Junto Boyz

ALWAYSON LIVE ON THE GOINGON PLATFORM

Tony's media property, AlwaysOn, is finally live on our platform. If you want to read about the latest tech trends and thoughts from some of Silicon Valley's leading execs and thought leaders, check it out!

Also since we are in beta there will be bugs and some snags (sorry!), so feel free to send me a message or email for help or to report a bug. Also for AlwaysOn related issues (separate companies, but a little bit incestuous:) please feel free to email Bobby at bob@alwayson-network.com, who is Tony's tech guy.

posted by Bernard @ 9:48 PM

MUPPETS + MATRIX

Two of my favorite entertainment series. One from my youth and the other from my recent years... The Muppet matrix.

posted by Bernard @ 6:25 AM

SHAKESPEARE IN THE PARK? NO, GOOGLE... HIT ME, PLEASE HIT ME

Google is bringing back nightmares for me with this recent random project by putting all of William Shakespeare's works online. One of my favorite professors at Wisconsin was Professor Weiner. He was an intellectual powerhouse and I enjoyed his class on Milton so much I wanted to take his class on Shakespeare. Wrong move.

I suffered that semester because on top of my other heavy courses for this class we went through twelve of the great bard's plays. Then for our final exam we had to memorize all twelve to effectively prepare because he was taking quotes from six out of the twelve, and then you picked four to identify the exact place in a play, its context, and correctly analyze its relevance. I remember reading through each play at least four times and reciting Shakespeare in my sleep. I was wondering if I was in East Asia where memorization is emphasized and questioning if Professor Weiner was diluting the quality of America's education system at the collegiate level. Anyway, I came away doing well on the exam, but I didn't see even a marginal benefit of stuffing my mind with Shakespeare til it puked his words into my dreams and create random shouts of frustration in public spaces. Anyway, I still might be intrigued to visit this new Google project if bouts of sadomasochism arise.

posted by Bernard @ 11:15 PM

CATCHING UP... LOTS GOING ON IN THE BLOGGING AND SOCIAL SOFTWARE SPACE

Yeah, I've been busy with our constantly improving beta, preparing for the AlwaysOn transition to the GoingOn platform, and our fundraising efforts. So not much blogging or linking here over the past three days. Anyway, since I'm catching up with the news, I'll share it with you:

"Pentagon sets its sights on social networking websites"

"Social networks--future portal or fad?"

"Social networks poised to shape Net's future"

"Ray Lane sees grass-roots media future — for the enterprise"

"EBay Says: Hooray for Bloggers!"

"Gathering highlights power of the blog"

"Net-Savvy Democrats Aim to Pack a Digital Punch"

posted by Bernard @ 10:47 PM

BUYTAERT, CLEARY, AND FELD JOIN GOINGON AS ADVISORS

It's always a great feeling as an entrepreneur to receive confirmation of your vision and company from customers, partners, industry leaders, and really smart people. So over the past couple weeks our team has received such confirmation and I'm very stoked to announce that Dries Buytaert, Bill Cleary, and Brad Feld have joined GoingOn Networks as advisors.

Since our team has significant experience in building new companies, I would say that we're selective in who we ask as advisors, especially since most of us had at least one bad experience with advisors who simply lent their name and did nothing else. Also for our three new advisory board members, we know they do not readily lend their time and name, so we are truly honored to have them join our team.

To give you some more insight into our excitement, here are a few words about each person:

Dries Buytaert is the founder of Drupal, a leading open source CMS platform that the GoingOn platform was built upon. We look forward to working with Dries and will have some cool plans to announce on our involvement with the Drupal community in the near future.

Bill Cleary was co-founder the CKS Group, which went public and eventually merged with USWeb, and current founder of Cleary & Partners. He was instrumental in launching several major web brands from the first boom including Yahoo!, eBay, and Amazon.com. He believes in our vision and how we can transform the corporate marketing landscape and the way people do business through GoingOn.

Brad Feld is Managing Director at Mobius Venture Capital and the most active venture capitalist in the blogosphere. His insights into our space and advice on our operations are things we truly value from him. We're very lucky to have Brad and the rest of our advisors helping us build GoingOn into a great platform and company!

posted by Bernard @ 3:15 AM

ZARQAWI DEAD... ROUND UP OF POSTS

Best line I heard from a liberal friend today was, "There are more Zarqawis and terrorists to come anyway because of us (U.S.)..." Eh?

