Not much to do with business or technology, but you might find this scene at the newground!

NewGround’s web site, including this blog, is created within a web-based application developed and hosted by a company named Squarespace.  This service, in my mind, would best be described as a Web 2.0 Content Management System (CMS).  From a business perspective, I believe the Squarespace service offering represents a great value proposition.  For $20/month, we get a web development and hosting platform that allows us (non-HTML proficient people) to create, store update/refresh, manage and publish our website, including this blog,  I mention this because today I noticed this post on their customer service blog describing the recent launch on the same Squarespace service (and servers) of a much larger and much more heavily trafficked website (of former US House Majority Leader Tom Delay).  The contents of that post not only raised my esteem for the Squarespace platform capabilities, but also underscore what a great value proposition it is – for Delay a great website/managed traffic service for $100/month versus several thousand to create the same capability for yourself.

According to a veteran IT venture capitalist and current Web 2.0 investor, the Web 2.0 phenomenon is producing changes in the job description for "business development"  Fred says:

But the job of a business development executive is changing. You have to be more product focused, more technical, and focus on making deals where there is already user level integration happening.

 In a previous post, Fred described how the public api’s published by Web 2.0 companies not only allow them to effectively partner without all the overhead of a business/legal deal, but also to do so much more quickly.  Nevertheless, as a commenter on that post observed:

The BD guy has always been the guy who sees how two companies can play together. Today’s smart (good) BD guy simply works more with his in-house API guru and less with his Rolodex.

Via Susan Crawford, we learn that at least one government official understands what’s at stake in the telecom regulatory environment in Washington.  In support of a recent report from the FTC’s Internet Access Task Force Commissioner Jon Leibowitz opines:

Let me begin by commending the staff for this Report. It begins the process of identifying guiding principles for our growing Internet competition mission. At least as importantly, to my mind the Report provides a powerful basis for the Commission to oppose, as part of our advocacy program, future attempts by states to limit or prohibit municipalities from offering broadband to their own residents. Some of these proposed laws address legitimate questions, but others are simply unconscionable.

In the same report, he also observes:

As an agency charged with enforcing the antitrust laws, we know the importance of competition well. Increased competition means lower prices and higher quality for consumers. But the lack of competition along the “last mile” of the Internet to consumers can have an even more profound effect than high prices in local markets. It can interfere with the growth and development of the Internet everywhere.

I suppose we should be happy that at least one commissioner "gets" it, and that his commission’s mission is to promote and advance the cause of fair competition, especially when the competitors and regulators in the communications industry seem to prefer unfair competition in spite of the harm it brings to our country, its commerce and its citizens.

n response to Wretchard’s post regarding the Second Gutenberg Revolution, I would submit that there is no need to worry about books as containers for human thought/history. Given the continually accelerating and exponentially declining cost of digital storage, I-Pods and similar devices with terabyte and petabyte storage capabilities are just around the corner.  Consequently, it will soon be as easy for people to carry the Library of Congress plus the entire historical catalog of recorded music as it is to carry one’s cell phone.  The Library of Congress would require approximately 80 terabytes of storage capacity, which at today’s cost of approximately $.40/GB, would cost about $30,000. Continued progression down this cost curve is certain, short of nuclear war, which means that the price/GB for data storage in 5 years will be under $.02/GB, at which point the Library could be stored for $1600. Another five years and the cost will be $1/TB (terabyte), or $80.  Remember, an I-Pod is essentially a hard drive with earphones, and now a small video monitor, attached.  Over 2 billion people currently own cell phones, and assuming trends for the last five years continue,  that number will exceed 3 billion by 2010. The rate of decline in storage costs blows away the rate of decline in either cell phone costs or cost/minute of call time, so you can see where its all headed (eg, Apple’s announcement yesterday re: movie downloads).  If your find these figures hard to fathom, remember that the first IBM PC included 64 MB of RAM; the current PC standard is 1 GB.  Future archaelogists should not have to look too hard to find these devices. Furthermore, Google has already scanned all non-copyright protected books into its database, and others will follow suit.  Finally, for those who don’t know about it, the Internet Archives (aka Wayback Machine) already contains an impressive database of historical Internet pageviews, music and other digital information (including most of the live performances of the Grateful Dead in high quality audio format).  Check it out!

Thanks to Scott at Powerline for this post celebrating Van Morrison’s 61st birthday and tipping me off to a video on YouTube of Van Morrison singing "Caravan" with The Band during their "Last Waltz".  He makes the following observation about this particular performance:

Van’s performance with the Band is memorably documented on film in Martin Scorsese’s "The Last Waltz." Below, courtesy of YouTube, is the clip with Van and the Band performing "Caravan" from "The Last Waltz." Van steals the show. The camera catches Van with the barest hint of a smile as he triumphantly leaves the stage. "Hey, Van the Man," Robbie Robertson exults.

Here’s the YouTube vid:

Although a bit dated, this post by Michael Arrington at TechCrunch provides a great list of seriously legitimate web-based business ideas.  Will follow up on some of these later, but I thought this was a good link from which to begin my blogging here at NewGround Technologies.

These quotes aren’t linked because they were carried in numerous publications.  The first one is a "mashup" of irrelevant irrationality, economic idiocy, and illogical childish "that’s not fair!" temper tantrum.  Said differently, its just stupid!

"During the hurricanes, Google didn’t pay to have the DSL restored," said BellSouth spokesman Jeff Battcher. "We’re paying all that money."

Additional quotes from Bill Smith (BellSouth), Whitacre (SBC/att) and Seidenberg (Verizon) to be added later