Mainline Web 2.0

I've discovered Google Reader. The next best thing to having an ethernet jack right between the skull and 1st vertebra. Google reader along with their little "Next >>" bookmark makes sifting through all the news (or detritus) of the day all too easy.

First you get yourself an account with Google if you don't already have one. Then go to reader.google.com and add 1 or 20 subscriptions.

Then you go to the Settings tab in Google Reader and look for the "Next >>" goody. Drag it up to your links or bookmarks toolbar and you're ready to take a simple periodic ride on the Internet bus.

This works very well. Actually, I think it may just work too well. So well in fact that I think I need a way to filter down the links in Google Reader to more important stories that I care about.

In the end, it's all about finding some good websites for which you don't mind reading every story they've got to publish.

Robert Scoble of Scobleizer and IBM VC's Drew Clark

Today Robert Scoble posted an episode of ScobleShow where he interviews Drew Clark of IBM Venture Capital. It's a great interview and lets us peek into the world of technology and business strategy that IBM both exists in and builds on.

Check it out at Scobleizer

Here are my notes on the interview:

IBM has 400,000 people.

IBM is a little like an Elephant...What you think it is dpends on what part are you looking at. IBM VC is in the corporate staff realm.

IBM has 4 main lines of business:

hardware - mainframe
z, p, x, i

software

mostly infrastructure, not apps(apps compete with customers)

eclipse - concieved as an open IDE for java

IBM focused on open and linux development

IBM's big brands: lotus, db2, websphere, tivoli, rational

IBM Venture Capital group made to fill gap at board room level consulting...CIO isn't enough. Need CXX level.

Impact should be transformative rather than design, develop, deploy.

IBM VC has no fund. A VC with no fund?

ebo - emerging business opportunities
identify partners and customers
id business model

Great question: Who do you hang out with at lunch?

Many consumer plays are good for enterprise

Customers want Google for inside the enterprise

IBM going after clean tech - big green like big blue

Finding alternatives is harder than people think...scalability is the issue. Not as simple as slapping solar panels on your roof.

Go distributed(federated) rather than centralized with power generation

Akamai - figured out clever ways to route and cache content

Drew Clark runs a sort of matrimonial service. Needs surface and IBM VC talks to other VC about getting those needs filled.

Other VC like draper, hummer, sequoia.

Mashups that the enterprise wants:

social networks for the enterprise

salesforce and google maps

corporate data and google maps

Help visualize data and make it more easily sharable

Data mining is being done....visual mashups show data that was obscure and hard to see...data comes to life and can be acted on quickly.

More people will join the internet via cell phone this year than were here already.

300,000,000 in the middle class in China

yeepay ... mobile micropayments that IBM pwned into existence.

IBM much leaner and more aggressive today...better understanding the web not as a pipe but as a platform. as a service delivery platform. leveraging the web BVBVBVBVBVBVBV.

Twitter

Not so long ago, I found a service called Twitter. It's a website where you can log in and repeatedly update the question: What are you doing?

Now, that's a simple way to put it but that's the kernel of its function. People answer that question and look for some feedback or just enjoy announcing their status to the world. On the next level, it acts as a huge distributed chat room.

Once you log on, you can subscribe to other users updates and sort of build a list of friends(today friends turned into followers and notifications but the concept is still there). To get started you can notify all of your real friends via email that they can sign up and "follow" you or you can simply browse the public_timeline, a constant stream of everyone's updates, to find interesting people.

I would say this service is one step beyond a blog. A blog is encumbered with a lot more composition and editing. Simply answering, What are you doing? is so easy, people let down their guard a little more.

Now this kind of conversation has been going on inside IRC, IM networks, and chat rooms for a long time but Twitter brings a new touch to chat. You can submit updates via SMS from your phone, or you can use a client like Twitterific. Finally you can just use a web browser.

If you've got some extra time and are looking for a way to join and/or understand Web 2.0 and social networking sites, why not check out Twitter?