This morning’s TechCrunch post and last Friday’s Startup Crawl heralds the public announcement of my new startup – Plato’s Forms.
I’ve been working with Darryl Siry (former CMO Tesla Motors) on this project since Spring, with us producing a demo for investors' [...]
Yahoo! have been mopping up the PR fallout from the stripper show that occurred during the Yahoo! Taiwan 2009 Hack Day (if you missed the story, check out Violet Blue or Simon Willion’s posts).
Well, the plot thickens as the most damning photos of the event have mysteriously [...]
Metric-orientated user acquisition is definitely the hot topic of the moment here in the Valley (along with “frictionless customer conversion” as my rad friend Ethan Bloch of Flowtown would say)
But as we optimize funneleing and conversion for user acquisition within [...]
Google’s GMail blog has some “handy” advice on how pick a good password to project your email account.
Don’t use dictionary words, use mixed case, your eldest kid’s name is a bad choice, etc etc. Yeah that’s great.
But the much bigger security issue I fear is that my GMail username [...]
I don’t subscribe to the “everything muse be free” meme that basically ignores the intrinsic value a product or service gives you. If a product or service provides me with a real value then I am happy to pay for it – either through purchase/subscription or from being monetized via [...]
Like many of its counterparts, the BBC News Website maintains two distinct versions of it’s front page – a ‘domestic’ orientated front page and an ‘international front page. The domestic front page contains a mixture of British and world-news orientated stories, whereas the international front page only includes British [...]
Much hyped Wolfram|Alpha is due to launch later tonight (or later) but I managed to ’sneak in via the back-door’… essentially query the site directly by circumventing the holding page.
Here’s a test query to start you off and get you in there: [www.wolframalpha.com]
So far I’m impressed with [...]
Here at SxSW we’ve just launched a glimpse into some future product direction we’re working on at Seesmic. During the Facebook panel, we announced Seesmic for Facebook.
Seesmic for Facebook lets you keep track of your friend’s Facebook status and easily update [...]
Can’t believe this hasn’t been picked up by the major blogs yet, but I’m seeing a lot of friends having their twitter account compromised with this unauthorized tweet:
hey! 23/Female. Come chat with me on my webcam thingy here www.chatweb*********.com
(redacted by me).
A quick search on Twitter Search shows this is [...]
A couple of thoughts on today’s news that Jason Calacanis employed John Schiefer, at Mahalo (or more accurately, that he didn’t fire him when he found out about his past). For those who don’t know, before he worked at Mahalo Schiefer got caught up in creating a [...]
It’s been interesting to read many people describe the recent Facebook announcements (including today’s) as “Facebook opening up”. While it is true, they are – and should be congratulated for it – there are greater reasons for them doing so than just for ‘pure alteruism’ as some people have [...]
The Pirate Bay trial has just started over in Stockholm, Sweden. It’s arguably one of the most important copyright and media consumption related court cases of recent times, but sadly (yet unsurprisingly) it is being held in Swedish.
Never the less, @Sofia is live tweeting in English the sentient points [...]
Just a quick note to say that Twhirl 0.9 was released this afternoon. Yes, sorry for the self-promotional plug (I’m an advisor to the product and am involved with it’s product development) but we’re really excited about the features in this release – persistent search, [...]
Anyone who follows me on Seesmic will know that I have been experimenting with a Dell Mini 9 Netbook running OS X. And I have to say it has been simply AMAZING.
I ended up choosing the Dell Mini 9 as it appears to be the only Netbook whose chipset [...]
An on-going beef Michael Arrington has with me is that I am often “hostile” towards TechCrunch. (his words)
For my part, I feel I am not so much ‘hostile’ towards TechCrunch but more ‘holding to account’ of it’s activities. With my media background I find myself doing that with all [...]
Last week we launched a totally new version of the Seesmic website – with a much improved interface on the front end that builds upon 2008’s rewrite of the back-end. The new has version got some great reviews and I know the whole team [...]
I think it’s a very interesting and exciting move for Flickr to partner up with Getty Images to provide a stock photography avenue for it’s members.
