August 2011
13 posts
2 tags
Vacation
After an amazingly busy three weeks so far this August, I am thrilled to be going on a family vacation starting next week. Also am really looking forward to speaking at Turing Festival and Lean Startup Machine in Edinburgh (both on August 26th). Other than that I plan to mostly unplug, finish reading “The Information” and hopefully at least one other book. To accomplish that I will...
3 tags
What I Learned From Teaching My Skillshare Class
Last week I had the pleasure of teaching my first Skillshare class. The subject was “Bayesian Probability and a Theory of Life” and is one I am very passionate about. I hope that I was able to convey some of that passion but I can say for sure that I learned a lot:
First, the saying that “you don’t understand something until you have taught it a dozen or more times”...
2 tags
I Love (foursquare) Lists
When I first met Susan in a cafe in Paris 20 years ago, one of the very first things I told her was that I had a list of all the things I was going to see in Paris during my vacation there. According to Susan, my super geeky line in asking her to join me on some sightseeing went as follows: “I am going to do all the things on this list, so happy to start wherever you want.” A lot of...
3 tags
Investing in Skillshare
Excited to announce our investment in Skillshare today. You can read some other posts about it here: Michael and Malcolm from Skillshare, Fred, and Jenna Wortham in the New York Times.
7 tags
Google Buys Motorola: Patent (and UX) Defense
Google buying Motorola is a strong defensive move against both Microsoft and Apple on two fronts: patents and user experience. Apple is vertically integrated and Microsoft controls Nokia (without having had to buy it). Between that and having filed or acquired a lot of patents, these two pose formidable threats to Android. Buying Motorola lets Google fight both of these threats in one go. As...
5 tags
Taxes in Marketplaces: Amazon's Cloud Reader and...
Fred’s blog post today is about how new and powerful HTML5 apps are emerging, giving the new Kindle Cloud Reader as an example. The Cloud Reader is also an example of something else: if you tax a system too much people will find ways to work around it. This is highly relevant to anyone running or starting a marketplace. You can’t be greedy! (Sorry, Gordon).
I had written a while...
5 tags
Mobile App Competition: Startups vs Big Guys
Facebook recently released Messenger as a separate mobile app. Google+ launched with multiple separate mobile apps (Google+, Huddle, Places). What’s going on here? We are seeing the results of limited screen real estate combined with effective notification systems and a fully logged in user on mobile. Unlike on the desktop (Microsoft) and even the browser (Google, Facebook) this means...
2 tags
Double Dipping
What happened in yesterday’s market underlines the deep bind we now find ourselves in. We have politically precluded new revenues and have shifted our attention to deficit reduction at a time when we would need to invest. We have already had two rounds of quantitative easing and interest rates are at record lows so there is precious little that the Fed can do.
At this point a double dip...
4 tags
Let's Eliminate Ratings Agencies
Standard & Poors downgrade of the US has generated much discussion, with some blasting S&P such as Robert Reich and some defending S&P such as Henry Blodget. Whatever you may think about the downgrade, I have a different proposal: let’s eliminate ratings agencies. By that I mean specifically a government sanctioned oligopoly on rating debt.
Ratings agencies as they exist today...
4 tags
If You Need To Raise Money, Get Your Financing...
I was already planning to write this post today before I knew that the markets would open down sharply (Nasdaq down almost 3% as of 11:30am Eastern). While we are still well off the 52-week lows this shakiness in the markets has very real reasons: Europe has been a mess for a while and the US is rapidly becoming one. The underlying reasons are deeply structural (i.e., we are not talking small...
4 tags
Identity, Pseudonymity, Anonymity and HR1981
The question as to what should represent people online has has generated some mighty fine posts and comments recently. Here is a short list of people strongly supporting some form of pseudonymity or even anonymity:
- Caterina Fake: Anonymity and Pseudonyms in Social Software - Andy Weissman: Everybody wants to be special here (in praise of pseudonymity) - Jyri Engeström: untitled G+ post - Chris...
A Time of Demagogues and False Prophets
I have been struck recently by how much is being said and published by politicians and their supporters that is outright wrong. The latest attempts to rewrite slavery as a time of “family values” for African Americans is yet another example (see today’s New York Times). I am beginning to think that this has a lot to do with the complexity of the changes in the world around us. ...
4 tags
Rewriting the Tax Code
I wrote a bit of a rant recently about the structural changes in our economy and society that need to be addressed. What we are getting instead — not surprisingly — is a lame last minute compromise on the debt ceiling that includes absolutely no additional revenues for the government (“it’s all cuts!”). This essentially means that the Democrats and the President...
