51 posts from: Loosely Coupled // Tim Marman's Weblog
TheFunded brings more transparency to raising venture capital
(Indexed 2008-01-27):
Asymmetry of information plays a major role in negotiations, and it is often said that venture capital investments are made under extreme information asymmetry. On one side of the table, the limited partners don't know much about the company, the VCs know a little (relatively speaking), and companies know everything. This is one reason VC investments are made in stages - it serves as an incentive to keep the company on track and a way to minimize the risk. When it comes to funding, though, ...(truncated)...
Facebook opens up with a JavaScript API
(Indexed 2008-01-27):
Facebook just announced a new JavaScript Client Library that allows you to make Facebook API calls from any web site. In other words, you can start building Facebook applications are live outside of Facebook. I agree with Charlie that this move "makes membership in Facebook that much more valuable", and is probably a direct response to the openness promised by OpenSocial. Duncan calls it a clever move, but if their goal is to truly build the social OS - or what Charlie calls a "social dial tone"...(truncated)...
Taking the Plunge and Rediscovering Passion
(Indexed 2008-01-27):
In my first few years in college, I took a few gut courses that older friends assured me were easy, requiring only 4 hours of work a week. I did terrible in every one. The reason, of course, was that I hated those 4 hours and avoided the work whenever I could. After a couple of semesters of this, I just started taking courses that interested me. Instead of those random "gut" courses, I took various advanced computer science courses. They were easily three or four times as much work, but my GPA d...(truncated)...
Scoble, Facebook and Data Ownership
(Indexed 2008-01-09):
I've sort of ignored the whole Scoble/Facebook fiasco, with people arguing on both sides who "owns" the data. Jimmy Gutterman misses the point a bit, because Facebook has already opened up the social graph through the Facebook Platform API. What they don't expose - and why this script resorted to screen-scraping - is any contact information. He paints this as a "lock in" issue, but I doubt that's their primary goal. We already complain enough about the spam we get on Facebook, and I ...(truncated)...
Creating a better 404
(Indexed 2007-12-31):
Jeff Atwood rants about the typical 404 page, saying "the average internet user has no idea what 404 means or what to do about it. To them, it's yet another unintelligible error message from the computer. Most 404 pages are unvarnished geek-speak." Jeff lays out 5 ways to make the 404 error page better. Drop the 404 Yes, the HTTP response code is 404, but there's absolutely no reason that ever needs to be shown on the actual page. Error codes aren't helpful. A simple explanation of...(truncated)...
Friday Fun: Best DUI Ever
(Indexed 2007-12-28):
With New Year's Eve approaching, I want to implore everyone to be careful... or at least practice your dancing and alphabet in reverse. "Remarkable, I've never actually seen anyone do that." Classic.[Image][Image] [Image] [Image] [Image] [Image][Image]
Congrats to Faisal on his new role on the ADO.NET team
(Indexed 2007-12-05):
My good buddy Faisal has moved from MSBuild to ADO.NET. Specifically, he's the Program Manager for LINQ to SQL and the Object Service for Entity Framework. He says you'll hear a lot more from him on these things, but of course if past history is any indication his blogging will be short lived :) Either way, I'm still waiting for him to convince me why I should LINQ instead of SubSonic. The only issue we're really having now with SubSonic is with the JOIN story, and they're s...(truncated)...
Security implications of MyBlogLog vs. BlogRovr
(Indexed 2007-11-27):
According to a TechCrunch story, Citibank is putting a warning message up for users of comment and blog tracking services.[Image] As it turns out, there is a known issue with the coComment plug-in and, though I'm not familiar with the service, it sounds like BlogRovr also has a browser extension. Since I use MyBlogLog here, I want to re-emphasize that this message above doesn't apply to this service. MyBlogLog works by saving a cookie to your machine under the @mybloglog.com domain. When...(truncated)...
