Back to my passions

by on February 19, 2006

Hey, Guy, how come you haven’t invited me over for breakfast? I thought you were my friend! :-)

Seriously, though, if you’re a company or a blogger and want a link, you don’t need to suck up. Just go to my comment and post your freaking URL along with a pitch of why your blog, software, new idea, etc rocks. But more on that in a bit.

Anyway, this weekend was really incredible. Our party was just over the top.

I find myself asking “now what?”

I’m asking myself what’ll get me excited to get out of bed tomorrow. Thanks to Rick Segal for putting that question in my head (he took Patrick and I out for sushi and we spent a bit of time talking life and technology).
Passion. It’s coming up in lots of conversations.

Today I had lunch with the team from Ether.com. I’m not allowed to say what they showed me, but I saw the fire in their eyes (that’s program manager Ron Hirson on left, and developer and co-founder Scott Faber on right). The passion for building something that changes the world. If you’re someone who sells your time and want a new way to do that (like, say, a lawyer does) then you should sign up for their beta.

I love that passion! It’s why I love hanging out with geeks. People who build things. People who put it all on the line. Who risk everything for an idea.

We need more people like that. Enough talking about me. Who’s the geek sitting tonight in a dark room typing code into a keyboard and hitting F5 to see how much further they’ve gotten in their dreams?

But, back to the Guy Kawasaki post: why suck up to anyone? If you are good, people will notice. They’ll stand in line overnight to buy your product. Word will get around. All you need is a few people to kick it off (and they don’t need to be the A list either).

I get bummed out when I hear people assume that getting me (or other A listers, or even someone who really has huge influence like Walt Mossberg or Steven Levy) to write about them will make their company.

Here’s a little secret: want to get me passionate about something? Get every single person in my life passionate about it.

Why did I return my Cingular aircard and buy a Verizon EVDO one? Cause my friends were passionate. My readers were passionate. And they were right. At Oakland my Cingular card would barely work. Verizon has five bars here and is fast, fast, fast.
Why did I try CoComment? It’s not cause Laurent took me skiing. Well, that helped. But I started hearing about CoComment from other people at the LIFT conference. Laurent didn’t come to the “A list” first. He just was passing them out to anyone. Passion. It’s not about sucking up.

It’s about being so excited by what you’ve built that you’ll tell anyone. Remember Flickr? Two years ago Stewart Butterfield was so excited that he was just pulling anyone who would listen aside at the O’Reilly Emerging Technology conference and showing them his stuff. That passion won me over as a customer and continues winning me over to this day. (Although he better watch out, cause Albert Lai of Bubbleshare is even more passionate than Stewart was!).

So, don’t suck up, get excited!

PS: are you excited about something you’ve built? Just post it here. Don’t send me email. If you send me email your excitement might get lost in my inbox. 133 emails to go.

  • cheap 3mp camera
  • Well, since everyone is getting a plug, might as well put in mine. I'm a silicon valley guy who loves porn (hey, I'm sure I'm not alone here) and know search engines. So, I've put the two together and built the largest adult search engine in the world.

    www.eonsex.com
  • I don't know. I might have thought your message was spam or the Wordpress algorithms might have deleted it because it looked like spam.
  • Why was I deleted?
  • Taking a break from the Apple debate, a SaaS that I'm excited about is FeedBlitz http://www.feedblitz.com - an email service that delivers blogs via mail to readers and subscriber management / customization for publishers - in other words, it makes a blog into an easy to manage newsletter. Zero to over 300k readers in its first few months of operations, it supports OPML subscriptions, metrics integration with FeedBurner, and offers upgrade services for email customization.

    Users publishing their blogs using FeedBlitz include at lest one of those mentioned above - Guy Kawasaki. It's recently been extended to allow anyone to search the subscriber web formed by all the subscriptions at feedadvisor.com
  • Christopher Coulter
    As for 'passions', I am having Ultimate S 2.0 Vegasgasms.

    http://www.vasst.com/product.aspx?id=c8cec3c4-7...
  • Actually Jack, up until the mid 90s, Apple was never going to be approved over IBM in corporate. IBM had that kind of corporate clout, Apple never did. Ever. Still doesn't.

