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.

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What’s So Kewl About Krugle

February 10, 2006 / / 0 Comments

It should be no surprise to you by now that Krugle Inc. launched its source-code search engine on Tuesday at the Demo 2006 conference. The company’s gotten much fanfare, including being named one of the “Demo God” winners at Wednesday evening’s closing press panel dinner, which you’ll see more about here.

I spoke with Chief Architect John Mitchell and CEO Steve Larsen earlier that day to find out more about this new tool, which they say will change the way developers work. Steve said their job in today’s open-source world is “more about finding and assembling code than it is about writing it.” Krugle’s research has found developers spend upwards of a quarter of their time searching. That’s a ton of lost productivity. With the Krugle service, you can find content about the code you’re looking for, or find the code itself. In the search results, the Krugle interface has a Project View at the right, which shows you where a specific piece of code fits in, with “lots of meta info.” And it also has a World View, which shows the relationship of that code to all the source code in the world. What’s also cool is you can email colleagues to show them right where you are in your search.

Chief architect John Mitchell explained to me how their engine goes well beyond a Google search. “They just do text. This goes in and understands the code, using semantic analysis,” the latter referring to proprietary technology of the company’s. Search results also include all necessary licensing info. John told me Krugle is currently bringing ten new servers online, and has a private, 800-user test coming. He said the company’s search data base is being built as it crawls all the code repositories, currently including “Java, C, Python, etc, and more coming — Linux, Eclipse, and so forth.” What about scaling? How big does their infrastructure need to be? “The scale is nowhere near Google’s, as far as numbers of users,” Mitchell explained. “Our focus makes it work. There are only so many source code repositories, and only 20 million or so developers out there.” That means, he said, the number of concurrent users might be only hundreds of thousands at any given time. The key in comparing to Google is “we have to go deeper.”

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Full Disclosure: My Blog Coverage

February 10, 2006 / / 0 Comments

Did you see this article yesterday in the Wall Steet Journal’s Marketplace section: “How Tech Start-Ups Tap Blogs as Cheerleaders”? It’s worth a read. [I’d give you the link, but it requires a paid subscription.] After reading this, and in the spirit of good, common-sense ethical practice, I’m declaring here and now that I am not paid by any of the companies mentioned in my “Demo 2006” conference coverage. Nor am I for any of the other companies I have mentioned to date in my blog. [And, if I ever do mention a company with which I have a consultant/client relationship or advisory board relationship, I will disclose that within the blog post.]

I know bloggers Dan Gillmor and David Weinberger (mentioned in the article), and they are both highly ethical individuals who enjoy a great level of deserved trust. So, it only makes sense they would disclose their respective relationships with Spanish Internet startup FON Technology early on in their postings about them, as the WSJ article states. It’s good to have them taking a leadership position on this very important issue.

I’m afraid the topic of how bloggers can “monetize” what they do (if you’ll excuse my use of that awful word) is one that won’t be going away anytime soon. Traditional journalism pays awfully, except for an elite few; but blogging is a whole lot worse. So, it will be interesting to see what kind of a compensation model emerges for this growing medium, beyond Google AdSense Ads, Amazon commissions, and other nickel-and-dime stuff (see the “Tip Jar” feature I added at the bottom of my sidebar to the right!). Again, these only make a difference for an elite few that get monthly traffic in the hundreds of thousand or millions. The vast majority of independent bloggers rely on consulting or freelance project work to survive, and in most cases are going to be doing that in whatever industry, sector, or topic area they blog about. (Unless maybe it’s a totally personal/hobbie/avocational kind of a blog.) No question, then, that disclosure by bloggers is an issue that cannot be ignored.

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‘Demo God’ Winners: Is There a God?

February 9, 2006 / / 0 Comments

Just saw the story pop up on CNet about last night’s DEMO 2006 recap dinner, at which the show’s producer, Chris Shipley, gave out the event’s legendary “Demo God” awards. [I was on a plane home at the time, writing another blog post.] Demograemesview No surprise that Krugle was one winner, for their game-changing open-source code search engine. They were definitely a pick of mine (see previous post from early this morning), as was the “Pleo” robotic toy (how could that miss?). But, wow, the fact that enterprise software and services companies dominated the list so much — that shocks me! I liked some of these winners, but the buzz just wasn’t there, IMHO. The fact that none of the consumer-services companies — zip! — made the list leaves me wondering: huh? That category was the dominant one. So much for Web 2.0/social networking at Demo, I guess (well, for their CEOs being top-notch presenters, anyway). I thought some did great pitches, and I blogged about several of these consumer services companies in previous posts from the event (scroll down to see): Vizrea, SmileBox, Tiny Pictures, Kaboodle, LocaModa, TagWorld, Blurb, GarageBand.com, EQO Communications. Hey, we wuz robbed… 🙂

