NASDAQ hack?

The NASDAQ is investigating “erroneous trades routed from another exchange” which caused Google shares to drop to one cent in the final minutes of trading on the last day of the third quarter.  The trades were canceled and presumably all derivatives trades were adjusted as well, but no further information has been released about the cause.  Given the imperfect nature of all computer systems and the chaotic trading environment in the wake of the credit crisis, the “glitch” scenario is plausible.   I’m not an expert on trading systems (though I did sell systems Wall Street firms and the NYSE for IBM), but I will say this event is extremely unusual.  What caught my eye was that this has happened to Google once before.  If you were a hacker trying to cause mischief in the stock market which stock would you choose?

Launch!

In our infinite wisdom, we decided to launch ved.io on the Jewish holiday after an almost 800 point down day on the stock market. Strangely, I didn’t find Fred Wilson’s post about startup funding being the first to go, or Jason Calacanis’ post about startups facing dismal prospects discouraging. Probably because we’ve been at this too long to take a short term view. Whatever happens, we did what we set out to do more than a year ago: show the debates annotated with facts. It’s enough to be on our way.

Ten Foot vs. Two Foot Experience

As interactivity comes to the television, user interface designers distinguish between the two foot experience of sitting at a computer and the ten foot experience of watching the living room TV.  The ten foot interface is usually a remote control rather than a keyboard, and interactivity is therefore limited relative to the more user-directed experience of the internet.  But as televisions grow larger, the distinction is more about the desire rather than the ability to interact.  People will always want the passive experience of watching television, but the TV is becoming more and more ready to deliver the full interactivity of the computer.

Elgato: “Our Evil Plan is Working, MuHaHaHa”

This is a rant: Elgato makes great products for capturing video onto your computer. But the authorization number for the software is only included on an easily misplaced card, not on the manual or disc envelope as is standard industry practice. There’s no way to reinstall the software without the code, and Elgato doesn’t answer customer service email inquiries. So they get another $80 from me for the same software I already purchased with their hardware because I lost the piece of paper.

Remember Interactive Television?

The term interactive television has awful connotations: failed, expensive experiments by media companies, klunky, slow, simplistic interfaces on set-top boxes, kludgy two-screen interfaces. Despite some wonderful efforts (Who Wants to be a Millionaire comes to mind), television is just not the right medium for interactivity. But the web is. Are media companies convinced that interactive video is dead because of these bad executions? You’d think so because now that we have a truly interactive medium and standardized interface, we’re not seeing much interactive video content from the media. I may be biased, but I think this will change soon and huge.

Silicon Alley: Powered by Brooklyn

Silicon Alley is generally thought of to be the area in Manhattan between Union Square and expanding somewhat north of Flatiron building. But in my experience the talent and creativity that feeds the New York web startup scene is largely focused in Brooklyn. It’s nothing new that Brooklynites have exhibited ambition and aspirations, but Brooklyn is in the midst of a Renaissance. It’s culturally vibrant and neighborhoods recently reminiscent of demilitarized zones have become trendy and upscale. More often than not, when my neighbors talk of leaving (or do leave) Tribeca, it’s for Brooklyn. And as I look for talented people to work with on ved.io, I often find myself crossing that famous old bridge. My co-founder in ved.io who now lives in rural Connecticut – guess where he’s from?

TechCrunch50

We just did our demopit day at TC50 and it was a great experience – sore feet, lost voices and all from a 13 hour day.   Met lots of great people, and ved.io was well received. 

Can’t Judge a Book by its Cover?

Of course you can’t. You can only get a first impression, and first impressions are powerful. It’s fairly obvious that these are just the author’s initials. It’s not a bad graphic to put on the cover. But really, he’s had these initials his whole life – he knows how this could be interpreted. Now I’m going to read this book because it looks like fun, but I can’t help thinking there’s a hint here to take this (nonfiction) story with a grain of salt.

Related Content Shown on CNN During Dem Convention

It’s finally happened: after years of news scrolls showing unrelated headlines during newscasts, CNN last night had a box at the bottom of the screen showing facts about the speakers and candidates.  This of course required a little preparation to gather facts, and the facts could have been more interesting.  However, here’s the first example I’ve seen (granted I don’t watch much TV) where the content shown on the screen was not random.  I believe the future of news is one obvious step beyond this: giving context to video stories with related interactive content.

Rooting for Virgin America

Virgin America is in beta.  On our flight back from San Francisco, we couldn’t find a working power outlet, the satellite signal routinely broke (it didn’t work at my seat at all on our way out, and there are many features of the “Red” interactive service just not working yet.  But these are small complaints.  Virgin is embarked on a bold, user-centric rethinking of air-travel, and I’m sure they’ll overcome the problems.  I’m rooting for them.