Sunday Papers
Weeks go by where I don’t pick up the paper. We get both The Post and The Times at home and we get both the Journal and The Times at the office. But I can’t be bothered. My news is coming at me all day long and prefer to get it on my phone and laptop than in paper form.
But I’ve been travelling today. From Naples Maine to Amagansett New York. You do that by driving, flying, and then taking a bus. I am on the bus portion, happily connected to mobile broadband.
I read the Times and The Journal today. Here are some stories I found interesting.
Happy Blogiversary – WSJ – Blogs are ten years old this week according to the WSJ. So they celebrated by getting 12 people to tell us what they make of blogs. First of all I am shocked that Dick Costolo didn’t mention this blog as one of his three favorties. I guess now that he’s at Google, he doesn’t have to pretend to like this blog anymore! Second, I think Tom Wolfe’s section was written tongue in cheek. He can’t be that much of a luddite. It’s an entertaining read and I had no idea that Mia Farrow is a blogger. I’ll have to check that one out.
A Patent’s Worth Having, Not! – NYT – Ok, I bastardized the headline. But not the point of the column by Michael Fitzgerald in the Sunday business section. He covers some research that shows that patents are a huge waste of money and are stifling innovation. All you need to do is listen to most of the people working on software and Internet technology and they’ll tell you the same thing. Patents are absurd. But you know I felt that way a while ago. I think patents are like nuclear bombs, if others have them you have to have them as well. Fortunately we can eliminate patents. Unfortunately we cannot eliminate nuclear bombs.
The Boat Is About To Rock In Internet Video – NYT- This is Brad Stone’s piece on Veoh’s new software for watching web video. First, I like the sound of Dmitry. He’s a nimble russian technologist/entrepreneur. I’ve made money with guys like him before. Veoh came in as an also ran in the web video sweepstakes. We all know that YouTube won that one going away. But instead of giving up, they’ve copied Joost and build a client side app that acts as a set-top box style interface to video. But, and this is a big but, instead of going and asking permission from the content ownes like Joost is doing, Veoh is just pulling all the stuff that’s already on the web. That’s the way to do it. Nobody wants a closed system anymore other than the content owners. Open wins, closed fails. My only beef is with Todd Dagres’s quote (Todd is a friend who sits on Veoh’s board). Todd says:
“We are going to try to be friendly to content owners,” said Todd
Dagres, a partner at Spark Capital who serves on the Veoh board. “We
are going to try to be the white-hat company.”
Not exactly Todd. Joost is the while hat company. That’s why Veoh is going to win and they are going to lose.
Sushi For Two – NYT- If you love sushi, read this. I’ve gotten to the point that I don’t want to eat sushi anywhere other than the bar talking to the chef.