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Michael Robertson is behind the new site Dealipedia.

(Credit:
Michael Robertson)

Serial entrepreneur Michael Robertson has started a new business-information site called Dealipedia.

Robertson, founder of such companies as MP3.com and Linspire, is relying on the wisdom of crowds to supply information on IPOs, mergers, acquisitions, closings, bankruptcies, and investments. He said that Wikipedia has proven that allowing the masses to provide and edit information works.

Dealipedia is a “combination (of) news, reference and perhaps a bit of gossip for business deals,” Robertson said in an e-mail to CNET News.com.

At Dealipedia.com, I clicked on the site’s “Who Made the Money” section to see if Robertson’s own name was included. Sure enough, it was. According to the site, Robertson pocketed $115 million when he sold MP3.com to Vivendi Universal for $372 million in May 2001.

Jason Calcanis made $11 million and Mark Cuban made $2 million (as of Tuesday afternoon) when Weblogs was sold to AOL. None of this is breaking news and the section is relatively bare of details. But Robertson is hoping the content will grow as greater numbers of business insiders contribute.

In one area, Robertson will also allow users to post info anonymously. He said this has supplied new details about Flickr, Delicious, and GrandCentral.

“After continually getting frustrated that I couldn’t find historic data on business deals,” Robertson said, “or easily keep track of new deals without reading a dozen different publications, I decided to remedy the problem.”

The site is designed to appeal to investors, venture capitalists, and entrepreneurs, Robertson said. His intent is to offer a “nice snapshot” of a company’s life cycle from the first round of investment all the way to an IPO.

At Mix '08, Ballmer was asked to reprise his famed 'Monkey Boy' dance, this time touting Web developers. He complied.

(Credit:
Ina Fried/News.com )

LAS VEGAS–If the jabs from venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki weren’t enough, Steve Ballmer took a bunch of no-holds-barred queries from the audience at Mix ‘08.

He was asked whether, given Apple’s iPhone announcement, Microsoft was trying to get Silverlight on the Apple phone.

“Silverlight for the
iPhone is, of course, interesting,” he said. “I can’t say there’s been extensive discussion with Guy’s old boss.”

He also said it was unclear whether Apple’s business model, which takes 30 percent of iPhone application revenue, would allow for royalty-free distribution of Silverlight. (Apple has said it will allow free applications.) He also noted that Apple might be taking too large a slice, grabbing “30 percent of every bit of revenue.”

“It’s a good business, if you can make it,” Ballmer said.

Later on, he was asked about Apple’s license of the ActiveSync protocol that connects mobile devices to Microsoft’s Exchange Server.

Ballmer brings back the Monkey Boy dance.

(Credit:
Ina Fried/News.com )

“We’ve licensed ActiveSync for a while. That’s been an option that’s been available to Apple,” Ballmer said. The company has already licensed the technology to other rivals, including Palm and Nokia. “It was certainly an option we knew Apple might take advantage of.”

Ballmer was also asked to reprise his Monkey Boy dance, this time touting Web developers. He complied. (Watch the video here.)

The session concluded with Kawasaki saying he knew Ballmer really wanted a MacBook Air. “If you ever want a discount, I have friends,” he said.

A class action lawsuit against T-Mobile received new life yesterday after a Seattle federal judge ruled that it could move forward. The suit, which comes as text messages fees are on the rise, alleges that T-Mobile is allowing subscribers few options to avoid spam text messages. Since customers are charged for all incoming texts, whether solicited or not, the suit argues that subscribers must either eat the costs or end their service contracts early, which could result in an early termination fee of up to $175.

Instead, subscribers most log in to their online T-Mobile account to set messaging filters. In a statement to RCR Wireless News, T-Mobile said it “is committed to providing the best customer experience in wireless and does offer customers the ability to block chargeable text messages, MMS, IM, and e-mail from being sent to their handsets at no additional charge.”

While some other carriers let customers block text messages completely, T-Mobile does not offer such an option due to “system restrictions.”

Rich Peters of Iowa City, Iowa, explained why he’s a Democrat in a simple video with a few scene changes, a dog as a prop, and straightforward analysis– and now YouTube will fly Peters to the Democratic Convention in Denver to present his video and travel with the press pool for a day.

Interest in the party conventions has waned in recent years: Nielsen Media Research showed 15.5 million homes tuned in to the Democratic convention in 2004 and 16.8 million watched the Republican convention, compared with around 20 million who watched both parties’ conventions in 1992. The parties are turning to the Internet to bolster public engagement in the formal nominating processes, using Google Maps to answer questions, and podcasts to give updates on convention preparations.

