January 2008
14 posts
Urban Interactive →
I just stumbled across Urban Interactive today. I think my friend Joy participated in one of their games a few months ago. It’s basically like a real-world quest game, where you try to accomplish tasks based on clues given to you on a mobile device. I think live actors are also interspersed throughout the experience to help move the story along. Kind of like a less intense version of one...
21 →
I was watching Clover Field last week and saw the trailer for 21. I’ve had “Bringing Down the House” on my reading list for a while and ripped through it in 3 days. Great book… the movie doesn’t look as good, unfortunately.
EBay Chief Whitman, Web Pioneer, Plans to Retire -... →
Farewell Meg. It was a great run.
Bug Labs Store Open for Business! →
I want a camera on my blackberry
I never used to think digital cameras in phones were very useful. But since I’ve been using Tumblr, I find myself wishing that I had one almost once a day. I think this is one of the first time since Ebay that a web service has started changing my off-line behavior and encouraged me to start making complimentary purchases. We all see things in our everyday lives that are unexpected but...
Apple's Jobs Disses Amazon's Kindle: "Whole... →
I’m sure that this is taken out of context, but I wish Jobs didn’t say that “people don’t read anymore”. It’s just a silly sound bite. We have our fair share of video investments, but for a lot of reasons, I think text still rules.
Chinese Blogger Beaten To Death By Government... →
This is tragic. But I think it also shows that the Chinese government will need to become far more accountable to the ways that they are restricting free speech in the country. Years ago, something like this would have happenned in a corner, and no one would have known that it had taken place. But the penetration of internet in China has provided an outlet for the people to speak critically of...
Vote for Bug Labs - Best of CES 2008
CNET just selected Bug Labs (a Spark/USV portfolio company) as a Best of CES 2008 contender. That is so freaking cool. If you love the idea of community electronics, then I would encourage you to vote for Bug Lab here (we are PV14). You can also text your vote by texting PV14 to 26381 as well. Jeremy has a post as well on the Bug blog. Go Bug Labs! — bijan
WatchHilarious video on “How to Raise Money from VC’s” on 5min. These guys showed this during their pitch to the partnership… I guess you can’t argue with results!
Portfolio News - 5min and Veoh
We announced our latest investment in 5min today, a leader in the online how-to video space. Watch experts show you how to hit a flop shot in golf, change a flat tire, etc. Great content with a very unique and useful player specifically designed for this purpose. Also, Veoh launched its TV Shows tab which unveils its awesome selection of premium content like CSI, The Office, Family Guy, Heroes,...
New Areas of Interest?
Every now and then, people ask me what new areas I am looking into. If you read my blog posts, you can generally get a feel for this. One new area of interest for me is what I’ll call the “Internationalization of the Web”. It’s a pretty broad bucket of stuff. Basically, I think most web services based in the US focus on serving their core US users well. This was...