I read a great book a few flights ago, entitled Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The book was written by a mathematics and statistics adept trader / academic / philosopher who explores fun and interesting questions about probability, causation,
The folks over at Powerset, a much hyped natural language search engine, have a fun post on their blog where they point their parser at Miss Teen South Carolina's now infamous answer to the question: "Recent polls have shown that a fifth of Americans can't
See this post on Search Engine Land entitled Searcharazzi: Salacious Wiki Edits to Fast Search & Transfer. Excerpt: “Would the vandal or PR person removing information from these pages please stop. It is a matter of record that FAST had a share price crash of 28% when they made a
One of my big gripes with most content-oriented software is that it requires a big bang approach (see The First Step's a Doozy). The basic premise behind most content software is roughly: 1. If you do all this hard work to perfectly standardize the schema of your
Read/WriteWeb had an interesting post a few weeks back entitled "Rethinking Crossing the Chasm." Those of you who know me know that I'm a fairly devout practitioner of chasm-crossing ideas and that I'm a big believer that they work, particularly in markets
Here's a fun editorial on CNET entitled "Tech cliches to live by." Here's the opener: Todd, a friend of mine, once gave me an invaluable piece of advice: if you fall asleep in a meeting and wake up not knowing what's going
See this Forbes story for the latest news on the situation at Fast Search (& Loose Accounting) & Transfer: * Layoff of 148 employees * Reduction in operating costs of approximately $12M/quarter * Up to a $55M one-time restructuring charge * Of which $25M will be cash (e.g., severance) * And remaining
It's funny how things that companies leave undisclosed in press releases can often be found buried in SEC filings. Seth Grimes and I had gone back and forth a bit debating what Business Objects had paid for Inxight. Seth had estimated $125M to $175M. Knowing that Business Objects
The Software Equity Group has released the 2Q07 Software Equity Report. It's a great piece of research on the market. Here a few highlights: * Overall software industry growth from $211B to $305B between 2005 and 2010, reflecting a 7.6% CAGR (per IDC) * There were 6 software IPOs
Fast Search & Transfer reported its 2Q07 financial results yesterday. Here is the summary: * Revenues of $34.1M, down 31% from 1Q07, and down 11% from 2Q06 * Operating loss of $37.8M, reflecting an operating margin of -111% * Cash burn of $25.6M in 1Q07 and $74.8M over the
The cover story of today's (Sunday) New York Times is an article about millionaires in Silicon Valley who don't feel rich. Overall, I think the piece does an excellent job of capturing the local culture and feelings about money. However, I think it overlooks a few
I've always loved the tale of the time traveler who goes back in time, steps on a butterfly, and returns to a radically different present than the one he or she left. I think about it every time I hear a story of a business that's
