betaworks
fieldnotes network of companies team

  1. Posted by aweissman

    Dec 1st, 2008
    “ I DON’T believe that Twitter is Journalism. You can’t replace the freaking New York Times with Twitter. Yes, the New York Times is busted, but I don’t want my news in 140 characters. I do believe that Twitter is entertaining and can make us all smarter as ideas get exchanged. That’s a fantastic combination for now. ”
    — Howard Lindzon.  Yes
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  2. Posted by aweissman

    Dec 1st, 2008
    “ My friend Stewart Brand, who is now 69, has been arranging his life in blocks of 5 years. Five years is what he says any project worth doing will take. From moment of inception to the last good-riddance, a book, a campaign, a new job, a start-up will take 5 years to play through. So, he asks himself, how many 5 years do I have left? He can count them on one hand even if he is lucky. So this clarifies his choices. If he has less than 5 big things he can do, what will they be? ”
    —

    Conceptual Trends and Current Topics (via davehyndman)

    Brand is awesome.  Check out the Clock of the Long Now.

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  3. Posted by aweissman

    Dec 1st, 2008
    Neat bitly: How to Add a bit.ly Info Chicklet to Each of Your Tumblr PostsHere’s a cool little javascript any Tumblr users can add to their blogs that adds a bit.ly Info Chicklet to each post. Add the following line to your Tumblr Custom HTML inside the {BlockPosts} section: <a href="javascript:var%20Bitly={url:'{Permalink}'},e=document.createElement('script');e.setAttribute('language','javascript');e.setAttribute('src','http://bit.ly/bookmarklet/load.js');document.body.appendChild(e);void(0);">Info for this post by bit.ly</a> You’ll now have a little button after each post people can click to view a bit.ly overlay about that page. This overlay shows traffic data, referrers (other websites where links to your blog post appeared), and conversations about your post from Twitter and Friendfeed. The overlay will also of course contain a bit.ly URL for your post that your readers can use if they want to tweet about what you wrote. Try clicking the link below this post that says “Info for this post by bit.ly” to see this in action.Wordpress users, this should be trivially easy for you guys to do as well, but you’ll have to use a different placeholder where this code has {Permalink}. We’ll work on packaging this up as a Wordpress plugin soon to make things easier on you.

    Neat

    bitly:

    How to Add a bit.ly Info Chicklet to Each of Your Tumblr Posts

    Here’s a cool little javascript any Tumblr users can add to their blogs that adds a bit.ly Info Chicklet to each post. Add the following line to your Tumblr Custom HTML inside the {BlockPosts} section:

    <a href="javascript:var%20Bitly={url:'{Permalink}'},e=document.createElement('script');e.setAttribute('language','javascript');e.setAttribute('src','http://bit.ly/bookmarklet/load.js');document.body.appendChild(e);void(0);">Info for this post by bit.ly</a>

    You’ll now have a little button after each post people can click to view a bit.ly overlay about that page. This overlay shows traffic data, referrers (other websites where links to your blog post appeared), and conversations about your post from Twitter and Friendfeed. The overlay will also of course contain a bit.ly URL for your post that your readers can use if they want to tweet about what you wrote. Try clicking the link below this post that says “Info for this post by bit.ly” to see this in action.

    Wordpress users, this should be trivially easy for you guys to do as well, but you’ll have to use a different placeholder where this code has {Permalink}. We’ll work on packaging this up as a Wordpress plugin soon to make things easier on you.

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  4. Posted by aweissman

    Dec 1st, 2008
    “ Taking this a step further, we think that an Internet media company (using just one example) can (and should) be structured not as AOL and Yahoo were or are, but instead as a loose collection of similarly related businesses (similar in philosophy of how you interact with users, how you build your service, how you view data, how you view inter-relating with other businesses), that work together - cross pollinate - in a number of different but flexible and fluid ways. ”
    —

    It implies a level of uniform ownership that I don’t think you actually mean.

    No, I actually mean a completely non-uniform level of ownership in things.

    Betaworks.Tumblr

    Rafer sez:
    @AWeissman I’m not sure that calling it a “media company” works here. It implies a level of uniform ownership that I don’t think you actually mean.

    (via rafer)

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  5. Posted by aweissman

    Dec 1st, 2008
    “ Have we not learned anything from AOL and Yahoo? Kludging disparate factions of a community together in an attempt to be its center never works. In fact, it goes against the very essence of Meetup itself—a loose collection of groups centered around focused interests, with lots of cross pollination but no central hub. ”
    —

    Charlie O’Donnell.

    What Charlie is writing about here actually represents something more fundamental that as just relates to who will run the NY Tech Meetup.

