Nic Butterworth's Open Coffee MeetUpI was there when Nic launched the Open Coffee MeetUp. The dude is a minor tech celebrity locally. And the turnout was good. More than 20 people showed. I kept coming a few times. It is not like investors did not show, and plenty of entrepreneurs. But the investors were institutional ones who would be good for round 2, round 3, round 4, kind of. They did not click with my seed money needs. And then I dropped out, kind of. Then I got slightly distracted with things Obama.
Now I am back. I went two weeks back. Noone showed up. So I left at 9:15. I met someone - Hilary Rowland - who I knew had RSVPd and who I met again at the NY Tech MeetUp - that 800 pound gorilla of MeetUps - and she said she did go. I did not see Nic, I did not see her, what was going on?
"We were in the corner in the left," she said.
Hmm.
Ends up I was in the wrong location. Nic started at the Astor Place Starbucks. Now it is a different location, better for me since now I don't have to change trains.
I set my alarm for seven. How about tomatoes for breakfast? Makes you feel cutting edge, healthy eating and all that.
I show up at nine. Only one other person was there before me, someone I had emailed before on the MeetUp system, but did not have a face for.
Facebook Group:
New York Open Coffee MeetUpProspect Park Pick-Up SoccerNY Tech MeetupNic set it up for a Thursday morning on purpose. Jobholders and entrepreneurs are two different species. He wanted to weed out the former.
Slowly people gathered. Nic did not show, but someone from his vertical video search company did. It was a good size crowd,more than a dozen. You get the intimate talk at the Open Coffee MeetUp that you don't get at the NY Tech MeetUp. That second usually has 500 people in the audience and presentations. Afterwards you interact for a few minutes with the celebrity presenters, like last time I did with the
DoubleClick guy who sold it to
Google for $1.6 billion. Now, that is some big fish.
Scott had also sold Fotolog for $90 million only a week before. So I needed to congratulate him.
I introduced myself saying I used to come here looking for investors, but I am here now primarily because I consider it a great learning experience to interact with entrepreneurs at various stages of growth.
Someone took the initiative to break the group into two. One for current affairs. I chose to stick with the second.
Lefty said his name was Lefty.
"Is that really your name?"
"When people say Lefty, I respond."
The actual name on his card was even more exotic. Leftonred Atanycorner. Dean is a consultant who helps early stage companies. He told me I had emailed him. Have I?
He said he was not interested but he came to sit near me twice. That is a lead to follow through.
Arnaud recently moved here from France. I could hardly pronounce his name.
This was my third or fourth time meeting
Mark. The first two times I met him at Drinking Liberally, Rudy's, near
Times Square. He was with The Huffington Post. Then I also saw him last week at the NY Tech MeetUp and waved him hello from a distance. Another person I was surprised to see there was Carlos, one of the top Obama volunteers in the city. His CEO ended up the guy who had sold his company to Google. I am impressed, Carlos.
Mark personally knows
Arianna Huffington, of course. Yahoo, Salon ("Slate," he corrected me fast) and The Huffington Post had just hosted the first ever online only presidential debate, mashup, to be specific. We talked about that a little. By the way, Arianna Huffington is a Facebook friend of mine, as is
Howard Dean, and
Matt Damon, and Hilary Rowland, and Andrew Rasiej, and Greta Van Sustern at
Fox News who has written a few times on my Facebook wall.
Yahoo:
The First Online Only DebateAfter everyone had left, Mark and I kept talking. Ends up he also lives in Brooklyn, "the most residential of the four boroughs," I said. I have been meaning to go to the Drinking Liberally in Brooklyn.
We talked. He gave me some very good advice on my startup. Then we talked soap. Then we walked to Union Square where I took the train to Astoria where I was meeting a former Nepali ambassador to Qatar for lunch. He is flying back to Nepal on Monday. We talked for hours.
The past two years I have met most of the top Nepali politicians here in the city including two former Prime Ministers one of whom said to me, "Thanks for saving me."
Lance I had seen once before. He was back. He was sitting next to me, but he ended up in the Current Affairs group.
Vlad, now that is a Slavic name.
JP has a real interesting startup. It is a social networking site. But it looks like a desktop application. There is the free part, and there is the premium version, so no ads. "Distraction." He is half Chinese, half Hispanic. He speaks Spanish.
Troy is in the mobile space. That is exciting. So much going on in that space.
