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.

Tag: Graeme Thickins (Page 40 of 55)

No Wonder Marc Andreessen Has So Much Time to Blog Lately

July 23, 2007 / / 1 Comment

Marcandreessen
Seems a little deal has been brewing. He just got rich — again. This just in from the Wall Street Journal:

Hewlett-Packard agreed to acquire software maker Opsware for $1.45 billion as the PC giant continues to bulk up its non-hardware offerings. Opsware was co-founded by Marc Andreessen, the young brain behind Internet pioneer Netscape.

Not that he wasn’t already rich. Why does this guy even need to work, anyway? I guess he’s still too young to know any better…. 🙂

Here’s Marc new blog if you haven’t seen it yet. Where he reminds us that the deal was for all cash. Several bloggers, myself included, have been going on and on lately at how great a job he’s been doing with his blogging — really some nice, long, thoughtful pieces, tips about raising VC, etc. (I’ve cited them somewhere on one of my blogs — forget where right now). Suddenly he was being so generous with his time! Sure, he has a great CEO running his popular new firm, Ning (which, by the way, just announced a $40M+ VC infusion).

But I say, hooray! He gets richer, and we all get to benefit more from his great writing — his new career of blogging. Go for it, Marc….

A-Conferencing I Will Go….

July 21, 2007 / / 1 Comment

Summer’s usually not a big time for me to be blogging from tech conferences, but I decided I had to get to Ad:Tech Chicago, July 31 – August 1, because nothing beats hot, old sweaty downtown Chicago in the summertime. Adtech No, seriously, I’m getting soo into ad technology and widget technology these days, how could I miss it? And I actually love being on Lake Michigan — literally! It’s being held in the Navy Pier conference center. Lots of good speakers and exhibitors at this one that I want to hear from. Please, definitely look me up if you’re there and think you have something disruptive in the world of advertising and marketing that we should all know about.

The next day, I’m back in Minneapolis for a local gig, put on by The Collaborative. It’s called Summer Venture Camp, and it should draw a couple hundred of us crazy tech startup Minnesotans looking to rule the world from the Land of 10,000 Lakes (one of which I’m sitting next to right now, and about to dive in). Venturecamp I’ll see a lot of my friends and clients at this one….including a bunch of you in my GetGoMN network, I hope!

Then, come September, I’m stoked about being able to blog from my favorite conference of ’em all, another one of the famed DEMO events — this one DEMOfall ’07”,
in my favorite other place in the world, San Diego. Demofall07 Looking forward to seeing many of my media and blogger friends at this one — and, yes, I know a lot of you VCs colleagues will be lurking about, too… 🙂 Nothing beats hearing some 70 startups, many heretofore in stealth mode, pitch their new wares. DEMO rocks! And you’ll read all about it again right here, o faithful readers….

Not sure where I might be venturing off to in October but, in November, I just have to blog from the Defrag Conference in Denver. It’s being run by, among others, my old buddy Eric Norlin, with sponsors including the Rocky Mountain Venture Capital Association and Colorado’s CTEK organization. Defregconf Guys like Brad Feld, VC extraordinaire in Boulder, are involved, too. I just gotta find out more about the the brand of startup mojo those guys have going’ there — it’s awesome! And how can you miss an event with a sales pitch like this:

“Defrag is the first conference focused solely on the internet-based tools that transform loads of information into layers of knowledge, and accelerate the ‘aha’ moment. Defrag is about the space that lives in between knowledge management, social networking, collaboration and business intelligence. Defrag is not a version number. Rather it’s a gathering place for the growing community of implementers, users, builders and thinkers that are working on the next wave of software innovation.”

Hurry up and register for this one. The buzz is building, and they only have room for 300 — which is a great size for an event. You can get to know people a lot better in a group of this size, and there will be mucho heavies in attendance here.

What events are on your radar in the next few months? Tell me in the comments….

Written from the shores of the Whitefish
Chain, north of Brainerd, Minnesota.

I Can’t Help But Digg This One – ‘Content Producers: Write Articles, Not Blog Postings’

July 10, 2007 / / 4 Comments

I always passed off Jakob Nielsen as simply a UI geek. No more — the man knows his stuff about blogging and writing, too. This latest essay of his is one I find very relevant in light of my own background as a blogger, and my previous considerable background as a published writer. I find it very hard to disagree with the case Jakob is making here. Reminds me of a piece I wrote a few years ago, for IDG’s Darwin Magazine, putting forth the notion that blogging was not soon going to be adopted by most mainstream businesses — which some in the blogosphere immediately (in the typical knee-jerk reaction it’s become known for) took as a negative attack on blogging. Of course, it wasn’t; for one thing, I said I felt blogging was great for certain kinds of businesses, both large and small, and gave examples.

Now, I feel an echo of sorts happening. Blogging is not a panacea, this essay also reasons — meaning blogging as most people know it: short posts that aren’t very well thought out. However, what will never go out of style, he says (and I wholeheartedly agree), is good writing. That is, lengthier articles actually based on thinking, preparation, and research — and, not unimportantly, that exhibit a real voice.

