As expected being Winerized bumped me into 84th place in "Site's most read yesterday"

anyone doing RSS banner ads yet?
I'm a bit uncomfortable with the appearance of graphics links embedded in the 'description' field of RSS. And now BlackHoleBrain suggest this. As I read it, I just know it's going to happen, and I think it's BAD, BAD, BAD! Imagine scanning through the Moreover Vertical Portals feed and item 8 is a rolling animated LINE56 banner for their next conference.

Well, Well. I just got Winered. We'll see tomorrow what it does to the hit rate.

EU encourages SMEs on-line in new GoDigital project. EU Business Mar 14 2001 10:21AM ET [Internet Europe news]
Maybe important, maybe not. I'll check tomorrow...

Financially-challenged surfers start to invade the Net. Rich Americans forced to share cyberspace [The Register]
Typical. Give away free internet access in the public libraries and poor people take advantage of it.

Clay Shirky Explains Internet Evolution Oh boy. What a lot of good stuff here.

Line56: MS link their small business offering "bCentral" with eBay via SOAP. And hence with UDDI. This is B2B for the rest of us and MS wants it. Also remember MS' recent purchase of Great Plains, probably the market leader in MS based mid range accounting.

Palm Won't Hand It to Microsoft. Palm dominates the handheld market and Microsoft dominates the PC market. Which company will conquer the burgeoning PDA-cell phone market? By Elisa Batista. I want one Palm sized device with a screen, fold out keyboard, aerial, Mic and Speaker/headphone jack and maybe a little vidcam. I want an expansion port. And then I want to turn it into a PDA, radio, TV, MP3 player, phone, GPS, camera, webcam, SMS system, WAP system all in software.
And I want it now!


Boston Globe Story about Forrester. "Forrester's continuing success hinges on ensuring that big companies are paranoid about the future, and the havoc that technological change might wreak. It's fear, uncertainty, and doubt - as well as a desire to take advantage of opportunities - that keeps companies tuned in to Forrester missives like ''The New Reality of Online Travel: Zero Commissions.'' Yup, this is how analysis works. Create a research report with 4 FUD questions. Follow it up with 6 paragraphs on how it's not that bad. Finish with 2 Paragraphs of recommendations on dealing with the threat.
Cynical? Moi? With my reputation?

So this is how it works. A Goldman's Sachs analyst talks to some corporate board level suits. They say things aout B2B like "There's a recession coming, delay any deal north of $1 million", "Wait a bit while we double check the potential ROI", "The wheels will not fall off the business because it spends too much money processing purchase orders for office supplies". So he then marks down Ariba, C-1, Verticalnet, ICG and FreeMarkets. The stocks catch a cold and tank. People lose money and the recession becomes more real. But is that last comment stupidity and confusion on the part of the analyst or the suit?

BBC: China plans worlds deepest lab.

2:22:24 PM    And then they're going to fill it with robots running evolutionary algorithms... Was that a Bruce Sterling or Neal Stephenson short story?

Napster Blocking Creates Dan Quayle Effect I love it. The only illegal songs on Napster are the Mis-Spelt ones...

Essential T Shirts from NTK.

USA Today: Europe's music-piracy solution: taxes. The legislation, which takes effect in each of the 15 EU nations after being ratified by the national parliaments, allows countries to add fees for each blank CD or CD burner sold -- mirroring existing laws in Italy and Germany, where additional charges of between 5% and 10% are already being assessed. So if I pay the tax, what rights does that give me? Who gets the money? Can I now copy legally?

Tech Meltdown: Lessons Learned?. There's a reason why news about the dot-com slump is starting to sound old. It is old. As of this week, it'll be a year since the tech stock market hit its high and Net shares began to crater. By Joanna Glasner. So how about a bit of optimism then ;-) The US and UK economies are as strong as they've ever been. You've never had it so good! Remember, "Optimism is a self fulfilling prophesy..."


This Virtual Life with Danny OBrien. Sunday Times Mar 9 2001 12:52AM ET
Fascinating. It takes the Gujurat earthquake and the sizeable Indian population in the valley to get the hi-tech industry involved in political/social activity.
BTW, Danny edits the excellent NTK.

Hotscripts.com's lists of code, scripts and applications that support RSS.

Descramble That DVD in 7 Lines. A new, slimmed-down version of DVD descrambling now exists: a mere seven lines of Perl code. It's so lean, you too can attach it to your e-mail signature file.
Hey, Remember when you could put a munition on a T shirt by printing some crypto code?

Excellent, funny and long review of the O'Reilly P2P conference. Packed with quotes. "Only a developer conference would begin on Valentine's Day. These guys may be cool, but they're too damn busy coding or reading SlashDot to have girlfriends. "
at http://www.gtamarketing.com/P2Pconferencereport.html

The most retro web page ever. Jakob would love it.

