Upon 2020

Category: Business

  • The upside of sharing personal data

    We had a rather interesting lunch yesterday at the MyData Silicon Valley Hub, on the occasion of a visit by Julian Ranger, board member of MyData Global and founder of personal data startup digi.me. Julian offered a striking proposition that I had not heard before. It is very much worth writing about, starting with some…

  • Why decentralized social networking never makes it — ever heard of Crossing the Chasm?

    Every now and then, the “why hasn’t decentralized social networking succeeded” discussion pops back up. And inevitably, that motivates somebody who thinks they can do better. They proceed to design a new set of decentralized networking protocols, write lots of code, and get early adopters to enthusiastically adopt the New Thing. Which then, inevitably, never…

  • Comcast about its own policies

    Got this from Comcast in response to an e-mail to the FTC. I assume it is canned, but interesting nevertheless: Contrary to the allegations raised in this complaint, Comcast does not apply “arbitrary” usage thresholds, does not “zero-rate” or grant special policy exemptions to its own video content, and does not implement policies intended to…

  • “World After Capital” Summary

    When a Venture Capitalist writes a book “World after Capital“, it might be worth paying attention. If he happens to be a partner at Union Square Ventures in New York, you know it’s going to be good. Here are my notes about his draft book which is available for under a Creative Commons License in…

  • Ten years later, Paypal is already using personal URLs for money transfer

    LID turned 10 years a little while ago. Back in the days, the revolutionary idea was: everyone could have one (or several) user-specific URLs they could print that URL on their business card and all sorts of interesting services could be attached to that URL, such as: single-sign-on into any website standardized transfer of personal…