Technically Speaking

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).

TechCrunch, the tiny blog that went big time for Mike Arrington looks to be on the verge of a deal of astronomical proportions. Now if the deal is true, this could make TechCrunch another thing that CNET destroys. I think that the offer is probably going to be hard to refuse, and for Mike maybe it’s time he cashes out and leaves the rental he lives in.

CNET’s growth has stagnated, while TechCrunch is growing like a weed. And so are SeekingAlpha, GigaOm, Huffington Post and other new media companies. These companies have filled a niche that appeared when traditional media began cracking apart–and they’ve taken full advantage of it.

The main question is why have big sites like CNET have supposedly stagnated? Well the answer is that Mike worked his nutz off making TechCrunch work. He put in the time, the hours, and did what it took to make it work. CNET rested on it’s already established place, and that my friends is the reason TC took off like a rocket and surged in growth like nobodies business.

The blogs I look to do the same very soon of course are Allen Stern’s CenterNetworks, often overlooked but out of nowhere he is going to drop a DDT before you know what hits you. Than of course there is Read/WriteWeb, who has had tremendous growth over the past year. RWW is another contender for the crown. We mustn’t count out VentureBeat, the scrappy true journalism integrity site left in the blogosphere. If you want the complete story, you go there. Matt Marshall is one heck of a reporter and person. GigaOM, well Om already has his money and he is building a fine network of blogs; GigaNET if you will. Lastly we must not forget the blog that posts 900 items a day of course - Pete’s Mashable.

Technically Speaking, there are a lot of great blogs that have the news when you want it. TC becoming a CNET property is interesting and for one thing, it will free up the blogosphere and put in a new fight for #1!

DEMOfall, which is being held in San Diego sounds like a great excuse for me to head out there. I just looked over this great list, and started to think to myself, you could make some money off this. Of course I have been busy working all day, and I just wanted to play a little catch up this evening.

Marshall tags his former boss Mike on this one. Some very interesting Google news by November 5th which is like election day maybe? Sounds like enough fuel for a conspiracy theory. As the TC article was stating, secret meetings, NDA’s, and off the record conversations by Mr. A. Where’s the KGB and the CIA black ops team?

Technically Speaking, enough silliness for now. I need a beer! colon cleanse

Zimbra who was bought by Yahoo for $350 million the other day is still making news. This time it appears that Richard over at RWW does a full analysis of why Yahoo wanted to drop $350 million on Zimbra. The answer is pretty simple, but he breaks it down pretty nicely.

Zink, a company that does inkless printing raised $25 million. Now isn’t this the same thing we did as kids at the fall festivals we had to go to? Take some wax paper and melt crayons with a hair dryer? Sound familiar? Well this company just took that idea one step further with some crystals on paper that turn into colors at a specific temperature. Very interesting. $25 million should help roll this product out to market. Miami real estate

Technically Speaking, that is two “Z’s” too many for now!

As we head into Web 2.9 or whatever you like to call it, Marshall Kirkpatrick has the first sighting of Intel’s new MashMaker. The overall concept of MashUp’s is something that is very Web 2.0, but I think that Intel intends to leverage their namesake to make it more appealing for “mom”.

What I don’t like is the fact that in today’s web whatever.0 we are in, the comparisons of mashup’s are going to be compared to splog’s. What most people term as “scraping” has been given a bad reputation among bloggers as well as the casual web surfer. Splog’s or scraping blog’s to create monetary gains is something that all bloggers have been fighting for the past year or more. It’s quite apparent that the first thing Intel must do is to dis-associate the term scraping from their product. They must make “screen scraping” a good thing online. Somehow they need a real spin job done that is understood by “mom”. diamond rings

The thing that Intel doesn’t realize is that while most of us (well my readers at least) are very web savvy, the other issue at hand is that many of these smaller mashup companies don’t understand is they are way over the head of mainstream America or the world at large for that matter. While this week is going to be the week of TechCrunch 40, the start up world still doesn’t realize that in order to really succeed you need something universal.

Reason’s why Facebook and MySpace succeeded is that they became household names, and offered something to the consumer that was worthwhile. It’s no secret, while Intel’s MashMaker will gain some positive traction amongst a small percentage of the tech crowd, unless Intel is willing to dump some money into advertising, this is a project that enters a sphere of many competitors. In other words, by some time next month if you utter “I made it on Intel MashMaker“, you may as well be speaking Latin.

Yes, I could do a link-a-thon to other companies that provide mashup services, but I would rather my readers do a search on their own. Think for yourself, learn what other mashup companies are out there already. I am not saying avoid the Intel MashMaker project, by all means - try it. At the end of the day, is giving up your creation to Intel worth that often over used slogan they made famous - “Intel Inside”?

It’s also a concern that all mashups created are property of Intel.

Technically Speaking, Intel Inside your creation doesn’t sound like a promising start to something that does have potential. Nevertheless - Welcome back DUDE (Marshall)! Great articles like the one you just dropped on the world (blogosphere) has been MISSING since you left from daily blogging.

Marshall Kirkpatrick, who has become a blogging standard bearer, has decided to step down from his job as Director of Content at SplashCast and join the ReadWriteWeb team. This announcement may surprise many of you, in fact it may be the shocker of the day for a lot of you.

When he worked for TechCrunch I believed he took that blog to an even higher standard of online journalism. His insight on things such as simply explaining the reason why “the company” matters - is why I believe his writings are far superior than a majority of bloggers.

On every announcement such as this, there is an upside. So the upside to this? Well starting Monday, we will be able to enjoy Marshall Kirkpatrick - the blogger - once again. Some bloggers, you just skim, others you check daily, and than there are those that you can’t miss reading.

Technically Speaking, I wish Marshall the best in his upcoming adventures. This makes next week even more exciting for the blogger as well as the blog reader - Marshall Kirkpatrick the tech blogger —- is back. Not good-bye by any means, because he never really left the building!

Covered on SplashCast
Covered on CenterNetworks

To be a blogger, you don’t have to be anywhere particular in the world. New Zealand is just fine. In fact if you can make it to number 51 (currently #76), you are really doing well. You just need to have a passion and do it. That goes for any blog out there, whether you are starting or fighting your way up the ranks of Technorati as I outlined in my last blog post.