Anton’s Hat

Via TechCrunch. The Israeli Web tour is rolling into Silicon Valley in the next while. This is the second Israel Web Tour the first one being in December 2006. I think that perhaps we have some stuff to learn from these guys. Future Paddy’s Valley tours and others connecting with the organisers to share experiences and resources could be a great resource for both groups, especially as we share largely the same goals when traveling to Silicon Valley. As we are both essentially in Europe (before anyone starts up I know Israel technically isn’t in Europe, but it is a de facto part of the EU) building links with these guys might not be too difficult. Obviously they would also have to be interested in such an idea but extending the hand of friendship would cost little and could achieve much. Although this may have been done already, if it has I’d love to hear about it.

Here’s a video from the last Israel Web Tour.

This is absolutely priceless. Via TechCrunch

An app was mare for facebook which for fun elected a Facebook president. A French lad gets elected fine it’s all in good heart but he then has a manifesto and it get’s better… The French press take him seriously apparently the first guy didn’t check the story then other journalists just copied it so they wouldn’t miss out! Sacre bleu!

And people wonder why I don’t read the papeers and don’t have a TV?

Read more hear 

This is a continuation of my post on the teacup storm about Robert Scoble  getting kicked off facebook.

Scraping

Ok back to the scraping. On this issue Scoble needs to just leave it off. I agree with the people to a large extent that say “look, it’s a service with terms that you sign up to, if you don’t like them but want the service ask them to change or leave”. Don’t cry when they kick you off for breaking those terms. If they don’t change and do what their customers want, someone else will eventually build something better and you’ll use that instead. That’s just how it works…

Walled Gardens

Wow! I can never understand the mentality of a social network that would set itself up for this problem given the nature of contracts, both social and economic, implicit and explicit. To give an example it is generally recommended for a happy working environment that employers not put to onerous a restriction on the ability of an employee to leave, as this in itself can cause dissatisfaction later on and result in them to wanting to leave earlier. Therefore the theory goes that the employee will be happier if he knows that if this job isn’t for him he can move on, causing a totally different mindset. This is not new thinking people, it’s been around for a while and applies to walled garden terms of service contracts and social contracts in the same way. Try and lock me in and I’ll try and get out. It’s inevitable that a walled garden can only have a limited life expectancy and growth potential. But on the other hand if I were facebook I’d be making hay while the sun was shining too.

Social Graph

The last thing I’d like to address and I think highly relevant to this whole issue is the very idea of the social graph and data portability. While not everyone agrees that data portability is a good thing. I think that everyone agrees that you ought to have the choice to change your web service for another similar one without losing all of your connectivity. So the question becomes, “how do we address this?”. Some people suggest Open-id is the answer. It certainly is one answer and a step in the right direction but, (and it’s a big one) that only allows my ID to follow me around meaning where it’s supported I can sign in once and that’ll do for the day, it doesn’t answer the data portability question really. Ok so Google, Facebook et al sign up for the Data Portability WorkGroup and OpenID, so what, is the problem now near being solved? I don’t think that it is.

The real issue here is the idea of social graph and that it is movable at all. I think this is preposterous. This is where a technical approach must be discarded and the reality has to bite back a bit. Let me explain, the reality is that people do not want to be members of 3, 4 or 5 services which do essentially the same thing (personal note I’ve just realised I’m in 7 social networks!!! I mean 7!!) but we are forced to because our friends are on them. The social graph is not something that can be written down or put on a disk in any meaningful way right now, because it doesn’t exist on the web. It is a real thing merely somewhat represented online. Your social graph could only become portable if your friends changed services whenever you did. So what needs to be done is that the web needs to become more like the real world. The walled gardens do need to be broken down but not in the way that is being talked about right now.

Standardisation of messaging and connection methods

The next step in social networking is standardisation of messaging and connection methods. This simple step along with Open Social would make it possible for me to stick with the social tool that I feel suits my needs and personality the best and enjoy the same connectivity with people in my social graph that are in their tool of choice as I do now with friends inside one of those networks. It’s like living in a different apartment building, you can’t nip in nextdoor to Alice anymore and it looks different but it doesn’t mean the mail and telephone won’t go there. And that is what a social network profile is, it’s where you LIVE on the net.

So in my view the future of the web is that it itself will become the background for a series of totally interconnected social networks competing on the basis of providing context and service. You’ll join the one you feel represents you the best and connect to your friends in their social networks through one or two social profiles that you feel represent you. You won’t need to join a new service just because you change or because a bunch of friends do. There will be no need for data portability at all.  In the mean time in the words of the old Cole Porter/Robert Fletcher song please..

don’t fence me in….

It’s been a few days since the debate erupted over Robert Scoble and his scraping of his 5000 or so facebook friends email addresses, names and birthdays and subsequent ban and reinstatement.

There are several parts of this debate, a moral/ethical one, a legal one, the issue of “walled gardens” and notion of the Social Graph with the legal one being especially expounded upon with regards to the EU. I will deal with the Ethical and Legal ones first and Further posts will deal with other issues.

