So I’m sitting in South Park, the self-proclaimed “lunch room of the web”, eating my oversized, plutonium density burrito. I like San Francisco. People are nice here and talk about interesting stuff, and everyone seems to be working on some neat project with extreme goals.
It’s impossible not to get impressed, affected, inspired, humble etc etc. Best part of Web 2.0 so far has probably been Max Levchin, the well-deserved poster boy for the social app sphere. Slide has impressive numbers, and very interesting opportunities for revenue, that I hadn’t really thought about before. Max seemed scary clever, surprisingly funny and all-in-all nice guy. Tim Oreilly was also solid in his “Are we done yet?” presentation, but couldn’t mask the fact that we probably are until the financial crisis (or “coming nuclear winter”, in the words of Marc Andreesen).
Most refreshing/interesting app I’ve come in contact with is Thermo, from Adobe, and Fireeagle, from Yahoo Brickhouse (which office I visited yesterday). I was a member earlier, but (I hate to say it) hadn’t really “got it” earlier. It’s awesome. But I doubt that they’ll be the platform they’re hoping for. My guess is that you must embed that kind of service into the actual operating system, or at least the browser (or what ever means you access the information). Wouldn’t be surprised if Android includes something like it right in the box.
By accident I had lunch with Odie Fernandez, of Rails way-fame. Didn’t really talk much tech stuff, but after meeting him I’m glad to have supported his side track-career as a writer 
I’m surprised of the number of me-too-apps, that all seem to scream out that “our platform creates liquidity in the social network/display advertising/enterprise mashup/etc space like AdWords did for search”. Not very convincing. I never like people sticking to close to a metaphor from previous successful player from their own industry when claiming to push the industry envelope.
Off to watch the Launch pad. I wonder what kind of aggregating social networking spin they’ll give me?
Tags: Fireeagle, launchpad, odie fernandez, san francisco, Slide, Thermo, web 2.0 expo
