Jeremy wrote:
] And if by adopting this we could solve spam,
] allow darknets
] and scale to billions of users ... Guess what, Google may
] need to rethink timing on S-1 filings and Microsoft may end-up
] [canceling] Longhorn or at least renaming it LongGone or
] LongGong.

Well, that sounds like a bunch of bullshit. But I expect talk like that will get a lot of people excited about the beta. Worked for Orkut.

Jeremy wrote:
] It's the biggest thing that has hit Silicon Valley since
] Netscape ... Nova Spivack has been working on this for years
] with his MIT genius CTO Kris Thorensen.
]
] The Radar Networks demo has literally blown Sand Hill Road out
] of their chairs and has become a thing of epic legend in the
] last month.

I'm going to go out on a limb here. I looked into this awhile back, and this just spurred me to look at it again.. I'm seeing the same thing this time.

I've seen this Nova Spivack character pop up all over the place, singing the same song, and always with the "hey, I'm a big VC type guy!" thing going on. However, beyond that there does not appear to be anything there.

From what I've been able to gather this guy started a web company in 1994, built a bunch of sites, did an IPO, and road the dot-com wave into the ground like everyone else, only he came out the other side with enough money to maintain an image. I see no evidence of anything other then pumping this stealth Radar Networks thing, and a few other products like RipDigital. I'm pretty sure this guy is just a professional "meme dropper", or someone looking for an idea as opposed to already having one.

Also, this "MIT genius CTO Kris Thorensen" appears not to exist.. If you do a Google search for the name, nothing comes up other then these posts pumping Radar. That's, well, very strange.

Furthermore, Sand Hill Road is a generic way of referring to Valley VC. That isn't anything more specific then a street in Menlo Park. If Radar has become this epic thing of legend, there would be some discussion about it present somewhere, and I'm not seeing anything other then meme-dropping that all looks like its coming from the same person, with the same general writing style, and a hardcore VC fixation.

This is so stealth, it may not exist!

] XML cannot keep pace with info overload. It's about Metadata
] and allowing RSS/RDF to function semantically; this has
] enormous implications to existing database and router
] architecture. And if by adopting this we could solve spam,
] allow darknets
] and scale to billions of users ... Guess what, Google may
] need to rethink timing on S-1 filings and Microsoft may end-up
] [canceling] Longhorn or at least renaming it LongGone or
] LongGong.

And what the hell does that mean anyway? Now, I'm pretty buzzword savvy. Remember, I'm one of the ones who used to love playing the "how many buzzwords can you fit in a logical sounding sentence" game, just to be obnoxious. This _is_ that game, I know how to spot it.

] So yee want to see Social Networking really scale,
] intelligently? Jeremy, thou needest Radar!

I'm going to call "vaporware" on this one. All talk and no show.

Rattle wrote:
] This "MIT genius CTO Kris Thorensen" appears not to exist.
] If you do a Google search for the name, nothing comes up
] other then these posts pumping Radar. That's, well, very
] strange.
]
] This is so stealth, it may not exist!
]
] I'm going to call "vaporware" on this one.
] All talk and no show.

Okay. So the meme-dropper, "Hugh J. Sloan III", can't spell.

However, I must stand up for MIT when it comes to the "genius."

The correct name is Kristinn Rúnar Thórisson. His PhD thesis, from 1996, is "Communicative humanoids: a computational model of psychosocial dialogue skills". You can find selected publications at his home page:

http://xenia.media.mit.edu/~kris/

His thesis is at

http://xenia.media.mit.edu/~kris/thesis.html

Note that Pattie Maes served on his thesis committee.

Jeremy wrote:
] However, I must stand up for MIT when it comes to the
] "genius."
]
] The correct name is Kristinn Rúnar Thórisson. His PhD thesis,
] from 1996, is "Communicative humanoids: a computational model
] of psychosocial dialogue skills". You can find selected
] publications at his home page:

I stand corrected.. I just poked around his thesis and webpage. Sounds like this guy is working on making computers interface more like they do in Star Trek. I certainly approve.

I still can't get over the one string of buzzwords. I'm still going to consider Radar vapor until I see something.