The moral/ethical part of the debate and possibly what most people were concerned about is first, what is the type of information being scraped and second, what will it be used for. Now with regards to the actual information being scraped in this instance (and I’m sorry to disagree with it seems everyone I know about this here) but if you make a decision to make your email address and date of birth viewable to people you friend on Facebook you do so because that is information you either a) actively want those people to have or b) don’t mind if they have. It is very difficult in my view to make the arguement that it is any different from sending someone an email, except arguably stronger because you have gone beyond merely communicating with someone to actually asking them to be your friend and sharing your information with them. SO from that strictly moral/ethical perspective I don’t see anything objectionable in what Robert Scoble did.

From a legal standpoint it will be interesting to see this tested in the courts but here’s my take. Again the interepretation depends on a few things. If Robert Scoble wants the names and contact details of all of his friends off any service for his personal use, let’s get real folks, he is perfectly entitled to that. The important point here is that, as with the moral issue, he already has the info and could take it out manually if required, (a point he has made a few times) and that by sharing contact information, by definition people are looking to be contacted outside of facebook, otherwise what’s the point of doing that. The birthdays however are another issue, the reason it is different is because it is not contact information. For example the birthday information may be inaccurate, possibly even deliberately so, but as soon as it is removed by Robert Scoble it is personal information that is recorded electronically but is no longer controlled by the individual it relates to and might have an effect on their life in some way or another in the future. It is this type of information being scraped that people are most concerned about and it’s here that Scoble is on shaky ground. Plaxo’s scraper starts with your birthday but theoretically it could take what it wanted. If he had stuck to name and email addresses he would have a stronger case (so to speak).

It has also been at least implied that the context of the walled garden must be taken into account when looking at this problem. That is that the fact that people are aware that it is a walled garden and therefore rely on that as a means of security. I think that’s rubbish frankly. If you friended only one or two people they could easily email you directly and you wouldn’t be surprised by that. If you’re not friending someone because you want to be friends with them, then perhaps you should tell them that. Stop whinging

This is all assuming it is being used for personal use for Robert to maintain his social graph. If it were also taken by Robert or Plaxo and used as a way of generating business or for any other purpose then that is clearly ethically and legally wrong.

Welcome to the inaugural Hat Links

Don’t watch movies on your iphone!!

For the very paranoid, secure your house and turn your lights on and off from San Francisco. And if you see someone moving around lock the doors and shoot them with a modified one of these… poisoned darts Mr. Bond.

You could set it up form your new Cheap Laptop. (Intels withdrawal from OLPC make more sense now?) This little blighter might actually cause laptop sales to go over desktops

Run the whole thing on viable solar energy.

Then use Googles new embedded slideshows to put the images on your blog.

Oh and it looks like sony will have it’s revenge for Betamax as HD DVD pull out of CES Press conference.

Engadget has just annouced Ambient Devices has just released it’s baseball scoreboard and it’s a great device. MLB fans can simply input their team and track the game stats. It uses the infocast system which it gives it 90% coverage which is pretty nifty and updates every half inning. It isn’t the first such device either the SportsCasts Wireless Football scoreboard was announced back in September and Vroops retro bluetooth based baseball scoreboard announced before that in June.

All these types of devices leave me thinking “Why?”

Don’t get me wrong the idea of keeping up with a game while you’re not there is a fantastic idea but what about the radio or calling a friend at the game or who’s watching it on TV. I know the geographic proportions of the USA mean that thats difficult but surely someone does sms updates. Is no-one deveoping mobile apps for this market? I mean why sell people a new device, why not sell them a service for a device they already carry around and which has far near 100% coverage wherever you are? If a mobile baseball game can be produced a scoreboard can’t be that difficult.

This leads me to another question, one that bench’d hopes to serve as a focal point to help over the next few years. Are sports communities cut off from the technology community? Is this part of the smart kid/jock divide that started in school? Is this part of our societal norm? Does technology have to enter the mainstream first to be adopted by sports people?

I think that to a certain degree they are cut off. The crossover in uses for technology for sports media coverage and interaction has MASSIVE potential. Sport related transactions online are already in the multiple billions, but the truth is most transactions occur at non sport specific sites. You didn’t book or find your flight to the Manchester Utd. game through a sport website. The problem to date has been that most people at the cutting edge of new media don’t understand the sports community and from the other perspective most people involved in sport are not tech savvy. Thankfully though this is changing. As more social media tools become everyday tools understanding is increased on both sides. I also don’t believe that the sports community needs to wait for social tools to become mainstream to start using them, if anything here is one community that mirrors the tech industry where the fans, (if not the big corporations) believe in working for the greater good and really believe in having their say.

So lets leave off the uni-directional devices and lets plug into whats really going on and what sport fans really want. Interaction!!!

I will say this though the Vroop baseball scoreboard is a pretty cool retro looking gadget so I can’t be too hard on it.

