Archive for November, 2006
What is it with humans and their pets?
Three completely unrelated news stories of late all connected in the neurons of my brain and I have to ask: what low-level function in the human brain is responsible for this intense desire for humans to have pets? Maybe the nurturing gene(s)?
Dogster got some funding back in September [...]
CNN has a great article on how companies like Amex, GE, and Whirlpool asked 3,000 MBA students to help them with some of their critical and strategic issues around innovation. Worth a read.
I first heard of Pickspal from Andrew McAfee in August 2006. Then from Michael Arrington. Venture Beat’s Matt Marshall has written a good summary of their venture. In short, Pickspal lets people bet on sports – nothing new there. But they they figure out which of their many thousands of customers are able to pick [...]
This Wired article is hilarious. It further proves my “Theory of Constraint” (constraints increase creativity and clarity of any project.)
Wired asked dozens of writers to put their words to paper and to author a six word story.
The challenge was predicated on the fact that according to the article:
” Hemingway once wrote a story in just [...]
IBM rocks. They keep doing cool things. They’re spending a ton of money on wikis and light-weight scripting languages. And they asked 100,000 of their customers, partners, and employees to develop an innovation pipeline. Now they are spending a reported $100M (according to BusinessWeek) in an effort to capitalize on Second Life and other immersive [...]
I like this cartoon from the prolific and funny Hugh Macleod:
I would correct it though to:
“If two smart, savvy people can’t have an interesting conversation about your product, you haven’t designed your product well enough yet, nor have you marketed it well.”
But his is shorter. And fits on a business card.
(For the most recent articles on Web 2.0, check out my full Web 2.0 articles category.)
This posting has links to all of the Web 2.0 Summit 2006 blog posts that I wrote:
Day 1
Enterprise 2.0
SMB Session
Launch Pad
Keynote with Eric Schmidt
Joi Ito on Worlds of Warcraft
Ben Trott of Six Apart, talking about Vox
Discussion with Arthur [...]
Until now, the mobile phone networks have been walled gardens with pay-per-use data plans and in order to build a telephone application, you had to customize it for every phone and every model and every carrier. It has been frankly a nightmare and has even prompted Michael Arrington to comment at The New New Internet [...]
Here are my summary thoughts on the 3 day Web 2.0 Summit 2006 in SF, CA
There were some overall themes that seemed to prevail in the sessions I attended and I’m going to try to capture them here in no particular sequence. It’s one thing to have sat in all the sessions or to review [...]
Here are the day 3 notes for the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco:
[My notes are in this square brackets.]
Harnessing Collective Intelligence with Jim Buckmaster (Craigslist), Owen Van Natta (Facebook), Toni Schneider (Automattic), and Richard Rosenblatt (Demand Media)
On the panel:
Jim Buckmaster / CEO, Craigslist
Owen Van Natta, COO of Facebook
Toni Schneider, CEO of Automatic
Richard Rosenblatt, cofounder, [...]
Here are the day 3 notes for the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco:
[My notes and analysis in this square brackets.]
The Alumni Report – Web 2.0 Launches Revisited:
Michael Tanne / Wink: he gave a very long demo
Veoh Networks: YouTube except for high-resolution long videos. We have figured out how to store them in a distributed [...]
Here are the day 3 notes for the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco:
[My notes and analysis are in these square brackets.]
From the Labs: eBay Research Labs, Eric Billingsley:
we now have 800,000 people making part or all of their living on that marketplace.
labs employees are doing a 3 way split:
1/3 consulting; identify new research opportunities; [...]
Here are the day 3 notes for the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco:
[My notes and analysis are in these square brackets.]
Disruption Opportunity: Venture Capital: Roger McNamee (private equity) and Ram Shiram (seed investing)
Shiram: I DO believe that it’s cheap to start a company; it is hard to find talent though.
Content companies are very hard [...]
Here are the day 3 notes for the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco:
[My notes and analysis are in these square brackets.]
Yahoo! Technology Preview
Brad Garlinghouse
Web 2.0 is about people and emotions
Technical specs have never been less relevant
Email was sent in fall 35 years ago
[I use a rule of thumb that I think I got from [...]
Here are the day 3 notes for the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco:
[My notes and analysis are in these square brackets.]
MySQL, Marten Mickos
Referred to a book on open source titled Innovation happens elsewhere
my data + your data + public data = next generation OLAP
We are running trillions of transactions per day on the [...]
Why do I love this new Bugatti from Volkswagen? Because it’s so ridiculously implausible. Because it took 100 engineers five years to build. Because it goes faster than F1 racing cars. Because it costs $1.4M (if you can find one). Because it has a W-16 engine that was built by mashing together two Audi V-8s. [...]
I have always admired Nicholas Negroponte, former head of the MIT Media Lab. For many years now, he has been throwing his challenge towards the computer industry – build me a $100 USD laptop that can be hand-powered, so that developing nations can join the information revolution. This year at the Product Design Awards 2006, [...]
Okay, this is one of the coolest inventions I have seen in a while. This tent is designed in such a way that you can pack it up in 15 seconds and you can set it up in 2 seconds!
For information on this tent that won the Gold Medal in the Best Product Design Awards [...]
THIS is the reason you don’t allow overly broad stupid legislation like the Patriot Acts I and II and the most recent Military Commission Act to pass. They are always unintended uses that far exceed the original intent of the law. In this case, a couple in their mid-forties were being overtly sexual on a [...]
Mark Morford has just written what can only be described as one of the most incredible customer testimonials I have ever read. Every company on the planet should aspire to create the kind of loyalty and lust and pure unadulterated joy that Apple seems to have successfully created in Mark’s eyes.
Another writer recently posted a [...]
