Daily Show on MySpace ad the Social Networking Thing...

Oh, this is too funny.

Great commentary on youth & social networking sites from the Daily Show.

Here's another interesting commentary: does google have permission to use ANY of these copywritten clips? =)

The State of Canadian Tech/Innovation Culture & Startups

Below is a a quick cross posting of a comment I left for Mark Evans on his blog entry on his write up about Alec's new company... for some reason on this Saturday afternoon, I just felt compelled to chime in with my 2 cents on the state of startup culture in Canada.

What’s truly weird for me is that I've come to realize that I've been in this industry (with 100% of the time being a "tech entrepreneur") for well over 10 years. Its a pretty startling thought for me for some reason. Perhaps I'm worried I'll be saddled with experience, and lose my creative edge and drive. Frankly, I'm not sure how much more creative or better I am with coming up with new ideas now than 10 years ago with a lot less experience (..but I'm pretty sure I am a few magnitudes better translating an idea into a viable business).

Hrmm.. or maybe its just mid-tech-life crisis coming on early for me. ;)

Anyhow, here's my 2 cents on startup-life / innovation-culture in Canada...

by Albert on Sat 11 Feb 2006 03:00 PM EST | Permanent Link

Your right, Alec is kickin' ass -- and I agree, even with the dramatically lowered cost of starting something up, we're still seeing little in the way of new innovative ventures in Canada that are pushing the edge. But I think this time around, we'll do a bit better -- access to global talent and capital is easier in this era than before IMHO, all we need is to have folks step it up. The culture IS slowly changing I think. Waterloo is still no Stanford when it comes to migrating top technical talent into REAL VENTURES (per capita) -- even as they produce some of the best technical minds in the world.

But my guess is that Canada is going to be a relatively more innovative in the next decade (2006-2016) than the last decade that I've experienced working here as being paid to "build things technology" (1996-2006).

And, as you may recall from April 2000 when I first showed up publicly on your editorial radar at the Globe, me and the team (made up of mostly serial tech entrepreneurs) at BubbleShare are not risk adverse and enjoy stirring stuff up. ;)

The most important thing we can do here is just lead by example and keep stirring things up to help cultivate a culture and awareness of entrepreneurialism. I think between guys like Alec on the startup side, Rick Segal on the funding side, and David with things like TorCamp on the grass roots developer side -- things will really start picking up over the next few years.

New Release on BubbleShare

Major release on BubbleShare today. Still a few bugs to iron out, but I hope to hear everyone's feedback. We took all the suggestions over the past few months and tried to take as much of it as possible and put it into our first major release since launch (well, officially, this is our "3rd release" in the past 3-4 months).

Hope some of you guys will like it... more details to come. Been pretty bad at this blogging thing. Just been crazy busy, and can't remember the last time I left the office before midnight. But all the hard work I from the team and the what I try to do for them seems to be paying off nicely in this new release!

Enjoy and let us know what you think (please email feedback (at) BubbleShare (dot) com).

Quoted quoting the real brains behind blogging on The Globe and Mail

I've been quoted in The Globe and Mail.

After working till 4:00AM on a Sunday, mostly to catch up with last week's work, I just don't think I can't think of a ton to add to the conversation that was started with that piece. I know I'm not alone burning the midnight oil as I'm sure many of my fellow entrepreneurs are doing the same, as its the weekend prior to the main event that is Demo 2006 (we didn't make the application deadline... sigh.) Then again being a bootstrap -- tens of thousands of dollars to demo at a conference is pretty steep -- esp. given our non existent marketing budge.

Here's a bit more I wish I could have added to the article: (1) blog early, blog often -- and (2) read the Cluetrain Manifesto. Much of what I was quoted on I can't take much credit for, much of what I said was figured out way before I had even heard of the "blog" word word by Doc, Chris, and David the real blogging gurus.

Coincidentally, I'm proud to say that I've met two of the authors (Doc and David) in person (both separately) and have spent a decent amount of time with each talking about what we've been up to at BS. I'm looking forward to reading more of what Robert Scoble and Shel Israel have written in their recent offering and see how they are "extending the conversation" around the evolving role of blogging and "peer-to-peer content creation."

Hopefully those that are using BubbleShare see what we're doing as a positive contributor to enabling regular people to become "peer-to-peer content creators." If a picture really is worth a thousand words, then our BubbleShare pictures with their associated audio and text captions should have contributed a few essays worth the googlesphear/blogosphear.

Chipmunks, the Matrix and PodCasting

So here I am, 1:43AM, still haven't had dinner yet, but having a blast. I'm listening to this podcast in the background of a Churchill Club event.

The REALLY weird that that happened was that I thought the podcast was a voice synthesized version of the text -- since everyone sounded like a Singing Chipmunk. But then as I listened, I realized it actually just the podcast that's been SUPER accelerated (probably 2x). Perhaps its a bug in the flash player.

