Posts and pointers on software, art, math, noise, and other obsessions…
Hahaha…
From Marc Andreeson’s blog.
BTW, I just discovered his blog yesterday, but it looks like some good reading: an unpretentious and honest look at tech entrepreneuriship past, present, and future. To read…
Update: Ok, I don’t feel that bad about just discovering it, he only started it 12 days ago!
The last few days, when I log in to check my feed usage, FeedBurner tells me how many subscribers I have but claims I had no item views and no item clicks the previous day. Some indeterminate time later in the day the real stats magically appear. Are they having trouble completing the “big crunch” in the time between midnight (I assume PST) and my EST morning?
Maybe I’m just paranoid, but… it seems every time Google buys someone, they simultaneously start having scaling difficulties. The question is: is it a chicken thing, or an egg thing? Do companies that get to a size where scaling is becoming a problem become natural targets for Google acquisition? Or does getting bought by Google bring you the kiss of death, scaling-wise (just look at Blogger?)
File this under baseless rumours, if you like. We’ll see what happens as time goes on.
Update: I actually received an email from someone at Google about this (sorry for the delay in posting the update, but I don’t often read that email account). I won’t repeat it in full, but suffice it to say that there is a “big crunch” (as the writer calls it: “nightly roll-ups”) which begin at midnight Central time and last a few hours. It has apparently always been thus. However, I still don’t see my stats until about 10-11 am EST, which is different than before, so I guess I’ll have to report that as… an issue. Though not, I assume, anything to do with Google. 
Move your mouse pointer away from that “Attach” button! There’s a better way….
As the debate about the wisdom of entrusting all one’s data to someone else’s “cloud” continues, today’s Privacy International report on Google adds a disturbing note: the London-based watchdog group “assigned Google its lowest possible grade. The category is reserved for companies with ‘comprehensive consumer surveillance and entrenched hostility to privacy.’“
Leigh will have plenty to say later on about why we’re so stoked about our new product, ucaster. But first I want to say a little bit about why we built the tecnhnology behind the product in the first place.
In a nutshell, it just bugged me that every computer and every device was not actually a node on the Web. Despite the fact that personal computers in particular are more than powerful enough to act as web servers, the physical and logical topology of the Interent as deployed relegates most devices to being web clients only.
The Web 2.0 phenomenon has improved the capabilities of lowly web-clients, allowing them to contribute content as well as consume it. This is a great thing, and I don’t mean any insult by saying that by itself it just isn’t enough.
I wanted a Web that was end-to-end. Where every device could provide as well as consume web services and content. Where every shared resource had a resolvable URL.
Just because your laptop or your phone don’t have the full power and connectivity of the “great server cloud in the sky” there’s still plenty you can do with them if they’re able to join the network in an active capacity.
So that’s what we set out to do. Our first product, ucaster, is intended to be the easiest method ever invented for publishing your own content on the web. If you can drag files from one folder to another, you’re an expert user already. There are no servers in between you and your friends (or colleagues) with web browsers viewing your content. We don’t upload anything anywhere, we don’t replicate anything anywhere. You own your own stuff. You control who sees it and when. We’re just flinging packets around to make that possible.
I hope you enjoy the freedom. We certainly do.
Cross-posted from the official oponia networks blog
