E se eu quiser continuar usando o Netscape? Hein, hein? Pelo menos ele não estupra a memória do meu computador com a cache que ele mal sabe administrar. Quero só ver como será na nova versão…

Pocas veces he visto gráficos tan interesantes y didácticos como este sobre la historia de Internet diseñado por Cameron Chapman para Sixrevisions. Es un paseo por los eventos que han conformado el estado actual de las cosas en la red, desde 1969 hasta 2009. Cuarenta años que han causado toda una revolución en la forma en que nos comunicamos y entendemos el mundo.

Particularmente creo que los elementos más importantes en estos 40 años son la invención del protocolo TCP/IP en 1974, el lanzamiento del navegador Netscape en 1994, la formación de Google como compañía en 1998, la creación de Firefox en el 2004, creación de Google Chrome en2008 y toda la avalancha de las redes sociales estos últimos años (entre las que destaco Twitter). ¿Cuales son los hechos más importantes para vosotros?

Siempre es importante detenerse un poco a mirar lo que la historia puede enseñarnos. Lo cual es muy practico para muchas personas que comienzan a desarrollar proyectos relacionados con Internet. Y es que al tener claros los conceptos de como llegamos hasta aquí podremos dar una mejor solución a los problemas y necesidades actuales.

Vía| ALT1040

Using the simple metaphor of sending postcards and books, Vint Cerf, ‘the father of the internet’ explains the basis of TCP/IP (the internet protocol suite) supporting the internet. In a fascinating and accessible interview for the BBC’s forthcoming DigitalRevolution (working title) documentary series on how the web is changing our lives, he discusses how the web’s open architecture arose by making as few assumptions as possible (i.e. ignoring national structures – favouring topology), paving the way for the most democratic means of publishing available.

He covers a wide range of topics including net-neutrality and non-discriminatory access recalling the history and evolution pointing out why the internet works on openness. He also talks about the impact of Mosaic and the excitement it generated, leading to the founding of Netscape, back in 1994 (I was busy building my first website around this time for what became London South Bank University.
). Vint also dismisses the idea of natural hierarchies on the internet, choosing to focus more on collaboration and viral/spiralling effects as evidenced by YouTube and Twitter – through ease of access to new applications. He cites Wikipedia and Google’s belief in open platforms to allow this collaborative phenomenon to exist.

In conclusion he asserts that the internet will not lead to anarchy but contribute to the collaborative development of our civilisation. Hear hear.

Vint Cerf interviewed for BBC's Digital Revolution (working title) documentary series

It’s come up a few times  in  recent weeks.  Here’s the scenario:  I am meeting with Bob,  the CEO of a start-up who’s just returned from a two-week sales tour — three Fortune 100 companies, three mid-tier suppliers, two government agencies, another early-stage technology company, and a university research center.

“How did it go, Bob?

“Great, every meeting was a home run.  They liked the product.  They liked the technology.  They really liked the company.”

“How many orders did you sign?”

“None, yet.  But they all asked me to come back.  Except for the university guys, and they wanted copies of my presentation. Lots of excitement about this stuff!”

If you’re in the innovation business, the last thing you want to hear — even if you make the improbable assumption that everyone was telling the truth — after a meeting that doesn’t close a sale is “Great meeting, Bob!” It’s a sure sign of impending catastrophe as worlds collide.  I’ve talked in other posts about conflicting agendas and how the need for technical recognition can shape an innovator’s view of what is actually taking place. The great meeting phenomenon goes beyond that.

I was in the lobby of Netscape Communications a few days after its 1995 IPO, waiting for a former colleague who had promised to set up a series of technology exchange meetings between Bellcore and Netscape.   Bellcore  had just filed patent applications for two server technologies that we knew would be important to Netscape, and we were hoping to license them.  One was for buying and placing ads on web pages, and the other was for video streaming.  I had been in meetings like this before, and it was good to know that there would be a couple of familiar faces on the other side of the table.  So I sat there watching visitors file in and out.  There were a couple of guys dressed in three-piece suits, clearly bankers.  There was a Hollywood type with massive  gold chains around his neck — he and his two handlers had just rolled out of a black Town Car.  There were two kids in the corner –  complete with sandals and dirty tee shirts  — who looked like they had just crawled out of a basement.  Lots of khaki’s and blazers and  Madras shirts with pocket protectors.  I remember trying to guess who they were there to see and what they wanted from Netscape.  Except for the guys in the suits, who were quickly escorted  past security, we were all ushered in turn to small  conference rooms off the lobby. I realized in a moment of panic that I had no idea what Netscape wanted.

