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Big in Japan launches Dirt Fan Podcast!

December 29, 2006

The Big in Japan team has been working hard to get the Dirt Fan Podcast system up and running.  This is the first commercial application of our Podcast/Podcall API.  Big Interactive created the Flash site in the form of a virtual magazine (Dirt is about a gossip magazine) and simply connected to our API.  The API is ready and waiting for other applications, just give Jake McKee a call at 214.550.3603 and he can get you started.  Check it out here, the screen shot is below:

 

Written by Alexander Muse · Filed Under Blog |  

Starting Fresh in 2007

December 29, 2006

Michele and I are putting our house on the market early in 2007.  We need a little more room (our family has grown) and a little more land (our son needs more of a yard).  I went ahead and posted the listing on Zillow (my favorite real estate site).  If you are in the market for a fairly cool house in the North Dallas area (near Greenville and Royal Lane) take a look.  I posted a blog here and the Zillow listing is here. 

Written by Alexander Muse · Filed Under Blog | Leave a Comment 

Enlightened Serendipity

December 22, 2006

One of things I’ve observed about the fraternity of those who provide entrepreneurial advice and education is that we say similar things, but we have our own way of presenting it.

  • Jack Thorne characterized entrepreneurship as, “Insane perseverance in the face of total rejection.”
  • Jack Roseman has captured the essence of his perspective in the title of his excellent book, Outrageous Optimism.
  • Fred Beste has a series of articles, including the classic, “25 Entrepreneurial Death Traps.”
  • Ron Morris has his “75 Immutable Truths.”

To this list I humbly offer “Enlightened Serendipity.”

Enlightened Serendipity

Being in the right place
At the right time,
Recognizing it, and
Acting upon it,
APPROPRIATELY and
PASSIONATELY.

An observer can often be heard exclaiming, “What luck!” or “Another overnight success!” when reacting to someone’s achievements. Nothing could be further from the truth.

True, intuition and flashes of inspiration may play a role in the process, but these seemingly sudden bursts of accomplishment may have been gestating for years, perhaps decades, with conscious preparation throughout. It is the confluence of personal and external events, trends, and developments; many controllable and some that are not, that ultimately lead to opportunity. It is the TRUE entrepreneur who has prepared himself and successfully grasps the opportunity to make it his own.

Right now and right here – is your opportunity at hand? Do you expect it to be? If not, how will you recognize it?

Have you ever exclaimed, “That was my idea!” when someone achieves success? At the risk of hyperbole, ideas really are a dime a dozen. Having an idea is one thing. Acting on it is quite another.

“If only I had the money…” “Once I close on a round of investment…” The everyday person frequently finds reasons not to do something. The entrepreneur scales his pursuit of the opportunity to a level appropriate to the circumstances and prospects.

“It should have worked…” “If only I’d had one more round of investment…” Virtually every successful company I know was essentially bankrupt by all rational measures, but the passionate founders refused to accept that outcome. When others are ready to throw in the towel, entrepreneurs redouble their efforts to make it work!

Opportunity Obsession

Entrepreneurs are obsessed with the pursuit of opportunities. Unlike administrators who attempt to optimize outcomes based upon a given set of resources and constraints, the entrepreneur pursues opportunities without regard to the resources currently under control, but with the confidence that they can be attracted when needed.

I am a firm believer in the adage that if you throw enough mud against the wall, some of it will stick. Through business planning activities; networking with other entrepreneurs, professionals, and business practitioners, among others; and attending conferences, trade association meetings, virtually any gathering of people; the budding entrepreneur will be exposed to an unlimited number of opportunities.

Entrepreneurs will seize opportunities while others see only noise and confusion.

THAT is Enlightened Serendipity.

Written by Alexander Muse · Filed Under Blog, Startups | 1 Comment 

Built to Stick!

December 22, 2006

Is your idea built to stick?  We are constantly working to incorporate stickiness into our offerings ~ we still haven’t figured it out.  Malcolm Gladwell talked about "The Stickiness Factor" in his book The Tipping Point (surely you have read it).  John Moore is writing about a new book (to be released next year) called Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.  If John is right, the book will be a great resource for anyone trying to get their message to "stick".  John explains,

Madetostick

Gladwell did a great job writing about Stickiness. But, he never really explained, in step-by-directions, how to achieve stickiness. Enter the Heath brothers … Chip & Dan. Chip is a Stanford Prof and Dan is an Education Consultant. Together, they have written what could be the breakthrough business book of 2007 for creatives, marketers, and anyone else responsible for communicating ideas and/or messages.

