I have been struggling to articulate why I feel quite so concerned about the economy but in a dinner conversation last night I had a kind of Eureka moment. It is now well understood that for at least two decades or so we had economic growth that was fueled (at least in the US) by consumer debt, which in turn was made possible by a housing bubble. Much of the political discussion today seems premised on the idea that once we are done with de-leveraging, households will return to spending and e...

I have been struggling to articulate why I feel quite so concerned about the economy but in a dinner conversation last night I had a kind of Eureka moment. It is now well understood that for at least two decades or so we had economic growth that was fueled (at least in the US) by consumer debt, which in turn was made possible by a housing bubble. Much of the political discussion today seems premised on the idea that once we are done with de-leveraging, households will return to spending and e...

Today’s Feature Friday is not about a single feature but rather about initially prioritizing user engagement and growth over other features and in particular over discovery and analytics. The idea here is simple but still often ignored. If you have engaged users then their activity will generate the data you need for discovery and analytics. In some ways this is a corollary to the idea that lots of data combined with simple algorithms tends to beat more sophisticated algorithms run over less ...

Today’s Feature Friday is not about a single feature but rather about initially prioritizing user engagement and growth over other features and in particular over discovery and analytics. The idea here is simple but still often ignored. If you have engaged users then their activity will generate the data you need for discovery and analytics. In some ways this is a corollary to the idea that lots of data combined with simple algorithms tends to beat more sophisticated algorithms run over less ...

It’s hard to be bearish on a company that has had a run as amazing as Apple and a hugely successful launch of a new product. But there are two reasons that lead me to question where things will go from here: The first reason is Apple’s approach to software. I already blogged last Friday about how hard it is to maintain simplicity. But there is a bigger issue: Apple is only creating software for their own devices. Yes they have iTunes for Windows but I am talking primarily about mobile apps. I...

It’s hard to be bearish on a company that has had a run as amazing as Apple and a hugely successful launch of a new product. But there are two reasons that lead me to question where things will go from here: The first reason is Apple’s approach to software. I already blogged last Friday about how hard it is to maintain simplicity. But there is a bigger issue: Apple is only creating software for their own devices. Yes they have iTunes for Windows but I am talking primarily about mobile apps. I...

The very first post on Continuations explained that I think of myself as a technology optimist. Thanks to Steven Johnson’s new book Future Perfect I can now proudly add a second label to that: peer progressive. In Future Perfect, Steven describes a position that overcomes the traditional liberal - conservative divide by embracing the power of networks. As Steven points out, not all of these networks are Internet based, but the Internet has greatly facilitated the creation of networks. That ha...

The very first post on Continuations explained that I think of myself as a technology optimist. Thanks to Steven Johnson’s new book Future Perfect I can now proudly add a second label to that: peer progressive. In Future Perfect, Steven describes a position that overcomes the traditional liberal - conservative divide by embracing the power of networks. As Steven points out, not all of these networks are Internet based, but the Internet has greatly facilitated the creation of networks. That ha...

At the airport in London this morning just before getting on my flight back, I read John Batelle’s epic complaint about his usability problems with Apple software. That got me thinking about my 30 years of experience with a wide variety of software systems. And there seems to be an ironclad pattern: successful new systems start out simple and easy to use. Just two cases in point: the early web and the early iPhone (note that I am not saying “beautiful” or “elegant,” as the early web was anyth...

At the airport in London this morning just before getting on my flight back, I read John Batelle’s epic complaint about his usability problems with Apple software. That got me thinking about my 30 years of experience with a wide variety of software systems. And there seems to be an ironclad pattern: successful new systems start out simple and easy to use. Just two cases in point: the early web and the early iPhone (note that I am not saying “beautiful” or “elegant,” as the early web was anyth...

One of the great promises of the Internet is that it provides for unprecedented access to data. Whether that is data on government or corporate activity or research results and intermediate measurements. By opening up that data so that entrepreneurs, developers, researchers can build on top of it (and hopefully contribute back to it) we can accelerate innovation in many fields. I am therefore excited to see Sir Tim Berners-Lee creating the Open Data Institute and thrilled that Gavin Starks, t...

One of the great promises of the Internet is that it provides for unprecedented access to data. Whether that is data on government or corporate activity or research results and intermediate measurements. By opening up that data so that entrepreneurs, developers, researchers can build on top of it (and hopefully contribute back to it) we can accelerate innovation in many fields. I am therefore excited to see Sir Tim Berners-Lee creating the Open Data Institute and thrilled that Gavin Starks, t...

I have written about the topic of prioritization before, but maybe with a title that was too oblique – “Applying Engineering Business: Binding Constraints.” There I made the point that at any one time a startup tends to have only one binding constraint. It’s the problem the startup needs to solve to get to the next level. That could be the next financing, or hiring people or finishing a key project. But what about more fine grained prioritization? What about the long list in front of the prod...

I have written about the topic of prioritization before, but maybe with a title that was too oblique – “Applying Engineering Business: Binding Constraints.” There I made the point that at any one time a startup tends to have only one binding constraint. It’s the problem the startup needs to solve to get to the next level. That could be the next financing, or hiring people or finishing a key project. But what about more fine grained prioritization? What about the long list in front of the prod...

Last Tech Tuesday we started digging into Data Structures by examining records and structs. We saw that these allow us to group attributes belonging to something like a person or a product or a geometric point but generally don’t keep the metadata around when the program is executing. Metadata means data about data and here would be the names of the attributes (and potentially their respective data types). All we have access to are the attribute values. There are other data structures that pr...

Last Tech Tuesday we started digging into Data Structures by examining records and structs. We saw that these allow us to group attributes belonging to something like a person or a product or a geometric point but generally don’t keep the metadata around when the program is executing. Metadata means data about data and here would be the names of the attributes (and potentially their respective data types). All we have access to are the attribute values. There are other data structures that pr...

Last week’s posting of a video to Youtube that resulted in violence and killings presents an interesting challenge for the open Internet. The whole incident illustrates that the design and capabilities of the Internet are fundamentally at odds with many existing social and cultural structures, such as the nation state and different religious sensibilities. This is not the first time though that we have encountered such a situation as print previously played a similar role. In fact, it almost ...

Last week’s posting of a video to Youtube that resulted in violence and killings presents an interesting challenge for the open Internet. The whole incident illustrates that the design and capabilities of the Internet are fundamentally at odds with many existing social and cultural structures, such as the nation state and different religious sensibilities. This is not the first time though that we have encountered such a situation as print previously played a similar role. In fact, it almost ...

Today on Tech Tuesday we are diving into Data Structures. The idea of a data structure that combines multiple attributes to describe a thing, goes back as far as the 1960s and possibly earlier. Both the COBOL and ALGOL programming languages already had this concept and IBM’s mainframe operating systems such as DOS/360 had built in storage support (in form of ISAM files). At the time most computing was super pragmatic and motivated by solving business problems – in fact COBOL stands for COmmon...

Today on Tech Tuesday we are diving into Data Structures. The idea of a data structure that combines multiple attributes to describe a thing, goes back as far as the 1960s and possibly earlier. Both the COBOL and ALGOL programming languages already had this concept and IBM’s mainframe operating systems such as DOS/360 had built in storage support (in form of ISAM files). At the time most computing was super pragmatic and motivated by solving business problems – in fact COBOL stands for COmmon...