June 2009
39 posts
“When the news broke Saturday, the user from Florida reposted the information,...”
– 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,...
“A student who secures a degree is increasingly unlikely to make up its cost,...”
– 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 $200k+ on college during that same...
“Historically, recessions have been a time when new companies, like Microsoft,...”
– Op-Ed Columnist - Invent, Invent, Invent - NYTimes.com
Damn Straight! (via henrysztul)
“Instead of watching TV or playing Grand Theft Auto, work on your idea. Instead...”
– 37signals on not quitting your day job (via marco)
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Or in the words of Gary Vaynerchuk Stop Watching F#$%ing Lost (via msg)
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...
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...
“Starting in late 2007, one of the first things we did to solve our problems was...”
– 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...
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...
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...
Facebook Local Language
I went to Facebook tonight from my hotel room in Buenos Aires and it is all in spanish. It is funny (and totally ass backwards) that they have langauge set to where you are not who you are.
“this is why you got to read blogs”
– Fred Wilson talking about how he learned that there was the opportunity to invest in Twitter. The full transcript and video is here.
The ironic part is that by reading Fred’s blog I saw that he wanted to have the video transcribed, I pushed it to PhoneTag’s new multi-speaker API and...
WatchFor those who are out their pitching companies/products this is one of the better “how to” videos that I have seen. I am meeting Mark on Friday for the first time, luckily I don’t have to pitch him as I am not sure if my skills are at his level:)
“If you cost the company money then you ought to be at risk”
– Barney Frank, on CNBC talking about government regulations he believes are needed on bonuses for top executives. Going so far as to say that if an executive takes risk and it fails that they should actually owe the company money.
If the decisions I make as a CEO could actually cost me cash...
A big step for VOIP
One thing that I believe has been holding back growth in VOIP is the lack of a good wifi phone. A open source VOIP client on a mobile phone would be insane but that is not in the cards anytime soon. I tried the Linksys WIP330 but the battery life on standby was at best 4 hours and talk time was just enough to speak a twitter message.
Last week I found the Quick Phone at VoipSupply. It states...
WatchCaptured this fire hydrant geyser on my Blackberry coming home from lunch today. For those in the LA area, this was on Sunset in the Pacific Palisades.
Bing is going to be huge
I am trying to find a video of the round table that Business 2.0 did in 2007 of the Next Net 25 winners (SimulScribe/PhoneTag) was one of them. I looked on Google both on YouTube and on Video search and found nothing. Then I went to Bing and Searched Next Net 25 in their video section. (I had safe search off because I had seen Loic’s post about that earlier and had to see for myself).
...
Blinded By The Past (Technology Adoption)
Great post (below) from Albert at Union Square Ventures. Too many times I hear people tell entrepreneurs, “Someone did that 5 years ago..” The world continues to change and what did not work 5 years ago might work today. History is not a great litmus test for business success.
continuations:
I have been thinking about how our past experience can blind us to the potential of new...
One Home for Your Voice Mails →
PhoneTag is on the front page of the Personal Journal section of the Wall Street Journal today. I hope that print newspapers do not disappear as there really is a unique excitement that you get being in them that you just don’t get from the electronic news.
“Apple and its licensors reserve the right to change, suspend, remove, or disable...”
– iTunes Terms and Conditions
Sounds fair to me:) It is amazing what we agree to in all of these online “I agree to X” without reading them.
Tethering on the iPhone, Nice!
Image via CrunchBase
Apple just announced at the developers conference that they will have tethering. Additionally it will not take software on the PC and will work with wireless technologies like bluetooth.
OK, between that, search and copy and paste, I am heading to the Mac store to finally get an iPhone as soon as the next hardware update comes… (hopefully announced today as well)
...
7 Gadgets That Prove the Cell Network Isn’t Just... →
Great article on Gigaom about non-telephone uses of the cellphone network. I personally am a huge believer and have a lot invested in the idea that the lines will continue to blur between traditional carriers and developers. Check out the 7 gadgets, this is just scratching the surface of what’s to come…
Air France Mystery
I can’t believe that they have not found this plane yet. What has me so perplexed is that the plane has a satellite system that can send maintenance information from anywhere in the world but no one thought to append to those messages latitude/longitude numbers.
There are many areas where planes are off of radar. A simple ping every few minutes (maybe they should use twitter) through the...
“When I was an entrepreneur, I realized there are three kinds of VCs. My...”
– -Josh Kopelman from his interview with Connie Loizos
The best part about Josh is that not only does he say shit like this but his actions back it up. I can say first hand that Josh puts the entrepreneur first. When I had a somewhat messy deal on my hands, Josh made every effort from a human level...
“I’m a huge believer in getting a million people, getting them engaged, and then...”
– Reid Hoffman - LinkedIn’s startup story: Connecting the business world - Jun. 2, 2009
(via bijan)
There have been many huge successes around the methodology of build first, monetize second. However for some reason the way my brain is wired prevents me from ever doing this. I always need to have...
Surveying your customers to death... (part 2)
Image via Wikipedia
I just posted about surveying your customers, today I received a great example of what I was talking about this survey email from Gogo Inflight Internet (They are the people supplying the wifi that I love so much on certain American Airlines/Virgin America flights):
——- Dear James, Recently, you were invited to purchase a Gogo® Monthly Pass. In an effort to...
“The airline company identified the nationalities of the victims as two...”
– The nationalities of the victims from today’s Air France accident. I was struck by the diversity of people on the plane, the world is definitely flat.
source CNN
“It doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. We make our people wait in line for...”
– - Kogi co-founder Caroline Shin-Manguera
A lot of times the most successful businesses are the ones that don’t do it by the book. I love this quote because she is breaking every rule of business, yet her business thrives. Books like Predictably Irrational help to explain why people do not...
“the biggest rule facebook is breaking is: you don’t fix what isn’t broken. now...”
– Saw this quote on Fred Wilson’s blog this morning, it is from his niece (a junior in college, her blog is ecospiky’s Xanga Site). I have a half written post about the broader topic here. Too many companies innovate themselves out of business.
I hope to finish my thoughts on this in the next...