However, according to the Getty Images FAQ participation in the Getty Images stock program requires you to move your Creative Commons licensed images [...]
The BBC News Website has been trialing Apture for a few a weeks now - it’s been great to see one of my new projects find its way onto on of my old but significant projects.
The Beeb’s has been trialing Apture [...]
I have two submissions to SxSW 2009 and would be delighted if you would consider voting for them please:
> Taking Platforms to the Next Level
Companies are finally realizing that in order to find market success they must build their products as platforms [...]
Presdo, the online scheduling start-up, has is running a mashup competition around their API. Build something cool with it, win an iPhone 3G.
Sounds pretty good to me, so I was delighted to accept Presdo founder Eric Ly’s request to be a judge [...]
“Wow, that’s really really slick!”
That was my reaction when Tristan first showed me a demo of Apture (which just opened for signups, if you want to add it to your blog or website).
We’d met a few times previously and he’d been teasing with hints about the product [...]
UPDATE 08/08/08: I have submitted a panel for SxSW 2009 on this subject. If you enjoyed reading this post please consider voting for my panel! Thanks!
Loren Feldman may be hanging up the Shel Israel puppet but sadly we’re still a [...]
As you will know, I’ve been working with MySpace for a number of months on a number of initiatives to help them evolve into a far more open platform.
Following on from the launch of the developer platform and REST APIs, I’m really excited to announce that MySpace has joined the [...]
If you’re in LA cos you reside here, or down for the TechCrunch/PopSugar party tonight, you should definitely come out for the first Data Portability Meetup in LA:
Data Portability LA MeetupApril 11, 2008 7pm – 10pm
Blank Spaces,
5405 Wilshire Blvd,
Los Angeles,
California 90036
Just a quick note to say that the MySpace Developer Platform, which went live to developers last month, is now live to ‘regular’ users too.
That means anyone can add an app to their MySpace profile or homepage.
Congrats to everyone in the team who’ve worked some looooooong hours to [...]
While I’m writing about new site launches, I also want to mention LearnHub, which went live to the public last week.
Last year, our good friends John and Malgosia Green returned from San Francisco to their native Toronto, Canada to realize their dream of establishing a social learning network.
What’s that, [...]
Congratulations to Peter Nixey and Immad Akhund - two friends and fellow Brits - who’ve just publicly launched their Y-Combinator backed startup ClickPass (TechCrunch coverage here).
Sofia and I have been following their progress for some month, including sneak peeks and early uses of the product. And I have [...]
During last week’s ETech Conference, I attended Lawrence Lessig’s talk on his new project ‘Change Congress‘. TorrentFreak picked up a key point Lessig made during the Q&A that proceeded the presentation.
“At a preview of his new Change Congress project at the ETech conference, the Creative Commons founder [...]
(disclosure: I work with MySpace on their platform)
Having just launched the MySpace Developer Platform, including support for OpenSocial, MySpace are holding the first of their MySpace devJam events next week: Saturday March 1st at MySpace San Francisco (upcoming).
devJams are MySpace’s take on [...]
You’d have to be under a pretty big rock not to have heard about the layoffs at Yahoo! today. Many people, from an Integrated Campaign Strategy Manager through to popular blogger Susan Mernit were ‘impacted’, as the internal memo was apparently worded. Even Brickhouse lost its head.
On [...]
Disclosure: I advise MySpace with the creation and execution of the developer platform
So, after months of work by an amazing + passionate team (and I genuinely mean that) the MySpace Developer Platform is very close to being launched - in fact it will go live on 5th Feb.
You can go [...]
Last week was one of the roughest I’ve experienced in my entire adult life.
At the start of the week I became poisoned and had a severe allergic reaction to what we believe were gasses emanating from a new memory foam mattress Sofia and I purchased a few days prior. [...]
(Ben Metcalfe is a founding member of the DataPortability Workgroup - which promotes and encourages the implementation of open-standards and open-access to data using technologies such a OpenID, OAuth, Microformats, APML and more)
Over at DataPortability.org, we’ve been sitting on some BIG news for the [...]
