Orlando Makes FastCompany Global Dozen

On a tip from Greg via Doterati, I just checked out FastCompany's list of the dozen best cities on the planet for innovation. Only 3 of the cities were in the US, and kudos to Orlando for being one of the few. The full list, in no particular order, included:

• Beijing
• Hyderabad
• Mexico City
• Kigali
• Seattle
• Orlando
• Calgary
• Moscow
• Barcelona
• Kansas City
• Dohar
• Abu Dhabi

They had this to say about Orlando:

"There's more to Orlando than Mickey. It's now a hub for two burgeoning industries: interactive games -- a lively scene has sprouted around the Electronic Arts studio behind Madden NFL -- and biotech. A new medical complex in the Lake Nona area will house a University of Central Florida med school and a branch of the famed Burnham Institute for Medical Research."

We've known this for years about Orlando and multiple spots across the state. It's nice to see others take notice...

Revision3, MediaDefender and the Building Robot Wars

Over the last couple years I've diligenced a few network security products that are the internet equivalent of automated unmanned air vehicles (UAVs). They offer the ability to scan the [network] horizon for enemy behavior and take aggressive, automated offensive/defensive action.

The magnitude of such automated action usually intrigued me and troubled me at the same time. Today's detailed claim by Revision3 of a MediaDefender denial of service attack on its BitTorrent port reminded me of the robot wars that are coming in air (via UAVs) and in the "cloud" (via MediaDefender and others).

Revision3's post sure sounded like they are setting up to sue MediaDefender (or at least scare up some kind of settlement). Given the business losses, R3's claimed legitimate BitTorrent uses and the precision of the attack (8,000 packets/second at R3's BT port), it's hard to blame them.

At the same time, just as I'm allowed to protect my physical property, it seems like there should be some rights online for protecting my digital property (assuming protective action is taken against entities truly taking my property). I don't know where that line is, but I'm curious how the courts would treat MediaDefender actions if their target really was stealing digital property they are paid to protect. It's likely that most of those cases go unreported, but it would probably depend on the proportionality of their action to the risk of loss.

Anyway, R3's detailed post is an interesting read. Are these the early skirmishes of the building Terminator Robot Wars?

UPDATE: Although I wouldn't blame this one on the robots, a separate BitTorrent-related hack bit Comcast, possibly in response to their BT throttling.

Related images: revision3, mediadefender, bittorrent, comcast, terminator

Digital Savvy: Are you in the savvy six (percent)?

On a twip from @bcavoli, I just reviewed Scarborough Research's "Understanding the Digital Savvy Consumer, An Analysis of the country's most high-tech consumers: where they live, who they are, what they buy, what they watch/listen to/read"

It was an interesting read, with the usual things you might expect about high-tech consumers. Although the Digital Savvy come in all shapes and sizes, making up 6% of the population, I was surprised to see how much I fit the typical profile:

• Male: check
• Young: check (OK, a stretch)
  
• Affluent: check (another stretch)
  
• Single or Married with children: check
• Entrepreneurial: check
• Traveler: check
• Hungry for info online: check
• Heavy, diverse online spending: check
• On the go, rely on cell phone: check
• Download video online: check
• Heavier radio listener: check
• Politically independent: check
• Active & athletic: check

With one glaring exception:

• In the West geographically: negatory

I did notice one theme that took me by surprise: sports. The top two sites visited by the Digital Savvy in the last 30 days were ESPN.com and NFL.com. I'm a big fantasy sports fan, starting a fantasy baseball league back in 1990, but those sites don't come close to being my top visits. My guess is they did their research in the heart of fantasy football season.

As free research reports go, this is worth a read. After doing so, I'd love to hear in the comments what findings, if any, were a surprise to you...

Stupid Entrepreneur Tricks: Blast Email From:Mail Reflector

In between twitter updates tonight, I kept seeing replies to the same email pop up from my Outlook. That email came from an entrepreneur who was looking for "partners" or possibly funding. There's nothing wrong with that, right?

Well, try blasting that to a large VC distribution list, with that same distribution list (mail reflector) in the From: field. Bad combination.

