former Internet consultant, I kid you not).

Did I mention conferences are a booming business again? 🙂

Okay, so next week, since I was planning to stay in SoCal this coming weekend, anyway, I decided to catch a big “Travel 2.0” conference. The pitch: “Now in its 13th year, this event will cast a Hollywood-style spotlight on the world’s largest industry as ‘Travel 2.0 Confronts the Establishment’.” Yikes! They asked Minneapolis’ Rob Metcalf of Flyspy to speak, so I can’t miss that. Mr. Disrupto. I’ll be posting from there as much as I can, assuming they’ll have enough WiFi bandwidth to go around. It’s a jam-packed agenda, with lots of big hitters in the travel space, old and new, speaking. From the looks of the registration list, this one will top out at some 800 attendees and close to 50 press.

Ah, yes, Internet conferences — I love ’em! Watch for more, right here…

Tags: , , , , , ,

Brightcove Is No YouTube Wannabe – It’s Bigger

October 31, 2006 / / 5 Comments

My friend Jeremy Allaire busted out of the gates again today with a story that’s all over the web about his firm Brightcove, which is not just any old startup. Jeremyallaire It’s backed by Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp and America Online, among others. And it boasts a management team with senior execs from Allaire, Macromedia, ATG, Comcast, Lycos, News Corp., MediaVest, and Discovery Networks. The firm just announced the launch of its Brightcove Network, which is aimed at what it calls “video prosumers” — the ranks of which are dead certain to be growing. I know for sure that will include me, but it won’t be just us tech-savvy folks.

As background, you may recall I published an interview with Jeremy earlier this year, onsite from the PC Forum conference in San Diego. And I also chatted at dinner one night there with his PR people, who had recently secured a front-page feature on Jeremy in the Wall Street Journal. Then, this morning, my buddy Mark Druskoff shot me an email on all this Brightcove attention today (he’s the former editor of Minnesota Business magazine, now working in Texas). He also pointed out that Barry Diller will likely earn the distinction of being this year’s highest paid executive. Yes, and a good guy for Jeremy to have on his board.

Here’s the latest Brightcove news as the WSJ covered it today (subscribers only), and CNet did a piece as well. For other background, here’s a TechCrunch post just out by Marshall Kirkpatrick, and a great wrapup on what it all means from Forbes.com, entitled “AnotherTube.”

Call it the revenge of the media industry. This is about professional video, or at least semi-professional — something more polished than raw crap, anyway. Brightcove1 Let’s face it, consumer-generated video is hardly what everybody wants to spend most of their time watching on the Internet going forward! Hey, this broadband video thing is just getting going. And no firm, startup or otherwise, is better positioned than Brightcove to take advantage of what will be a very, very BIG market — all kinds of video, from professional on down to user-generated. Brightcove3 Think online video marketplace, with every angle covered…and everyone makes money. Unique concept, huh? Making money. Quick, somebody get the YouTube-Google folks on the line — they’ll want to look at this!

I think Abbey Klaassen of Ad Age gets it right today in her commentary, in which she doesn’t hold back the optimism of her employer on this news: Meet the Next Media Mogul: Jeremy Allaire.

I would not bet against her being right.

Qloud Kicks Social Music Into New Territory

October 15, 2006 / / 1 Comment

Frederick, MD-based Qloud (pronounced “cloud”) took the locks off its online social music site a few days ago to open a new chapter in “music discovery.” I met with Mike Lewis, one of the cofounders, a couple of weeks ago here in the Twin Cities. Mikelewis Mike grew up in Edina, MN, just about a mile from me, though we hadn’t met till he looked me up on his latest trip home. A veteran of online music, having worked at AOL and Ruckus after college at Dartmouth, he joined with former coworker Toby Mordock to found Qloud, and the pair received funding several months ago. [It’s from a notable source who must remain unnamed, or they’d have to kill me :-)…]

To use Qloud, you download a free plug-in for iTunes (Windows only right now). The site also works with the open-source Songbird player, which has Windows, Linux, and Mac versions [though I can’t find anything about that on the site right now]. “Our key points,” said Lewis, “are these: (1) we make your iTunes experience better by allowing you to organize it using tags, (2) we make it easy to search for new tracks, and (3) we make it easy to keep track of what your friends are listening to.”

Here’s a screen shot of the home page, and three others showing the main views, which are Music, Tags, and People. Qloudhome

Qloudmusic_1

Qloudtags_1

Qloudpeople_1

For more, view the Qloud demo here. And here’s the launch press release. Blog coverage has already appeared at GigaOm and Mashable. Qloud was also named Lifehackers Download of the Day on October 11.

