Main Dish:

Ed Note: you may have noticed that I haven't been including much news about new fundings and liquidity events. I figured that most of you who are interested in such things have the same source info that I have, and because I don't often comment on what deals are getting done by other VC's I figure I'm not really adding anything to what you already get. If you found those sections interesting, let me know and I'll restart.

- interesting article in eWeek about Sun's efforts to open source Solaris and the controversy they are generating by considering a new license. The comment that really caught my attention is the one from the University of Ulm guy, who says that current open source licenses "seem to have some drawbacks - some for reasons of intellectual property or religious reasons". Whaaaa, religious reasons? Somebody educate me on this... I can't find the article on their site (maybe not updated with this weeks hardcopy), but I swear that's what the article quote says verbatim.

- Agere's 802.11n proposal promises 500mbs, get's attention of IEEE
http://www.tomshardware.com/hardnews/20040712_122736.html

- If Ballmer wants to have the kind of success they have had in Denmark everywhere else, perhaps they should concentrate on just buying every hometown software provider instead of making the whole world Danish.
http://news.com.com/Ballmer%3A+Nothing%27s+rotten+in+Denmark/2100-7343_3-5267742.html?tag=nefd.top

- I thought that's what Bluetooth was supposed to do? Seems that a number of handset mfg'ers are readying phones with Near Field Communications (NFC... can't have a gizmo without an acronym). These are basically RFID-enabled phones.
http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/1020/1/1/

- in other RFID related news, a bill that was working it's way through the California Assembly that would have put restrictions on businesses deploying RFID technology was defeated in committee. What this means is that the bill is dead for this year. It always cracks me up to listen to NPR (especially that I'm-smarter-than-everyone Michael Krazny program) when they talk about privacy... it's a sure bet someone will call up in a full rage about how the SF Public Library is implementing RFID and there isn't a public outrage about it.
http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/1015/1/1/

- lot's of media stories about Yahoo acquiring Oddpost, most of the commentary points to the novel interface as the compelling value. I disagree, I think that the Newsdash service is a bigger jewel for Yahoo!.
http://www.newsdash.com/

- hackers are using VoIP to spoof caller-ID. Great, another reason to not answer my phone.
http://www.securityfocus.com/news/9061

- thoughts on the enterprise software market. I have to admit that I'm feeling very conflicted about enterprise software. On one hand it's still a time consuming sales process and the deal sizes continue to shrink, large vendors are putting out warnings, yet SAP still manages to post strong Q2 results. What's going on here? I suppose that ultimately is comes down to a broken distribution channel.
http://www.beyondvc.com/2004/07/everyone_is_tal.html

- Bloglines rolled out a new user interface. I like Bloglines a lot.
http://www.bloglines.com/about/news#63

- this is the exact problem I had with my old Nokia 3650. Through the message boards on Howardforums I found out that I needed to get my firmware flashed, yet when I went into the T-Mobile store (several actually) the guy looked at me like I was from another planet. Called level 2 t-mob support and the guy said they don't do firmware upgrades, after first asking me why I didn't download it off the web... I had to explain to him that you need a DCT4 flasher to do this operation, it's not like installing a new java app. Bottom line, the carriers are really not equipped to deal with increasingly sophisticated handsets that consumers are demanding.
http://www.boingboing.net/2004/07/13/howard_rheingolds_ba.html

- Howard Lovy is one of the best writers on the subject of nanotech, he has a remarkable ability to explain things that are really complex. He's freelancing now.
http://nanobot.blogspot.com/2004/07/flirtin-with-freelance-disaster.html

- Shirky writes about companies doing shared link management.
http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2004/07/13/social_link_management.php

- what is the number one source of bugs?
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/5194

- speaking of bugs, I got this for our 4 month old. I know, I'm a geek... my wife reminds me off it at least daily.
http://www.cafeshops.com/babysfirstsite.10996529

- outsourcing has a long way to go before it's mainstream. I agree, but at the same time I was surprised to hear about all the U.S. college and grad school students applying for internships in Bangalore. It's the next frontier, and like all disruptive innovations it tends to take the incumbants faster than they predict.
http://management.silicon.com/itdirector/0,39024673,39122179,00.htm

- there's a lot of shortcomings in RFID, this article does a good job at covering the major issues. In my view, reliability at the reader/chip level is a major one that will definitely stall widespread deployment in production systems. With chip yields at 80%, you just can't plan a production system.
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/wo_hellweg071304.asp
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/wo_hellweg071304.asp

Comments

[JB]

I liked the New Fundings & Liquidity info you provided. Can you at least point out other sources we might monitor for that info (e.g. where you get that info)? Thanks.

[Niels]

I'd welcome your restart of the fundings sections - I used your site as my summary instead of digging through other sites. In case you don't have bandwidth to restart - can you suggest a good "replacement" for vcbuzz.com?
Regards.

[Andy]

I found the fundings section is interesting in that it was a window into what *you* thought were interesting deals . . please continue

[Allan]

One more vote for re-instating the funding section? I only follow European liquidity closely so your summary covering mainly US deals was useful to me.