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Mark Evans

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Archive for August, 2007

The Struggles of Municipal Wi-Fi

It didn’t seem that long ago that municipal Wi-Fi was all the rage as cities across North America scramble to roll out free or low-cost networks as an alternative to high-speed service offered by carriers and cablecos.
Today, the municipal Wi-Fi market appears to be, at best, a major disappointment. Chicago, for example, just decided to [...]

Facebook: The New Goldrush

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been thinking and reading a lot about the economies of Facebook - not whether it’s worth $100-billion or whether the company will do an IPO rather than accept a zillionaire dollar takeover offer.
In particular, I’m talking about the thriving Facebook application landscape that a growing number of companies [...]

Buying a Blackberry Can be Hazardous to Your Health

First, the good news: I got a Blackberry 8800 yesterday - slick design, GPS-enabled…very cool, although it is odd that the 8800 doesn’t come with a camera, while the Curve doesn’t come with GPS.
Getting the Blackberry, however, was a painful experience. Perhaps the first mistake was actually going to a Rogers store, which seemed like [...]

The Internet is Not Boring

Given Mark Cuban credit, he knows how to create a hornet’s nest of controversy - the latest being his contention the Internet is “boring” because it has evolved into a utility and there’s nothing “explosively exciting” on the horizon - mostly because the “last mile” into the home is still a trickle rather than a [...]

Twitter: Where’s the Meat

It’s good to see that Fred Wilson is so excited that Twitter has introduced some new tools to invite friends into the fold - good news for anyone who has been patiently waiting for a Twitter invitation or terribly anxious for a way to easily invite friends.
Putting aside why you’d ever want to use Twitter [...]

Wordpress Videos

Although I’ve used Wordpress for more than a year, I’m just starting to get beyond just writing and inserting images. Given I seem to learn better from seeing rather reading, I’ve been happy to find a bunch of really good Wordpress videos recently. In thinking about it, short, well-produced tutorials may be a sweet spot [...]

Exploring the World Beyond Tech

My Google Reader is chock-a-block with tech blogs - the obvious ones such as TechCrunch, Mashable, A VC, GigaOm; those written by friends such as Mathew Ingram, Rob Hyndman and Aiden Henry; and a bunch of Apple blogs such as The Unofficial Apple Weblog and A New Mac Tip Every Day.
But as the past few [...]

Things I Don’t Get…

1. Why has Sony insisted on maintaining its proprietary Memory Stick? When I was looking at digital cameras, Sony wasn’t even in the running because of the memory issue.
2. Mary Meeker. Even after being embarrassed during the dot-com boom as more of a promoter than an equity analyst, she’s still alive, well and bumbling along. [...]

What About a Web 2.0 Aggregrator?

Earlier this week, Steve Rubel had a terrific post on the challenges facing content owners at a time when consumers can compile the information they want (RSS feeds, images, video) into personalized portals such as Pageflakes or Windows Live. He contends this will make it increasingly difficult for content owners to make money online.
“If almost [...]

Okrut: Does Anyone Care?

Apparently, Okrut is coming out with a new look and feel. The question is does anyone care outside of Brazil where Okrut, which is Google’s social networking service, is extremely popular? How is it that Google can have such a strong brand and large followings for search, blogging and GMail but be such a minor [...]

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