Writing a blog is an interesting affair. Sometimes you get that eerie feeling that you are completely alone, no one is reading your blog and nobody bothers.
On that time you usually get a comment from a reader regarding something you have blogged about and you feel lost. Where did he get that? how does he know that I'm involved in this or that? When at one time I asked about that, I got the answer that it was me, I blogged about it and it was read, and I was a bit surprised and a bit proud. Maybe there is a point to this and we are not alone.
On other news, I had an interesting bubble discussion today, about the hi-tech industry bubble which I am probably a part of, yet very aware of it unlike many others. Some theological questions popped up after that discussion like will there always be a bubble? is our bubble special? what actually defines a bubble? and I lack the answers.
When bathing the kids, I make extremely large soap bubbles for them which they enjoy popping, which always leads me to think of the industry bubble and what is actually more fun, the creation of the bubble or its popping? who knows...
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Thursday, November 13, 2008
The convention theory
This time I wanted to write about a few conventions I have been to last week. First one by google, the google Israeli developer day and the second was the garage geeks that were hosting yahoo (followed by a yahoo event the next day).
The google day was a disappointment for me, even though my hopes were not too high to start with. The problem was that on one hand google were forcefully trying to be cool (putting chess boards, lego cubes and cushions everywhere) and on the other hand they had nothing meaningful to say and that was said by the wrong set of people.
Maybe its just me, or I had bad luck at picking sessions, the only reasonable session was the one about google gears. Other were either just bad (Google gadgets) or terrible (The open mic session).
Luckily, a few days later I was able to compare it to a different event at the garage geeks. Yahoo people came, gave a short and insightful presentation, and were later available to talk about the subject. Sure - it was not as fancy, and I got no free usb-people dok. But I was able to get meaningful interaction.
The good impression was slightly dimmed the next day at the hack day event which was poorly organized (my registration did not catch, and I think many of the people registered didn't bother to show judging from the amount of lonely name tags). And the presentation was quite the same, nothing too deep and nothing that resembled a hack day. It didn't look like many hackers actually made it to that conference. I did cut short and went home earlier than expected, but the food was good :)
I have decided that I'll submit a hack to the competition as I had a nice idea that I guessed would fit the time frame, and with the help of my brother in law we have created a small search engine on top of boss that we called FocuSearch. I don't believe that we'll win, but it was fun doing it, which is enough for me. The winner will probably be a company which have done a better job and is in higher need of PR.
Another good point of that event was the fact that I saw a presentation by a direct competitor. I think they are not focused enough on their goals, but they seem like nice people and I wish them luck.
Last item on this long post is the fact that the network on google day was hacked. I am quite surprised this didn't make valleywag, techcrunch or slashdot, but who knows.
The google day was a disappointment for me, even though my hopes were not too high to start with. The problem was that on one hand google were forcefully trying to be cool (putting chess boards, lego cubes and cushions everywhere) and on the other hand they had nothing meaningful to say and that was said by the wrong set of people.
Maybe its just me, or I had bad luck at picking sessions, the only reasonable session was the one about google gears. Other were either just bad (Google gadgets) or terrible (The open mic session).
Luckily, a few days later I was able to compare it to a different event at the garage geeks. Yahoo people came, gave a short and insightful presentation, and were later available to talk about the subject. Sure - it was not as fancy, and I got no free usb-people dok. But I was able to get meaningful interaction.
The good impression was slightly dimmed the next day at the hack day event which was poorly organized (my registration did not catch, and I think many of the people registered didn't bother to show judging from the amount of lonely name tags). And the presentation was quite the same, nothing too deep and nothing that resembled a hack day. It didn't look like many hackers actually made it to that conference. I did cut short and went home earlier than expected, but the food was good :)
I have decided that I'll submit a hack to the competition as I had a nice idea that I guessed would fit the time frame, and with the help of my brother in law we have created a small search engine on top of boss that we called FocuSearch. I don't believe that we'll win, but it was fun doing it, which is enough for me. The winner will probably be a company which have done a better job and is in higher need of PR.
Another good point of that event was the fact that I saw a presentation by a direct competitor. I think they are not focused enough on their goals, but they seem like nice people and I wish them luck.
Last item on this long post is the fact that the network on google day was hacked. I am quite surprised this didn't make valleywag, techcrunch or slashdot, but who knows.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Competition, what competition?
