Saturday, February 15, 2003

Does that make it "Bloggle"? Google Buys Pyra: Blogging Goes Big-Time. NOTE: This is a slightly edited version of a special column running in tomorrow's San Jose Mercury News. We're posting... [Dan Gillmor's eJournal] Google acquires Pyra Labs/Blogger. Wow. This is pretty damned huge for blogging. Dan Gillmor has reported that Google is acquiring Pyra Labs, creator of Blogger. Strange that Google is getting closer to content creators. I see the concern about changing their algorithms to give Blogger results higher priority, but what's interesting is that Google is becoming more of a publishing service by acquiring Blogger. In any case it's great news. Track the discussion using Blogdex, here and here [ia/ - information architecture news] Google buys Pyra. So the news is out: Google has bought Pyra Labs, the company I co-founded. I'm really pleased with the deal because Pyra's always struggled for the resources to really do cool stuff with Blogger. As Ev says in Gillmor's article, the acquisition gives Pyra, "resources to build on the vision I've been working on for years." It's also an exciting development for weblogs in general, and one that's sure to raise their level of exposure. What does this mean for the Lafayette Project? Not much. As I said on Friday, we're not doing weblog search, and we had no intention of going up against Google. [megnut] 10:53:15 PM    Questions? Comments? Flames? []

What a race! 2 down, 3 to go. Whooowheee, that was fun to watch! Race 2 of the 2003 America's Cup was won by Alinghi. This time New Zealand actually showed up and made it a real race, after yesterday's gear buster. The Kiwis led for much of the race, but Alinghi pulled off a masterful pass on the final downwind leg, powering over NZ on a tight reach, jibing, then holding NZ off until the jibe to the finish. While the upwind legs were boring, the final duel had me yelling at the television. This is going to be a fun series! The thrilling finish very nearly made up for the questionable start, which was delayed nearly three hours while the Kiwi race committee waited for conditions to NZ's liking. The wind was clearly sufficient for racing, but the committee made a pretense of asking the spectator fleet to move--even though they weren't in the way. Sorry fellas, we're going to be suspicious the rest of the series. 10:47:25 PM    Questions? Comments? Flames? []

© Copyright 2002-2005 Fred Sampson. Last update: 5/21/05; 10:16:07 PM.