    As well, IBM never encouraged clone makers. In fact, they sued the *hell* out of them. It wasn't until Phoenix pulled off a clean version of the PC BIOS that the clone market could start up, and had they lost that suit, IBM would have been *fine* with it.

    But either way, your licensing point falls down. Early on, there was no PC hardware that could have run the Mac OS worth a crap, so they would have had to license not just the OS, but the hardware spec as well, which is exactly what they did in the 90s, and that was a rather amazing failure. There's yet to be any logic to suggest that Apple would have somehow been this industry - dominating powerhouse if they had licensed the Mac out early on. In fact, they were NEVER an industry dominating powerhouse on say, an IBM scale or a Microsoft scale. They've always been a major player, bigger or smaller depending on when you're talking, but they've never had a Microsoftian market share.

    The problem with sales was who was going to buy it? Corporate didn't want it, and refused to buy it, and schools, especially at K-12 take forever to buy anything, and you have to deeply discount to get those sales. So they were left with Higher Ed and niche markets. Developing for the Mac was a complete pain in the ass, as the development machines cost a LOT more than the Mac did.

    The sales point was valid, but any attempt to link it to some "If they had only licensed the OS..." theory is just silly.
  • Jack
    John: it's also about timing. It's not certain that Apple would have lost if it had licensed early in a growing market and capitalised on its advantages. That's not the same as licensing too late, when Apple's market share was falling and the company was being badly run.

    This also doesn't change the general point I made to Guy: Apple did get noticed; it just wasn't able to convert notice into sales.
  • Jack, what else are you going to license it to?

    Apple tried licensing the hardware in the 90s as well, and discovered, to no one's surprise, that the cloners went after *apple* instead of extending the market share. Power was particularly blatant.

    The licenses also created a lot of extra work for users and Apple when it came to OS upgrades, because there were too many cases where you needed this patch or that enabler to load it onto a non-Apple system. Not 100%, but there were definite trends and problems.

    in other words, even with Apple detailing the spec for the licensees, there were regular, continual problems, and Apple was having to provide support to the same people who were trying to take away sales. The business model for this was SO stupid, I'm amazed it passed a laugh test.

    That experiment was so obviously and thoroughly bad, and happened at a point when Apple didn't have any chance whatsoever of gaining at all from it that it never occurred to me that you were talking about THAT idiocy.

    Apple is not, nor has it ever been a software /OS company ala Microsoft. it is a *computer* company, ala IBM, and that has ALWAYS been how they make their money: Selling the whole widget. Every time they've forgotten this, it's been bad.
  • Jack
    John C Welch says:

    > The entire “If Apple had licensed the OS in the 80s,
    > they’d own the world” theory is bulldookey.

    > For one, other than a Mac and maybe the Amiga, take a
    > good look at PC state of the art features from 1984
    > on, and tell me at what point did PCs have the
    > graphics hardware to support the Mac OS?

    Nobody said anything about porting Mac OS to the PC, let alone a 1984 PC.

    To put it simply, the dim-witted idea you have spent so much time demolishing is your own dim-witted idea. Sorry.
  • Christopher Coulter
    Guy said..."If you take two companies with equally good products, and one knows how to suck up to bloggers and the other one doesn’t, I believe that the former will win."

    Well, that really depends on the market demographics, if you fizzle up bloggers, but yet such action alienates key customers, well then you lose. This is very case by case, very demographically CRMish. Say a product with a large blue-collar demographic, suddenly decides to get into the luxury market, they run the risk of losing their base. Sometimes better to peel something off, creating a hybrid, that appeals to differing markets. And sometimes you have highly specialized markets, and all the blog-sucking up won't do an ounce of good. And the markets are rather thin-slice limited to Consumer and Tech offerings.

    But I liked your 'suck-up' post. Bloggers are just a differing subgroup, know the religion(s) and sacred cows, know the lingo, pander to the egos and adjust the marketing. But lot of those things are common sensical, but still good to repeat. The biggest being, how evil marketers are that are only your friends when they have something to push.