Peters’ video, shown below, addresses the Iraq war, the environment, health care, and other issues. It will be shown during the Democratic convention, where Peters will get to record a video documenting Barack Obama’s activities for a day.

Viewers chose Peters’ video out of five finalists presented in YouTube’s video contest posing the question, “Why are you a Democrat in 2008?” The Democratic National Convention Committee picked the five finalists from hundreds of submissions. The Republican National Committee is hosting a corresponding contest, “Why are you a Republican in 2008?” but a winner has yet to be announced.

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Yesterday, a US federal court of appeals handed open source a significant victory. An earlier district court ruling in Jacobsen v. Katzer had put open-source licensing on shaky ground by treating the Artistic License as a contract, with some injurious readings on likely remedies under an open-source license.

The CAFC reversed the District Court’s decision and its reasoning is very helpful for the open source community. The court found that the limitations in the Artistic License were “conditions” on the scope of the license and, thus, Katzer was liable for copyright infringement (as well as breach of contract). The CAFC noted that the Artistic License imposed its obligations through the use of the words “provided that” which is generally viewed as imposing a condition. Although the reasoning is limited to the Artistic License and the interpretation of each open source license will depend on the wording of its provisions, this decision is a welcome change to the District Court decision. The case has been remanded for the District Court to determine if the other criteria for injunctive relief have been met, but the CAFC’s decision strongly suggests that they have been met.

A very good ruling, and a very good day, for open source. I’m not sure why there should be much confusion in the first place as to whether open-source licenses should be given a place at the licensing table, but this case at least takes us one step closer to making open-source licenses full partners in software developers’ arsenal.

As Mark Radcliffe details, the Jacobsen ruling [PDF] is a boon to all open-source licensing, and not merely those that choose to use the Artistic License:

The mascots of Web 2.0.

The rabbit on the right is from MindTouch Deki Wiki, a hostable wiki service that lets you create all sorts of mashups to other Web services such as Google and Flickr.

I’m always interested to see what a company chooses to represent the look and feel of its products. On a day-to-day basis, we bloggers rarely see anything besides the service and its WebEx presentation. However, when conference time comes, they pull out all the stops with crazy booths, over-the-top swag, booth babes–and in extreme cases: the mascot.

(Credit:
CNET Networks / Josh Lowensohn)

For most people, the last time they saw a mascot was at an organized sporting event. Today’s Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco might as well be the Super Bowl.

The two mascots seen below are for wildly different products. The one on the left is for eXpresso, an Excel spreadsheet sharing service that takes your Excel spreadsheets and gives them tags, online histories, and a really neat feature that lets you tweak which areas of a spreadsheet other users can make edits to.

Sorely missing were any walking cell phones, despite the heavy presence of mobile-centric services. I was also hoping to see Coghead, (whose mascot is a walking gear) make the jump from vector art to velour sweat suit. Maybe next year.

The site is powered by Move Networks, the high-definition content delivery network that pulled in $46 million earlier this week from Benchmark Capital, Cisco Systems, Comcast, and a number of others. The company already handles video delivery for ESPN, ABC, Discovery, and Fox.

(Credit:
NBC)

PluggedIn (wonder how much they paid for that domain?) reportedly has about 10,000 music videos in its catalog, thanks to contracts with Sony BMG Music Entertainment, EMI Group, and Universal Music Group. The videos are accompanied by artist profiles and some community features.

That, unfortunately, doesn’t change one big problem I see with PluggedIn. Quality specifications aside, I already have a hub for watching music videos online. It’s called YouTube. MySpaceTV and MTV.com are also big players in the space.

Who would’ve thought this guy would go on to become a Web 2.0 investor? Carlton Banks would be proud.

Actor Will Smith–or rather, his entertainment company, Overbrook Entertainment–is one of the investors behind a $2 million funding round for PluggedIn Media, a new site for watching high-definition and broadcast-quality music videos online, PaidContent.org reported Tuesday evening.

The “involvement” of Will Smith, however, is likely to be what comes to mind with PluggedIn. In addition to tearing up the box office over the past decade and a half with everything from Men In Black to I Am Legend, Smith also has an impressive number of hit rap singles under his belt, which makes him slightly more legit than rapper-turned-DanceJam-executive M.C. Hammer.

commentary

A very, very frustrating match. The game should have been Arsenal’s. As it stands, Eduardo is out for at least the rest of the season and Arsenal are looking like they’re chasing second place rather than commanding first place. Manchester United decimated Newcastle - Arsenal simply cannot give up such easy points and expect to hold off United.