(Originally posted on The B-Team Blog)

I just got my new seesmic account  (Thanks Halley) and I have to say it’s some pretty cool shit. This is famed French blogger Loic Le Meur’s new video blogging/podcast/twitter affair.  I love it but haven’t put anything up yet because my Webcam is all broked up.

This does have huge implications for Bench’d  and all sports content websites and I’ll be reviewing the whole video podcasting phenomenon over on www.benchd.com/blog and what that means for us in the next few days. Hictu run by Italian Voip entrepeneur Luca Filigheddu is also running in this space. Luca’s usual business is Voip so this is a departure for him. Watch out for developments. He was in the Valley at the same time as the Paddy’s Valley crew and he made some of the same mistakes as us (going to the WorkIT.com Silicon Valley mixer specifically) but a fantastically positive guy who I’ll buy a coffee for next time I see him for sure, maybe even lunch, but not through paypal. I might even go visit him in Italy (well I do have relatives there).

In the meantime if you’re jealous or want to know what it’s all about just ask me.

Peace out brothas…

Ok guys I’ve had some responses and interest about the event pencilled in for the 24th Jan.

Here is the current suggested format. All comments suggestions and criticism are welcome…

When: Thurs 24th Jan 6pm

Where: Exact Location TBC, Dublin

Who: 3/4 entrepeneurs presenting and one celeb if people want that. (You guys suggest who you want we’ll see if we can get them)

What: Format will be Presentation by 3/4 companies then demo for about 8 depending on location. (presenters can demo too if they want). followed by networking and a few beers.

6-6:30 - Mingling and getting setup for presentations/demos

6:30-7:15ish - Presentations- Short and sweet anyone with questions ask them during the demobar.

7:30-8:30 - Demo Bar so people can be comfortable talking about what they’re doing and networking can happen naturally.

8:30-whenever -  Pure networking and relaxing

 This is only a suggested format so please comment and suggest etc.

It appears the idea and the energy associated with Paddy’s valley wasn’t lost on the flks at Yahoo.

Havi Hoffman met us there and is very complimentary in her article about the Paddy’s Valleyers on next.yahoo.net yahoos blog about upcoming technologies. I think she has an interesting and intuitive take on what Padddy’s Valley was about and what it actually achieved.

The experience at Brickhouse itself was excellent and we had the opportunity to go to the main Yahoo campus as well where we had a meetup with Salim again and also the head of M&A for Yahoo which was very interesting.

Plus she’s a lovely lady and i had great fun chatting to her about brickhouse and yahoo’s up and coming tech stuff and the hacker renaissance they are trying to encourage.

I’ve just arrived back from the fantastic Paddy’s Valley Tour. What a blast!

Quite frankly anyone who couldn’t go on this really missed out on an amazing, informative, inspiring trip with some of the best and brightest of Irelands Entrepeneurs. Which brings me nicely to the point of this blog.

One of the things that stood out the most for me for our trip was the culture of the Silicon Valley and the way business is done there. The technology community is fragmented here in Ireland and the knowlede base spread quite thinly throughout the country as there is no real forum for people to pass on knowledge acquired and experience gained. Quite a few of the peole and businesses brought together for the Paddy’s Valley trip only got to know each other and share thougths and ideas in California. This begs an obvious question, why did a bunch of irish entrepeneurs have to travel around the world to form a close network and share ideas? Well the truth is that there is no way of doing that in ireland at the moment. But I’ll leave that for now but watch this space…

 The value I gained from the trip was access to the minds of Mike Murphy, business development manager at facebook, Ross Mayfield, the founder of socialtext, Marc Andreesen of Ning, Salim Ismail who runs Yahoo’s Brickhouse (we also had a 30sec hello with Jerry Yang), Seth Sternberg of Meebo and those are just the biggy’s. The host of other contacts made and people we were exposed to would take all day to relate and i’m sure I’ve even left out a billionaire along the way. Notably some of the best and useful contacts were among the Paddy’s Valley group itself.

Track Damien Mulley’s blog for more info as he kept a better track of what was going on. 

I could relate what all these people had to say about their businesses and what their experiences were but it would take too long. I will say this though the most powerful thing I learned about Silicon Valley was not it’s concentration of VCs and Technology companies but how it’s massively open culture affects those groups of people and led to an environment where investors, entrepeneurs and the general community know (or can easily access) information about what is going on in any particular space. A place where respect is gained for having a go, and where knowledge, contacts and info are shared with ease. The attitude is not, “I’ll help you because you’ve already done it” (why would you need it then anyway), it’s more “I’ll help you because you might be the next big thing”, which from a business perspective is a far more intelligent way of looking at the world, especially when you consider the CEO of the hottest company in the web space right now is only 23 (Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook).

So I pose a challenge to the Irish Technology community. Let’s build the same thing here.

Starting Dublin on the 24th-ish January and the third thursday of every month thereafter. Format and location to follow. All ideas and suggestions are welcome.