Bit of an off-topic one link for today, but I wanted to highlight “The Airport Security Follies”, a great blog post by Patrick Smith over on the New York Times blog site.
As a frequent flier I probably find myself subjected to airport security once or twice a week. Patrick [...]
(For those who don’t know me, I’m a British Internet professional who moved out to San Francisco 18 months ago to work with startups and industry-leading companies out there. I currently provide consultancy to Seesmic [more on TC] and MySpace. Before that I worked for the BBC [...]
It’s with great sadness that I have just learned that Marc Orchant, who was critically ill after a heart attack, has died.
My sincere condolences to Marc’s family and friends.
I only had the pleasure of meeting Marc a few times, the last being at Defrag Conference last month. But I [...]
I’m pleased to announce I’m advising and working with super-cool video start-up Seesmic! (that’s in addition to working with MySpace too)
Seesmic, for those who don’t know, is a video conversation site - somewhat reminiscent to Twitter. However, there is a lot more to it, much of which [...]
Given that I helped establish (probably) the first developer mash-up competition run by a media organization and also my recent foray into the world of widgets, I was particularly interested to read that UK broadcaster Channel 4 is dipping its toe into the water by running a similar [...]
UPDATE 12/09/2007: With great sadness I have just learned that Marc died in hospital today. Plz see my new post.
I just discovered via Robert that my industry friend Marc Orchant suffered a heart attack over the weekend and is critically ill in hospital.
Marc edits the US edition [...]
(disclosure: I am currently helping MySpace - a Facebook competitor - with their platform strategy)
Around this time last year Facebook released a feature on profile pages called “News Feeds”, which allowed a user to see all of the updates and interactions their friends were doing with the site.
Esteemed industry observers [...]
When I moved to San Francisco, just over a year ago, I came with three intentions:
Ive already been working API stuff with Orange Labs, but with the two announcements [...]
In the big Microsoft/Facebook debate on Techeme, one fundamental point seems to have been largely overlooked:
At the end of the day Microsoft paid $240m to beat Google for the exclusive advertising contract to supply to non-US advertising on Facebook. Microsoft doesn’t care how much of Facebook it got for it’s [...]
I’m pleased to announce that the NewsGator family of products are going to support APML!
More on Read/WriteWeb. Welcome NewsGator to the workgroup!
This week is shaping up to be the highlight of the San Francisco conference calendar. It’s not worth going paying to go to all those gatherings and so many of us end up LobbyConning instead.
I was interviewed for a piece published in tomorrow’s San Francisco Chronical on the very [...]
So, Firefox is to develop a mobile version of it’s browser…
No one seems to be pointing out that Google practically ‘owns’ the development of Firefox (the browser’s lead engineer and most of the other full-time devs are Google staff) - and so it doesn’t seem unreasonable to assume [...]
Did Google buy Jaiku for it’s engineering talent rather than for the product? I’m betting the engineering team is going to be siphoned off into the GPhone project.
Firstly, Google just bought themselves a bunch of highly experienced engineers, including Jaiku co-founder Jyri Engestrm who [...]
When it launches tomorrow, the Radiohead price experiment is going to be very interesting to analyze.
(Background: Users pay what they like for the new Radiohead album, from Free - 100. See the BBC News article)
Having pushed for so long for digital distribution methods that afford us our full [...]
Hot on the tails of my in-depth post addressing Tom Morris’ issues with APML, I’ve been meaning to ‘back up’ and write a higher level “introduction to APML”.
Well Marjolein Hoekstra has written a superb introduction to APML and I guess done the hard work for me. 
[...]
It’s all too-easy to confuse yourself and think that TechMeme’s latest feature is a top 100 list of authoritative blogs, based on the number of citations they receive per month on the venerable meme tracker. Even Michael Arrington announces it as:
“…tomorrow bloggers will have a new top 100 [...]
(Disclosure: I am a member of the non-profit APML Workgroup, which facilitates the development of the APML specification)
It’s been great to see the momentum and interest build around APML Attention Profile Markup Language (if you don’t know what it is, check out the wiki).
Tom Morris [...]
