Some of you might remember Foldera (FDRA).  The company enjoyed a brief moment of prominence and seemed poised to be a Web 2.0 darling that was breaking the rules and suceeding brilliantly.  So charmed was the company that at one point they could even boast that the “Don of Web 2.0″ Michael Arrington was on their board of directors. (Disclosure: I was the SVP of Business Development and Chief Mobility Officer for Foldera from Jan 2006 to July 2007)

Alas, twas not to be.  The combination of an audacious goal, a talented but immature senior engineer who had never shipped a product, overblown promises and slipping deadline after deadline turned the company from darling to deadpool candidate in less than a year.

Over the past 12 months the company has been languishing with a $0.02 to $0.03 stock price, no sales, no product to sell, no real deals in the pipeline and what seemed to be little in the way of any prospects.  All this has apparently changed with a completely surprising letter to the shareholders that the company released yesterday.

It looks as if the company is mainly just providing a shell for an entirely new organization.  CEO Hugh Dunkerely – now being referred to as Interim CEO, although when they announced his promotion to CEO a few months ago the word “Interim” was conspicuously absent from the press releases – has stepped down and slid back into his prior  role  as SVP of Investor Relations.

It appears that Reid Dabney, Foldera’s CFO will retain his position in the new entity leading me to believe that he had some significant role in this new deal.

Aside from those two familiar faces – everything else about the reconstituted organization looks piosed to change.  No longer about collaboration and organization software, the company will now be the developer of software and hardware for the carrier class 10 Gigabit switch market.

Along with the new management team and new direction the company is adopting a new name; CeCors, an acronym for Carrier Ethernet Core Switch and pronounced ‘SeaCores.’ This will become effective in the coming weeks as the Company’s legal name, registrations, trading symbol and marketing materials are changed.

Another change looks to be the capitalization structure of the company.  According to the letter they say they sent, the company intends to do a 10 for 1 reverse split of the stock which could have very significant repercussions for those people that purchased stock when the share price was several dollars as well as for those employees now sitting on fully vested options that have been left un-exercised because they have been worth less than the strike price established to exercise them.

At present I’m not sure what to make of this information.  There are a lot of unanswered questions that I’m sure are shared by the hundreds – perhaps thousands of shareholders that were left holding the bag when the brokerage firm that underwrote this security, Brookstreet Securities abruptly folded do to unregulated trading of CMO’s in mid 2007.

There are certainly a lot of hard feelings among the investors that feel that they were screwed by  Brookstreet and in particular by Neal Dabney and Steve Kerr, two savvy Wall Street raiders that managed to bank tens of millions apiece while allowing the people that made that possible- both the early investors and the employees of the original Foldera to take it in the shorts while they sold the stock right out from under us.

It is my  understanding that there is already a class action lawsuit that has been filed against Brookstreet although I don’t know at this time if Dabney or Kerr (Not sure of the spelling; please correct me if you know it) have been named in this suit or in which court it has been filed.

It is interesting as well that this leader was released via PR  Newswire before it had even reached the shareholders whose money has been paying the salaries of Reid and Hugh for more than two years now.  You’d think that such a major change in direction – particularly when accompanied by a complete management change and a ten for one reverse stock split is the sort of thing that the shareholders deserve to hear about directly rather than from a Google alert turning up the “Letter to the Shareholders” on Yahoo Finance.  Classy guys.  Off to a great start.  Are you going to write to those of us holding worthless options to explain our rights given this turn of events or has that somehow slipped off the radar too?
What a costly and frustrating experience. One I am sure is shared by more of you than I even want to think about.  For what it’s worth, while I was AT Foldera I did my best to make something happen but it is awfully tough to generate deals that produce any revenue when you never have a product that is ready for sale.

And, as Forrest Gump says; “that’s all I have to say about that”.

Note: This post is in response to Jeff Jarvis’ suggestion that all bloggers repost substantially all of any AP story to show solidarity and support for their fellow blogger, Rogers Cadenhead’s community-created Drudge Retort, after it was aggressively threatened by the AP. What follows is my show of support. It is also a story that merits posting in its own right as autism is one of the most serious and increasingly common challenges facing children today.

The Zac Web Browser Aims to Focus Autistic Kids; The Associated Press

The Zac Browser is an Web application that helps autistic kids focus their attention and limits their exposure and interaction with inappropriate content. For autistic children, simply concentrating on one situation can be a challenge. Dealing with the multitude of sights and sounds produced by a computer can be even more difficult.

Software designer John LeSieur recognized those frustrations while watching his 6-year old grandson, Zackary try and navigate the Web. LeSieur knew he could help. So he had his company, People CD Inc. design the Zac Browser, an interface geared specifically towards autistic children. The Zac Browser greatly simplifies the Web. It seals off most adult-oriented sites and presents a hand-picked slate of choices from free, public Web sites.