"Can I take a momento of my visit to the USA? Yes. Take California."
Probably the best Big Beat song ever, The Propellorheads, "Take California"

Website profitability: an economic analysis. Very interesting article about making or losing money with a content based website.

The internet isn't 10 years old, but right now it feels like a 10th Birthday party is in order. One of my favourite mailing lists (Euro-Moto on European motorcycles) had it's 10th Birthday at the end of last year. I've been on it for I think 7 years. Then The Times posts a story that the famous Cambridge Uni Coffee Machine webcam is 10 years old but is going off the air in a couple of months when the faculty moves. Judging by the photo, the coffee machine may be 15 years old if it's a day.
Happy 10th Birthday, Internet!

Former Netscape duo reunites for P2P start-up. CNET Mar 5 2001 4:51PM ET

Http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200-5028061.html?tag=ch_mh
So the big guys from Netscape and Loudcloud are at it again. This time it's selling a better way to distribute the content from major news sites closer and perhaps on to the desktop using a mix of Akamai and P2P style tech. Maybe.

Meanwhile the Slashdot/Kuro5Hin model gets hijacked by a bunch of trad publishers and launched in a "Plastic" imitation. Look it's got
DoubleClick ads! And seeded with stories from trad publishing media by trad editors.[1]

I guess the P2P and P2PJ models must be real if the new old guard is
investing in it.

[1]Sorry, is my cynicism showing?


Napster Alternatives: The Best of the Rest Good summary of the state of P2P file sharing. But note that P2P is not just about file sharing.

The Potlatch Protocol I suspect this one's important. More later.

Meeting on Middle Ground: The B2B Procurement Solution for SMEs?. B2B Markets and Exchanges Mar 6 2001 8:23AM ET
SMEs are a hot topic of mine.

Darwin: Under the Influence. But in an industry that touts objectivity as its primary value and sales tool, research companies do little to encourage or police the objectivity of their analysts. These organizations quietly profit from the same technology vendors their analysts cover...
Hmmm? It's Pimps, Whores and Suckers again.

Jargon overload weighs on b-to-b. UpsideToday Mar 6 2001 4:10AM ET
Adam Feurstein does it again. "B-to-b software companies are floundering because their corporate customers don't know what the hell any of this software actually does."

The FT has a page about B2B today. More doom and gloom about B2B.

Canadian paper buys Napster in Sealand story. 'We got our own Shawn Fanning'
Truly cute story doing the rounds about Napster servers moving to "Sealand". Sealand is a notional extra border ISP, actually 30 feet below sea level in an old 2nd world war contraption in the North Sea.

Bertelsmann set for showdown with Autonomy. Netimperative Mar 6 2001 7:04AM ET
Are Bertlesmann going to go head to head with Moreover, using TopicalNet's auto categorization software?

Bertelsmann Says Free Online Music Services Will Die. IDG Mar 6 2001 2:40AM ET
Hah and Hah! That's what they think.

Sagem joins in launching UK video phone. Netimperative Mar 6 2001 3:23AM ET
I want my pocket vidphone/pda/mp3 player. And I want it now. So is there going to be enough money left to build those G3 auctions? This was a classic case of the winner's curse. The UK Gummint made a packet from the G3 auctions, but they may have destroyed the mobile phone business in the process.

Five Questions...To Put a Smile on Your Face
"And of course, it's not just the media that was guilty of this. I'd turn around and call an analyst at Gartner Group or Jupiter (JMXI, info) and bring this up and very often they'd say, "Well, I'd never heard of that," but just in case the Brazilian Tupperware market actually did take off, they would comment anyway just to make sure. "

UK accounts for 40% of European CRM market. Netimperative Mar 6 2001 3:23AM ET
So why is UK Customer Service so damn bad??

Trace who is linking to your site. Database launched to boot off deep linkers. "There are an estimated two to three billion pages on the Internet, and around 100 billion links. Around a quarter of all pages have one or more broken links, according to LinkGuard" Oh, Linkrot!

NY Times: Companies in No Hurry to Buy Over the Internet. Moreover, purchasing managers are reluctant to learn how to use the various intranet and Internet sites peddling everything from manufacturing supplies to printer cartridges, and they do not necessarily trust those sites to deliver critically important goods on time and at the right quality.

Does this mean online e-procurement won't work? Or that public markets won't work? Or that procurement managers are over cautious?

SJ Mercury: Hollywood putting the squeeze on consumers. Dan Gillmor.

JBRates:9 Why does the Entertainment industry hate it's consumers. We're in the middle of a bloody battle as wqe redefine what copyright means. As for me, everything I do is KopyLeft. Go on, steal this weblog.

