A VC known as Fred Wilson shares his perspective on the current "tower of babble" that has been created by online music distributors with their competing formats, playlists, etc.  I share his view.  Just think how easy it is to send a file list, which
most players autogenerate anyway, to your friends and family with
a note "check this out".  If your musical tastes hold credibility, it
goes right into any web connected audio file playing device and out
comes the tunes. 

Of
course, in all likelihood, none of those big companies like Apple,
MSCT, Yahoo or Real Media will be the winner.  This space, as well as
the same one for videos, will be fun to follow.  See Fred’s site for more info.

Another sturdy sapling sinks its taproot deep into the New Ground as Captain’s Quarters "breaks" the publication ban imposed by a Canadian judge regarding  testimony delivered in his court this week.  If true, this testimony implicates the Chretien and Martin governments and possibly the Liberal party itself, in complex schemes that channeled over $250 million in Canadian government funds to finance their election campaigns.  For details on the story see the link.  From the New Ground perspective, however, the key element in this story is the role played by blogs and the Internet in exposing the truth the fresh air and sunlight of free speech.  More on this later.

And the company simply ignores the problem.

I am posting this for the benefit of those who do a Google search for ” vsmon.exe memory leak “, as well as anyone else considering the purchase of the Zone Alarms Pro software firewall.  This program, vsmon.exe, is the core engine of the firewall and in any of the 5.0 releases of ZA Pro, many users are experiencing diminished system performance as this program consumes system memory in huge quantities (typically several hundred MB and oftentimes on my Dell PC (3.2Hz Pentium, 1GB RAM,Windows XP Pro-SP2) it will exceed 500 MB.  It use to happen sporadically, but now occurs on a daily basis and often several times daily.  Every time it happens, I have to shutdown ZA Pro and restart it.

Emails to their tech support bring no response.  Innumerable posts to the company sponsored and maintained user forums from users experiencing the problem are consistently met with the same answers; either stop using P2P software, which they say causes the issue, or, do a clean reinstall of ZA Pro, or, drop back to an earlier version (e.g., the 4.5 release).  All of these responses are completely unacceptable, from my perspective.  I paid for a license of the 5.* release, not a 4.* release.  I use a P2P program to sync files on three PCs, which is far more important to me than the continued use of ZA Pro.  Finally, the re-installs are a waste of time.  I’ve tried them repeatedly to no avail.

There
is no reason for Zone Alarm users to take Zone Labs’ (the company which develops and sells the software) support
personnel seriously when they repeatedly ignore this critical problem with their software.  The “memory leak” is no longer an
annoying “feature”; it  now  impairs the software’s usability. Unfortunately, no one is stepping up to be accountable for resolving the malfunctioning code.  The
fact that no moderator/support personnel will even acknowledge the
reality of their customers’ experience, as repeatedly described in the user forums, speaks volumes about this
company’s value system, as well as its management.

At this point, I will fix the problem myself by uninstalling Zone Alarm Pro, for the last time, ever!  I will find another software firewall – there are lots of them available (i.e., it’s a commodity) and soon enough the one included in Windows XPSP2 will include all the functionality needed in a firewall (although it does not currently).

Finally, I am writing about my experience with the Zone Alarm Pro product and Zone Labs, the software company (now owned by Check Point), to exemplify the power of blogging (which was the original, primary theme of The New Ground Blog).  Although my one post will not be sufficient to change anyone’s behavior, if other users also publicize their dissatisfaction, then anyone else experiencing the problem and searching the web for a solution will find our posts.  Likewise, prospective purchasers researching the software will also be forewarned.  Finally, the message might get through to someone at Check Point who cares and who can do something about the problem.  Members of Check Point’s board of directors, perhaps?  Significant shareholders?  Check Point CEO or CTO,  maybe?  Someone at this company should be listening (or searching)!

In spite of being an ardent free market propronent and a believer that less government is better than more, I am beyond beginning to believe, although not yet completely sure, that government would be the best WiFi provider. And I should add that maybe, maybe that could also be true for the physical wired network infrastructure (fiber-to-the-home/business) as well.

Should WiFi Be Public Infrastructure? (continued)
I hate logging in to all of these various hot spots. Each one has a different login, a different account, and the process is one big hassle.
I’ve begged for better wifi roaming and I’ve wondered if Wifi should be public infrastructure.
Yesterday, a reader sent me a link to this story about a silicon valley firm called AnchorFree that is putting up free hotspots that are sponsor supported.
That’s a lot better than the paid hotspots we have now, but what I really want is free Wifi everywhere. Or at least let me pay a monthly bill to someone and then get free wifi everywhere I go without having to deal with different vendors with different payment schemes and different login systems.
This is only going to become more important as we get wifi voip phones, wifi iPods with podcasting built in, wifi cameras, and wifi video.
I honestly believe that the cost of supporting public wifi is not that expensive and the benefits to the citizens of every city that does it is enormous.
UPDATE: A great post on the comparisons between public water projects in the 19th century and wifi today. It’s a very interesting read.