The meeting was awful.  The Netscape executive I really wanted to see was off doing other things (something about buying an Irish castle).  My contact was selling, not buying.   After about fifteen minutes of nervous chit-chat we agreed to keep in touch.  But not before I asked about the strange collection of visitors in the lobby.  “I’ve been in lots of technology companies,” I said, “and I’ve never seen anything like it.  I see why the financial people are here, but what do you think is going on with the others?”  What he said stunned me, and as soon as I left the building I wrote it down.  “We don’t know,” he said. ” The guys in suits are from a Russian software company, and we get a lot people who just want to stop in. It’s chaos.”

I’ll tell you in a later post what happened to our technologies, but Netscape did not figure prominently into Bellcore’s future.  They were not excited.  They told me almost nothing about their business.  They did not want to know about ours. It was not a great meeting.  It was the best thing that could have happened to us.  I want to use Bob’s great meetings to explain why.

The University Meeting

Let’s first dispense with the university meeting.  Universities are in the great meetings business.  Professors give great talks.  They are great listeners.  All it takes for a  great university meeting is a great story told well.  There are some possible positive outcomes.  For example, Bob could have heard about a new invention that would help the business, but that would have involved the university selling to Bob.

The Government Meeting

Government agencies do in fact buy from small companies, so it’s not hard to imagine a meeting with a good outcome.  It depends on who is in the room.  A meeting of technologists is all about learning what Bob knows, and they are inclined to lavish praise on anything they can use to sell ideas and programs internally.  That’s literally what they have to spend.  The outcome of almost every other meeting with a government customer is irrelevant to closing orders.  Bob may hear about proposal opportunities or new programs that the company is qualified for, but government employees never show up pen in hand ready to write a check.

The Meeting with Another Early Stage Company

If a meeting concludes without an order being signed, it’s because they are the C-O-M-P-E-T-I-T-I-O-N. They are thrilled to hear what you’re doing.

The Meeting with a Bigger Company

Big company meetings are the most dangerous. Almost everyone is interested in what Bob knows.  Engineers run internal projects and Bob is the ideal guy to help educate them.  Marketing casts a wide net looking for trends and intelligence. Who better to help them out than the head of a company that has just acquired investors and is thinking day and night about what new customers want?  General management doesn’t have time to spend on a meeting (Irish castles, remember?) and mid-level managers, who are not inclined to spend money, know that, if you keep coming back, they are buying time in a possibly interesting market.  Bob could have snagged a meeting with someone who manages vendors, and it might have led to a sale, but it would not have been great.

What I said to Bob was “Great meetings lead nowhere.”  Every one of Bob’s  meetings was designed to transfer value away from his company.  Everyone he met with was so thrilled with this that they told him how much they liked him.  He educated companies with greater resources and provided fodder for PowerPoint™ presentations by technology managers.  All for the price of a sandwich and a bag of chips.  And they were willing to do it again.

My Netscape meeting was awful, but I learned that

1. We were a small slice of a value chain that we didn’t understand;
2. Innovation bubbled all around Netscape, and they did not need to get on a plane to New Jersey to get access to it;
3. The market looked as chaotic to Netscape as it did to me.

A great meeting with Netscape would have felt good.  They could have said how important we were to their success or how much the Bellcore patent portfolio meant to them.  I could have come away feeling that the 1995 golden child had the market all figured out.   I could have been enticed to go back for a second or a third meeting.  None of those things happened.  Instead, Bellcore started its own e-commerce company and for a brief while was a smaller, dimmer but still exciting star.  The star eventually fizzled, but that is a different colliding worlds story.

