May 2006 (This essay is derived from a keynote at Xtech.) Startups happen in clusters. There are a lot of them in Silicon Valley and Boston, and few in Chicago or Miami. A country that wants startups will probably also have to reproduce whatever makes these clusters form. I've claimed that the recipe is a great university near a town smart people like. If you set up those conditions within the US,

Verizon Wireless(s vz)(s vod) is hauling COWs and COLTs to Kansas City and Detroit, but it’s not going to any livestock show. These COWs and COLTs are cells on wheels and cells on light trucks, basically mobile base stations Verizon can roll out in emergencies or at big events where it knows voice and data demand will peak. Carriers have been using these temporary cells for years, but what’s inter

Every so often, a controversy erupts over something that seems relatively simple: Namely, the concept of linking to (and thereby giving credit to) the source of a news report. In one of the most recent examples, Instapaper founder Marco Arment — who broke the news about a wave of corrupted apps in the Apple store — kept track of both media outlets that repeated the news and whether they gave credi

In a widely expected move, Facebook (s fb) and Yahoo (s yhoo) have agreed to put aside a ruinous lawsuit that would have locked the two Silicon Valley giants into a lengthy patent throwdown. The news comes via Kara Swisher of AllThingsD who reports that the two firms will not only put sheathe their lawyers but also enter a wide-ranging content and advertising partnership. The report says that the

Your #1 competitor starting out will always be the BACK button, nothing else. – Garry Tan Suppose you have an idea for a startup, and then do some research only to discover there are already similar products on the market. You become disheartened and wonder if you should abandon your idea. In fact, the existence of competing products is a meaningful signal, but not necessarily a negative one.  Her

Updated. I have been saying this for a while – Google is forgetting its core DNAand instead chasing Facebook and other competitors. It isn’t going to end well. Others such as influential publisher & technology observer Tim O’Reilly are starting to wave the red flag as well. In a Google+ post bemoaning the emphasis of “time on site” as a worthwhile metric for an information utility like Google, O’R