Biggest issue for now? Well, on top of the initial bugs that any beta release has to deal with, which Lewis assures me are being dealt with very quickly, is the fact that only a PC version of the plug-in is available right now. “We’re hoping to have the Mac plug-in before the end of the year,” said Lewis. Actually, he told me it’s basically done and working, but it’s the testing that takes time — working the bugs out. “We know we need it and we’re pushing forward.” So hang in there Mac lovers….me included!

But, Hold On — Qloud’s About More Than Sharing Music
“Something we haven’t even talked about yet,” said Lewis, “is that, over time, people develop lots of data in their player – plays, playlists, tags, ratings, etc. And every time they get a new player, they have to start all over. What we hope to be is a repository of metadata for a user’s music. In the future, we’ll let them push their information down to other players and other sites. That’s a big idea that’s coming from Qloud, and I think it’s cool.”

If you’ve ever seen the stats for the number of music players the average online music junkie has already gone through — a number that will only be rising — I think Qloud is onto something here.

Tags: , , ,

The ‘Other’ YouTube Founder – Minnesota’s Own!

October 13, 2006 / / 0 Comments

Great story on page 1A of the StarTrib today: St. Paul Whiz Kid Cashes In. Yes, Jawed Karim, the quiet one you don’t hear much about is from here. Jawedkarim He’s not involved day-to-day in YouTube right now, since he’s studying computer science at Stanford (which is why you don’t hear his name mentioned much) — but, as a founder of the company, he definitely benefits from the Google buyout. A quote from the story:

Although he has lived in California for several years now, he still considers himself “a Minnesota guy.”I think Minnesota has a unique place among the states,” Karim said. “It’s very progressive and modern, but it’s not overrun by all the negative things that come with progress. Things are a little more in balance with Minnesota.”

Tags: ,

Dan Gillmor on Silicon Valley’s Declining Image

October 12, 2006 / / 0 Comments

Speaking of the options-backdating debacle, Dan Gillmor wrote an incisive piece recently in PR Week, where he has a regular column. I met Dan several years ago at an O’Reilly conference, and I have much respect for the man. Few journalists have a better perspective on the Valley than he does, after so many years covering the tech beat for the Merc News. His latest PR Week column was entitled Silicon Valley’s image troubles run a lot deeper than just PR. Since that link is behind a paywall for most of you, let me provide some excerpts:

Like most others in Silicon Valley, I’ve watched Hewlett-Packard’s slow-motion train wreck – its unethical and probably illegal anti-leak spying program – with awe….

The current management is trying hard to spin its misbehavior into something that will let the company go back to business as usual. Good luck.

HP’s woes have shifted focus away from another corporate ethical debacle, namely the stock options scandal. That, you’ll recall, involves corporate chieftains and their obedient (or incompetent) directors, who’ve abused shareholders to further enrich the executives.

As a Silicon Valley resident, I’m sorry to say these affairs have the Valley and its longstanding arrogance in common. The 1990s stock bubble and its predations were bad enough. The latest news has made things worse…

Then he goes on to cite a metric that reminds us we’ve hardly heard the end of this saga….

…when the Valley’s most venerable big company gets caught running a sleazy spying operation, and when roughly half of the companies known to be under investigation for stock options shenanigans are in the tech business, you can’t just ignore reality…

He also mentions the troubles of a man who was previously one of the most renowned, iconish names in the Valley — top tech-industry lawyer Larry Sonsini:

….Sonsini’s role in the Valley’s dual debacles may be the most intriguing. As outside counsel for HP, he offered advice – not to worry, we’re doing nothing illegal, he effectively told the board as its spying operation neared public disclosure – that met a low standard indeed: What’s acceptable is what you can get away with, not what’s right.

Sonsini’s firm has also represented many of the tech companies under investigation in the options matter. No big surprise, given that the firm has been the Valley’s most influential and powerful for years, but it does raise more questions. Handling PR for Sonsini and his colleagues right now must be nightmarish, too.

In his closing, though, Gillmor succinctly lays out the real challenge for the tech establishment:

No doubt, the Valley’s image will recover eventually. But making that happen will require some honest introspection in executive suites and boardrooms, not just clever PR. How likely is that?

Makes one think of the company motto adopted not long ago by a certain new tech leader (whose name starts with “G”). Maybe that motto — “Don’t Be Evil” — wasn’t just window dressing? Maybe these kids had a deeper knowledge and insight about Valley culture than we realized….

Tags: , , , , ,

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2026 Graeme Thickins on Tech

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