I got engaged in a mini conversation with him. I could propose Christmas be celebrated in January but that is not going to happen, it is ingrained in the culture; do you think America's lagging behind in the mobile domain is partly cultural, I asked. He said it was more to do with the regulatory framework. The tiger had not been unleashed.
Not my space, though. I empathize with the
Homo Sapien that needs the screen and the keyboard to be a certain size.
Frederic.
An Asian young woman who did not have her card with her, but who had a startup "that I can't tell you much about."
Hmm. I should use that line. If I tell you more, I will have to kill you.
Facebook Group: NY Open Coffee MeetUp.
"The IC is going to be like a frying pan, like a rice cooker. It is not the technology of it. It is the business part that is going to be amazing."
The Open Coffee MeetUp is a great Thursday morning thing to do. And the monthly NY Tech MeetUp is where you start the month.
Soccer on Sundays. And you got it all made.
"I live in Little Bangladesh. Prospect Park is the best part of where I live."
Scott 2.0, MeetUp.com 2.0In The NewsAnalysts Mull Apple's Interest in Wireless Auction PC World
South Korea nears antitrust decision against Intel InfoWorld
Cisco Appoints Naresh Wadhwa to Lead India and SAARC Operations NDTV.com Cisco® has appointed Mr. Naresh Wadhwa as President and Country Manager of its India and SAARC region (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation). He will report directly to Mr. Owen Chan, Cisco’s President, Asia Pacific Operations. .... Prior to Cisco, Naresh worked with 3Com Asia Ltd and Wipro Infotech in India. ...... Mr. Wadhwa has a degree in Engineering in Electronics from Mumbai University. ..... the worldwide leader in networking Teenage Disney star apologizes for posing nude Xinhua "High School Musical" is Walt Disney Company's most successful show over the last two years generating profits to the tune of 1 billion U.S. dollars. ..... the photograph was allegedly taken by Zac Efron, Hudgens's 19-year-old boyfriend, and her co-star on the show. Together, the couple are by far the biggest "tween" stars in America
AMD: Is closing the quad-core deficit enough? ZDNet the launch of AMD’s single-die quad-core milestone processor. ...... Intel’s soon to launch 45nm chip takes the die size down to an even more manageable 107mm squared. Quick Take: Dell Comes Out of the Storage Closet Motley Fool Storage networks are a reasonably cheap way to keep pace with the digital Everest of data that businesses must track. ..... By choosing to go "mostly" direct, Dell is eschewing services partners who could make the MD3000i a hit. And, worse, it's blowing a ripe opportunity to become a consultative partner to fast-growing small businesses Dell reports strong storage sales Bizjournals.com
Dell launches storage systems for small businesses Reuters a new computer data-storage system on Monday targeted at small businesses, one of the storage market's fastest-growing segments. .... the devices, which start at about $7,000 and run to $13,000 ..... the growing backup needs of small businesses grappling with ever-increasing amounts of data. ....... iSCSI, an Internet-enabled alternative to other methods for connecting computers to data storage. ..... Small businesses, defined by Dell as employing 20 or fewer people ...... the fastest storage revenue growth of major data-storage vendors in the second quarter, increasing nearly 24 percent to an estimated $405 million ...... HP is the world's biggest PC manufacturer. ..... Dell earns about 85 percent of its revenue from businesses, with consumers accounting for the rest. ..... "What you are starting to see emerge is a bit of a different focus where we are pointing the company into different areas," CEO Dell said. "We're making a number of long-term investments," which include the new storage system.
Painless Drug Injections ABC News
HP Inkjet technology to be used medicinally Monsters and Critics.com
Dell's 'Veso' appliance runs on four-core Opterons and thin VMware Register
VMware's Diane Greene Sees Virtualization Embedded In Servers InformationWeek will soon ship servers with a hypervisor pre-installed, allowing customers to activate virtual machines shortly after turning on the server ........ The simplest way is to add a flash memory device to the motherboard of the server. The device holds a stripped down, 32-megabyte version of ESX Server called ESX Server 3i ..... "Virtualization really does simplify IT" ..... Microsoft's upcoming Windows Server 2008 is due next February, with the Viridian hypervisor to be added within six months. ...... The shift by the hardware makers to embed virtualization illustrates how far virtualization of the data center has come in a year's time. At VMware's annual user group meeting last year in Los Angeles, spokesmen on stage debated when virtualization would cease to be a specialized niche and enter the mainstream. That debate appears to be over with virtualization's adoption by the hardware manufacturers. ....... You can dynamically scale your infrastructure with embedded hypervisors and "drag and drop virtual machines off of network attached storage.... the notion that an embedded hypervisor or any other hypervisor will one day replace the operating system ...... A hypervisor, on the other hand, sits between a virtual machine's operating system and the processors, routing communications between the operating system, the CPUs, and other system resources. ...... can activate disaster recovery if necessary, firing up stored images of failed systems ....... a neutral virtual machine file format called Open Virtualization Format.