    PS - And much more beyond just 'style' and 'viewpoint', but since I don't blog, obviously I am not doing anything with the rest of my life, spending all my time "only attacking the thoughts of others" (note that was sarcasm). But I live in this thing called the capitalist system, hence my offerings, scripts and productions need lots of folding green stuff, and I have other family obligations. Your offerings on a blog are already financed. If I could get 100K a year with bonuses, to blog and run shaky cams around Microsoft and go on exotic junkets, maybe I'd change my religion too (though I'd cross my fingers). ;)

    But bearing down on a BIG documentary project and won't have time to even comment, even in between dupes and encodes, so you will get a breather from me. :) So the comments are safe from snark for awhile.
  • And ... Robert if you come over for breakfast ... pancakes, local smoked salmon, fresh bagels, eggs to order . Canadians a hospitible if nothing else.
  • see
    http://www.fixya.com - repair and support information engine for gadgets
  • I'm a fan of www.ning.com though there may be copyright issues. Lashup relatively simple apps but with goodness. Being a British accountant I put together a wee Q&A I called Answering Taxing Questions. It's a bit scruffy but it took 5 minutes. It's a start.
  • The entire "If Apple had licensed the OS in the 80s, they'd own the world" theory is bulldookey.

    For one, other than a Mac and maybe the Amiga, take a good look at PC state of the art features from 1984 on, and tell me at what point did PCs have the graphics hardware to support the Mac OS? pretty much not until VGA, MAYBE EGA. When did the PC world even get to where plug and play expansion slots were standard, no more ISA? Not until recently. When did the PC world stop shipping PS/2 and go to USB - only? Still waiting. How long did it take for ATA to catch up to SCSI, just in terms of partition sizes? I've got a dualie 800Mhz G4 at home with a native ATA bus that can only handle 120GB drive/partition sizes, and that machine is not *that* old.

    Face it, IBM and the rest would have had to start making *Macs* for the OS to be licensed.

    Considering how underpowered PCs were in 1984, ESPECIALLY for graphics capabilities, there was.no.way they could have run the Mac OS and had it not be a configuration nightmare that looked like ass.
  • Jack
    >If you are good, people will notice.

    Guy Kawasaki says:

    > This is where we fundamentally disagree... Apple ...
    > had a better mousetrap, we got our (marketshare)
    > clocks cleaned.

    On the contrary, Guy, you DID get noticed, massively. What you failed to do was convert notice into sales. That was mostly because of the decisions you (Apple) took in shipping a system that was overpriced, underpowered and proprietary; refusing to license the OS; insulting prospective customers (shown as drones walking over a cliff) etc etc.

    It wasn't Microsoft's fault that Apple took those decisions. Indeed, as you well know, Microsoft recommended a different strategy.

    Still, one thing never changes: man's tendency to blame somebody else for his own mistakes ;-)
  • Someone asked for a way to plug your site? You've been able to plug your site on pluggit.org for months now... If i get a ton of traffic ill restart the cronjob that cleans links off after a while to keep things fresh.

    Enjoy!
  • >Microsoft got results (until recently)

    Hmmm, you must have missed the people standing in line overnight to buy our products. So much for accuracy in reporting here.

    What, the Xbox 360? Dude, you're kidding.

    > It’s not like he’s creating, he’s just writing about those who do.

    For a guy who cares about the journey, you sure seem pretty lose with the facts. I ship a video every single day. That IS creating. What did YOU ship today? Venom. Yes.

    Oh silly Robert, you have no idea what you're talking about, but okay. No I don't ship a daily video. I ship a column every other week here:

    http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/columns/appleent/

    I do a column every so often here:

    http://www.mactech.com/

    I do regular bits here:

    http://www.yourmaclife.com/

    I've helped write two books on Mac OS X This one in 2000:

    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0761524150/sr=...

    and this one in 2005:

    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B...

    I've been running sessions at Macworld Conference & Expo since 1999, including one of the first in-depth looks at Mac OS X.

    I'm "the N00b" on http://www.musicalgeeks.com/

    Oh, I helped create a company and a product:

    http://www.tackyshirt.com/ was Sam and my idea, but Sam had the time to put into it more than I did, so I gave him my half, because getting the idea done was important.

