James Siminoff

Jul
3rd

Fri

In all fairness to the S.C. governor’s aides “I am hiking the Appalachian Trail” does sound a lot like “I am getting some Argentinian tail

— My father in law sent me this in a email forward. Thought it was too funny to keep to myself.

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Jul
2nd

Thu

The above is on TechCrunch today.

Guess there was no need to stay up close to midnight getting this done for the deadline on the 30th…

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Jul
1st

Wed

Final touches on taking out the fly clear booth at SFO

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Jun
29th

Mon

When the news broke Saturday, the user from Florida reposted the information, with a note to administrators that said: “Is that enough proof for you [expletives]? I was right. You were WRONG.

—

Some anonymous asshole contributor on Wikipedia (via NYT)

The trend of citizen journalism that the social web has allowed is overall a good thing. However the problem that I have been seeing more of recently is that people are so excited to get their 10 seconds of fame on Wikipedia, TechCrunch, etc., that they are not thinking about the consequences behind their actions. Hopefully time will begin to calm the “shoot first, aim later” approach that many citizen journalists are taking.

Too bad the web is not like grade school where you would just beat a snitch up…

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Jun
28th

Sun

A student who secures a degree is increasingly unlikely to make up its cost, despite higher pay, and the employer who requires a degree puts faith in a system whose standards are slipping. … I’m not arguing against higher learning but for it — and against the degree system that stands in its way.

—

DON’T GET THAT COLLEGE DEGREE! - New York Post (via fred-wilson)

I had a little BBQ today and we were talking about college degrees. I think that at this point you are probably better off gaining experience in the real world for 4 years then you are spending $200k+ on college during that same time.

The tough economy has emphasized to me that experience trumps a degree.

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Historically, recessions have been a time when new companies, like Microsoft, get born, and good companies separate themselves from their competition. It makes sense. When times are tight, people look for new, less expensive ways to do old things. Necessity breeds invention.

—

Op-Ed Columnist - Invent, Invent, Invent - NYTimes.com

Damn Straight!

(via henrysztul)

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Jun
26th

Fri

Very smart ad from Sprint.

However the one clincher is that the Pre is a brick when you bring it abroad (does not roam) and the iPhone does that is the clincher for me.

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Jun
25th

Thu

Instead of watching TV or playing Grand Theft Auto, work on your idea. Instead of going to bed at 10, go to bed at 11. We’re not talking about all-nighters or 16 hour days – we’re talking about squeezing out a few extra hours a week.

—

37signals on not quitting your day job (via marco)

===

Or in the words of Gary Vaynerchuk Stop Watching F#$%ing Lost

(via msg)

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Jun
24th

Wed

Productivity at 35,000 feet

I am writing this post on my way to NYC from LA. I have written about how much I like the GoGo Internet on the plane before but I think it is teaching me something about productivity.

By not having a phone or high enough bandwidth to easily stream video I am much more productive then at my desk. In the last 2 hours I have been able to get at least double the amount of work done then I would of in the office.

Not sure if it is too extreme, but I might turn all of the phones (mobile and desk) off for 2 days a week and see if it allows me to be more productive.

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Jun
23rd

Tue

Pretty cool… I had no idea that Marco was on our service. He is the lead developer at Tumblr (powers this blog) and created Instapaper. Always a fun surprise when you find out that people who you follow are using your service…

marco:

myeviltwin:

Finally moved iPod out of my iPhone dock because, um, I barely use it and SMS is a major part of my regular communiques. Also I never listen to voicemail.

Since you’re a voicemail slacker like me, I suggest PhoneTag, a service that intercepts your voicemail and instead sends you an email with a human-done text transcription and the audio as an MP3 attachment.

Then they become emails that you can quickly skim (and possibly ignore).

The only disadvantage is that it completely takes over from the built-in voicemail, so voicemails will no longer go to Visual Voicemail at all. It was worth the trade-off to me.

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un-Clear

So one of my favorite travel services ceased operations today, Clear. The service (where available) allowed you to get through security in less then 3-4 minutes guaranteed.

My only disappointment with Clear’s ceasing of operations is how they decided to do it. Hundreds of thousands of customers like me have been prepaying for the service, in fact I just renewed for the next 12 months 2 weeks ago for $200. So when I saw that website just had the below, I have to say that my sadness for the service turned into a bit of anger…

I have seen a few VC contracts but in all of them there is nothing about control of how a shut down would take place if one ever happened. Clear had many funders, one was my friend Bijan’s firm Spark Capital. Now I am sure that Spark had absolutely no control over how things went down at Clear so I in no way feel this is their fault but it would have been good if they had been able to control the communication of a shut down in order to make it as soft of a landing as possible. The above is definitely not soft.

