Archive
History Repeats Itself – The Looming Internet Bubble Version 2 and Thinking of the Old Days
Wow, as I sit here tonight thinking about the bubble of 1999; I can’t but help to see similar signs of that time now in 2011. Linked In, Facebook, Pandora, and more are all heading towards public offerings. The valuations are again in the stratosphere, like in 1998 and 1999.
Are we doomed to repeat the past? Thinking back to that time, I’m realizing quite a few of my successes and my failures. What I did well, I did really well, what I did bad I did really well, to paraphrase Mae West.
So what have I learned:
- That we all need heros and mentors
- That it’s OK to fail, it’s how you handle it that matters more
- That walking away and taking a timed break will do your heart and passion good
- That you should celebrate your success when it happens and learn from what worked and what really didn’t
- That we need to build relationships, projects won’t sustain your business, relationships will
So here I go, I’m back to trying to learn from Bill Gross of Idea Lab again. Over 14 years ago he was my hero, on the cover of Inc. Magazine and launching a Start-Up Factory. He was my role model on what was possible in business. His start-up Idea Lab was the inspiration for the name of my second software development start-up Idea Avenue, Inc.
After recently connecting with someone that worked closely with him around that time, I find myself following him again. This time it’s his blog at www.billgross.com. I urge you to read it and learn about the man and his principals, then go to his business at UberMedia to learn what they are doing to help change the world, 140 characters at a time.
Here’s to sharing a great resource whom offers sage advice on everything from business to saving our planet.
Wordle – I love Wordle
Wordle example of blog
I love seeing data in a Visual Data Diagrams almost as much as I love Augmented Reality. It’s become my second biggest interest in emerging technologies lately.
Thank you IBM Research for allowing Jonathan Feinberg, the ability to reuse code he wrote on your dime to develop this awesome, fun, cool, educational application.
Try it – you too will fall in love – http://www.wordle.net/
<from the site>
Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.</from the site>
Don Tapscott: Re-Industrialize the Planet
(Thanks Gerd!)
“Re-Industrialize the Planet”. A quick summary:
* The web is creating a global infrastructure for collaboration (which leads to disruption and confusion)
* As a result, all of our institutions have come to the end of their life-cycle
* The current recession is a crucial punctuation point in human history – the point where we said that we need to reset, the point where the industrial economy has finally run out of gas
* This paradigm shift is creating a crisis of leadership
* The Digital Natives are inheriting this situation – and they think very differently
* Kids are now the authority on many issues
* We have 40 years to re-industrialize the planet
Peek – About Peek
Check out Peek – a great simple device to get your email anywhere.
Peek was born on a walk in the park when Amol Sarva and his wife, Ursula, were expecting their first child. At six months pregnant, Ursula couldn’t sit still and found comfort in taking long walks. But planning for a new arrival and a busy life besides, Amol saw that Ursula would return feeling behind. Emails were piling up. She had inbox anxiety.
A seasoned wireless industry entrepreneur, Amol had long been using smartphones for mobile email. With smartphone in hand, their long walks were actually a great way for him to stay on top of things at the office. Amol tried to get Ursula to use one, describing the many features: email, texting, voice calling, Internet, etc. But the bells and whistles are exactly what turned her off. She didn’t want a complicated smartphone with extras she didn’t need.
What she really wanted was a simple, nifty device that would let her do email on the go since email was how everyone she knew made plans, caught up, and shared news.
Amol thought a simple, fun, and attractive mobile email device had to exist. He asked his contacts at the cell phone companies, but they were dismissive. Nobody wants “simple”, they want “more”, they said. But Amol saw an opportunity, which he discussed with a few colleagues from earlier ventures. They explored the idea in the “real world”, closely observing real people using email at their desks and on the go.
Amol’s hunch was right; people really want a device that simply does email.
via Peek – About Peek.
Quickies. intelligent sticky notes
The goal of ‘Quickies’ is to bring one of the most useful inventions of the 20th century into the digital age: the ubiquitous sticky notes. Sticky (a.k.a. Post-it) notes help us manage our to-do lists, tag our objects and documents and capture short reminders or information that we may need in the near future. Keeping track of these sticky notes is a difficult task in itself. They are yet-another passive pieces of paper. ‘Quickies’ are stickies that have some intelligence and the ability to remind us about the task we ought to perform or to provide us at the right time with the information we captured in the past. ‘Quickies’ enrich the experience of using sticky notes by allowing them to be tracked and managed more effectively. The project explores how the use of RFID, Artificial Intelligence and ink recognition technologies can make it possible to create intelligent sticky notes that can be searched, can send reminders and messages, and more broadly, can help us to seamlessly connect our physical and digital worlds.
Post it notes for the now – MIT Media Labs hits it out of the ballpark again.
Candy.com gets pops in Emmy swag bag
Joe Melville and I have both worked the east and west coast selling our lollipops. His company is one of only three left in the US that hand pours candy in the traditional manner.
Candy.com gets pops in Emmy swag bag
Just a month after launching, Candy.com has a prime-time gig.
The Weymouth company, which sells more than 6,000 candy items online, has landed one of its products in the swag bags for the Daytime Emmy Awards party this weekend.
The 36th annual program, which honors soap operas and other daytime TV shows and their stars, will be broadcast on the CW Network at 8 p.m. tomorrow
Candy.com
2011: Trendspotting for the Next Decade (video)
Richard Laermer’s book 2011: Trendspotting for the Next Decade. It’s a book about how to find the signal in the noise as well as a few predictions on how media will be forced to change for it to remain useful.This video is an interview with 2 guys from Mashable.com and Richard Laermer
Cheezburger on Agile Software Development
i know you’ve heard of or visited LoLCats or Failblog, here is Ben the founder talking about one of my favorite subjects
how his company makes 7 figures in ad sales last year is due to this method of development
Perfect Parallel Parking
i only wish i could park my vehicle with such style and grace
ahhh, the youth of our country
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