Sophie Vandebroek
CAMBRIDGE, MASS. — Does Xerox CTO Sophie Vandebroek have trouble with basic numberwork? At MIT's EmTech conference, she asked the audience how many people had "avatars" — digital characters for virtual worlds like Linden Lab's Second Life. From what I saw, half a dozen people out of some 300 attendees raised their hands. "Perhaps 25 percent!" she said, as she played a video showing off Xerox's presence in Second Life. I am not sure what is more disturbing: Vandebroek's miscounting, which one might blame on the bright stage lights, or her inability to calculate the lack of a return on investment in Second Life, which has no such excuse. Here's a clip of Vandebroek talking in Second Life:
More »
blogging for dollars
JAMESON'S IRISH BAR, BOSTON, MASS. — If you'd gotten over that
unclothed photo of Robert Scoble and Naked Conversations coauthor Shel Israel, here's a new one to haunt your memories. Scoble,
Fast Company's pet videoblogger and social media guru, was in Boston for the EmTech conference, and he wanted to go to a bar. Why? So he could sit at a table and ignore everyone around him, constantly reloading FriendFeed, the Web-activity tracker on which he relentlessly documents his nonparticipation in the world which surrounds him. Two startup executives who had just watched the Red Sox play at Fenway Park with Scoble told me he Twittered nonstop through his visit to the Green Monster. The only time he was separated from his iPhone? When he lent it to me to take a picture of him. That didn't turn out, but I found another pic Scoble had taken of himself, fresh out of the shower.
EmTech
CAMBRIDGE, MASS. —
Fast Company videoblogger Robert Scoble, who has discovered in the Web a popularity which escaped him in high school, has been moderating a panel titled "Web 2.0/Web 3.0 Mashup" at MIT's EmTech conference for the past hour. There are people from Facebook, Six Apart, and Plaxo on stage with him. With no introduction, Scoble launched into a meandering conversation about data portability, online video, URIs, social TV guides, and the Olympics. An hour later, it still has no sign of going anywhere. Joseph Smarr of Plaxo talks very fast. Dave Morin of Facebook seems very tired. Sample quote: "The pace of change is not indexable from a central service." The audience appears to be stunned into stupor. Does it matter that nothing is being said? Perhaps not; perhaps the point is to show this audience of technology generalists how insubstantial the obsessions of the Valley's geek set are.
superficial
CAMBRIDGE, MASS. —
Technology Review editor-in-chief Jason Pontin is bursting with pride. No,
not the Clay Aiken sort: He is married — to a woman, one must specify, since this is Massachusetts — and the couple is expecting a child in mid-October. Oh, and his magazine has won some large number of awards from
an industry trade publication, placing behind
CRN for best online community. But how to explain his choice of wardrobe at the EmTech conference he is hosting? His hosiery recalls Nathan Lane's in
The Birdcage. On the surface, Pontin's straightness remains as plausible as the
former West Oakland resident's British accent.
Update: Pontin adds, "Please mention my stylishly skinny Nudie jeans from Sweden." You're not helping, Jason.
valleyspeak
CAMBRIDGE, MASS. — "That is not my presentation, although it would be very sexy if it were," said Ning CEO Gina Bianchini, as she took the stage at MIT's EmTech conference here, with someone else's Windows desktop blown up on a screen behind her. Alas, her presentation, a canned version of Ning's stump speech, was not sexy. Bianchini routinely talks up Ning, a set of tools for developing customized social networks, as if it were a platform, and takes audiences through a tiresome parade of the free websites created by her customers. MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn are "walled gardens," she says — techspeak for an online service whose contents are tightly controlled by its owner. But listening to Bianchini, I couldn't help thinking that "walled garden" is code for "an idea I wished I'd come up with."
vinod khosla
CAMBRIDGE, MASS. — At MIT's EmTech conference, venture capitalist Vinod Khosla made a shocking assertion: Electric cars are irrelevant. Unless some unlikely breakthrough in battery technology comes about, they will never take enough of the market to matter. This is a financially convenient argument for Khosla to make: He has invested heavily in biofuels startups. But he raises a point few in the privileged West think about: Will the rising middle classes of China and India buy a $25,000 Prius, or a $2,500 Tata Nano?
More »
jason pontin
CAMBRIDGE, MASS. — I'm here in the hub of the universe for EmTech, a conference thrown by
Technology Review, MIT's magazine of self-importance. Jason Pontin, who is the magazine's editor-in-chief, publisher, and whatever title he's added last week, has just introduced Vinod Khosla, one of the venture-capital industry's brightest names. But is Pontin gazing raptly at Khosla, taking in his every word of wisdom? No, he is not. I can see his laptop screen from six rows away. He is using Twitter, a recent
topic of obsession for him. This grand chronicler of innovation is whiling away the duration of Khosla's presentation 140 characters at a time. Oh, wait! I take that back. Now he's reading Valleywag.
Valleywag
