I wonder why most blogs have no ads?  We are not shy about recommending things, places, and products on our posts, so why not have ads for the recommended things, places, and products on our blogs?  If it can be done easily and without losing control, bloggers can make money without selling out.

Lets see how this can be done.  A blog crawler can scan the blogspace for recent blog posts containing certain names like "Diet Coke" and "Nokia 7650".  When one is found, an ad-space offer is made to the blogger by e-mail, feedback, or web services.  If the blogger agrees, then the blogging tool inserts the ad automatically.  Expired ads are removed when the time limit ends.

Next problem is how to handle the abusers who posts bogus news containing product names and nothing else.  Use a combination of Google's approach, Bayesian filters, and other statistical abnomally detection techniques.

Last major problem is what to do about RSS feeds and news aggregators.  Links to ads can be included in RSS feeds and news aggregators should allocate areas to display required or optional ads.  Detecting new feed clients that do not display mandatory ads will be difficult but manageable.

I have been thinking about Clay Shirky's Power Laws post and my conclusion is that the power law does apply to weblogs as well as the web and life in general.  But I believe the power law erode in the face of fast chaotic changes.  Weblog technology is still at its infancy and evolving fast into a form we have yet to see.  Applying the power law at this time would be as foolish as pinpoin the position of my underwear inside a running washer.

Looks like I am in for a private winner-take-all poker tournament early March.  I am pretty good at the table, but never done a tournament before, not even a small and friendly one like this one, so I'll get something out of it even if I don't win.

Berkman Center folks sure made a good investment when they granted Dave Winer a fellowship.  He is making news, experimenting, and rousing people (see Dan Bricklin's pictures of Dave's first Harvard weblogger meeting).  He is not only infecting smart people with the blog meme, but pulling them into close enough proximity, both physically and virtually, to make things happen.

When you catch a meme, you are pregnent with a mixture of the original meme and your interpretation of the meme.  Over the incubation period, you feed your lifespan of thoughts and experiences into it.  Someday, these people will crack open and start infecting others with their own variation of the original meme.  So the faces in Dan's pictures are carriers.  Scary, huh?

Comments are back in because I enjoyed occasional comments from strangers more than I realized.  Some style changes as well.  I don't know why the permalink was using a tiny image of # character, but I changed that.

Some analysts are predicting that when the bullets start flying in Iraq, stock market will rally.  I agree, but I suspect the rally will be short lived with only about 300 to 500 points on the upside, leaving us still within the 1000 point down draft situation.  My reasoning is that removing uncertainties around war with Iraq will still leave North Korea and the Economy weighing us down.  Some people thrive on yo-yo market, but its risky without the ability to watch every ticks and tides.  As for me, I stopped watching ticks and tides and started watching people.  After all, its the people who buys and sells.

More people from the past.  I was also reminded of Marney Morris's Animatrix when I read people blog about Animatrix.  Is that a movie or something?  'The Animatrix' site was too busy being cool so I wasn't sure what it was about.  Duh.  Anyway, I worked with Marney way back in Apple II days.  Really nice gal.  She drew graphics and I threw them on the screen as fast as I could.  I remember a particular renderer I did for Apple II's double-hires mode (twice the pixels with even crazier mapping).  Fastest way I could come up with was self-modifying 6502 code.  Yikes!

Here we go.  Countdown to Matrix:Reloaded.

The Matrix = The Mesh

Some of us, when we hear the name Animatrix – can't help but think of Marney Morris. That was the name of her company.  Marney was literally the FIRST person to make money off of VideoWorks, which became Director, which became Flash. Marney was the ORIGINAL multimedia developer. [Marc's Voice]

I remember Adam Green.  When dBase was still king of the hill and SQL was just a glimmer in people's eyes, Adam and I talked about working together to build a smart  interactive SQL editor/IDE.  Nothing came of it and I lost track of him since.  I wish I could be scholarly like him instead of pounding on my keyboard and yacking on the phone all day to make a living.  Being a VC would be even better although more tiring, but empty trees (re: VC tree joke) in Sand Hill makes the transition near impossible.

BTW, totally by coincidence, my old friend Adam Green, the dBASE guru, and CTO at Andover, retired rich from the software industry, is now taking classes at Harvard to learn how be scholarly about the history of science. His aim is to be the first software historian. Adam is uniquely qualified to do that. He was doing his work, reading the ancient scientists, on his own, when people asked what he's doing, he'd tell them and they would look at him weirdly. Now he says he's studying the same stuff at Harvard and people's eyes bug out. I've noticed the same thing. Synchronicity. [Scripting News]

Microsoft has a hit on its hand that should strengthen Xbox marketshare.  Its Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball.  It will open the floodgate for sex-appeal games.  Will Playboy's Mud Wrestling for Xbox be next?  Here is a screenshot of DOAX for your pleasure.

 

What should an engineer do with all that money?  Become a VC of course.

Macromedia and Beyond.  After eight years with Allaire and Macromedia, I've decided to move on. What a ride its been, and will no doubt continue to be.