Yeah, and all those Iraqis and other Middle Easterners seeing suicide bombers kill innocent Iraqis will think less about the choices they have and commit to a fanatical cause. Before it was attacks on just foreigners that created a separation of relatedness but killing innocent Muslims and fellow countrymen places a whole another perspective on the average rational person in Iraqi, Iran, and elsewhere.

Anyway, here are a few posts on this big win for freedom and democracy:

"Al-Zarqawi is Dead" Rich Karlgaard

"Zarkawi is dead - goodbye, good riddance, you human nightmare!" Roger Simon

"Zarqawi, Spinning in His Grave" (amusing liberal bloggers trying to spin this)

Pajamas Media Coverage

posted by Bernard @ 11:14 PM

FUTURE IN SOUTH KOREA?

I think Business 2.0 editor, Chris Taylor, was either suffering from writer's block, or he took an article that never got published in 2003 or 2004 and put it up here.

Why the future is in South Korea
Smart investments in broadband there have paid off in the form of a hyperconnected society --and now we can start reaping the benefits of the Korean experiment.

posted by Bernard @ 10:25 PM

MLB TAKES FIRST SWING AT SLING MEDIA

We knew it was going to happen eventually. A war of words happened between an exec from Sling Media and Major League Baseball. I wonder when the first lawsuit will be thrown?

posted by Bernard @ 11:11 PM

RANDOM NEWS QUICKLIST

"Nearly 600 Iraqi prisoners released"

"Diplomats: Package gives Iran some leeway"

"Nasty Democratic campaign may boost Schwarzenegger"

"Google's Brin lobbies for Net neutrality"

"Yahoo buying into South Korea's Gmarket"

"Microsoft Will Take Adobe Out of Office After Talks Break Down"

"Dot-com exec gadfly Philip Kaplan cedes own CEO spot"

"Blog network that means business" (about Glam)

"Star power: Celebrities have a legal right to prevent the commercial use of their images without permission. But are they silencing artists and satirists as well?"

"Kids Want to be Seen Online"

"Harvard launches effort to clone human stem cells"

posted by Bernard @ 7:26 AM

RAFAT ALI CALLS BUSINESSWEEK ON THEIR HYPE

Amusing post by Rafat. He calls BusinessWeek on them drumming up buyout rumors in the tech and media space. I agree that BusinessWeek is getting too excited too easily:

Is it me, or is BW absolutely desperate to whip up media buyout rumors, or rehash old ones? First it was the Facebook $2 billion valuation story, then some other wildly speculative stuff about Microsoft’s M&A ambitions, and now this almost a year-old story about Movielink-being-on-the-block-yet-not-finding-buyers story. This story says the online movie service Movielink, jointly owned by movie studios, was on the block but couldn’t find any buyers. That is true, except that formal process ended about a year ago.

posted by Bernard @ 11:43 PM

NEXT STAGE OF THE WEB CHANGING CORPORATE AMERICA & MARKETING

A couple good articles on the changing landscape of marketing and communication...

Web 2.0 Has Corporate America Spinning
What every CEO needs to know about the array of new tools that foster online collaboration -- and could revolutionize business

Comic book software touted as marketer's dream
By the time the new Jack Black movie "Nacho Libre" opens on June 16, its fans will have already had more than a week to create their own versions of stories based on the film.

That's because Paramount Pictures is licensing Planetwide Games' Comic Book Creator software, an application that lets users quickly make their own digital comic books by dragging and dropping text and images into a template, and making a "Nacho Libre"-branded version of it available to fans on Thursday. (full post)

posted by Bernard @ 11:27 PM

EBAY ENHANCES SELLING EXPERIENCE THROUGH BLOGS AND WIKIS

Good move by eBay. A better move would have been to utilize our platform :)

eBay Exuberantly Joins Web 2.0 with Launch of Blogs and Wikis for Sellers

eBay is exuberantly jumping into social media with the launch eBay Blogs and the eBay Community Wiki and other community tools that heralds the largest corporate move into Web 2.0 to date. eBay will launch the new sellers' marketing tools at the sold out eBay Live conference that more than 10,000 people are set to attend in Las Vegas on June 13-15, according to Ina Steiner at Auctionbytes blog.

