Union Square Ventures invested in Tumblr. I’ve said my piece on it there. If you’d like, check out my tumblelog (which is a superset of the content here).
For some nostalgia, I originally wrote about Tumblr after learning about it over dinner with the Iridesco guys. Fun to look back.

There was a lot of great newsworthy questions being tackled today such as:

Should libraries allow Google, Microsoft to copy and index books for proprietary purposes?
What will Bush’s response be to California Wildfires?
Is Apple really worth as much as IBM now? (Market caps are now equal)

But, I’m feeling a little guilty… because in spite of all [...]

I really enjoyed Brad Fitzpatrick’s talk about the open social graph today. Brad’s talk was essentially a distilled version of this lengthy piece he wrote two months ago. Rather than retread his entire argument, I want to highlight the juicy bit that really popped for me. If you’re interested in more then [...]

I have seen the FPhone. It had a profound impact on me ;)
It’s not perfect yet, but it’s damn close. Let’s run through Fred’s FPhone checklist:
1 - same form factor as the iPhone - 3″ x 2″ super crisp display [This gets a 3/4 check. It's not as small, but it's pocket-sized]
2 [...]

I don’t know how readable this picture is, but the gist of it is that Web 2.0 is giving out trees instead of schwag. They’re using Tree-Nation to purchase the trees on behalf of the attendees. I’m really happy about it. The trees are being planted in Niger (which prompted me to [...]

Mary Meeker (Morgan Stanley analyst) just spoke on the state of the internet from a financial and secondary-technology perspective. Her slides are very thorough and are mandatory reading for anyone who cares about markets in the IT industry. Note: this link to her slides goes to a 49-page PDF.

I thought the talk by Evan Williams at Web 2.0 was the highlight of the first day. The title of his talk was “Think Less” (pun intended). By “Think Less” Ev means, “What can you take away to make something new?” By reducing the number of features and limiting the abilities of [...]

I’m going to be in SF from Tues through Friday for the Web 2.0 Summit. Drop a line if you’d like to meet up (either at the conference or elsewhere).

USV hosted another Facebook Hackathon tonight. The first hackathon USV hosted was really productive; we learned a lot and met a bunch of talented entrepreneurs. This time around was just as good.
This iteration of the Facebook Hackathon was much more focused on the monetization side of the Facebook App economy. [...]