Either way, I thought this "bug" is an awesome feature. I love it, because here I am experiencing this panel that I missed in the Valley, an even that I usually go to, and pay money for, and I'm in Toronto listening to it in 2x of real time. It does take more focus to listen to it, esp. since Guy Kawasaki is already a fast speaker. But its awesome to be able to "place shift," "time shift," and "accelerate reality."

The other interesting thing about this is that I would never enjoy watching a movie in 2x real time, but to listen to an audio clip in 2x real time is great (I'm guessing this is 2x real time, I have no idea, but it sounds like it).

I wish there was a tool that would allow me to jog-dial in how fast I want to accelerate the audio. The other thing I'd love to learn about are what are the human limits on how fast you can process audio information. As well, I wonder if it makes sense to lower to tone of the audio so that the people just sound like they are speaking quickly, without sounding like a chipmunk.

BubbleShare Contest

I discovered first hand how painful it is to deal with a hard drive crash AND trying to get a contest going at the same time. Its umm.. not recommended.

But that's a story for another time.

We've been hard at work getting our first contest up and running... this is "part 1 of 2" of our little contest where we'll be giving away a bunch of stuff, including an iPod, Startup.com DVD (a great movie), tshirts, gum, books, and a bunch of other fun stuff.

The best excuse we could find for giving away free stuff was that we found out it was Bubblewrap appreciation day today. So, here's the BubbleShare bubblewrap contest for your viewing/participating pleasure.

A big thank you to our sponsors and friends at: Tucows, Naked Conversations, LockerGnome, Red Flag Deals, and ElimiTaste.

"Part 2 of 2" of the contest will follow... stay tuned. =)

Open House at Linden Labs!

Its been too long since my last blog. My last visit to the Bay Area brought me to Linden Labs, the makers of SecondLife -- who are doing some AMAZING things. Philip (CEO/Linden) and Reuben (Marketing/Liden) are crazy smart people, and I had a chance to speak to them both about what they've been up and and are doing with their virtual world.

I had a great follow up conversation with Philip, whose is not just smart, but is a super nice guy to boot, who gave us some great advice. In return, I'd like to extend a HUGE recommendation to my friends that are looking to try something new to consider working with Linden. If you're brilliant, and for whatever reason are not working with us already (or want to be in the Bay Area) got give them a ping!

Anyhow, for those of you that are looking for a super cool enviorment to work in the Bay Area, or are curious about Linden Labs, they are having a open house. I've attached a invite below -- if you're interested in attending, just RSVP via the email below -- and if you happen to be someone I know, let them know that Albert sent you. =)

Second Life Engineering Open House

--------------------------------------

On January 30, 2006, the development team of Linden Lab will host a wine bar and presentation about the design, development, and future challenges of Second Life. If you have senior engineering, technical operations, or product development experience, you may want to consider attending. This will be a very interesting and entertaining look at a pretty incredible technology - the simulation, streaming, and distributed computing architecture of a rapidly growing open-ended 3D on line world hosted on over 1,500 servers, used by over 100,000 people, and already generating more than $40M in annual revenues for the people creating goods and services there. Get an early look at the little company that is going to change everyone's world. We'll be providing wine and some light food. Bring your brain. The event is invite-only, if you are interested in attending RSVP to elisabeth@lindenlab.com

(Yes, it saids invite-only, but but feel free to ping Elisabeth, if you're smart and curious, they want to hear from you)

Heading off to Bay Area, anyone interesting in connecting?

I'll be in the Bay Area/SFO uber-early monday morning. If anyone is interesting in connecting there, or at MacWorld (where I'll be briefly) please let me know. I'll also be meeting Mr. TechCrunch who has turned our "meeting" for me to buy him a beer into a "meetup" (with what looks to be attended by a disproproate number of Canadians).

Drop me a line if you're going to be in the bay area and want to meet up.

Just wrapping up at CES and CESCamp... Request for CESCamp photos

Trying to do CES while trying to host/organize CESCamp certainly can test the human limits as to how much sleep a human can live off of. =)

Thank you all for attending CESCamp it was great meeting you all in person after all those email and electronic exchanges, we had a bigger turn out on our last two days than I had expected... which is great.

I lost my camera while at CES, so if anyone has any photos of CESCamp, please upload your high rez pictures to me via this link here (uploads to bubbleshare admin album, so i can get the high rez in a nice little zip via this hack here.

Trademarking the Commons

This rumor -- or maybe inkling is a better word – that someone has a desire to trademark barcamp is unsettling. Especially to those of us who like to create things and exchange ideas with our peers – even our competitors -- to see what the next person might make of them.

There's a lot of acreage between careful brand building and 'giving away the farm. Of course we need to build smart businesses that support the teams and individuals who make them go. At the same time, we have to contribute meaningful creations that move the whole industry forward. Things like Barcamp and Torcamp and CESCamp don't 'belong' to anyone. That’s why they work. As business owners, we can help organize them, sponsor them, encourage them, support them, attend them -- but trademark them? Yikes, that seems counterproductive to say the least.