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September 2006

The Archives

• 09.28.06
  Crunch time for the Second Brain Team development, start-up | (0)

  You should hear the office right now. It is 4 PM and It is buzzing with life. The deadline is in two hours. Seven people are doing all they can to finish the ALPHA on time. They have all been working 10 -  12 hours everyday the past few weeks. 30 minutes ago - nothing was working. And hour before that, everything worked fine. It's stressful, but at the same time, this is typical of any project - almost like a standard ritual we have to go through in order to get our creative kicks. I know we can do it - ...
• 09.25.06
  Creating a social layer advice, design | (1)

  I just found an outstanding presentation that Tom Coates (who writes plasticbag.org) gave last week at the Future of Web Apps conference at Brad Feld's blog. It explains some of the considerations one needs to make when trying to put sociability into a web applications. Recommended not so much for its details, but for its short and sweet overview of the big issues.
• 09.22.06
  Where will Second Brain be? advice, future | (0)

  Read/WriteWeb has a great analysis of the major social networking sites. They estimate their traffic and present a chart comparing their features. The interesting aspect of this, from a Second Brain perspective, is to test our position of opportunity in this space. Sometimes, when we try to describe ourselves, we use the phrase "a social network for smart people". Second Brain is a place where people can create their own personal library of all thoughts and things. There are no social networking sites in the Read/WriteWeb list, or on the more general Wikipedia list, with this type of position statement. ...
• 09.13.06
  Combining AJAX, Flash and internetness design, development, technology | (1)

  One of the first challenges we faced in Second Brain was how to build an application that have all the rich functionality that we needed, but still had the necessary opacity to support the ideal of internet as an open and connected architecture. We didn't want to compromise on functionality, we wanted to forget about the old page paradigm, and we wanted it to have the look and feel of a desktop application, while still taking advantage of the benefits of the internet platform. Quite a challenge for the architects. The coming RIA wars: A roundup of the Web's new face ...
• 09.11.06
  What it takes - learn from the success factors advice | (0)

  This is a video of “Startup Success,” the Churchill Club’s annual look at what it takes to build a successful startup. This panel of five Silicon Valley entrepreneurs discussed the challenges and critical success factors necessary to reach the promised land. August 17, 2006. Moderator:Guy Kawasaki, Managing Director, Garage Technology Ventures Speakers:Lauren Elliott, Founder, Personal News NetworkReid Hoffman, Co-Founder and CEO, LinkedInJoe Kraus, Co-Founder and CEO, JotSpotDaniel Mattes, Co-Founder and CTO, JajahAlex Welch, Co-Founder and CEO, Photobucket Even and I were actually at the Churchill Club last May listening to several other great VCs. It was a great learning experience.If you don't have ...
• 09.11.06
  Rules of order ideas, thinking | (0)

  On CNET's blog on Web2.0 I read a short piece on structure that made me think about the problem with structure and social interaction. Brian's rules of order: CivicEvolution | News.blog | CNET News.com. CivicEvolution, still in development, is designed for political committees, nonprofits, and small collectives like neighborhood groups and teams. Fundamentally it's a wiki, but unlike most first-generation wikis, it offers a great deal of structure. (This is an important trend in wikis, which I'll be covering more soon.) I think this touches on the relationship between the structure that is necessary to create an automated computer-based system and the freedom ...
• 09.05.06
  The first Second Brain Baby miscellaneous | (0)

  Bergsvein and his wife Irene, had a baby last Friday at 23:30. The boy weighed 3984 grams and was 52 centimeters long - quite big - for being so small;). Still waiting for the pictures though. We wish him and his family all the best, and hope they enjoy the week together. But at the same time, Bergsvein is the technical architect and manager on the team, so we hope it doesn't take too long before he is back at work. We have a deadline you know, baby or not...;)
• 09.04.06
  The Long Tail of start-ups funding, strategy | (0)

  I see one of the more untraditional VCs, Paul Graham of Y Combinator, is talking about how new start ups can get their business going with little VC money. All though he hasn't made any killer investments from his existing portfolio yet, I do think his approach is very appropriate considering how cheap and easy people can start new internet-based companies these days. But the old big-money model is not dead yet. There will always be new ideas that need large scale initial growth, think YouTube.com. And the traditional VC will definitely open their pockets for them. Where I think Mr. ...

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