Software is Eating the World
Marc Andreessen, writing in the WSJ Why Software Is Eating The World, writes:
More and more major businesses and industries are being run on software and delivered as online services—from movies to agriculture to national defense. Many of the winners are Silicon Valley-style entrepreneurial technology companies that are invading and overturning established industry structures.
The best evidence of Software eating the world, one that I think he missed, is that the Phone component on an iPhone or Android device is an app, just another piece of software!
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. Michael Strazynski, Writer & Producer of Babylon 5
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. How could you possibly know beforehand what’s going to happen?
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. The easy part of treating digital news as a product is getting money from 2% of your audience. The hard part is losing 98% of your advertising base.
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. Then they will determine the materials to use - hard vs soft woods, laminate, plywood or railway sleepers. Then they will look at the aesthetics of the table - beveled edges, foot design, center or corner mounted legs. And when they finally get down to crafting the table, they spend a lot of time to mitre, mortise and dovetail all joints, install bracing points, use quality glues, dowels and screws, test its levelness, sand it flat, stain it, seal it, polish it and produce a table they are proud of. Seems a whole bunch more work, doesn’t it? It just a table, no?
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.
- If you meet someone, you should tell them what you are doing, you should be selling it.
- If you are in a bar, and are trying to meet girls, you should be selling it (in this case, yourself).
- When you run down the street for some milk, dress nice, you never know if you will bump into someone, you should be selling.
The most successful CEO’s are the one who are always selling their ideas and their companies. The most successful sports stars are always selling their sport, their team and their sponsor’s products. The most successful sales people are always selling their products. The most successful people picking up in bars are always selling. Those vacuous celebrities in the papers and on TV are always selling something.