Bill Burnham, who plays a VC at Softbank when he is not playing Texas Hold'em, has a clear view of where RSS is heading and what the upcoming problems are.  Read his post RSS A Big Success in Danger of Failure (I linked the version at Seed Capital Partners' The Weekly Read because Bill's version doesn't seem to have a permalink).  His view matches mine but I think he has overlooked some hidden valleys.  Added Bill to my blogroll.

Google-free Yahoo Search is out (via Scott Loftesness).  The interesting thing is that ranking algorithm used seems to be very similar to PageRank used by Google.  For example, I am the 11th 'Don' on both services.  I used to be the 9th but the acceleration of global warming trend dropped me down a couple of notches.

Oy.  I have been thinking too much about syndicated data feeds.  I looked at my neighbor's willow tree and saw feeds.  I see a feed when I look at a roll of toilet paper.  Thank goodness I chose Japanese over Italian for the Valentine's Day dinner.  It's time for a break, hopefully as far as away from any string sales persons, before I start thinking of myself as a feed.

Update:

Speaking of feeds from the restroom, Jeneane Sessum drew up this excellent diagram:

Hey, it's Party Time! – A-List Dungbeetle

I didn't know how the Mars rovers landed until I saw this picture that shows how Opportunity landed and then bounced into a crater.

Amazing.  I wonder if they planned to put the rover into the crater.  Here is an overhead picture of the rover and the lander.

It's always amazing to see your own neighborhood from out the space.  Below is a picture of my home using Acme Mapper (via Esther Dyson).

The red circle is where my house is.  What's funny is that I never been to the island across from my house and I am looking at it through a satellite's lense.  Too bad there was nothing in the lagoon when the photos were taken.  Oy, I am less than a pixel.

I wrote a comment elsewhere that was memorable but not exactly right, so I'll post it here as a note to myself.

Being fearless without being peerless is a formula for tragedy.

Maybe some of my quotes will make it into the book of quotes someday. 🙂

Differences and Similarities

I woke up this afternoon after 14 hours of sleep, crash of a pleasant kind, with this question:

Is it better to see differences ahead of similarities?

I tend to see differences first and then examine the similarities, often times over a long period of time, forming a spiral of thoughts, leaving a sense of same but different, just as I see people's lives and markets moving in spiral columns.  If I see the similarities first, then I would not be moving at all and form a straight line just as a piece of rock would make a straight line in time.  Hogwash?  Maybe, maybe not.

Are blogs just diaries or web pages?  Is social software just hype covered groupware?  I think the answers depends on whether one sees differences before similarities.

Financial Services

Yesterday, I had a nice talk with Scott Loftessness and Russ Jones, of Glenbrook Partners, about how weblog and syndicated data technologies will change the landscape of financial services in the near future.  It was one of those productive talks that helped clarify our visions.  Maybe it was the stress of the clarity that caused me to sleep too much, like when I get a new pair of glasses and see everything near and far in sharp focus.

Sharing Pictures and Toons with One-liners

Every picture tells a story.  False.  Every picture tells different stories to different people.  Why not let them share what they heard?

Imagine a blog where a post is just a picture or toon with nothing else but a form that looks like the comment entry form.  Readers of such a blog either looks at the picture and writes the story the picture tells them or copy a picture with a story they like to their own blog to share with others.

We got blogosphere equivalent of daily cartoons.  Little mind snacks.  If this doesn't blow your mind, you have my condolence.