Where the Gods fight.... A e-mail discussion between John Gilmore and Jon "maddog" Hall about .ORG bids. A few low points where they try to prove to each other whose is bigger (now I understand why penis enlargement isn't popular with geeks; who needs a pill if you can grow 3 inches with just a well-crafted put-down) but otherwise an excellent read. I found out that I can buy domain for $12/year at Joker.com (I'm one of those chumps overpaying $35/year using register.com and easydns.com; which just proves that markets (consumers) are far from well-informed and efficient (the economic theory goes that in well-informed, efficient markets all prices will go down to barely make a profit).     

A new hotness. Here's an example of something I strongly believe in: you can always do better. Furthermore, a way to make money on software is to produce better, unique apps. You would think that web server log analysis should be a solved problem by now. The market for good, useful tools is huge and the problem is old. In the past I used log analysis software and I wasn't impressed. Two leading free tools (Analog and Webalizer) are doing industrial-strength but very uninspired job. They are old and busted. They are Ford Ts. They don't go beyond producing basic stats and occasional graphs. (note: I haven't used commercial tools, maybe they're much better). I felt that it could be done better, that we need a Ferrari of log analysis tools, a new hotness. Unfortunately I didn't know how to build this new hotness but when I saw it I knew this is it. I'm not going to bore you with the details, just see their 60 seconds demo. I was blown away by simplicity and usefulness. It really takes analyzing logs to the next level.

Interesting: the author of Analog works there. Is this really a 3 person company?

One painful thing: they use "patent pending technology". Ouch. No matter how smart they are and how great their ideas are, this software doesn't do anything a smart developer couldn't figure out. It's just extremely well executed good idea. Good but not earth-shattering. Parsing log files isn't a rocket science. I hate patent system for encouraging this land grab mentality in people.     

Information business as a relationship. Bruce Sterling at his best. His analogy of information business and relationships is great.