Arsenal looked to be in cruise control to take home the win and maintain its five-point lead over Manchester United. But it wasn’t to be.

Such was the day. It happened in the third minute of the game and completely dampened Arsenal’s mood for the first half, when Birmingham put a ball in the net near the end of the half. After the half, however, the team came alive and Walcott drilled home his first two Premiership goals.

Adebayor selfishly shot when he should have passed to the (admittedly obnoxious) Bendtner. That goal would have sealed the victory. There were also a number of chances that went begging as Hleb and Fabregas wrongfully chose to pass away several opportunities in or near the edge of the box that really should have been rifled at the net.

Today was a very bad day. First, Martin Taylor decided to inflict the usual strategy against Arsenal: “kick them off the pitch.” He did so. Literally. Eduardo da Silva was stretchered off with his shin bone coming out of his socks (picture below). Disgraceful. Wenger’s right: Taylor should be banned from the game for life. As it stands, it looks bleak as to whether 25-year old Eduardo will ever be able to play again.

Taylor snaps Eduardo's leg

Even so, the game was won…until Clichy, normally so diligent, strolled for a ball that even a saunter would have collected. Birmingham collected the ball, Clichy panicked, and ended up tackling the Birmingham player in the box. No, it shouldn’t have been called a penalty - Clichy collected all of the ball and little of the player. But in such circumstances it’s not surprising the ref gave the penalty kick, which Birmingham scored.

Google has declined to comment on the matter but says Reid was let go because the in-house graduate degree program department he had been assigned to was eliminated.

Reid, who joined Google in June 2002 as director of operations and director of engineering, helped to create the first firewall, and worked on the AltaVista Internet search engine and the alt.* hierarchy of newsgroups in Usenet.

The California Supreme Court did not say when it would hear the case but it will likely be before June, which is when its schedule for hearing oral arguments typically ends.

The California Supreme Court said on Wednesday it will consider an age discrimination lawsuit filed against Google by a then-54-year-old manager who was fired six months before the company went public in 2004.

In October, a California state appeals court in San Jose threw out a lower court’s decision to dismiss the lawsuit. The appeals court said a jury should have been allowed to consider the evidence in the case, including a statistical analysis that found that younger Googlers typically received better performance ratings and higher bonuses. Google then appealed that ruling.

In his lawsuit, Brian Reid alleges he was told he was not a “cultural fit” when he was being fired from his job in February 2004. He also claims that his colleagues referred to him as “old man” and “fuddy-duddy.”

Greener One isn’t going to open up its own testing lab (there are plenty already) because, “it doesn’t scale,” Piroska says. He believes a dedicated cadre of users and activists will do the heavy lifting.

Piroska is convinced that this user-generated green database will be a game-changer in consumer behavior, especially since, as he told me, the price of an item does not correlate with its environmental impact. Expect, perhaps, in the case of Apple: The MacBook Air, he said, is one of the first laptops that doesn’t use heavy metals in its screen; and Apple as a company is “greener” than most computer manufacturers. Overall, Piroska said, the manufacturer of a product is a good indicator of greenness: In mobile phones, Nokia is generally good. Motorola is not.

Ultimately, Piroska would like the Greener One rating stamped on product boxes or running alongside reviews (like those on CNET). He thinks most consumers will get exposure to the concept from such relationships, that a small number will dive into the Web site for deeper details, and that an even smaller number will contribute. Given the growing awareness of green issues and how they impact consumer safety, cost, and climate change, I would not be surprised to see this idea get some traction.

On the input side, Greener One is a structured wiki. Consumers who want to add information to the database are directed to look up certain info on products, and there’s a database of enviro contacts at major consumer companies, with a list of pre-written e-mail templates for gathering info that’s not evident in a product’s packaging or on its Web site.

Each product gets its own green rating.

Greener One, now in early beta, is a very interesting and timely idea. The CEO, Zoli Piroska, wants to build a “crowdsourced database of green attributes for consumer products.” The benefit for consumers is that they’ll be able to tell what the environmental impacts are of products they are considering, from TVs to laundry detergents–and users will be the ones to build the database of attributes.

Most consumers won’t enter information, of course. They’ll just consume it. What they’ll get from the service is a green rating, and data underneath it, that will tell them the comparative impact of the product they’re looking at. The database will consider the entire lifecycle of the product, from raw materials used to recyclability, and will also include include environmental issues that pop up during a product’s use (for example, outgassing due to chemicals used during manufacture). The data isn’t just about a product’s carbon footprint, as it also considers safety issues.

The system encourages users to contribute data from which the score is calculated.