I was once on the board of a start-up with new technology for analyzing transactions to determine probable future customer behavior.  It was in  the earliest days of CRM and almost no enterprise-ready products had hit the market.  Every  financial services company had internal projects in this area and wanted to have a meeting to hear what was up.  I made introductions within my own company, although I told the CEO to not waste his time, because we were engaged in ten simultaneous discussions with large software companies.  Every six weeks the board heard about a string of successful meetings — great meetings.  A lot of them were great, but not one led to a dollar of revenue.  The company was eventually sold at  a huge discount to a  much larger company where there had been a great meeting years before.  How much better off  everyone would  have been if, instead of a great meeting, there had been a little blood on the boardroom floor.

Parece que faz tanto tempo, mas faz apenas cinco anos que o Mozilla Firefox apareceu. E, como quem não quer nada, abocanhou 25% de participação nos computadores do mundo. Ele está em meus computadores desde o início, e também nos dos meus clientes, amigos e colegas. No início era chato ter sites desconfigurados, ou faltando conteúdo, simplesmente porque o outro navegador, aquele das Janelas, não seguia padrões de mercado e a empresa que o desenvolveu preferia (e ainda prefere) ditar seus padrões fechados e vender as ferramentas de desenvolvimento de sites para ele. Felizmente, depois de muita luta, o Firefox venceu, está cada vez mais conhecido e presente nos computadores do mundo.

A Fundação Mozilla está prevendo uma grande festa. Visite a página comemorativa dos cinco anos do Firefox, participe das festividades, participe das atividades, assista ao vídeo, faça o download e divulgue-o.

http://www.spreadfirefox.com/5years/pt-BR/

http://videos.mozilla.org/fyfx/Firefox_Final_VO.ogv

Boas,

Depois de muito tempo sem o blog,

decidi voltar e continua-lo!

Obrigado pela força e nos aguarde

em Navegator!.

Cumpts,

(written by: Willy Yanto Wijaya)

The lecture about University Entrepreneurship and Social Innovation by Prof. Shigeo Kagami coincided with current situation of employee slash by many companies in the world. One interesting point of Japan that I had noticed for a long time is about the tendency of the most university graduates to only have one choice in their mind: working in a company. Why this phenomenon happens? We’ll see through this again after going through several notable points of lectures delivered by Prof. Shigeo Kagami from University of Tokyo.

Prof. Kagami started the lecture by posing the most exciting and notably successful university entrepreneurship, i.e. Hewlett-Packard, Genentech, and Google. All these companies were founded by the professors and students of Stanford University. Google is one interesting and up-to-date example. Stanford University tried to license out the technology and Intellectual Property (IP) of Google to some companies such as Netscape, Yahoo, but failed. The university eventually helped Larry Page and Sergey Brin to found Google in 1998 and just in 10 years, the market capitalization of Google has reached $150 billion (August 2008). Since Google used its equity to pay royalty for the licensed technology from Stanford University, Stanford gained $400 million just by selling its 1% of ownership of Google¹.

Here we can see how, as a matter of fact, universities could get considerable benefits by the entrepreneur spin-off. In Japan itself, since 2004, a policy by the Monbukagakusho, had start reforming the corporate national universities (including University of Tokyo, Tokyo Institute of Technology, etc) to gain more autonomy, at the expenses of continuous deduction of operational grants from the government (1% deduction per annum)². Such a condition like this should have pushed the universities to diversify and restructure the composition of their income. One way is to increase the external funding which comes from the sponsored research and donations. In this case, the sponsored research could be accelerated by the university spin-off companies.

However, Japan universities are still facing several problems regarding this entrepreneur spin-off. Annually, the number of university start-up companies is about 100 companies³. This number might look big enough, but there’s still no clear definition about how to count those companies, or whether they are really ignited by the technology license from the universities. Therefore, for now, only low output of university ignited-companies could be expected. This phenomenon goes along with low willingness of university graduates to become entrepreneurs.

Then, coming back to our previous question of why most students after their graduation from universities in Japan, would prefer choosing to work at companies? This is rather a tough question. One main reason, in my opinion, is caused by the rather already-established of Japan’s economy. Big companies are established and agglomerated in Keiretsu⁴, and it’s just not easy to compete with such companies. The other reason is that the entrepreneurship education is not nurtured sufficiently in most Japanese universities. Students, after undergoing their deep academic research, will feel further and further away from the sense of entrepreneurship.