New stocks for 'Today's List of Top Growers' CNNMoney.com The new additions have little debt and offer well-above-average growth. ..... The case for replacing Dell is simply that the computer-maker's results have deteriorated, and it's not clear how it can restore rapid growth. Dell's greatest strength has been cost-efficient production of made-to-order PCs. The company has had initial success broadening that business by selling through Wal-Mart and other stores. But managing large inventories will make it harder to maintain profit margins. ......
Corning, the leading maker of optical fiber.
Review: Hewlett-Packard's Blackbird 002 gaming PC San Jose Mercury News
Cisco Continues to Deliver on Data Center 3.0 Vision by ... CNNMoney.com Cisco® (NASDAQ: CSCO) today announced the integration of Cisco VFrame Data Center with VMware Virtual Infrastructure, a key solution for the Cisco vision of next generation data centers, called Data Center 3.0. ...... increased IT agility and flexibility, faster coordinated provisioning of storage and network resources, and improved business continuance. ...... The Cisco vision for Data Center 3.0 entails the real-time, dynamic orchestration of infrastructure services from shared pools of virtualized server, storage and network resources, while optimizing application service levels, efficiency and collaboration. Cisco and its partners are helping organizations to design and build virtualized, self-defending and efficient data center infrastructure for delivering superior application performance and user experience.
Online-Only Forum With Democrats New York Times The sponsors have been looking for ways to keep the forums fresh, which has mostly meant experimenting with the format ....... This is not being broadcast on television but will be available tomorrow on a computer near you. .... He finds lengthy dialogue more revealing and would ideally like to see Lincoln-Douglas-style debates across the country. “Great moments in conversation come as part of a flow,” he said. .... success will be measured not in live ratings after an hour or two on a single evening, she said, but in traffic to all three sites over a period of time, in links, and in seeing how long users stay with the material. Users will have a week in which to vote on whom they think won.
SAP, Oracle agree to reschedule court hearing to Sept 25 Forbes
Sun Expands Alliance With Microsoft The Associated Press is the latest twist in a truce the companies, once bitter rivals, hammered out in 2004, when Sun pocketed $1.95 billion in a settlement payout from Microsoft over antitrust and patent allegations, and both companies vowed to make their products work better together. ........ Microsoft, the world's largest software company, stands to gain from the agreement because of Sun's reach in the server world. Sun is the world's No. 3 server seller with 13 percent of the worldwide market, behind IBM and Hewlett-Packard ....... the momentum surrounding so-called virtualization technology, which allows computers to run more than one operating system, saving hardware and electricity costs while boosting the performance of giant, energy-sapping machines. ........ Sun and Microsoft vowed to make sure their respective operating systems worked well with one another's virtualization technologies, a commitment that could help both companies prosper from the trend toward data center consolidation and urgent efforts by technology managers to reduce energy costs. ........ Sun's attempts to shed its image as that of a quarrelsome startup that in the late 1990s was eager to pick public fights with big rivals. ....... Sun is becoming a more restrained and inclusive company willing to forge alliances ....... the growing open-source movement in hopes that it will sell more hardware and services as more companies and programmers start using Sun's free technologies.Microsoft Makes an OEM Out of Sun InternetNews.com the warming in relations between the two firms over the past three and a half years.
