I was excited to vote for Obama this past November. Now I am excited for him to actually be our president. As I wrote back then, I hope that he will an unleash “a tidal wave of involvement, innovation and improvement." For that to succeed, we the people have to be that tidal wave. We all have to ask ourselves what we can do. It has been great to see posts to that effect, including Fred’s post on selflessness and Alex’s post on 7 Online Things To Do To Restore America. So here are three things...

I was excited to vote for Obama this past November. Now I am excited for him to actually be our president. As I wrote back then, I hope that he will an unleash “a tidal wave of involvement, innovation and improvement." For that to succeed, we the people have to be that tidal wave. We all have to ask ourselves what we can do. It has been great to see posts to that effect, including Fred’s post on selflessness and Alex’s post on 7 Online Things To Do To Restore America. So here are three things...

I believe that the financial and economic crisis is accelerating the change from the industrial to the information society. The magnitude of the change is likely to be on par with or greater than the transition from agricultural to industrial society (I am intentionally saying “society” instead of “economy” because the change affects all parts of how we live). This is scary if you are stuck in the old and exciting if you are helping invent the new. Take the automotive industry. There is a dis...

I believe that the financial and economic crisis is accelerating the change from the industrial to the information society. The magnitude of the change is likely to be on par with or greater than the transition from agricultural to industrial society (I am intentionally saying “society” instead of “economy” because the change affects all parts of how we live). This is scary if you are stuck in the old and exciting if you are helping invent the new. Take the automotive industry. There is a dis...

A while ago I wrote that there is “No Such Thing as Too Much Seed Capital Availability." I have been asked a bunch of questions (offline) by folks about this idea and am speaking about it tonight. The biggest question has been whether this is really an area for government involvement (whether city, state or federal). I believe the answer is an emphatic yes but I want to elaborate on this a bit. The key here is that every startup generates benefits that do not accrue to the investors. In the l...

A while ago I wrote that there is “No Such Thing as Too Much Seed Capital Availability." I have been asked a bunch of questions (offline) by folks about this idea and am speaking about it tonight. The biggest question has been whether this is really an area for government involvement (whether city, state or federal). I believe the answer is an emphatic yes but I want to elaborate on this a bit. The key here is that every startup generates benefits that do not accrue to the investors. In the l...

A while ago I wrote a post where I argued that it can be a good idea for entrepreneurs to go for a transformation instead of grinding it out. But that post was a generic consideration of risk/reward. Recently I have noticed a trend though that at first seems to perfectly illustrate this idea. A number of consumer sites that were trying to build their own brand and destination are switching to a whitelabel business model instead. This transformation is motivated by slow growth of the consumer ...

A while ago I wrote a post where I argued that it can be a good idea for entrepreneurs to go for a transformation instead of grinding it out. But that post was a generic consideration of risk/reward. Recently I have noticed a trend though that at first seems to perfectly illustrate this idea. A number of consumer sites that were trying to build their own brand and destination are switching to a whitelabel business model instead. This transformation is motivated by slow growth of the consumer ...

We are operating in exceptional circumstances in terms of the severity of the economic crisis with a potential for it to get much worse before it gets better. I think of it a bit like being in the deathzone in mountain climbing (something I only know from books). You really don’t want to be making an effort that’s not focused on your goal because every bit of wasted energy endangers your survival. This is true even if you are feeling suprisingly well at the moment. What does acting like a mou...

We are operating in exceptional circumstances in terms of the severity of the economic crisis with a potential for it to get much worse before it gets better. I think of it a bit like being in the deathzone in mountain climbing (something I only know from books). You really don’t want to be making an effort that’s not focused on your goal because every bit of wasted energy endangers your survival. This is true even if you are feeling suprisingly well at the moment. What does acting like a mou...

I had been using a Panasonic Toughbook W2 for about 6 years and it was a great machine for that time. It was light (3 lbs), fairly full featured and robust. But of course it ran Windows with all the problems that entails. So I had been wanting to switch to a Mac for a while, but all the MacBooks were too heavy. Then came the Air, but it made too many compromises for someone who was hoping to keep this new machine for another 5-6 year (sealed battery?). Now I am writing this on my brand spanki...

I had been using a Panasonic Toughbook W2 for about 6 years and it was a great machine for that time. It was light (3 lbs), fairly full featured and robust. But of course it ran Windows with all the problems that entails. So I had been wanting to switch to a Mac for a while, but all the MacBooks were too heavy. Then came the Air, but it made too many compromises for someone who was hoping to keep this new machine for another 5-6 year (sealed battery?). Now I am writing this on my brand spanki...

Yesterday we had a little snafu at one of the companies I work with. Some users received duplicate and even triplicate reminder emails. This snafu was caused by what I consider to be one of the key mistakes when first working on production systems: rookies trust their own code. By this I mean assuming that code you wrote yourself has the behavior you think it should have and then not guarding in other code against possible errors. The particular case in question involved two parts: code to id...

Yesterday we had a little snafu at one of the companies I work with. Some users received duplicate and even triplicate reminder emails. This snafu was caused by what I consider to be one of the key mistakes when first working on production systems: rookies trust their own code. By this I mean assuming that code you wrote yourself has the behavior you think it should have and then not guarding in other code against possible errors. The particular case in question involved two parts: code to id...

Yesterday I wrote about how it feels to me like the economic crisis is accelerating the transition to the information society. I believe that the government stimulus can play an important part here by investing in networks as the infrastructure for the information society. The two key networks are high speed Internet and the electrical grid (see also Sam Palmisano’s Op Ed piece in today’s Wall Street Journal). Our existing electrical grid is in a dismal state because regulation for many years...

Yesterday I wrote about how it feels to me like the economic crisis is accelerating the transition to the information society. I believe that the government stimulus can play an important part here by investing in networks as the infrastructure for the information society. The two key networks are high speed Internet and the electrical grid (see also Sam Palmisano’s Op Ed piece in today’s Wall Street Journal). Our existing electrical grid is in a dismal state because regulation for many years...

I love how the iPhone has been driving innovation through competition. A while ago I also pointed out what I believe to be the biggest Achilles heel of the iPhone and how that might provide an opening to beat the iPhone. Well the first contender for the role of Paris has shown up and it is Palm. Palm? Yes, Palm unveiled the Palm Pre at CES. The Pre does exactly what I suggested, which is to use the standard Javascript, HTML, CSS model to program the entire device. Apparently the apps that com...

I love how the iPhone has been driving innovation through competition. A while ago I also pointed out what I believe to be the biggest Achilles heel of the iPhone and how that might provide an opening to beat the iPhone. Well the first contender for the role of Paris has shown up and it is Palm. Palm? Yes, Palm unveiled the Palm Pre at CES. The Pre does exactly what I suggested, which is to use the standard Javascript, HTML, CSS model to program the entire device. Apparently the apps that com...

“The revolution wil not be televised” is a line from a great Public Enemy song. I think it is safe to say that the revolution will be tweeted and flickrd and blogged. Yesterday’s miraculous “splash landing” demonstrated that some of the best early coverage, including photographs and links to information about bird strikes could all be found within minutes of the event on Twitter. I am also convinced that some of the best analyses of what actually happened and who did what to help avert a disa...

“The revolution wil not be televised” is a line from a great Public Enemy song. I think it is safe to say that the revolution will be tweeted and flickrd and blogged. Yesterday’s miraculous “splash landing” demonstrated that some of the best early coverage, including photographs and links to information about bird strikes could all be found within minutes of the event on Twitter. I am also convinced that some of the best analyses of what actually happened and who did what to help avert a disa...