This is posted from ecto, which is a perfectly fine editor, but it’s no Live Writer, looks like I need to auto-run Parallels.
- Bumptop beta invite
I received my Bumptop invitation last night. And it looks like I’m not alone, Connor Turner published his experiences running it under XP. I haven’t read the requirements yet, assuming it will install on my Dell m1330, it will be going on later today after a backup. I’ll publish screenshots later. - Angel, VC, or Bootstrap?
Anand Rajaraman from Cambrian Ventures (not associated with Cambrian House) talks about the risks and benefits of bootstrapping versus raising angel money. In particular, he discusses Greg Linden’s post-mortem of Findory, and the risks some entrepreneurs may experience when bootstrapping. It’s interesting model for angels that relies on personal relationships and technology expertise in the area of the company. This makes sense when looking for an individual investor, but I’m having a hard time understanding how this advice impacts organized angel groups, like National Angel Organization, maybe Dan or Bryan can help clarify. - The business that are now dead
Ever since I heard Albert Lai say “How many of you work in traditional media, well, you’re [email protected]&%ed!” at Mesh 2006, I’ve been trying to figure this out. It’s a great article challenging the death of traditional media. These are huge advertising markets, TV, radio, print are still big parts of the ad spend. They may not be growing markets. There may be greater opportunity and less capital risk on the Interwebs, i.e., it takes less money to start a blog network than a newspaper. But NY Times, BBC, World Online (never heard of them, well Django started there), News Corp and other traditional media folks are doing interesting business online. That said, bloggers and online media are not something you can ignore (even though you may think i said something else last week). - 9 Companies building on top of SharePoint
ReadWriteWeb has a story from Enterprise 2.0 about 9 companies launching integrations with SharePoint. I wrote about nForm’s Midori which offers project management on top of SharePoint. There are 9 other companies including: Awareness; NewsGator Social Sites; Atlassian Confluence; WorkLight for SharePoint; Spotlight Connect for SharePoint; Telligent’s Community Sever Evolution; Tomoye’s Ecco and others. Tomoye is based in Gatineau, QC and has been building communities of practice tools. - Patterns for Designing a Reputation System
Yahoo! User Interface Blog has published Reputation Design Patterns. Great work by the Yahoo team including Randy Farmer, it’s a great understanding of the social-design related UI elements for communitys and social networks. - The realities of life and startups
James Robertson responds to Aaron Swartz about what keeps people from joining startups. For the first time since I started doing the startup thing in 1998, I deeply related to James’ comments. I have a new baby, I had a failed startup, and I’ve joined Microsoft. Time is the most important thing. Followed very closely by money. I try to spend as much time with my daughter as possible. Even at Nakama, I had a different viewpoint on work than my 20-something coworkers, I work a lot, but I don’t expect to spend 65+ hours a week in the office. For me, being able to have a pay cheque to pay my mortgage, to put food on the table, to provide the best possibilities for my child (hopefully children), these are the things that require either a well funded company or a job that I define at a company like Microsoft. The long and short of it, if you’re a student or a recent graduate, you should think about programs like YCombinator, even Canadians get accepted.