b.cognosco
Where leaping to conclusions is my primary form of forward motion.
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rethink(ip) blog
Thursday, April 14, 2005
Meetup.com Cuts Freebies, Charges $230/year
Meetup.com has put away the teat. It will be interesting to see if this starts a spiral down into nothingness.We have some news to share that we don't think you're going to like. There's no point in dancing around it so here it is. Starting May 1st, every Meetup Group will have to pay a monthly fee. Read on for the details.
How much? If your group starts paying in April, the charge is $9/month for the rest of the year. (If you wait until May 1st it goes up to $19/month). The substantial discount (more than 50%) is a "thank you" for being one of the first Meetup Groups.
Nine dollars?! To some, $9 every month may sound like a lot for an Organizer to pay, but remember, it's a group fee, not per person. If the Organizer splits the cost among the members who show up each month, it's probably $1 - $2 per person.
With a Thank You like that, I'm not sure Meetup users need any enemies. "Only $1 or $2 per user" is a tired, overused ploy that just doesn't work. Hundreds of internet services have died on the premise they could get a few pennies a day per user. I'm sure Meetup has lots of user stats and something makes them believe, however vaguely, they can pull this off. I don't know. I sure don't have the smarts of someone like Esther Dyson or the other backers, but this is such a drastic change that, to my cynical mind, it smells like VCs at DFJ have tightened the screws to get some profits rolling at any cost - maybe to pretty it up financially to try and unload it or something.
Meetup has never really taken off here in the south and maybe that colors my view. This will be interesting to watch.
Terry Frazier at 8:35 PM
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Alternative Voice Options
For the past several months I've been experimenting with using my Treo 600 as my sole business phone. This just doesn't work - partly due to hardware problems on the Treo, and partly due to the realities of SprintPCS cellular service, I've grown increasingly dissatisfied.
I like having my cellphone, calendar, and address book in the same device and being able to sync it with Outlook. But I've had two Treos with defective headphone jacks (making the phone unusable with headsets) and the speakerphone facility sucks. SprintPCS offers no way to permanently turn off call waiting, which means that anytime a client calls me we're subject to being interrupted by a second call. And the thing rings, beeps, buzzes, or makes some kind of noise at every event and these beeps and buzzes are audible to whoever is on the other end of the line.
I need alternatives and I'm not going back to the telco.
The latest news on SkypeIn looks promising, and the $30/year price is low enough to make experimentation attractive. Reading about Steve's Skype and Treo combination started me thinking, so today I bought a SkypeIn number
- 678-608-1406 SkypeIn
VoIP looks like the best option. I have a great ISP - Speakeasy - that offers dry copper (no dial tone) DSL up to 6Mbit. I got a dedicated DSL link installed in my office some time ago. Today I ordered Speakeasy VoIP service that gives me unlimited calling in the US and Canada for $24/month. It will take a week or so to get my new number and the adapter, but I should soon be back in business - literally. And all without a single call to or bill from a telco. Now we're talking!
The cell phone experiment wasn't a total failure. I learned that running a business from a tiny, portable device isn't a strategy for heavy or long-term usage. It's great as a backup, temporary, or failover option but not reliable enough for everyday use. And I still like my Treo - I just need to get it replaced (again) under warranty.
Terry Frazier at 1:07 PM
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Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Firefox to Support SVG
Nice tip courtesy of Tiffany B. Brown. SVG has been slow to take off but it holds a lot of promise for business and information graphics that need to be used in different mediums. One of the problems today is a lack of tools – no one wants to shell out $500 for Adobe Illustrator or $350 for CorelDraw just to play with SVG. We need are plug-ins and import/export filters for Visio, Mindmanager, ConceptMapper, and all the other apps we use to create our business graphics. The article indicates Opera is supporting SVG in their latest browser. This is progress, but until IE has support you can’t call it mainstream.
I’m going to try out Inkscape.
Firefox 1.1 to support Scalable Vector Graphics
And this makes me smile. Read the story. You can get started with SVG in a number of ways, including by hand, with Adobe Illustrator 10 and CorelDraw, or by downloading the open source SVG editor Inkscape. Previously: Fun with Scalable Vector Graphics.
Monday, April 11, 2005
Realizing We're All Grown Up
Jason Toney has a nice post about attending his sister’s high school play. Below is a paragraph with which I readily identify. Having kids – one in high school, one already out – I frequently have the sense of deja vu Jason describes:
In the Out Doorway
[…] Being in a high school auditorium in hard wood chairs among fifteen to eighteen year olds, I realized that I'm an adult. I leaned over to my mother and said, "This is why I don't have kids...they never shut up." I mentally tsk-tsked girls in pants slung too low on their butts and boys mistaking obnoxiousness and bravado for confidence. I remembered how big that world was when I was in it and how small a world it is to me now. I marveled at the significance of it all for these 300 people in the auditorium and how seriously they take the roles and norms in this space. […]
The thing I’ve always wrestled with is how to grant this space a requisite amount of respect (after all, it is the world as far as the kids are concerned) yet make sure my kids have a decent understanding and connection to the real world that exists outside their bubble. Time will tell if I succeeded…
Assholes - They're Everywhere
The following link is not work-safe. It will do nothing to create mutual respect or engender open conversation. It has, in short, no redeeming social value. But it's funny (well, it might not be quite so funny if you're a die-hard Republican.) Try singing along.http://filmstripinternational.com/
rethink(ip) blog
A promising new intellectual property blog (which will, no doubt, have a wonderful Terms Of Service) – rethink(ip).
I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that I will not hire a lawyer that does not blog. I’m currently embroiled with a dimwit lawyer for a bank. The lawyer has created a problem for me because he gave the bank an opinion on something he knew nothing about, and he was wrong. When presented with overwhelming evidence of his error (by my lawyer, who does blog) he refused to put his objection in writing, fumbled around, and then suggested we find another bank rather him admit to his client he was wrong. What a schmuck.
Blogging gives you some insight into a lawyer’s expertise, but also tells you something about how that lawyer relates to people. I guess, if you’re so inclined, you can also dig around for some sort of deep, personal insights but I’m not sure lawyers are worthy of that kind of interest. Mostly, you just want someone who knows their stuff, makes it understandable, is easy to do business with, and protects you from yourself. I’ve had great luck with Marty Schwimmer, the blogging trademark attorney, in that regard.
Thanks to Ernie for the link.
The Internet Bar Association's Patent Law Group
Steve Nipper, Doug Sorroco and Matt Buchanan all practice patent law. They practice in different firms and have their own weblogs about patent law. Now they have a blog called rethink(ip) which seeks to talk about problems in patent law. So why would they collaborate on a joint blog? Maybe for the same reason that lawyers join bar associations and then form into sub-groups. [...]
Terry Frazier at 11:03 AM
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