Most people think the way deals work inside a VC firm is that the opportunity comes into our firm, we meet with the team, we talk about it, we do some research (due diligence), we have some more meetings, we do some more research, and then we make a decision, and either invest or pass on the opportunity. And that is true for many, possibly even most of the opportunities that come into our firm.

But there is another approach and I like to call it hanging around the rim. We like to source our opportunities directly which means we go out and find the most interesting companies working in the markets we find interesting. And about half the opportunities we consider are sourced directly by us.

"Hanging around the rim". Nice.

A VC: VC Clich� of the Week

At the core of Trac lies an integrated wiki and issue/bug database. Using wiki markup, all objects managed by Trac can directly link to other issues/bug reports, code changesets, documentation and files.

Around the core lies other modules, providing additional features and tools to make software development more streamlined and effective. Our goal is to help programmers focus on the important stuff: Developing software.

Edgewall Software: Trac

The value behind the consumption of microchunked user-generated data/content is that it ultimately allows people to use it how they want it, where the want it, and when the want it. Shouldn’t the reverse be the same for how the data/content is produced in the first place? Consumers want to produce content how they want to, where they want to, and when they want to. And it doesn’t seem to be that that’s necessarily on the Edge.

This is a great start for the mixed graph debate.

There are those who feel that all data should be held at the edges -- that memestreams would be better if only these posts were going to my own controlled domain. Maybe this is principly driven by content creator types being the innovators (as discussed in the comments to this blog) -- I blog, my friends blog, so eventually everyone will blog. Or, by analog, I have my own domain for email, you have your own, why would anyone want an @hotmail/@gmail/@yahoo, etc address? For a webpage? Obviously, they do.

They do because they don't like replicating labor, or because they don't have the technical sophistication. I no longer run a local webmail service, because everyone can just use one of the GAMY alternatives. My mom will only have a blog when I set one up for her, and then what she does with it will be dependent on what plugins I show her. If she gets into selling things, it will be on Amazon and eBay, not tags+microformat+EdgeIO (until there are slick plugins and an obvious marketplace).

But why does it have to be one way (walled garden) or the other (edge)? The real opportunity lies in the middle. The next MySpace will be something similar to MySpace, not lots of little blogs and a technorati -- because teens don't care as long as their peers are convenient. Blogging on livejournal, memestreams or blogging on a privately hosted wordpress instance should be equivallent in the eyes of aggregation.

Genuine VC: On The Edge About The Edge

Amazon Web Service is launching a new web service tonight called S3 - which stands for “Simple Storage Service”. It is a storage service backend for developers that offers “a highly scalable, reliable, and low-latency data storage infrastructure at very low costs”.

They’ve built the back end for the number one requested company that I wrote about late last year - reliable and cheap online storage. I’ve been watching this space very closely, even profiling a number of new entrants, and I have to say that S3 changes the game entirely. Move over Google Drive, Amazon just stole your thunder (for now).

Holy.... wow, this changes a lot of things for me.

TechCrunch » Amazon: Grid Storage Web Service Launches

Right... I've been using Bloglines for a littel while now. My approach is to use Bloglines as a means of storing the RSS feed of any blog that I might be interested in, and then to scroll through my collection every couple of days. As you mentioned -- no reputation. I definitely don't count on my Blogline feeds "recommending" anything that's any more interesting than the topic of the blog... the information I recieve is thus left to the discretion of the blogger.

Actually, I got the link wrong; the bookmarklet took the wrong URL and title associations. I've updated the original post.

But yes, I agree that Bloglines is nothing but a straightforward aggregator. It is very competent at what it does, but it is more like webmail (you expect it gets and manages content, consistently) than anything intelligent. Obviously, we're going to go to smarter RSS tools, because it is very easy to build totally ridiculous OPML files.

RE: Bloglines | My Feeds (1760) (301)

Like a lot of people, I find that the web is becoming my main source of news. Some of the sites I read are published by individuals, but I find the most informative sites are those published by groups of writers/editors/correspondents, including those put out by Main Steam Media (MSM). However for the past three months my main source of "what's new" has been a new breed of website that collaboratively votes on the best links.

This genre does not have an official name yet, but each of these sites supplies readers with pointers to news items that are ranked by other readers. None of these sites generates news; they only point to it by filtering the links to newsy items. Using different formulas they rank an ever moving list of links on the web. The velocity of their lists varies by site, but some will have a 100% turnover in a few days. I check them daily.

This is a nice overview of the competition (minus reputation...)

Update: It assigned the wrong link. Fixed.

Cool Tool: Consensus Web Filters

As you’ll quickly realize, the features and functionalities offered within myYearbook enable teenagers to facilitate and optimize their real-world social lives and their careers as high school students. Conversely, if you’re not on myYearbook, you will be at a disadvantage, one that becomes more severe with time. For instance, in schools where the teens have adopted myYearbook, parties are planned with the service, they collaborate on classes and extracurricular activities, you can see who’s popular or who lives near you with similar interests… even their search engine is optimized for socialization. Of course, this is all on top of pretty much everything you can do with MySpace. In a complete reversal of the first ten years of online communities, where the inhabitants were the edge cases of society as I described above, for a teen in a high school today where myYearbook has presence, the edge case is the one that doesn’t belong to the service. Consequently, this is something that is not well understood by many “older” execs and investors today.

Nice business model, too.

GigaOM : » David vs. Murdoch er …. Goliath.

finethen wrote:

What is going on with teenage boys in this country? Church fires (in "Bombingham")as a alcohol fuled prank? Homeless men beat to death as a "joke"? How can people so young be so violent and destructive?

Violent video games. Duh.

RE: Chron.com | Drinking May Have Fueled Ala. Church Fires

Just in case Tim O'Reilly is running short on buzz phrases, I'm going to contribute another one suggested by the mix at eTech. In the early days of cybernetics, many applications were in the control of aerospace systems. Many of those control loops unavoidably involved the presence of homo sapiens in the cockpit, leading to the phrase Human in the Loop (HITL). As the linked article dryly observes "The adaptability of human operators made the basic approach of extracting equivalent transfer functions enormously challenging." (Translation: Under carefully controlled conditions, the experimental subject will do what he damn well pleases.)

...

Or we can look at the Mechanical Turk, where humans can literally be put into a program loop. And not just a single human, a whole marketplace is the big vision. Which are known to get complex. I grew up writing EXTERNAL statements; will the next generation need to write 'EXTERNALITY' declarations on their jobs?

Due Diligence: Humans in the Loop

Memestreams.net suggestion -- there should be a draft saving option on the recommend page.

What I really like about the bookmarklet, and the general interface, is that it is really easy to save a link to my feed. I generally use it as a clipping service for my own reference, rather than have additional content scattered onto a site like Bloglines.

I feel that writing up a point, or responding to an article, requires time. It is easy to write stream of conscious, but that does not make a great entry. I noticed a big difference between the options of a site like LiveJournal (post now!) and Wordpress (compose your posts, set a release date, juggle multiple entries) -- and I think that is reflected on the quality of the content often found.

Sometimes I see something that I'd like to clip AND comment on, but I lack the time. It would be nice if there was a "Save Draft" button below. It would save whatever I've typed but keep the content private; I could go to Memestreams to resume the entry and post it to my stream.

The writing quality of the site would improve... but the rants would decrease... maybe that isn't a goal for the site.