    I figured out a way to use AppleScript and Folder actions to allow for automatic scanning of files via Virex without needing kernel extensions, created an implementation of that solution and gave it away:

    http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/maco...

    Wrote a wee application that allows me to more easily set my iChat Status, and gave it away:

    http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/maco...

    Wrote a script to help automate shutting down a vulnerability in Directory Services, since the manual way was a bit tedious for non-technical users:

    http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/maco...

    And wrote some iTunes/Mail, iTunes/Entourage scripts that I gave away, but Mac OS X 10.4 seems to have broken them, and I've been lazy.

    Anything else? Care to talk about the companies and products YOU helped to actually create as opposed to just evangelize? In the end, all your work is nothing more than, in essence, comments on other people's work. Now that's not a bad thing. You're good at what you do, and honestly, that's something. But you're sloppy, and that's the bad part. You don't do your research first, you just throw the spaghetti, and hope some of it sticks. In this case it's about me, (and you're wrong, again), but in past instances, you've hung coworkers out to dry, and if you hadn't been pimp-slapped relentlessly here in the comments and on other sites, the chances of you correcting your incorrect assumptions and statements would have most likely approached zero.

    See Robert, unlike you, I don't have to trumpet my accomplishments 24x7, nor name drop for weeks at a time. You seem to be rather insecure about yourself, but then when your "fame" and a large part of your career is based on self-promotion, well, you don't really have a choice.

    But don't confuse me not relentlessly self-promoting myself with me not actually doing anything other than commenting on your blog, because that would be...oh yes, that's right, that would be incorrect. Again.

    Anything else?
  • >Microsoft got results (until recently)

    Hmmm, you must have missed the people standing in line overnight to buy our products. So much for accuracy in reporting here.

    > It’s not like he’s creating, he’s just writing about those who do.

    For a guy who cares about the journey, you sure seem pretty lose with the facts. I ship a video every single day. That IS creating. What did YOU ship today? Venom. Yes.
  • >The only differences between him and Chris Coulter are viewpoint and writing style.

    I totally disagree. I regularly put out my own thoughts on things that aren't prompted by others. Christopher NEVER does that. He only attacks the thoughts of others.

    Guy: great suckup! :-)

    >I worked for Apple, we had a better mousetrap, we got our (marketshare) clocks cleaned.

    I was an Apple evangelist in the same timeperiod. Agreed. But, in hindsight you didn't have a better mousetrap. Howso? The ecosystem beats the experience. Apple is gonna use that in the iPod market. Just watch.
  • Yeah.... I'd have to say I'm really excited about how TailRank is going. We're pushign amazingly hard and its awesome to see how people are excited about it and helping out by providing killer feedback.

    Def more exciting than I was when I started Rojo... More exciting than when I worked in the ASF...
  • Dmad
    Hard to do what job? Your Microsoft job? You choose to blog about things other than Microsoft, so I don't really have much sympathy for you there. Microsoft does email like no other company I know, so that comes with the territory. If you get paid by Microsoft to blog and go to conferences you self-fund and book launches and the like, then I suggest working with your manager to reprioritize some of your other committments if you are finding it difficult to stay focused on the things you are getting paid to do.
  • Um, to be accurate, I never implied anything about what Robert should write about, in fact, I don't care. I get the irrits more at HOW he goes about it. He's a bit Machiavellian about it, in that so long as it ends up right, the journey's no biggie, whereas I'm very concerned with the journey, and think that not only does it count as much as the results, it counts MORE than the results.

    Microsoft got results (until recently), but the journey they took was such a scorched-earth campaign that it could be decades to undo the virulent, unrelenting hatred they created. Was it worth it? Well, by Bill's bank account, sure. But man, it's got to suck to be doing good work that you know millions will (in some cases literally) spit on just because of the name on the box. Robert kvetched about the DoJ demoralizing the IE team...dude, the DoJ working day and night for the next decade couldn't do that efficiently as MS itself has. Please note that eating one's own dogfood, and eating one's young are in fact, different.

