[see the bottom of this post for an invite code to a new service that helps solve the problem I'm describing here]

It’s probably passe to say that we live in an information economy.  It’s also probably not correct anymore because really we live in an information NOW economy.  Staying on top of the topics that are important to you and your company has never been more important.  And with the explosion of media sources (particularly on-line) this has never been more of a challenge. 

Back in the day, large companies would outsource the function of knowing what was said of them and their competitors to various "clipping services", so named because they would line up the major new outlets of the day (mostly the large daily newspapers and national magazines) and literally clip out the stores that were of interest to their clients with scissors.  Every week they’d compile these clippings into a briefing and ship it off to their client.  These services weren’t very efficient and they were extremely expensive, but there was little other choice.  While these services have evolved in more recent years to incorporate technology, they’re still expensive and for the most part involve some 3rd party culling through the data to sort for relevance. 

Google Alerts is the most notable exception here – they’ve developed a service that in theory will let you know when any particular key word (really any search string) is crawled by Google spiders.  However in my experience Google Alerts quickly falls down. For starters, I get relatively few hits across my keywords and most of the hits I get are repeat ones (I can’t understand this at all – with probably 60 keywords I get almost no alerts and while I share keywords with some of my colleagues I rarely am sent the same hits that they are). I have other friends with the opposite problem with Alerts – their inbox is flooded with responses.  In some cases so much so that they had to turn the service off completely.  There’s also no good way to aggregate these alerts into any kind of trend data or manipulate them, group them, etc. 

Enter Filtrbox.  Filtrbox was one of last year’s TechStars companies and the the one with which I worked most closely (after the summer TechStars program I participated in their angel financing round).  They’ve developed a system that if you had to describe it in a single sentence is "Google Alerts on steroids".  That said, it’s almost unfair to compare the two as Google Alerts just isn’t designed to provide users with the accuracy, level of coverage, ability to tune and provide feedback to alert terms and the overall representation of data that Filtrbox provides – even now in the relatively early version of the Filtrbox platform.  Filtrbox allows me to set up a series of "filtrs" that contain various keywords so that I can organize the things I’m looking to track.  Every morning I get a "daily briefing" email that lists all the hits from the last 24 hours and online I can use their dashboard to see up-to-date hits in list and graphical form, manipulate the data, adjust the sensitivity of the report (so I see fewer, but more directly relevant hits) and tune the system by providing it feedback on the information it provides me.  Below is a snapshot of their dashboard to give you a sense of what I see every day (in true Web 2.0 fashion, everything in the image below will give me more information as I mouse over it and I can adjust the data I’m seeing on the fly by checking and unchecking keywords or entire filtr groups or adjusting the sensitivity (the slider in the top center of the page).

The service is in private beta, but they’ve given me an invite code that I can use to let people try the system out.  For smaller users, the service will be free (you’re limited in the number of keywords you can use and by the length article history).  For larger users there will be paid "pro service" ($20/month) and for teams of users a group account that enables some additional sharing and other group related functions (for $100/month for the team).  You can sign up for the beta at https://www.filtrbox.com/signup.php?code=foundry.  If I’ve run out of invites, drop me a line and I’ll try to make more available. 

My partner Brad Feld was interviewed yesterday on NPR’s Talk of the Nation on the topic of how companies make money online. You can listen to the broadcast here.  The key take-away ultimately is that is you aggregate enough traffic you have a handful of options for turning those eyeballs into cash (probably worth of a full post about the pros and cons of these various models, but no time today to get that down on paper). 

Brad did a great job and I’m psyched that I now know someone who’s been on TOTN!

If you’ve read this blog for a while, you already know that I’m crazy about my Sonos system. Time has only increased my love of the product, which is on in our house pretty much non-stop when someone is home.

Today I was pointed to a TeardownTV video of Sonos.  It’s definitely geeky, but if you’re into taking a look at what’s under the hood of electronics devices (but like me wouldn’t even consider taking your very own Sonos apart for fear of never getting it back together again) you’ll love it.   For me the video underscores just how well thought out the Sonos system is – there’s an unbelievable amount going on inside the sleek Sonos boxes but it’s internal design and lay-out is, as you’d expect from them, extremely elegant.  Enjoy!

This is a shameless request for help from anyone out there who has a good Apple connection.  I’m trying to make the switch over to the iPhone.  So far I love it – the interface is great (intuitive in a way that only Apple seems to be able to perfect) and the touch screen typing isn’t nearly the challenge that friends suggested it would be.  There are a few things that I’d love to see improved (dial by name, full inbox delete, longer battery life . . . etc.) but they are minor compared to my major problem – lack of exchange sync.

Fortunately this problem is scheduled to be fixed in a release due out this summer.  There’s a beta program up now for a select group to test the new functionality.  I’ve got no juice at Apple (and consequently have had no luck getting into this program).  Any readers out there who can help an Apple convert out?!?  I’m afraid I’m going to have to go back to the my WinME device for a while if I can’t get sync up and running soon.  HELP!

