Welcoming the new Lijit Welcome Wijit
Lijit quietly released a very cool new widget for users of their service (that’s you, right?). The new Lijit Welcome Wijit greets site visitors who come to your site via a search term and gives them a relevant roadmap of your site as it relates to the search query that brought them there. It’s great for your site visitors who now have additional context for their interest in your content. It’s also great for publishers who can now create a more sticky experience for their users and expand the cross pollination of their content. From Greg Keller’s post on the Lijit blog, the Welcom Wijit is about: …
September 22, 2009· 3 min read
AT&T wants to sell you better coverage
As you know, I’m no fan of AT&T. With that in mind I couldn’t help sharing this piece of news: AT&T is now offering customers the ability to pay up and purchase a 3G Microcell to use in their homes (since no-one it seems actually gets descent service at home). The device supports both voice and data usage (presumably the latter is only marginally useful since most consumers with data devices connect to their home wifi networks in house). …
September 22, 2009· 1 min read
Your first 30 seconds
I receive a large number of “check out my new cool bright shiny web thing” emails. I’m amazed at how crappy the user experience is on many of these new tools. Sure – if I spent 20 minutes setting it up and clicking through a bunch of different layers of the application I might find out how great it is, but honestly, if the site doesn’t grab me in the first 30 to 60 seconds I typically close the browser tab and move on. …
September 17, 2009· 4 min read
Don’t Panic!
I was recently talking to someone about an issue in one of their portfolio companies (this was not a Foundry or Mobius company). The issue was pretty serious (it related to safety standards at the company that were being ignored and a resulting accident at the business) and the person relating this story was (understandably) pretty worked up and asking me what I thought they should do. My advice? image …
September 15, 2009· 2 min read
Please sir….may I have more targeted advertising
A few days ago I received a note from Plaxo in my inbox that said in part: As you probably know, Plaxo was acquired last year by Comcast and is now a business unit of Comcast Interactive Media (CIM). Not surprisingly, given the above focus, we’ve been working on enabling interoperability between Plaxo and other CIM Websites. In advance of rolling out this common identity system, we’ve developed a unified Terms of Service and Privacy Policy that will apply to Plaxo and the other participating Comcast Websites, providing consistent protection and eliminating the complexity and potential confusion of having different terms and policies for each Website. …
September 4, 2009· 3 min read
VCs and social media
I recently participated in a Thomson Reuters webinar entitled “Boosting Returns with Web 2.0 Technology”. The seminar was targeted to VC and Private Equity professionals and focused on how investment firms can use social media in managing their investment business. I was reminded of the mew media technology bubble that I live in a few months ago when I spoke on a similar topic at the PEI Investor Relations and Communications Forum. When I asked the crowd of about 150 people how many were on Twitter and a single hand went up I realized that I had my work cut out for me (I might have guessed that that when I walked into the room and was the only person wearing jeans, but that’s another story)… …
September 1, 2009· 2 min read
AT&T reminds you not to use your phone
My wife received an email this morning from AT&T that said in part: Our systems have detected that you are transmitting a substantial amount of data while roaming in areas not directly served by AT&T. The Terms and Conditions of our data plans (including unlimited plans) provide an “off-net usage” allowance that is equal to the lesser of 24 megabytes or 20% of the megabytes included in your plan. I was surprised by this, not only because I hadn’t completely read the terms and conditions (I subsequently did and it’s in there – they can go so far as to cancel my account if they don’t like my network usage – on net or off, voice or data) but mostly because our phones were registering that they were on the AT&T network in all of the places that we travel to regularly. …
September 1, 2009· 3 min read
Community Hours
Brad, Jason and I are going to try something new in Boulder starting this fall – Community Hours at the TechStars bunker. We’re all fans of “random meetings” – taking meetings from people that have been referred to us or have taken the time to write to ask to get together – but sometimes struggle to fit them into our schedules (I’m particularly poor at this – scheduling them generally at random and breaking up many days with too many meetings and not enough time at my desk). …
August 28, 2009· 1 min read
Email closings
I wrote a post a few years ago poking fun at how people (myself included) sign off on their email correspondence. Ben recently pointed me to a Post article on the same subject (written a little more seriously than mine). I continue to find amusing the myriad of ways people use to sign their emails – especially now that social media “coolness” has invaded the tech circles that I run around in (i.e., where there’s more pressure than ever to be seen as cool and with it in the tech world). This has only served to increase the craziness of email sign-offs. Here are a few of my favorites along with my interpretation of their meaning (updated with a few new ones). I’m curious to hear any outlandish or amusing sign-offs that readers have received. Let me know. …
August 28, 2009· 2 min read
Are you a PPC expert? Read on…
One of our portfolio companies (a heretofore stealthy one at that) is looking for Pay Per Click stars (Google AdWords Qualified or SEMPO Institute training preferred) to join their crowdsourced PPC marketplace. If you’re a PPC marketing expert click here to find out more and sign up. Lots more on Trada (which we haven’t yet been talking about broadly) in the coming months as they really start to open up.
August 27, 2009· 1 min read