    But the point of my comment was that for Robert to complain about people who never create and only write about those who do is rather hypocritical, since that defines a rather large part of his career and pretty much all of his fame. It's not like he's creating, he's just writing about those who do. The only differences between him and Chris Coulter are viewpoint and writing style.
  • Robert:

    >If you are good, people will notice.

    This is where we fundamentally disagree. Our backgrounds, perhaps, explain this. I worked for Apple, we had a better mousetrap, we got our (marketshare) clocks cleaned. You work for Microsoft, it "was inspired by" a better mousetrap, it cleaned Apple's clock. :-)

    If you take two companies with equally good products, and one knows how to suck up to bloggers and the other one doesn't, I believe that the former will win. (One of the hardest lessons for me to learn has been that the best product doesn't necessarily win.)

    Be glad to take you to breakfast. I've been a long time admirer of your work. My RSS reader checks your blog every five minutes. In fact, I've made your blog my home page... :-) Let me know when you're in SV. I'll be in Seattle in March if that's more convenient. We'll split the check so no one can accuse you of accepting a suck up.

    Guy
  • This is what I do, and what I am excited about:

    from my blog, The Daily Technocrat
    http://techandother.wordpress.com/
    from the 'what is a technocrat' page:

    "The goal of this blog is similar to the core goals of the Technocratic Movement of the 1920’s and 1930’s. At its core, the Technocratic Movement believed in…

    '…the optimization of the welfare of human beings by means of scientific analysis.' (Wikipedia)

    [snip]

    'Ultimately, my goals for this blog are not for fame or compensation, but as they are in my real life, to contribute to the betterment of human beings by bringing about the technologies of tomorrow and by demonstrating efficient use of the technologies of today.'"

    This is what blogging is all about to me. YMMV. Any support via encouragement is appreciated.

    Dan
  • Dmad: it's hard to do this job. Want it? It comes with 200 emails a day (actually 400, but that's including all the ones you can ignore). It's hard to keep it up every day and stay focused on the right things.
  • Dmad
    Scoble, this is really what you should be doing. Again, John C. Welsh is right. To continue to be valuable to your employer and add shareholder value, you need to get back to blogging about broader technology issues, trends and stuff that, as Chris says, has "business value", read: can MAKE MONEY!. And then you need to tie all of that back to how Microsoft best maps to that stuff. Enough of the "look how important blogging is and how highly I rank". I often wonder if you are as passionate about your employer's goal to increase shareholder value as you are about your place in the blogging world. Do the former and the latter will come, with you even having to beg for it.
  • I've been blogging about Cialdini and NLP as a tool to become a successful musician. This pulls two of my biggest passions together, Music and Influence. I became an NLP Master Practitioner because of my passion for understanding influence and persuasion. And I've been playing music professionaly/passionately for 20 years. Put those together and you've got my blog, http://www.grahamenglish.net

    And I've got you, Robert, to thank for much of my blogging passion. I've had your feed in my reader long before I ever started taking blogging seriously. And it was your book that clarified the need for a professionaly blog. So thanks :)

    Oh yeah, and I got offered a job to blog about songwriting on http://www.bloggingmuses.com, based on the quality of my own blog.

    Posting remarkable content beats sucking up to A-listers any day!

    :)
  • exactly, success is directly related to the level of passion.
  • Robert, you make a great case study for why the persuasion techniques outlined in Robert Cialdini's Influence book really do work:-

    > Here’s a little secret: want to get me passionate
    > about something? Get every single person in my life
    > passionate about it.

    Social proof: we are more likely to be persuaded into doing something when we see a lot of other people doing it.

    > Why did I return my Cingular aircard and buy a
    > Verizon EVDO one? Cause my friends were passionate.

    Liking: we are more likely to be persuaded into doing something when we see people we know and like doing it.

    > Why did I try CoComment? It’s not cause Laurent
    > took me skiing. Well, that helped.

    Reciprocation: we are more likely to do something for somebody when they have already done something for us.

    > I get bummed out when I hear people assume that
    > getting me (or other A listers, or even someone who
    > really has huge influence like Walt Mossberg or
    > Steven Levy) to write about them will make their
    > company.

