Collaborize, Rinse, Repeat

I’d been putting-off going to startups.cringely.com to finally read all 286 entries so far in this summer’s Cringely (NOT in Silicon Valley) Startup Tour.  But when I finally went to the site, I couldn’t get in.  The page timed-out.  This was not good.  Or maybe it was very good in that the site was so busy.  But even that’s not good because I don’t like turning readers away.  So which was it — good or not good?

Not good.

Twelve hours later, when I still couldn’t get in I called the CTO at the company that hosts that site — Democrasoft.  You haven’t heard about them, believe me, and I’ll […]

By |March 23rd, 2010|2010|72 Comments
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Is There a Google News Blacklist?

My relationship with Google News has always run hot and cold. No make that cold and tepid. From the very beginning of Google News as an experiment back in 2001, they refused to index my work, which they said was my fault, not theirs (“they” being an algorithm attached to an e-mail box, of course). But new evidence has recently come to light suggesting to me that Google News has an actual blacklist.

For those not familiar with the expression, “blacklist” usually refers to Hollywood screen and television writers from the 1950’s McCarthy era who were thought to be communist sympathizers and were banned from working openly in the entertainment industry as a […]

By |March 16th, 2010|Uncategorized|130 Comments
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What He Said: Cisco Steps Up Its Router Game

Last week Cisco Systems made a big product announcement that the networking giant said would change the Internet forever. What could it be? Well it was a big router, a really big router that would allow more bits than ever to flow over the world’s fiber backbones. And the market yawned, because bits are a commodity and it is hard to tell a million bushels of wheat in a pile from two million bushels of wheat. And Cisco’s enterprise customers — its biggest business customers — have plenty of bandwidth already, thanks.

Well that’s the entire point: corporations, where T1‘s still dominate, use less bandwidth per person than we do at our house, […]

By |March 15th, 2010|2010|65 Comments
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Is Yahoo Mail Broken?

This just in from an old friend who only gets pissed-off when it is justified.  He says Yahoo Mail has been going downhill for awhile and has lately become unusable. Is this an isolated incident or does it affect all 200+ million Yahoo Mail customers?  What’s your experience?

Here is his:

This is unacceptable.

We can log into Yahoo Mail.
We can read our email.
We can move or delete our email.
WE CANNOT SEND EMAIL.

When we try to send email, we are asked to enter a Captcha code.  We then receive a Yahoo error message stating the message was not sent. Due to spam problem sending has been disabled on our account.

The message goes on to say […]

By |March 15th, 2010|2010|239 Comments
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The 94 Percent Solution

Newspapers are folding, magazines are fading, ad pages are down and angst is up in the serial publishing business as it struggles through a global technological transition and may not survive.  But what will be our next New York Times, our new Field & Stream, our improved Playboy?  That’s what the big guns of publishing are fighting about with their Kindles and iPads.  But I think they may have it all wrong and my friend Anina, the fashion model/girl geek may have it all right.

Anina has reinvented the magazine for your mobile phone.

Isn’t that what Apple is doing with the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch?

Not even close.

Anina, whom you may remember from […]

By |March 11th, 2010|2010|113 Comments
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