Tech News

Zuck’s Sweatshirt

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ May 15, 2012 / 1 Comment

Mark Zuckerberg goes on TV to ring the bell in 5 days and the big question is, will he be wearing his Sweatshirt or will he put on a suit jacket? I’m not planning to invest in Facebook, but if I were, I would be hoping he sticks to his...
The Way I See the “Talent War” in Pittsburgh

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ May 10, 2012 / Leave a comment

There have been a number of interesting articles in the past few weeks about the “talent war” that tech companies in Pittsburgh are fighting. There was one (actually from last year, but I recently saw a link to it) about Pikimal addressing a shortage of developers by finding strong candidates...
Zynga’s Hybrid Cloud

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ May 9, 2012 / Leave a comment

There are two things I thought I’d share about the story I read in iWeed this morning about Zynga’s hybrid (internal/Amazon) cloud: In the hype about cloud it’s easily to lose track of just how immature we are so far. The fact that with all the cloud options out there in...
File System For the Cloud

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ May 1, 2012 / Leave a comment

Once in a while something comes along and you’re like CRAP, why didn’t I see that coming. Box.com being the NAS of the web (not just for their apps but for ANYONE’s) is frickin brilliant. Releasing their API isn’t just storage as a service, it’s something more than that. It’s...
2 Ways to Spend 1 Billion Dollars

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ April 10, 2012 / Leave a comment

$2 Billion changed hands yesterday in the form of the two biggest news items of the day: Facebook spent $1 Billion on Instagram. They acquired an innovative, competitive (if tangentially) product to make their company better. Microsoft spent $1 Billion buying patents from AOL. The rumor is that they may have...
Sunny Days?

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ April 9, 2012 / Leave a comment

One of my primary investment theses at the moment is that the cloud is not only growing, but that we are just scratching the surface of what’s possible. That’s why when I read that Amazon’s S3 growth has declined slightly, I was surprised. To be clear, it’s not like S3...
Democratizing Spelling

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ March 27, 2012 / Leave a comment

One of the cool things about big data is that it lets you see every trend, whether you expect it or not. I remember the old hunch reports that would show interesting anomalies, like the fact that dog owners are 16% more likely to consider Paul McCartney their favorite Beatle. These...
Some Observations and Thoughts on The PG’s Website

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ March 16, 2012 / Leave a comment

The Post-Gazette completely redesigned their website earlier this week. What I’d like to do is make two lists, first I’ll highlight the changes I observed (the critical ones anyway) and then I’ll share some thoughts on what I think it all means. I’m not going to share thoughts on the...
Getting a Job Based on Data or Social

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ March 13, 2012 / Leave a comment

The world is full of interesting spaces where the current technology’s days are numbered, but what will replace it is not quite clear yet. Take television, Like many things, the days of the traditional resume are numbered. Take News, Media, or Television as examples that I’ve discussed before. Today, I’ve...
Content as a Service

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ March 7, 2012 / 1 Comment

There is a model that evolved over the last decade in IT that’s based on creating a community, a marketplace, or a platform. The best examples of this to date are Twitter, Facebook, and Google. You not only think of each of these when you’re at their site, you think...