How to solve the problems then? One of the possibilities is to create the entrepreneurship-related education as well as university business incubators. One example conducted by University of Tokyo is to create DUCR (Division of University Corporate Relations) which could handle the IP-related problems, entrepreneurship and enterprise development and education, as well as even holding the business plan competition. By this kind of education, hopefully, the courage to create new business entrepreneurship, amidst the Keiretsu dominance, could be accelerated. As a saying goes, “Smart people are people who dare to take the risks”.

References

¹ http://www.stanford.edu

² http://www.mext.go.jp

³ http://www.meti.go.jp

⁴ Willy Yanto Wijaya. 公器 and Japanese Shareholder Orientation, Report no. 7, Managerial Perspective for Sustainable Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, 2008.

We hate the blog Area Rugs Club and we hate the post When A Rug You Love Is Backordered.

1. WE HATE that we found your blog while searching for something entirely different. But our wife probably thanks you.

2. WE HATE these sentences:

“So you start looking online and find the perfect rug which you think will lively up that drab floor of yours. But there is a problem! The rug is back ordered for six weeks! Ohh no!!! So what should you do? Frankly, I don’t know what you should do as I’m unaware of your specific circumstance.”

We read Area Rugs Club a few times a day precisely so you can tell us what to do. Don’t give us that “I don’t know what you should do,” crap. You know exactly what we should do. Our rug smells like doob and Doritos. We need a new rug. And you need to sell us one, apparently. You need to sell us one so bad that you have a blog.

We've seen a lot of reactions to Two Girls, One Cup, but this one takes the cake.

3. WE HATE that you even have a blog. We prefer our blogs to be narcissistic explorations of the blogger and possibly his/her family. We like family photos, long ramblings about missionary trips to Massachusetts, the occasional linked image of a celebrity, recipes for tomato soup, maybe some arty photos of an empty baby swing or barbed wire. But business-run blogs and photos of nerdy 20-somethings staring intently at rugs on a laptop? That simply has no place on the internet.

4. WE HATE that your most used tag is Area Rugs and that in second place is Rug. So, so predictable, Area Rugs Club. Wait, where’s the Area Rugs Club tag?

You rug people. Always so desperate for attention.

5. WE HATE when our rug bunches up on one end. We have one end under a coffee table and it always bunches up right by the table. We bought it at Sears. Maybe that’s it. But the other one we bought there isn’t under anything and works just great. It creeps a little bit, but we just move it back. No biggy. We suppose this could be seen as an endorsement of Area Rugs Club, the fact that our last point is a complaint about rugs in general and not about Area Rugs Club in specific. But make no mistake, the Area Rugs Club blog can go straight to hell. Don’t buy anything from them.

Download Accelerator Plus (DAP) will accelerate the speed with which you can receive files over the Internet using FTP and HTTP protocols by simultaneously downloading several file segments from the same or different servers. Download Accelerator Plus enables you to pause and resume downloads, and to recover from a dropped Internet connection. In addition, DAP searches for mirrors and implements the downloads from the best or most responsive mirrors. It is configured by default to automatically Integrate into your Explorer or Netscape browser when it is installed, and to self-activate each time a download is performed.

No further configuration or action is required on your part – simply use your browser to access the desired site, click on the download file, and respond to the self-explanatory DAP dialogs that appear. Advanced options enable you to tailor the operation and responses of the application to your needs. You can choose to trigger specific responses such as messages, queue update, closing the application, and disconnecting after the download is completed or is not available.

Download Link:
http://rapidshare.com/files/144455663/DA_PREMIUM_8.6.6.2_Pre.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/144455664/DA_PREMIUM_8.6.6.2_Pre.part2.rar

HTML-ul s-a cam oprit prin ‘99. Producătorii de browser-e s-au concentrat pe cititoare RSS sau facilităţile aduse de tab-uri. Lumea a început să înveţe  CSS, JavaScript şi AJAX ca să le integreze cu framework-urile deja existente. Doar HTML-ul a ramas pe loc în ultimii 8 ani de zile.

Ei bine, dupa tot acest timp de pribegie, bestia s-a întors! Dar deşi aduce o mulţime de lucruri noi în săculeţul de pe băţ, tot HTML rămâne. Nu există namespace-uri. Tag-urile nu trebuie închise. Browser-ele sunt extrem de „forgiving”.

