Stop SOPA and PIPA, a personal request
This blog exists due to the confluence of a few cool things Freedom of Speech The Internet being a free and open platform that interconnects us all Me, having something to say and share You, having the option and the ability to read my writing In this blog I can express my opinions, emotions, teach, joke, and write about anything. You can find me in your browser or search engine. Confluence.
Hollywood Accounting and SOPA
Hollywood Accounting refers to the opaque accounting practices used by the film, video and music industry to hyper-inflate expenditures such that their products never make any profits so they can then screw artists out of fees and royalties due to them. See a friendlier definition in wikipedia. Basically by the terms of my contract, if a set on a WB movie burns down in Botswana, they can charge it against B5’s profits.
Google's Schmidt Solution to Android
Following on to my earlier post on How Google Failed to Fix the Mobile Market, Jamie Lendino writes in Hey, Google: Here’s What Fragmentation Means in PCMag: Schmidt’s solution—that “if you don’t like it, you can buy the phone from someone else”—doesn’t work when you’re locked in a two-year contract, when there are over 300,000 apps in Android Market to test, and when a phone vendor goes back on its promise to provide an OS upgrade.
Products define you
Dustin Curtis makes an excellent point in his article skewering Visio entitled The soul of a “consumer electronics entertainment connected scenario”: People stopped buying computers based on specifications and features years ago. All computers sold now are practically identical in functionality. Today, people are increasingly buying computers the same way they buy cars: to define themselves. I own Apple products because I love fine software, I drink 12 year old scotch because I like fine drinks, I use a Nikon camera because I adore fine photography equipment and I celebrate at fancy restaurants because I really enjoy fine foods.
Newspapers, Paywalls, and Core Users
Clay Shirky exposes the story behind Newspapers, Paywalls, and Core Users. As a heavy consumer of news, my biggest problem is finding good old-fashioned journalism in a world of spin, hype, agendas, placements and sponsored content. I worry that we’re entering a world where the truth becomes what other people have paid for me to read because journalists have no other way to finance an honest service. This isn’t a problem with general-interest paywalls — it is the problem, widely understood before the turn of the century, and one to which there has never been a convincing answer.
How Google failed to fix the mobile market
MG Siegler, in his blog parislemon, wrote an excellent but badly titled article called Why I Hate Android on how Google blew its, and therefore our, chances at an equitable mobile phone market in the USA. Google wanted to give-away or sell Android phones unlocked in stores and allow consumers to then choose their carrier. Consumers could then get the best phones, a great operating system, all updates and choice in carriers, something the iPhone only gets us half way to.
It should only take you a few hours...
It sure seems easy to make a table. Anyone can do it, right? Get 1 large flat rectangular piece of wood, 4 equally tall wooden poles, 4 nails and a hammer. Nail the 4 poles to each corner of the flat rectangular bit, and you have a table. Ta daaa! Now ask a carpenter to craft you a table. First they will spend time discussing the purpose and function of the table - indoor or outdoor, kitchen or dining room, for show or heavy use, what load does it need to bear.
Why patents are a big problem
Brad Lindenberg nails it in Why patents are a big f******* problem There has to be a correlation between ideas and execution otherwise those who can execute get shafted by those who cannot. I don’t have a problem with patenting a physical thing that you make, I do have a problem patenting an idea, concept or discovery.
Always Be Selling
There is no right time to start selling. If you have a great idea, you should be talking about it, you should be selling it. If you have an alpha level product, you should be finding beta testers, you should be selling it. If you have a beta level product, you should know what the final product will look like, you should be selling it. If the product is done, you should be selling it.
Does money even exist anymore?
Dave Caolo, writing in Does money even exist anymore?: More and more it seems like money is a myth. I assume he does not live in the USA or Japan. Back in Australia in the 1990’s I certainly would have answered no, everything was BPay and a card swipe. In Japan in the early naughts, the answer was yes, they still hold on to cash as a primary form of exchange because its polite, but now do most smaller transactions via SUICA.