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Grant Robertson

- http://grantrobertson.com

Grant Robertson is a born geek. Having worked in nearly every facet of the IT and software industry at one point or another, Grant has served as Lead Blogger for Download Squad since the departure of Jordan Running in February 2007. He has appeared on several NPR radio talk programs, been quoted in several national publications, and he still gets a tiny thrill every time he sees software he wrote in action.

Filed under: Business, Developer, Web services, Adobe, Google, Microsoft, web 2.0

Eolas v. Everyone you've ever heard of

by Grant Robertson (RSS feed) Oct 6th 2009


Tireless patent troll Intellectual Property holder Eolas has filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas against, well.. nearly everyone. The issue at hand deals with two patents in Eolas' possession -- the first of which was the subject of a successful lawsuit against Microsoft back in 2004.

The second patent, what Eolas refers to as "a continuation of the '906 patent" claims to hold as the sole intellectual property of Eolas, "fully-interactive embedded applications [...] through the use of plug-in and AJAX (asynchronous JavaScript and XML) web development techniques." The second patent is so far untested in court -- and ostensibly covers more popular websites than you can shake a knock-off Louis Vuitton handbag at.

I haven't had time to delve into the language of the patent, but this reeks of utter nonsense to me so far. In my layman's oppinion, Eolas may have made a crucial mistake however, taking aim at so many large targets at once -- with one untested patent, and another which Microsoft already came rather close to beating.

Take the leap to read the whole extortion demand press release, and see the enormous list of publicly traded web firms included.

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Tags: ajax, eolas, patent, plugins, troll, web browser, web dev, WebBrowser, WebDev

Filed under: Internet, News, Blogging, Microblogging

Did the FTC just mention something about blogging?

by Grant Robertson (RSS feed) Oct 6th 2009

So that we're not the only single blog in the known universe and beyond who misses the chance to comment on the FTC's boneheaded guidelines requiring bloggers, celebs, reviewers and others -- basically anyone who you might read online -- to disclose any "material relationship" with companies they review.

I tend to look at everything in terms of Pros and Cons. Here's the list I came up with.

The bad
  • The FTC has passed an over-reaching regulation which is unenforceable at best, and is a violation of free speech at worst.

The good
  • The FTC has passed an over-reaching regulation which is unenforceable at best, and is a violation of free speech at worst.
There are about a million better things the FTC could be doing with its time. Even if you wanted to narrow the to-do list to just Internet related issues, the list is still enormous. How about click-fraud? Noni Juice? Teeth Whiteners? Loose 200 pounds in 37 seconds? And all those hot single girls who are looking for a man like you -- and happen to be conspicuously located in teh same city as what geo-location returns for the IP of your upstream router?

There's a significant amount of misunderstanding of how Internet publishing works in this regulation, but this is the moment where I find the clue train leaves the station with absolutely no-one aboard. AdAge reports that Richard Cleland, assistant director- division of advertising practices at the FTC interprets the regulation to include, "posts on review sites such as Yelp or online stores such as Amazon."

Does that mean when I drop a review on Urban Spoon of my favorite eatery -- who happen to throw me a freebie every once in a while for being a loyal customer -- the FTC will sick it's blogger enforcement team on me? When they figure out exactly how to enforce this, call me.

Until then I'll be driving the Windows 7 box graphics wrapped Porsche Cayman that Microsoft sent me. *

* Kidding. But Ballmer, if you're interested, drop me an email and I'll send you my address

For what it's worth, take the jump to read my quick diatribe on Weblogs, Inc gimmies policy -- which is likely the strictest in existence among blog networks.

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Tags: blogging, bonehead, endorsements, FTC, law, politics

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Filed under: Fun, Humor

Larry Ellison does near-standup comic rif on cloud computing

by Grant Robertson (RSS feed) Oct 5th 2009

I've come out pretty strong against the fad of "cloud computing", which has spent the better part of the last year at the top of my most-hated buzzword list. In private, I've even been known to threaten that the next PR person to send me a release using the word "cloud" was going to get it, right between the Prada frames.

So, imagine my glee while watching one of my heroes -- Oracle's chief samurai warrior and jet pilot, Larry Ellison -- drop effortlessly into a riff on cloud computing while talking to a room at the Churchill Club.

Ellison makes a pretty solid argument that cloud computing isn't just the future, it's also the present and the past. This from a man who just bought Sun Microsystems -- a company which sported "The network is the computer" as its slogan, more than a decade before the first marketroid said cloud.

In Soviet Russia, cloud computing makes fun of you.

Take the leap to see Lawrence "Shecky" Ellison in action.

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Tags: cloud computing, CloudComputing, ellison, oracle, shecky

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Filed under: Web services, Microblogging

Drew Carey bids 25k for @drew -- Cancer gets scared

by Grant Robertson (RSS feed) Oct 4th 2009


I've written before about Download Squad friend, Drew Olanoff, and his creative way of kicking cancer in the behind. Count up one more point for Drew and his fight -- Drew Carey just bid 25K for his Twitter name, @drew. All proceeds of the auction, which ends on November 9th, will go directly to The Lance Armstrong Foundation - Livestrong.

