TechFuga and News Aggregation
TechFuga launched a new version today and among the many improvements in the service are better clustering, search, and an interesting feature called “upcoming news” that attempts to surface news that is not yet popular but signals popularity movement.
I like these services because they efficiently surface interesting news that is domain specific (e.g. tech, politics, [...]
Why the TechCrunch Economy Will Falter
Reading yesterday that AppLoop has apparently shut down impressed upon me a fundamental flaw in the startup economy promoted by a wide swath of pundits and proponents, that starting is more important than sustaining.
Now, we’re hearing rumors that the startup is in trouble, and they appear to hold some truth. For one, the company’s website [...]
Digg’s Recommendation Engine
We’ve been developing filtering technologies based on behaviors and expressed likes/dislikes. It’s hard stuff and one thing is evident, relying on a single mechanism or ideology for recommendations is a strategy fraught with risk.
If you rely on active participants, people training the recommendation engine, you simply won’t get the data inputs necessary to deliver good [...]
Dapper MashupAds Turn Your Website Into Contextual, Display Ads
This is a great example of what is possible when you enable widgets with a communication mechanism (as in communicating with other data elements) and take advantage of microformats. Great work by the Dapper team, this is a very novel solution (in all fairness, it is essentially what AFC is doing, so novel is subject [...]
P2P Loans Runs in the SEC
This is an interesting story at the intersection of regulatory oversight and technology enabled business models. Personally, I really like the P2P startups but I wonder about the potential for abuse in these networks and the backing company’s willingness to regulate the markets if the net effect is to reduce activity.
But this so-called [...]
GE Drops Google, Selects Zoho
I agree with Daya on two points, Google Spreadsheets is a disaster and Zoho is a remarkable company that has defied the odds to become the leader in online productivity apps. With 1 million users, before this 400k GE agreement, they have outmaneuvered everyone else.
A GE spokesperson who did not want to be [...]
Wachovia @ Office 2.0
Wachovia Bank presented a case study featuring their use of a Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server (MOSS) at the recently held Office 2.0 event. Based on my anecdotal feedback, this was one of the more talked about presentations at the conference.
It’s worth watching all 50 minutes of the video to see how real customers are looking [...]
Well Under the Radar
I am attending the Under the Radar conference at Microsoft’s SV campus today and my first impression is that there is a real resurgence here. The team at DealMaker Media did their homework, not only are these companies very under the radar but they are also really exciting.
The other aspect of today’s event that I [...]
NYTimes Reader
The NYTimes Reader is available for the Mac.
Great but I don’t get this entire initiative at any level. They position it as a way to enhance the reader experience but from my perspective it appears to be nothing more than a vehicle through which they can control access and charge a monthly fee.
Has a web-based [...]
Incrementalism and Pyrrhic Victories
Last month I wrote something called Incrementalism and the New New Thing that got quite a bit of conversation flowing. While largely an observation about Valley dynamics and a malaise I feel about Web 2.0, the fact is that it’s a lot more complex than that.
Last night I was catching up on some reading and [...]
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About
My name is Jeff Nolan and I write Venture Chronicles. These are my thoughts on technology, innovation, management, public policy and pretty much anything else that I find interesting.
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