Here’s what the submitter on Digg (“spinchange”) had to say in his summary of Jakob Nielsen’s great piece….and do read the full piece if you’re at all interested in the topic of blogging :
“To demonstrate world-class expertise, avoid quickly written, shallow postings. Instead, invest your time in thorough, value-added content that attracts paying customers. Warning – this is a long article, stuffed with charts and statistical concepts – like standard deviations and utility functions – it flies in the face of guidelines for web writing.”

What are your thoughts on this topic?

read more | digg story

Google Picks Iowa – Goodbye ‘MinneGOOG’

June 21, 2007 / / 6 Comments

It became official a couple days ago: Google has chosen Iowa as a site for a data center, dashing the hopes of us Minnesotans for the Big Guys to come to our state. Oh, the pain of it all! Losing again to the Hawkeyes…. My heart sank when I saw the news on CNet. Another story had appeared earlier, I learned, from my old buddies at Byte & Switch.

Mapiacolor

This news was especially painful in light of the post I did a while back, called Minne-GOOG?, in which I related a case that had been made by a fellow Minnesota blogger about why Google should buy the St. Paul Ford plant, which had just announced it was closing.

For a little perspective on this revolting development for Gopher fans, I asked Matt Bauer, the founder of Mosquito Mole Multiworks in Minneapolis, for some background on how such a thing could happen. MMMultiworks specializes in Rails development and hosting for startups. Matt’s a smart guy, and we were just talking about this very subject at lunch the week before this news broke.

“Google’s choice not to build a datacenter in Minnesota doesn’t come as much of a surprise to me,” he said. “This state doesn’t have cheap fiber connections — we’re just a spur off of Chicago for the most part. With its dark-fiber reserves, Google could probably overcome this, but they can’t overcome Minnesota’s energy problem.” He thus hit on the what would appear to be the real reason Google shunned the Gopher state.

“The biggest difficulty in building a datacenter is power — period,” Bauer continued. “That’s why Google buys more land than it needs for its data centers — so no one else can build nearby and take power. Minnesota has a good amount of power, but legislation put into law this February probably likely took Minnesota out of the running.” That legislation requires 25% of the state’s energy to come from next generation power sources. “I’m sure Google saw this and quickly became concerned about the quality of these new power sources and the associated costs. Iowa doesn’t have such legislation and gets its electricity from MidAmerican Energy, which hasn’t raised its prices since 1995. In fact, they’ve promised not to raise prices until 2010! Additionally, their new coal-fueled power plants operate very efficiently and predictably,” said Bauer.

Then there was the take of Ed Kohler, master blogger over at Minnesota’s own Technology Evangelist — the source of that great post I referred to above. He said, “Maybe it’s just there to speed up Warren Buffet’s searches?” Old-Mr.-Money-Bags Buffet lives just across the river from Council Bluffs in Omaha, Nebraska.

PagePow Launches Widgets with Advanced Reporting

June 20, 2007 / / 0 Comments

PagePow Inc., a new web technology startup based in Minneapolis, today announced the launch of a private beta at PagePow.com. PagePow enables bloggers and web content owners to easily copy and paste web-based widgets into their blogs, web sites, auctions, social networking sites, and more. PagePow.com is immediately avalable as a private beta.

The startup is debuting with seven widgets:
– 5-Star Rating
– Poll
– Quiz
– Page Counter
– Google Map
– Contact Us
– Send Page to Friend

Pagepowhomepage

More widgets are planned. A key differentiator with PagePow is that bloggers and content owners will also have access to comprehensive reports generated by all the widgets they use. PagePow members will easily be able to monitor all the data their widgets produce through one simple interface at PagePow.com.

“Web site ease-of-use is a major focus for us, ” said PagePow founder Joe Sriver, an experienced UI designer whio worked in Silicon Valley for several years. “We spent a lot of time creating a simple, intuitive user interface to make sure people can come to the site, easily find what they need, and copy the code to their site within a couple minutes.”

Pagepow5starwidget

PagePow allows webmasters and bloggers to concentrate on generating content without having to worry about programming to have the cool features they want on their web sites, said Sriver.

PagePow offers comprehensive reports detailing statistics from PagePow widgets. “We wanted to offer widgets that any site could potentially use. We won’t have widgets that have a very narrow user base. For example, our poll widget can be used for any question,” said Sriver.

Users of PagePow widgets will be able to track all the data they generate while using the widgets, by logging in to PagePow and seeing their ratings, comments, poll/quiz answers, etc. all in one place. “This is something I haven’t seen on similar widget sites,” said Sriver. Otherpagepowwidgets “We let everyone take advantage of our widgets — not just webmasters or bloggers who put the code on their pages, but any user of the widgets.” Users will receive a one-time only pop-up dialog when they confirm their vote, comment, etc., and PagePow will prompt them to log in and will briefly explain the benefits of tracking their data.

Those interested in participating in the PagePow private beta can submit their name and email address at PagePow.com. Private beta testers are invited to comment on the functionality and UI and anything else they wish, said Sriver. A stage-one Public Beta is planned for the near future.

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