Marc's Voice

AIM Auth

So we’re starting to do some more work for AOL - this timre utilizing their new AIM APIs.

We’re gonna bake it into PeopleAggregator and come up with some coolio Whimsicals (as they call Widgets.)  So I’ve been diving deep into these APIs.  Here’s some demos of WIM.

MY gutt told me one thing immediately:

- now that Yahoo has BB Auth, AOL needs to have AIM Auth

- just like Yahoo will enable us to enable our end-users to use their Yahoo ID as a log-in

- I think AOL should enable end-users to use their AIM screenname - for the same thing

- we’ll support both in our Identity Hub strategy

It’s Ted Leonsis’ ‘Magic Carpet’ finally come to life.

Lots of folks are focused on this stuff - and this is a great opportunity for AOL to join the party!

So shoutout to Stephen Benedict:

YOU DUDE - lets get AIM Auth happening!

Blockhead mentality

So I’m sitting in the Dublin airport, trying to figure out what to blog about, when I realized I could go and watch the latest episode of Heroes.

So I go to NBC.com and get this:

Fucking idiots.  Why would then NOT want me to watch this show (which is one of the hottest new shows around.)  This reminds me that I have to go and remove all that NBC direct download bullshit they put onto my machine.

This sort of “one step forward, two steps back” attitude - is going to keep these people in the cellar.  I wonder what the new ‘digital czar’ Quincy - thinks of this?

Salim says he believes in iterating in public - and I buy that

Salim is pretty smart.  He’s presenting now at IT@Cork - and is explaining why he got Confabb up and running first and then plans to iterate.

There are a few comments on my earlier post - suggesting features to Salim and team.  He’s also put up a ‘Coming soon….’ page.  Those are all good things.

But if he leaves Confabb as is - then I’ll be pissed at him - again.

Trying to avoid BitTorrent

I just hate the idea of having my bandwidth chewed up and particiapting in one of those p2p conspiracies.  Yes - I understand that it’s a people’s distribution network, but it is illegal afterall.

Now I’m not here to debate DRM policy, copyright fair use or the next big video codec or CDN - but I have been trying to find my favorite TV shows on-line - legally.  I remember noticing when ABC announced that they’d make their primetime programming available through download and I’ve been getting into a few of the new shows - so I thought I’d take an informal survey of what’s out there right now.

CBS - this is where I can find ALL the episodes of Jericho. hat rocks.  Lots of other stuff too.

NBC - at first glance, seems like they have a pretty nice UI and way of slicing up episodes into parts. But wait!  Where are the back episodes?  I missed the opening episodes of Heroes - where can I see them?  They’re not on NBC.com.  What’s up wit dat? 

NBC also tantalizes us with offers of downloads - but after you’ve installed their onerous spyware - all you get is eh same stuff you can get streaming.

I wonder if Quincy Smith, the new head of NBC digital will change all this?

ABC - is by far the leading proponent of full VOD on-demand mainstream TV programming.  Not only do they sell all their suff via iTunes, but hey’re also giving us free versions - just as long as we sit through the TV commercials (which seems pretty fair to me.)

FOX - is he biggest disappointment.  They don’t have any shows on-demand at all!  Oh well!

COMCAST - we have COMCAST cable out here in Walnut Creek, and we’ve been enjoying the VOD on-demand capabilities that went live this fall.  We can now safely NOT record shows like Dexter, the Wire or the Sopranos - cause we know they’ll show up on On-Demand.  What’s fristrating is NOT finding the shows we want to see - like Heroes, the Unit,

Anyway - the world is getting to be a better place and once Home Media Centers, Meedio or otehr platforms become teh norm - and we have consoles like the XBox360 and PS3, I think we can look forward to a world which integrates mainstream content, DLAs, our living room, mobile devices - and hey - maybe even our cars.

So in conclusion - I sure wish NBC would show us ALL the episodes of Heroes - and what’s going on with Fox?  I thought they cut a revenue sharing deal with all their affiliates?  Why not share some of that ‘content wealth?’  Oh yah - all their shows suck right now, so it doesn’t matter!

