Baratunde Is Funny

Baratunde, long time property of Master Thurston.

Total Lunar Eclipse

A Guggenheim Walk

Last night I was at the Guggenheim for about two hours for a free concert. The line was long. But the wait was worth it.

I was wearing blue jeans.

There was this newly retired Chicago couple - college sweethearts - right in front of me. We chatted. I ended up talking about ethnic prejudice in Nepal.

I was one of the top Obama volunteers in the city, friends with the founders of Manhattan For Obama, Brooklyn For Barack and so on. When they finally published the names and profiles of the prominent Nepali Obama supporters in the city in the Nepali newspaper in Queens, I was not on the list. That is ethnic prejudice for you. (Am I Smart?, Larry Ellison)

Kyle Cameron Studstill: Social Butterfly, A Scene All On His Own

I don't quite remember when exactly was the first time I met Kyle. The second time was at a Dropio party, a company Mark Zuckerberg scavenged. That was a long time ago. But I have seen him at so many events since. Kyle "gets" social. I think I have seen him more often than anyone else in the NY tech scene just going to events. I see Kyle, and I get very comfortable. He makes me feel like I belong at events.

130 Million Books

It is not an infinity. There are only so many books in the world. Google has come up with the magic number. It is almost 130 million.

Going To Kickstarter For My Microfinance StartUp

Image via WikipediaSome of my friends have been urging me to go to Kickstarter to raise the first 100K that I need to raise for my microfinance startup, a for profit, high tech proposition. And I am getting excited by the day about the idea. Actually I think I am going to go ahead and do it.

With this 100K I should be able to do enough work to be able to raise a few million dollars from the microfinance fund that Vinod Khosla is working to set up.

I know Kickstarter best for Diaspora. I believe Diaspora also raised 100K - it might have been 200K - when Facebook was mired in a major privacy controversy.

My microfinance startup is way more promising than Diaspora. I am not even in the same league.

Microfinance: Cutting Edge Like Clean Tech, Bio Tech, Nano Tech

Image via WikipediaMicrofinance: A Zero Trillion Dollar Industry
Microfinance, Nanotech, Biotech, Software/Hardware/Connectivity
Vinod Khosla's Green Tech Sweep

I put microfinance in the same league as the sectors touted as the next big things: clean tech, bio tech, nano tech. People in the industry keep referring to the challenges in the last mile. When it is time to dole out the money, it gets complicated.

Web tech is relevant to all these emerging sectors. You are going to need specific kinds of software for specific tasks in nano tech, for example, although many generic web tech stuff will do just fine. The big minds in nano tech will still be on Facebook and Twitter, will they not?

Learning The Wrong Lessons From Wikileaks

Image via WikipediaVint Cerf: Chief Internet Evangelist: Google: Governments shouldn’t have a monopoly on Internet governance: Gooble Public Policy Blog

The beauty of the Internet is that it’s not controlled by any one group. Its governance is bottoms-up .... the UN Committee on Science and Technology announced that only governments would be able to sit on a working group set up to examine improvements to the IGF—one of the Internet’s most important discussion forums .... we don’t believe governments should be allowed to grant themselves a monopoly on Internet governance. The current bottoms-up, open approach works—protecting users from vested interests and enabling rapid innovation. Let’s fight to keep it that way.

This issue is kind of like net neutrality, it is kind of like free speech. Like some Iranian authorities like to say, we are for people speaking freely, but the free speech should be in moderation. Either there is free speech, or there is no free speech. You take away net neutrality and the web has become cable television.

Yahoo Doldrums

Image via CrunchBaseMike Arrington has relentlessly gone after Carol Bartz from day one. Some of that I have attributed to sexism. Some I have attributed to the media's need for conflict and drama: that is partly how they generate page hits. Some I have attributed to Mike angling to get bought by Yahoo's rival AOL: that happened. But Yahoo does have serious problems.

Yahoo's problem is not that it is not number one, or that it is not going to get back the crown. Yahoo's problem has been that it has messed up being number two. Yahoo bought Flickr, and look at Facebook: photo sharing is the number one thing that happens on Facebook.

Congrats Zuck

Time: Person Of The Year 2010: Mark Zuckerberg

Holiday Parties Most Days

December is the cruelest month
But this time for once my cheeks are warm
- The Waterboys

There are so many Holiday Parties going on in startup land. I have been to so many already, with so many more lined up.