Haideţi totuşi să nu fim pesimişti. Vechi prieteni precum div încă mai sunt de găsit, în schimb acum avem section, header, footer şi nav. img şi embed continuă să fie folosite, dar acum există video şi audio. De fapt, noile elemente nu sunt atât de diferite. Sunt doar multe lucruri de care poate ar fi avut nevoie un designer în ‘99. Sunt oricum foarte uşor de însuşit (mai uşor decât AJAX sau CSS).

Veţi fi surprinşi poate să aflaţi că noile pagini sunt afişate în Netscape sau IE5. Bineînţeles, tag-urile noi nu sunt recunoscute, însă paginile apar pe ecran iar conţinutul este acolo în totalitate. HTML 5 a fost conceput pentru a se „degrada cu graţie” în browsere care nu îl suportă. Într-adevăr, render-ele de HTML au rămas blocate în ‘99. Firefox spre exemplu ştie despre CSS, dar nu putem înainta fără să ţinem cont de baza instalată. Cu aceste lucruri în minte, să vedem ce aduce noul HTML.

La capitolul structură:

• section : un captol dintr-o carte, o secţiune dintr-un ziar, în principiu orice deţine un heading propriu
• header : nu e la fel cu head, semnifică foarte clar headerul unei pagini
• footer : evident, semnifică footerul unei pagini
• nav : o colecţie de link-uri către alte pagini
• article : o intrare independentă într-un ziar, o revistă, un blog (cum ar fi acest articol dacă s-ar folosi HTML 5) etc.

La capitolul semantică:

• aside : reprezintă o notă, un sidebar, o explicaţie între paranteze şi în general orice se află în afara firului narativ ca să spunem aşa
• figure : reprezintă o poză, un clip video, un clip audio la nivel de bloc, împreună cu captura asociată
• dialog : reprezintă o conversaţie între mai multe persoane; dt este supraîncărcat pentru a indica vorbitorul iar dd pentru a indica vorbele; sintaxa exactă încă este la nivel de dezbatere
• time : indică un moment specific din istorie
• meter : o valoare numerică într-un interval specificat

După cum bine ştiţi, toată lumea se uită la clipuri e net. Adobe foloseşte FlashPlayer, Microsoft foloseşte Windows Media, Apple foloseşte QuickTime. WhatWG a propus video într-o încercare de standardizare care permite încorporarea a mai multor formate video care să satisfacă toate cerinţele. În mod complementar, s-a propus şi audio, pentru a adăuga de exemplu muzică de fundal unei pagini.

În zona de interactivitate, s-au reîntors din HTML 2 menu şi command. In HTML 5, un element menu conţine mai multe elemente command, fiecare provocând o acţiune imediată.

În concluzie, putem afirma că HTML 5 face parte din viitorul web-ului. Noile elemente fac marcări simple şi clare care fac paginile mai evidente. Nu avem elemente redundante. Deşi nu toate browser-ele vor suporta noile facilităţi la început, la fel a fost şi în cazul majorităţii elementelor introduse după ce HTML a fost inventat: img, table, object. Suportul va veni în timp.

Opt ani de zile este o perioadă destul de mare de aşteptare pentru noile facilităţi, mai ales într-o lume cu o dinamică atât de avansată cum este World Wide Web. HTML 5 se simte ca în vremurile entuziaste de început, când Netscape şi Microsoft introduceau elemente noi în fiecare săptămână. Viitorul sună bine.

*Note – This Blog is a repost of Alex Espinoza’s Blog Entry on 10/31/09. You can find the original post here.

I just recently read an article from Krishnan Subramanian, which I believe is very interesting: Microsoft’s Huge Cloud Problem.

I agree with most of the article’s comments. They have to be taken with a grain of salt, since most of is speculation. Very smart speculation, but speculation none the less. But What I do disagree completely, is the following line:

“..cloud is an evolution from the web and .NET was never a platform of choice in the web…”

I agree that the cloud is an evolution of the web, but the article talks about choice, who is it referring to? Is it the open source community? Or is the enterprise community? or is it both?

Obviously as an Open Source advocate, .Net or even Mono would not be your web platform of choice. You usually go to either PHP (which is the leader in the Open Source community) Ruby or Python (just to name a few, I know there are a lot more).

