D Conference Report

Thanks to Denise Howell for blogging highlights of the WSJ's "D" Conference this past week. Here's her summary of the Steve Jobs talk, and here's the one for Bill Gates.

Aliens DVD Commentary

There's a new sort of literary twist on MST3K emerging on the web and I think it's wonderful and hilarious: the fake DVD commentary. McSweeney's has a new two-part series online entitled Unused Audio Commentary by Dinesh D'Souza and Ann Coulter, Recorded Spring 2003 for ALIENS Special Red-State Edition DVD. Part One is there and part 2 is here.

eBay: did it need to lose?

So eBay loses its patent suit. Did it need to? I mean, there's plenty of prior art. Hell, I built an online auction system in 1991 and 1992. MercExchange, the plaintiff in the eBay case, didn't even exist then. I even hired a programmer to help build the database back-end. The system, written in C and using my old company's CocoTalk API C library and COCONET server and client software, enabled sellers to post items online for sale, and buyers to bid on those items and then settle the transaction. Sounds like the "electronic marketplace" that MercExchange claims they invented.... a few years later. eBay has boasted that it is defending itself "vigorously" in this and other pending cases. I wonder why they deemed the auction system my company built for a client in 1992 immaterial to their defense. Oh well.

Blogiday, Schmogiday

Dave Weinberger suggests all bloggers take the first two weeks of August off in a mass "blogiday". He's even got the logo you're supposed to attach to your blog during that time, to let everyone know you're taking off time when Dave is taking off time.

I say, keep on bloggin'! If the blogerati want to take off two weeks in August, fine. It's a great opportunity for other blogs to get some attention.

A suggestion to vacationing bloggers: rather than just showing a blogiday logo, how about providing some prominent links to a lesser-known blogs, ones they like but for whatever reason ones they haven't put in their blogroll. A sort of "while I'm away, I recommend the following fine blogs" followed by a list. Share your discoveries!

Rivers and Tides

Finally got to see Rivers and Tides at its brief San Diego screening. I've blogged about it over at Nettle.

Venture blogs

(Originally posted 19-May-03, updated 21-May-03)

Some VC-related blogs I'm reading regularly:

• AlwaysOn: mentioned here yesterday.

• due diligence: Tim Oren's venture capital (Pacifica Fund) blog. Great writing, a real gen-u-ine blog.

• Venture Blog: The August Capital blog.

• Summation: Networker-extraordinaire Auren Hoffman's monthly newsletter on entrepreneurship, technology, markets, business, and other stuff intended to make you think. Back Issues available and worth a read.

• Staenberg Capital's blog: just got started recently.

• Joi Ito's blog

• Don't Kick My Dog: "Mr. Anderson"'s new venture blog. (Every time I see "Mr. Anderson" I pronounce it like Agent Smith...)

• Corante's venture news

• Martin Tobias of Ignition Ventures has a blog.

• Esther Dyson's blog

So are there any more VC types out there blogging?

Pitching Battle-of-the-Fans to Tim Draper

VC Tim Draper seems to be seriously considering the pitches over at AlwaysOn so what the heck, time to pitch this thing I've wanted to do for ages: Battle of the Fans.

Tim, here's a pitch:

Something I've been thinking about for years: an eBay-meets-Meetup-meets-MP3.com idea. A new twist on "music-on-demand." Remove middlemen from the concert scene equation, empower fans by enabling them to BID on their favorite artist/performer/band, COMMISSIONING them to appear at their local HS gym, town square, playhouse, concert hall, park, destination resort, whatever. Imagine: a "battle of the FANS" where towns can duke it out with each other racing to get the highest bid for a performer.

Idea: integrate with Apple's iTunes Music Store, and you could not only BUY THE SONG, but BID ON THE BAND: an upsell oppty where users buy the song then get asked if they'd like to "demand" that this artist play live in their town. When demand reaches critical mass then each user gets is charged a fee (a FRACTION of a Ticketmaster ticket price since much of the mktg & promo costs removed) and the concert goes on!

Artists could register w/ service & indicate their minimum commission rate & geographical restrictions. Some artists would probably be willing to accept very low numbers (the "I'll play in your living room for $800 with 25 of your closest friends" kind of artist) while others might need 250 people paying $200 each before they'd agree to do play a private venue or charity event.

Ideal service for fans of both new, struggling bands as well as washed-up/retired types (say, burnouts from 60s/70s). Fans would "bid" for their favorite performer to come out of retirement and come play in their town. Heck, entire TOURS could be automatically generated this way, and artists would have a new way of reaching their fans, and getting paid directly, etc. (Who needs record companies? They're so... 20th century :)

Extend the service to all kinds of other "by-popular-demand" events:

• Book buyers want their favorite author to come to THEIR town. So they group together, each pledging some $, and collectively they make it worth the author's while to come to their town and speak/sign books/sell books. Again, entire book TOURS could be automatically generated this way --- and the book publishers, notoriously cheap for sending authors out on the road, wouldn't be involved at all. Money goes direct to authors; huge incentive for them to participate. Everyone wins.

• School district gets 10,000 students to invite the governor, CEO, celebrity, astronaut, war hero, or some other dignitary, to come and speak in their town. Maybe everyone submits 50 cents or a dollar, and suddenly they have enough to pay for a nationally-known speaker to come to their town and speak.

• Customers of a business could group together and pay a company to fix a bug, add a new feature, extend their customer support, etc. Kind of like a pre-emptive tip-jar: we'll tip you if you do this for us. Great potential with open-source projects.

• Film buffs group together and BID on rare films to be shown at great theatres. For instance, I wanna see a 70mm restored print of Lawrence of Arabia. I don't want to wait 5 more years for it to go on the road again, and I don't want to fly to NYC to see it 6 months from now when it makes a rare appearance. So I use this service to find others interested in LOA and we collectively get enough people to DEMAND that the studio release a print to a designated theatre, and everyone wins: guaranteed audience, payment up front, happy film buffs.

A service like this could ONLY exist using the Internet. This kind of thing is GOING to happen, it's inevitable. Let's do it!

So, that's what I pitched to Tim. Let's see what he has to say.

I wrote about the Battle of the Fans idea back in February in this blog. I referenced a case in point where Paul McCartney performed live for some millionaire woman's birthday party in Rancho Santa Fe, CA. Patrick Moraz was doing this back in the mid '90s: a genuine for-$800-I'll-do-a-concert-in-your-living-room gig. Not sure if he's still doing that.

MusicMatch tinkering

Couldn't resist downloading and tinkering with the new MusicMatch Jukebox v8.0 player for Windows, and of course, this led to a MusicMatch review over at my Nettle blog.

Microsoft iLoo

Gives whole new meaning to where do you want to GO today?.....

I keep wondering if this is for real or a late April Fool's Joke (maybe April Fools is celebrated on May 7 in the U.K.?)

Busy Week, Quiet Blog

Really quiet around here lately, because I'm simply too busy to blog, or even to read blogs. I'll be lecturing at Stanford University on Friday. Details here.