Cork links

Salim defends himself and gets into horse backing riding speeds.  There are a few good suggestions posted as comments on my post - that hopefully Salim will pay attention to.

Want an idea of what Google is really like? Read this from a JotSpot partner - and how they were treated after the JotSpot merger.  I wonder if Joe Kraus cares?

I officially disagree with this list.  Lias Rien, Kim Polese, Mary Hodder, Liz Lawley - there are LOTS of hot Girl Geeks!

Another founder gets kicked out - this time its Bram Cohen.

Creative Commons birthday party - Dec. 15th

Good luck to Marshall Kirkpatrick.

pk predicts that Wal-Mart and Amazon will merge

BarCamp Delhi

Falco doesn’t use email?

Congrats to Eric Shonfeld!

My condolences to the UK music business in their failure to extend copyright from 50 to 95 years.  That means the Beatles will be in the public domain starting in 2012.

Rajesh Jain’s 15 journey as an entreprenuer.

Drupal 5.0 is out.  Now all those forked Drupal apps can be updated, and all those professional projects can stop and all that code can be refactored and brought up to speed.  Right?

A former religion of mine.  If you don’t know who Bob is - click here. The former Cardinal of Boston is now working with us.

New bebo features, Trusted Zoomf Places, Wayn, Pagebull,

Fred Wilson’s daughter picks a winner and makes money with her Bat Mitzvah money.

Dan Farber has something on Teqlo - Jeff Nolan is here and just gave his presentation in Cork.

John Battelle and Brewster Kahle - have another insight into the nightmare known as Google.

Erik Schwartz likes hotel long halls.

Seth Godin’s unforgiveable manifesto

More on the relaunch of Boo

On the road again

So I’m here in Cork, Ireland - and then I head to Milan, then India, then Paris, and finally London.

I actually get a lot of work done while I’m on the road.  We did a conf call with everyone today - spanning around the world (Germany, Italy, India, New Zealand, SF and Ireland.)  Unfortunately I had to do it from the lobby of the hotel - as there is no Internet access in my room.  Running a virtual company means that it simply doesn’t matter where I am - as the work continues 24/7.

Being away from my family gives me the extra time to do work that I could never get done at home - with the phone ringing, daughters jumping on my lap and all the meetings and parties I go to in the Bay Area.

But its sitting in a hotel room alone - that the best work perculates.  I can review and deeply dive into any subject, I can write up new ideas, I can pace and utilize techniques to visualize and emulate - while comparing and cross-referencing to both the past and present.

All of my best ideas and product ideas have been born in some hotel room - somewhere. I scribble down notes on hotel stationary, go down to the hotel resturant and often - review notes while on a plane.  All in all - I realize that this is one reason I love to travel.

To get work done.

Stormhoek wine doubled its sales in 12 months

Hugh MacLeod is telling a story of how one of his clients - Stormhoek Winery - doubled its sales in 12 months by giving away wine to bloggers.

Hugh and I are appearing at the same two different conference - over the next two weeks.

Did you know that Hugh is the leading blogger in the U.K. ?  He’s going on a pub crawl with Scoble and Maryam later on today.

Hugh called me an original thinker.  He says that uprtight people should not blog or read blogs.

Finally figured out why I dislike Confabb

I have every reason in the world to like Confabb.  Its founded by two friends of mine, its partially funded by a freind of mine and its about a topic which I hold dear to my heart - conferences.

So it is with a critical eye that I judge and use Confabb.

So I feel like i have the right to criticize it:

- I just spent :30 minutes playing with it

- I’m a speaker at two upcoming conferences listed in the service

- and it’s not that I encountered numerous bugs or problems - that’s to be expected.

But its the initial premise that just turns me off.  So here’s how the logic goes:

- as far as I can tell - the purpose of the site is for people to come and find conferences - fair enough. Google and Technorati do a shitty job of that.