(Disclosure: I provide consultancy to Orange France Telecom)
Orange has announced the Digital ID World that its 40 million customers that use it’s services in France now have an OpenID! UPDATE: I’ve been informed they have the option to easily create an OpenID [...]
MacWorld 2007 is happening between January 14-18 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.
I just thought I’d share this Priority Code I received for a free Exhibit Hall Pass (usually $45):
“Limited Offer: FREE* Exhibit Hall Pass
Register for the Exhibit Hall pass by Friday, [...]
Whilst I’m living the life of an Apple fanboy convert - just to see if it’s as good as it’s made out to be - I thought I’d buy myself an iPod Touch to compliment my experiences so far with my MacBook.
Word on the street was that Apple [...]
Not sure if this is/was going to be tomorrow’s big TechCrunch announcement, but it looks like TechCrunch is relaunching it’s UK presence tomorrow (Tuesday).
UPDATE: Looks like it *quietly* went live last week…
I was alerted to the fact something was going down [...]
There’s no denying it - Apple is trying to go mainstream (well mainstream into the rest of the world outside of San Francisco!).
If you look at them closely, those price cuts earlier this week are the fruit of a volume-sales strategy. The now $399 iPhone being the obvious kicker but [...]
Dave Winer has a good observation:
“Scoble wants an SDK so developers can create cool iPhone apps. Of course I do too. But I doubt it’s going to happen anytime soon. Look at all the deals they can do if they don’t. Starbucks wouldn’t need them if there was an [...]
I am available for hire as a freelance Innovation and Technical Product Development Professional. I’m always interested in discussing potential opportunities with new, dynamic and interesting companies - so I thought I’d lay out here more about what I do and how I might be of service…
What do you do?I [...]
Seedcamp, the European take on the whole Y-Combinator experience (money + incubator support) kicked off today in London.
As a Brit myself, I’m immensely pleased that a support network for European start-ups is finally coming together.
In my mind, the start-up panel during Future of Web Apps conference [...]
A personally poignant piece by Seth Goding on the meaning of ‘hard work’ in today’s economy.
He writes:
“…Richard Branson doesn’t work more hours than you do. Neither does Steve Ballmer or Carly Fiorina. Robyn Waters, the woman who revolutionized what Target sells — and helped the company trounce Kmart — [...]
Greg Stein was mugged and seriously injured outside his Mountain View home last Friday evening.
A cowardly and vicious act was made even more despicable by the fact that Greg was already on crutches from a climbing accident, and as such was unable to fend for himself.
For those who don’t [...]
Wow, Jonathan Schwartz proves he’s good at navel gazing.
But you can’t paper over all the cracks…
I know that sounds audacious, but wherever I travel in the world, I’m reminded of just how broad the opportunity has become, and how pervasively the technology and brand have been deployed. Java truly [...]
I’m pleased to announce that I will be speaking on a panel at the forthcoming Office 2.0 Conference, which is taking place in San Francisco on Thur 6th and Fri 7th of September 2007.
I shall be a panellist on “Feeds and API’s in the Enterprise 2.0″.
I’m looking forward to [...]
Having blamed Microsoft windows updates for the collapse of the Skype network, the beleaguered p2p VoIP company has spun another yarn now ‘clarifying’ that it’s not really Microsoft’s fault after all.
Their second explanatory post contains more hot air than a dodgy datacenter with a broken air conditioner.
I would [...]
I’m late to the party, but there’s been a bit of a buzz going around about what conference are worth attending in the industry calendar.
It all started with Alex Iskold’s post on Adaptive Blue’s blog, suggesting which conferences offer the best sponsorship opportunities for your fledgling startup (a good [...]
Stowe Boyd highlights the importance for consultants to have a good ‘corporate shell’ or ‘corporate façade’ for their work.
(Stowe parted company with Blue Whale Labs some months ago, and is now consulting (and blogging) under the wonderfully titled ‘Brannan Street Irregulars’. Apparently a lot of people still [...]
I really liked the article “Give ‘em Something to Talk About” on Fast Company.
It looks at Cluetrainy approaches to creating conversation in real-world products and gives a couple of interesting real-world case study examples.
