Category Archives: Uncategorized

Remember the \”great sucking sound\” that we used to talk about? I think it\’s the Roomba.

PCWorld.com: In 2003, IRobot sold 470,000 units of the Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner. In just the first three months of 2004, the company has exceeded that total, and has high hopes for the second generation of the product.

Buying a robotic vacuum cleaner and lawn mower is definitely in my future purchasing plans.

Hooked on Phonics just agreed to forfeit $4,600 it earned from renting customer information that it had obtained under a Privacy Policy that did not allow it to rent customer information without giving existing customers a chance to opt out.

Interesting timing on this. I have been ordering books from Amazon for several years now under the name \”Paul Amazon Allen.\” I did this, of course, to track Amazon\’s use of my customer information.

SmartBargains.com has filed to go public. According to the SmartBargain S-1, it had revenue of $92 million last year. It has net loses of

CNET has a nice article today about how cell phones might one day replace mini mp3 players like the Apple iPod, but they probably won\’t have hard drives that can store thousands of songs for at least 18 months. Still, a future world where billions of people carry cell

Someone told me that venture capitalists in Utah have dubbed me Paul Allen the Lesser so that when they are talking about me they aren?t confusing me with Paul G. (as in ?greater?) Allen, the multi-billionaire co-founder of Microsoft.

I wish I could make it to this event. Looks excellent: http://www.garage.com/pressReleases/040505.shtml

Ask Jeeves purchase of Tukaroo gives it local software for searching desktop files and email, similar to X1 and to Google\’s Puffin (code-name) project. Terra Lycos has the HotBot deskbar already. It appears that several major search engines will have local search before Microsoft releases

WebSideStory files for $57.5 million IPO. NEW YORK – Web site analytics company WebSideStory Inc. added its name Thursday to the growing list of tech companies planning to go public, filing registration papers to raise up to $57.5 million through an IPO (initial public offering). [InfoWorld: Top News]

Last November, Google released its Deskbar, which allows you to search the web from your Windows toolbar without using a browser. I use it occasionally; but when I first learned about it I blogged a memo to Larry Page and Sergey Brin with what I thought was a brilliant idea, but probably one that had occured to them long before. I suggested that Google provide a free search tool that would index all your personal email and all the files on your desktop.

Sorenson Capital announces $250 million Western Equity fund for buy-outs and growth equity investments, with offices in Arizona, Utah and California.