Well, every time you think of something there is a slight chance that someone else is thinking about the same exact thing. Although this may sound like bad news this is normally far from the truth. I am now thinking about this as many of my friends who know what I am doing has referred me to an article about a competitor (similar market and basic approach, different goals ,technology and howto market).
There are a few advantages to competition, for starters it gives you some sort of validation, which means you are probably on some right track. More than that, you are given the option to ponder and answer a few very important questions - like why am I better? How can I prove to someone else that my solution is superior? (may it be an investor or a future client) and if you don't have conclusive answers - you are given the chance to improve.
There may also be a few bad sides to competition, in my former company it seemed like the competition did many things which were counter productive (to say the least) and instead of focusing on improving they focused on demoting our product - saying it was illegal (rubbish) broke their patents (complete rubbish) was not as good as theirs (weird that clients bought it in that case) and in the end they resolved to copy our technology. However - they were much better than us in raising money and in a way helped us raise money too (the mee tooo of VCs that I might discuss at some future post).
To sum it up, if you are a startup - you are probably better off with a competition than you are without it, it proves you are on the right track, help you get funded and even allows you to focus and improve. Viva la competition!
There are a few advantages to competition, for starters it gives you some sort of validation, which means you are probably on some right track. More than that, you are given the option to ponder and answer a few very important questions - like why am I better? How can I prove to someone else that my solution is superior? (may it be an investor or a future client) and if you don't have conclusive answers - you are given the chance to improve.
There may also be a few bad sides to competition, in my former company it seemed like the competition did many things which were counter productive (to say the least) and instead of focusing on improving they focused on demoting our product - saying it was illegal (rubbish) broke their patents (complete rubbish) was not as good as theirs (weird that clients bought it in that case) and in the end they resolved to copy our technology. However - they were much better than us in raising money and in a way helped us raise money too (the mee tooo of VCs that I might discuss at some future post).
To sum it up, if you are a startup - you are probably better off with a competition than you are without it, it proves you are on the right track, help you get funded and even allows you to focus and improve. Viva la competition!
Sunday, October 12, 2008
The answer
As stock market world wide are plummeting, I am quite sure my readers could not help it but ask themselves what the answer to the riddle was.
Well, without further ado, the answer is Google Translate service, which recently launched hebrew support. The results are extremely poor, as the original text meant "A team of entrepreneurs that are simply awesome". Unfortunately - mix-up of literal translation of a phrase that means awesome with very wrong ordering of words has created that anomality.
Will Google Translate improve over time? I'll keep my eye open. As for now, I won't recommand it for trying to read Hebrew sites, not even to get a clue.
Well, without further ado, the answer is Google Translate service, which recently launched hebrew support. The results are extremely poor, as the original text meant "A team of entrepreneurs that are simply awesome". Unfortunately - mix-up of literal translation of a phrase that means awesome with very wrong ordering of words has created that anomality.
Will Google Translate improve over time? I'll keep my eye open. As for now, I won't recommand it for trying to read Hebrew sites, not even to get a clue.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Weekly riddle for the children
What generated the following phrase "entrepreneurs rope team on time"?
One of our solvers will win a rope that is rope on time by itself.
One of our solvers will win a rope that is rope on time by itself.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Google index and me
I have been googling my name a few times in the last days. What I have discovered is that the google index can tell much about me, and yet tell nothing.
First item on the agenda is the fluctuations, every day the results are quite different, one day my linkedin profile was on top, another day it was a post I once made on the Zebra mailing lists and another day it was some site called marketvisual (more on that later).
Second item is the totally useless stuff, although its quite cheering to know that there are a few hattrick players named after me (virtual soccer players , not real people) I doubt that those results really deserve their location, I guess hattrick should have probably prevented spiders on those pages. There are also some name poachers on the list, I already mentioned marketvisual and would gladly add lookupanyone which believes there's a me in NJ. Any other auto generated database which contains my name is probably useless, as they normally add very little information and sometimes even wrong information with regards to who I am, what I do and who I know.
Third item is the freshness issue, it is quite difficult to know who I really am when my past and present are tightly mixed. You'll find my software contributions of the long past interlaced with my recent activities and events I have been through. It would have been really cool if there was a way to create a timeline and put the search results on it, so one will know that I wrote the renegade utils about 10 years before writing the google toolbar button or filing some gentoo bugs.