I hope that another service will take the place of Clear as I think it was really a great and valuable product. In fact if I had a little more money and time on my hands I would buy the assets of Clear today and try and make a go of it.

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Jun
22nd

Mon

Starting in late 2007, one of the first things we did to solve our problems was move battery pack production from an outsourced factory in Asia to California. This may sound counter-intuitive, but our unit cost actually went down and quality improved as we went to a more automated system and could iterate quickly with engineering to find design efficiencies.

Avoiding the cost of shipping a half ton pack from Asia also meant significant savings on shipping costs. This is a much bigger deal for a heavy and bulky product than a small consumer electronics device, where outsourcing to Asia makes a lot more sense. Very importantly, our supply chain went from a tectonically slow six months and having to pay for tens of millions of dollars of inventory in transit to a matter of a few weeks.

—

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla

As labor cost go up and environmental regulation tightens in places like China and India, we are going to see more and more manufacturing moving back to the US. Shipping cost and time to market are 2 very big negatives that exist when outsourcing manufacturing to Asia which so far have been covered up by low cost.

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Jun
20th

Sat

iPhone: from frustration to fantastic.

Bijan and I share very similar thoughts on iPhone/Blackberry debate. Until now I just could not switch off of my curve, there were just too many critical business features that I was just unwilling to live without.

I was thinking of getting the 3GS this weekend but Bijan’s post below has now made that a definite.

I am looking forward to all of the incredible fun features of the iPhone without having to give up on productivity. I am not a stock investor but based on where Rim’s price is today, (stock price 84, p/e 22, market cap of 45 billion) I would be shorting the shit out of it if I was.

bijan:

I bought the very first first iPhone when it came out a few years ago. I was so excited and couldn’t wait to give it a run.

It didn’t work for me. I couldn’t get over the lack of 3g, lack of MS Exchange support, lack of apps (no app store in those days), no copy & paste, no email search, poor battery, and an odd headphone jack connector. I wanted it to work for me. It was so frustrating.

I went back to my trusty blackberry curve.

Then the iPhone 3g came out and promised a lot. It came with an App Store, 3g speeds and MS Exchange support. My friend Nabeel and I got up early and bought that phone on opening day.

I lived with that phone for a few months but slowly found myself carrying around two devices. iPhone and Blackberry. I still couldn’t get over the frequently slow/delay keyboard bug, lack of copy & paste, lack of search, slow processor, poor camera & poor battery life.

Then i dumped the iPhone altogether and just used the Blackberry. I couldn’t take the iPhone shortcomings and carrying two phones isn’t my thing.

When a friend helped me install an early beta of iPhone OS 3.0 OS I knew that things were getting better. At last we had search & copy/paste. Yes!

On Friday, I received the iPhone 3gs. I’m still in the honeymoon phase but this thing is fantastic. Better battery, plus it’s fast. I did a web browsing speed test with my colleague Rob Go who has the previous 3g model. The 3gs blew him away.

The OS is smooth. Copy & paste and search are lighting quick. I can type really fast. The camera is excellent and I’m already having a ball with video recording.

I have had a love/hate relationship with the iPhone over the years. But I’m back and this is the phone I’ve been waiting for.

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Jun
18th

Thu

Writing a few Tumblr blog posts from the Ramada Hotel lobby at the airport in Lima, Peru.

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My favorite new start-up, Quirky

My friend Ben Kaufman a fellow serial entrepreneur (founder of Mophie and Kluster) just launched a new business called Quirky. Quirky leverages the crowd to create products, it then pre-sells the product until it has enough to be manufactured.

I really love the business model of building a platform that enables the crowd to do the heavy lifting, WIkipedia is probably the best example of this. I continue to play around with a business around this same idea for content, which I hope to launch in 1-3 years (too busy right now).

So far Quirky users have come up with a few products including the one above, the Presto, which presses the water and slices Tofu at the same time. Not sure I would need one but that is exactly the point, all they need is 250 Tofu lovers to pay $30 and this niche crowd built kitchen device will become a reality.

Keep an eye on Quirky I have a strong feeling that some really incredible things will come out of it…

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