Tuesday a big story broke that could have impacted millions of web users. A researcher discovered a major security flaw involving the Domain Name System (DNS), and instead of selling the information or using it to market himself he went to major internet vendors and discussed the vulnerability with them. Today Microsoft, Cisco, Sun and […]
Last week stories broke about a significant change in the way Internet addressing will be managed. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has opened up the process of assigning new top level domains (TLD’s), such as .com and .net. Potentially any string of letters could be a TLD — maybe we’ll see […]
Saturday night Gabe and I had a very enjoyable experience at Restaurant Eve in Old Town Alexandria. Eve is the crown jewel of the restaurant group owner Cathal Armstrong and his wife Meshelle have built in Alexandria over the past three years. http://www.restauranteve.com/home/index.html We’ve eaten there once before, and originally intended to just have a […]
Last night I attended a big social media gathering at MCCXXIII (1223 for those not into roman numerals) on Connecticut Avenue. It was pulled together quickly by Robert Scoble, noted tech blogger and roving fastcompanyTV producer. He hooked up with Andrew Feinberg of Capitalvalley.net to preach the gospel of new media to Capitol Hill. Gary […]
An interesting survey came out of the telecom industry’s NXTComm show last week in Las Vegas. It’s been getting a lot of play in trade publications. Attendees to the show were asked a number of questions, including whether they thought the Internet could ever “break” due to increasing traffic levels. The study was conducted by […]
It’s been a few days since Microsoft reportedly walked away for good from discussions with Yahoo, and the vitriol being hurled at Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang is really something to behold. There certainly are facts to back it up, but the uniformity of the conventional wisdom and the level of anger puzzles me. Some of […]
Lately Gabriele and I have been impressed with some wine from Courtney Benham, part of the the Martin Ray family of wines. http://www.martinraywinery.com/about/index.html Recently we’ve had the 2006 Mendocino County Petite Syrah and Pinot Noir. Both are good wines at very good price points — $11.99 and $15.99, respectively. The Petite Syrah was surprisingly light […]
A new survey came out during a Broadband Policy conference here in DC. It was put on by Pike and Fischer, a subsidiary of BNA (http://www.bna.com/about/companies.htm) that looks at broadband from a policy perspective: http://www.broadbandpolicysummit.com/ The survey found that 40% of attendees ranked high speed as the most appealing advanced service, substantially more than services […]
I was interested to read a few days ago that Verizon plans to discontinue its branded social community and move it over to Facebook. Their Facebook page has over 18,000 “fans”: http://www.insidefacebook.com/2008/06/04/verizon-moving-its-branded-social-network-to-a-facebook-page/ Of course it’s very smart of Verizon to particpate in social networks — Strategic Communications Group has its own page, and we regularly […]
Fierce competition is back on the web browser front. After Microsoft crushed the Netscape challenge in the mid to late 90’s, Microsoft Explorer cruised for years as the overwhelming leader in the web browser market. It still is, with approximately 75% market share. But out of the Netscape defeat rose the Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit […]
The WSJ reported today that John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods is back online with a vengeance. He was cleared by the SEC of any wrongdoing relating to anonymous postings on Yahoo Finance message boards. Mackey had attracted media attention by posting critical comments about the rival food chain Wild Oats under the screen name […]
Gabriele and I got back recently from a short San Francisco vacation. We spent Saturday 5/3 in Napa county, after being given some really good advice on what wineries to hit. Of course we didn’t get to a fraction of the original target list, but still had an incredible day. Chateau Montelena (www.montelena.com) is justifiably […]