Harry Chen Thinks Aloud

In the latest issue of The Economist, it argues why Obama should be the next US President, even it’s a risky choice.

I’m not an Obama since the beginning of the race. But, at this point of time, given that McCain and Obama can offer the country, I don’t want McCain to be the President.

LinkedIn launches a new feature that allow business partners to create applications for LinkedIn. Service providers like Amazon, Wordpress and SlideShare can develop custom applications to link data and profiles from theirs sites to users’s LinkedIn profiles.

This idea is nothing new. Many social networking websites provide similar functions. But, I think this idea makes great sense for LinkedIn’s business model. LinkedIn’s business goal to increase revenue by attracting more users and traffics. I think this new feature is right on the spot.

Read more on ZDNet 

Andrew Sullivan wrote an interesting article on his blogging experience as a professional journalist. Any one who has written a blog knows that blogging is different from writing essays and traditional journalism. A key distinction is that blogging is an expression of thoughts in words but minus the formal journalism rules.

Personally I enjoy writing blogs more than writing technical papers. My blog topics are usually less restrictive than which of the technical papers. Thus, it allows blog writing to be more creative and fun.  Writing blogs is an effective form of communication. Especially, when I want to receive reader response fast. For example, it usually takes weeks for the readers of my technical papers to send me comments. But, it takes only days (sometimes just hours) for my blog readers to respond.

Siri is a new Silicon Valley start-up that attempts to change to the way people use the internet. I joined Siri in Sept. 2008, but I was unable to talk about it until this week. Siri (previously known as stealth-company.com) is an SRI spin-off company armed with $8.5M VC funding. The company inherits  technology innovations resulted from many years of AI research (e.g., the DARPA-funded CALO project).

• Start-up developing new Web interaction paradigm (CNET)
• Stealth Semantic Startup Raises $8.5 Million, Won’t Tell Us Anything (TechCrunch)
• Shadowy government project spins off Siri to help direct your affairs (VentureBeat)
• Semantic Stealth Startup Siri Raises $8.5 Million (ReadWriteWeb)
• Siri Raises $8.5 Million for Personal Artificial Intelligence (Mashable)
• Stealth Company decloaks… as Siri (ZDNet)

The Silicon Valley is the heartland of technology innovation. New services and products are usually developed with venture capital funding. In news: credit crisis may be hitting start-up companies.

The heart of the Valley’s success is, of course, its ecosystem of start-up companies. Many claim that ecosystem remains healthy, thanks to the lessons learned and prudence gained from the dot.com crash.

Nevertheless, a dense fog of anxiety has settled over the land.

“Funding will tighten up. We are certainly going to see some ripple effects,” said Ron Conway, a prominent angel investor who has invested in hundreds of Web start-ups over the last decade.

Yet nonstop economic gloom in other parts of the economy seems to have frayed even the nerves of the Valley’s sublimely confident denizens. The economic crisis dominates conversations. In the technology blogosphere, prescriptions for riding out the crisis - and what percentage of start-ups are destined to fail - are the subject of intense debates.

According to a quarterly survey by the University of San Francisco Entrepreneurship Program, the confidence of venture capitalists has plummeted to the lowest level since the survey began in 2004.

There is no doubt that the current economic crisis is serious. But, it’s also naive to believe that all business and technology innovation will collapse. Not all investors are cash dry — Warrent Buffet still has a lot of cash. Because technology innovation is important to the survival of human race, investors will find money to fund start-ups and create new business opportunities. The rules of the game haven’t changed, just the competition for fundings is getting tougher.