Tuesday, September 04, 2001

>>>> Shark attack. I recently heard an NPR interview with a couple shark experts. The funniest thing about the interview was the attempt by the experts to redefine "shark attacks" as "shark encounters" because the attack language labelled sharks as "aggressive" which according to the experts they are not. 10:05:31 AM    Comment_ Trackback []

>>>> Marconi is helping the city of Palo Alto install fiber to the curb. I wish Acton would do the same. Most of the town would pay for the service. 9:06:50 AM    Comment_ Trackback []

>>>> Out to sunny CA today. Of course, it is sunny and slightly nippy (5 degrees cooler) in MA right now. Should be a good week. 7:20:16 AM    Comment_ Trackback []

>>>> Nextpage. Content networks whitepaper (PDF). What is missing are apps, which so far has been the curse of P2P as a whole. Without apps, the P2P companies fail to generate a business model -- and sets Microsoft up to turn the sector into a utility by 2003. File sharing just doesn't cut it. 7:13:12 AM    Comment_ Trackback []

>>>> James Hong. Success with am-I-hot-or-not. "We chose to use Rackspace Managed Hosting because it was top ranked by a couple of informational Web sites we consulted. This ended up being a great choice. That first week, I called Rackspace nearly every night around 3 a.m. to request another server. Each time, the new machine would be up and running by the time I awoke the next morning. By the end of the week, we had gone from one Web server to seven." Could this app have been built using a next generation P2P architecture without the expense of bandwidth and managed hosting? Yessss! 6:59:10 AM    Comment_ Trackback []

>>>> Netcraft. Apache reaches limits to growth. I can write this story, can you? It will not be as dramatic as Netscape's, but the result will be the same. What can be done? An open source architecture that challenges .Net but keeps scripting diversity intact. Apache needs a .Net story. Another way: challenge Microsoft on the desktop with a P2P/Dynamic Website/IM/XML-RPC alternative. Give them a two front war -- it worked before with another group of very aggressive people that wanted to take over the world. "apache" 6:39:11 AM    Comment_ Trackback []

>>>> Wow. The groove preview edition is already over 14 Mbs (and that is without content or much functionality)! Well on its way to become bloatware. 6:08:01 AM    Comment_ Trackback []

>>>> WSJ. Excite at Home to lose cable deals. Well, the famous Kleiner Perkins shell game is about to come to a close. This time AOL wasn't the repository of last resort. So goes the saying: you can fool some of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time. 5:36:14 AM    Comment_ Trackback []

>>>> NYT. Embryonic stem cells coaxed to produce blood products. "Separately, the researchers said the method could also provide a virus-free and inexhaustible source of blood products to supplement the present blood bank system that is dependent on the vagaries of donated blood." "Embryonic stem cells seem to be considerably less provocative to the immune system than are ordinary cells. "So if we derived cells from embryonic stem cells, maybe we don't need a perfect histocompatibility match," Dr. Kaufman said, referring to the markers on a cell's surface by which the body distinguishes its own cells from aliens." This is the kind of benefit we were after through support of the use of embryonic stem cells. The biggest problem, as recently pointed out in the NYT, is the lack of embryonic stem cell lines in existence. Only ~ 1,500 couples have opted to create frozen embryos. My wife and helped some friends go through the arduous process almost 9 years ago, we didn't have a clue that it was this rare. 5:29:25 AM    Comment_ Trackback []

>>>> NYT. Hewlett-Packard to buy Compaq for $25 billion. Size matters. This is a too big to fail strategy. Exodus is probably next on the plate. Notice that in this type of situation all the senior execs make out like bandits. It also improves their quality of life: the WS analysts that have been houding Fiorina will let up on their pressure on her while they analyze the deal. 5:16:49 AM    Comment_ Trackback []

>>>> Gartner. Is Groove the desktop of the future? "The choice to develop the Groove client and servers using COM methodologies and the C++ language ties teh company to Microsoft's architectural vision... Groove's technological alignment with Microsoft will allow them to extensively leverage .Net technology as it evolves... Groove has the potential to redefine many of the functions typically found in the desktop and Internet device user environments. Its APIs and underlying XML-based communication services transform this product from an application into a flexible Internet infrastructure platform. As such, Groove is precisely the type of platform that Microsoft feared Netscape would become (Groove isn't Microsoft's worst nightmare this is: a wildfire P2P next generation platform that sucks in developers!). Should Microsoft choose, it could seriously hamper Groove's growth by announcing a "peer-to-peer strategy", making a series of modest enhancements to its existing programs, calling those it peer-to-peer "solution", and bundling that solution at no charge in upcoming versions of its operating system." What is needed is a fully open alternative to Groove that operates in the consumer space. XML-RPC + P2P + Dynamic Desktop Websites + IM = Next generation platform. 5:03:47 AM    Comment_ Trackback []