We just got our royalty statement from Crown and are pretty excited about the fact that we’ve sold over 200,000 copies of REWORK now. About three quarters of the sales have been hardcover books with audio and ebook splitting the remainder. Thanks to everyone who helped us get here by buying and recommending the book. We are very grateful for your support in getting the word out.
Inc 19
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Most Topular Stories
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REWORK passes 200,000 copies sold!
Signal vs. Noise26 Jan 2012 | 12:43 pm -
Feature Friday: Techmeme
A VC27 Jan 2012 | 5:51 amYesterday Techmeme launched a redesign. I like it. Nicely done Gabe. I thought I'd use this news as a jumping off point to talk about my favorite feature on Techmeme. When a news event happens, I like to see various pundits' take on it without having to click thru and read every post. Techmeme has always done this better than any other news service. Let's take this news that Twitter can now comply with local censorship laws and takedown notices without taking down a tweet globally (good news in my mind). It looks like this in Techmeme: But if you click on the down arrow on the left of the… -
Reconsidering Gartner's Cycle of Hype
Seth's Blog27 Jan 2012 | 4:22 amOne theory of technology marketing and acceptance goes like this: A technology causes a media hypestorm and rising expectations. Then it crashes to Earth as the popular press and the public discovers that it's not all the hypesters said it would be--through no fault of the technologists who brought it to the world in the first place. Then, gradually, the truth about the technology seeps out until finally it reaches its use case--and then becomes that status quo, just waiting to be disrupted as it previously disrupted what came before. While the violent vicissitudes of this chart make for good… -
Key to productivity: Choose phone calls carefully
Penelope Trunk Blog22 Jan 2012 | 2:00 pmOne of the keys to my ability to work 40 hours a week and homeschool two kids is that I have great time management. Which is to say, I say no to just about everything. But learning when to say no is still a work in progress. Here's what I know about saying no to phone calls: 1. It's more efficient to read the book than talk to the author. I get about ten emails a day asking me if I want to talk to someone about their book so I’ll recommend it on the blog. My answer is always no. I said yes once because it was Gloria Steinem. And it turned out to be a really disappointing phone… -
Raising Money: What Not to Say and What Not to Believe #OfficeandGuyK
How to Change the World20 Jan 2012 | 12:46 pmOver the past two weeks via my partnership with Microsoft and Office Web Apps, I’ve provided templates of models for you to create enchanting PowerPoint pitches, Word business plans, and Excel financial models. They are all available for you to download from my SkyDrive account. I hope these documents and blog posts help you save a boatload of time and increase the quality of your efforts.I leave you with two sets of top ten lies: one of entrepreneurs and one of investors so that you know what not to say and what not to believe. Top Ten Lies of Entrepreneurs “Our projections are…
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Penelope Trunk Blog
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Key to productivity: Choose phone calls carefully
22 Jan 2012 | 2:00 pmOne of the keys to my ability to work 40 hours a week and homeschool two kids is that I have great time management. Which is to say, I say no to just about everything. But learning when to say no is still a work in progress. Here's what I know about saying no to phone calls: 1. It's more efficient to read the book than talk to the author. I get about ten emails a day asking me if I want to talk to someone about their book so I’ll recommend it on the blog. My answer is always no. I said yes once because it was Gloria Steinem. And it turned out to be a really disappointing phone… -
Things I wish I had written
20 Jan 2012 | 12:34 pmIn therapy lately I am learning to identify my feelings. Maybe you’re thinking this is elementary, but did you know that envy is about wanting something you don’t have, but jealousy is the fear of losing something you already have? I am thinking about those two things. I am almost never envious, but I am often jealous. Most of my emotions, in fact, are rooted in fear. I am thinking a lot lately about where my joy comes from, and one thing I love is writing well. When I have a blog post that people love I am happy for weeks. And the excitement of doing good creative work gives me energy to… -
How to manage a career in 2012
16 Jan 2012 | 2:57 pmI have never been great at picking my own clothes. I’m great at interior design, but I have a blind spot for clothes. So I email Melissa photos of my outfits, and she uses her photographic memory of my closet to edit my outfits. When I sent her this photo, she said: “What is this?” I only wanted her opinion about the color of the shirt, so I thought it was okay that it was blurry. But the more I look at the picture, the more I think that it’s how I feel about myself right now. I am not quite sure who I am, right now. And given the current career climate, this is actually how most… -
5 Ideas that will influence 2012
8 Jan 2012 | 1:45 pmIf I look back on my blog, I can see that each year there were one or two ideas that just blew me away and ended up dominating my thinking. For example, 2011 my year to be obsessed with school – homeschooling and higher ed, 2010 was my year for disillusionment with happiness research, 2009 was when I started writing honestly about how unglamorousstartup life really is. I'm excited to think about what this year will bring in terms of the ideas that will capture my imagination. Here are the early candidates: 1. Nature vs. nurture An important book came out at the end of 2011 that… -
My New Year’s resolution: pay attention
6 Jan 2012 | 3:13 pmSomehow, last year, I got too big-picture. It’s not surprising since I’m an ENTJ. I understand my deficit, which is one reason I picked the Farmer, an ISTP-–extremely short-term thinking. At the end of the day, the Farmer walks in the house and talks about his day’s accomplishments, and the weather. I used to tell him that the weather is such a stupid topic that it actually makes me uncomfortable to have him bring it up. But now I realize that the weather is a segue to talking about what is happening right now. And that’s something I need to get better at. 1. Pay attention to the…