But in the enterprise world, .Net is very much relevant, and in most of the cases it is the platform of choice. I know that this is a huge market and the competition is strong, but to completely dismiss Asp.Net as not a platform of choice is far from the truth.

Asp.Net and .Net are very much relevant right now, and it will stay that way for a long time. Whether Azure succeeds or not.

It is a mistake to think that everything will be in the cloud. What will prevail are hybrid environments. That is why I think Microsoft will not only survive this (even though is going to be a really difficult climb), but it will remain relevant.

Google’s view of *EVERYTHING* in the Cloud is not very down to earth (hence the name, everything in the clouds). And in my opinion, it will never get there. A lot of things are going to be done in the cloud, and probably the majority, but not all. We are creatures of choices, and we will keep our options open.

Now with the open source movement, Microsoft has done a lot. And I actually think we should thank Miguel de Icaza and his team for this. He might be called a traitor by some, but I think he is the biggest Trojan Horse of all. He has been pushing Microsoft to open source (with the help of so many).

But let’s think about Mono for a minute. Microsoft already released the source code for .Net in a very closed license, which I see as a glass box (look but don’t touch). It is getting there, to that openness that the article is talking about. They know they have to do it. But they don’t know how.

Now, Mono is a very good example. They have been reproducing the signatures and interfaces to use .Net on Linux and it works like a charm. Also they have been adding their own mix.

Microsoft will end up releasing .Net as an Open Source project, it will not be soon though. They already have their own license for that. With what Mono has done, when Microsoft plans to release, the integration with Mono will make it easier to hit the market.

The article is right about one important thing, in order to compete in the clouds, they have to kill Windows as an Desktop OS. But I think it will prevail as Windows Azure. That is why the word “Windows” appears in there.

Just one more thing before I close this rant. I think the mistake that Netscape did with Mozilla, is a learning experience that can be applied anywhere. When Netscape decided to build their browser from Scratch instead of fixing their bloated browser at the time. They lost too much time, and they lost the browser wars. They should have fixed their browser, not start a new one, which ended up with the same problems. It eventually got fixed when the community did the right thing and fixed it with Firefox, but they didn’t not start from scratch, they fixed Mozilla.

Microsoft is the browser and we (the community) are Netscape. Are we going to kill Microsoft so that Apple or Google takes its place? And then end up with the same problems all over?

I wouldn’t really want Apple in Microsoft’s shoes. I can see what they can do with their App Store. They have so much to learn. It would be like going back to the 90’s. We already went this route with Microsoft so many times, and now, Microsoft is learning.

How about Google? I wouldn’t want Google either. They are still too young, and we haven’t seen their evil yet, which scares me a lot. They not only have a lot of power in the internet, they hold most of our data, and they want *ALL* of it. Everybody has an evil side, and Google is not any different. We just haven’t seen it yet.

Microsoft is a known evil, let’s fix it. Why change it for a new one, when this evil has already been changed so much, and it is learning to live with the community?

Well enough of rants…I’m going back to work.

Post contributed by Alex Espinoza Alex Espinoza, Software Development Manager for the Axis in Motion consulting team at Axis. Read more of Alex’s blogs at http://neonlabs.structum.net/blog/

Want to learn more about Alex and the Axis in Motion team? Email Alex here

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BOBBI BILLARD
Born: Austin, Texas
Residence: Laguna Beach, Calif.

Bobbi Billard is one of the top print and Internet models in the United States, whose rising star has blossomed over the course of her stellar career, with bigger things expected in 2007 for this blonde bombshell.

Bobbi is America Online/Netscape/CompuServe Men’s No. 1 downloaded model, a title she has held for several years and one which she won’t be relinquishing any time soon. She is also the Unofficial MySpace queen ( www.myspace.com/bobbibillard), with almost 900,000 friends, putting her No. 4 in the world for total friends and popularity.

