Venture Chronicles

FOXNews.com - Politics - Sarbanes to Retire Next Year

Senator Sarbanes announced he will retire at the end of his current term... we will have to live with his legacy for a lot longer.

Link: FOXNews.com - Politics - Sarbanes to Retire Next Year.

Chicago Tribune | Motorola iTunes plans on hold

Steve Jobs: we don't need to give you no stinkin revenue share
Cell Carriers: yes you do, or we'll start our own music download service
Steve Jobs: screw you, then I'll come out with my own cell phone with iTunes
Cell Carriers: and what carrier will you use?
Steve Jobs: <long silence> but we don't need to give you no stinkin revenue share

Link: Chicago Tribune | Motorola iTunes plans on hold.

Ross Mayfield's Weblog: Relationships Over Transactions, A Learning from the Bubble

Read this and take whatever lessons from it that you find, but for God's sake just read it.

Link: Ross Mayfield's Weblog: Relationships Over Transactions, A Learning from the Bubble.

A 10GB iRiver H10 coming soon?

I think I'm gonna get one of these, very cool styling and I like the color display.

Link: A 10GB iRiver H10 coming soon?.

So the other day iRiver announced new 20GB and 1GB versions of their 5GB H10 MP3 player, and we made some casual mumblings about how the only flavor you couldn’t get the H10 in was 10GB (not that we were exactly clamoring for one, but you know we get fixated on these little things). They’re being a little cagey about what they know and what they don’t know, but the iRiver experts over at MisticRiver seem to have reason to believe that a 10GB H10 is on its way.

Yahoo delivers syndicated feeds to mobile devices

Link: Yahoo delivers syndicated feeds to mobile devices.

Yahoo has created another link between its My Yahoo service, which lets users aggregate content and services on a single Web page, and mobile devices, such as cell phones and personal digital assistants.

SAP chief tells European tech companies to wake up | CNET News.com

Henning makes a point often misunderstood about the U.S. economy

Link: SAP chief tells European tech companies to wake up | CNET News.com.

The dynamics of the global economy also disproportionately benefit the United States, he said. He cited a study from management consultancy firm McKinsey which found that when $1 of value creation moves out of the United States, $1.13 of new gross domestic product is created in its place; in Germany, when a euro of value creation moves abroad, only 79 cents of new GDP are created. "In the United States, jobs with little added value are quickly replaced by more productive ones," he said.

Senate Task Force Protects RFID

Link: Senate Task Force Protects RFID.

The Senate Republican High Tech Task Force announced its policy platform this week, pledging to work to "keep America at the forefront of technological advancement, and to encourage our country’s most creative entrepreneurs."

Among the elements of its policy platform was this point about RFID:

Protect exciting new technologies from premature regulation or legislation in search of a problem. RFID holds tremendous promise for our economy, including military logistics and commercial inventory efficiencies, and should not be saddled prematurely with regulation.

The Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) applauded the Senate Republican leadership's Task Force for pledging not to unnecessarily interfere with the development of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology.

802.1X in the Spotlight at Enterprises

802.1x security in the enterprise.

Link: 802.1X in the Spotlight at Enterprises.

The 802.1X protocol for authenticating users and restricting access is starting to hit the big time: This long feature, which I wrote for Mobile Pipeline, walks through how the 802.1X specification works, how it can be secured, and what benefits it is bringing to businesses and academic institutions that want to segregate traffic, control access, and provide a high level of security to their wireless links.

After talking to vendors and customers, it's clear that all the pieces needed to make 802.1X a consistently deployed, secure, successful method of authentication are in place. Even better, 802.1X can secure wired and wireless networks with equal ease, preventing rogue access points, unauthorized Ethernet users, and even sticking virus-infected legitimate users on special VLANs to solve their problems before they hit the LAN.

Newly Knighted Bill Gates Calls Brits A Bunch Of Liars

so that's what a "blagger" is... I kept hearing all those cool British slang terms in the Fancy a Butcher's game and didn't know what they were.

Link: Newly Knighted Bill Gates Calls Brits A Bunch Of Liars.

How's that for gratitude? Just a week or so after Bill Gates was Knighted by the Queen, Microsoft has released a study saying that two-thirds of British workers are liars. It's not exactly clear why Microsoft is studying the honesty levels of those in the UK, but apparently it's a big concern to them. Of course, it's not entirely clear how the study determined this, and what is considered a "lie." The details show that most of the lying is done to a boss -- which isn't that surprising. At some point, plenty of people lie to their boss ("yeah, sure, almost finished with that...") but that isn't necessarily as horrible as the headline makes it sound.

Scoble's Take on the Technorati Mini-Controversy

Link: Scoble's Take on the Technorati Mini-Controversy.

Just wanted to post a link to Scoble's takeaways and reinforcements on the recent Technorati blogging happening. Numbers 8 and 9 from Scoble's list are noteworthy to me (in the context of crisis response) as the blogging medium is a bit of a different animal as a communications medium:

8) Get into real space as fast as possible. Text is so easily misunderstood. Why not do an audio or video podcast? That way we can see just how sorry you are, you can cover a lot more ground, we can hear your sincerity in your voice.

9) Overcommunicate. The more you communicate, the less serious these problems will be. With a lack of communication people start making things up. Or at minimum they start rattling the cage to see what's up behind all the silence.

I cannot emphasize enough that the blogging communications medium is different. There are delays inherent to the system, people don't always know who the spokesperson is and who's watching, and one's never quite sure if everyone is looking at the same picture. Fa