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How to Change the World
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Raising Money: What Not to Say and What Not to Believe #OfficeandGuyK
20 Jan 2012 | 12:46 pmOver the past two weeks via my partnership with Microsoft and Office Web Apps, I’ve provided templates of models for you to create enchanting PowerPoint pitches, Word business plans, and Excel financial models. They are all available for you to download from my SkyDrive account. I hope these documents and blog posts help you save a boatload of time and increase the quality of your efforts.I leave you with two sets of top ten lies: one of entrepreneurs and one of investors so that you know what not to say and what not to believe. Top Ten Lies of Entrepreneurs “Our projections are… -
Design a Sam Adams beer
20 Jan 2012 | 10:24 amNow this is a fun project. I’m helping Sam Adams “tap” the knowledge of beer drinkers and crowd source its next brew. Join the party by getting the app and designing your beer: The final brew will be released in Austin in the first week of March. #sponsored -
How to Create an Enchanting Financial Forecast #OfficeandGuyK
17 Jan 2012 | 3:52 pmThis is the third post in my Microsoft partnership, and it’s all about numbers. The topic is crafting your financial forecast to include in your pitch. Bill Reichert, my partner at Garage Technology Ventures, created an Excel model and wrote this blog post. There’s a lesson in this too: Get the best person for the job. His grasp of financial models and how to present them exceeds mine by two orders of magnitude. The Purpose of Financial Projections When it comes to financial projections, there are two types of entrepreneurs: first, the “visionary entrepreneur” who… -
How to Create an Enchanting Business Plan #OfficeandGuyK
12 Jan 2012 | 10:16 amHere is the second post in my series about planning, pitching, and launching a new business venture. In partnership with Microsoft and Office Web Apps, I’ve created a Word document that outlines a good business plan. It’s saved to my SkyDrive folder here. Feel free to download it and use it as inspiration. And if you’re working with a partner, you can use the free Word Web App to stay in sync. I provided the PowerPoint document before the Word document because a good business plan is an elaboration of a good pitch as opposed to a good pitch being a distillation of good business plan. -
How to Create an Enchanting Pitch #OfficeandGuyK
9 Jan 2012 | 10:01 amWelcome to the first in a series of blog posts I’ll be doing as part of a partnership with Microsoft and Office Web Apps. Over the next two weeks, I’ll cover everything a budding entrepreneur needs to turn an idea into an enchanting investment opportunity—from the perfect pitch to a killer business plan to financial forecasts. I’m going to start with a little dissertation on creating effective PowerPoint pitches for your company. I embedded the sample deck for you to click through by using the PowerPoint Web App. When you’re ready to get started, you can download the…
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Signal vs. Noise
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Basecamp Next's caching hardware
27 Jan 2012 | 8:45 amFrom the very start, we wanted Basecamp Next to be fast. Really, really fast. To do so we built a russian-doll architecture of nested caching that I’ll write up in detail soon. But for now I just wanted to share where all this caching is going to live as we just installed it at the hosting center. It kinda reminds me of what pictures of a drug raid look like when they lay out all the coke and cash on the table, but this is what 864GB of RAM looks like: Cost of the loot was $12,000. -
Three years later, Mr. Moore is still letting us punt on database sharding
27 Jan 2012 | 8:23 amThree years ago, I wrote about how improvements in technology keep allowing us to punt on sharding the Basecamp database. This is still true, only more so now. We’ve grown enormously over the last three years but RAM keeps getting cheaper and FusionIO SSD’s keep getting faster. If anything, it seems like recent advances in SSD technology are accelerating and it’s ever more unlikely that we’ll need to shard Basecamp. Basecamp remains a perfect candidate for sharding. Isolated accounts, no sharing between them. Yet the cost in increased complexity is constant while the… -
REWORK passes 200,000 copies sold!
26 Jan 2012 | 12:43 pmWe just got our royalty statement from Crown and are pretty excited about the fact that we’ve sold over 200,000 copies of REWORK now. About three quarters of the sales have been hardcover books with audio and ebook splitting the remainder. Thanks to everyone who helped us get here by buying and recommending the book. We are very grateful for your support in getting the word out. -
Basecamp Next: A peek at early iterations of the Projects screen
26 Jan 2012 | 12:06 pmWe’ve been working on Basecamp Next since March 2011 and we’re getting close to the public release. The private beta is now in full swing. Early iterations on the Projects screen We thought it might be fun to share some of the early design explorations for one particular screen, the Projects screen. Basically, the projects screen is a list of your projects. You can create new projects there as well. We explored hundreds iterations of the screen – from small tweaks to fundamental shifts in the feature itself. Only a fraction of the explorations are shown in the video below. -
Give me spark
26 Jan 2012 | 9:14 amSome of the best decisions and designs at 37signals have emerged from intensely contested debates. Not just between Jason and me, but from anyone in the company. When sparks fly, some truly great ideas come to light. The catch is that the heat must arise around the decision itself. Debates go off track when personal biases or old grudges come into play. So long as each party sticks to the merits, adding some fire will only unearth new angles and concerns. This energy is so important to how 37signals operates that I consider it every time we make a hire. Is this person willing to fight for…
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blog maverick
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The TV Business Keeps Getting Stronger !
