SocialPipeline 05/28/2011 (a.m.)

• How the Blogger Deal Happened

  • February 1st, 2001, I returned from a PR tour. It was my mother's birthday and that night I was busy trying to find a way to tape Jeopardy! after she called saying she saw my name mentioned on it. Later, reading Dave Winer's site before bed, I saw a posting about problems at Evan's company, Pyra. I read Evan's heartfelt story "And Then There Was One". I was really moved. This was the type of stuff I couldn't write during our tough days at Software Arts.

• Stanford scientists turn human skin cells directly into neurons, skipping iPS stage - Office of Communications & Public Affairs - Stanford University School of Medicine

  tags: SharismBook

  • The direct conversion of skin cells to neurons contrasts with similar research that first transforms skin cells to a pluripotent, or developmentally flexible, state and then coaxes them to become neurons or other specialized cells. A separate team of Stanford researchers recently used this technique to generate patient-specific neurons from a woman with Parkinson’s disease. However, that process is labor-intensive and relies on cell lines that may not fully reflect the cell-to-cell diversity that occurs in a natural population. Wernig emphasized that it is important to continue to explore both research techniques.

• Pyra Labs - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  • The co-founders were Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan, and the company's first product, also named 'Pyra', was a web application which would combine a project manager, contact manager, and to-do list. In 1999, while still in beta, the rudiments of Pyra were repurposed into an in-house tool which became Blogger. The service was made available to the public in August 1999. Much of this coding was done by Paul Bausch and Matthew Haughey.

  • In 2002, Blogger was completely re-written in order to license it to other companies, the first of which was Globo of Brazil.

  • In 2002, Blogger was completely re-written in order to license it to other companies, the first of which was Globo of Brazil.

• Scripting News: 2/1/2001

  tags: SharismBook

  • A fantastic essay by Evan Williams about recent events at Pyra. "It really breaks my heart to see the group of awesome people that I was so damn proud of having assembled break apart, feeling beaten and with dreams unrealized."
    

• Trellix Licenses Blogger - Slashdot

  tags: SharismBook

  • I've never cared for the term"blog,"but gee, I can't really argue with the idea of a siteful of short newsy items updated several times a day. And everyone seems to agreeBloggeris a great way to run your own such site, much better than thecrappy alternatives.AsDan Bricklinsays, "I didn't like the idea of Blogger beinglost in the dotCom crash.Personal web sites were growing and important." So he got his companyTrellixto license it. Go check out his account"How The Blogger Deal Happened"(and/or read thepress release).

• For Twitter Founder Evan Williams, Anything Could Happen, Page 3

  tags: SharismBook

  • So as he sits in his apartment and blogs, Williams finds himself in an odd place. He's running a company that's more popular and growing faster than he could have possibly imagined. It's also flat broke. Several weeks earlier, Williams had written a post that begged users to donate money to keep the servers running. It worked: He raised more than $10,000 in $10 and $20 money transfers made through PayPal. Now he's got to figure out how to save the company. Writing the blog post, which he titles "And Then There Was One," he describes the layoff, wishes his former employees well--"Hopefully our friendships will survive"--and then finally addresses his customers: "I'm still fighting the good fight," he writes. "The product, user base, brand, and vision are still somewhat intact. Amazingly. Thankfully. In fact, I'm actually in surprisingly good shape. I'm optimistic. (I'm always optimistic.) And I have many, many ideas. (I always have many ideas.)"

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