Friday Fun: LOLCODE! on the DLR
(Indexed 2007-11-23):
The LOLCAT is mildly amusing, but what I find really amazing is that someone actually took the time to write an implementation LOLCODE for the DLR. Imagine that, instead of writing boring old C# code, you wrote something like this: HAICAN HAS STDIO?I HAS A FISH ITZ "Yummy"VISIBLE FISHVISIBLE "HAI WORLD!"I HAS A FIBI HAS A A ITZ 1I HAS A B ITZ 0GIMMEH FIBIM IN YR LOOP VISIBLE B IZ FIB SMALR 1? YARLY GTFO NOWAI VISIBLE "NOWAI" KTHX I HAS A TEMP ITZ A UP B LOL A R B LOL B R TEMP ...(truncated)...
Justice Department says ISPs are like the Post Office
(Indexed 2007-09-12):
As reported on TechCrunch, Department of Justice said imposing Net neutrality regulations could "could deter broadband Internet providers from upgrading and expanding their networks to reach more Americans." Chief amongst their examples was that the one of the oldest data delivery systems, the U.S. Postal Service, charges customers differently based on guarantees and speeds of delivery, ranging from bulk mail to overnight. Similarly, the Department believes ISPs who deliver data packages, shou...(truncated)...
Taking on WestLaw and LexisNexis
(Indexed 2007-08-24):
Carl Malamud is taking on WestLaw and LexisNexis. Carl Malamud has this funny idea that public domain information ought to be... well, public. He has a history of creating public access databases on the net when the provider of the data has failed to do so or has licensed its data only to a private company that provides it only for pay. His technique is to build a high-profile demonstration project with the intent of getting the actual holder of the public domain information (usually a governm...(truncated)...
Distinguishing between a platform and a destination
(Indexed 2007-08-21):
Charlie says that "the whole idea that you have a main site is dead". I couldn't agree more - I strongly believe that platforms are the future of the Internet. One clarification I'd like to make in this whole discussion is Facebook is both a destination and a platform. It's important to understand that these are discrete things - something can be a platform without being a destination and vice versa. Clearly, Facebook offers a nice API for integrating your code into theirs, but this ...(truncated)...
More on UrgeMS.exe
(Indexed 2007-07-01):
UrgeMS.exe seems to be causing issues for a lot of people. I mentioned previously that you can disable the process via security policy, and someone pointed out a registry setting to disable it a little cleaner. I was hoping they'd fix this in the future, but it looks like all they did was make it worse. A recent update made this process a bit, shall we say, heartier. In previous versions, UrgeMS.exe was launched only when Windows Media Player started up; now it seems to launch the process repea...(truncated)...
Twitter is, or will be, a Messaging Platform
(Indexed 2007-06-18):
Charlie discusses the future of Twitter and touches on what I think are two key points: corporate twitter and content subscription. The key as Charlie discusses is the opt-in and one-way nature of Twitter. That is, I only get updates from someone if I explicitly choose to receive them, and the party I subscribe to doesn't necessarily need to listen to me. That sure sounds a lot like an RSS aggregator, doesn't it? To me, Twitter is exactly that: a messaging aggregator. The future of Twitter is a ...(truncated)...
There's no such thing as Web 2.0
(Indexed 2007-06-11):
I've said before that I hate the term Web 2.0 but that it's more than a buzzword. Perhaps what I meant to say is what Marc Andreessen said: there's no such thing as Web 2.0 (via Fred Wilson) - thing being the key word there. The first Web 2.0 conference was held in the fall of 2004, and coincided with a large number of people in the tech industry (myself included) peeking our heads out from the fallout from the nuclear winter of 2001-2003 and realizing that the Web was not only not dead, it was...(truncated)...
The real reason for Google's free 411 service
(Indexed 2007-06-04):
Tim O'Reilly speculated why Google is really doing a free 411 service. In short, I'm speculating that the 1-800-GOOG-411 service is designed to harvest voice data to build Google's own speech database, rather than licensing from Nuance or another player. Charlie confirmed this at the recent Google Developer Day. Dr. Norvig said that the primary motivation behind Goog-411 is to provide something useful to Google's users, but the voice data the service collects will certainly help the company ...(truncated)...
Microsoft Silverlight
(Indexed 2007-05-25):
A lot of people are very excited about Silverlight, the technology that was formerly known as WPF/E. Jesse says it will give Flash a real run for its money because of a better video story (emphasis in original). Unlike Flash, Silverlight (the new name) will support DRM, it supports the industry standard VC-1 codec used in HD-DVD and Blueray, and it can take advantage of the built-in media streaming capabilities of IIS. As for DRM support, I don't think that's of any real consequence. Jesse c...(truncated)...
