I didn't have time last week to make a big point about the announcement of Google Gears, an open source software project aimed at enabling online web services (such as Google Reader, an RSS client, and eventually all the other Google Apps) to work offline.
I saw history in the making today.
For some reason, I was lucky enough to be in San Francisco for the Facebook f8 Platform launch event. This announcement was at least an 8.0 on the Richter scale. It was a whopper.
I just noticed that a fairly large selection of quotes from business leaders has been added to the StrategyTree.com wiki. The beauty of a Wiki project is that any individual can add content and make the Wiki grow and become a useful resource.
I want to thank the person(s) who created this section and encourage
others who have collected inspiring quotes from business leaders and
entrepreneurs to add them to this growing collection.
I think LinkedIn.com is one of
the best ways to find angel investors in your area. With 3.5 million
members, including many investors, this is a great service and a great
way to get introduced through a mutual trusted acquaintance.
But in addition to LinkedIn.com, I have found value in owning a copy of
the 1998 Pratt's Guide to Venture Capital Sources, a 600+ page hard
bound book that probably cost about $50. Of course, this edition is
almost useless since it is so out of date. There are probably more
current editions. Vfinance.com sells a current database of venture
firms on CD ROM for $299.
It's much harder to find a directory of angel investors, and since they
are many times more likely than VCs to fund your startup company, it
can be frustrating if you are an entrepreneur looking for potential
angel funding.
Our solution? Let's all work together to create a free open-access
I don't have time to blog today...I'm preparing to fly out for the AlwaysOn Network event at Stanford...but I got this email about a very cool "wisdom of the crowds" concept where a group of 2,500 or so individuals will build and manage a new business by voting on the plan, who to hire, products to create, how to market them, etc. It's really a wild notion. I hope some journalist will pick up on this, interview the creator, watch the creation of this business over time, and write some interesting story about it.
Google announced that it will host personal video content soon, but Ourmedia.org (a non-profit) is already offering free permanent hosting of any personal audio and video content. Check out the Ourmedia.org Alexa chart showing its rapid growth.
When Jeff Bezos introduced Amazon's A9.com search engine's OpenSearch project, he mentioned Koders.com. I checked it out. Koders.com claims to be the leading search engine for open source code. It's Alexa chart shows it is rapidly gaining in popularity. I think this will be a great resource for developers and entrepreneurs.
Once again Google surprised the street with much higher than expected earnings. The stock price has jumped $20 today to more than $210 per share and the market cap is almost $58 billion.
I will not be surprised to see consistent positive earnings surprises coming from Google for many years.
Six Apart which produces the Moveable Type publishing system and TypePad blogging service raised $10 million in venture funds in October. Today it announced the purchase of LiveJournal, a blogging service built on open source that claims 2.5 million users. Together they have 6.5 million blogs, according to TechNewsWorld.com. That seems way high, considering that Pew Research says about 8 million U.S. adults have a blog. (The vast majority of them only post once, however.)
I've never met Brewster Kahle, inventor of WAIS, co-founder of Thinking Machines, founder of Alexa and digital librarian for the Internet Archive. But I've watched his contributions over the years and have admired his Vannevar Bush-like vision. (If you have never read the 1945 Atlantic Monthly article by Vannevar Bush titled "As We May Think", you're missing out on the original "access to all knowledge" brainstorm.)
