Technically Speaking

Docstoc.com has opened in public Beta, becoming the first online community providing a library of high quality professional documents, forms, templates, presentations, and spreadsheets. Users can find and share any document and organize and access their files with online storage for access anytime, anywhere.

To get things kicked off, Docstoc will give away an Apple iPod Touch every week for the month of November to the user who uploads the most professional documents each week. User can check their status in the contest in real time, by going to the “docsters” page and clicking on “most uploads.”

Similar to YouTube™ and Flickr™, Docstoc harnesses the power of user generated content (UGC) to provide a one-stop source for professional documents that can be shared freely, discovered quickly, and organized for easy access. Docstoc is the place to go for all content related to business, legal, technology, financial, educational, and creative work, as well as many other professional services industries.

Docstoc makes it easy to find, share, and access any type of content. Users can easily search by categories or by keywords, filter search results by views, downloads, ratings and comments, preview the documents online, and download or store content in online personal file folders for free.

Examples of content at Docstoc:

Legal Docs - consulting/partnership agreements, real estate documents, sample contracts

Business Docs - Sample Business Plans, Contact Lists, Sample Press Releases

Financial - financial templates, proformas,

Creative Docs - sample designs, books, Powerpoint Presentations

Educational Docs - terms papers, class notes, presentations

Resumes - users can upload their own resumes

Docstoc was founded by Jason Nazar in 2006 and has been in private beta and further development since November. Nazar recently graduated from the Pepperdine School of Law with his JD/MBA. He was a partner in Venature, LLC a venture consulting firm in Los Angeles. He is joined by Alon Shwartz, an experienced technologist who most recently headed up product development for a division of MySpace.

The company’s recent Series A funding included, Scott Walchek the early stage VC in Baidu, Brett Brewer one of the co-founders of Intermix Media the parent company of MySpace, and Robin Richards the founding president of MP3.com.

Well it seems like these guys have figured out a way to ruin porn online by making it a spamming tool. The only good thing is that it seems to be a Windows Internet Explorer issue for the time being.

The virtual stripper program arrives on machines that are already infected with malicious software, said Mr Genes. The program comes to life when the Internet Explorer browser is used on infected machines.

The Captcha-busting program can run on Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, and Server 2003.

What this means for everyone though is that the internet is going to become a smaller place before you know it. It’s bad business to have this out there, as if they can do it with a stripper, they can do it with anything.

Maybe it was only a proof of concept, and they will nail this shut as fast as it opened. Let’s all hope that is the case, but as Pandora’s box is opening once again, it will be hard to shut. It’s almost like I can actually hear some anti-porn people screaming “Praise the Lord, porn is dead online!”

So far the two security firms who have spotted the program, Trend Micro and Panda Security, have not seen many copies of it in the wild suggesting few people have been caught out.

Technically Speaking, of course porn is dead, it’s been overtaken by social networking! Where have you been?

Living on One Income - I recently saw a clip on The Today Show with tips for women leaving their jobs, or thinking about leaving their jobs, to become stay-at-home moms. That got me thinking about the prospect of trying to live on one income and seeing how the tips could apply to the general population. … read more posted 10/30/2007 - 6:28am PDT

Money leaks—where is your money going? - Everyone has certain items that they love to spend money on. For me, I can’t resist a good book on Amazon, even when I already have too many books in my backlog. … read more posted 10/30/2007 - 10:09am PDT

The 30 Most Popular Personal Finance Blogs - In the past few years, blogging about money and finance issues has become quite popular. It seems that while discussing money is still somewhat taboo in casual conversation, blogs are pushing the envelope online, discussing and dispensing financial advice on a daily basis. … read more posted 10/30/2007 - 12:21pm PDT

Dig A Silicon Valley Girl, looks to be just that. It appears to be running on a modification of the pligg platform, and what a perfect way to have some fun. I even submitted a girl from the SV, so go vote for her today. Alison McNeill as you many of you know is the hostess of TechSoup and works at bub.blicio.us.

While this is not earth shaking or mind blowing advances in Web 2.0 goodness, it’s just fun, and it’s nice to find a fun site. Hey, I even tried to have a fun site on the same pligg platform, but my design skillz are just not what I’d like them to be.

Technically Speaking, we should all just sit back and smell the roses every now and again! Oh, and if you have any complaints, just like Duncan said - take them here!

While many people will agree with the article I found this morning, there are many in the Valley that will agree to disagree. The points made in the article are all valid, but I agree with one of the final statements made by Seth Goldstein:

“People in New York feel a chip on their shoulder because they’re not in the center of this thing,” says Seth Goldstein, a longtime Silicon Alley player now decamped to Marin County.

Being that I’m about 2,000 miles from San Francisco and the Valley proves that under the right circumstances you can be in the thick of this up time in the industry. Another case in point is RWW’s own Marshall Kirkpatrick who resides up the coast in the nice metropolis of Portland, OR. Being there hasn’t stopped him from being Mike’s main go to writer last year, nor has it stopped him from working for SplashCast, another startup *not* in the Valley.

The Valley does provide great access to resources, and for most startups that I have talked with, I suggest that a possible re-location might boost the chances. Than again, I also state that you should be able to live anywhere and enjoy the bubble while it lasts.

There is nothing out there that states you must be in NYC or San Francisco to be in a successful Web 2.0 company. The fact is that many companies that I have dealt with are in the area, but in the same token I have dealt with companies outside the area as well; just as successful, and enjoying this Web 2.0 bubble.

Will it all come crashing down like a house of cards? I think there will be a downturn coming soon, but as for an actual crash, no. One thing we have to remember, everything hardware, software, and knowledge level has all increased to the power of ten since the first dot com bust. Infrastructure speaking, it’s a better ship we are riding on this time out.

Technically Speaking, yes, I still live in St. Louis, Missouri but am employed one company where we all live in a variety of places (Lookery) - but still based out of San Francisco, CA and another company in Sunnyvale, CA (Lending Club).