14 Jan 2012 | 6:53 pmBack in my broadcast.com days we had a saying that “bits are bits”. That once content becomes digital, it is naturally going to become available on any and all digital devices. Based on this, we always made the point to be platform and device agnostic. We didn’t care where or how people saw our content, as long as they saw it and we had the chance to monetize it. We also knew that our core value proposition to consumers was that on broadcast.com they were able to get content that they couldn’t get on TV. We had Yoga channels, we had cricket live and on demand, we had… -
Why Startups Shouldn’t Hire PR Firms
13 Jan 2012 | 5:31 pmA quote from my book, How to Win at the Sport of Business got picked up in multiple stories. In the book I stated effectively that “Startups should never hire a PR firm”. As you would expect, the PR Industry was not over-joyed at the comment. Articles were written about how incredibly valuable a good PR person can be to a startup. Actually, I have no doubt that a smart PR person can add value to a startup. The problem is that all things considered, it’s not enough value. The first problem with hiring a PR firm is cost. Cash is always in short supply in startups. -
You Don’t Live in the World You Were Born Into
31 Dec 2011 | 11:54 amI thought this was appropriate to start the new year. We all have the tendency to believe that we are living in a very advanced technological period. We get all excited about the new tech we got at Xmas and what we read about that will soon be available to us. In reality, everything we are excited about today is going to be incredibly old and boring much faster than we ever expect. No matter what year you were born, by the time you finish(ed) high school, its (was) a completely different world. Today’s high school seniors were born prior to the World Wide Web, wireless internet,… -
The Fan Experience at Sporting Events – We dont need no stinking smartphones !
24 Dec 2011 | 11:17 amWith the season starting tomorrow, I wanted to update a blog post I did in 2010. In just the past 18 months the number of proposals for in-game entertainment have skyrocketed. It seems like every day I get a new proposal to invest in a company that is going to revolutionize the experience of going to a sporting event. Without fail the proposal starts out with some form of “with the explosion in sales of smartphones…” Then I get the meat of the pitch which is some derivative of stats, pictures, fantasy games, social sharing via FB/Twitter or some new network to replace… -
Patent Law Kills Again
17 Dec 2011 | 3:28 pmI got this email this morning. Mark, I’ve been following blogmaverick.com for a loooong time. I’ve recently come up against a patent related issue and figured I give it a shot in running it by you since you write about patent law often. I’ll be brief… I spent the last year developing an extremely valuable piece of technology. I have caught the eye of a Fortune 500 company that would benefit most from the technology and they want to make a strategic investment in my small company. The problem is they are big, stodgy and paranoid… and they are hung up on…
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Matt Mullenweg
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On the Evolution of Investing
24 Jan 2012 | 1:59 pmToday Y Combinator announced they are adding two new partners, Garry Tan and Aaron Iba. This announcement is unique because it does not list their academic credentials, their previous investments, the boards of companies or non-profits they have sat on, how many years of experience they have, or any of the usual badges of honor investors parade in their biographies and Crunchbase profiles. Instead we get accolades of “rare individuals who can both design and program” and “best hackers among the YC alumni.” Take note of this moment. I was part of a dinner conversation… -
MPAA Threatens Politicians
22 Jan 2012 | 2:43 pmMPAA Directly & Publicly Threatens Politicians Who Arent Corrupt Enough To Stay Bought on Techdirt. -
Hollywood and the Justice System
21 Jan 2012 | 8:44 amTwo excellent essays on how Hollywood has completely put our legal system out of whack through years of twisting our legislative process to their ends, or as Shirky put it “imagine the possibility of a longer jail term for streaming a Michael Jackson video than Jackson’s own doctor got for killing actual Michael Jackson?” Andrew Bridges on PandoDaily: Forget SOPA, Hollywood Already Had a Field Day with the Justice System. Clay Shirky on his blog: Pick up the pitchforks: David Pogue underestimates Hollywood. -
#Reinventing: Chamber of Commerce
18 Jan 2012 | 11:23 amReally great article from my friend Hunter Walk on #Reinventing the Chamber of Commerce, which is especially relevant given how the US Chamber of Commerce has been tending to side with the MPAA and RIAA rather than actual small businesses, startups, and tech communities. -
BBC Viewpoint on Blackout
18 Jan 2012 | 10:51 amI've built my life on a free and open internet. As the co-founder of WordPress.org, a free software project that aims to democratise publishing, and the founder of Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com that hosts blogs from around the world in pursuit of the same goal, the proposed US legislation to regulate and censor the free and open foundation of the internet makes my mouth go dry with fear. The rise of the web over the past two decades and the freedom to publish and express yourself online will be looked back upon as a cultural revolution. We have gone from a world split…
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Altimeter Group
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Twitter and censorship
27 Jan 2012 | 12:10 pmBy Alan Webber, Principal Analyst Almost 49 years ago, President John F. Kennedy stood at a podium in the divided city of Berlin where he proudly proclaimed that the wall that divided the city was an affront to basic human freedoms, that it was a symbol of the failure of communism and its ability to [...] -
Can Apple Lose The Mobile Innovation Game?
