BijanBlog

New blog location

I'm now blogging over at www.bijansabet.com

Please come by and say hello.

I'm now Tumbling

I met David Karp last year. He was helping out a number of folks create, design and develop their web properties. We started spending more time earlier this year when we made our investment in Next New Networks. David had been helping Fred Seibert for years At that time David also showed me his latest creation - Tumblr. And since then we've gotten to know each other and I started to really love what Tumblr was all about. Tumblr makes blogging super simple. And you can create a tumblelog just by linking & sharing in addition to a "traditional" blog posts like this one. If you have found blogging to exhausting but love the idea then give Tumblr a try. It's a lot of fun. Some great examples of tumblelogs powered by Tumblr include: -Jake Jarvis (jeff javis son and creator of very cool facebookapps)

-Jakob Lodwick (founder of Vimeo)
-Kevin Rose (founder of Digg)
-David Karp (founder of tumblr)
-Fred Wilson (general partner at Union Sq Ventures)
-Marco Arment (software genius behind Tumblr)

By early fall, David decided to create Tumblr Inc and spend his time building out the service. We recently invested in the company along with our friends at Union Square Ventures, John Borthwick, Fred Seibert, Jakob Lodwick and Albert Wenger.

David is gearing up for a new release of Tumblr on November 1st and the new stuff looks fantastic.

And I'm now tumbling as well. So this will most likely be my last post on typepad.

Please check out my new site at www.bijansabet.com from now on. And I hope to see you on Tumblr too.

(note: If you are subscribing to his feed then you don't have to make any changes to your reader. This feed will now grab my new site. Thanks to Brad Feld and David for the tip on how to do this. If you aren't reading this feed than subscribe now :)

The Fall of an American Icon

  THE FALL OF AN AMERICAN ICON 
  Originally uploaded by maebmij.

It's hard to believe that this was the cover of Business Week in 1996 (full story here)

Everyone at the time was predicting the downfall of Apple Computer.

And today Apple announced yet another amazing quarter. They sold 10M ipods, 2.1M macs and 1.1M iphones this quarter. They generated $3.5B in net income for the year. The company now has over $15B in cash and no debt. And the are telling the street that Q1FY08 is going to be huge.

This company is simply incredible.

Go Apple.

(disclosure: i own apple stock. and i'm not selling anytime soon)

Dave's River of News

Over the weekend Dave Winer sent me a link to his latest creation. Essentially, it's the entire NYT listed in outline form and by keywords. Dave's post describes his thinking behind this creation.

It's pretty exciting. It certainly a better way to navigate the NYT. So simple. No clutter, no fuss, no seductive editorial titles steering your attention. Just the news. Ready to digest.

I think it could have important implications for news and other content types as well.

And I'd love to see mobile news sites presented this way.

Very cool.

Confession: Bionic Woman

I was going to keep this a secret. One that only Lauren knows.

I confess, I have been watching the Bionic Woman. The plot has been ridiculous and underwhelming. But I'm watching it anyway.

Maybe it's because I'm a fan of Battlestar Gallactica and Katee Sackhoff. I really don't know. I do know that it could be so much better though.

Looks like Marc Andreessen is watching as well ;)

The kids are alright

We found an awesome farm today off of Rt 2 in Concord. Killer pumpkins. Many were over 150lbs.

I love this photo

Oliver and New Friend
Originally uploaded by Amin Sabet.

My brother took this photo of his son Oliver and a new friend.

Web 2.0 summit: photos & SteveB's memorable quote

Just a quick post before I goto bed tonight.

Dave Winer just sent an email with his slide show from the web 2.0 summit today. Yours truly is somewhere in the bunch along with some other familiar faces & friends.

I think Steve Ballmer probably had the most memorable line at the event today.

During an animated discussion at the Web 2.0 Summit moderated by organizer John Battelle, Ballmer took a paternal tone, saying Microsoft's own Web search technology needed improvements.

