BuzzMachine... by Jeff Jarvis: ": Brad Feld, blogger and VC at Mobius, has just led an investment in RSS reader Newsgator. I met Brad a few weeks ago and we talked about all the good things happening in this space. This is good for RSS. (I don't use Newsgator, however; can't stand anything else cluttering my Outlook.)"
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And now the loop between PointCast and RSS readers is complete; VC dollars are being thrown at the opportunity. Look for iRead or iSlurp from Apple soon! ;)

Harvard man loses 3,000 weblogs | The Register"It's not the first time Winer has earned a ticking off from webloggers. One of Harvard's strangest-ever appointments, Winer sent a spam to hundreds of authors inviting them to a $500 gabfest last year. Webloggers weren't impressed."

C'mon Dave, you're smarter than this. Hosting for blogs that are getting so much traffic that it's generating an expense? Monetize it, don't pull the freakin plug.

Susan Mernit's Blog: Navigating the Info Jungle
Susan Mernit comments on Chris Schroeder's perspective on pay-for-performance advertising.

Susan, perhaps I'm misreading your perspective, but you seem to be mixing P4P vs. CPM with text vs. banners/animation/etc. P4P has nothing to do with the creative ad unit format and everything to do with pricing and billing.

CPM <-> CPC <-> CPA

From CPM to CPA represents a risk continuum; one would and should expect to pay less on the CPM side (maximum risk) and more on the CPA side (minimum risk). One may also pay a premium for graphics vs text, or animation vs. graphics, but only if the results are quantifiably better.

As for ad unit formats, remember that while CPC may be most closely associated with Overture/Google search results, we now have Google showing banners via their AdSense service. What's to stop them from doing rich media? Nada.

The only question if advertisers will buy into a hybrid approach. For example... a study or two have been done on search engine result text advertising, showing that it does have a branding impact. Could Overture & Google start charging $0.01 a VIEW in addition to the $0.43 a CLICK (on average) that they currently take down? Adding a $0.01/impression would have a monsterous effect on RPS.

People say Gen Y is the first generation to grow up online...

but they're wrong.

I knew a lot of kids my age who were into BBSs, Usenet, Fidonet, etc way back when.

I wonder if anyone's done a study to see how many 30-40 yr olds who are now in senior positions at online companies once frequented BBSs?

TiVo-like camcorder documents your life | CNET News.com
Deeje and I brainstormed this out (and several related business models) back in '99 or so. Now it just needs to be WiFi (or even Bluetooth) enabled (see this post for why).

Maxtor, Linksys to debut wireless external hard drive | CNET News.com
(Been forever since I blogged -- eventually I'll "catch up" -- but this is truly worthy...)

To some, this may be a "logical extension" of similar high end solutions, as the article indicates. I however, see this as the beginning of what will eventually be personal area networking, with various minaturized data capture and rendering devices all sharing a personal, wireless hard drive.

Nothing that hasn't been written about for years, but now all the closer.