Startup and Dissemination

I've been running full-bore these last two weeks, writing commercialization plans and dispatching them to consultants for review, getting servers up and running in skyscrapers in San Jose, and pushing the whole system out for early public consumption. On top of that, I was drawn into the local paper's wonderful world of fora, sparing with those who use "seditious liberal" as a form of punctuation. Name calling is such a great debate tactic. Oh, and I did "Career Day" at my son's school, spending the morning repeating myself. Such is the fate of teachers, as I recall. I had my patter down by the third and final session and, of course, will go back again.

The forum engagements began as a follow-on to my original editorial, now followed up twice in print. The second follow-up calmly attacked the previous one for their anti-evolution stance. I post little notes on these topics, focusing on issues in epistemology and noting that I don't much care what others believe as long as policy provides for freedom of conscience. My unflappability results in the name calling, I suppose. Oh, I was also told to repent. That was expected.

But, more interesting, is the continued sense of support for my main business effort, which I will now reveal to my very limited readership! ofamind.com is an elaboration of my earlier glitta.com platform and is designed as an online prosumer web clippings/tagging/social networking engine for online knowledge workers. I liken it to MySpace crossed with Salesforce for serious researchers. The system integrates with patent search and with citeseer (more sources to come) as well as with other user's content to provide discoveries related to your interests. From a business standpoint, the technology is a channel for personalization and advertising for a select audience (with high earnings) built around science, technology, legal and business research professionals. The early-stage funding came from consulting gigs, but I won a National Science Foundation grant to continue to expand the system and have been team building in an effort to try get a second wave of funding.

Meanwhile, I am hard at work on another government funding opportunity that builds on one component of the Ofamind system: indexable briefings and presentations. Specifically, a subcontractor has a tool for compiling voice together with PowerPoint slideshows, then uploading them for search and dissemination to Ofamind. The new funding opportunity builds off of that capability and expands on the idea that cross-citation of supporting documents and ideas via tagging, content and reference can provide a powerful new way of working on the web and distributing briefings and presentations to a wider audience.