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Make Your Service Underdetermined To Achieve Internet Scale
Albert Wenger – May 24, 2011
I have written previously that given the huge scale of the Internet, services that might historically have been considered a feature can now be companies. There is a critical success factor though to achieving Internet scale that I think is [...] Read more
The Unbundling of Product Discovery from Commerce
Albert Wenger – May 20, 2011
Search will always be an important way of finding products when I know what I want. For instance, if I know that I need a manual bilge pump (a recent purchase), I will go to either a search engine or [...] Read more
For A Change: Some Sensible Legislation on Privacy
Albert Wenger – May 19, 2011
This seems to be the week for legal blog posts. After trying a slightly revised version of COICA with new branding (now: PROTECT IP), Senator Leahy has come out with a very sensible piece of legislation, the ECPA Amendments Act [...] Read more
The PROTECT IP Act (COICA Redux) Is Still a Bad Idea
Albert Wenger – May 16, 2011
The proposed PROTECT IP act is an improvement on COICA, but still makes the wrong trade-offs between protecting copyright holders and defending the integrity of the Internet.There are several major modifications from the COICA draft. The key ones are first [...] Read more
Ceramics on Shapeways
Albert Wenger – May 13, 2011
Shapeways yesterday announced support for yet another awesome material: ceramics. Ceramics is a particularly cool because it it is food safe and thus unlocks the market for 3D printed dishwares. That includes my admittedly fairly lame chop stick holders, which [...] Read more
From the Locus of Computation (Chromebook) to the Locus of Control (?)
Albert Wenger – May 12, 2011
Google’s announcements of Chromebook and subscription pricing offer a great opportunity to reflect on where we are in the history of computing. It is all too easy to think of this as something radically new, when it is simply the [...] Read more
On Incubators
Albert Wenger – May 9, 2011
As with the previous cycle, we are once again seeing the formation of many new incubators (Om has a post up which inspired my post). Having co-founded an incubator and having observed a bunch of others over the years, I [...] Read more
Skype Should Not Sell
Albert Wenger – May 6, 2011
Despite their best efforts to screw up the Mac client, I still love Skype both as a consumer service and as an independent company. Back when eBay decided to spin out Skype to private investors instead of waiting and spinning [...] Read more
Fake Quotes and Information Cascades
Albert Wenger – May 4, 2011
On Monday as I was reading reactions on the web about the successful raid on Osama bin laden’s compound, I kept coming across a quote “I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in [...] Read more