The Get Down Guy

thegongshow:

I’m reading The Victorian Internet on the recommendation of Sam Lessin.  What a terrific book. Only 30 pages in, I can tell already that I’ll be blogging about this book a number of times.  So, here’s the first of many.

Samuel Morse invented the concept of an electric telegraph and his system of encoding messages, Morse code, during a 6 week journey across the Atlantic.  When he sketched out the ideas for this invention, he was oblivious to the fact that many European inventors had been working for nearly a century on the idea of sending electric telegraph messages, and all of them failed when it came to testing the concept over large distances.

Morse had no idea how many people had failed before him and the improbability of his idea at the time. He thought he was the first person to come up with this idea.  And, if he had been aware of the wasteland of failed attempts behind him, he likely would have resolved it was impossible and given up himself.

Sometimes ignorance is a great thing to have in entrepreneurial endeavors.  People (myself included) often dismiss an idea or market because “it’s a landscape littered with bodies.” The knowledge of past failures justifies being dismissive about the prospects in a idea/market as the rational choice, but I love the entrepreneurs (like Samuel Morse) who prove that being dismissive is not necessarily the right choice.

siminoff:

There has been a lot of patent discussion today, starting with Brad from Union Square Ventures post, “We need an independent invention defense to minimize the damage of aggressive patent trolls”

Bijan’s follow on post had the best tidbit, “Trolls are just one end the spectrum. On the other end, patents also favor big companies. In 2007 IBM proudly announced they received 3000 patents for the year.”

I think the best way to look at patents is to think of them as Nukes.  Every big company like IBM/ATT/GE, etc., needs to have a arsenal to protect themselves from each other.  It is very rare to see the big boys sue each other over patents, because they are each stepping on the others patents, so like nukes if you fire them at someone else that has them you both die.

Enter the terrorists.  The people you need to be scared of with patents are those that have one patent or “nuke” and nothing to lose, also called trolls.  By not having any operating business themselves that could be infringing on someone, they are impossible to squash, so they can sue at will.

In my mind, when it comes to software patents, we just need to put in some reform that if you are not operating on the patent in a significant way then you can not sue enforce it.  Like anything I am sure this would not 100% fix the problem but it would be a great start.

Here is the quote Harry Reid is in trouble for followed by his apology.

From the new book Game Change:

“He (Reid) was wowed by Obama’s oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama – a ‘light-skinned’ African American ‘with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,’ as he later put it privately,”

The Apology:

“I deeply regret using such a poor choice of words. I sincerely apologize for offending any and all Americans, especially African-Americans for my improper comments”

Ok.  Apology accepted. So what words should you have used to get this thought across?

I frequently get asked what my favorite fantasy sports platforms are.  Here are my top 3:

1. Yahoo! Fantasy Sports - It’s no surprise to me that the best overall fantasy sports experience is made by a technology company and not a content company.  Yahoo’s games are basic, the design is clean, and the games are stable.  I’ve noticed a few glitches in the StatTracker application, but other than that it is a pretty smooth experience.
2. ESPN.com - ESPN has come the farthest in the past few years.  A few years ago they lost customer data in the middle of the season and had significant trouble with live scoring.  These issues have been fixed.  I’ve used ESPN for fantasy football over the past two years for one league and it’s been great.  The draft application is my favorite, and it appears that they are allocating more resources to UX.  Everything related to fantasy sports is free on ESPN.
3. MyFantasyLeague.com -  This is the most customized option for fantasy football and it’s ideal for keeper leagues.  MFL has excellent customer service (if you play on Yahoo! or ESPN you know how difficult that can be) and they’re the only platform I’m aware of that has an open developer API.  It’s for pay leagues only.

Runner Up - Flea Flicker.  Like MFL it is a football only site, and like Yahoo and ESPN it has a clean UI.   The auto draft has done a better job for me in the past than ESPN or Yahoo.  It was recently bought by AOL, but it’s unclear how they plan on integrating it with other AOL properties.