- as far as me as a spekaer is concerned, I’m supposed to go and register and fill in the standard set of social network info (see IMPORT as a missing feature) and then claim which speeches I’m giving at which conferences.

- I did that.

- and that’s it.

- then I get rated.

- what’s wrong with this picture?  Why would I spend all that time just to get rated?  Now I can see if some scrub newbie, never been around the block, hired Citizem Agency, hired a PR firm, hired a publicist, spending my VC money, tryuing to get a break, trying like hell to get noticed - would want this service - but not me.  Why would I waste my time on this?

- this software falls into the “get up as little up as possible, run ads on it, spend as little money as possible (hell spend NO money on it - that’ll make it GREAT software!), make sure to use Ruby-on-Rails’ software - which I hate. 

- Why does software have to be shitty and simple? Why can’t it be well crafted, full featured and proivide value to me?

- it’s typical Web 2.0 and signifies all that is wrong in our industry today.

Here’s my crazy notion - THAT SOFTWARE SHOULD PROVIDE SEVERAL REASONS FOR USING IT - not one.

When Reid Hoffman launched LinkedIn - it had limited functionality, but one KNEW he was up to more.  But what guarentees do we have that Confabb will do more?  Where’s the roadmap?

As I said before:

- how can I submit a question to a speaker?

- where are their presentations - uplaoded ahead of time, background links, relative material?

- where is the value added of this software?  Rating speakers - come on!  That’s so dam Web 2.0 -lame!

As I said before - you can do better than that dudes!

Getting ready to fly - Last trip of ‘06 - links

I agree with Dave McClure - Yahoo needs to monetize better.  None of their glamerous, open acquisitions has generated any income to speak of - as DNA insertion doesn’t necessarily mean revenue acquisition.  I also agree with Dave that Yahoo shoujdl atke the $1B they were willing to spend on Facebook and buy 20 >$50M companies - which collectively would generate more income than Facebook could.  Afterall - flow and traffic is not what Yahoo needs - its ways to make money. Otherwise known as ‘monetize’.

Speaking of getting out from inside the English bubble, James Seng has a bit on IDN’s (Internationalized Domain Names.)

Phil is getting into Widgets - in lots of advanced ways.  Guess what feature we’re working on?

One less law suit solved by the VCs cash. I smell a payoff.

I bet Steve Rubel has never met Judith Meskill.  The edge at Weblogs wasn;t from Jason DUDE - it’s from Judith. The boss.  Geting rid of Jason will just give Weblogs more room to breath.

Webjam launches - sounds like PeopleAggregaor - I wonder if they have source code available as well.

Boo is back!  Amazing.

Pete’s right - a MySpace store is what monetization is all about.  Lets get all the  soft porn addicts to buy things for the ‘musical friends’ via a MySpace branded commerce experience.

Too bad I don’t have our location based entertainment operating system we were working on back in 1995-97 - to sell to these guys.

Turkey Day links

I’m speaking next Weds in Cork, Ireland.

Yottamusic, iLikeMusic, LunchMeet, BigBrother, Vibely,

XFN based portable social networks?  Coolio - we support XFN!

dabble interview

Coolio Useability Poster - for only $20!

Berlusconi used Hollywood studios for money laundering - gotta love this for the title alone.

KnowNow and WordPress Partner on RSS/Blogging - good to see KnowNow doing something with that Kleiner, Perkins money.  They had a deal with PubSub, but…….

AOL’s new CEO speaks up - and Rafat Ali fears lameness.  Rafat is right - until we meet this man, we’ll never know what he’s really about.  But they’ve given him a good hacket man - that’s for sure.  “What do either of these guys have ot do with web - anything?  On-line?”

Ashish wants everyone to know about the ‘Manjunath Shanmugam Trust’

LonelyGirl15 may be outed, but she’s also on the cover of Wired magazine.

Make Your Own Netvibes Modules With Dapper

Eric Schmidt on Open Internet Standards.  Which one - like GData?