RIM announces Application Suite for Windows Mobile
(Indexed 2007-05-25):
Some pretty big news in April that I never got around to posting: RIM announced the Blackberry Application Suite for Windows Mobile (via). RIM plans to begin offering the new software application suite later this year for select devices based on Windows Mobile 6. Once installed, the software will provide users with a virtual BlackBerry application experience, including support for BlackBerry email, phone, calendar, address book, tasks, memos, browser, instant messaging and other applications de...(truncated)...
On finishing law school... and what's next
(Indexed 2007-05-24):
It's finally starting to sink in that I'm done with law school. After nearly 4 years, I received my J.D. on Sunday as part of Fordham's 100th graduation class. Because we were a "special" class, commencement was held in the Metropolitan Opera next to the school, instead of the usual location at the MSG Theater. (I'll update this post later with pictures). It was sort of a weird experience for me. I didn't know most of the graduating class - there were only a handful of us who stayed in the par...(truncated)...
Arguing Intelligently about Copyright
(Indexed 2007-05-01):
Dare has a great rant on copyright. A key purpose of giving authors and other content creators exclusive rights to their intellectual property is to enable them to be rewarded financially from their works for some time before allowing these creations to become "owned" by society. This is supposed to be an incentive that enables the creation of a professional class of content creators and thus benefits society by increasing the number and quality of copyrighted works as well as creating a marke...(truncated)...
Blogs are "definitely not reputable news sources"
(Indexed 2007-04-24):
Jawn Murray, a columnist for AOL's Black Voices and a regular personality on the Tom Joyner Morning Show, had this gem in the latest Giant magazine. Blogs are online diaries written by your average Joe - people who don't work in the entertainment industry and have no formal journalism training. They report arbitrary gossip, things they hear in hair salons and barbershops or read on message boards. They lift content and take photos from other Web sites without permission. Blogs should have a dis...(truncated)...
Blogs are "definitely not reputable news sources"
(Indexed 2007-04-24):
Jawn Murray, a columnist for AOL's Black Voices and a regular personality on the Tom Joyner Morning Show, had this gem in the latest Giant magazine. Blogs are online diaries written by your average Joe - people who don't work in the entertainment industry and have no formal journalism training. They report arbitrary gossip, things they hear in hair salons and barbershops or read on message boards. They lift content and take photos from other Web sites without permission. Blogs should have a dis...(truncated)...
Students sue anti-cheating company
(Indexed 2007-04-03):
Prof. Patry passes along an interesting story. Four students are suing a company that compares submitted papers to a database to test for plagiarism. The service seeks to root out cheaters by comparing student term papers and essays against a database of more than 22 million student papers as well as online sources and electronic archives of journals. In the process, the student papers are added to the database. The students are suing because that last piece - they claim (rightfully) that they ...(truncated)...
Sorry for the downtime
(Indexed 2007-04-03):
Right after the move, the power supply in one of the new servers died. Unfortunately, the database was also running on this server and I didn't have mirroring set up yet. It required a physical trip to the data center, but we recovered the data and failed over to the second server. The first server is back up on a borrowed power supply. We have have ordered a replacement, but this shouldn't require additional downtime. Sorry about this... hopefully you've at least noticed the speed improvement...(truncated)...
I Don't Get Twitter
(Indexed 2007-03-22):
I am really struggling to understand the Twitter lovefest, and I'm certainly not the only one who doesn't find value in the service. It is mildly interesting, if that, from a technical perspective and doesn't add much to what I can do today. (Not to mention it's been down and/or slow under the load lately). Perhaps the only real draw is that "everyone" is on there - but we all know love for social networks can be fleeting (see, e.g., Friendster, Facebook). As Yogi classically put it, "nobody g...(truncated)...