Most of the replies are "take me off your distribution list ASAP", "how did I get on this list" or a whole bunch of "me too's" -- total replies now exceed 4075. A few firms were kind enough to reply to the entrepreneur's question, like OpenView, LightSpeed, and Mayfield, with very public declines.

Kudos to Jack Biddle of Novak Biddle and Elizabeth de Saint-Aignan of Nautic Partners for realizing that every reply only perpetuated the pain.

I was going to reply with a similar refrain, but thought this blog post might do more good...

UPDATE: @peterkaminski noticed too, counting over 75 replies, with better terminology. To be precise, this looks more like a mail reflector than a distribution list.

Microsoft, Facebook and Twispers

Do you remember playing Whispers, Operator, Telephone or Chinese Whispers (UK) -- where one person whispers a phrase to another person, who whispers it another person...until the last person hears something significantly distorted from the original phrase?

I've seen it play out many times in the blogosphere, with the added incentive that bloggers gain traffic/celebrity by twisting things to give their post an "angle" and fuel controversy. The speed of distortion only increases with Twitter. It usually just makes me chuckle, but with the influence/agendas of some bloggers it can border on business tampering. If this weekend's Microsoft/Facebook story continues to morph as it already has in 2 days, there could be billions of shareholder dollars at stake.

Over the weekend Microsoft released the following statement:

"“In light of developments since the withdrawal of the Microsoft proposal to acquire Yahoo! Inc., Microsoft announced that it is continuing to explore and pursue its alternatives to improve and expand its online services and advertising business. Microsoft is considering and has raised with Yahoo! an alternative that would involve a transaction with Yahoo! but not an acquisition of all of Yahoo! Microsoft is not proposing to make a new bid to acquire all of Yahoo! at this time, but reserves the right to reconsider that alternative depending on future developments and discussions that may take place with Yahoo! or discussions with shareholders of Yahoo! or Microsoft or with other third parties.

“There of course can be no assurance that any transaction will result from these discussions.”"

Pretty straightforward, no mention of Facebook, no mention of locking anything down.

John Furrier combined that statement with some rumors he was hearing:

"Why would such a complicated transaction (just Yahoo search with all the headaches and all) be in the cards for Microsoft? After the failed bid for $40 plus billion for all of Yahoo, Microsoft’s intentions are clear. Buy the search business from Yahoo and take that team and go spend at least 20 billion for Facebook. Integrating the search team at Yahoo with Facebook puts a formidable army to take on Google."

Distortion #1: "Microsoft's intentions are clear...go spend at least 20 billion for Facebook." Clear?!? I saw no mention of Facebook in Microsoft's statement. At least John didn't claim anything would be locked down, just a formidable integration.

Robert Scoble then expands on John's post to claim:

"Google is locked out of the Web that soon will be owned by Microsoft. We will never get an open Web back if these two deals happen....It’s Facebook and Microsoft vs. the open public Web."

Distortion #2: "It's Facebook and Microsoft vs. the open public Web" Robert doesn't state any plans by Microsoft to lock anything down, but he does play the tried-and-true "open vs. close" card.

Then, Umair Haque takes Robert's bait (or maybe John's) and adds a litany of open vs. closed buzzwords for Harvard Business Publishing:

"According to an interesting rumour making the rounds: Microsoft is to acquire Yahoo's search business as well as Facebook, and lock both down, to better take on Google....Microsoft is trying to shift from open to closed....That’s what evil really means: coercing others into accepting value destruction....Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Ballmer’s hare-brained scheme for world domination...Microsoft's move is a textbook example of how not to think strategically at the edge...."

Distortion #3: where do I start? Somehow we got from a Microsoft statement about Yahoo to "Microsoft is trying to shift from open to closed" with a couple good vs. evil references for spice.

Not only does this game of Whispers continue with republished out-of-context quotes, but it even comes full circle with John's follow-up Twitter promotion of Umair:
"Furrier: @kellyrfeller you should sub to this blog by Umair http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/haque/ he's strong on strategy"

There have been many names for this whisper game over the years. I wouldn't be surprised one day to find my kids calling it the Blog Whispers game...or maybe even Twispers ;-)