Written by Alexander Muse · Filed Under Blog |  

Camera Phones = No More Fish Stories. . .

December 18, 2006

Gone are the days when people would talk about the fish they caught the weekend before and by the end of the year it was 225% bigger than it was on the day they caught it.  Why?  Camera phones.  This weekend we took Ethan fishing and he caught his first fish.  Let me tell you, it was a proud moment for me.  He was very pleased with his catch, but unfortunately we caught the fish on camera.  That fish won’t grow over the years, it will always be the same size.  Another unintended consequence of camera phones!

Written by Alexander Muse · Filed Under Blog | 2 Comments 

SimpleTicket Revamp

December 18, 2006

Check out the latest screenshot of SimpleTicket:

Also, notice that the picture was served from Amazon S3.  Evidently Basecamp is now serving images from Amazon…  Nice.

Written by Alexander Muse · Filed Under Blog | Leave a Comment 

Jake: Ego motiviates online communities

December 18, 2006

Jake McKee of Big in Japan talked to coBRANDiT about the motivation of online community members.  Check out the post and video here.

Written by Alexander Muse · Filed Under Blog | Leave a Comment 

Google Patent Search

December 15, 2006

Check it out:

Written by Alexander Muse · Filed Under Blog |  

Passion makes it work. . .

December 14, 2006

Last night I took one of the guys to see the Dallas Mavericks beat the LA Lakers.  We sat right behind the players and three seats away from Mark Cuban.  I couldn’t help but come the realization that the Mavericks are the team they are in no small part because of Mark’s passion.  He really cares about the team ~ both as a fan and owner.

If you look at other sports franchises, such as the Dallas Stars, you just don’t feel the spark you feel watching Mark and his team.  If I bought the Mavericks (anyone want to loan me a few hundred million?) they just wouldn’t be the same.  They wouldn’t be an NBA powerhouse.  I just don’t have the passion that Mark has.

I think to achieve outsized or extraordinary success you need to be passionate about what you are doing.  Not passionate about your job?  Consider changing careers…

Written by Alexander Muse · Filed Under Blog | 1 Comment 

Goodbye Lamar. . . Texas will miss you!

December 14, 2006

Lamar Hunt died yesterday a the age of 74. Texas won’t be the same without his influence. Many people call him the founder of the NFL as we know it today (such as Jerry Jones of the Cowboys). When he was just 26 he was the “energy and catalyst” behind the AFL and coined the term “Super Bowl”. He was also the man behind professional tennis and soccer, eventually being inducted into the football, tennis and soccer hall of fame.
The Dallas Morning News has a great obit here, the Dallas Observer writes about him here.

Written by Alexander Muse · Filed Under Blog |  

Talking about spam: IronPort

December 12, 2006

We have been talking quite a bit about spam and the IronPort spam filtering system on the Architel Blog:

New Ironport BoxAre you hating spam as much as we are?  We are liking the Ironport box, I have a call into the CEO to chat.  Perhaps he will agree to a profile.  Anyone else have good (or bad) things to say about the IronPort box or team?  Scott Weiss is the CEO (from Microsoft/Hotmail), Scott Banister is the VP of Strategy (Microsoft/Listbot), Crag Collins is the CFO (from Brio), Keith Valory is the General Counsel (nice guy I am working with him on an issue we are having with a local channel manager) and Jeff Williams is VP of Sales (formerly of IntruVert and GlobalCenter).

Written by Alexander Muse · Filed Under Blog |  

Dirt Premiere Screening & Party

December 11, 2006

We attended the Dirt premiere this weekend. I blog about it in a post titled, “Dirt Premiere.” Lots of fun, and a great show. Check out the pilot January 2nd on FX.

Written by Alexander Muse · Filed Under Blog |  

GPL License Terms

December 11, 2006

The GNU General Public License Version 2, June 1991 explains:

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.

