Given it's Easter this weekend and most people aren't working tomorrow, we did our second podcast today. We're hoping to have a weekly guest, and we started close to home by dragging the Financial Post's retail reporter, Hollie Shaw, into our "studio". We thought it would be insightful to have someone not drinking the high-tech Kool-Aid every day to provide us with a woman on the street view of the world. We started the show by talking about the growth of cable telephone customers in Canada; then moved on to whether people will actually watch televison on their PCs and mobile devices, before closing with a discussion on - surprise, surprise - Google Calendar.
Addendum: This week, we recorded the podcast using software called Propoganda (hat tip to Tris Hussey). Propoganda has all kinds of neat bells and whistles, which I plan to experiment with this week...probably after I decipher the instructions for the Slingbox that I'm hoping to review. We also signed up for Libsyn, which was packaged along with Propoganda.
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Mark Evansthe blog - examines the world of telecom and technology from a distinctly Canadian perspective.the person - lives in Toronto, CA with his wife and three children, and works as director of community with PlanetEye Inc. 
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Thursday, April 13
Kevin & Mark Podcast #2 (a.k.a We Need a Better Name!)
by
Mark Evans
on Thu 13 Apr 2006 04:55 PM EDT
Matt Takes Some VC
by
Mark Evans
on Thu 13 Apr 2006 09:23 AM EDT
I had lunch a few weeks ago with wunderkind Matt Mullenweg about all things Wordpress - and Automattic and Pingomatic. When I asked about raising venture capital (because it's the Web 2.0 thing to do these days) he laughed and said he'd enjoyed a lot of free lunches from VCs. Well, it looks like someone must have taken Matt to the right restaurant because Automattic has accepted a small minority investment. Apparently, there will be no parties or a move to new, fancy digs but Matt said it will:
"allow us take better advantage of the opportunities before us and also for us to keep our promise to everyone of you to maintain, a fast, stable and innovative platform in the long-term."
Automattic will use some of the money to keep up with the popularity of Wordpress.com, which is getting 4.2 million hits a day, and spam-killer Askimet. One of the key questions Matt and Automattic are probably going to have to ask themselves down the road is what do they want to be when they grow up. Wordpress, for example, has as much cache and opportunity in the blog publishing market as SixApart, which raised $12-million last month from a group of investors that includes Intel Capital. If Matt, who will be in Toronto next month for the mesh conference, wants to take Wordpress into the corporate market, for example, he'll likely have to raise more capital - and find no scarcity of suitors. At the very least, it appears Wordpress is taking off within the mainstream blogosphere, and there will come a point fairly soon when its success will start to strain Automattic's resources. In any event, it's a nice "problem" to have.
Update: Silicon Beat reports Automattic raised cash from Polaris Ventures, Blacksmith Capital, Radar Partners and CNet. Mullenweg comments on Silicon Beat pointing out that a few months he declared no interest in raising capital.
Google Calendar: Cool But....
by
Mark Evans
on Thu 13 Apr 2006 07:59 AM EDT
 Stop the presses, Google Calendar is finally available! You'd think that a cure for cancer has been discovered given all the excitement on this glorious, sunny morning. Yes, GC is pretty impressive with its search capability, tight integration to Google Mail, ease-of-use, etc. But what's the real story (if there is one beyone we're Google and here's yet another cool Web 2.0 app from our army of PhDs)? In other words, how does GC fit into the big-picture strategy? If you step back, Google's portfolio now includes search, maps, a calendar, a word processor (Writely) and e-mail. This gives it a strong foundation for an integrated consumer suite that would be nicely rounded out when/if Google launches some other Office-like services. Is GC the last move before Google rolls out an online productivity suite to take on Microsoft? Will anyone be surprised if Google acquires Vancouver-based Dabble DB, which is developing a Web 2.0 version of Excel?Google Calendar strikes me as two-pronged: one, it's another excellent service that gives many people yet another reason to strengthen their online relationship with Google; second, and far more interesting, is it's probably another part of Google's nudge-nudge, wink-wink Trojan Horse strategy to become the Microsoft of Web 2.0. By launching new services in a progressive or staged way, Google is going after the consumer productivity market from several fronts. This, I think, is their long-term strategy For other views, check out CNet, TechCrunch, and Google Blogoscoped. |
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