Seth Godin has one of these blenders and loves it. I just threw out a one-year-old Krups blender - not cheap - because the motor doesn't work and can't be fixed. Maybe I should try Blendtec.
What if you could know what your great grandmother was thinking when the photo was taken? (My grandmother is the one the arrow points to). And what would you pay to get or keep that information?
Ethnographer Grant McCracken gives us a glimpse at how shifts in camera technology will transform our trips down memory lane, creating untold personal, media and business opportunities:
Audio capture with every photo: Photos with "voice overs" allowing relatives speak to one another across generations.
Automatic geotagging: cameras will stamp each photo by longtitude and latitude as well as date, allowing future generations to understand time and space references.
Wireless storage and lockering: Wireless cameras will wick photos off to servers automatically and entire businesses can spring up around giving access to past photos.
I'm already addicted to blogging. I can see it will just get better...and even more involving.
Is there a photo you have that you wish could talk to you? Join the discussion.
Related: Gordon Bell at Microsoft is spending his lifetime recording his life.
File this under "Blogs have changed journalism." In June senior writer Om Malikleft Business 2.0 to focus solely on his blog hit, GigaOm. In response, Business 2.0 has re-written the rules for staffers. All staffers must now blog. So this morning, when I logged on to Erick Schonfeld's Business 2.0 blog (previously the only B2 blog), I was greeted with the announcement of their new blog network, B2 Beta. Schonfeld will continue to blog and so will 15 other B2 staffers covering topics that include green tech, venture capital, real estate, design and more.
Boston-based Charles River Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm, this week launched a new program, offering rapid but tiny $250,000 checks to Internet start-ups. The program, QuickStart, recognizes that today's Internet companies no longer need vast amounts of cash to road test their ideas. The program is "convertible," meaning that it acts as a no-strings-attached loan. Then following the loan, if the idea gains traction, the company can go after a first round of funding and negotiate a proper valuation. For a $5 million valuation, for example, the $250,000 in seed money converts into only 5 percent of the company. Manna from heaven for entrepreneurs.
Dominic Basulto blogs about Mike Hugos' thoughts on how business leaders can become more innovative. In short, ideas come from unexpected places...think and observe like an artist and give form to those ideas in your business. To start, totally immerse yourself in the business and then collaborate frequently to vet and bring in new ideas. Tolerate uncertainty and resist the temptation to rush to judgement. And maybe most importantly, look for simple patterns.
"As you investigate ideas and combine them in different ways to create system designs, look for designs where all the elements fit together in a simple, logical and complementary fashion."
Guy Kawasaki loves Robert Sutton's soon-to-be-published book, The No A**holes Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t. With a title like that, I'm sure Sutton, a Stanford professor and Co-Director of the Center for Work, Technology, and Organization, will sell a few copies since every one of us knows exactly what he's talking about. The book provides a list of everyday a**hole actions and Guy has compiled a top 10 list of for how to avoid being an a**hole. Sutton's book focuses on how to cope with a**holes and he even promises to help you calculate the TCA (Total Cost of A**holes) for your company. I'd put it on my Christmas list, but it's not due out until February.
Frank Barnako blogs about comments Ron Bloom, CEO at Podshow Inc. made to CIO Insight Magazine. Reacting to comments that podcasting may be a fad, he said:
"We believe in Fart’s Law: the likelihood of an innovation succeeding increases exponentially with the number of old farts who refuse to endorse it."
Admitting that he's an old fart himself, Bloom claimed that major brand advertisers are spending "millions of dollars" with PodShow. He went on to say PodShow was created with one premise: The 5/50 prediction. Within 5 years, over 50 percent of all media consumed will be created by other consumers." Clearly Ron Bloom knows how to create soundbytes. He is co-founder of PodShow along with Adam Curry
Rob Hof blogs that Google's acquisition of JotSpot "shows all the more that Google is dead serious about creating a comprehensive suite of online business applications." JotSpot was founded three years ago by Excite cofounders Joe Kraus and Graham Spencer. Richard MacManus blogs that Kraus described JotSpot as "wikis meets Microsoft Office," allowing users to collaborate on different types of "office like" products. The question Hof believes, is whether Google, as they cobble together acquisitions and internal projects to make a Web Office product, will "blunt some of the innovative spark that has driven the current wave of Web startups before it has a chance to get kindled."
Boston-based TopTenSources, through its parent company Top10Media, raised $3.5 million in a venture round led by Highland Capital. The company also acquired Blogniscient, a blog news aggregator. No surprise that Halley Suitt is hatching plans, making deals.
It's a happy Halloween at Boston-based social news site Reddit. They've been acquired by Conde Nast, owner of Wired and other magazines/websites for an undisclosed price. As happens with most successful tech startups in Boston, all four Reddit employees will relocate from Boston to San Francisco. Reddit will remain a standalone site and will operate under Wired Digital. Reddit, founded and funded in 2005, is a YCombinator company. YCombinator is an early-stage VC firm based in Cambridge. Like Digg, Reddit news stories are submitted and voted on by an active and loyal set of users.
Tomorrow through Friday the Product Development & Management Association will be hosting a delegation from the China Productivity Center (CPC), a Taiwanese government-sponsored organization for Taiwanese business leaders looking to stay ahead in the global market. They will be meeting at MIT and learning the ropes of innovative product development including getting comfortable with the fuzzy front end. That's the experimental, chaotic time in product development prior to knowing what you're actually creating. The seminar is considered groundbreaking as Taiwan is very production-oriented. Just think what would happen if they became innovative?