Journalistic Standards in Web News Sites: Are They Adequate?. I know a number of people who now seem to get their daily news almost entirely from "new media" sources such as Salon, Slashdot, F***edCompany, and the Drudge Report. These are often sources of interesting information, but in terms of journalistic professionalism, they fall decidedly short of traditional news sources.
JBRates: 7 Yes, but, Why would I want to participate in the hall of mirrors between the pimps, whores and suckers that is mainstream publishing?

Nupedia and Project Gutenberg Directors Answer
"the manuals NEVER MAKE ANY SENSE until you already know what they are trying to tell you. . .and then, and only then, can you understand what they were trying to tell you in the first place. "

"Man, if I were a programmer, I'd love to create a Babblefish-like translation page that would turn marketing blather into the Yada it actually speaks. So —

FirstPeer's solutions enable marketplaces ...

would become —

FirstPeer's yada yadas yada yada yadas to yada without the yada...


How to become a B2B hero. IDG Mar 5 2001 9:24AM ET
JBRates:9 Great article for techies on setting up a B2B Extranet for mission critical supplies.

DaveNet: The next trend: B2R. "It may be an excellent time to release new software, it's so quiet in the Valley you might be able to hear a product ship."
Right on Dave. Geek Power, Geek Power, Geek Power!

When Personal Projects Start To Conflict w/ Work?

Don't all new systems happen like this?

If it's really property, then let's tax it..
Hmm. If Intellectual Property is real, why isn't it taxed? And if it's not real, how come lawyers can sue against improper use?

BrowseUp Unveils Beta Software. The software, which the company says fulfills the original vision of the World Wide Web, allows anyone to add their own links from any Web page.
JBRates: Hemm, Interestink

Dave W posted this.
Tim O'Reilly interviewed Microsoft's Jim Allchin. Here's the gist of Allchin's statement. Microsoft is opposed to the US government investing in software licensed under the GPL, since it would not allow Microsoft, a US company that pays taxes, to use the software. He didn't say it's un-American to do so, but I do. It's a simple obvious point. Software created by the public must be accessible to the public.

Let's be clear what "Use" means. nobody's suggesting that MS shouldn't be able to use the software. But MS is complaining that they couldn't take the source, extend it and make money from selling new set.

The interview is actually excellent and clarifies what everyone was talking about.

WriteTheWeb: The state of the blog, Parts II and III
JBRates:9 Some very interesting comments in an Interview with Blogger.com

Get this. A sea transport logistics exchange starts up based in Rotterdam, Holland. The Name? "GoReefers.com" http://c.moreover.com/click/here.pl?e16007998&e=6584 eyefortransport.com

Information Anxiety2: A Guidebook for the Information Age. Overwhelmed by the glut of information, Bunky? How about some more information on how to deal with it? Read Laurie Gray's review of Information Anxiety2. 0302
JBRates:9 I think I need this!

Hempcar will introduce 17 billion dollars into the economy. The Hempcar will introduce 17 billion dollars into our economy over the next five years. This alone, along with the green benefits of using hemp, will help manage our planet more responsibly. What is the spearhead of the Hemp Industrial Movement? It is the Hempcar Transamerica Tour.
JBRates:9 Although this looks like a joke, It's real and sensibly argued. Hemp is just another casualty of the "War against Some Drugs"

My first direct e-mail to weblog posting.

Whoops, I just redirected my three email mailboxes to my blog... Now everyone can read my 300 messages a day...
Actually this tech is kind of neat. Hook it to an SMSeMail service and you can blog on the road. Whoops, I just had a car accident, sorry officer, I was blogging while driving...

UK Web Surfers Have 3 E-Mail Addresses - Research. Newsbytes Mar 1 2001 1:08PM ET
Ha and Ha! What? only 3?

OpenP2P.com. I noticed that OpenP2P.com is syndicating P2P-related items from this site.
JbRates:5 What goes around, comes around. When we all start syndicating each other's news more and more of this will happen.

eCompany Now: Personalization Without Popularity. Fast-forward to today. Azer Bestavros, a professor of computer science at Boston University and chief scientific adviser to Allaire, is currently exporting Zipf's linguistic principle into a retail setting. Bestavros's work and ideas might also offer a breakthrough in how we use personalization technologies...
JbRates:7 Veerry interrresssting... Points out why Amazon's "books like us" firefly system just pushes more best sellers out the door.

From the Nerd Desk. Shooting yourself in the foot as programmed in several languages. It's an old joke but a new laugh.

Who is "Skinny DuBaud"


"My family were" Pimps, Whores and Suckers, A joyful rant against the media industry. And about time too.

XML Fund
JBRates:8 A pretty good primer on XML and it's use in business, particularly in relation to UDDI. But what is XMLFund? And Investment fund in XML??

P2P Auctions for B2B e-Commerce
GnuMarkets comes out of stealth mode. Well there you go...

