Today DLD in Munich started. Hubert Burda, Jossi Vardi, Martin Sorrell, Joe Schoendorf and Richard Wurman opened the conference with some perspectives on the (digital) future. While Sir Martin was very pessimistic about the future for Western Europe and would go to Bejing or Shanghai being 25 agin, Joe Schoendorf reminded the audience of the 1980s, when Silicon Valley was regarded as the Detroit for the IT industry. That was
Today I started a new wiki using a wikifarm called wikidot (which is a smart tool). Used Wikis all the time but never ran one by myself. It’s different — when you are the one in charge of navigation and the like. Never thought that it woul take me that long. Getting old(er) 😉
Today we spent a few hours in our datacenter in Frankfurt. What does a datacenter loook like? In my younger years I imagined a datacenter a huge cool and clean area with the size of a soccer field. Today, or with the eyes of a 38 year-old, a datacenter more looks like an overheated room full of noise and narrow corridors, where some sloppy sysadmins left their remains of servers packaging. Our datacenter is situated in the heart
Twitter goes Japan. That is the message of today’s announcement of Joi Ito and his Digital Garage VC. Joi invests an undisclosed sum in Twitter to help the microblogging platform to grow in Japan. That should be a perfect match. Congrats Joi, Evan and Biz!
Germany based VC European Founders Fund EFF is said to acquire a stake in Facebook. Run by the three Samwer brothers (sold Alando to ebay, later Jamba to VeriSign) the European Founders Fund normally is known for smaller investments at early stages. Marc Samwer said that EFF’s stake would not match Microsoft’s but they would be the third biggest investor in Facebook after the software company and Hong Kong billionaire Li
Would be computer scientist Donald E. Knuth (later known as the ‘Father of Analysis of Algorithm’), developed a Potrzebie System of Weights and Measures at High School — after a running gag in Mad magazine. The basis of this revolutionary system is that 1 potrzebie is equal to the thickness of the Mad magazine issue #26 or 263348517438173216473 mm. via Jeff
this and much more of that funny stuff via Luke
PETA had placed a tombstone in the Louisville cemetery in which the founder of KFC was buried. It turns out that the gravemarker, which was approved by the cemetery, contained a hidden message: KFC TORTURES BIRDS
amazon.com is said to have spent 4 million dollars for a small stake in woot.com and the option to buy the company when certain milestones will be matched. What is the rationale behind that idea? Certainly woot.com is a great idea — but what would it cost amazon to copy this business model? 1 developer, 4 weeks, 1 purchaser? Perhaps some analyst will help to explain 😉