In 1990, almost 90 percent of the CEOs of the largest 100 companies served on outside boards. Today, that number has fallen below 60 percent. Intense scrutiny and new regulations aimed at curbing the trend of clubby, rubber-stamping, multi-board member CEOs, may have had an unintended negative effect. Active CEOs are arguably more experienced and talented - sought-after because their point of view is not hypothetical, but based on experience. Traditionally they've been the mainstay of the modern corporate board. Jim Drury writes that refomers need to know that "too much of a good thing is never a good thing."
Dove knows why YouTube just sold for $1.65 billion. Their devastating viral video that shows how beauty is packaged and sold has been viewed more than 1.7 million times so far on YouTube. And it's brought in three times more traffic to CampaignForRealBeauty.com than Dove's Superbowl ad did last year. So not only does the Dove campaign work - bringing market share gains in four out of five product categories so far - but YouTube delivers.
Put a video on YouTube and YouTube keeps every ad dollar your video generates. Want to keep those dollars? Try Cambridge-based Brightcove's new service that lets websites and video producers easily broadcast and sell videos and/or generate ad revenue. The service is free, but Brightcove keeps 50 percent of the ad revenue and 30 percent of product sales.
CNET says that in some ways Brightcove is the anti-YouTube. YouTube got big by letting the masses broadcast themselves or other stuff (apologizing later for any copyright violations). Now (post $1.65 billion) they're courting big media. But Brightcove started out with established media as customers, selling them software tools to broadcast videos online. Brightcove never courted the hoi polloi. Until today.
Who has the toughest tech job on the planet? My vote is Ray Ozzie. How's this for a to-do list? Step into Bill Gates' shoes. Turn Microsoft into a nimble web service company. Reinvent the corporate culture. Maintain and transform the Microsoft software business.
Wired says the switch to designing and launching software online is like telling an airline mechanic working in a hangar that he now has to maintain and fix planes...while they're in the air. I think that's the analogy for Ozzie too. He's the pilot and this is no flight sim. But he does seem to do it with professorial aplomb.
Unlike BillG, Ray didn't take any notes at all (though somebody with him did). When it was time to ask questions, I was stunned by Ray's depth of technical knowledge. He would go all guns blazing with questions like "Do you guys use technology X? What does it mean for Y? Have you guys thought about Z? Have you spoken to teams A, B and C who are doing a different form of X? ".
However, unlike Bill, Ray was always soft-spoken - even when he didn't like something, he was polite...but firm about it. I was impressed with his knowledge of the competitive landscape - he often knew of arcane features in some competitor's product - or in certain cases, competitors I hadn't heard of.
Brilliance. Vision. Commanding respect. That's what you want in a pilot, especially one that delivers some pretty chilling directives over the plane's intercom. Last fall his advice to the company was:
"Complexity kills. It sucks the life out of developers, it makes products difficult to plan, build, and test, it introduces security challenges, and it causes end-user and administrator frustration." Better, he went on, to "explore and embrace techniques to reduce complexity."
Yeah, he's telling the 700,000 Microsoft employees who have built some of the world's most bloated and complex software...to think simple. This will be the mother of all piloting attempts. Use the force...
Fortune is reporting that Yahoo, now overshadowed by Google, may be flirting with AOL. A Yahoo- AOL merger would be a face-saver from Yahoo's Terry Semel, who was outflanked last year by Google when it swooped in to become AOL's search provider and got a 5 percent stake in AOL as part of the deal. What's killing Yahoo, the web's largest audience base? Status quo. They keep missing the big deals - MySpace, YouTube. Fortune sees it going one of 4 ways: Buy AOL, sell to Microsoft, merge with eBay or stay the course and be patient. What does your crystal ball say?
What if you could know what your great grandmother was thinking when the photo was taken? (My grandmother is the one the arrow points to). And what would you pay to get or keep that information?
File this under "Blogs have changed journalism." In June senior writer Om Malik 
Boston-based 
Dominic Basulto blogs about Mike Hugos' thoughts on how business leaders can become more innovative. In short, ideas come from unexpected places...think and observe like an artist and give form to those ideas in your business. To start, totally immerse yourself in the business and then collaborate frequently to vet and bring in new ideas. Tolerate uncertainty and resist the temptation to rush to judgement. And maybe most importantly, look for simple patterns. 
Guy Kawasaki loves Robert Sutton's soon-to-be-published book, 
Boston-based 
Who has the toughest tech job on the planet? My vote is Ray Ozzie. How's this for a to-do list? Step into Bill Gates' shoes. Turn Microsoft into a nimble web service company. Reinvent the corporate culture. Maintain and transform the Microsoft software business. 
Fortune is reporting that Yahoo, now overshadowed by Google, may be flirting with AOL. A Yahoo- AOL merger would be a face-saver from Yahoo's Terry Semel, who was outflanked last year by Google when it swooped in to become AOL's search provider and got a 5 percent stake in AOL as part of the deal. What's killing Yahoo, the web's largest audience base? Status quo. They keep missing the big deals - MySpace, YouTube. Fortune sees it going one of 4 ways: Buy AOL, sell to Microsoft, merge with eBay or stay the course and be patient. What does your crystal ball say?