Clearly, eBay understands that selling on the Internet is about creating community and engaging in credible conversation, and not about whacking buyers over the head with heavy-handed sales speak. Providing the community-building tools for sellers involves a massive education campaign that other sales sites, from Yahoo stores to department stores will have to catch up with quickly or be left behind in the dust. (full post)

posted by Bernard @ 11:53 PM

SOCIAL NETWORKING STUFF

Here's a couple articles on MySpace and one has a plug for TagWorld:

The Network Unbound
How TagWorld and other next-generation social networks could feed your business--and maybe even change the world.

MySpace No Longer Their Space?

posted by Bernard @ 7:56 AM

TERRY SEMEL EMBARRASSED SO HE CHANGES HIS SALARY TO $1

This news cracks me up. The San Francisco Chronicle printed this article, "TOP 100 BAY AREA EXECUTIVES BY COMPENSATION," a couple weeks ago with Terry Semel listed as the highest-paid executive, so he changes his annual salary to $1. Of course he receives stock bonuses :)

Some of the others on this list:

1 Terry S. Semel Chairman & CEO Yahoo Inc $56,848,880

2 Arthur D. Levinson, Ph.D. Chairman & CEO Genentech Inc $39,980,537

3 Mark V. Hurd CEO & President Hewlett Packard Co $34,896,918

4 Lawrence J. Ellison CEO Oracle Corp $25,333,700

5 Daniel Rosensweig COO Yahoo Inc $24,405,160

6 Susan L. Decker CFO Yahoo Inc $24,255,160

7 Farzad Nazem Chief Technical Officer Yahoo Inc $24,005,160

8 Paul S. Pressler President & CEO Gap Inc $23,193,653

9 Carleton S. Fiorina Former Chairman & CEO Hewlett Packard $22,274,270

posted by Bernard @ 3:34 AM

PROTOMOBL, "CONNECTED INNOVATOR" AT SUPERNOVA 2006

Protomobl, the mobile social networking platform startup I'm advising, was announced as a "Connected Innovator" for this year's upcoming Supernova conference. Congratulations to Eduardo and his team!

Definitely take a look at Protomobl's gearOn platform when the launch later this year. They have a kickass social networking-based mobile interface, and have really thought about the future of mobile-based interaction.


*Originally blogged from my GoingOn blogging tool, which posted here, to my GoingOn personal blog, and 4 networks (think of super-charged groups) on the GoingOn platform all at once :)

posted by Bernard @ 1:30 AM

AMUSING VIDEO CLIPS

HatTip to Mike on the first two. I heard engineers at Cisco love the first one:

Retro Encabulator

The second one reminds me of all the Asian Americans that would work on their pen tricks during high school. Obviously I didn't do it or I would have put up my own video:

Haduri - Pen Tricks

The last one is Bell South commercial:

Kung Fu Clowns

posted by Bernard @ 3:11 AM

SIXAPART'S VOX (COMET) IS COMING SOON

SixApart's delay on their Vox launch makes GoingOn look good :) Om has a review of his sneak preview here. TechCrunch has a review here.

I can't provide my thoughts on this yet because I haven't gotten a chance to play around with it.

posted by Bernard @ 11:35 PM

NORTH KOREAN E-LIBRARY

HatTip to Mingi. Hilarious comments from his email to me:

It appears the North Korean comrades have figured out Adobe Acrobat. There is now a Kim Il Sung e-library (English language), where you can access a range of N. Korean books. Judging from what I've read so far, it's not as bad as the issue of 'Independent' that Bono edited.

He also points to this classic: 160-page Kim Jong Il biography

posted by Bernard @ 11:08 PM

THE FLASH MIND READER... HOW NOT TO PLAY SOCCER

Might be old for some of you, but trying out The Flash Mind Reader is pretty cool. Also for you soccer fans, check out this hilarious video here.

I'm just taking a blogging and random websurfing break. I need my mind to rest. I haven't been blogging or linking much lately since we're having our soft beta launch next week, and we're busy closing our first institutional round. I can't wait until the next stage of our startup when we can start hiring... such as a real product development head instead of me :)

posted by Bernard @ 10:49 PM