Rob Freeborn's Comments

Feld Thoughts : Online Reading For A Three Day Weekend

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:19:59 +0000

So I just saw a feature in Gmail that is in line with this discussion. Gmail saw that there was an address in the email that I received and, unobtrusively, gave me an option in the top right column to map that address. In a way, the feature was almost "too" unobtrusive as I have no idea how long this feature has been living in Gmail interface! Maybe it's something more like this that Outlook enables - or something similar to how Blackberry handles phone number, highlighting them and enabling an appointment to be automatically set based on some predefined search parameters focused on the content of the email. r.

Feld Thoughts : Online Reading For A Three Day Weekend

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 16:14:36 +0000

Wouldn't the logical problem be that you don't WANT every date that floats by your email inbox to become associated with your calendar? One way that I could see this being useful is if every time I dragged an email (or task or anything else) onto the Calendar folder in Outlook that it automagically grabbed the date info and pre-populate that for me. The debate, in my mind at least, is quite similar to opt in vs. opt out. Do you want ALL date info embedded in email associated to your calendar or just the date info you are interested in? r.

Feld Thoughts : Facebook for the Enterprise

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 16:09:14 +0000

I hope you don't mind but I'm going to direct EVERYONE I can that I meet in the enterprise space to this blog post.....FB for the enterprise....we finally have social networking that is actually worthwhile?!?! r.

Feld Thoughts : Why Do People Find Email So Difficult To Deal With?

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 16:05:24 +0000

This thread made me think about something I read a few years ago - "Managing Incoming Email", a .pdf by Mark Hurst. Here's a link to his page, the .pdf I noted is 4th on the list http://www.creativegood.com/team/mark.html r.

Feld Thoughts : Ted's Demise and The Kindle's Rise

Thu, 5 Jun 2008 09:34:39 +0000

Brad -
I soooooo agree with you about TED....I never understood the idea of trying to compete against the low cost structure of the budget carriers when you have the high cost structure of the traditional carriers.

It's kind of like the early day of the internet when a company would get the question "Aren't you losing money on every transaction?" and the answer is "Yeah, but we'll make it up in volume!!" ;-)

rob

Paul Kedrosky: Infectious Greed : Wind Power Potential

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 12:14:36 +0000

A bit unfortunate how the core of the potential wind power is so far removed from the greatest urban population centers....It would be interesting to see how this map overlays something that shows effective transmission distances to better understand how well this potential capacity can be harvested and utilized.

r.

Feld Thoughts : Modest Deals, Happy Deals

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 07:04:20 +0000

While the values of these deals aren't too high - how do the multiple's rank for what you are looking to do?

In the case of Sphere they had taken in $3.5mm in two rounds (don't know % equity or valuations at these points) but at face value turning that investment into a $25mm buyout in ~ 2 yrs can't be too bad.

Farecast, well, not as high of a multiple by taking ~ $20.6mm and tripling that.

The first thing I thought when reading your post was that there was a disconnect between the now common thread of "build it faster, lighter, cheaper" and the you're first measure of a sub $100mm deal being of modest size. In the end, isn't it the % return that counts the most?