Fred Wilson comments on a journalist’s observation that we are about to enter "the most furious investing cycle in history" due to the vast amounts of cash raised by VC funds in 1999-2000 that their partnership agreements require them to soon use (invest) or lose (return to limited partners along with management fees that pay their salaries and expenses).

It is true that there is a huge "overhang" of venture money left over from the 1999/2000 fundraising binge. But that money can’t go into early stage deals because those deals take 5-6 years to turn into realizations. So this "overhang" is going into later stage deals. Look at $75 million going into Fastclick or $108 million going into Webroot. That’s where the overhang money is going to go. The early stage market may also be entering a "furious investing cycle" but that’s not being driven by the overhang from 1999/2000, its being driven by Web 2.0 and the realization that we have entered another wave of innovation around the Internet that will result in a lot of interesting companies being created, built, and sold over the next several years.

I just love this – The Daily Brief: Just Because No One Understands You Doesn’t Mean You’re An Artist! ? It’s Good to Know Leadership Gets It – Four star general ORDERS his subordinates to stay out of the way of troops providing answers to questions he POSTS ON HIS BLOG! (I even coined a new category for it – Bureaucracy Busters!)

Commander’s Call was yesterday. The boss was getting us all together in groups, civilians, Senior NCOs, Junior NCOs, Officers, etc.. Two things that stuck out in my mind: He noted that there were not enough chairs for the civilians and they were packed out into the hallways surrounding the ballroom and that we SNCOs had a LOT of empty chairs. He shook his head and said, “I’ve GOT to get that mix changed.” As he was talking up his Command and Control Blog (you couldn’t get to it even if I did link to it), he made one of the most astounding, outside the box statements I’ve ever heard come out of a flag officer’s mouth. Other than giving me some leeway for perhaps not having the order he said them right, this is what I heard yesterday. Anyone else who was there and can make it clearer, please do: “The metric is what the person has to contribute, not the person’s rank, age, or level of experience. If they have the answer, I want the answer. When I post a question on my blog, I expect the person with the answer to post back. I do not expect the person with the answer to run it through you, your OIC, the branch chief, the exec, the Division Chief and then get the garbled answer back before he or she posts it for me. The Napoleonic Code and Netcentric Collaboration cannot exist in the same space and time. It’s YOUR job to make sure I get my answers and then if they get it wrong or they could have got it righter, then you guide them toward a better way…but do not get in their way.”

JAMES E. CARTWRIGHT
General, USMC
Commander, USSTRATCOM

Just how cool is that?

See this link for history of the celebration and details on others’ plans to celebrate.

In keeping with The New Ground’s basic paradigm of Internet disruption, Techdirt asks – Does The Wall Street Journal Risk Becoming Irrelevant?.

Does The Wall Street Journal Risk Becoming Irrelevant?
Predictions Contributed by Mike on Thursday, February 24th, 2005 @ 03:04AM
from the learn-to-play-online dept.
Last year, Adam Penenberg knocked the NY Times for becoming increasingly irrelevant in an online world. By locking up their archives, they made it difficult to be found in Google — and in an online world, if you’re not found on Google, you barely exist. If that was bad, things may be much worse for the Wall Street Journal, according to Penenberg. We’ve covered this issue before. Many people are giving up on the Wall Street Journal, in part because they can’t link to the stories. In an online world where many people feel that sharing the news is as important (if not more important) than reading it, this makes the Wall Street Journal useless. While the Journal has been able to coast by on its (well deserved) reputation, Penenberg points out that the younger generation that’s being raised online has other options. The Wall Street Journal’s strategy works in a world where there aren’t other options, and everyone learns that to get the day’s business news you go to the WSJ. It’s a strategy for the status quo. However, it’s not a strategy for bringing on new readers when those new readers are already overwhelmed by news everywhere they look. So, while the WSJ’s strategy may be able to last for some time, it’s going to increasingly come under pressure — which is why Penenberg suggests they throw up the doors now. Of course, it’s unlikely the Journal will listen. Instead, they’re trying to do things like start a weekend paper edition — because what we all want in our lives these days is more paper.