Friday, May 11, 2007

B and C List VCs Sucking Wind

nytimes grab.png The New York Times today provides more reportage on the woes of the venture capital sector. Unless you are a top 40 venture firm, you are in a world of hurt.

“It’s been almost a decade,” said Eric Doppstadt, director of private equity for the Ford Foundation, which invests in venture capital firms. “I find it shocking that an asset class that has provided so little payback continues to attract so much capital.”

Read - Some Unrest Is Bubbling Beneath the Top Tier (NY Times)

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Odd iPod Patent Shows Dual Screens, Rear Touchscreen

The Interweb is all a'flutter about an odd iPod patent filed by Apple that describes a device with screens on both the front and the back of the player. An amalgam of Sprint's UpStage and the iPhone, this patent describes an interface in which a rear touchscreen accepts input and reflects that input on the front screen. Confused yet?

It works like this. Because a Nano-sized device would be too small to allow for a real front touch interface, the rear touchscreen would sense your finger position and show a cursor where your finger or thumb would be on the front screen. This frees up front real estate and could potentially allow for an onscreen keyboard and other goodies. Possible? Yes. Will it happen soon? Probably not.

This is all pie-in-the-sky conjecture, but it does show a potential design for a future Nano-sized iPhone and makes for great Apple rumor-mongering.

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Bypass Flickr Ban in Iran, UAE and Saudi Arabia


"We apologize the site [Flickr.com] you are attempting to visit has been blocked due to its content being inconsistent with the religious, cultural, political and moral values of the United Arab Emirates."

That's the message you're likely to see when trying to access Flickr pictures from certain gulf countries like UAE and Iran because the administration has blocked the photo sharing site from citizens for various cultural and religious reasons.
 
Unblock Flickr website in Dubai, Tehran

[The government ban also applies to sites like Hi5, Friendster, Skype, etc.]

To unblock Flickr in UAE, Iran, China or any other country, you may try the standard proxy route but there's a much better option developed by an Iranian photographer who's an ardent Flickr fan himself.

Hamed Saber has released an Access Flickr extension for Firefox that will let you circumvent the internet filters of any country where the site is banned.

The Access Flickr extension for Firefox substitutes the HTTP header parameters before sending a request to Flickr and therefore fools the government filters. This extension is only for accessing Flickr.com, it won't work for other sites like YouTube or Orkut.

Download Access Flickr | Hamed Saber on Flickr

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Thursday, May 10, 2007

Clever AACS t-shirt hack

ThinkGeek has a great take on the AACS number censorship thing -- they've made a t-shirt that shows all the hex values in sequence leading up to the AACS key, a blank line labelled [redacted] and then all the numbers following from it. Link (Thanks, David!)

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Guruza.com - Pay Someone to Answer Your Question

Guruza is creating an ask-answer marketplace that allows you to chat with experts until you get an answer to your question. After you get a satisfactory answer, you pay them an agreed-upon fee (usually $5 or $10). In looking at the most recent questions/answers, some questions are serious and get a serious response with the requested fee, while others just go unanswered. It is an interesting comparison with Jyve.com, which was less upfront about the fee part of the equation and thus received many more ridiculous and perverse questions. I also prefer the layout and functionality of this site, as compared to Jyve. They have a good Q&A section, as well as good graphics. In their own words: Guruza is a marketplace that brings together people seeking knowledge with those who can provide it. You don't pay unless you get the answer you are looking for. Go ahead and try it out-it only takes a minute to get started! Just enter a question into the box below, decide on how much you offer to have it answered, and submit to Guruza." Why it might be a killer: There must be a market for paying "experts" to answer random questions out there, and if there is, this site definitely answers the call. It is well designed, explained and managed. Some questions: What is that market for paying so-called "experts" online? Are these guys making a profit? kinda like the failed Google Answers -- never made it to critical mass.

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