Yahoo launched a private version of what they are calling FireEagle – a service that allows you to track your location to be shared with applications that build to the FireEagle API – its basically a location “broker” (for self reported location).  I’m a big fan of location based services (we’re investors of IP geo-information company Quova and geo-spatial platform company deCarta), so the idea of a common platform upon which to build location aware applications.  Through Quova, we’re small investors in Navizon who has a similar dev platform to FireEagle.

So you can imagine my disappointment when I clicked over to the “application gallery” tab only to find nothing there.  Nothing.  Not a single “this is cool stuff, we’ve thrown a few things up to get you going” application.  Where is the Facebook “I’m here; my friends are there” integration?  Or better yet, the Twitter “friend location tracker”?  Or even a simple widget for my blog that reports my current location Nadda.  Just a note that says essentially “there’s no there there yet”.  I don’t get the point of launching a service – even just to the developer community, which is clearly their intent from the email I received – without at least a few demo apps.  I have to imagine that there are scores of companies out there with the time, talent and inclination to have done the work to be included with this launch.  Hopefully Yahoo/FireEagle will quickly get its act together and have a full application library before they take this service much further.

I have a few more invite codes if you’re looking to check it out.  Send me a note directly and if they are not all taken, I’ll hook you up.

I’m excited about what Yahoo is doing – just want to see more meat on the bones of the bird. . .

Update: My invite codes have all been given out.

From my partner, Chris Wand, describing a program one of his companies put in place over the holiday to encourage employees to clear a bunch of outstanding bugs in their backlog:

Anyone that wanted to fix a bug during their holiday break could earn $50/$75/$100 (depending on the severity of the bug) for each known bug they fixed (the catch was that QA had to approve the fix). The person that fixed the most bugs also earned an additional bonus (I think it was $500). They managed to clear about 100 bugs off their list… It was so successful, they’re thinking of implementing it at other times (i.e. over a long weekend, etc.—of course making sure that they don’t set it up so people are working on the bug fixes during normal working hours).

You know your software has problems when you have to offer a tool like the Windows Service Pack Blocker Tool Kit. The WSPBTK, like its name suggests, stops Windows Update from automatically installing new service packs (and presumably entering into the endless Vista shut-down cycle in the process). Brilliant!

Hat tip to Ross for the pointer.

The thing about being the current platform of record is that all eyes are on you. So when you do something stupid, like co-opting information from around the web into everyone’s Facebook feed without a user’s explicit permission, you get called on the mat for it. Mark Zuckerberg had it right today in his apology for the Beacon debacle when he said:

Facebook has succeeded so far in part because it gives people control over what and how they share information. This is what makes Facebook a good utility, and in order to be a good feature, Beacon also needs to do the same. People need to be able to explicitly choose what they share, and they need to be able to turn Beacon off completely if they don’t want to use it.

That said, the idea behind Beacon is a step in the right direction. It was the implementation that was wrong. Even the most dedicated Facebook users have lives outside of Facebook. In fact, most of what we do around the web has nothing to do with Facebook (at least it shouldn’t, if you have a life . . . ). The problem is that if I want a centralized place to tell people about what I’m up to and to interact with them about it, I need to spend a bunch of time recreating stuff I’ve done everywhere else around the web back at my platform of choice. It’s not efficient and it’s a pain. In my case, I essentially never do it. It’s that real-world problem that Beacon, despite its flaws, is trying to solve. For that, I say kudos to Facebook.

Perhaps it’s too cliché to rag on Microsoft Vista, but indulge me for just a minute. Vista – you suck! You reboot my computer constantly and at seemingly any time of day, you don’t work with any of my existing peripherals, you amuse yourself with your endless “i’m thinking now, please go away” circles and seem to revel in turning my inbox opaque and hanging up for minutes on end – especially when I’m in the middle of something important.

Today I bought my first Mac in 17 years (my last Mac was the Classic my parents bought for me when I left for college). It’s too early to tell you exactly how much I like it, but so far it’s a breath of fresh air. And while I’m not planning on completely giving up my windows machines yet, I think I’ll enjoy a respite from them now and again with my new found friend.

For a much more amusing rant on this subject, check out this post from Ross Carlson, our Director of IT. Well put, Ross!

My friend John Kembal recently started a company – HiveLive – that facilitates communication between groups (friends, co-works, clubs, associations, etc.). The system looks like a social networking site, but allows you to upload more relevant information to your “Hive” and control better how you share it (i.e., its both a personal organization tool as well as a tool for communicating and sharing ideas across a group of people – kind of a cross between a blog, social network and wiki). They are in beta, but John has set up a site for VC Adventure readers to sign up – http://hivelive.com/join/vcadventure (click on the link and you’ll be taken to the sign-up page).

You can e-mail me or John with your thoughts.

Note: Mobius is not an investor in HiveLive, nor am I affiliated with the company in any way other than being a fan of John and a user of the service.