Google buys YouTube for $1.65B in stock

In case you haven't heard...the deal between Youtube and Google was announced yesterday. I love YouTube and have always been impressed with Google (how can you not be!) Here are the details of the release. http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/pressrel/google_youtube.html

What is truly amazing about YouTube is their history.

Feb 2005 - Company Founded
Nov 2005 - $3.5M round of funding from Sequoia Capital
Dec 2005 - YouTube goes live
April 2006 - $8M round of funding from Sequoia Capital
Oct 2006 - Sold to Google for $1.65B

An impressive track record to say the least!

Office 2.0 - impressive list of web apps

Chris Vickerson, our CTO at Q4 sent me this link last night. It's an impressive list of web 2.0 apps. If you've been wondering about where the web is headed and what it means for business be sure to check out this list. Office 2.0 Database

SEC pumping $54 Million into XBRL based EDGAR

Although the SEC's chairmen Christopher COX has made many statement regarding XBRL and it's benefits, investing $54 Million into EDGAR to transform it into an XBRL based system goes a really long way to proving they are serious about it.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE2006-158
Agency Invests $54 Million in Three Contracts Toward Transformation of EDGAR Database

Washington, D.C., Sept. 25, 2006 — U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox announced today that the SEC has awarded three separate contracts totaling $54 million to transform the agency’s 1980s-vintage public company disclosure system from a form-based electronic filing cabinet to a dynamic real-time search tool with interactive capabilities.

Complete release can be found here.

Dominic Jones over at IR Daily does a good job of putting this into context.

Salesforce.com moves closer to a true Web OS

Salesforce.com is the worlds most successful web-based customer relationship management (CRM) software. With over 25000 customers world wide Salesforce.com is leading the software as a service revolution. With this latest announcement Salesforce appears to be closing the gap on web based software and traditional software. The complete article can be found here.

Imax (IMX.TO) in the sights of BIll 198

Looks like Imax (IMX.TO) is currently the subject of an informal inquiry by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over its revenue-accounting practices, yesterday became the target of a potential $200-million Canadian class-action lawsuit that could become the first test of Ontario's new Bill 198 law aimed at making it much easier for shareholders to sue companies and their executives.

Here is the article on Globe Investor.

Here at Q4 Web Systems we are watching this very closely. The reasons being our lead product called Q4 Record automatically records all of a company's disclosure on the web and can be used to help defend companies in the event of legal action such as this.

Web 2.0 Traffic Watch List

Keeping on the Web 2.0 topic, here is a watch list from Seth Godin that tracks 937 sites. If you're looking to burn a couple of days this would be a great place to start. Here's the link: http://www.alexaholic.com/sethgodin

Collaborate, share and remix all your stuff.

I came across this list the other day, thought it was pretty interesting. There are now 350 web applications listed. They range from online document collaboration to photo sharing to online calendars. Take a look and get your web 2.0 a moving. Here is the link to the main site. http://www.philb.com/iwantto.htm

Google Maps with Traffic

http://www.google.com/gmm/index.html

Google has enhanced its Google Maps mobile application by adding traffic information and the ability to save routes. Go to http://www.google.com/gmm on your handheld to download it. I tried and it's pretty cool.

Need to get more done? Work 28 hours a day.

The last couple of months have been very busy for me. Getting Q4 off the ground and closing our funding has taken a huge amount of time and dedication. Things are going smoothly and we're on track to close our first round of funding over the next couple weeks. The point of this post however, is to pass along some advice I received awhile back.

About 2 months ago I asked a trusted advisor how to balance the critical requirements of acquiring new customers while raising money. I said "there doesn't seem to be enough time in the day to raise money and put time into selling, what should I do?" his reply "there is if you work 28 hours a day" he was joking...but not really.

So now it's 2 months later, we've put our share of 28hr days in and it's starting to pay off. Once the funding closes I'll be back to posting on a regular basis.

Until then.

New TSX site

The TSX just recently launched a new site. I must say this is a HUGE improvement over their last site. www.tsx.com

The Real Value in Sarbanes-Oxley

Informative interview on the value that SOX is bringing to companies. I find this interesting because lately a number of smaller companies have been complaining about the increased cost associated to being compliant. This article really opens up the true value of compliance and why this is a good thing for all companies.

