It's proverbial that the VCs all sneak out of town in August. Far be it from me to dispell such a useful stereotype: Starting tomorrow I'll be off in Fly Over Country visiting family, friends, and alma mater. Blogging will be light to nonexistent. Assuming I'm not parboiled by too many 90/90 days, I'll be back with you on August 11. In the meantime, may I suggest a visit to some of the fine blogs linked just to the left and down?
5:08:16 PM    

John Robb thinks that AOL is setting itself up to reprise Time-Warner's failed Pathfinder strategy of the mid-'90s. (I was at CompuServe at the time, and remember quite well the -splat- that plan made when it hit the ground.)

The strategy is called branded content bundling (or aggregation). It was bogus then, and it's even more bogus now with Internet habitués quite willing to go hunting for their own content. Evidently all those who had an intersection with the clue-by-four last time around are now out of power at AOL-TW.

Hat tip to Ole Eichhorn, who's on a roll of late.
2:15:10 PM    

Chris Alden is made to feel like a gray-hair by the casual comment of a young cousin, and reflects on the future of e-mail in light of young people's acceptance of IM and Internet in general. He's onto something: e-mail is broken in many ways, but it's an established way of social and business life for many of us. It's called an installed base problem, and it includes people as well as systems.
9:02:33 AM