Alex Iskold Technology Blog

Patent Crisis and The Age of Open Source Ideas

alexiskold — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 06:15:02 PDT

We live in an age when success of innovation is mixed with unprecedented failures. On one hand we’re reinventing the web, fighting for a greener future and building genomix. On the other there are housing bubbles, credit crises and war. The technology patent crisis is important to our future. For decades the patent law served [...]

Startup, Inc – What You Need to Know Before Starting a Company

alexiskold — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 20:12:48 PDT

Often people start a company without any clear idea of what a company is. Entrepreneurs closet themselves in the garage and start writing code. While the modern tech world could not exist without obsession, artistic inspiration and crazy engineers, there’s more to a startup than passion. In this post, we explore the basics behind corporate entities, [...]

What Startups Can Learn From Haruki Murakami

alexiskold — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 20:25:39 PDT

I’m a big fan of Japanese writer Haruki Murakami. The genius of Murakami is in his discipline, focus and determination. I see him as a virtual Zen master – an embodiment of wisdom, passion, skills and exceptional will. The elements of his work and life story are inspirational and particularly applicable when you’re running a [...]

Beyond the API: Why Companies Should Have a Presence on All Major Platforms

alexiskold — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 05:49:40 PDT

Much has been written lately about the rise of the API. Offering a programming interface to an online service is now standard practice amongst this generation of web companies. Through APIs, we get to enjoy a range of innovative Twitter clients, wide availability of maps and location information, custom search engines, and more. However, delivering [...]

Top 10 Concepts That Every Software Engineer Should Know

alexiskold — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:09:16 PDT

The future of software development is about good craftsmen. With infrastructure like Amazon Web Services and an abundance of basic libraries, it no longer takes a village to build a good piece of software. These days, a couple of engineers can deliver complete systems. These days, a couple of engineers that know what they are doing [...]

The Future of Computer Applications: Help Me or Entertain Me

alexiskold — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 06:56:04 PDT

In the introduction to his book, Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux operating system, wrote that life is about entertainment. He might seem the last person you’d imagine as focused on entertainment, until you realize that Linux started as a hobby. Entertainment is increasingly the center of our lives, and we also want work that challenges [...]

Facebook Platform: The Fanfare Revisited

alexiskold — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 04:47:35 PDT

When the Facebook platform debuted last year it was touted as the next big thing. Media, VC, startups and big companies shared the enthusiasm for its future. And no wonder: Facebook enabled access to 50 million users. You no longer needed to bring the audience to your app. Instead your app could be delivered to one [...]

iPhone – The New Personal Computer

alexiskold — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 07:20:56 PDT

When Apple first announced the launch of its iPhone platform, we wrote here that it is a game changer. Even the core of iPhone is a major advance in mobile computing, but with the platform iPhone becomes the new personal computer. The desktop from now on will be for professional and business work. Laptops aren’t going [...]

Can Browser Add-ons Be Businesses?

alexiskold — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 06:12:48 PDT

VC Fred Wilson asked recently on his blog if there is a business in browser add-ons? I have a vested interest, since my company is in the add-on business. Adding a bit of functionality to your browser can be fun and customization makes software more personal, yet there are issues such as privacy, performance, and [...]

Is Email In Danger?

alexiskold — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 05:13:22 PDT

Human history is one of progressive improvement in communication. From the 20th century mail was a fundamental form of communication. The invention of electronic mail (email) changed two things. It became cheap to send mail, and delivery was instant. Email became favored for both corporate and personal communication. But email faces increasing competition. Chat, text messages, [...]

Does Microsoft + Powerset Beat Google?

alexiskold — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 05:08:54 PDT

What can the plan be with Microsoft’s purchase of hot startup Powerset? The 3-year old company, founded by Dr Barney Pell, recently launched a semantic search experience for Wikipedia. It is doubtful that Microsoft bought the company just to enhance Live Search. Possibly the plan is to replicate the Wikipedia solution, then incorporate Powerset into Internet [...]

Semantic Search: The Myth and Reality

alexiskold — Thu, 29 May 2008 19:23:40 PDT

For a few years now people have been talking about semantic search. Any technology that stands a chance to dethrone Google is of great interest to all of us, particularly one that takes advantage of long-awaited and much-hyped semantic technologies. But no matter how much progress has been made, most of us are still [...]

Freebase: An Overview

alexiskold — Thu, 29 May 2008 05:51:48 PDT

Freebase, the first product of semantic web company Metaweb, is an open, semantically marked up database of information that we called one of the “10 semantic apps to watch” last year. With $57.4 million in funding, a smart team, and a tech legend in Danny Hillis at the helm, Metaweb is considered to be [...]

alexiskold — Tue, 27 May 2008 21:58:32 PDT

Last week at the SemTech 2008 Conference that took place in San Jose, Yahoo! Researcher Peter Mika spoke in detail about the company’s new SearchMonkey search platform initiative. Mika talked broadly about his work looking at metadata on the web, and how that led to the birth of SearchMonkey. This post is based on [...]

SemTech Panel: Investor Opportunities and Pitfalls

alexiskold — Tue, 27 May 2008 21:50:47 PDT

What sort of funding opportunities exist in the budding Semantic Web space? What are VCs looking for and how much are they will to invest? That was the topic of a panel at the SemTech 2008 Conference that just concluded in San Jose. The panel featured Stephen Hall from Vulcan Capital, Eghosa Omoigui [...]

SemTech Panel: Taking Semantic Technology to the Masses

alexiskold — Tue, 27 May 2008 21:44:54 PDT

How will the Semantic Web make the jump to the mainstream? That was the topic of a panel at the SemTech 2008 Conference that is going on right now in San Jose. The panel was moderated by Carla Thomson from Guidewire Group and featured Josh Dilworth from Porter Novelli, Tom Tague, who heads [...]

The Rise of Contextual User Interfaces

alexiskold — Thu, 15 May 2008 07:21:26 PDT

Web 2.0 has brought many wonderful innovations and ideas to the Internet. We can no longer imagine the web without a social dimension, and we can no longer imagine an online world that is read-only – it is now a read/write web full of user-generated content. But there is another fairly recent innovation, which might [...]

Twitter and the Architectural Challenges of Life Streaming Applications

alexiskold — Tue, 13 May 2008 07:05:27 PDT

Because Twitter is getting more popular, every glitch in the service is now felt more acutely. Going without Twitter for many people is even harder than going without email, and so outages lead to complaints. Complaints pile up and become debates, asking questions like: should Twitter be converted into a protocol and become decentralized? Is [...]

Faster – Why Constant Stress is Part of Our Future

alexiskold — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 21:21:19 PDT

A few weeks ago, the New York Times ran a weekend piece entitled In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop, which focused on the stressful nature of blogging. Using our friend Marc Orchant’s death and Om Malik’s heart attack as examples, Matt Richel built a case for web journalism as the [...]

The American Dream: 17 Years of Engineering Software

alexiskold — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 17:32:03 PDT

Seventeen years ago, on April 10th 1991, a plane landed in John F. Kennedy airport. That plane had just crossed the Atlantic carrying, amongst others, passengers escaping the crumbling Soviet empire. One of whom was me. I walked off that plane with a first ever taste of Coca-Cola in my mouth, a lame teenage [...]