Music of Note: The View
(Indexed 2007-03-14):
The View are an indie/punk band from Dundee, Scotland. Perhaps the most obvious comparison is to Arctic Monkeys.[Image] Their debut album, Hats off to the Buskers, is currently topping the UK charts. It's all over the place in terms of style, but overall it's a great album. Standout tracks for me are Same Jeans, Grans for Tens, and Skag Trendy. I'm not quite ready to put this in the same class as Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, but it's an excellent record that I've had in heavy...(truncated)...
Choosing a corporate entity for your startup
(Indexed 2007-03-06):
Generally speaking, tax and liability drive the choice of entity. Taxation From a tax perspective, all of the entities except for C-Corps are known as "pass-through" entities, where any income and losses show up on the owners' tax returns. With a C-Corp, taxes are paid by the corporation itself, independent of the individual owners. If you anticipate huge tax losses early on, one of these pass-through entities can be desirable (unless you anticipate taking VC money soon). In some cases, you can...(truncated)...
The UAC security flaw in Vista
(Indexed 2007-03-03):
User Account Control (UAC) is one of the key security mechanisms introduced in Vista. In the past, the default account as an administrator. Following the principle of least privilege, the default Vista account runs with limited access, and Vista detects when something requires "administrator prompts", as mocked in the most recent Mac ad. All told, this is a good thing. Unfortunately, Microsoft made some poor design decisions in the implementation, sacrificing some of the security for ease of ...(truncated)...
The Pros and Cons of OpenID
(Indexed 2007-03-02):
The Radar team has a good post up about the pros and cons of OpenID. So what does all that mean? It means that there are a lot of people who have OpenID, but they don't have many places to use them and they probably aren't aware that they have one. It is a good step towards solving some key online identity problems through an open standard that isn't trying to solve every problem at once and is instead focusing on deployment and handling issues and requirements as they arise organically. We ar...(truncated)...
First Life is refused a C&D
(Indexed 2007-03-01):
Marty's post reminded me about this great anti-C&D from Linden Labs. This notice is provided on behalf of Linden Research, Inc. (Linden Lab), the owner of trademark, copyright and other intellectual property rights in and to the Second Life product and service offering, including the eye-in-hand logo for Second Life and the website maintained at http://secondlife.com/. It has come to our attention that the website located at http://www.getafirstlife.com/ purports to appropriate certain trade d...(truncated)...
Start++ brings WDS shortcuts to the Vista start menu
(Indexed 2007-03-01):
Brandon recently released a tool for Vista that brings Windows Desktop Search-style shortcuts to the start menu (and command line). Users of WDS on XP may recall the Deskbar Shortcuts functionality that allows you to create little aliases between words or characters with commands and searches. For example, you could set up the Deskbar so that you could type g Stuff to search for the work Stuff on Google. You could also launch programs, run scripts with parameters, and more. Windows Vista repl...(truncated)...
OpenID gaining momentum
(Indexed 2007-02-17):
On the heels of Microsoft's announcement that it will support OpenID in CardSpace, AOL has become the latest major player to support OpenID. "Every AOL/AIM user now has at least one OpenID URI". This is big news. We made the decision to use OpenID as the sole authentication mechanism on a product we're building, and I'm increasingly happy with that decision. At best, we'll have no local accounts. At worst, we'll be an OpenID provider. It would be relatively trivial to expose ASP.NET membership a...(truncated)...
An Introduction to OpenID
(Indexed 2007-02-15):
OpenID, which describes itself as "an open, decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity", has been gaining momentum and getting press in the Identity 2.0 space. The fundamental idea of OpenID is that a URI is necessarily unique and thus a good way to identify users. If you say you own a URI and can properly authenticate with the URI, then you must be who you say you are. Admittedly, this can be tricky to understand at first. Perhaps the best analogy is an open version of Pas...(truncated)...
How is IP split between separating founders?
(Indexed 2007-02-12):
AskTheVC addresses the question of what happens to IP rights when the founders go their separate ways. "Bottom line, you have a strong incentive (as does your former partner) to settle this amicably, otherwise, you both are going to be worse off." I thought it was worthwhile to dig into this a little further, though, and discuss what happens with the various IP rights a startup might acquire. Often you'll hear 3 founders say "we want everything split 3 ways", but joint ownership of IP can be tr...(truncated)...