Wal-Mart touts return to low prices BusinessWeek after disappointing results from last year's push into trendier clothes and merchandise. ...... the world's largest retailer.Sirius-XM Merger: Costly StaticAmerican Families Now Save $2500 a Year, Thanks to Wal-MartCNNMoney.com up 7.3% from $2,329 in 2004. ...... the continued reduction in prices due to the presence of Wal-Mart and the growth in consumer expenditures over the 2004 to 2006 period translates directly into savings for consumers amounting to $287 billion in 2006. This corresponds to savings of $957 per person or $2,500 per household. ...... http://www.SaveMoneyLiveBetter.com featuring the new ads, customer testimonials about how they've saved money by shopping at Wal-Mart and behind-the-scenes footage http://www.livebetterindex.com or http://www.walmartfacts.com
Wal-Mart rolling out new company slogan Reuters.uk
Wal-Mart Dealt Another Blow in Expansion Plans in Bay Area NewsBlaze
Wal-Mart takes charge tied to German sale Reuters.uk
2 new tropical depressions emerge in Gulf, Atlantic Sun-Sentinel.com
Oil tops $80 a barrel, an all-time high CNNMoney.com
Sun to pre-install Windows on its servers TG Daily
Sun Expands Alliance With Microsoft The Associated Press
FCC: US doesn't need free wireless broadband Computerworld The FCC once again is siding with big telcos at the expense of consumers. This time around, it killed a plan that would offer free wireless broadband to 95% of the U.S., making use of a piece of the wireless spectrum that's unused. Are you surprised? ...... M2Z networks has been asking the FCC for months to approve an innovative plan that would bring wireless broadband to just about every consumer in the U.S. M2Z wants to use 20MHz of unused spectrum in the 2GHz band to build two nationwide wireless networks -- a free one with 384kbps download speeds, and a for-pay one with 3Mbps speed that would cost between $20 and $30 a month. ........ The deal would work like this: M2Z would offer the free service in exchange for use of the spectrum, which right now lies idle. The company would pay the U.S. 5% of its revenues in return for use of the spectrum. ..... The plan is no pipe dream from a flaky startup. The company is founded and headed by John Muleta, who is the former chief of the FCC's wireless bureau. ..... Because big telcos told them to. The spectrum was used previouly by big telcos for microwave connections, but is no longer needed, so it lays idle. Even though big telcos aren't using the spectrum, they'd like to keep squatting on it, in case they come up with a use for it. So the FCC lets them keep it.
Rev. Jesse Jackson Endorses M2Z Networks' Plan for Free, Family ... Earthtimes.org Rainbow PUSH Coalition (RPC) founder and President Rev. Jesse Jackson, in a September 7 letter to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Kevin Martin, endorsed M2Z Networks' (M2Z) plan to provide free and family-friendly broadband Internet access across the country. Rev. Jackson urged the FCC to work quickly to make this a reality for all Americans...... "The RPC supports M2Z Networks, Inc.'s (M2Z) plan to level the playing field for broadband access in the United States and to help connect millions of underserved Americans," wrote Jackson in the letter, adding "Moreover, we believe that the FCC has a moral obligation to promote justice and equality by extending the critical opportunities of the information age to all Americans.".... "For more than 16 months since we first proposed our plan to the FCC, M2Z has been ready to provide a free and family-friendly broadband Internet service across the country," said M2Z Networks' co-founder and CEO John Muleta. Muleta added, "We have consistently urged swift action to put fallow spectrum to use so that all Americans, not just some Americans, can enjoy the right to full participation in the digital age and fulfillment of the American Dream. This is the FCC's statutory obligation to the American people." ...... Section I of the Communications Act requires the FCC to act to make communications services available to the public at reasonable charges "without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex, a rapid, efficient, nationwide, and world-wide wire and radio communication service with adequate facilities at reasonable charges." Is this vein, Rev. Jackson wrote "It is critical the FCC make it a priority to establish a free nationwide broadband network as the benefits of broadband cannot be reserved only for those members of our society with sufficient disposable income to afford a monthly high-speed connection." ..... Founded in 2005 and headquartered in Menlo Park, Calif., M2Z Networks' goal is to transform the current state of the broadband marketplace by building a high-speed wireless network throughout the United States. In May 2006, the company submitted a license application to the FCC to construct and operate a nationwide broadband wireless network in the 2155-2175 MHz spectrum band. Approval of the initiative, to which the FCC recently has indicated it would extend consideration in a forthcoming rulemaking, would guarantee delivery of free, fast and family-friendly wireless broadband service to at least 95 percent of Americans in a 10 year timeframe. The service will be supported by locally targeted search results and will include a network-level filter to shield children using the service from indecent content. If licensed, M2Z would pay the U.S. Treasury 5 percent of annual gross revenues from its premium subscription services, which could total payments of up to $1 billion over 15 years. The introduction of M2Z's broadband service would generate $18 to $32 billion in direct consumer benefits over the next 15 years according to two uncontested economic studies. M2Z is backed by Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers; Charles River Ventures; and Redpoint Ventures; three of the most successful venture capital firms in Silicon Valley with $5 billon of capital under management. For more information, please visit http://www.m2znetworks.com and http://www.freebroadbandnow.org
