Don's Daily Filter

I am going to try an experiment publishing a daily reading list...the stories I find interesting each day. I read lots of blogs and lots of news stories, and monitor several new clipper services. Most of what I read is only mildly interesting. I will try to boil it all down to only the most interesting stuff. OK, here is my list for today.

Windows bumps Unix as the top server OS  Windows has been the market share leader in terms of units for several years but 2005 was the first year that Windows Server also was the revenue dollar leader. I remember 10 or 15 years ago when Windows was ONLY a desktop OS. It was hard to imagine using Windows as a server. Today many think the same about Linux. Watch out, history could repeat itself.

Got Favorites? Technorati now tracks 28.4 million web logs. The number of blogs is doubling every 5 months. Technorati has introduced a new feature called Technorati Favorites where you can list your favorite blogs. You can share your list, and perform searches against just your favorites. Services like Memeorandum, TailRank, Findory, Blogniscient, Megite, and others, are trying to help users sort through the millions of blogs to find the most relevant content. The major search engines can find anything for you, but they can't recommend the good stuff to you.

MySpace is the new blogosphere MySpace is the number one most trafficked web site in terms of page views, and in the top 10 in terms of unique visitors. MySpace is basically a personalized blog where teenagers connect with their friends and share photos, music, and leave notes for each other. It is HUGE!! Both my teenage boys use MySpace for several hours each day. It is THE place for teenagers to meet and share. Parents and schools are worried about sexual content and adults posing as teens. The potential is there but my sons have never seen any issues. Most adults have never used MySpace and don't understand the community nature of the site. It is a big deal, and will expand into other areas like music distribution. It will be a big business. News Corp acquired MySpace for $580M last year.

Can Yahoo do content? Cnet has an extensive story about Lloyd Braun and Yahoo's attempts to capitalize on TV, Movies, and music.  AOL tried to create synergy with Time Warner. Disney is trying to do it with ABC. Yahoo is trying to create synergies with Hollywood by hiring one of its own Lloyd Braun. The theory makes a lot of sense. The payoffs would be huge. Many big players have tried...and they have all failed. There has been lots of brains and lots of money applied to this opportunity without success.

Brightcove - the new online media network I wrote this blog yesterday but it is relevant to some of the other stories listed today. Brightcove could be the one that dis-intermediates the network TV oligopoly. Think of Brightcove as the eBay of video, creating a marketplace for suppliers of video content, and consumer buyers.

How the VC business works If you ever wondered how VCs get compensated you should read this. It seems that some VCs envy the deal that hedge fund managers get. Nice work if you can get it. Also see this post from Jeff Bussgang at IDG Ventures.

Let me know if this list is useful, and what other subjects interest you.

Comments

[Matthew]

Very nice. You are creating a memetracker by human editors, different from algorithm based approach.

[Don Dodge]

Matthew, Thanks for your comment. I know you are one of the founders of Megite, and appreciate your comments.

Actually I use Memeorandum, Megite, TailRank, and my own feedlist (OPML) to filter the stories. Then I personally filter those stories down to 5 that I really find interesting, and add my own commentary.

This is an experiment to see if I find it useful and rewarding, and to see if readers find it useful.

[Ryan Williams]

I think it's very useful. The memetrackers can tell you what everybody is linking too, but it could be a whole bunch of mildly interesting stuff as you state and is easy to get overloaded still. Having you (and other top tech/vc bloggers) boil that down to a few really interesting things is a helpful approach for filtering.

[Alex Pooley]

Don Dodge's Daily Digest.

I like it!

[Don Dodge]

Hey Alex, Great suggestion. I am changing the name to Don Dodge's Daily Digest effective immediately. Thanks.