    Authority: we are more likely to do something when somebody who is authority in a particular field has told us it is a good thing. Whether you like it or not these people understand that you and Walt etc. are respected as authorities on new consumer gadgets and applications and they want you to write about their product.


    If you want to learn more about these techniques and the two I didn't mention (scarcity and commitment/consistency) go spend 10 bucks on his book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0688128165/sr=...
    It gets 4.5 stars from 161 reviews and, right now, has a sales rank on Amazon of #219, which is pretty good for a book published in 1998. It's quite literally the best non-fiction book I've ever read (followed by David Allen's Getting Things Done). I guarantee that you won't regret buying it, in fact if you do I'll buy it off you for $10.

    Andrew.
  • i finally put a real url to my site that let's you search all the three major (at least in my mind) search engines and vote on the one that returns the best results. it is a bit slow at times, but give it a try (i am interested in the results).
    http://www.searchall3.com
  • mujibur
    Just because you're one of Mossberg's favorite blogger doesn't mean you belong in the same sentence as him. His contributions to the world of technology far outweigh your own.

    And I have to differ with Coulter on this -- Mossberg is one of the few journalists who actually gets it and is critical of products, no matter who they come from. He has bashed Apple and Microsoft products alike.

    Scoble is a paid schill no matter what he says.
  • Hey Scoble,

    I know everyone is now asking for a plug, I just think it would be cool to talk to entrepreneurs. As a late stage VC, I think I may have something to offer that a few of the earlier stage guys don't. I also respond to every email I receive, so that's a bonus.

    I'd love to hear from entrepreneurs who are looking for growth stage capital and even be a resource for you to refer people to.
  • Christopher Coulter
    Christopher: what I saw today has a business case.

    Wait let me guess, Ad Sponsored Ray Ozzia like moniterizations. I'd roll my eys, but that would be redundant.

    And there are roughly 150+ Flickr copycats with just as much "passion" yet they languish, including Vizrea, which seems a Microsoft website non grata. You might recall the names, Mike Toutonghi, Brad Silverberg, Brad Chase, and Brad Schick. Wouldn't that be a hoot? Tag Silverberg on Channel 9.

    As for returning Cingular aircard and buying a Verizon, your "passionate" friends where just competent. When you buy a junky Yugo and upgrade to a Oldsmobile, it's not so much that people are "passionate" about Oldsmobile, it's that you made a blunder of a choice and are the odd man out. If I buy a Palm III, and then decide to go Treo, should I say cause it's on account of the "passion of the Treoites"? You could spin it that way, but it's really just me being stupid and correcting my mistake.
  • Here is something that I'm excited about:

    http://www.squeet.com

    It's simply the best way to get RSS feeds delivered to your InBox. No waste of bandwidth and the power and benefits of email. What could be better? In fact, you can subscribe to Scoble's blog using this link:

    http://www.squeet.com/?FeedUrl=http://scobleize...

    And it's 100% free. Enjoy.
  • I was just getting ready to send you an email but then read this post :)

    I'm really excited about my new website http://www.ctxbay.com. It enables bloggers to monetize their blogs with contextual ads from eBay. Given the fact that eBay gives 40-70% of their cut to affiliates I believe you can earn more with ctxbay ads then with Google's AdSense.
    The site is in public beta. You can see example of ads on my blog http://www.ctxbay.net
  • Feedlinx - http://www.feedlinx.com - Tracks "read" posts across email and feed readers on multiple machines. It also allows publishers to provide an easy email or feed subscription mechanism for readers.

    I've become extremely passionate about RSS and its power to address information distribution issues. My passion has often bordered on obsession -- and that's why I'm writing this at three in the morning. This isn't a bubble, it's a spike, and the energy is palpable.

    My latest project fixes an issue that I've had for some time. I like client-based feed readers. I use Thunderbird at home for email and feeds, and I use SharpReader in the office for feeds. Before Feedlinx, I would read my web feeds in the morning at home, and then the exact same posts would be downloaded to my feed reader at work. It took too long to figure out which posts I'd seen before. Feedlinx tracks the "read" status of my posts and keeps me in sync at home and at work. It can even email me my posts, and I actually like that method for the feeds that I monitor closely (like Rob's).