The Real Value in Sarbanes-Oxley

APRIL 10, 2006 (COMPUTERWORLD) - Fear can be a powerful generator of upstanding conduct, say Stephen Wagner and Lee Dittmar. But business runs on discovering and creating value. In this month's Harvard Business Review, the co-authors discuss how smart companies are finding unexpected benefits in Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. Wagner, who is the managing partner of the U.S. Center for Corporate Governance at Deloitte & Touche, and Dittmar, who leads the enterprise governance consulting practice at Deloitte Consulting and co-leads its Sarbanes-Oxley practice, talked with Kathleen Melymuka about how your company can use compliance requirements to its advantage.

Personally I find the last statement in the article the most interesting:

It seems that a lot of these Sarbanes-Oxley benefits are the kinds of things that CIOs have been advocating for years, with mixed results.

DITTMAR: I agree. CIOs say, "Things would be better if we standardized on a particular application," and the business units say, "Sure, as long as everybody moves to mine." So this is an opportunity not just for CIOs to step up but to get various CXO stakeholders to understand all the elements -- people, process and technology -- because they all have to go together. The president of a very large technology company recently told me that compliance will be the single largest driver of IT priorities over the next decade. CIOs have a very important role to play, and even though they've been frustrated over the last decade, the impacts of IT are pervasive, and companies can't do this efficiently and effectively without properly leveraging technology. It's not enough to just write good policies and processes; you have to have technology to support it, or it won't be sustainable.

Looking back on the web

Catherine over at Weave sent a link to the Internet Archive today.

The Wayback Machine is a web archive that goes back to 1996.

It’s slow and not perfect but fun to look back on early sites. Plug in your URL and go back in time.

The Human Honda

Have you seen the new Honda Civic UK commercial?

You should.

http://84.40.3.164/

Be sure to click through at the end of the movie. The site is pretty impressive.

Netvibes storage module - the web desktop is coming into focus.

After my last post I went to www.netvibes.com and checked out the new 1GB web storage module. What is soo cool about this is that this module was made in partnership with box.net.
http://blog.netvibes.com/?2006/03/09/44-netvibes-welcome-a-free-1-giga-web-harddrive-for-every-netvibes-users

Netvibes, setting the new standard

www.netvibes.com is an ajax based rss newsreader/portal/news site. If you haven't seen it, be sure to check it out. If you like MyYahoo (or things like that) you will love Netvibes. I'm using it now, but it's taking time to move all my feeds over. (grrr)

They just closed their seed funding from some high-profile investors - like Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape. More here: http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060322/sfw063.html?.v=52

Been a while

Yes, yes it's true. This is my first post in about 4 months. Been so busy setting up the new company that finding any time to post has been impossible. But I am going to slowly start posting again.

Also, at the advice of a good friend I'm going to consolidate my blogs into one to make things a little more managable for me. Meaning I'll be including riding related and other general stuff into this blog in addition to the Internet and business commentary.

All for now

Google custom meta-feeds are on the way.

If it wasn't already obvious, it is now. RSS is changing the face of the web....

RSS and Google Base: Google Feeds Off The Web

Google...you're beautiful. stop it.

Google is releasing products at an impressive pace. Today's is Google Base.

I can't help but be impressed.

From Google's PR

Google Base is an extension of Google’s existing content collection efforts such as our traditional web crawl system, as well as Google Sitemaps, Google Print and Google Video – all which enable content owners to easily make their information searchable via Google.

Google Base is a place where you can add all types of information that we'll host and make searchable online. Among the types of information you can make searchable by Google are cars, jobs, news articles, products, reviews, and wanted ads.

From Business 2.0 Blog

Yes, it's a Craigslist killer. But it's also much more.

There is a whole dark Web out there that Google's bots cannot crawl, so they want you to be helpful, please, and become unpaid data-entry clerks to fill up their index. Why would you do this?

It seems obvious that people will do this. User driven content continues to drive the growth of the web. Social networks, people sharing content, products, services you name it. It's all about having tools that make it easy to publish and search to help people find what they're looking for.

When you have a little time read this ariticle written in 2002 by Paul Ford.
August 2009: How Google beat Amazon and Ebay to the Semantic Web

Google on a roll

I just read this great article on Google, I've been impressed in the past by what they are doing. This article opened my eyes a little bit more to the real impact that Google is having on the world. Enjoy. What Lurks in Its Soul?

Finally back online

Colleen and I just recently moved, and I've finally got the Internet up and running again. Great to be back online at home. Simply can't get to reading and blogging from work. More posts to come...