REVIEW: Unchained Value. Want to know what the B2B world can learn from Amazon, Yahoo, and eBay? So would we.
JBRates:1 The book, not the article. "Not that nothing can be gleaned from the B2C set. However, Cronin fails to establish a connection between the Yahoos, Amazons, and eBays of the world and B2B e-markets. And for B2B executives to draw their own conclusions, well, who has the time for that?" Indeed!

The Aggravation of Aggregation. Cold reality is hitting those in the B2B trenches: Aggregating product data, inventory information, and pricing is no easy task.
JBRates:8 Glad to see another article exposing just how hard it is to collate, clean and maintain a catalog. If every e-Procurement system is expected to do this, e-Procurement itself is not going to fly.

And now...
The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation

UK firms confident of ebusiness future. Nua Internet Surveys Feb 28 2001 11:37AM ET
Well there you go.

http://www.content-exchange.com/weblog/weblog.htm
"This is the first generation that doesn't need us. They don't read newspapers," Brent Baker, the dean of Boston University's College of Communication,
JBRates:8 A great blog on the e-media business.

InfoWorld's James Borck Weighs in on P2P-B2B
JBRates:9 At last. Somebody else has picked up on the connection between P2P, UDDI and B2B.

A Closer Look at B2B Exchange Revenues. eMarketerNews Feb 22 2001 11:36PM ET
JBRates:8 Good to see a journalist questioning what those figures really mean.

Kat Nagel: Natural Life Cycle of Mailing Lists.
http://www.rider.edu/users/suler/psycyber/lifelist.html
And others. Follow the links.

OneSoft Applications Help Sterngold Drill Deeper into Dental Business-to-Business e-Commerce. PR Newswire Feb 26 2001 10:58AM ET
Ah yes. The dental exchange. Almost rivals the exchange opened ion the mid west for the mortuary business as B2B site of the month.

A Century of Controversy over the Foundations of Mathematics.. Gregory Chaitin: A Century of Controversy over the Foundations of Mathematics.
JBRates:10. Yup a perfect 10. Ever since high school Physics and reading "Godel Escher Bach", I've loved this stuff. Any way you look at it, the 20th century was astounding, right from the crisis in Physics in 1900 through to the Human Genome project and String theory.

Holy guacamole, Zeldman is doing permalinks! Now when he writes something noteworthy I can point to it without linkrot? My work is almost finished.
Um, Dave, shouldn't Manila have permalinks? Shouldn't the RSS feeds have the link field filled in?

London less groovy than Vancouver. Evening Standard Feb 26 2001 9:14AM ET
Hmm, Maybe. But then we have better mucis in London...

Phototropic Solar-powered Robots
JBRates:9 MMM! more little tiny dumb robots.

- Busting B2B e-commerce fraud. IDG Feb 26 2001 7:16AM ET
JBRates:8 Interesting article about the problems of keeping your suppliers under control.

Bank of Scotland and Royal & Sun Alliance in B2B SME JV. futurevantage Feb 25 2001 5:48PM ET
JBRates:5 So now we have Sage, BarclaysB2B, LloydsTSB, Virgin and bank of Scotland all going after the SME B2B market. Will any of it work, or will Oracle/Accenture just get richer?

Scripting News said "The purpose of workflow is to keep content off the web." while talking about all that expensive content management software. Absolutely Yup, the emperor's wearing no clothes.

Research Says P2P Will Lead B2B. line56 Jan 24 2001 6:12AM ET
JBRates:7 That's more like it. Somebody's thinking for a change.


P2P survival hinges on Napsters fate. CNET Feb 16 2001 9:15PM ET
JBRates:1 I suppose this is inevitable. Since half the world seems to think that P2P = Napster, Napster's demise will be seen as P2P's demise. Come on guys. Go and read the Intel defintion of P2P, take a look at Peertal and read the de-centralization list. Then come back and look me in the eyes as you tell me that P2P is dying.

This Virtual Life with Danny OBrien. Sunday Times Feb 25 2001 5:48AM ET
JBRates:9 It's well worth while seeking out other stuff by Danny O'Brien including Need to Know. He's one of the good guys.

http://www.nulldevice.net/images/saddam.gif
ALL YOUR NO-FLY ZONE BELONG TO US

OReilly P2P Conference Coverage. OpenP2P.com Feb 22 2001 12:08AM ET
JBRates:8 Here's the more official P2P conf coverage.

Useit.Com: From August 15, 1997; Community is Dead; Long Live Mega-Collaboration

JBRates:3 Another Jakob Nielsen rant. The problem with Jakob is that while he has some good points, there's really only one idea there. Reminds me of the Chasm group.

Wired: "'Moreover sees cybersleuthing in the same continuum as headline news delivery,' a company spokesman said.

I'd been wondering what they did with all that data. It's not just the news they capture and syndicate, it's every clickthough as well although this doesn't necessarily give any clues to the identity of the clicker.

