Brad’s Sketchpad

Thoughts about copy-cat startups, in my PlainText column on Newsweek.com this week

in this week’s magazine, I write about Akamai, a company that endured a terrible tragedy during 9/11, and now is riding the boom in online media content. Last week, I profiled Accel Partners venture capitalist Jim Breyer, for a recurring section in the magazine themed “managing change.”

I don’t object to the emerging idea of “carbon offsets”. I agree they can play a role in a broad solution to the forces contributing to climate change. But I don’t think that programs like Ford’s Greener Miles are a replacement for making conscientious consumer decisions, such as whether to by an SUV. I argue as such in this week’s Plain Text.

I didn’t have the stamina for Apple’s iWeb. There were many reasons I disliked it: bizarre file structures, the dependence on dot.mac, numerous bugs, and the fact that I could only post from my iMac at home… So I’m using WordPress now. I’ll be porting over the last six months of posts at some pont. Thanks to Jacob Knight Wachman for help with our new blogs!

In this week’s Newsweek, I interview new SUN CEO Jonathan Schwartz and profile the new Yahoo tech channel-which includes a weekly reality TV micro-show. I think we’ll be seeing much more of this kind of content from the big Web companies in the coming months and years.