Claude Ritter

Podcasts that keep me sane – Part 1, maybe

Posted by claude - 13/07/10 at 01:07:49 pm

I’ve just read Mark’s post about podcasts he loves and I figured why not do the same. My selection doesn’t really consist of things that I miss from home (as his does), but it’s rather stuff that I can consume to keep me entertained and sane at the same time. It’s really a relief for me to just tune in to one of these shows (be it video or audio) and just forget about the whole madness going on here without having to turn on the TV and watch the crap that’s on there (aka more madness). I do have to add that my viewing/listening habits will not be everyones taste since I am heavily leaning towards electronic music and sort of educational/news content when it comes to video.

All right, without further ado, here’s my selection.

Mixergy. Andrew Warner interviews entrepreneurs from around the world and digs into their stories to find out how they made it (or are going to make it). He pumps out almost one new 1 hour interview a day, which for me, is a bit too much but fair enough. It’s not like you have an obligation to watch everything. Anyway, I highly suggest to subscribe to it on iTunes.

This Week In Startups. I’ll just borrow their own description since it hits the nail on the head: “Entrepreneur Jason Calacanis and a rotating group of guest experts bring you this weekly take on the best, worst, most outrageous and interesting stories from the world of Web companies. Calacanis, a podcasting pioneer, gives you an insider’s look at what’s happening in the tech industry with his trademark blunt style and good humor. Looking to start your own company? Need strategies for improving your business or motivating your team? Just want to catch up on what’s happening in Silicon Valley and beyond? Your journey begins here.”

This Week In Venture Capital is my second show on Thisweekin.com. Basically it’s a weekly wrap up of what has been going on in the (mostly) valley VC scene. However, even if you are not in California or some other hot spot like NYC, this show has lots of good information about venture capital, how the industry works, how to raise money and more. Weekly, about an hour, worth watching.

Not much to say about Leo Laporte and his This Week in Tech (careful, iTunes link). Basically a tech talk show with not too much substance, but entertaining nevertheless.

Now on to something different in the sense that it is not a podcast per se. Khan Academy is a non-profit website that provides quality education videos, mostly hosted on YouTube. All the content is produced by Salman Khan, who runs the site. Topics range from Statistics, to History, to Finance and much much more. I have seen Salman on Mixergy and checked out his site. Since then, I have been nothing but impressed by his effort and his commitment. I am currently enjoying some of his videos on “Differential Equations”, feel free to join me

Ok, so now I’m down 5 of the things I watch (there’s way more) and we haven’t even started with music podcasts. This is taking more time than I thought so I call it a day. There will definitely be a part 2 so stay tuned.

Oh, and just quick side note. I honestly believe that internet TV, in whatever form, be it podcasts, on demand shows, independent productions or what not, will seriously kick mainstream TV’s ass. In 5 years from now, smart people will watch stuff they can learn something from on the internet (and maybe a bit Dexter etc. , while stupid people will still watch silly talk shows on whatever breakfast TV network. Ok, that’s it, sorry for the side rant.

Presentation: Startup Analytics

Posted by claude - 14/06/10 at 10:06:10 am

Last Saturday I held a short presentation at Barcamp Shanghai 2010 about Startup Analytics. The slides should be fairly self explanatory but just to give you some context, let me say that my presentation is really just an introduction. There are plenty of references and links in the presentation, I encourage you to go and check them out.

We’ve also had a couple of good ideas in the discussion. Someone recommended Splunk for log analysis. I haven’t really checked it out yet but it looks like it might be worth looking at. Also, there was a suggestion to use file logs instead of database tables for logging, since DB writes tend to be not super fast.

Learning from StackOverflow.com

Posted by claude - 30/04/09 at 11:04:38 am

Facebook Highlights: Algorithm developed by a 6 year old?

Posted by claude - 21/04/09 at 12:04:04 pm

I normally don’t join the “I want the old Facebook back” crowd but the latest redesign is really a bit hard to digest. The one thing that annoys me most, is the “Highlights” box. I’ve been observing the contents of this box for a while and I think it’s save to say that a good 75% of all items are nowhere near something I’d call a highlight.

So let’s looks at the highlights presented to me when I was logging in to Facebook this morning.

Awesome, thanks for telling me! First of all, Coco lives in Hamburg, which is about 10’000km West of my location. Second, I’ve never had any contact with here, never send messages, wall posts, nothing. And the most important thing, Facebook knows that I am in a relationship.