27 Jan 2012 | 8:19 amThe big story this week is the record number of iPhones, iPads, iPods that Apple sold in Q4, 2011. Great news for Apple and it’s shareholders – their stock got a 7% bump on the news – but, with stellar growth in the number of users of the iPhone, what’s the achilles heel that slows [...] -
Facebook’s IPO: What Does It Mean For…?
25 Jan 2012 | 6:08 pmOver 800 million active users – more than half of whom log in on any given day and interact with over 900 million “objects” (pages, groups, communities, etc.). Over 250 million photos uploaded every day, over 70 languages on the site. The stats go on and on, and anyway you look at them, the numbers [...] -
Finding Value In SOPA
18 Jan 2012 | 12:15 pmThere is a lot of discussions, arguing, lobbying, and political wrangling going on around the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its sister legislation Protect IP Act (PIPA) right now. It has been portrayed as the battle between Silicon Valley and Hollywood, old media verses new media, Washington verses California, and on and on and [...] -
Jerry Yang’s departure signals a New Day for Yahoo!, the passing of an era for Tech
17 Jan 2012 | 9:01 pmMy first reaction to the news that Jerry Yang is leaving Yahoo! was that this was the passing of an era. I first met Jerry in 1994 when he was still a PhD student at Stanford, before he and David Filo left to run Yahoo! full time. Through bubbles and two economic downturns, Jerry has always been [...]
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Howard Lindzon
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The Facebook IPO…#HowMuchMoneyHaveYOULeftOnTheTable.DotCom
27 Jan 2012 | 2:58 pmSo it’s really happening. Actually seeing the market react to the FBOOK IPO is really just a reminder to me of how I have underperformed. You too :) . I have bled social and mobile web and spent thousands of hours reading, writing, investing and entrepreneuring in the space. Right now though, all I can think about is …so much money left on the table. But, who has not left money on the table. It’s just part of the game…the business…life. Screw that…it hurts. In today’s version of the game of ‘I can’t believe how much money I left on the… -
StockTwits Party in Soho – Woohoo!
27 Jan 2012 | 8:38 amMonday night at 7, StockTwits will gather for cold beers and eats at Antarctica in Soho. Please join us. Where: 287 Hudson Street (below Spring) When: Jan 30 @ 7PM -
Google is Great….Apple is Magnificent…The ELEVEN Year Highs in The Nasdaq… and Momentum Monday!
26 Jan 2012 | 8:40 amGoogle is a great Company. Somehow I have still managed to lose money owning the stock the last few years. There are other great Companies…Intuit, Federal Express, Nike, Starbucks, Whole Foods, IBM to name a few. You should own great Companies. They are generally great stocks. You must prune and prune your portfolio until you own the great ones. Apple is a ‘Magnificent’ Company. Scott O’Neill of Investors Business Daily shared this chart that helps quantify the difference between great and magnificent: A couple of fun facts: 1. Apple earned more money in the last… -
S&P Capital IQ Utilizing StockTwits Pro Beta
25 Jan 2012 | 8:49 amStockTwits is excited to announce that S&P Capital IQ has begun utlizing StockTwits Pro during our beta period. At Stocktwits, we have been working with analysts from all sectors of Wall Street to help build a financial publishing platform that is fast, compliant, fits within a professional’s workflow and offers the widest distribution. StockTwits Pro is a new service from StockTwits which provides market professionals with critical tools for communicating and interacting with a growing global audience of market participants and observers in a compliant, reliable and easy to use… -
The ‘Swoosh’ of Nike – Marketing, Sales, Fashion, Technology, Data, and even Biotech!
20 Jan 2012 | 9:05 amThe great Nike NKE is once again at all-time highs and you don’t really hear much about it with SOPA, The Golden Globes, Greece, Google and Apple in the headlines. I don’t own the stock, but it is about time and I want to. If you asked 100 random people in the street to describe Nike in the streets with one word/phrase…they would likely use ‘swoosh’ Just Do It’or shoes. Just loving the company for those basic things has earned investors from 1977 a 27,000 % return. The Company trades at just 2 times sales with $3 billion in cash. Sometimes the ‘big…
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Calacanis.com
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Thank you @zappos for making my life so much easier… Which two people?
12 Jan 2012 | 12:33 pm -
Thank you @zappos for making my life so much easier… Which two people?
12 Jan 2012 | 12:33 pm -
Tred desk!
6 Jan 2012 | 6:32 pm -
Tred desk!
