CNet News has reported that Twitter has recently signed for $15-$20 Million in VC funding…
“A source familiar with the negotiations tells me that Twitter signed a term sheet for “either $15 million or $20 million” last week. We’re still trying to find out who is in, but the word is that it’s largely an inside round of funding with one outsider setting the price.”
I am amazed at how companies with no business model in sight can get so much attention and so much funding while other companies that offer a real service are finding it difficult to get funded. Obviously some people think that just having a lot of people using your services makes it valuable. My guess is that Twitter will end up like YouTube. Some company will end up buying them and that company will have to take a hit and pay for whatever it costs to keep it online until they figure out some business model.
I hope you twitter fans like webpages 80% covered in Ads as well as Ads in your twitter feeds.
In other news, I have yet to figure out why people use Twitter.
Today I had the opportunity to attend the Utah CodeCamp and I learned quite a few new things. The main reason I wanted to go was to listen to Mark from Medicity give his presentation on the new Asp.net MVC Framework. He probably gave one of the best presentation there today. I made sure it was clear at work that I had high expectations, so maybe that helped?
So what’s the big deal about the new MVC Framework? Oh it’s only the best thing to happen to Asp.net ever! I never really played with classic Asp much but I’m told it has some similarities and you might feel like things are moving backwards, but it really is for the best. If you’re familiar with how JSP (yuck) works with the MVC pattern then a lot of the new things will feel very familiar.
The biggest shock to me was how they have basically eliminated the page life cycle and the traditional postback. Until now, in Asp whenever you wanted to fire some click event the client posted back to the aspx, recreated the entire page again firing off the pageload and all the other junk and THEN invoked the click event. That has always bugged me! It is such waste of time to recreate an instance of a page that you’re probably going to throw away anyway. That’s because the majority of the time you direct the user to different page when they invoke some event. Now, your buttons invoke specific ‘actions’ on your controller and the controller decides what data to pull from the model and what view to use.
I’m not going to go into much more detail now but I’ll try share any new findings in future posts. Until then, check out Scott Gu’s blog for more info!
Thanks Mark for an awesome presentation!
“How much is an idea worth? Many normal people assume that ideas are valuable, and that if only they could think of one, they might be able to sell it for millions of dollars, like the Pet Rock. On the other hand, many engineers, VCs, and successful entrepreneurs claim that ideas are worthless.”Idea * Judgment * Ability * Determination * Luck = $$$
I just recently started reading Paul Buchheit’s blog and thought i would share this great post on the value of Ideas. Since you all know how obsessed I am with coming up the next big thing you can see why I would find this interesting. I better get moving because I dont have much time if I plan on retiring by 26!
Check it out - http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2008/03/ideas-vs-judgment-and-execution_9197.html
“Cramer claims this product will revolutionize instant messaging the way Apple revolutionized the portable music industry with the iPod. Normally, one might just brush these comments aside as speculation or sheer lunacy. However, a patent, uncovered by AppleInsider today also points to advanced work Apple is doing on the instant messaging front — for the iPhone.”
http://venturebeat.com/2008/04/21/what-do-jim-cramer-kevin-rose-and-the-us-patent-office-know-about-im-on-the-3g-iphone/
An interesting article about Android’s mobile strategy. Check it out.
“Here we are months away from the launch of the first Android hardware, and Google along with the Open Handset Alliance is gearing up for the war against Apple and the vaunted iPhone. However, given the recent revelations regarding Google’s approach to quality control, or lack there of this war may be over before it even gets started.”
Check it out here! - http://androidguys.com/2008/04/21/why-the-iphone-is-poised-to-crush-android/
From the Google Android Blog:
“I’m thrilled to share the news that developers from over 70 countries submitted 1,788 entries to the Android Developer Challenge!
Here are a few facts that I thought were interesting. When we announced the Android Developer Challenge back in January, developers started submitting entries right away but it wasn’t until the April 14 deadline approached that the flood really began. The rate of submissions spiked in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, reaching as high as 170+ submissions per hour.”
Sideclicker is officially turned in! We completed what we could and turned our application in to Google yesterday. I hope we do well! If not, it was dang fun while it lasted. I feel pretty comfortable using the Android SDK and it was a great way to refresh my Java skills. It was also a great reminder of all the things I hate about Java!
So, if we win, dont worry… we’ll remember all the little people who helped us get there.
From SlashDot - http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/08/1932232
“iPhone developers enrolled and active in the iPhone OS 2.0 beta program got a nasty surprise today when Apple inadvertently ‘expired’ the recently released version. While for a beta program this typically would not be an issue, Apple has yet to release a new deployment of the iPhone OS. So developers like myself who use their iPhone for both actual phone and iPod use are bricked. Of note, this particular expired build is just 11 days old.”
