techblawg - Latest Comments

Re: david johnston speech — not to be missed

Carol — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 23:43:29 -0000

He was a hockey player in Love Story as he was in real life, being a captain of the Harvard hockey team and declined to try out for the Boston Bruins but went to Britain instead to Oxford to further his studies.

I lived up the street from David in Sault Ste. Marie

Re: work life balance is alive and well at 37signals

David Ma — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 09:30:22 -0000

I don't think it matters much, does it? For 37signals, they've achieved the success they're looking for without the process promulgated by E-myth. Conversely, there are many organizations out there that follow a highly regimented process and achieve great success. I don't see why one is or isn't the right philosophy for online business (or for any business, for that matter).

Re: work life balance is alive and well at 37signals

Marty Thomas — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 12:53:43 -0000

I'm interested in your thoughts.. Does 37signals or E-myth have the right philosophy for online business today? www.purlem.com/blog/?p=38

Re: whither an open cloud manifesto

Steve — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 21:41:57 -0000

Ironically the guy behind the manifesto is Canadian too. Fortunatey nothing came of it...

Re: law 101 for web startups

Connie Crosby — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 00:07:28 -0000

Thank you for the kind words--I'm glad you found it helpful.

Cheers,
Connie

Re: bilski going up to the supremes

Dr. Kopp E. Wright — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 11:57:13 -0000

YO....No creation....no transformation......then NO PATENT.....that simple.....quit whining.

Dr. K.E. Wright

Re: internet e-mail is not secure

Lilly — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 16:09:10 -0000

There actually is an encryption service out there that's not a pain to use. I started using it about a year ago and it's really easy. It's the Voltage Security Network, and you don't have to do anything with keys, because it uses your email address as the key. Pretty cool. and I can even send to ppl I know that don't have any encryption software. Easy for me - easy for them. You shoud really try it - http://www.voltage.com/vsn/... - there's even a free trial version.

Re: premature cuil punditing

david — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 11:46:10 -0000

Matt - I don't disagree that cuil wasn't all that and a bag of chips - I wasn't particularly impressed when I tried it. And I certainly don't think its unreasonable to criticize. My only point was that the criticism seemed to be a bit disproportionate - kind of like saying that a new startup software company's first product doesn't measure up to, say, Windows Vista. OK maybe that's not the best example. What I meant was that I would have thought it would be fair to look at cuil from the perspective of being a new startup with one, relatively small round of VC money under their belt, rather than comparing them to the 800 lb gorilla of search.

Sure, at the end of the day they will need to have Google in their sights. But to say that they're DOA because they don't measure up today I think is a bit too critical.

Thanks for your comment.

Re: premature cuil punditing

Matt Keegan — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 12:14:01 -0000

Cuil has failed for several reasons:

1. The navigation bar wasn't working when I used it on Monday.

2. The SERPs for certain key words and phrases were outdated.

3. Some of the photos were clearly mismatched.

As Ryan mentioned, the company eschewed the soft launch, deciding to hit the ground running from the gate. They stumbled, thus the criticism.

Re: premature cuil punditing

david — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 12:42:51 -0000

Interesting. I had no idea. I wasn't able to find anything from them that indicated either the company or the founders were making such declarations. All the press I saw that made such comparisons seemed to originate from bloggers or reporters (Fortune, CNN, Searchengineland, etc.), with no references to the company or its founders making such statements.

But alas, silly lawyer that I am, I certainly don't pretend to understand the mysteries of the PR world. If what you say is correct, that would indeed be foolish, though I would have thought that in that case, they would have received an even more severe beating/mocking in the press - you know, a la Aleksey Vayner.

Re: premature cuil punditing

ryancoleman — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 08:09:52 -0000

If it were just people declaring they were no google killer that'd be one thing.

But we're (media, bloggers, people in general) not the ones who initially made the comparisons to Google - it was the founders who were at the head of the pack declaring it a "Google killer" to anyone who would listen.

They set the bar so high for themselves they couldn't possibly ever hit it.

They've clearly never heard of the term "soft launch" - and for that I think they've created a DOA service. Regardless of how good they can make it eventually they've pretty much burned their early adopter market with a half-baked product.

Re: asp issues

Laurie/Halo Secretarial — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 10:16:03 -0000

I think I would like to be able to work using asp's, but definitely would need the assurance that my data would be safe and that the application would be reliable. I believe QuickBooks already has such a model, but I was definitely concerned about entering all my financial data into such an online provider, so I bought their regular software instead.

Re: regrettable absence

Peter — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 15:16:10 -0000

Personally, I have to say that when I see a post from this blog appear in my reader it's treated like a found gem. Don't give up on the blog, even if weighing topics and comments against the professional life could keep posts few and far between.

Re: Virtual Diplomacy

peter — Fri, 18 May 2007 02:22:04 -0000

The second, the way policy is devised, is a game many countries now play: policy laundering. The game goes something like this. The US wants, say, biometrics in passports, and the UK likes the idea, toosecond passports

Re: ALPR is.…

david — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 11:40:43 -0000

Cool. I didn't realize they had them in Toronto. Certainly neat technology.

I certainly don't disagree with the ends - i.e. finding stolen cars, but as with most privacy issues it has more to do with whether the ends justifying the means and the right to be left alone.

In the former camp, an extreme example is whether 24 hour surveillance of each and every member of society would be justified to prevent all crime (since such surveillance certainly could).

In the latter, that same argument could be used to justify virtually any invasion of privacy - for example - no one should complain if their e-mail, telephone calls are monitored. Or, for that matter, if the government decides to wire surveillance cameras in bedrooms, since if you're not doing anything wrong, then there's nothing to worry about.

Re: ALPR is.…

Ryan Coleman — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 06:30:06 -0000

They've had (at least) one of these cars in Toronto for several years now - I see it all the time down in the lower east end of the city all the time.

From what I've seen their primary use for it is locating stolen cars - the theory being they have to be parked somewhere. I remember seeing a segment about them on Discovery a few years back and apparently they've been quite effective.

Yeah it gobbles through thousands of plates a day, but if you aren't doing anything wrong you really don't have anything to worry about.

Re: Of Search Engines and Competition

MRM — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 21:02:42 -0000

Google alerts found this; how apropos. Thanks for the tip. Good luck with the blog.