"You're just 3 years old, and we've got you in there playing basketball with a 12-year-old," Ballmer gushed and gesticulated, nearly popping out of his seat. "You're growing up quick and getting better every day, and you've got all the potential in world, and it may take you 'til you're 7, 8, 9 or 10, but you're gonna dunk and you're gonna dunk on the other guy some day, Johnny." [from CNNMoney via GigaOM].

It was actually really funny....delivered only the way Steve can do it.

Oh, and I also have a tree planted for me in Niger. It was the attendee gift from the event. This is so much better than typical conference swag.

Bubblicious

I'm at the Web 2.0 summit in SF.

In addition to seeing some old friends, I've met a ton of new companies and new people trying to change the world. I met too many people yesterday with new ideas that my head is spinning. The excitement is infectious.

With all of the entrepreneurs running around, VCs running around, and panel after panel, it's not surprising that many folks are wondering if we are in another bubble and if Crash 2.0 is coming soon. My friend Scott Rafer believes we are months away from the next bust. Josh on the other hand points out why the crash-predictors have been actually been with us for a long time.

During one of the panels I actually sat in on, the founder of Topix had a slide about broadband penetration in the US since 2000. Its hard to remember but when the stock market tanked the last time around, broadband penetration in the US market was just under 10%. In retrospect it's hard to believe that we were able to build so many businesses  going after so few users. Yes, I know people will remind me that sites in those days were optimized for dialup but c'mon, we know that was just a bandaid. The user experience for dialup is just lame. (think about mobile internet for a moment).

I can't predict when the next crash will come. As an investor, I wish I could.

But I'm encouraged by some entrepreneurs and VCs trying to learn from the past. And I'm encouraged that there are more of us online & connected than ever.

And besides, bulls are more fun than bears :)

Death or Glory

I'm in a rocking mood these days. Especially UK rock and roll. New and old.

Before i left for my west coast trip I loaded up my macbook with The Who, Stones, the Alarm, Hard-Fi, Editors and one of my absolute favorites, The Clash.

So here is Death or Glory from London Calling. Turn up your speakers and enjoy.

More about Dopplr

So my love affair with Dopplr continues.

I had Dan Gillmor in my office yesterday who is one of the founders of the service and a really cool guy.

He asked me how the service could be improved. I told him three things :

1. Outlook and gcal sync. Obvious.

2. Twitter support. I want to broadcast on twitter from dopplr automatically when i'm traveling on the day of travel.

3. LinkedIn style questions to my network on Dopplr.  Imagine sending out a question like "what hotel should I stay at for my upcoming trip to nyc?" or it could be used to answer howard's question about SF. That would be powerful. And would be a big step towards User Reviews 2.0. Content with context.

New blog, new url coming

I hand my data off to web services every day. The ones that give me the best value in return I use most often. Simple. That's why i share my personal data with me.dium, last.fm, google, flickr etc.

The place that I probably give the most data to is actually Typepad. Typepad hosts this blog. All of my posts, comments, trackbacks, links, etc.

I'm in the process of moving this blog to a different service that I'm really excited about. So I need to migrate my data from typepad. I'd like to think that my data on typepad is actually mine but it doesn't feel that way as it's hard to make the move.

Since I started bloging, my url has been sabet.typepad.com. This weekend i bought the domain BijanBlog.com. So now if you goto www.bijanblog.com it will redirect you to this blog for now.

I need to figure out how to move my feedburner feed or most likely I will have to set up a new one. And I need to figure out what technorati will do with inbound links. I suspect I'll have to keep this typepad blog alive in parallel for months while I make the transition. Sigh.

And what to do about comments? I never liked typepad's commenting system. My friend David Karp from Davidville introduced me to Daniel Ha at Disqus several weeks ago. Now I have Disqus powering my comment system. Not only does Disqus provides a substantially better commenting system than typepad but the commenting data is portable.  I will be able to bring the service *and data* with me to my new blog. Daniel is a super cool guy and I want to thank him for all of his help. Daniel uses Tumblr and blogs at obscurelyfamous.com

Please let me know if anyone else has info or tips on typepad migration. I'm all ears.

Beautiful Day

  James, Sophia and Ellie 
  Originally uploaded by bsabet.