    I'm extremely excited about this service. Check out http://www.feedlinx.com right now!
  • Um...Robert, your JOB is to write about other people's ideas and work, and promote them over any possible competitor's. If you were feeling superior to Chris for some reason, you may want to dial that back, since you're the other side of the same coin.
  • (Warning: shameless self-promotion follows, but you did say that anyone excited about their product should post!)

    I've worked 7 years making a software product that has a tiny market, and Guy Kawasaki recently wrote that two of the top ten lies of entrepreneurs are "no one is doing what we're doing" and "no one can do what we're doing." I posted a comment then that this is not always correct.
    http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/01/the_top_ten...

    If you want to visualize a drug molecule approaching its binding site or watch the self-assembly and evolution of rationally-designed nanomaterials, there are very few choices of technique. I have one. You can see a glimpse here: www.complexfluidsimulations.com. (You can see I have not spent much of the last 7 years designing web sites. It sucks. But what it says is true.)

    I have 2 competitors in the world. And a market of 1 trillion dollars in 2015. And, no, that estimate isn't from Gartner, its from Science 311:622, 3 February 2006.

    If you want to learn more, send me an email on the site.
  • The danger then is that everyone will start plugging their sites in your comments which will lower the overall quality of the comments section plus there could be so many posted that you would only take notice of the first few anyway. Someone should start a hosted link plugging/management service for bloggers.. with ajax! ;)
  • Ben
    Hey I'm hugely excited about a new site me and a friend have launched: http://www.surlygamers.com. Sounds silly, but we've been talking about doing it for ages and have finally got our stuff together, bought some hosting, and got it off the ground. It's just two guys talking about gaming, but we talk so much about our love/hate relationships with computer games that we figured why not let the world know :)

    It's not a Digg or Technorati or Flickr, but hey, someones gotta ride the long tail :D
  • Christopher: what I saw today has a business case.

    mujibur: if I don't belong, you might want to read Mossberg. He wrote that I'm one of his favorite bloggers. Doesn't that just chap your hide?

    Handy Commenter to English Dictionary Translation: Whatever Christopher Coulter writes is gonna be negative, snarky, and will match his worldview. He never will put out an original idea of his own, just tears down other people's ideas. In other words, he'd be a great blogger but refuses to give into the dark side.
  • Christopher Coulter
    Handy Blogger to English Dictionary Translation:
    Passion = Irrational Exuberance

    If not wetting your pants over something, thinking some social-software or browser plug-in will be world-changing, then you don't rate. To talk to bloggers, drink 4 cans of Red Bull beforehand, then you will be electrical enough to satisfy. Avoid any mention of the killing words "business case" and never under any circumstances mention "niche markets".

    PS - Walt Mossberg and Steve Levy don't belong 'making sentences' at all. Hired-hand Marketers posing as Tech Journalists, rewriting Press Releases and piffling out glowing feature-stories. Just like Wilcox and Gartenberg are Microsoft-rent-a-quote "analysts" so too are Mossberg and Levy "journalists".

    You have to know, thoroughly understand and be able to decipher the Scoble lexicon. It's all clear after you run it through a few translations.
  • mujibur
    you don't belong in the same sentence with walt mossberg and steve levy.
  • Robert: I don't think so. And, anyway, I'd rather have an "hey, look at me" post than a "hey, look at me" email. Posts scale, email doesn't.
  • I'm guilty of using email instead of commenting, I guess, but it seems odd to just comment on your blog unless it is relevant to your actual post.

    You have stated in several posts that you prefer comments, but comments that just say "hey, look at me" are just comment-spam, right?
  • pt
    i'm really happy with our new site design on make http://www.makezine.com and http://www.makezine.com/blog we also rolled out an updated MAKEbot (add makebot on aim). he does "alerts/pings" and a lot more. lastly, our volume 05 is shipping and it really turned out great. sorry i missed you book party, i needed to go to dc for a quick trip.
blog comments powered by Disqus