6 Jan 2012 | 6:32 pm -
“Office Hours” stage at the LAUNCH Conference March 7/8
29 Dec 2011 | 1:56 pmAt the LAUNCH Conference on March 7th and 8th we’re going to host a second stage for the first time. discussion here: https://plus.google.com/103716847685048716973/posts/VEkmXPYxBAT The stage is going to be called “Office Hours with…” and it will feature moderated Q&A sessions with only 50-75 seats in the room. Yes, it’s a inspired by the awesome “office hours” format pionered by Paul Graham of Ycombinator. Each “office hour” session will be 40 minutes and it will feature an all-star moderator like +Jason Nazar. I’ve reached out…
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The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss
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How to Become an Effective CEO: Chief Emotions Officer
19 Jan 2012 | 6:39 amChip Conley, founder of Joie de Vivre Hotels Chip Conley is the founder of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, which he began at age 26 and built to more than 30 properties in California alone. In 2010, Joie de Vivre was awarded the #1 customer service award in the U.S. by Market Metrix (Upper Upscale hotel category). Conley has also been named the “Most Innovative CEO” in the Bay Area by the San Francisco Business Times, and I’m proud to call him a friend. We’ve shared many glasses of wine together. He doesn’t know what I’m about to tell you, but it’s true (Hi,… -
Tim Ferriss Getting His Ass Kicked + How to Survive a Physical Attack (Video Series)
8 Jan 2012 | 6:11 pmThis post might seem odd, as it starts with a random sequence from a random skill. There are three reasons for this: 1) I like to expose readers to things they’ve never explored. 2) The best long-term policy for keeping a blog fun to read (and write) is to cover things that subsets of your readers love, not things that everyone merely likes. 3) I think all of you should know how to respond to a real physical attack. Keeping these in mind, I hope you enjoy a lil’ taste of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, often nicknamed “human chess.” If it’s not your thing, I still suggest… -
No Brown M&M’s! David Lee Roth and the Power of Checklists
1 Jan 2012 | 11:17 pmArticle 126: No brown M&M’s! (Photo: Mr. T in DC) Happy New Year, all! I’ll be putting up a “Lessons learned in 2011″ post soon. In the meantime, here is a taste of things to come. I can come across as anal retentive, even severely Monk-ish. One reason for the madness: with rare exceptions, I’ve come to believe that how we do anything is how we do everything. I’m not alone. The following is a short excerpt from The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande, also reprinted by Tehelka magazine in India. In it, we learn the logic of David Lee Roth’s… -
Christmas Deals from Start-ups
22 Dec 2011 | 12:24 am(Photo: Kevin Dooley) Just for fun, I asked my start-ups (and a few friends) if they’d like to offer y’all a little something special from the holidays. Here’s an incomplete list. Many are working on top-secret stuff and couldn’t jump in, but a few were game on last-minute notice, so here you go! They are listed in alphabetical order by company/name: Stop being a Wantrepreneur; start taking action. Free vids! Get here: http://appsumo.com/wantrepreneurs-videos/ via @AppSumo Everything you need to transform. Free trainers, complete nutrition plans, & top-selling… -
Foundation: Kevin Rose and Tim Ferriss
19 Dec 2011 | 10:55 pmKevin Rose and I go deep on a few subjects in this longer-format episode of “Foundation,” on which he’s interviewed many of my favorite entrepreneurs and investors, including Jack Dorsey (Twitter, Square) and Chris Sacca (Lowercase Capital), among others. I had a great time, as should be clear from the wine and laughter. It’s quite different from The Random Show and more of a Larry King-like format… but with more cursing. Hope you enjoy! Happy holidays and Merry Christmas, everyone!
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Seth's Blog
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The honest broker
28 Jan 2012 | 4:42 amIt really is a choice, one or the other. Either you happily recommend the best option for your customer, or you give preference to your own items first. Either you believe in what you sell, or you don't. Either you treat your best partners better, or you treat everyone the same. Either you shade the truth when it's painful to do otherwise, or you consistently share what's important. Either you always keep your promises or you don't. Either you give me the best price the first time, or you make me jump through hoops to get there. Earning the position of the honest broker is time-consuming and… -
Reconsidering Gartner's Cycle of Hype
27 Jan 2012 | 4:22 amOne theory of technology marketing and acceptance goes like this: A technology causes a media hypestorm and rising expectations. Then it crashes to Earth as the popular press and the public discovers that it's not all the hypesters said it would be--through no fault of the technologists who brought it to the world in the first place. Then, gradually, the truth about the technology seeps out until finally it reaches its use case--and then becomes that status quo, just waiting to be disrupted as it previously disrupted what came before. While the violent vicissitudes of this chart make for good… -
Who cares?