CNN: Nifty one-ounce robot (w/pic)
JBRates: 8 I love this stuff. Never mind nano machines, let's have hoards of robots in the 1-10mm range. I want little ant things that creap out from the corner of the monitor and clean the screen when I'm not looking...

In article , Luis I Cortes
(Biz2Peer) writes
Hi Adrian,
 
P2P is not only about file sharing! True it is about communication between people (absolutelly agree) but also about managing decentralised systems. You can have P2P applied to e-commerce, supply chain management, knowledge management... and you can share not only files but real-time information about inventories
position, access your remote PC via your web-enabled PDA, content from distributed databases... Hope this help "enlightens" your business people!
 
By the way, Prof. Lessig made a very clear point ( http://www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2001/02/16/lessig.html) that
either the right to innovate or the copyright (that is, the way to incentivate innovatioin) will have to change, being that (and only
that!) the underlaying reason for the jury not shutting down Napster right away.
 
Luis I. Cortes
Biz2Peer Technologies


Notes from the O'Reilly P2P Conference. Collated by Gary Bolles (gary@gbolles.com). Full text at http://www.conferenza.com/ArtDsp.asp?file=200102/demo_intro.htm

THURSDAY (panel): "The New Collaborative Journalism" --

Of all the individual sessions I observed (i.e., those other than the general or keynote sessions), this one was *by far* the best attended and most animated discussion--with the most audience reaction and questions. It featured moderator Katie Hafner, a writer from the NY Times (see her January 18 story on "Self- Organizing Web Sites"), and panelists (1) Dan Gillmor of the San Jose Mercury- News, (2) Dave Winer of Userland Software, and (3) the two creators and editors of famed hacker hangout SlashDot.org, Rob Malda and Jeff Bates.

"Using the Web for a 'write' medium as well as a 'read' one -- that's the interesting technical part for me....Journalism is turning into a conversation. It's making my job easier." -Dan Gillmor, Technology Columnist, San Jose Mercury- News

"Journalism has gotten to be a lazy practice--they rarely challenge those they cover. There's a huge integrity issue...But there are many 'disempowered voices' out there that have a lot to say...I think writing without an editorial process is liberating--telling the unadulterated, unaltered truth...We saw a lot of this happening around the newspaper strikes in San Francisco and Seattle." -Dave Winer, CEO, Userland Software

"Ours is now one of the largest systems out there where users are creating the content...Anyone can post, anonymously if they want... [those doing so are given the label "Anonymous Coward"]...We try to amplify as much signal as possible, and filter as much noise...Obviously, it's a very flawed system--there are people who'll piss in the public pool...I wouldn't go so far as to say it's P2P." -Rob ("CmdrTaco") Malda, co-creator, SlashDot.org

"How do we pick our 15 stories a day? It's simple--if we like it! For example, Linux. We don't care about Microsoft!" -Rob ("CmdrTaco") Malda, co-creator, SlashDot.org

"I wouldn't call myself a journalist--a bunch of links is all we are. Some call us 'The Town Hall.' I prefer 'The Village Pub'." -Jeff ("Hemos") Bates, co-creator, SlashDot.org

"I shut down my discussion board, because I found I was deliberately avoiding posting things that would draw flames...A lot of these 20-year olds just want to fight." -Dave Winer, CEO, Userland Software

"Moderation is useful...If I care about a topic, the 'collective voice' is more intelligent than me, or anyone for that matter." -Dan Gillmor, Technology Columnist, San Jose Mercury-News

"You look at the comments and opinions of 10 to 15 people you respect." -Rob ("CmdrTaco") Malda, co-creator, SlashDot.org

"It's the reputation of who you trust. But then, how do you find Joe Schmo, who's 15 and really smart?" -Jeff ("Hemos") Bates, co-creator, SlashDot.org

"All the web logs should be able to work together intelligently." -Rob ("CmdrTaco") Malda, co-creator, SlashDot.org

"The basic problem all of us in this room share is that we don't have enough time! ... I'll often do a search on SlashDot when I'm working on a story--read the threads, get the gist. I operate on the assumption that the people who read what I write know more than I do ... We're just at the start of all this. It'll work in any kind of journalism." -Dan Gillmor, Technology Columnist, San Jose Mercury-News

"The narrower your niche, the more passionate you're likely to be ... At some point, a meta-system will emerge." -Rob ("CmdrTaco") Malda, co-creator, SlashDot.org

"A user should be invited to every press conference. Why don't companies do that? Users don't have an ingrained point-of-view!" -Dave Winer, CEO, Userland Software

"Everyone's tainted! The only way to get the real idea is to look at what, like, 40 people say." -Rob ("CmdrTaco") Malda, co-creator, SlashDot.org

"Yeah, like who cares what a financial analyst thinks? He's just looking for his next interview with a CEO." -Jeff ("Hemos") Bates, co-creator, SlashDot.org

Moderator question: So how does this make money?