Last item on the agenda is the black hole, many items of my activities were logged to the net on the past, however - those are unavailable today (probably just removed) which actually creates a preference to some sort of activities, many other things will never be seen (for example surfree and kerenix times pages).
However, googling yourself or beloved ones is a fun activity, you can do this and compare the results with yourself and see if the picture stands true. Atleast in my case the picture is mostly true, although shot from a unique angle...
First item on the agenda is the fluctuations, every day the results are quite different, one day my linkedin profile was on top, another day it was a post I once made on the Zebra mailing lists and another day it was some site called marketvisual (more on that later).
Second item is the totally useless stuff, although its quite cheering to know that there are a few hattrick players named after me (virtual soccer players , not real people) I doubt that those results really deserve their location, I guess hattrick should have probably prevented spiders on those pages. There are also some name poachers on the list, I already mentioned marketvisual and would gladly add lookupanyone which believes there's a me in NJ. Any other auto generated database which contains my name is probably useless, as they normally add very little information and sometimes even wrong information with regards to who I am, what I do and who I know.
Third item is the freshness issue, it is quite difficult to know who I really am when my past and present are tightly mixed. You'll find my software contributions of the long past interlaced with my recent activities and events I have been through. It would have been really cool if there was a way to create a timeline and put the search results on it, so one will know that I wrote the renegade utils about 10 years before writing the google toolbar button or filing some gentoo bugs.
Last item on the agenda is the black hole, many items of my activities were logged to the net on the past, however - those are unavailable today (probably just removed) which actually creates a preference to some sort of activities, many other things will never be seen (for example surfree and kerenix times pages).
However, googling yourself or beloved ones is a fun activity, you can do this and compare the results with yourself and see if the picture stands true. Atleast in my case the picture is mostly true, although shot from a unique angle...
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
"The Cloud"
There are times when one looks at technology and see dramatic innovations. Some other times it is just marketing over existing features.
I am not talking about web 2.0 and ajax which really predated their names. This time I'll discuss the cloud or "elastic computing".
I will start by saying that the technology has some potential for some problems, if you need 1,000 computers for a few hours - the cloud can't be beat. Unfortunately - this is not what most problems are made of and not what most companies need. The cloud is actually not a very sophisticated virtual servers hosting service, with steep prices starting at ~$100 monthly with no persistent storage. The simple fact is that most startups can use a good hosting provider and get more bang for their buck. If a reader will try arguing scalability - I would simply say that he can get more machines at any provider, or just host his own machines and scale them as needed without facing virtualization issues. A good example today would be that one may want to use a server with SSD for a high intensity I/O machine, the cloud simply won't give him that - and will charge those I/Os at a hefty premium.
A small exception is the google app engine, which is actually a very different cloud which actually bills for CPU resources used and not simply allocated, which in turn leads to better programs. However - for the time being it is python bound and limited.
So - if I'll sum it up, the way I see it - if you are a startup and not afraid of hosting, just host and skip the cloud for now - although it would sound sexier - it is not worth it - yet.
I am not talking about web 2.0 and ajax which really predated their names. This time I'll discuss the cloud or "elastic computing".
I will start by saying that the technology has some potential for some problems, if you need 1,000 computers for a few hours - the cloud can't be beat. Unfortunately - this is not what most problems are made of and not what most companies need. The cloud is actually not a very sophisticated virtual servers hosting service, with steep prices starting at ~$100 monthly with no persistent storage. The simple fact is that most startups can use a good hosting provider and get more bang for their buck. If a reader will try arguing scalability - I would simply say that he can get more machines at any provider, or just host his own machines and scale them as needed without facing virtualization issues. A good example today would be that one may want to use a server with SSD for a high intensity I/O machine, the cloud simply won't give him that - and will charge those I/Os at a hefty premium.
A small exception is the google app engine, which is actually a very different cloud which actually bills for CPU resources used and not simply allocated, which in turn leads to better programs. However - for the time being it is python bound and limited.
So - if I'll sum it up, the way I see it - if you are a startup and not afraid of hosting, just host and skip the cloud for now - although it would sound sexier - it is not worth it - yet.
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