On Syndication ... and why formats don't matter
(Indexed 2007-02-12):
One of my big pet peeves with syndication is when platforms publish multiple formats. Or, more precisely, when the user is presented with 5 similar-looking icons with all of those options. Why make the user think? The user wants your content, but you've put an additional barrier in that ultimately has little or no effect on their consumption. Many argue that ATOM is a superior format, and from a technical perspective that is probably the case. I just can't bring myself to care all that much. AT...(truncated)...
Album Reviews: The Game - Doctor's Advocate
(Indexed 2006-11-07):
On one hand, The Game definitely misses Dr. Dre as he confesses repeatedly on his latest album. On the other, he doesn't. The production is not as good as The Documentary, but it's not bad. On his last album, I said it shined despite him not because of him. Here we start to see things trend the other way - Game himself is carrying the album and not simply relying on impeccable production. Byron Crawford sums it up nicely: "He's still up to his same old name-dropping bullshit, but he's gotten mu...(truncated)...
Would you trust Zamzar with your data?
(Indexed 2006-11-03):
Kevin writes about Zamzar, a free web-based service that converts audio, video and documents from one format to another (via Download Squad). Sounds cool, but would you trust them with your sensitive data? I don't know about you, but I barely trust Google or Microsoft with this information. Should I trust what appears to be a UK-based startup whose company page provides little, if any, information about the company? In their Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, they make allusions to "respect[i...(truncated)...
Blackberry 8700g, T-Mobile Dash and a leak in my system
(Indexed 2006-10-23):
[Image]In July, I switched from my beloved Audiovox SMT5600 to a Blackberry 8700g. Part of the reason for the switch is that I wanted EDGE and I wanted a keyboard, but I wasn't happy with the phones out at the time on either GSM network here. I bought my slightly-used 8700 off a friend for a very reasonable price. I haven't written much about it here because I really didn't expect to be using it very long - but overall, my experience with that device has been very positive. The Blackberry just w...(truncated)...
Taxing Virtual Economies?
(Indexed 2006-10-18):
A congressional committee is exploring the idea of taxing in-game virtual economies. This is not a tax on the sale of video games themselves (especially violent ones), nor is it a tax on the sale of virtual assets in a real market like eBay. As Mike explains: Note that the politicians aren't talking about virtual items in the game that have been converted to real dollars or other assets. That's already taxable as income. Instead, they're looking at actually taxing the items within the game base...(truncated)...
The Prevalence and Dangers of SQL Injection
(Indexed 2006-10-12):
Michael Sutton looks at the prevalence of SQL injection vulnerabilities (via Bruce Schneier). He tested 708 different servers and found verbose SQL errors on 80 of them (11.3%) - numbers that are not, as Michael says, surprising but are certainly sobering. [Image] Michael acknowledges that his method is imperfect, and in fact I think the percentage is actually a lot higher. His test only captures sites that are vulnerable and actually return verbose error messages. I guarantee there are countles...(truncated)...
iTunes 7 vs. Windows Media Player 11
(Indexed 2006-09-22):
One of the main reasons I prefer Windows Media Player to iTunes is that WMP monitors folders and automatically updates your library. In other words, if you add or remove folders on your hard drive, the changes are reflected in your library - automatically. For some inexplicable reason, iTunes doesn't do this. I had been using a wonderful little product called iTunes Library Updater to "fix" the library, but it's a manual process and one that really started to grate on me. While I really liked ...(truncated)...
The Role of Copyright in Fashion
(Indexed 2006-09-18):
Mike questions why we should introduce new IP rights in an already competitive market, asserting that "a lack of intellectual property protection actually [benefits the fashion industry]". While big name designers saw cheap knockoffs hit the shelves quickly, that only helped to drive more innovation. The designers would keep on innovating, trying to outdo each other, while building up their own brand reputation -- which would justify some of the premium they charged for the "genuine article" (...(truncated)...
A Discussion with SAP's Shai Agassi
(Indexed 2006-09-16):
On Tuesday, we had the opportunity for some Q&A with Shai Agassi. Shai is the President of the Product and Technology Group at SAP and one of the seven members of the SAP Executive Board. (And I'm glad I don't work for him, because he apparently likes to say no a lot - I'm glad I don't have to ask him for my vacation approvals and raises). [Image]When asked whether SAP was a technology or ecosystem company, Shai made it very clear that "SAP is an applications company". They are "a company that...(truncated)...
