Captain Underpants

No, this blog hasn't taken a raunchy turn. This is a funny story. My daughter is in Kindergarten at a magnet school in Raleigh, NC. The nice thing about it is that it has a really great curriculum, and she gets 45 minutes of Spanish instruction every day. Which is awesome in its own right, IMO, and its especially cool since I've got friends in Spain and Chile. On the downside, the school's a pretty good hike from the house - about 20 minutes door to door in car. But we just started putting Sarah on an express bus - o Joy!

So, my daughter is a really sweet girl, but, as her teacher put it recently in our parent teacher conference this week, she's a worrier. She gets a little up tight especially when she does new stuff. But it's weird, 'cuz she's really social and adventuresome, but whenever she has to do something new by herself, she gets a little worried.

So, taking the bus was a big leap for her - but she totally loves it now. After her first day when my wife picked her up at the bus stop after school, Sarah says "I heard a bad word." My wife was like "uh oh" so she told her, well, that's ok, that might happen, but if you repeat those words, you won't be able to ride the bus anymore. But she didn't ask her what word it was for fear of finding out. Finally, a couple days later, my wife gets up the courage to ask Sarah what the bad word was that she heard on the bus, to which Sarah said "Captain Underpants." LOL

Facebook Ads- smart strategy, questionable execution

Zuckerman unveiled Facebook's anticipated ad strategy yesterday. I was pretty skeptical, I have to say, but upon reading about it, it looks like a really smart idea. In a nutshell, the strategy is to allow advertisers to leverage what Facebook is good at, and what makes it popular - namely, relationships and endorsements. So, if you and I are friends in Facebook, and I say I like some product, then this will be treated the same way as if I told my friends that I like some type of music.

My problem with this, though, is not about how smart the idea is, but rather with the execution. Let me explain. The New York Times describes the strategy this way:

"The ads expand what has been one of the most powerful features of Facebook, the news feed, where members see a list of what their friends are doing — photos from their parties, new friends, favorite bands and so on.

Facebook now will give advertisers the ability to create their own profile pages on its system that will let users identify themselves as fans of a product. Each user’s news feed will contain items like “Bobby Smith is now a fan of Toyota Prius.”

Sounds great - but here's my issue - I've been using Facebook for a few months now - granted, I'm no power user and I have a limited number of friends, but I'm a user nonetheless - and I've only once had someone say they're a fan of mine, and I've never seen this so-called news feed, which the Times calls one of Facebook's most powerful features.

So, in the interest of thoroughness, I did what any self-respecting pseudo-journalist would do - I logged into Facebook and looked for the news feed. I couldn't find it. I used the search feature and I looked for something called news feed in all the tabs - no luck.

While performing my search, I was reminded why I don't really like Facebook - the interface sucks! It is so cluttered and confused, it repels me. Compared to the social networking site that I think sets the benchmark - LinkedIn - Facebook is completely amateurish.

Now, you might be thinking that the difference is explained by the target audience and use - LinkedIn is for professionals and for business use, where Facebook is for friends and social use. Two problems with this explanation - businesspeople and friends are all people and we all have basic user interface needs and, two, business is a social activity, so basically I don't buy it.

Bold prediction: I think Facebook is going to get their lunch eaten by the company that knows how to design interfaces and organize information as well as anyone - Google. Wouldn't it be funny if Google just ran up the price tag on Facebook to stick it to Microsoft? Seems to me like Google's own social networking announcement came too quickly on the heels of their supposed loss to Microsoft in the Facebook deal for Facebook to have been anything other than a decoy. Oh, and btw, there's nothing about the good part of Facebook's ad plan that can't be copied. To borrow a term from P&G - I think Google is a PFE (proudly found elsewhere) kind of company...

Linus Torvalds on Open Source: 'A Much Better Way to Do Things'

Linus Torvalds was only 22 in 1991 when he decided to share with friends and colleagues the code of Linux, the new operating system he had created. The University of Helsinki computer science student couldn't have imagined the revolution his decision was about to ignite.

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Which OSI license is best for NetDirector?

I need help figuring out which license to move NetDirector to. Right now, it's licensed under a modified MPL with attribution clause. I think I want to keep attribution, which would seem to rule out GPL and limit me to CPAL, or the newly approved MS-PL or MS-RL. You can see these at http://opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical

But, I also observe that many commercial open source vendors have embraced GPL, both versions 2&3, notably SugarCRM, Zenoss, Red Hat...

Do I need attribution? Bear in mind that, unlike the above-mentioned vendors, I am not VC-backed. I think this makes attribution more important to me - but maybe not.

Thanks!

Update - November 12, 2007

I'm pretty much settled on moving everything that's out there today in the comunity (all the stuff that can be downloaded from SourceForge) to GPLv2. Maybe someday there will be "Enterprise" editions of NetDirector that will have some other license, but I think GPLv2 is the ay to go.

thanks to everyone who chimed in with thoughts - I appreciate it!

Daily Affirmation

Remember that skit from SNL, "Daily Affirmation with John Handy" or something like that? I think the comedian is dead now. Well, I need a daily affirmation today. My wife is big into dreams - she even has a book about interpreting dreams.

This morning, she says to me "want to hear about my dream"? I say "sure" (that's the only right answer, of course...)

"I dreamt I was Barrack Obama's girlfriend..."

Feel free to interpret in comments below, but take it easy on me, ok?

Law & Life: Silicon Valley: Patent Troll Fire First Volley at Open Source

Law & Life: Silicon Valley: Patent Troll Fire First Volley at Open Source

OUI

It's been sort of a slow start for the season for Barca. They just didn't play well at all in their first couple outings, and then Ronaldinho got hurt. But in last week's game against Zaragoza, which is a great side, Messi was fantastico. So was my personal favorite, Iniesta. But poor Henry, despite having like 4 really good chances, the Zaragoza keeper was always placed rigt to make the save.

In this week's game against Levante (which I haven't seen yet, but got the news on) Henry scored a hat-trick. One word: Oui!!!!!!!!!!!