"Ads--SlashDot pays for itself." -Jeff ("Hemos") Bates, co-creator, SlashDot.org

"A lot of people are getting value from all this. But the tools aren't there yet...more is needed." -Dan Gillmor, Technology Columnist, San Jose Mercury-News

Audience question: What happens when story submitters are just parroting what the PR-hype stories are saying?

"Then we call 'Shenanigans' on them! But we operate on the assumption there are more good people than bad... Moderation is essential." -Rob ("CmdrTaco") Malda, co-creator, SlashDot.org

Audience question: People want the opinions of others, but don't they tolerate journalists just because they'd rather not talk to hundreds of others?

"Manufacturers of news are less important. And email isn't the answer, because it's not totally P2P. The problem is, the guy who everyone wants to talk to isn't responsive, because he's too busy--has too many emails!" -Dave Winer, CEO, Userland Software

"I don't know if there's a new model for journalism because of all this." -Dan Gillmor, Technology Columnist, San Jose Mercury-News

Audience question: Why isn't collaborative filtering the answer to all this? And to the anonymity question?

"Computers don't solve everything! People make good judgements. People *want* that!" -Dave Winer, CEO, Userland Software

Audience question: What about fact-checking -- all the disinformation out there? Even SlashDot has been taken in.

"The rules don't exist for this yet. But we don't worry too much about fact- checking--because, in minutes, there'll be hundreds of comments!" [to an erroneous post] -Rob ("CmdrTaco") Malda, co-creator, SlashDot.org

"Making a mistake is not bad. ALL publications do it." -Dave Winer, CEO, Userland Software

Audience question (from a European): Couldn't we combine all this with a micropayments system, to aid Third World countries?"

"Yes, but not me. I'm busy." -Rob ("CmdrTaco") Malda, co-creator, SlashDot.org

Audience question: Readers trust the NY Times, the Merc-News, etc, vs. a SlashDot moderator--it's a social thing. But, at the technological level, we also trust the back end. What about the trust issue?

"Well, we all have to trust something. People themselves just have to be filters." -Rob ("CmdrTaco") Malda, co-creator, SlashDot.org

"People don't get--shouldn't get--all their news from one source." -Dave Winer, CEO, Userland Software



------

FRIDAY (keynote): Larry Lessig, Stanford Law Professor, and author, "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace" --

"Legislation should not destroy this revolution! There's something extraordinary about this architecture."

"The architects of the Internet had no idea what this network would ultimately be used for. It was architected so their ignorance wouldn't stop it from developing. This principle is the foundation of what made the revolution possible!"

"The idea was decentralized control, to empower ordinary users--all of whom have different ideas about how the Internet will work."

"The issue for lawyers is how do we deal with the confrontation that's inevitable: What gets built?"

"Six years ago, the Supreme Court ruled to let it alone--let it work out, before we send in the lawyers! But, during the last three years, some Hollywood lawyers have began trying to regulate the Internet. And the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was Congress' response."

"Now, lawyers around the world are trying to protect existing powers--to enable them to *control* the Internet...Take the recent message that Hillary Rosen of the recording industry association had for VCs: 'Unless we approve, your ideas will not be permitted.' "

"When we learned the lesson of the Supreme Court six years ago, to leave the Internet alone, it didn't mean porn and other bad things were okay. It meant we didn't want to stall innovation!"

"The idea is not to g

Just ever so slightly off topic, but this week I have been mostly watching memes travel round the noosphere.

This one turned up sometime last week. See my blog for details. http://www.microsoft.com&item=q209354@www.hwnd.net/pub/mskb/Q209354.asp RTFM, Lamer! Then it made it onto slashdot. Shortly after it was on all the usual suspect's weblogs. Today it made it to NTK (www.ntk.net). I get this feeling that next week it'll be in The Times Interface section before turning up on the BBC Radio 4 news quiz.

Then we get a bizarre animated gif taken from an ancient vid game with wonderful Japanese-English translations. "All your base are belong to us", "THEY SET US UP THE BOMB. NOW WE SET THEM UP IT" and so on. Again the meme is drifting around from memepool to the kitty porn page. The gif gets posted to half a dozen edgy hobby sites. People start quoting "All your base are belong to us" on IRC. Next week it'll be gone.

If you think too hard about this stuff, you can begin to divine the waves of attention of the collective net as this site then that site gets hit by the Slashdot effect and collapses under the weight of hitrate. I'm sure people are trying but I'm not at all sure it can be deliberately directed. Maybe one day the collective hive mind will start chanting OM and relax into rhythmic alpha waves.

B2B Mailing lists. A listing of Mailing Lists focussed on B2B trade

B2B Markets and Exchanges: FreeMarkets Launches ASP Auctions

ZDNet: ASPs turn to B2B marketplaces for growth. There's a rash of stories about B2B markets becoming ASPs, ASPs running B2B markets, Software vendors turning to the ASP model. What noone can tell me is where all the customers will come from...

