Web 2 Ireland

A touch of Deja Vu.

After seeing some recent investment activity into P2P plays, I was thinking of Clever Cactus. [because it was simply an excellent product vs. some of the ones that i've recently played with....]

Clever Cactus was created by one of the smartest developers I know, Diego Doval when he was based in Ireland.

Unfortunatly he ran into funding problems, before his vision was fully executed.

Anyway, I just spotted this piece
by Om in relation to P2P and a mention of Clever Cactus

“[Personally I would love for Diego to bring back Clever Cactus.]”

A clever initiative
from Christian at BV Capital

GigaOM : How To Build A Bullet Proof Start-Up

Mark Tluszcz is from Mangrove Capital – the VC firm that invested in Skype.

I heard Mark speak last week, and here are some related podcasts in relation to his investment strategies @ web2.0, etc

Peer Pressure A Conversation with Mark Tluszcz and here on vpod.tv

Niall and Om give a shout out to Web2Ireland, the Web2Ireland event and the issues @ International and Web2.0

Om and Niall PodSessions: International Next Net

Tags: web2ireland, onpodsessions

JPMorgan just published a report on possible M&A activities between the Web2.0 elephants.

JPMorgan Document

Thanks Ben for the tip

Pictures from the Web 2.0 event inThe Helix on 27th April

www.flickr.com/photos/maryowey/

Insighful coverage from Suw on a recent talk at xTech

Xtech 2006: Paul Graham – How American are Startups?.

I’m a fan of Paul Grahams – his book “hackers and painters” is a must read for anyone in the technology space.

Now some of us are old enough to remember the days before the World Wide Web. Some of us can remember when being a hacker was really cool and Dutch techno-anarchistens held geeky log-ins in muddy campsites with an InterTent network and a mighty 128Kbps link to the outside world.

We can remember how the web as a technology seemed so lame — being able to communicate with other people rather than browse documents was so much more fun.

We had bulletin board systems and multiple user dimensions to say nothing of usenet news and internet relay chat. But that was in 1993 before the clean cut MBA value seekers intruded on this introspective world. The money came and blew the lid off a male, twenty-something idealistic world (that smelled more than a little of computer labs and cheesy socks). Suddenly the web was the thing, because it could be made to look like TV and you could sell stuff through it and everyone got very sweaty palms.

Only the Web sites hit terminal complexity in their design and their ambition and too many people realised that they were still talking to themselves rather than to the customers they believed were out there in their millions. And a lot of people lost a lot of money, but those with cheesy feet came out of their labs and got mortages and joined the real world on the back of it.

Now suddenly, once again, everyone is saying its all about communication again, and not publishing. It’s about individual enfranchisement and it’s being branded Web2.0.

Which is fine, but we’ve been here before. We can give it new labels, like blogging and podcasting, and the technology might be easier and faster to use for many more people, but sometimes, the more things change, the more they stay the same. The Internet was always about communication and there are still a whole load of things we got excited about a dozen years ago which have never yet come to pass, like the idea that enfranchisement of communication might really reach out to corners of society that are mute.

And the hungry investment money is flexing itself again, chasing down the quarry of the latest re-branded enthusiasm.

Only this time I hope I get a piece of the action.

Following up from a recent lunch with 3i – they have posted some great material @ Web2.0 space.

iSIGHT| Venture forward with Technology