26 Jan 2012 | 4:09 amUnless someone does, things start to fray around the edges. Often it's the CEO or the manager who sets a standard of caring about the details. Even better is a culture where everyone cares, and where each person reinforces that horizontally throughout the team. You've probably been to the hotel that serves refrigerated tomatoes in January at their $20 breakfast, that doesn't answer the phone when you call the front desk, that has a shower curtain that is falling off the rack and a slightly snarky concierge. This is in sharp relief to that hotel down the street, the one that costs just the… -
Solving problems (vs. identifying them)
25 Jan 2012 | 4:27 amOften, we're hesitant to identify a problem out of fear we can't solve it. Knowing that we have to live with something that we're unable to alter gives us a good reason to avoid verbalizing it--highlighting it just makes it worse. While this sort of denial might be okay for individuals (emphasis on might), it's a lousy approach for organizations of any size. That's because there are almost certainly resources available that can solve a problem if you decide it's truly worth solving. Put yourself and your people on a path to finding problems without regard for whether or not they are capable… -
"It's completely up to you"
24 Jan 2012 | 4:06 am... and that's the problem. I was picking out the mat for a framed photo and there were a thousand colors to choose from. The framer uttered the scary invocation, putting the choice back to me. So many things are now completely up to us, more than ever before. Where and how and when we work and invest and interact and instruct and learn... If you think you have no choice but to do what you do now, you've already made a serious error. It seems to me that passing the buck on this merely because it's easier than choosing is precisely the wrong strategy. It enables an abdication of power that…
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A VC
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Feature Friday: Techmeme
27 Jan 2012 | 5:51 amYesterday Techmeme launched a redesign. I like it. Nicely done Gabe. I thought I'd use this news as a jumping off point to talk about my favorite feature on Techmeme. When a news event happens, I like to see various pundits' take on it without having to click thru and read every post. Techmeme has always done this better than any other news service. Let's take this news that Twitter can now comply with local censorship laws and takedown notices without taking down a tweet globally (good news in my mind). It looks like this in Techmeme: But if you click on the down arrow on the left of the… -
Blog Polls
26 Jan 2012 | 4:55 amBlog polling widgets have been around a long time. I've tried out a few of them on AVC over the years. And polling has never taken off as a major form of engagement on blogs (as has commenting, liking, tweeting). I'm curious why that is so. I met with a young man named Max Yoder yesterday who has built yet another polling widget. He calls it Quipol. I figured I'd give it a test run with the AVC community. And let's get right to it with the question of the day: Quipol Let me know what you think of Quipol and blog polling widgets in general in the comments. -
Textbook Cases
25 Jan 2012 | 5:51 amI read something today that I wish I had written. So I am going to cross post it. This post comes from Noah Millman and it is about the lame textbook thing that Apple launched recently. With that intro, I'll shut up and let you read Noah. The original post is here. If anyone knows how to reach Noah, I'd like to email him and tell him how much I liked his post. I see that Steve Sailer and Matt Yglesias are both wondering why Apple’s iPad textbook initiative is so lame. Sailer wonders why Apple isn’t exploiting the interactive possibilities of the tablet to make textbooks much more… -
The Green Button
24 Jan 2012 | 5:08 amThis past Sunday afternoon I had the pleasure of being on the judges panel at the NYC Cleanweb Hackathon at NYU ITP. There were thirteen hacks presented to the judges. Of them, probably half had incorporated the "green button" for getting your utility data into their app. The Green Button is an initiative promoted by Aneesh Chopra, the CTO of the United States. In a speech last fall, he challenged the utility industry to come up with a simple way to allow consumers to access their utility data. Last week, three big California utilities announced they had made the Green Button available on… -
The Management Team - Guest Post From Matt Blumberg
23 Jan 2012 | 3:56 amNow that I've completed three posts on The Management Team over the last three MBA Mondays, it's time for four or five guest posts on this topic. The first one is from Matt Blumberg, CEO of our portfolio company Return Path. I've been on Matt's board for over a decade and I've watched him develop into one of the finest managers I've had the pleasure to work with. Here are Matt's thoughts on this topic. When Return Path reached 100 employees a few years back, I had a dinner with my Board one night at which they basically told me, “Management teams never scale intact as you grow the…
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O'Reilly Radar - Insight, analysis, and research about emerging technologies.