Building an ecosystem around SAP
(Indexed 2006-09-13):
One of the things Microsoft really gets is how to build a platform, innovating and yet carving out real spaces for their ISVs to play in. Part of this is community involvement, and part of this is the ability to let go of some control.[Image] We had a chance to meet with Zia Yusuf, Aiaz Kazi, and Mark Yolton today to discuss some of the challenges with building this ecosystem. As Zia put it, "it is not a platform until the people say it's a platform." Their strategy revolves around three primar...(truncated)...
ADO.NET vNext CTP (Aug 2006) available
(Indexed 2006-09-05):
Microsoft has released the first CTP for ADO.NET vNext which implements their vision for an Entity Framework to simplify data access. The ADO.NET Entity Framework supports Object Relational Mapping scenarios using ADO.NET Entities, in this build you can: Query of persistent Entities using LINQ to Entities or Entity SQL Save new and dirtied entity instances through the object abstractions which also handle: State management Identity resolution Change tracking Work with persistent object g...(truncated)...
Intro to Cryptography Course
(Indexed 2006-09-01):
A University of Washington course in Cryptography is available online, including videos of all the lectures (via Bruce Schneier). I've listened to the first lecture and it seems like a great introduction if you're interested in the subject. Interestingly, he cautions about Schneier's "popular-but-not-good" Applied Cryptography. The course also used Classroom Presenter 2.0, a cool product mentioned by the Tablet PC Education Blog last year. Related: The Illustrated Guide to Cryptographic Hashe...(truncated)...
Nullable Value Types and the Null Coalescing Operator
(Indexed 2006-08-08):
Scott recently discovered one of my favorite syntactic niceties in C# 2.0, the Null Coalescing Operator. This operator allows you to return the left side of the statement if it is not null, otherwise return what is on the right. In other words, instead of writing code like this: if (o != null) return o; else return defaultObj; Or this: return (o != null)? o : defaultObj;You can simply write this: return o ?? defaultObj;It can be a little disorienting when you fir...(truncated)...
How Chase lost me as a customer
(Indexed 2006-08-07):
I've been a moderately happy Chase customer for about 10 years now. I originally chose them because my father used it, and I was able to open a joint savings account under his checking account to avoid fees back when I was in high school. It was convenient from my parents' house, and it was certainly convenient in NYC. The addition of the Duane Reade ATMs was certainly nice. I say "moderately happy" because, in general, my experience has been pretty ambivalent. I've had a few proble...(truncated)...
Update on the DOA Dell
(Indexed 2006-08-02):
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I ordered a Dell and it was dead out of the box. My original discussion was with Dell Hardware Support at 2am on Sat Morning. When I spoke with Customer Service on the following Monday, I told them I wasn't happy with having a technician replace the motherboard, and told them I either wanted it replaced or I would return the entire system. Of course, they chose the former option and shipped me a replacement unit without peripherals. They quoted me an ad...(truncated)...
Just a friendly reminder...
(Indexed 2005-04-16):
If you are reading this, you are still subscribed to my old feed. I've moved. I would love to be able to permanently redirect anyone, but unfortunately that's not supported with .Text and I have no ability to install HttpModules on weblogs.asp.net. Please update your aggregators at the new feed [Image]. Alternatively, you can subscribe to our main feed [Image] to get good content from Alex, Omer, Dave, etc. And again, if anyone else wants to move over to Slashstar, drop me a line. [Image]
PLEASE NOTE: This blog has moved to Slashstar.com
(Indexed 2005-03-28):
Technically, I moved this blog to Slashstar almost a year ago (April 14, 2004), but I've been cross-posting all of my content to both locations. Well, last week I upgraded Slashstar to Community Server - which among other things means that, at least in the short term, new content will no longer be syndicated. (I may eventually upgrade that provider code to cross-post only technical content). I would love to permanently redirect everyone, but unfortunately that's not supported in .Text (and I hav...(truncated)...