Recovery Dialogue: Information Technology Solutions

The current administration has established a website to track the stimulus spending: http://www.recovery.gov. In addition there is a discussion site for technology ideas to promote transparency and openness in the stimulus spending: http://www.thenationaldialogue.org/.

I submitted an idea, based on my professional work: The Government should use a Research Management Solution to make their stimulus decisions.

DraftDude: fantasy baseball draft ranking

DraftDude.com is a website that algorithmically determines optimal roto baseball draft order. The algorithm uses the rules of your league, like the number of teams, number of players per position, scored statistics and so on. Then you can edit the statistical projections for each player, and see how it affects the ranking. The concept is pretty cool, and since some leagues become nearly full time jobs, DraftDude is charging for access to the (claimed) competitive advantage.

Instant, Make-Your-Own Fonts

Image via Wikipedia

In college I saw a mail-away font creation service, and I always wanted to digitize my own hen scratching. So I am definitely trying this out: http://www.veryshortlist.com/web/daily.cfm/review/1044/Website/your-fonts/

Tamale In the News

Advent Tamale launched RMS4.0, and we have some nice press. We keep our development pipeline about 2 or 3 releases deep at any one time. So, in my memory, RMS4.0 seems like ages ago even though it is launching now.

Presenting at Silver Lining

Silver Lining is a cloud computing user group here in Boston. On February 10th, I'm presenting Tamale's Delta platform, which is cloud technology for financial applications.

The financial industry adds a number of significant complexities for cloud computing, most notably the legal issues surrounding privacy. Advent Tamale's approach is to extend the cloud services into the client's firewall using the Tamale Appliance. All the usual benefits of easy distribution and access are married with the complete privacy of on-site deployment.

Bailouts Threaten Nations' Debt Ratings

Image via WikipediaScary, but fascinating, article describing bond traders' increasing cynicism for swelling national deficits and debts all over the world.

crunchbase, cb entry for advent

CrunchBase is a wiki-style company database. My company, Advent Software, has an entry there.

CrunchBase Information

Advent Software

Information provided by CrunchBase

Christmas 2008

The Bent Fawcett Madera, all-singing, all-dancing, Christmas Extravaganza on Ice:

Jackie's First Haircut

No one was injured in the course of this haircut: 

Could VC be a Casualty of the Recesssion?

The lack of capital barriers for internet startups means more competition for internet startups. Funding used to be a differentiating factor; it just isn't anymore. VC needs to refocus on capital hungry areas like alternative energy and healthcare.

The founder mentality needs to be imbued into graduating chemical engineers, mechanical engineers, biologists and physicists.

We need thousands of startups that work on our society's biggest problems.

Probably a platform for energy startups is needed. Something transformative to the energy industry as the internet was for software.

http://www.paulgraham.com/divergence.html