

Flightcaster Gets Acquired. I Go on to Start Woven. - revorad
http://measuringmeasures.com/blog/2011/1/9/flightcaster-gets-acquired-i-go-on-to-start-woven.html

======
yesimahuman
Sounds really similar to my last startup and I'm glad to see it. There hasn't
been a good solution so far to making news relevant to you _without making you
search all day for it_. NLP, Machine Learning, smart news alerts, etc., can
all make some interesting solutions to these problems without needing to be
perfect. Also, mainstream news is the least socially connected news source out
there and there is a lot of work to be done in this space.

Woven sounds like a Gist competitor to me (like we indirectly were), but I
felt like Gist transformed into a plaxo type company in recent months rather
than news intelligence so I'm not so sure anymore. At any rate, I look forward
to seeing Woven grow!

~~~
aria
Thanks so much. Any insight from your startup we could benefit from?

~~~
yesimahuman
My email should be in my profile if you want to chat.

------
ojbyrne
The weird capitalization made me think the company name was "Start Woven."

~~~
bmelton
It's a headline, so generally, everything except articles 'on', 'to', 'the',
'an', etc, are capitalized.

Here are the basic rules:
[http://www.newsletterfillers.com/archives/grammar/capitaliza...](http://www.newsletterfillers.com/archives/grammar/capitalization_headline.htm)

~~~
klochner
"On To" is a subordinating conjunction, so it should be capitalized.

side note: grammatical rules aren't set in stone, they're guidelines to help
you achieve clarity -- if the title looks wrong, it probably is.

~~~
Cushman
Really? I'd say "on" is pretty clearly a preposition— here meaning "onward".
Since "on" isn't often used in that sense except in the case of compounds like
"go on", "move on", "drive on" etc. it might make more sense to say that "go
on" is a phrasal verb and a single lexical item. (Note that we could replace
"go on" in its entirely with a more semantically shallow "leave" without
affecting the rest of the sentence.)

"To" is tricky because it seems that we can replace it with a conjunction and
maintain the meaning of the sentence— "I go on and start Woven" does mean
nearly the same thing. However, you need to look at the ellipsis
(linguisticspeak for omission): "I go on and [I] start Woven" makes sense. "I
go on to [I] start Woven" obviously doesn't work. So we've actually changed
the structure of the sentence, meaning our replacement is no good.

It makes more sense to see the "to" as attached to the infinitive "start",
with the form working as an adverb of reason: "Why do you go on? To start
Woven." The actual implied conjunction here is probably "in order". (If you're
feeling clever, the infinitive also assumes the subject of the main clause,
thus the ellipsis: "I go on [in order] [for me] to start Woven.")

So by my analysis, both of those words are actually part of verb forms.
Uncapitalizing either seems to separate them from their verb phrase, causing
the confusion we've seen. However I'd recommend, especially in this informal
context, just using normal sentence capitalization, which everyone will have
no trouble parsing— and which is how the title is capitalized on the blog
itself!

------
stevefink
Kudos to any company working on information overflow. I promise to use your
product religiously (and pay for it) if you can solve the problem.

~~~
kordless
For solving specific use cases, or giving you the tools to do it yourself?

------
kanwisher
LOL a bit off topic but his new profile picture is cool, the old one was a bit
too stuffy.

------
jonmc12
I love the new profile pic. Before startup pic: buttoned-up, stylish,
academic. After startup pick: mad scientist.

------
joshu
I worry that news is a crappy business to get into and near.

------
coatta
The "social echo chamber and pop-culturization of news" phenomenon described
in Brad's latest blog posts is exactly the issue my friends and I have been
discussing for some time now. As a shameless news-junkie, I'm genuinely
curious to find out how the Woven team aims to tackle this problem. Oh, and
congratulations on the acquisition!

------
bguthrie
Congrats, Brad! Best of luck with the new startup.

------
Nate75Sanders
Anybody want to volunteer info on the details of the deal? Or even wager
guesses?

------
jblitzer
With collaborators like yours, it should be great!

~~~
aria
Thanks so much. I'm really happy with the team too.

------
kleinsch
Congrats! Woven sounds interesting, can't wait to try it.