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Publishing News: Ereader ownership doubles, again
27 Jan 2012 | 1:00 pmHere are a few of the stories that caught my attention this week in the publishing space. Two surveys indicate a bright future for digital publishing Back in June, a survey conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project showed ereader ownership in the U.S. had doubled in six months. As impressive as those statistics were, the latest survey released by the company this week showed that both tablet and ereader ownership in the U.S. nearly doubled again, but in a much shorter time frame between mid-December and early January (the holiday season, of course). The survey also indicated… -
Top stories: January 23-27, 2012
27 Jan 2012 | 12:30 pmHere's a look at the top stories published across O'Reilly sites this week. On pirates and piracyMike Loukides: "I'm not willing to have the next Bach, Beethoven, or Shakespeare post their work online, only to have it taken down because they haven't paid off a bunch of executives who think they own creativity." Microsoft's plan for Hadoop and big data Strata conference chair Edd Dumbill takes a look at Microsoft's plans for big data. By embracing Hadoop, the company aims to keep Windows and Azure as a standards-friendly option for data developers. Coming soon to a location near you: The… -
Visualization of the Week: Politicians' word counts
27 Jan 2012 | 10:00 am'Tis the season for political infographics, what with the 2012 presidential election well underway as well as this week's State of the Union address. All of that speech-making provided plenty of opportunity for data visualization. Following the State of the Union address, The New York Times posted the following visualization comparing "selected words used by President Obama in his State of the Union addresses and by Republican presidential candidates in their debates, television interviews and major speeches since May." See the full visualization. Although this example is just a "simple" bar… -
ValoBox wants to reward content creators and consumers
27 Jan 2012 | 9:00 amEarlier this year, I chatted with Anna Lewis (@anna_cn) and Oliver Brooks (@cn_oli) about their new startup, ValoBox — a platform that allows readers to consume books by the page, chunk, or as a whole. The duo has been hard at work through the summer and fall, and ValoBox has launched. I got in touch with Brooks to see how the platform and development have progressed. Our interview follows. How has ValoBox evolved since our interview in May? Oliver Brooks: The product has stayed laser focused on keeping things light and simple. It has gone through a lot of tweaks to the user interface… -
Developer Week in Review: Sometimes, form does need to follow function
27 Jan 2012 | 8:00 amIt was 56 degrees in Boston on Tuesday. It wasn't a record (you need to go back to 1999 for that, when it hit 62), but it definitely is another page in what has been a very, very bizarre winter (so far, the largest snowfall occurred back on Halloween, for example). Call it climate change, call it elves, call it sunspot variations, but whatever you call it, call it weird. Meanwhile, while we wait for the the great Northeast Football War to commence, a few notes on the week's events. Sometimes, you need a button I suspect that somewhere, once a day, a journalist is taking a pair of 20-sided…
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TechCrunch
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Ron Paul, Mitt Romney Leading On Facebook Ahead Of Florida Primary
27 Jan 2012 | 7:49 pmThe Republican presidential candidacy is still far from decided, based on the split primaries and mixed polls so far. So here’s another source for trying to figure who’s really pulling ahead — the number of new Facebook fans that each candidate is getting, according to the Inside Facebook Election Tracker. Mitt Romney is finally making some strong gains this month, in contrast to his Facebook performance over December. By “strong gains” I mean he’s been attracting a roughly similar number of fans to Ron Paul, the candidate who normally dominates on the web… -
Harvard Gets Its First VC Firm: The Experiment Fund
27 Jan 2012 | 6:05 pmAs just about everyone should know by now, the seeds of what grew into Facebook were planted at Harvard. Might there be a bunch of mini-Zucks lurking in the dorms of Cambridge? If so, a new venture capital firm — the first housed right on the Harvard campus — wants to find them. Dubbed The Experiment Fund, the firm describes itself as “a bridge between America’s oldest universities and storied venture capital firms.” Backed by New Enterprise Associates (NEA), the firm is made up of Hugo Van Vurren, NEA co-head Patrick Chung, and NEA General Partner Harry Weller — all… -
Secret Windows 8 Weapon: Kinect Built Into Your Laptop
27 Jan 2012 | 4:39 pmThe Windows release of Kinect is coming up in a couple days, but for most people that won’t be a major event: the Kinect they have is sitting on their TV or in a drawer, waiting to be taken out for an impromptu Dance Central 2 party. Of the 10 million Kinects out there, the only ones connected to computers are the ones being fiddled with by the various hackers and students making science projects out the things. But according to the Daily, Microsoft is hoping to remedy this particular situation by building Kinect sensors right into your laptops. TechCrunch alum Matt Hickey got to handle… -
Twitter Puts Its DMCA Takedown Requests Up For All To See
27 Jan 2012 | 3:30 pmYesterday’s announcement that Twitter would be selectively censoring tweets based on country was not well-received. But part of that announcement was the assurance that the process would at least be transparent. A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. They also mentioned that they were working with Chilling Effects to make notices and orders sent to Twitter publicly available. At the time of the post yesterday, the site wasn’t up yet, but you can now browse it at chillingeffects.org/twitter. It’s a good thing, certainly, though not quite a successful saving throw… -
Y Combinator Names Seasoned Entrepreneur Geoff Ralston As Its Newest Partner
27 Jan 2012 | 3:15 pmY Combinator has just announced the newest partner to join the prestigious firm: Geoff Ralston. Ralston’s previous credentials include founding Four11, which was acquired by Yahoo back in 1997 for $96 million and served as the foundation for Yahoo Mail. Ralston spent eight years at Yahoo, eventually becoming Yahoo’s Chief Product Officer. Several years after leaving Yahoo he was named CEO of Lala, before it was acquired by Apple in 2009. Most recently he cofounded Imagine K12, a tech incubator for education-related startups, which presented at TechCrunch Disrupt SF (you can find…
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Dave Winer's "Scripting News" weblog
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Ask not what the Internet...