Better still, if Drew Carey gets 100k Twitter followers before the auction ends, he'll quadruple his bid to $100,000.

While Twitter's Terms of Service expressly forbids selling your Twitter name for personal gain, there is no express prohibition against selling it for charity. Just to be sure, Olanoff checked with @ev, one of Twitter's founders, who gave his blessing before the bidding began.

If there was ever a time for Drew Barrymore to get a clue about social networking, this is it. Fortunately for Carey's wallet, Barrymore was pretty emphatic on Regis and Kelly when she ranted, "I don't know what Twittering is! [...] People keep trying to explain to me and I'm like, I don't wanna know. I don't wanna know how it works, I don't wanna know how to do it, I don't want to know anything."

Barrymore made the comment in April -- just months into Twitter's meteoric rise. If the crowd of other twittering celebrities haven't softened her, maybe kicking cancer's tail will.

Tags: BlameDrewsCancer, cancer, Drew Carey, drew olanoff, DrewCarey, DrewOlanoff, Lance Armstrong, LanceArmstrong, livestrong

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Filed under: News, Blogging, Op-Ed

Huffington Post proves newspapers aren't dead, yet.

by Grant Robertson (RSS feed) Sep 30th 2009

What's been on the Internet 12 hours too long, is 5 years too old and demonstrates the gaping chasm between blog journalism and credibility? This Huffington Post piece pointing to a five year old YouTube video as footage from yesterday's tsunami in American Somoa.

Are you getting all your news on the Internet? Constantly cruising a mix of major and minor media sites, or sucking them all in at once through an aggregator like Google News? Pointing fingers at blogs, Amazon's Kindle, Google News and Youtube has become a popular habit of once healthy -- and now hurting -- newspapers and broadcast outlets both great and small. even Twitter fell complicit, with both @huffingtonpost and @Alyssa_Milano tweeting it to nearly 200k followers each, both without a hint of retraction.

Mistakes do happen, and no one is saying that major media gets it right 100% of the time -- or prints retractions and corrections in the same size font point and weight as the stories they seek to correct. But, it's near certain that 5 year old incorrectly attributed footage wouldn't still be airing on any national news service -- 12 hours after it was first run.

This would be different if we were discussing any third tier blog running in the streets with a wildly incorrect and unvetted story -- heck, Newsmax and Michelle Malkin practically invented that strategy. But this is Huffington Post -- the number one blog in the world according to Technorati, and an oft-cited source in the old media universe. Pitiful.

So, still ready to write off all of those old media institutions of the Fourth Estate and pin the murder on teh Intarwebs?

Update 2:42am: HuffPo has removed the video as of a little after 2am EST. The original YouTube video in the post was here. Still no response from Huffington Post, and no public mention of the incident.

Tags: blogs, credibility, dead trees, DeadTrees, earthquake, old media, OldMedia, tsunami, twitter, unvetted sources, UnvettedSources, youtube

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CNN makes bigger mobile push with new iPhone app

by Grant Robertson (RSS feed) Sep 28th 2009 {9 comments}

Gallery: CNN iPhone App Launch The wait for an official CNN app on your iPhone is over, and it looks like it was worth your patience. Available on the iTunes store soon -- Download here -- CNN's new app represents a serious investment in mobile news delivery, a 55 million user market according to Neilsen, and adds a few game changing features which may leave rivals MSNBC and Fox News scrambling ...

Don't try this at home - Tetris tribute on tiny wheels

by Grant Robertson (RSS feed) Sep 27th 2009 {3 comments}

Every once in a while, someone actually sneaks something cool into the YouTubes. Tetris lovers of the world, unite! via @arnteriksen ...

DEMOfall09 - Pyrix, social payments with deep tracking

by Grant Robertson (RSS feed) Sep 22nd 2009 {0 comments}

Piryx is payments for the social web, but with a host of intelligence and data mining features only available to huge companies and campaigns in the past. With roots in political fundraising, Piryx has a track record that's somewhat impressive, having recently rolled out a site to accept donations for Rep. Joe "You Lie!" Wilson, and claiming another 150 payment taking users nationwide. The ...

DEMOfall09 - Gelato is online dating meets social search

by Grant Robertson (RSS feed) Sep 22nd 2009 {0 comments}

Online dating is a somewhat static market. You have premium players Match.com and eHarmony, who seem to suggest at every commercial break that the person you've been looking for your whole life just signed up a few minutes ago. At the other end of the spectrum, there's Plenty of Fish which, although vastly improved from a few years ago, is still one of the least visually pleasing and user ...

DEMOfall09 - For those of us stuck at home

by Grant Robertson (RSS feed) Sep 22nd 2009 {0 comments}

For those of you lucky enough to still squeeze your boss for a travel budget in the tough economy, San Diego's weather for DEMOfall09 today will be a balmy 90 degrees with what Weather.com refers to as "Abundant Sunshine" From where I sit, I'm only slightly more jealous of the weather than the lineup of presenters I'm going to miss in person. I spent the better part of yesterday getting ...

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