Bobbi has been featured in several productions throughout her impressive career, including a feature spot in the Diet Dr.Pepper “Green Baywatch” commercial, which aired during Superbowl XXXV. Bobbi has appeared in Muscular Development magazine cover and features, as well as on the popular Benchwarmer trading cards. Bobbi made a music video appearance in Blues Travelers video, “Girl Inside My Head. Bobbi recently had a part in her first feature film: Fox Searchlight Pictures Phat Girlz starring Mo’Nique. She is also cast in Ckrush Entertainment’s upcoming reality film, “Live Mansion: The Movie,” where a character has been created specifically for her.
Bobbi appeared on the TV show WOW Women of Wrestling, playing Summer of the Beach Patrol, and was signed to a developmental contract as a female wrestler for WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) before an injury shortened her career.

Bobbi has had an amazing run as a celebrity nightclub host across the country. Bobbi has hosted seven events at Las Vegas nightclubs and hot spots in six months, including parties at Body English nightclub inside the Hard Rock, Jet nightclub inside the Mirage, TAO nightclub inside the Venetian, Seamless nightclub’s New Year’s Eve bash and the Wet Grooves music festival at the Hard Rock.

One special note: Bobbi was one of just three female celebrities to host New Year’s Eve events, with the other two being Britney Spears (Pure nightclub) and Pamela Anderson (TAO nightclub).

Bobbi has also hosted events in Columbus, Ohio, where she opened Karma Nightclub in December. More recently, and most importantly, Bobbi was the headlining model for two Super Bowl parties at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Florida.
Bobbi was the featured model of five models to host the “Poppin’ Bottles with Models” event with Academy Award-winner Jamie Foxx. Bobbi was also the featured star of the six models who co-hosted Diddy’s Annual Super Bowl White Party featuring Diddy, R. Kelly, Missy Elliott, American Idol winner Fantasia Barrino and several NFL stars in Florida for the weekend of Super Bowl festitivies. Bobbi also handled the radio advertising spots as well for the Jamie Foxx event, which aired on every major radio station in Florida during Super Bowl week.

Bigger and better things are expected out of Bobbi Billard in 2007, with many things already in the works.

When reading Tim O’ Reilly’s “What Is Web 2.0,” the first thing that came to mind was the differences between facebook and myspace. Both are considered web 2.0, but I think facebook does a much better job of creating a rich user experience, allowing user participation, and acting as the perpetual beta. In other words, facebook continually updates its features while myspace has remained stagnant for sometime now. This is probably why more and more people use facebook over myspace, at least in my observation.

Facebook allows a richer user experience by providing constant updates of other user’s activities. It also provides notifications when something is of particular interest to you. This increases user participation, and while I’m usually the first to complain when something changes on facebook, I end up liking the outcome eventually.

I think I these comparisons automatically come to mind because they are sites I am very familiar with. While I can see why Google is a progressive example in web 2.0, I never used Netscape to be able to compare the two. Plus Netscape is a browser, and Google is a search engine. I would be more apt to compare Netscape to Mozilla and Google to Yahoo. However, I see O’ Reilly’s point that Google remained open to market changes while Netscape tried to monopolize its software.

Either way, I understand the internet is changing. Often the changes are what is least expected. But now, it can be expected that changes will focus more and more on the user, that is, me, you, and everyone else with an internet connection. What we want directs what changes are made, and we are the ones making the changes.

Desde a criação da World Wide Web por “Tim Berners-Lee” e o lançamento do navegador “Mosaic”, presenciamos uma Corrida Frenética pela Liderança no Mundo WWW, que ficou conhecida no meio como  “A Guerra dos Navegadores”.

De início o Mosaic foi desenvolvido para o ambiente X Window do “UNIX”, porém logo ganhou uma versão para o Sistema Operacional Windows. Criado por Jim Clark e Andreessen, foi desenvolvido no Centro Nacional de Supercomputação Aplicada (NCSA) da Universidade de Illinois, o Mosaic começou a fazer sucesso fora do círculo acadêmico, pois trazia elementos  nunca antes explorados, vários recursos multimídias, gráficos.

Imagem do Mosaic, um dos primeiros navegadores com recurso multimídia

Jim Clark e Andreessen perceberam o grande potencial desse software e junto com um investidor resolveram montar a “Netscape Commnications Corp”.