While other programs offer a “walled garden” approach to the Web, LeSieur’s browser aims to go further: It essentially takes over the computer and reduces the controls available. And for children like Zackary, setting those limits and narrowing the focus could help open up a world of possibilities. The Zac Browser can be downloaded or run directly from www dot zacbrowser dot com. ___ ___, The Associated Press.(****END****)

TwitterFone, a new service that allows you to post to Twitter via voice by calling a number on your mobile phone has just been lit up. The application is currently in an invite-only beta so if you want to use it any time soon I suggest you hustle on over and get yourself on the list.

I’m finding the proliferation of voice to text applications interesting. While some are more useful than others what is becoming clear is that we’ve finally reached a point where reliable translation of the human voice into intelligible text messages has reached the point where we can make it work reliably – even over a mobile phone and even without the ability to see what the results of our utterances are coming out like on the other end.

This might result in some embarrassing and surprising things happening because I’ve yet to see any program that was even 85% at doing these translations and that’s sitting right in front of the computer and watching in real time as the system decoded my own voice speaking clearly and slowly which is hardly what I’d expect from someone posting a quick message to Twitter while using a cell phone in traffic. I guess if we start seeing less than sensible posts to Twitter we’ll realize that there are still some bugs to be ironed out of the whole speech to text thing. On the other hand, if we don’t see any difference it either means people aren’t using the interface that much or all the kinks have been worked out and it’s time to start brushing up on our dictation skills.

It’s no surprise that half a dozen people sent me a link the Matt Richtel’s New York Times Article (login required) about the stresses of blogging and the toll it takes on one’s health. To his credit, Matt did attempt to reach me, however phone tag and deadlines precluded our having a discussion save the one we had with one another’s answering machines.

It’s too bad. I would have added a certain amount of balance to his story – balance that I think, in the grand scheme of things was badly needed. Why? Because much as people would like to blame blogging and the strains and stresses therefrom as the culprit’s behind Om Malik’s heart attack, Russel Shaw’s fatal heat attack, or even the death (again due to heart attack) of my dear friend, Marc Orchant.

In all three cases, as well as several other examples, blogging was implicated as a singular stressor that in and of itself was responsible for everything from Mike Arrington’s 30 pound weight gain and sleeping disorder to Marc’s cardiac arrest early one December morning. The thing is, we’re talking about a couple of instances out of a group that now numbers well into the millions.

If you look on Technorati or Bloglines, or Google Reader, you can see that there are literally hundreds of millions of blogs. This means at a minimum there are millions of bloggers – so even if only a very small percentage of them blog seriously, it’s still a big number. A big enough number, in fact, that it is likely to statistically mirror the greater population at large. This means, that, as in any large group, there are going to be a few people that pass away and some of those or likely to pass from heart attacks as they are among the biggest killers of mature men and women in the US.

Personally, I see this less as a statistic that relates to blogging and more one that relates to pre-emptive care, regular checkups and healthy living. I know/knew all three individuals (four if you count Arrington) that were the subjects of the New York Times article and I can tell you with certainty that it wasn’t the blogging that these individuals did that resulted in their particular personal crises.

Marc, it turned out was suffering from about a 75% occlusion of the major arteries feeding his heart. 75%! It is amazing in retrospect that he was so energetic and robust and the sad part is that had this man, who was so concerned about being on top of so many aspects of his own life had taken a couple hours out of that busy schedule to get a regular check up his doctor would have almost certainly discovered this health emergency and ordered immediate action to prevent what was, ultimately, the inevitable outcome of this condition left untreated.

In Marc’s case I do believe that stress – but not stress directly from blogging – was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Namely that Marc was growing progressively more distraught over the games that Sam Sethi was playing with Marc’s money – that is the money Sam was contractually obligated to pay Marc and which he had lied about having, had lied about raising from investors, and had lied to us when he said it was already in the bank; which was, in both Marc’s case and my own, one of the main inducements to join his company.

My association with Marc was only for the last two years but in that time we spent a tremendous amount of time together. To understand Marc’s demeanor, the easiest way to explain it (at least to those that know me) would be to say imagine me, now imagine someone exactly the opposite. I used to say before big meetings that my job was to make people nervous while Marc’s was to calm them back down. It seemed to work well.

My point is that Marc was as even tempered as I am mercurial. The guy was quintessentially cool headed in the way that great martial artists are cool headed. He was the rock for a lot of people, myself included. Thus, during my last visit, seeing him lose his temper a couple of times over just a few days – and over traffic of all things – was quite surprising and said to me “wow – this guy is under a lot of stress. Since I’ve already said it several times I won’t bother to say again just what that stress was…

As for Om, I don’t know him the way I knew Marc, but I knew his reputation and I think it was obvious to a lot of people that physical fitness wasn’t at the top of his list of priority items. In fact, I think this holds true for all the folks mentioned in the New York Times piece. This problem is not the sole providence of bloggers. It should be a wake up call to anyone, though, who spends 8 to 10 hours in front of a computer, takes the elevator down 3 floors to the garage, hops in their car, hits the drive through on the way how and then spends three hours wearing the hair off the back of their head kicking back in their Lazy Boy before toddling off to bed with a bowl of ice-cream.