When we released the source code for the Big in Japan tools we used this license, but decided to clarify our interpretation of the term “distribution”. We did not modify or change the license in any way, instead before including the full text of the license we defined “distribution”. Some people disagree, suggesting that by defining the term we have “defacto” changed the license. We disagree with this position because the license itself (i.e. at the end of the license in a section titled “How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs” recommends that you attach various notices to the program (i.e. prior to the text of the license) similar to intent notice we placed prior to the preamble.

There is some debate in regard to what constitutes distribution or modification inside and outside the open source community. Everyone agrees that if you modify the original source code and distribute software based on those modifications you must release the source of the modifications as well. What is not clear is what distribution means. What if you take our code, modify it, but instead of releasing it as an application, you run it as a service? Do you have to release the source code of your service?

Some people (and lawyers) argue that you do not need to release the modifications, while others argue you do. Our tools were built as web services making this issue very important. Without the clarification we felt there would be a serious incentive to keep improvements closed source. We wrote on our blog:

To be clear, it is our intent that anyone who modifies the code MUST release those modifications publicly. If you modify the code for use as your own hosted service we require that you release the modified code. Get it? There is some confusion about this point in the open source community. The license explains that you are required to do so if you distribute or publish the code and some argue that a hosted application does not constitute “distribution” or “publishing” of the code and as such you are not required to release the modifications. We understand the confusion, but want to be very clear, for the purposes of our license hosting the source code for other’s use constitutes distribution or publication of the binary code. This is detailed in the source code files as well. Enjoy!

The main argument in favor of our interpretation is that executing binary code is, in fact, distribution of source code. So if you execute our source code in the form of a hosted application you are distributing the code and as a result you are required to publish the source code of any changes you make. The next version of the GPL addresses this directly, but we wanted to release the source code now instead of waiting for clarification in the new license.

I know a bunch of you disagree with my position and I would be happy to debate the point, but please remember that we are trying to be the good guys here. We are releasing the code free of charge, we just want everyone to play by the same rules.

This is how we have noticed our intent:

Read more

Written by Alexander Muse · Filed Under Blog | 11 Comments 

Open source invalidates trademark?

December 10, 2006

If you open source your software do you invalidate your brand? Can I call my company WordPress? Zimbra? JBoss? Asterisk? Ankesh Kumar and Rajiv Dutta seem to think so. Let me explain.

In late November I was reading the StartupSquad and noticed a post titled “SocialMail takes email communication to a new level“. At first I thought, VERY COOL, but then I noticed that our logo had changed. Dan Cederholm designed the SocialMail logo (on bottom) in 2005, but this looked more like a LogoWorks design. Then it became clear that someone else had launched a group email service with the same name as our own group email service.

I emailed Ankesh explaining:

We have been running a group email service called SocialMail for quite some time and I was not sure if you had realized the potential conflict. Anyway, let chat via phone next week. What is a good time and number?

I hate getting those lawyerly cease and desist letters and I assumed Ankesh simply failed to realize the conflict. Boy was I wrong. Shortly after our conference call to discuss he filed a trademark application with the USPTO. Since then he has emailed me suggesting that by offering the SocialMail source code as an open source project it is “not part of your core business”. Surprisingly, the company is advised by VERY smart people like Rajiv Dutta, the president of Skype (ebay).

The good news is that our use-in-trade and USPTO trademark filing pre-date Ankesh’s use-in-trade and filing. The bad news is that he is trying to create a precedent that if your brand is for an open source project it is invalid. Clearly I am annoyed that Big in Japan will have to spend thousands of dollars and valuable time prosecuting Ankesh and his team over a clear violation of our trademark. Perhaps when we do we can put the idea that open source brands have the same rights as closed source brands.

Written by Alexander Muse · Filed Under Blog | 8 Comments 

Skywire to buy Docucorp for $127MM

December 6, 2006

Local startup, Skywire is about to become a big company.  The company just announced the purchase of publicly traded Docucorp International Inc. (DOCC on NASDAQ).  Patrick Brandt will serve as president and CEO of the combined company.
Docucorp Profile:

  • Customers: 1300
  • Employees: 400>
  • Headquarters: Dallas, Texas
  • 2005 revenue: $79MM
  • Generates around $1.4MM in free cash flow per year
  • Offices throughout: North America, Austrialia, Austria, Belgie, China, Czech Republic, Dubai, Germany, Holland, South Africa, Switzerland and the United Kingdom

Written by Alexander Muse · Filed Under Blog |  

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