SiliconBeat

For this weekend, my column looks at the controversy over the awarding of a patent for podcasting to VoloMedia of Sunnyvale. Here are a few more links if you want to dig deeper into this story.

First, you can find the patent itself here. And you can find the VoloMedia press release announcing the patent here. 

For an overview, I recommend the ReadWriteWeb story and the NewTeeVee story here. 

Dave Winer posted his reaction: “Did VoloMedia Invent Podcasting?”

VoloMedia founder Murgesh Navar responds to some of the challenges here and here.

Finally, Adam Curry, who worked with Winer in part, had posted a history of podcasting here and here.

My latest column looks at the urgent need for a national broadband policy. There’s a lot been written about this subject and I wanted to share some of the links that I came across while doing some background research. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m just catching up on some discussions I missed while traveling this week. One of the more interesting was the chatter around Facebooks announcement that it was finally going to do something about search on the social networking site.

I was just discussing this with a few folks this week. As things stand now, Facebook search is somewhere between horrible and useless. Facebook is great for seeing what I did the last couple of days. But if I want to find something I did two months ago, forget it. I have to manually click back through dozens of pages on my news feed.

Also, Facebook doesnt help me build a larger narrative about my life and online activity. So I hope this new search will help mine and understand my behavior to help create a better profile of me and my interests over time.

Anyway, here are a few posts I thought help the stage for this discussion. Here’s the Facebook blog post announcing the search plans: Read the rest of this entry »

I’m always interested in the future of news, for personal and professional reasons. But I found this story about Digg to be particularly interesting. Can it be true that the Web 2.0 icon is doing this poorly as a business?

Black Holes: It Costs Digg $5 Million a Year to Run the Internet

The Use of the Internet by America’s Largest Newspapers (2008 Edition)

Design Agitator: Prototyping Terror: Mumbai in NY

MediaShift . Your Guide to Alternative Business Models for Newspapers | PBS

And here is a video excerpt of my chat with Pickens.

• Google Proves Mortal; Opportunity Knocking? | Eric Savitz | Voices | AllThingsD

  Here’s another take on Google’s black Friday.

• Google sets a record, but not the good kind | Docu-Drama

  As noted earlier, this is where Google’s ideals will be tested.

• The Story of the Fail Whale - ReadWriteWeb

  What a great tail, er, tale. If you’ve come to embrace Twitter and the Fail Whale, this is a must read.

The Yahoo showdown with Carl Icahn is only two weeks away. Today, Yahoo got some great news that Legg Mason, which owns 4 percent of the company, will back Yahoo over Icahn. I may yet have to eat crow over my prediction that Icahn would win a shareholder vote. On the other hand, the folks at Legg Mason and I agreed on one point: Both sides should settle this before shareholder’s vote in August 1. In a statement, Bill Miller, chairman and chief investment officer of Legg Mason Capital Management, said:

“We would prefer that the company and Mr. Icahn reach a mutual agreement on the composition of the Board and end this disruptive proxy contest.”

But no matter what happens over these next couple of weeks, I’ve come to believe that the Yahoo ordeal is part of a larger story playing out across Silicon Valley. In 2008, we’re seeing the end of Web 1.0 as several first-generation Web companies are either collapsing, or beginning to wheeze heavily. Read the rest of this entry »

• What the hell happened to Kleiner Perkins? » VentureBeat
• ING CAFES: NEWSPAPERS, WAKE UP! at WHAT’S NEXT: INNOVATIONS IN NEWSPAPERS
• The 463: Inside Tech Policy: Learnings from THE Cyberporn Story
• Google’s Talking Points For Today’s Antitrust Hearings: The Only One Who Won’t Like Our Yahoo Deal Is Microsoft

• Reports: Carl Icahn considering attempt to oust Yahoo board - San Jose Mercury News
  If Jerry Yang thought life was difficult with Steve Ballmer, wait till he has his first meeting with Icahn.
  (tags: yahoo carlicahn hostile microsoft)
• HP CEO Hurd upbeat about EDS deal
  (tags: hewlett packard markhurd)
• Foreclosures rise - SiliconValley.com
  Uh-oh.
  (tags: foreclosure mortgages credit crisis)
• Steven Pearlstein - A Tech Stable, But Hardly A Staple - washingtonpost.com
  Once D.C. hoped to be one of the country’s leading tech centers, but the dream has faded.
  (tags: washingtonpost, pearlstein, tech, region)