    At betaworks we believe that “loosely coupled” as a concept goes beyond computing programs and can be applied to organizational forms, indeed to companies themselves and how they are structured.  Taking this a step further, we think that an Internet media company (using just one example) can (and should) be structured not as AOL and Yahoo were or are, but instead as a loose collection of similarly related businesses (similar in philosophy of how you interact with users, how you build your service, how you view data, how you view inter-relating with other businesses), that work together - cross pollinate - in a number of different but flexible and fluid ways.

    At the core is not a central hub but a central focus (in betaworks’ case, the now, context and social webs).  That focus disseminates out to the network (or participants) in a number of ways - through knowledge, aggregated deals etc. - in ways we are still getting better at.  But it’s there, and it’s core to what we are trying to accomplish.

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  6. Posted by aweissman

    Nov 30th, 2008
    “ There is a moment in the farmers market where the tomatoes are really cheap. The potatoes, the apples are really cheap, and you buy them then, and you know, it’s a really good deal… you don’t have to wait for Nancy Pelosi or Barack Obama or Collin Peterson to get their act together on this issue. You can act now… what’s happening around this country is we’re building an alternative food economy. It’s being done without virtually any support from the government. And it’s burgeoning ”
    — Michael Pollan (via Scott Heiferman)
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  7. Posted by aweissman

    Nov 29th, 2008
    “ In many ways, Twitter is a re-incarnation of the old Unix philosophy of simple, cooperating tools. The essence of Twitter is its constraints, the things it doesn’t do, and the way that its core services aren’t bound to a particular interface. ”
    —

    Tim O’Reilly.

    And:

    “There’s a real lesson to Facebook here about giving other services (like Twitter) access to their social graph. They have the best one going, but because they try to keep users coming back to their interface, and even the applications built on their service have to live in Facebook, they end up as a ghetto rather than a true internet service. It’s the data, not the interface! Let other people use your data, build on it, and it will still belong to you. Hold it too tight, and they will compete with it.”

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  8. Posted by aweissman

    Nov 28th, 2008
    bitly: bit.ly meets Google SpreadsheetsUsing the new bit.ly API, I created a simple spreadsheet that transforms any URL entered in the first column into a bit.ly URL in column C. Many of you may find this useful for creating batches of bit.ly URLs.Here’s a link to the spreadsheet:http://bit.ly/spreadsheetTo play with this, make sure you are logged into your Google account before viewing the spreadsheet. Then, from the File menu, choose Create a Copy.

    bitly:

    bit.ly meets Google Spreadsheets

    Using the new bit.ly API, I created a simple spreadsheet that transforms any URL entered in the first column into a bit.ly URL in column C. Many of you may find this useful for creating batches of bit.ly URLs.

    Here’s a link to the spreadsheet:

    http://bit.ly/spreadsheet

    To play with this, make sure you are logged into your Google account before viewing the spreadsheet. Then, from the File menu, choose Create a Copy.
    Comments (View)

  9. Posted by aweissman

    Nov 28th, 2008
    bitly: BigTweet, a very cool new bit.ly / Twitter tool. We just discovered a great tool that uses the bit.ly API called BigTweet. It’s a browser bookmarklet you can use to easily share a page with your friends on Twitter. Just click the bookmarklet, and you can send a message to Twitter along with a bit.ly URL. As you know, we love bookmarklets—you can get the official bit.ly bookmarks here: http://bit.ly/app/tools Or, get the BigTweet bookmarklet at http://bigtweet.com If you want to play with the bit.ly API yourself, check out the API docs: http://bit.ly/apidocs

    bitly:

    BigTweet, a very cool new bit.ly / Twitter tool.

    We just discovered a great tool that uses the bit.ly API called BigTweet. It’s a browser bookmarklet you can use to easily share a page with your friends on Twitter. Just click the bookmarklet, and you can send a message to Twitter along with a bit.ly URL.

    As you know, we love bookmarklets—you can get the official bit.ly bookmarks here: http://bit.ly/app/tools

    Or, get the BigTweet bookmarklet at http://bigtweet.com

    If you want to play with the bit.ly API yourself, check out the API docs: http://bit.ly/apidocs

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  10. Posted by aweissman

    Nov 28th, 2008
    “

    We publish books and give them away for free.

    We’re dedicated to a different kind of publishing, one that connects readers and their communities in new ways. We’re interested in expanding the definition of publishing and re-invigorating the book, which isn’t dead yet, by the way.

    No matter who published them or how good they are, most books go on a familiar trajectory—new, used, shelved permanently, dusty. Ours keep going from hand to hand, generating donations along the way. Readers are generally good people. We give them a chance to get great books for free—and make contributions to organizations and individuals right in their own community, wherever that may be.

    ”
    — Concord Free Press
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