What is multitasking?

Seth -- just wanted to tell you that I've funded a new company in the Foundry Group portfolio. But it is so stealthy, I can't even tell *you* about it. I'll tell you more about in a couple years when we are ready to launch. Trust me, it is great!

Dear Mr. "A Guy" / Anonymous Coward,

April Fools!

thanks Jeremy. Golden Flower has been added to the list.

Jeremy, if you can find the name and address of the pho place, I'll totally link to it and add it to the list!

We've been to Zinnia (and Myth, RIP). Great place! Made it there in March on our way back from spring break in Hawaii.

OK, the best comment to this came via a comment on facebook from my friend Dave Jilk:

Rather than compress, the tweet should just reference a URL that contains the "full" tweet, e.g., "#uncompress http://bit.ly/asdf". The "writer" side would generate this, the "reader" side would just display the contents of the URL (which would presumably be a blog post or similar).

This would have the advantage of allowing a tweet of unlimited size and mixed media types, and it is also more human readable. Good idea Dave.

Of course, part of the inherent beauty of twitter is the 140 character limit, and this would destroy that.

And, ultimately, people passing URL-shortened links via twitter pretty much accomplishes this goal anyway.

i too enjoy whittling a message down to 140 characters. while folks complain about the inanity of twitter (and some of it surely is), twitter has also enhanced the pithiness of messaging, which is great.

my compression idea was really more of a joke. but one of the cool things about twitter is how user conventions have evolved (RT, OH, #hashtags) without any guidance from twitter. and so the idea of completely bastardizing it by sending compressed non-human readable text through twitter made me laugh.

Dave, clearly there are folks who would rather approach the remote access / sync / backup challenge via software/services rather than a device, and each solution has its advantages. As I point out in the blog post, a service like Soonr can be had for free, but you wind up limited to 2GB of storage based on my reading of the Soonr's offerings. Just for fun, I looked at the pricing for Soonr Pro for one terabyte of cloud storage and 5 user access, roughly similar to the scenario I describe in my post. That would cost $6,000 PER YEAR on Soonr, as opposed to a one time cost of $99 for a pogoplug and ~$100 for a terabyte hard drive.

Second, while you point out the green angle of wanting to avoid burdening the earth by not buying another piece of hardware, I'd point out that the pogoplug (really just a tiny linux server based on Marvell's Sheevaplug technology) only draws 5-10 watts of power, which is a greener option than using a third party's spinning disk farms in a datacenter or leaving all your home/office computers on 24x7 so you can have remote access.

Finally, the other reason I'm an investor (and satisfied customer) is that sometimes a special purpose appliance-based approach enables an ease of installation and use that software approaches do not. We saw this when we invested in Sling Media, the makers of the Slingbox -- while there were software-based solutions available that in theory allowed one to placeshift their TV signal and offered remote media access beyond what was on your DVR/STB, the Sling solution was the winner in the marketplace, despite many early skeptics dismissing it as an overpriced toy that offered no "new" functionality. I think the pogoplug shares these characteristics with the slingbox, and at $99, it is coming in at a pretty reasonable price point for many people, not to mention the fact that we think pogoplugs will find their way into the enterprise (particularly soho and SMB) over time too.

Brad, you are right, the Effie's Oatcakes rock. You nailed it on the salt/sweet angle, but they also are chock full of buttery goodness. Never forget the butter.