TechCrunch just did a review of PayScale. I clicked through and couldn’t get past the homepage.

Is TechCrunch that powerful that they should take down a server. I don’t think so.

Especially not for a company with 10.6 million in venture capital, as reported by Arrington.
Perhaps it was just coincidence in the timing of my HTTP request. I don’t know. Naaa, checked again. Still couldn’t get through.

Here is a screenshot:

No Comments »

I’m a strong believer in the disintermediation of classified ads, which is partially why I chose the name of this blog.

In fact, I heralded Edgeio as a sign of what was to come, especially to the CareerBuilder people I work with.

So, like James Corbett, I was confused by Mike Arrington’s wording of “decentralised job board for tech” , as you can see by my comment on the CrunchNotes post.

Here is the way decentralization for job sites must work.

1. Companies make RSS feeds of their sites available.

2. A decentralized but comprehensive OPML directory of jobs is wrought.

3. The directory is available under an open license.

That’s really all there is to it. And there will still be plenty of ways for service providers to make money.

Now if I were Mike Arrington, I’d continue the lucrative site he’s got. I think that’s great.

In fact, there is nothing wrong with adding those feeds to the Open Job Directory as well. (OPML heads can go to the directory , but it’s all OPML 2.0 inclusion, so you better Grazr it.)
Since the majority of jobs in the Open Job Directory are from paid listing sites, it looks like just another aggregator. But that’s not true. It includes feeds from O’Reilly, Edelman and even Edgeio (OPML) .

And once a critical mass of Businesses are publishing their job feeds, it’ll make those paid-listing sites irrelevant.

No Comments »

This is New York river of jobs. Other cities and job category specific to come any day. API available if you are ineterested.

http://ny.riverofjobs.com/

In fact this is the whole web page. One Rest call:

note: no line break here. I was having trouble with Wordpress blowing out the template

include_once(’http://freecruiter.org/rest/?method=getFeedListItems
&format=html&countryid=1&stateid=33&cityid=1&jobid=0′);

For fun just change the format=html in the URL to format=rss and you’ve got the rss version of the river for yourself.

No Comments »

Einstein asked in 1954, “Can we visualize a 3D universe which is finite yet unbounded?”

Steve Gillmor answers a resounding yes, unleashing a Big Bang that may mark the moment in history when the uncleansed masses bought their liberation from the “man who sold the world”, Nick Carr.
Did he pull a rabbit from his hat? Or has the rabbit died, signifying the conception of a new web.

One where gestures rule over links, where metadata outshines data.

Nothing left here boys, but an empty silk hat.

“Now Frosty, being made of snow, was the fastest bellywhopper in the world.”

No Comments »

It’s truly a gift to be able to create a buzz about a company by saying, “I really don’t know much about it.”

Without really knowing Mike Arrington, I still have an impression of him as an honest individual, and I believe you can really tell those things sometimes. I’ve done it before and I don’t think it was luck.

But one thing he mentions in this post that I think is a misjudgement.

I eagerly await a glimpse of what they will launch, and will have someone else write about it on TechCrunch (as I did with Edgeio, a startup I co-founded).

Probably the right thing to do, but he seems to be implying that a review of Edgeio will be more impartial if he doesn’t write it.

I don’t think this is necessarily true.

If that’s the case, then no journalist in the U.S. can write about the President or other political candidates that they are eligible to vote for. You must either be for or against what that candidate is doing. Does that mean you can’t be objective? Maybe not, but in this day and age, we’ve given up on  objectivity, in favor of transparency.

It’s typical to be overly kind about other people’s projects. Supportive is more likely than candid, with some light criticism. I see this every day. It’s a corporate problem because people don’t want to alienate themselves with their bosses.

On the other hand, many people tend to be very critical of their own work, though in the case of a startup you would expect excitement and optimism.

Honesty and the best intentions for the company are not what makes people succeed in corporations. Startups, yes, but corporations, no.

So, it’s very difficult for anyone to write a review on TechCrunch and really tear Edgeio apart. I don’t think I could do it. I’d be supportive and give some light criticism. That’s only natural.

It’s like going to someone’s house for dinner and complaining about the food.

Anyway, Mike should do an alternate post on Crunchnotes when he has a financial interest in a company. Just because he has an ineterest doesn’t mean his point of view is not meaningful.

In fact, I would say moreso.

15 Comments »