http://blog.payne.org Working to improve the signal-to-noise ratio Mon, 11 Jan 2010 16:47:06 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I seem to have two types of friends:  those that like Facebook and those that hate it.  The haters have a range of explanations, but the common theme seems to be:  "I don't need a tool to manage my friendships!" I like Facebook quite a bit, and I think I've finally ... http://blog.payne.org/2010/01/11/why-facebook-works/ Five or ten years ago, your Web site was your entire on-line presence, simply because there wasn’t any other place to deploy content and functionality. Today, that's not the case at all: with the proliferation of platforms (Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.), embeddable content, widgets (video, Flash, ... http://blog.payne.org/2009/09/18/your-on-line-presence-is-more-than-your-web-site/ I just posted a long note/essay on how to run a startup board meeting. http://blog.payne.org/2009/06/22/how-to-run-a-startup-board-meeting/ I'm taking a lead from Bijan and Fred and am starting to trim my Facebook friend list to "real friends":  people I know pretty well, old friends from school, etc.  I'm starting with the folks I've never met, or only met once. (If you're on the "cut list", sorry!) http://blog.payne.org/2009/06/03/dropping-friends/ I have a long-running discussion with a number of friends:  what's next for email? After all, email hasn't changed much in the past few decades.  Email readers have gotten slightly better over the years, with improved multimedia handling, searching, threading, calendar integration, etc.  In a lot of ways, email clients have ... http://blog.payne.org/2009/06/01/email-evolved/ Hulu Desktop just came out:  it's a client-app (Mac and Windows) that provides a "lean back" UI for Hulu video content.  It integrates remote control inputs, so it works well for folks plugging computers into the living room TV. I've written before about the evolution of Internet TV:  Hulu Desktop and ... http://blog.payne.org/2009/05/30/hulu-boxee-temporary-solutions/ Like many modern households, we're managing a lot of moving pieces.  Three kids w/ activities, brother & family living nearby, grandparent visits, travel -- it adds up to some "complexity". We depend on a number of technologies to make it all work.  I'm pretty technical and have been labeled a geek.  ... http://blog.payne.org/2009/05/29/managing-the-household/ Devdutt Yellurkar (at CRV) and I were comparing enterprise software war stories and notes on SaaS opportunities (he did CRV's recent investment in ZenDesk). The enterprise software business model is a tough one.  Large organizations frequently need custom features, and with project investments of millions or tens of millions of dollars, ... http://blog.payne.org/2009/05/14/inflexible-process-meets-immovable-software/ [A longer than usual blog post, summarizing some strategy ideas I've been working on.] In the early 90s at DEC, I had a colleague that worked with the cable industry.  I tried (unsuccessfully) to convince him that TCP/IP would be the winning network infrastructure for the fancy interactive TV services everyone ... http://blog.payne.org/2009/05/11/browser-powered-television/ I'm sure I'm a minority here, but are URL shorteners (e.g. TinyURL) really a "business"?  Bit.ly raised $2m in funding for this?  What? On the news that Twitter has switched URL shorteners, why isn't Twitter doing this themselves?  Either by handling URL shortening directly, or even better, treating URLs properly with ... http://blog.payne.org/2009/05/07/url-shorteners-wtf/