ZDNet: Oracle offers new business portal. Oracle's latest one size-fits-all, all-inclusive offering includes an ASP option.

Commerce One, SAP take aim at i2 with a direct goods and supplier collaboration system

Commerce One Readies MarketSite Upgrade. C-1 and SAP are bullish about B2B

CRN: Microsoft's Dragonfly for B2B. "Dragonfly" is part of Microsoft's goal to make bCentral a major Web service hub for all businesses, ISVs and channel partners. bCentral, Great Plains, UDDI, .Net, dragonfly, Commerce Server, etc etc. Here they come...

line56: AMR says Private E-Hubs to Dominate. Says Fortune 500 companies expected to spend $50M to $100M to build a private e-hub

UpsideToday: Deep pockets can't save b-to-b marketplaces. A growing number of industry-led marketplaces are shutting down, proving that deep corporate pockets don't guarantee success in the turbulent business-to-business sector.

ClickZ Today: Crafting an Effective B2B Subject Line.... How to make your email SPAM more effective.

B2B Markets and Exchanges : Up 2 Speed on Euro B2B?. Attacking an analysis company with a meat axe.

B2B Markets and Exchanges: Aucxis and EDS Target $100 million in B2B Revenue. With a product to solve the B2B Payment and risk problem

B2B Markets and Exchanges : B2B BizBuyer Snapped up by smarterwork. Smarterwork are a major European success story

Business 2.0: eBay Acquires France's iBazar.... Will eBay end up owning the whole online auction space?

Business 2.0: eBay Acquires France's iBazar.... Will eBay end up owning the whole online auction space?

B2B Markets and Exchanges: e-Marketplace Pioneer Band-X Moves Uptown. Another European success story expands into the USA.

vnunet.com: Intel opens B2B e-marketplace. Do they know something Dell doesn't?

TheStreet.com: Stick a Fork in Ventros Exchange Business, Its Done. COO, CFO, VP Marketing all leave. Zero revenue in the 4th Qtr. So long Ventro, it was nice knowing you.

Nua Internet Surveys: Asia the exception in B2B forecasts

Newsbytes : One Quarter Of Firms Will Bill B2B Online By 2003

Inside China: B2B Transactions Dominated China's E-Commerce in 2000, with more than 99 percent of China's e-commerce volume for 2000

IDC: "As worldwide B2B e-commerce grows from $212B to $2.2T in 2004"

Bloomberg: Europe Internet Trade Growth Outstrips U.S. in 3rd-Qtr, FT Says.. Of course! The USA just didn't get it!

ROI #11 - Last Page. Netmarket Myths: Dis-intermediation

ROI #11 - e-Sales and e-Distribution. B2B Integration

Psst! If kitty porn is too tame for you, try payphone porn. With the right friends, it's awfu...
JBRates:10 Had me rolling on the floor and coughing on my sandwich.

All your base are belong to us.. The Register: All your base are belong to us. Now the truth can be told.
Zig!

Notes from the O'Reilly P2P Conference.
Take the
recent message that Hillary Rosen of the recording industry
association had for VCs: 'Unless we approve, your ideas will
not be permitted.' "

Wow! Thought Crime! Doesn't she know that everything not compulsory is permitted? Sorry, that's everything not ... Such a shame Frank Zappa didn't live long enough to see this. "In the future music will be illegal, and then everyone will be a criminal".

I've reached the conclusion that all we're doing now is playing out the hand. The RIAA and Music industry *have* to behave like this because that's what they do. The Government/judicial system will do what they do. And frankly the populace, coders and market will do what they do. Napster should just wind themselves up and deny them the pleasure. And tomorrow something even stranger will take it's place and we all start again.

This conversation is taking place all over the web and in most cases it dissolves into some sort of morality slanging match "It's wrong to steal", "It's not stealing", etc. As ever Senor Barlow has the quip.

"If you steal my horse, I can't ride. But, if you steal my
song, I can still sing."
-John Perry Barlow, Founder, Electronic Frontier Foundation

Yes! But can I afford to eat?


Europe Internet Trade Growth Outstrips U.S. in 3rd-Qtr, FT Says. Bloomberg Feb 21 2001 10:42PM ET
JBRates:9 Of Course! The 'merkins just don't get it!


eBay agrees to pay up to $112 mln for European online auctioneer. Reuters via iWon Feb 21 2001 10:51PM ET
JBRates:8 eBay bags another one. "One day there will only be eBay"

Webvan Pulls Out Of Dallas; 9 Markets Left. BizReport.com Feb 22 2001 2:22AM ET
JBRates:5 What is this 10 green bottles? Yesterday Webvan had 12 markets left.