Really? Who? No contact over Facebook, ever.

All right, that might be interesting if this same album wouldn’t have been around for like a month already and constantly re-posted by the owner. Been there, done that, thanks.

Interesting group. I joined it, now stop showing me that damn thing.

Next item, the group owner posting a note for the group I’ve already joined. 7 people like it, aha.

Classical music. Not really my taste, and Facebook knows that.

A note withe _one_ photo. Never had any interaction with the poster (apart from adding him as a friend), none of my other friends commented on this etc.

And last but not least, a tagged photo of my girlfriend. Now that’s a highlight, there’s even a comment for this photo. Oh wait, this is MY own comment. Never mind.

I generally enjoy using Facebook, it’s free and I think they provide a lot of value. However, the latest changes appear to be a somewhat rushed reaction to the whole Twittermania and/or some Zuckerberg ego trip. The Highlights algorithm needs some serious work, otherwise it’s just a giant waste of screen estate or ad space.

Facebook, Wolfram|Alpha, StealthStartup. Will the next Google Killer stand up please.

Posted by claude - 10/03/09 at 07:03:09 pm

Exciting times we are living in. Technology and the web are evolving at a speed never seen before and we can’t even imagine which tools and services will be available to us in a couple of years time.

Anyway, today I simply wanted to link to two blog posts, both announcing the next Google Killer. First, we have my friend Julius who is proclaiming that Facebook is soon going to eat Google’s lunch. And then there is Stephen Wolfram and his team who apparently came up with something that “could be as important as Google“, a computing machine called Wolfram|Alpha.

Personally I think that neither of those is going to be THE Google Killer, but that we are in a transition to a completely new way we interact with the internet and our social circle using technology. If you look at numbers such as the fact that around 20% of all servers that are sold each year are bought by Google, Yahoo, Amazon and Microsoft (add Facebook to that list soon) tell you that we’re onto something big. And it’s certainly not just about desktop apps like Word to the cloud.

With all that uncertainty, I’m happy that there is still one constant: Sex sells!

The Borg are coming

Posted by claude - 03/11/08 at 02:11:25 pm

Watch CBS Videos Online

This is amazing! And a bit scary…

Web 3.0 and Semantic Web

Posted by claude - 25/02/08 at 01:02:29 pm

Ever since Tim O’Reilly coined the term Web 2.0 people have been asking what Web 3.0 is going to be. A lot has been written about this topic and it looks like there is some sort of consensus about what Web 3.0 will be. Semantic Web.

The interesting thing with Semantic Web is, that the technology has been around quite a while. Back in 2002 Edd Dumbill published an article titled “Finding friends with XML and RDF”, which basically describes what we call the Social Graph today (see Google’s Social Graph API). This is somehow similar to the evolution of Web 2.0 with its user-generated content. Long before we even called this Web 2.0 we had bulletin board systems, dating communities, marketplaces and much more. Due to a growing online population, technological progress, falling prices and other factors, companies were able to leverage existing technologies and build new services on top/around them.

As I mentioned above, the underlying technology needed to add a semantic layer to the Internet is not really new. The two basic building blocks or core technologies are the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and Xhtml Friends Network (XFN).

What’s missing?
RDF, XFN and other technologies related to the Semantic Web are difficult to understand. While there are projects such as Microformats or The Friend of a Friend (FOAF) project aiming at making things easier, we are still far away from having a mainstream Semantic Web application. In order to bring it to the masses, these technologies need to be implemented in the tools people use for their daily work. What I mean is that it must be transparent for the users so that there’s no need to bother about RDF etc. while using blog software, a social network or the web mail client.

Will there be ONE big Semantic Web company?
Due to the distributed nature of the Semantic Web I don’t think that there will be one company or service dominating this space. We will have thousands of blogs, social networking websites, discussion boards and other services participating in creating the Semantic Web. Users will get used to the fact that their information is shared between several services and that they are able to access their friends everywhere. Therefore the ability to share information between different services and websites will become a key success factor for all “social” services in the future. Semantic Web is part of the product, not the product itself.
A very interesting service, which is definitely worth watching, is Twine. From what I can see now, it looks like a social network built on top of a Semantic Web application, which also contains a friend aggregator such as Friend Feed. So far they are doing a good job in hiding the complex technology and making it understandable for consumers.

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