Seriously. This is not a blogging issue; this is an America is going soft issue – and I’m sure that the rate of serious health emergencies is just as bad or even worse across many professions. Moreover, while there are times when bloggers work odd hours there are very, very few that force upon themselves the sort of self-flagellation that characterized Mike Arrington’s early TechCrunch efforts let alone the lifestyle attributed to Matt Buchanen.

At the end of the day, the deaths of Marc and Russell and the near death of Om Malik are personal tragedies comprised of equal parts lack of concern for one’s health and the misfortune of a deadly genetic predisposition, they are not, as the article in the Times postulates, occupational hazards. In other words, I don’t blame blogging one bit for Marc’s death, however, Sam Sethi is another story…

Nokia has just announced the impending launch of four new handsets to the line up of the world’s largest mobile phone manufacturer.

For readers of my prior blogs, it is likely that the N96, the successor to the vaunted N95 will be the most exciting. Picking up with the N95 left off, the N96 comes standard with 16 Gigs of memory that can be expanded with an additional 32 Gig from the new massive, solid-state memory cards.

Expected to begin shipping in the third quarter of 2008, the phone sports a bevy of new or expanded features including an even wider range of video formats, including higher definition and high speed video modes. The large 2.8″ screened dual-slider also has another feature that will be much loved by the hard-core geek crowd; Full Flash. No more annoying Flash incompatibility or frustrating attempts to upgrade the Flash installation on your browser you can now navigate to any video file on YouTube and simply push play.

Other features include and FM Out to allow quick and easy integration with your TV or home audio system or in your automobile. Check out the video of the new device being introduced right here:

Rank Zero? That’s what the site says. According to IzeaRanks TechCrunch, which as we all know is – or perhaps I should say was – one of the most popular tech blogs on the planet.

This is a new utility that is supposed to generate as their site puts it:

Finally, there’s a blog ranking system that uses real data to calculate which blogs are getting the most traffic and have the most influence on the web. IZEARanks ranks the top blogs in the blogosphere via actual site statistics, not an extrapolation of estimates. Sign up to see where you stand in the Top 100 blogs.

The header does say “alpha” but come on. It’s tough to be considered credible as a source of ranking information for blogs based upon traffic when a blog like TechCrunch has neither rank, nor traffic based upon the metrics you are generating.

Of course, this might be a “play for pay” ranking tool that instead of actually doing what the site says it does gives blogs that pay some sort of fee an artificially high ranking.

I don’t know what the actual deal is here, I only know that in addition to TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb also gets a big fat zero, while

isn’t even ranked at all…

Guys @ IzeaRanks here’s a tip: either clean up your act or hold off launching your product until it at least sort of works. You only get one chance to lose your credibility and it appears you’ve managed to do so…

I just spent the last few hours engaged in conversation with Stephen Kelly, the Founder and CEO of Peepel. This application was released a few months ago and has been profiled on a number of popular blogs including Mashable, however, if you haven’t done so already, it really is really worth the time to take a look at it. If you haven’t you really should check it out.

Peepel is an online collaborative office suite that includes a desktop environment that has multiple window capability, built in RSS, a notifier, file management, email, word processing, a spreadsheet, contact management, file sharing/collaboration, a mini-web browser, pre-defined document templates and even a workspace manager that sits on top of your desktop and changes functionality depending upon which component of Peepel you are using.

Looking at Peepel (having come from Foldera, a company that operates in a similar space) I expected to hear that dozens of developers had been working on this application for a couple of years. I was shocked to find that this was not the case – it has been some time that they’ve been building this impressive application but the team is tiny. It just goes to show what sort of magic the best developers can produce when they really do understand agile development and know their stuff absolutely cold.

It does take a little getting used to the interface but once you sort out how to navigate and understand a few of the program’s limitations it is an eminently suitable environment for 90% of what the average student or office worker needs to do every day.

One limitation is that you can only import a limited number of document types, these being .xls and .doc and a few other similar file types. While this may seem like a bad thing to an advanced user, for a teacher deploying this for a class or for a small business that needs to keep employees on task these built in limitation may actually prove to be more boon than bane.

Although we didn’t talk about plans for generating revenue with Peepel, it seems obvious to me that it could certainly be advertising subsidized and perhaps offer a premium, ad free version for a monthly subscription fee or a per user seat agreement.

Currently the application is free and you really ought to take a few minutes to check it out, if nothing else, at least to see just how much a disciplined development team can accomplish.