Archive for July, 2007

By now, you’ve heard about the Facebook lawsuit. You know the one where ConnectU founders, Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra allege Mark Zuckerberg stole their ideas to create a social networking website.

Today, Judge Douglas Woodlock gave the ConnectU founders until August 8th to clarify the lawsuit which include charges of fraud, copyright infringement, and misappropriation of trade secrets.

The “he said, we said” allegations read like a trashy techy tabloid. Read more about this on-going saga here.

Today’s article introduces One Laptop One Child (OLOC), the brainchild of Nicholas Negroponte.  Negroponte is currently on leave from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he was co-founder and director of the MIT Media Laboratory, and the Jerome B. Wiesner Professor of Media Technology.

The goal of OLOC is to provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves.  The origins of OLPC stretch back more than four decades to the primordial days of computing, when most machines were still the size of small dinosaurs and next to no one imagined they had any connection to children. Pioneer thinkers such as Seymour Papert dreamed they would be suitable for children, and time has proved the immense power of the personal computer as a learning tool.

Any nation’s most precious natural resource is its children. We believe the emerging world must leverage this resource by tapping into the children’s innate capacities to learn, share, and create on their own. Our answer to that challenge is the XO laptop, a children’s machine designed for “learning learning.”

XO embodies the theories of constructionism first developed by MIT Media Lab Professor Seymour Papert in the 1960s, and later elaborated upon by Alan Kay, complemented by the principles articulated by Nicholas Negroponte in his book, Being Digital.

OLPC is not, at heart, a technology program, nor is the XO a product in any conventional sense of the word. OLPC is a non-profit organization providing a means to an end—an end that sees children in even the most remote regions of the globe being given the opportunity to tap into their own potential, to be exposed to a whole world of ideas, and to contribute to a more productive and saner world community.

First Cisco took on Apple over iPhone trademark infringements.  The two companies settled instead of taking it to the courts.  Now Cisco is taking issue with Google’s latest attempt to pledge $4.6 billion in the upcoming FCC (Federal Communications Commission) wireless spectrum auction.

Mary Brown, Cisco’s Director of Technology and Spectrum Policy, posted a blog sharply criticizing Google’s latest move and defending FCC Chariman Kevin Martin’s proposal.

As you know, Cisco is a major supplier to the telephone and cable companies who are interested in bidding on the 700 MHz spectrum.   However, Google, by lobbying Washington, isn’t doing anything different from other companies that want to influence in policy.

Here’s my opinion.  While this story is already “yesterday’s news”, the two technology titans will inevitably cross paths in the future.  Who wants ringside seats to that match?

If you mention Seth Godin, what comes to mind? How about “Purple Cow”, “Small is the New Big”, or even “The Dip”? Sound familiar? Seth is a bestselling author of these books and others not listed. He was the founder and CEO of Yoyodyne, which was acquired by Yahoo! in 1998. As if that weren’t enough, Godin is a reknowned speaker and founder of Squidoo.

What is Squidoo?

The following is posted on the Squidoo website:

Squidoo’s goal as a platform is to bring the power of recommendation to search. Squidoo’s goal as a co-op is to pay as much money as we can to our lensmasters and to charity. And Squidoo’s goal as a community is to have fun along the way, and meet new ideas and the people behind them.

Squidoo is quickly gaining popularity through the relative ease of creating a lens and, more importantly, because a well optimized Squidoo page is ranked higher on Google than any other articles on any other websites.

Squidoo has even created an interesting ecosystem for enterprising Internet entrepreneurs. For instance, individuals are monetizing their articles on Squidoo through participation in affiliate and ad revenue sharing programs. In addition, others have written an eBook about how to monetize your Squidoo (”Squidoo Secrets”).

If you haven’t visited Seth Godin’s latest venture, stop on by and see what the buzz is about. You may even want to build your own page on Squidoo. Also, be sure to check out Andrew Johnson’s interview with Seth Godin on Andrew’s Web Publishing Blog.

A few days ago I wrote about Agloco whose tagline is “Own the Internet”.  It is playing off the concept that no one really owns the Internet and that everyone should be able to participate in the online wealth.  This is a nice, democratic, utopian notion but sadly one that’s far from the truth.  In fact, some are creating incredible wealth for themselves much like the California Gold Rush in 1848.  Ken Ham is one such Internet mogul and tycoon; he’s also someone most of us have never heard of until now.

In May 2007, Paul Sloan of “Business 2.0″ profiled Ham in the cover story for the publication.  Sloan’s article was titled, “The Man Who Owns the Internet”.   Ham is an unassuming man who has quietly been building his Internet empire through acquisition of domain names (also known as a “domainer”) since 2000. Originally trained as a family doctor,  Ham now has a portfolio of 300,000 domain names that, combined with some other ventures, generate $70 million annually.

Check out Sloan’s article to learn more about his rise to fame and Internet riches.

Yesterday, Hewlett-Packard announced its intent to acquire Opsware for more than $1.6 billion. The big winner in this deal is Marc Andreessen, better known for his success with Netscape. At HP’s offer price, Andreesen stands to gain $138 million after the acquisition.

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If you’re an avid reader of “Business 2.0″, then you already know this popular magazine is at risk of folding ever since Time Inc, the parent of the magazine, first made the announcement publicly.

This story gets even better though and has a nice tie into social networking.  As reported on the Netly News blog, two loyal Business 2.0 fans from Canada started a group on Facebook Group to save the magazine.  This group is already up to 1500 already.

Time Inc and its advertisers are definitely watching this movement with interest.  If you are a Facebook member and enjoy reading Business 2.0, join the movement and help prevent this publication from folding.

There’s quite a bit of buzz brewing about a new website that allows you to “own a piece” of the Internet. It is called Agloco that allows individual users to participate in the revenues.

I didn’t pay much attention to it the first time someone mentioned it to me. However, I’ve been hearing more and more people jump on board. Like Facebook, if I hear it enough times, it’s probably worth checking out.

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I was at a networking event catching up with old friends and making new ones.  You never know who you’re going to meet or what kind of interesting things you’ll find out.  Instead of keeping you in suspense, I’ll just say I caught up with my new friend, Joanne (Joey) Wan.

I met Joey last fall at an event she organized.  At the time, I already knew she was an amazing networker and events organizer.  However, little did I know she held the dubious title of Ms. Web 2.0 as nominated by Valleywag.com.  How did I find out?

When I ran into her this afternoon, we caught up and discussed her new role at GigaOm.  What was an innocent question became a funny story.  “So, how do you know Om Malik?”  It turns out the King and Queen of Web 2.0 tied the proverbial knot in business thanks to Valleywag’s “prestigious” award.

So, rather than let this story fade off into the sunset, I told Joey that I plan to revive her title and award until another can come along and “dethrone” her.  Congratulations Joey!  Read the full article here.

I just read an article from the Fortune technology staff about a small start up company called Ooma. Normally, I wouldn’t really care about yet another VoIP start up. After all, I already have AT&T CallVantage and Skype. The latter is the ultimate disruptive technology for individuals and home-based businesses. Then why am I bothering to write anything at all?

What caught my attention was the byline that Ashton Kutcher is an advisor along with Mike Ramsay (TIVO), Apple and Yahoo executives. In addition, Ooma has received $12 million in funding from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, the VC firm behind Skype.
There’s not much to say about Andrew Frame first-time entrepreneur, founder, and CEO of Ooma. One interesting point that caught my attention is his experience at Cisco and then Procket Networks (which was then acquired by Cisco in 2004).

You can read more details on Fortune.com Blog.