Java, JotSpot, Better Bad News?

Some days I pinch myself because of the interesting people I get to hang out with and interview and talk business with. Here’s an example.

This morning I interviewed Joe Kraus at JotSpot’s offices (JotSpot is a really interesting Wiki set of services, which to my eye looks like a whole lot better than either Google or Microsoft’s vision for the future of how Office workers will work together, but maybe that’s just me).

Anyway, we talked about everything from whether we’re in the middle of a bubble: “yes” to what his favorite Google keywords were (he explained how JotSpot’s employees brainstorm interesting new keywords, then measure them, and get rid of any that don’t work after a couple of weeks). He wouldn’t share his favorites, though, saying that was his competitive advantage. That’s the third time I’ve heard that from CEOs this month, by the way. Until my video gets up sometime in September you should check out TechCrunch’s writings about JotSpot 2.0. Why take that long to get a video up? Cause I need a bunch in the bag so that I can bootstrap the show. Plus editing and compression are a real PITA. Nothing like slamming out a text blog.

I should have bugged Joe about why he hasn’t been blogging lately. But he’s a busy CEO so I was happy to get an hour with him.

Then it was onto visit Better Bad News, a funny video show. They have me under NDA, but their latest video hints at what I was meeting them about. The thing they showed me? Definitely interesting, I hope to use it soon. Oh, and Jeff Clavier, they said they’re interested in your money too. I’ll hook you and them up, you should see what they are doing. My pitch to them? “Better music and drugs.” Hey, a four-word pitch, what can I say? I told them I was really there to get them to sell their souls to me for $1 a month. They were tough negotiators, though, and talked me up to $1.50.

Then tonight I met up with Simon Phipps and Terri Molini after talking on the phone with Steve Gillmor who told me “don’t send me any traffic” (which promptly make me want to link to him and send him all the traffic he doesn’t want, heheh).

Simon is one of Sun Microsystems’ guys who are working on open sourcing Java and Terri is one of Sun’s PR chiefs.

Simon told us all about the cool places he’s visited and the open source computing trends. He asked me if I was going to get outside of the United States and I told him that I’d like to visit India and China. He’d just been, so figured he’d be excited. He, instead, told me that the bigger computing stories were happening in South Africa and South America where interesting open source movements have taken hold.

I hear Simon has started a blog for the PR team (I couldn’t find it cause it’s too new, but I’ll try to get the URL tomorrow) and that she has a new way to “command and control” bloggers inside Sun. Instead of sending them nasty notes she’ll just call them out in public. Hmmm, if she really does do that that’ll make her blog one that we’ll definitely follow. She was just kidding, of course.

Anyway, now I’m even further behind on answering email. Sigh.

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