One Quarter Of Firms Will Bill B2B Online By 2003. Elcom UK Feb 21 2001 9:59PM ET
JBRates: 3. And in 10 years time, 95% of all B2B trade will be online. Hey, My crystal ball works too.

Italian Tech Volcano Set to Erupt. Rural Sicily, in the shadow of Mt. Etna, is where Italian technology and Web firms are looking to settle. In fact, the government is pinning its hopes for the region's economic recovery on the 'Etna Valley.' Mila Fiordalisi reports from Rome.
JBRates:5 How appropriate. Tech communities should always be located in earthquake zones...

Robot Pets Monitor Their Masters. Aibos are cute interactive pets that can provide hours of entertainment. But can they also be used to keep tabs on children and seniors? Leander Kahney talks with human-robot experts.
JBRates: 6 I'd love to have a robot dog to play with and to be able to stick Schwa stickers on its head to confuse the cat, but this story just strokes me as incredibly sad.

Mike Hogan writes:-

Adam Feurstein's article in Upside today points out that the Industry Sponsored eMarketplaces (ISMs) are not immune to the B2B shake-out. He provides a list of shuttered ISMs that includes Silicon Valley Oil, FreightWise and eMarketplaces run by Dell and Telefonica. He makes the point that these were all eMarketplaces built, funded and run by a single "sugar daddy" company.

UpsideToday: Deep pockets can't save b-to-b marketplaces
http://www.upsidetoday.com/Ebiz/3a93025b1.html
Does this mean "Private Markets" are doomed as well? Or is a Single Sponsor ISM, not what people mean by a private market?

Tiptoeing toward B2B. Institutional Investor Feb 21 2001 3:13AM ET
JBRates: 8 Rentaquote does it again. "Market makers are necessary to tamp the volatility and create liquidity by bridging the gaps in supply and demand and counterparty risk," says Julian Bond, chief technology officer at Netmarkets Europe, a London- based research and
education group for e-marketplaces. "Chasing disintermediation is a mistake in most Net markets. In fact, they would do well to create systems that actively support the middlemen."

Internet Advertising : the SSP Protocol. One of the most recent changes to Internet advertising has been the rampant proliferation of the SSP protocol, and I think it will be around for the duration.
JBRates:7 SSP is vitally important.

Gay, Lesbian E-Commerce Activity Leads The Market - Harris. Newsbytes Feb 20 2001 9:03AM ET

No idea what it's about, but it's a good headline.

Inside: Source Philosophy Lies at the Heart of Media Businesses. Jason Chervokas and Tom Watson. Just because the law ignores reality doesn't mean reality is going to change, and as a result media business will continue to be under assault from new technologies until we develop some consensus based not on stop-gap approaches to specific technologies, but basic principles.
JBRates: 8 This one's key as well.

Industry Standard: The Lonely Crowd. Of course, as media distribution migrates to the digital world, companies will want to charge for something. So the question remains: If distributing conventional media online doesn't work, what will? How do you create successful media products for a hypernetworked audience?
JBRates:9 This one's key to the new economy.

Gigaideas: SOAP Client for PHP.

Yo! How about an XML-RPC client for PHP? Oh, there is one.

Http://www.crn.com/sections/BreakingNews/breakingnews.asp?ArticleID=23972

"According to Microsoft information available on the Internet, Microsoft is trying to evolve e-commerce and B2B services into a highly customizable SmartWeb that end users, businesses and channel partners can leverage to increase the use of business-based Web services and exchanges. "

"Several sources familiar with Dragonfly say the product is part of Microsoft's goal to make bCentral a major Web service hub for all businesses, ISVs and channel partners. Microsoft executives refused to comment on this story."

bCentral, Great Plains, UDDI, .Net, dragonfly, Commerce Server, etc etc Here they come...


ASPs tapping into lucrative B2B market. ZDNet Feb 16 2001 1:56PM ET
JBRates:7 There's a rash of stories about B2B markets becoming ASPs, ASPs running B2B markets, Software vendors turning to the ASP model. What nobody will tell you is where all the customers are going to come from...

They Reveal Hidden Messages. U.S. government agencies, including the NSA and the Pentagon, are quietly funding research into steganalysis: the study of detecting hidden messages inserted into MP3 or JPEG files. What have they found? Current steganography programs don't work that well at all. Declan McCullagh reports from Fairfax, Virginia.

JBRate:5 Bet you thought you could hide those instructions to your spies in Spam about "Meeting Russian Ladies". No Mr Bond, I expect you to die.

Can Ariba pull out of its slump?. UpsideToday Feb 20 2001 4:26AM ET
JBRate:7 Adam Feuerstein on the money again. "The widely held view is that Ariba no longer defines b-to-b."

Up 2 Speed on Euro B2B?. B2B Markets and Exchanges Feb 20 2001 5:24AM ET
JBRate: 8. Great. Somebody laying into an analyst and analyst company with a meat axe.