Disquete de Instalação do Netscape

Nesse meio tempo você deve estar se perguntando:

E onde estava a Microsoft?
Talvez corrigindo os problemas do Windows, ou ainda comprando alguma empresa, ou quem sabe esperando o mercado se estabilizar para poder se arriscar…

A verdade é que a Microsoft estava sim preocupada com a grande presença e vertiginoso crescimento da Netscape, que passou a cobrar cerca de U$ 40,00 pelo seu Browser, também abriu o capital da empresa com papéis em Wall Street.

Pensando em abocanhar esse outro setor a Microsoft começou a desenvolver uma estratégia para aniquilar a Netscape, e a Guerra ficou cada vez mais declarada. Usando parte do código originalmente desenvolvido para o Mosaic, a Microsoft começou a mexer os pauzinhos e lançou o Internet Explorer.

Como podemos ver no IE 6, a Microsoft aproveitou o código original do Mosaic em seu navegador

Não havia a opção para você desinstalar o Internet Explorer do Windows, e optar por outro Navegador, além de grátis, ele já vinha embutido no próprio Sistema Operacional. O que fez com que a Netscape recorresse à justiça e processou a Microsoft por práticas comerciais ilegais, o que gerou vários processos antitrustes contra a Microsoft e  fez com que a Netscape oferecesse também o seu navegador gratuitamente, já era tarde, os usuários se habituaram a usar o Internet Explorer, mesmo tendo inúmeros problemas relacionados a segurança, ninguém queria ter o trabalho de ter que instalar um outro navegador, mesmo este sendo mais seguro. O resultado de tudo isso foi que a Microsoft conseguiu virar o jogo e o Netscape Navigator foi aos poucos sendo esquecido, em uma última tentativa a Netscape resolveu abrir o código do seu software e deu início ao projeto Mozilla, hoje Mozilla Firefox.

Hoje existe uma placa na Universidade de Illinois homenageando os criadores do Mosaic.

Placa em homenagem ao Mosaic

Para quem quiser saber mais sobre a Guerra dos Navegadores, estou sugerindo um link de um documentários exibido pela Discovery Channel. Nesse excelente documentário os próprios funcionários da Microsoft e da Netscape contam com detalhes as suas versões dos fatos.

A Guerra dos Navegadores – Internet

Continua no próximo POST

The Internet formula for success turned traditional capitalism on its head.  Traditionally a company persuaded people to invest in it by making profits.  Now it persuaded people to invest in it first, and hoped the profits would follow.
A single assumption underpinned the entire boom:  the future would be better than the past. (Michael Lewis, The New New Thing)

—–

We are an age born of innovation.  The entire assumption was based on this — if this idea won’t be the big one, then we will keep innovating until we find the next new new thing.  And find it we will!

Not all innovations work.  Not all innovations last.  But the ability to innovate – to change, even with genuinely big changes in big ways, is maybe the ultimate business success trait.

Microsoft's early days: Microsoft wanted to build software tools

In an article I found on the Huffington Post business page entitled 10 Huge Successes Built On Second Ideas from BusinessInsider.com, there is a list of ten companies that made major changes in their business plans.  Here’s the list:

Here are some more companies that only saw huge success after a good bit of evolution:

• Facebook was briefly a “Hot Or Not” for Harvard.

• AOL began as a videogame on-demand service.

• Twitter started as podcast delivery service.

• Intel sold computer memory, not microchips.

• Microsoft wanted to build software tools.

• Tiffany & Co sold paper.

• Google wanted to search bulletin boards.

• Silicon Graphics got its start making graphics terminals.

• Avon sold books door to door.

(go to the article to click through for complete descriptions for each of these company change stories)

And here’s a little smart advice:
Marc Andreessen, the serial entrepreneur who successfully created and sold two billion dollar companies — Netscape and Opsware — preaches this lesson:  ”Trying to understand how a tech company is going to be successful is a little bit like looking at a sonogram and trying to predict the baby’s hair color,” Marc said recently.
“The idea really matters and the products really matter, but you know so little about the adventure you’re undertaking when you’re starting a new tech company, you have to assume that things are going to change. You have to have a very healthy awareness of what you don’t know. You have to be super flexible and able to reverse yourself very quickly.”

The path to success is riddled with ideas that did not quite work right, and other ideas that caught on, and then even these have to change in order to remain on the cutting edge of success.  Yesterday’s good ideas do not always lead to ongoing success.  So, yes, “you have to be super flexible.”