In particular I like the inclusion of Hilton’s Doubletree family of hotels (I haven’t [...]
The reason why the iPhone is an important phone is not because of its shiny gadgetness or its touch interface. It’s not even important because it’s the first serious media player to be combined with a phone.
It’s important because of its web-based approach to application development. I believe this approach [...]
Congrats to Bret Taylor and his friend Jim Norris who have taken up Entrepreneurs in Residence positions at Benchmark Capital.
The position allows them to work on their start-up idea and immediately start receiving support and resource from Benchmark. It’s a pretty sweet opportunity, but they both deserve it.
Bret and [...]
Looks like Semel is (finally) out at Yahoo!. Little birds tell me that Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang has taken over as CEO.
Interesting. I was at Yahoo! & BBC HackDay UK yesterday and David Filo (the other Yahoo! co-founder) seemed rather preoccupied with other matters. My HackDay post [...]
If you visit Orange UK’s HQ in Paddington from international office then your laptop won’t connect to Orange UK’s corporate WiFi network.
The official advice is to use the public wifi hotspot they operate in the building at €20/day and connect via VPN.
Welcome to Big-Corp Thinking.
I’m just about to get on my flight to London… I’m mainly going to attend Yahoo/BBC HackDayUK but do give me a shout if anyone wants to meet up.
I also hear Jason Calacanis is in town - we’ve never met so maybe there’s a possibility there too?
Anyway best [...]
I’ve got 101 Spock invites to give away. Spock is the people search site that Tim O’Reilly is “really excited about”. It is currently in private beta.
Comment me below if you want one and I’ll sort you out. I’ll send it to the email address to include in [...]
Just a quick ping to say that my GMail has been down for about 3 hrs now - it doesn’t look like I’m the only one.
Anyway if you’ve sent me a msg please hang on whilst I wait for Google to get things back up and running. My GTalk [...]
If Apple have decided to announce the new upgrades to the MacBookPro line up a week before the WWDC then one can only presume that Steve must have something really big for his keynote.
Apple announced mostly ho-hum upgrades to the range, so maybe not Job Key-Note worthy on first [...]
I’m at Google’s Developer Day in San Jose. Looks like it’s going to be a great event - just finished the key note which concluded with an appearence by Sergey.
Google are announcing a number of things today (well they’ve announced them already because [...]
Just wanted to let my London peeps know that I’ll be back in Blighty for Yahoo! HackDayUK.
My exact dates are June 14th - 20th, with the weekend (16 & 17) blocked out for the event.
It’s my first ‘official’ visit home since moving to San Francisco. I was back in [...]
Tickets are now available for a limited time, get ‘em now!
The inaugural NewTeeVee and Metacafe Pier Screenings is only one week away, next Thursday, May 24 in San Francisco. We have a very limited number of spots available, so please [...]
I know that Michael (Arrington) wasn’t happy with my strong criticism of the appointment of MC Hammer to the board of judges for TechCrunch20 Conference. I think he felt I was being very harsh about it all.
Well, Michael has just announced that he’s now got Google’s Marissa [...]
Bobbie Johnson wrote an interesting article in yesterday’s Guardian about the continued stifling of innovation and general staff frustration within BBC Future Media (the department of the BBC that works with Internet and emerging media). This was also picked up by PaidContent too.
The state of affairs that Bobbie’s [...]
UPDATE: This vulnerability has now been fixed by Eoghan, the site’s web developer. Thanks guys for sorting this quickly.
There’s a lot of buzz right now about Yak4Ever.com, a new site from Pat Phelan of Roam4Free.ie.
It seems like a nice idea, however [...]
I know the guy is launching some ’stealth startup’ (according to TechCrunch20 blog), but why on earth has MC Hammer been invited to be a judge for TechCrunch20?
BTW I can tell you what Hammer’s ’stealth startup’ - DanceJam - is all about. It’s apparently a YouTube meets American [...]
When Upcoming formally became an official Yahoo! property two weeks ago, the user experience turned really sucky for me.
I was being recommended events that were of no interest to me, and more importantly I was missing important events that my friends were going to.
Despite [...]
