People and Numbers

I recently attended the web 2.0 summit in San Francisco and it was very interesting. Their were a great many small start-ups present. Given our business is 4 years old and profitable I put myself more in the group of new companies than start-up.

 My observations include the following;

1. The re-occurring topics for this conference were the open web (open information) and connecting the edge with the mainstream.
2. Google folks were surprisingly sparse
3. Microsoft-* were present in numbers although they seemed a bit disassociated from what was happening
4. Many of the people had no real revenue model but expected that advertising would pay the bills
5. Their were about 75 women present in a crowd of at least 1000 and probably a lot more

Recently I was reading Wired on-line and they had an article about Google Open Social. It seems logical that for every custom application their should be a counterpart in the open space.

Zuckerberger (Nickname) is a smart guy (No argument there) and the value of his Internet property will increase as long as users and time spent on facebook increase. All the smart people working on this will figure out a way for it to make a lot of money.

I just wanted to wish Google a happy birthday! Thank you for existing as I use your search engine every day.

Last week I upgraded to a Blackberry 8830 World Edition. WOW this phone is nice. It has a great feel to it. It feels solid and the design seems very well thought out. The screen is bright and the reception is better than my old BB. It has video playback but I am not sure what formats work. The map feature is also very easy to use and is a great feature. Over all I am really enjoying this phone.

A couple of programmers from our team at AERS Inc. went to Blizz Con 2007 in Anaheim California. One of the items that they received is a WoW World of Warcraft Murloc Suit Key-code! Blizzcon on a card. He sold this item on eBay. It is interesting to me that it sold for $399 USD. Gratz!

I love Business week! Here is great little article on widgets. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_30/b4043073.htm

My google news alerts picked up this story on business week . The link is in line and below.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_30/b4043071.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_businessweek+exclusives

 Our mention is 3rd to last paragraph immediately followed by a quote by CEO Meg Whitman.

I just find this technology so cool! I want to invest!

Developers conferences are always fun. As an attendee we hear about all the new features and software that developers and eBay are working on. The event has a fun atmosphere and it is good to see all our friends that are shaping the future of eBay. The ecosystem is thriving with ideas and opportunity. I’ll post more as the event unfolds. Boston is a beautiful city.

I saw the video of this technology 6 months ago from TED. The technology has obviously been adapted by Microsoft as seen on youtube.

 Here are my predictions

1. Obviously it will be expensive early on and have bugs
2. More high resolution displays will need to be manufactured at table top sizes
   • What will be the native resoution?
   • Will all tables have the same aspect ratio?
3. Surface technology to limit scratching and denting will be key to the development of this technology
4. More processors will be required.
5. A new PC Social market will emerge where media applications are king

Social Applications !!