mitch-kapor

The End of Second Life

Owen Thomas · 02/22/09 12:00PM

Those who can't do, teach. Second Life, the most overhyped virtual world, has been abandoned even by its most fervent journalistic promoters, like Reuters and Wired. It's now pitching itself as an online schoolhouse.

Twitterati on Parade

Owen Thomas · 01/20/09 07:02PM

Did you hear Twitter is now bigger than Digg? That's because you can't vote on Obamanaugural headlines by text message. More OMG Barack!!!!!!1!1!! tweets from the media elite:

Is Mitch Kapor running for CTO of America?

Owen Thomas · 08/28/08 05:40PM

If Barack Obama is elected president, will he bring Silicon Valley a new bicycle in the form of a federal chief technology officer — our very own nerd in the White House? Bloggers are already nominating their favorite conference blowhards. But Obama seems pretty serious about naming someone to the position, even if it ends up being a policy figurehead. So who will it be, really?The whispers I've heard are that the most likely candidate is Mitch Kapor — the founder of Lotus, and the man who suggested the position to Obama in the first place. Technology Review interviewed Kapor about the position. He all but nominated himself for the job — and then backed away artfully:

The man who didn't let AOL kill Firefox

Nicholas Carlson · 01/31/08 01:00PM

Tomorrow, Netscape is officially dead: AOL is ending support for the venerable browser. But its offspring, Firefox, is thriving. Both Netscape and Firefox had several brushes with death. In 1998, "Microsoft was driving their monster truck after us and they were about to pin us to the wall," former Netscape software engineer Brendan Eich recently told the San Francisco Chronicle. Before that could happen, however, Netscape execs James Barksdale, Eric Hahn, Mike Homer and cofounder Marc Andreessen decided to open the browser's source code to the community. Behold, Mozilla. But the organization wasn't independent of Netscape owner AOL yet. And here's a shocker, AOL executives nearly killed Mozilla through neglect. So who saved the baby?

Three questions for the Google party plane posse

Jordan Golson · 01/28/08 05:40PM

We know TechCrunch's Michael Arrington didn't make it onto the Google jet back from Davos, but who did? Arrington claims that Lotus founder Mitch Kapor, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and tech publisher Tim O'Reilly made it onto the flight but doesn't serve us up with a passenger manifest.

Game shows and lectures

Megan McCarthy · 11/14/07 04:21PM

Go to a game show with your favorite videobloggers, get all scholarly, or spy on Yahoo's new digs, all in tonight's Valleywag Calendar.

Jordan Golson · 10/09/07 03:45PM

Lotus founder Mitch Kapor has some advice for the young guns writing apps for Facebook: "Platform owners have the power." Facebook will take your ideas and crush you; it's just that Mark Zuckerberg will be nicer than Bill Gates as he does it.. Sound familiar? [Compete Blog]