Ning.com, the first commercial Blank White Server, has launched.
Previously known as 24 Hour laundry and founded by Marc Andreessen formely of Netscape, this was one of the companies I was looking into joining a little over a month ago. Marc had contacted me after an 24HL employee and friend of mine pointed out my previous Blank White Server posts to him. It was nice to have my ideas validated by Marc's statement that a Blank White Server was what they were creating, unfortunately I was hesitant to sign an NDA as I did not want to be encumbered by any legal morass when I obviously had my own ideas to explore in this space. For the same reason, I'm hesitant to sign up as a user at Ning now since their legalese in the user agreement requires the user to not "modify, distribute, or create derivative works based on the Ning Playground" and I'll need to ask my lawyer what that means in my case of having conceived of it independently.
You should check it out though! The Ning Playground looks to be an excellent early example of what a Blank White Server can be.
Update: This is interesting. A forward from a friend of mine of a message posted today on a SIMS mailing list:
Oh, wow. Flashback to 1999. This sounds eerily like the dotcom flameout I worked for - Desktop.com. And here's some good marketing hype I just found to summarize. Sound familiar? (And for the fellow OSDDDI folks, Mitch was one of our angel investors, hee hee.) - Jen
SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 26, 2000
Desktop.com (www.desktop.com), the first integrated and personalized Internet desktop platform, today introduced Devtop (www.devtop.com), the first open, integrated platform for building, deploying, and distributing Web-based applications. Devtop reduces development time, minimizes cost, enables enriched functionality, and offers broader distribution for Web application providers everywhere.
Devtop provides the infrastructure, content, technology, and other resources needed to build Web-based applications. The service includes an Application Programming Interface (API) and corresponding documentation to access databases and servers, 25MB free storage, and content such as news headlines, sports scores, and stock quotes. Devtop's free hosting, 24x7 monitoring site management, and reporting minimize the time, money and technical expertise required to deploy an application.
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2000_June_26/ai_62915951
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