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Krugle: “Off the Charts”

February 9, 2006 / / 0 Comments

That’s what Don Thorson of Krugle Inc. told me when I asked how the Demo 2006 event went for his company. I stopped to chat late yesterday just before I had to bolt out of the pavilion tent to head for the airport. “We have 7,000 signups on our web site just this week,” he said. “We couldn’t be happier about how the event went for us.” Demopavilion020806 Krugle announced “the search engine for developers” at the Demo 2006 conference, and simultaneously at the Evans Data Developer Conference in San Francisco. Which appears to have been a stroke of genius, because I learned on their blog that they were talked about all over the web these last few days, including being number two on Technorati yesterday.

I had a post back on January 11 about Krugle’s launch marketing strategy, linking to a post by Shel Israel. I’d say Krugle is writing a lesson here on how to have a coming-out party in today’s Web 2.0 world…

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Some of The Great People I Met at Demo 2006

February 9, 2006 / / 0 Comments

I need something to do on the plane home, so thought I’d write a different sort of post….with all the names from all the business cards I collected at the conference! (Apologies to those I met that I didn’t get cards from.) Here’s the list, roughly in order from when I got there Monday afternoon through Wednesday at about 5:45 pm when I had to split for the airport (sadly, before the final dinner). Note: these are not necessarily people I met for the first time — some I already knew and just renewed friendships with.

Robert Wray, CEO, StreetDeck.com (MP3Car.com)…Steve Larsen, CEO, Krugle…Mitch Musgrove, VP Sales and Bus Dev, SimpleFeed…Brian Jacobs, General Partner, Emergence Capital Partners…Don Thorson, VP Marketing, Krugle…Bill Tam, CEO, EQO Communications…Melody Haller, President, Antenna Group PR (for EQO)…Azhar Khan, VP Engineering, Riya…Danny Yang, Senior Researcher, Riya…Shel Israel, co-author, “Naked Conversations,” and blogger for Conferenza…Gordon Ritter, General Partner, Emergence Capital Partners…Stephanie Houser, President, Launch…Colin Crook, Account Supervisor, Voce Communications (for Blurb)…Erica Lee, President of Strategiclee…Fred Krueger, CEO, TagWorld…D.K. Kim, CEO, ZIngee…Tim English, Marketing Manager, Digislide (Adelaide, Australia)…John Schultheiss, Founder, Grass Roots Software…Gail Bronson, Founder, InternetAssist…John Mitchell, Chief Architect, Krugle…Emily Melton, Associate, Draper Fisher Jurvetson…Ali Partovi, CEO, GarageBand.com…Burak Gokturk, CTO and Co-Founder, Riya…Jim Tybur, Trinity Ventures…Jeff Steeves, Associate, Prism Venture Partners…Scott Danish, VP Global Marketing, CNet Channel…Dan Summa, Venture Partner, Genesys Partners…Jim Kollegger, Chairman/CEO, Genesys Partners…Maryse Thomas, Co-Founder, Pokeware.com (Minneapolis)…Amy Wohl, Editor, Amy Wohl’s Opinions…Sean Captain, freelance journalist for NY Times, Wired, CNet, PC World…John Barnabas, Reporter, KFNN (Tempe, AZ), Bloomberg News Radio…Renee Blodgett, President, Blodgett Communications…Mark Carlson, CEO, SimpleFeed…Mike Toutonghi, CEO, Vizrea…Steve Toutonghi, VP Product Management, Vizrea…Manish Chandra, CEO, Kaboodle…Julie O’Grady, President, O’Grady Communications (for Kaboodle)…Dana Kibler, VP, GRP Partners…Jill Ratkevic, PR Director, Accomplice Software…Jason Feinsmith, CEO, Accomplice Software…Herminio De Faria, Head of US Office, Bouygues Telecom (France)…Will Aldrich, presenter for Yahoo!

Wish I had time to email every one! But if any of you drop into my blog, say hi. It was a pleasure meeting every one of you… What a great conference, huh?

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[Written at 41,000 feet, somewhere over Nebraska?]

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