Yes, we’re in a bubble

There is a lot of money flowing again… A LOT of money. It doesn’t take too much effort to see the companies being announced on Techcrunch today are exactly like companies of a different name mentioned from 1999. So the bubble is obious. Everybody else is writing about it. Fine, but I still want to thow my 2 cents in.

First, this company, PlayWidgets was announced on a blog today. The product struck a chord with me. Why? I wrote a similar app in Java 1.0 as an applet back in 1996. I wrote it with the free Java SDK and MS-DOS Edit or D-Edit. That was a long time ago. Here is the link is here. You will probably have to load it in IE, since the html doesn’t work in Firefox anymore. Also, I just loaded it and it looks like there is a bug. I remember contacting Paul Haeberli when I wrote it. Paul was one of the early graphics pioneers at SGI who would toss up some great graphics gems on the web when the web was practically nothing. He had a sample app that properly demonstrated double buffering in the cryptic Applet API. I asked if I could use his code… he said ‘sure’. BTW, if I recall, his app would take any JPEG and convert it to an impressionist interpretation. I have no doubt I will see such a widget pop up on someones MySpace page with the label.. ‘teh bomb’.

Second, although were are in a bubble, I’m not as pessimistic as I was towards the end of the last one. There are a lot of companies with great traction (ahem.. BrightRoll ). The internet is making a positive difference on a lot of problems. Yeah, we’ll have some royal flameouts (especially in the financial industry… again), but that will just help bring things back to reality… which is always a Good Thing.