27 Jan 2012 | 11:06 amOn Twitter, with its 140-character limit, there's little focus to the discussion about the new filitering they just announced. Here are some of my comments, in bullet form, hopefully to add some more substance to the discussion.. 1. We don't know very much about what they're doing, and it's not clear that we ever will. 2. The examples they cite, laws in France and Germany that prohibit pro-Nazi speech, are somewhat reasonable. But I suspect this will be used in the future to prevent leaks of information they don't want leaked. If Twitter-like tech is the new world stage, and I think it is,… -
EC2 for Poets in 2012
25 Jan 2012 | 6:08 pmThree years ago, I wrote a tutorial called EC2 for Poets that made it relatively easy for a technically proficient user to set up a Windows server in Amazon EC2. A few hundred people tried it, and were able to get servers running. They could install apps, and run web apps that they then could access from home or on the road. Having your own server "up there" can be pretty cool, makes a lot of things possible that otherwise would be hard. For example you can run a personal river of news. That's what I do on one of my EC2 instances. Not only for myself but for a few friends at universities and… -
What could Nancy Pelosi know?
25 Jan 2012 | 8:59 amI know the Repubs like to demonize Nancy Pelosi, but I really like her. Check out this exchange with John King at CNN. Fascinating. What does she know? Some possibilities... 1. Newt is secretly a Democrat. 2. Newt is secretly a woman. 3. Newt secretly slept with Nancy P. 4. Newt is secretly Osama bin Laden's long lost brother. 5. New paid no taxes until he was 45 years old. 6. Instead of fighting in Vietnam, he signed up for the Khmer Rouge. He's Prince Sihanouk's long lost brother. 7. He was part of the Bay of Pigs invasion. In fact the bay was named after him. He's Fidel Castro's long lost… -
Ideas for movie moguls
25 Jan 2012 | 8:35 amPresident Obama asks that we suggest ways for the movie industry to control the Internet that we might not find so objectionable. Nat Torkington tells an old joke in a new context. It's a good one. God already gave the movie industry the Internet and it's been shown you can make many billions of dollars selling things there. So why not sell movies too? I think the President asks the wrong question. What can the movie industry do to freshen up their product in the age of technology to make it more fun and interesting for their customers. Rather than try to destroy the new playground, how about… -
Can we buy your search engine?
24 Jan 2012 | 9:08 amIn yesterday's piece about wanting an exit from Google, I mentioned that I might use DuckDuckGo, but had reservations because it's "another Fred Wilson company." Fred, who is a very cheerful dude (no sarcasm) responded with evangelism, which is what I like about Fred. Of course he can handle criticism, even when it's as vaguely defined as the bit in my blog post. Come right back with a great product pitch. I wouldn't expect any less. Even though I know Fred personally, he has a bigger presence in the tech world. Like it or not he now is the leading tech VC. He occupies a slot that John Doerr…
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craigconnects
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Military families could use a break
26 Jan 2012 | 10:00 amWith the wars overseas winding down, the need to help vets and military families is increasing, as attention to their needs shrinks.Vets need jobs, and that's high priority. So do their spouses, and they all need a hand dealing with everyday challenges that are magnified when troops are deployed or relocated.A guy like me, I don't know what kind of real-life help they need, but here's what I read. They might need a little help in areas I wouldn't have figured:getting school credits transferreddealing with family stress resulting from deployment or relocationunderstanding… -
Some Results from the National Dialogue for Improving Fed Websites
25 Jan 2012 | 10:00 amThe new Open Government stuff gets results, normally with no media attention. It's just good, solid work, no drama, no way to sensationalize it. That's included a lot of progress in the last two years or so from the Department of Veterans Affairs.Turns out that a group of folks at the GSA, that's the General Services Administration, has been planning for years to figure out how to make Federal websites more effective, and they concluded a real successful national conversation at the end of last year:http://web-reform-dialogue.ideascale.com/A lot of people provided and refined a… -
Peter Levin, CTO for Veterans Affairs, doing a great job
24 Jan 2012 | 9:00 amOkay, I've worked with Peter for a couple years, and just saw a very positive article which understates his performance and results for vets. For those years, I've seen remarkable work including real innovation, like employee and vendor innovation, and increasing use of social media.I bear witness to this, including some worry that he's been working eighty hour weeks routinely. (I couldn't do it.)Anyway, he reports to the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, to get it right.Check out Feds@Work: VA's Peter Levin Pursues 'Art Of The Possible' In IT… -
We, The Internet
23 Jan 2012 | 10:00 amHey, this article: Antipiracy Bills Put on Hold in Congress (subscription link) was kind enough to quote me.Here's the original, for our mutual amusement:We, The Internet, have had a serious grassroots victory for democracy. Now is the time for us to turn that success into atipping point which restores the American vision of honest self-government. It's just a start.Personally, well, a nerd's gotta do what a nerd's gotta do. -
The #perfectgift that keeps giving
20 Jan 2012 | 10:00 amFolks, if you remember, I began the #perfectgift campaign on my birthday in December to help out the American Red Cross. The deal was that people would tell us what their #perfectgift would be, for themselves or someone else, and for each mention across the web, until December 31, 2011, I would donate up to $10k to the American Red Cross. The money was used to support the purchase of military comfort kits for our troops.To me, the #perfectgift is when I'm able to give to those who do such good stuff.Eileen Unger said, on my Facebook page, that her #perfectgift would be: "To take…