We made it to Honey Pot Hill and spent the morning apple picking, going on a hayride, eating carmel apples and then hanging around the pumpkin patch.

It was simply gorgeous today.

Kids had a blast. Grown ups too.

What is the definition of heavy metal ?

You'll have to watch Nite Fite to find out.

Brought to you by the same folks that brought us Internet People.

I love this. Reminds me of high school in too many ways.

How not to blog: see Microsoft Mac Unit blog

I subscribe to Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit blog.

Why? Because I'm anxiously awaiting the upcoming version of MS Office 2008. The current version of Entourage is ridiculous. It's old, crashes and it's the last major app to not run natively on Intel hardware.

The Mac BU has been forever trying to convince the Apple faithful that they care about Mac users. Read their posts. They publicly declare their love for all things Mac. And that is great.

But their blog is pathetic. All of their posts are either self congratulatory or they talk about features that people don't care about. Consistently in the comments for every post, customers (only) want to know if Entourage is going to fully support MS Exchange properly or not.

And with each blog post, the folks at the Mac BU at MSFT refuse to answer the question or even acknowledge the question. Here's a recent example of the continued frustration

They might as well just turn off comments at this point. Blogging is an opportunity for companies to talk directly, openly and honestly with their users (read: good, bad & ugly).

Microsoft's Mac blog is anything but.

Bug Labs meetup recap

Last night Peter, Ken, Jeremy, Brian, Heather and the Bug Labs gang hosted a meetup in Cambridge. I think about 70+ people show up. 

I met a number of folks at the event including Erik Schwartz from Foneshow who I met thru this blog. Erik lived in the bay area for a long time and moved back east about the time I did so we had a nice chat about Bug Labs and life on the east coast vs west coast.

I also met Dan Bricklin last night which was pretty cool. For those of you that might not know, Dan is the creator of VisiCalc. And he's an active blogger. Check out Dan's post about the Bug gathering last night and his podcast with Peter.

Wade from Xconomy was there last night as well and has this great post

Thanks to everyone who came. The enthusiasm for Bug has been really special.

Update: This is really funny. Here is Bug Labs Episode B which is a follow up to their first video on the beginnings of Bug Labs.

(disclosure: Bug Labs is a Spark portfolio company)

Join us for Tech Blogs

I'll be chatting it up with friends at Scott Kirsner's Tech Blogs in a few weeks.

Scott's description of the evening :

Tech Blogs: How are Blogs Changing the Way Technology is Covered?

Entrepreneurs, CEOs, VCs, journalists, and PR professionals are increasingly cranking out blogs, podcasts, and video dispatches. How does this change the way the tech sector gets covered? What does it mean for CEOs trying to get their stories out, PR firms trying to get coverage for their clients, VC firms touting their investments, journalists trying to cover important news, and customers tracking the market? (Not to mention the relationships between all of these players.)

We'll bring together representatives from all four camps for a wide-ranging conversation (definitely *not* a panel) about the way blogs are changing the game in the tech world.

General Info: Oct 23rd @ the Cambridge Innovation Center. It's free to attend but seating is limited. RSVP.

Rhapsody TV.....almost here

I've been wanting waiting for Rhapsody TV. Feels like forever. I want Rhapsody on my existing cable set top box which in my case is the Comcast HD DVR.

Well today Rhapsody and TiVo agreed to devilver Rhapsody TV on TiVo boxes. Henry Blodget says this one is a  loser. I think it's smart and can only hope that this service shows up on the upcoming TiVo service on Comcast.

My friend Nabeel is a big fan of the TiVo HD box with cable card. I've been holding off because it doesn't do VOD.

But Rhapsody TV may just push me over to Nabeel's camp.

Correction: Bug Labs MeetUp

I made a mistake on my original post about the upcoming Bug Labs MeetUp in Cambridge. It's taking place Oct 9th (tomorrow!). I had the date wrong before.

Hope to see you there.

So Sad About Us

The song, So Sad About Us, was written by The Who in 1966 and was covered by The Jam.

Here is Paul Weller from The Jam and Pete singing it together a few years back. Absolutely fantastic.