Is free nationwide wireless broadband dead? Computerworld "the proper way to allocate this spectrum in the manner that best serves the public interest is to conduct a general rulemaking." ...... He described four different options that the FCC should consider for dealing with the band, including opening it up for unlicensed use, designating it as an "open access model that would combine wholesale broadband access and a Carterfone mandate," using it to create a free nationwide broadband network that would be supported both through advertising revenue and revenue generated from premium service fees, and licensing it through an open auction. ....... he wants to see the band used to create a free wireless network that will be funded by advertising. The idea is to make the Internet more like analog radio and television, where people can tune in for free in exchange for being exposed to advertisements. ...... "A lot of the big carriers want to forestall competition, and the longer they make us wait to deliver our services, the better it is. ... Americans are dying for broadband, and it's not that it's not available; it's just incredibly expensive. We're offering a free service that's being retailed today for $40 to $90 a month." ....... the early days of citizens' band radio, which he described as "a free-for-all that ultimately led to a lot of interesting ideas." However, he noted that the prospects for getting the current FCC to make the 2,155-to-2,175-MHz band unlicensed are grim. ....... "The FCC has long history of wringing its hands in public, and often what they do is most politically expedient thing, which means going to go through the same traditional auction," Jude said. "That seems to be the path of least resistance, and it has a lot of attraction for politicians." ....... "You're either providing Internet access -- and the good, the bad and the ugly that entails -- or you end up becoming a government censor, which has incredibly scary connotations," he said. "Likewise, how advertising works on a free tier is vitally important. Ads should not be intrusive or end up degrading the user experience." ........ "Opening the band up for auction a la the 700-MHz block is probably the worst idea of the lot," Meinrath said. "Let's have an auction that actually generates benefits that people will directly experience."
WiMAX CASE STUDY: Ertach’s WiMAX Experience in Argentina WiMax.com 1998 .... Ertach was awarded licenses of 50 MHz of spectrum in the 3.4-3.7 GHz frequency band for data transmission and value-added services. Today, the company is one of the leading providers of broadband wireless solutions in Argentina and Latin America. ..... In 2003, Ertach launched the “First National Broadband Wireless Network,” an expansion plan that covered 40 new cities in only 12 months. .... “We saw in WiMAX a promising opportunity. We adopted the 802.16-2004 standard and the growth possibilities of the company multiplied” ..... In 2004, Ertach deployed “The First WiMAX Network in Latin America,” providing internet access, data transmission, and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) with the standard 802.16d. “In the short term, WiMAX provided us with many benefits such as the possibility of providing our customers with bandwidth speeds of up to 10 Mbps and QoS that allowed us to strengthen our business and equally compete with the other telcos; in most cases we were able to improve upon their price offerings and quality” .....In late 2006, Ertach was acquired by Telmex for a total of US$22.5 million.... the new wireless strategy of Telmex to compete against Argentinean fixed incumbents (Telefonica and Telecom Argentina). .... Telmex, together with Motorola, is conducting trials of WiMAX in the greater Buenos Aires area as well as in the cities of Cordoba and Mendoza. The company expects initially to target the residential and SME segments. In addition, Telmex and Motorola have 30 active trials in other countries across Latin America..... WiMAX tariff plans start at ARS 245 (US$77.65) for downstream speeds of 256 kbps. ..... Cable and DSL continue to be the most used technologies by Argentina’s mass market, not only because of their lower cost than wireless but also because of their greater availability. ... the launch of “True Mobile Broadband” with technology 802.16e. The company expects to bring its customers a true mobile WiMAX experience by 2008.
Increased Interest in WiMAX Will Impact the Cellular M2M Market Cellular-News the cellular M2M market will be impacted by the growing momentum behind the deployment of WiMAX as a next-generation WWAN communications technology. WiMAX is even more spectrally efficient and cost-effective to operate in carrier networks when compared with W-CDMA and CDMA EV-DO, making WiMAX very suitable for low data rate, low ARPU M2M applications ...... "Sprint and Clearwire are the two most significant service providers deploying WiMAX in the United States. ..... Clearwire - a Craig McCaw startup that has received $600 million in venture backing from Intel and $300 million from Motorola
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