Stanford University is full of smart people, and now it has a smart building too thanks to Jerry Yang, the co-founder of Yahoo!, and his wife Akiko Yamazaki The building is called Yang and Yamazaki Environment and Energy Building (Y2E2). The size of the building is 166,000 square feet, and it cost approximately $470/square foot. [...]
Avenue A Razorfish released the 2008 Digital Outlook Report yesterday. The purpose of the report is to help Avenue A's clients understand consumer behavior in the digital space. In the report experts cover topics such as media spending, mobile web usage, social influence marketing, the state of search, and behavior targeting. Here are some tidbits [...]
This article, called "Demystifying 'Above the Fold'" is important to read for its contrarian approach to this belief. It states that people are so intent on reading content may not notice any ads above the fold.
Choose your weapon: Power 1.0 = muscle and weapons Power 2.0 = money, market share, or brain power Given these choices, most people and companies choose both. However, both Power 1.0 and 2.0 reflect Machievelli's thinking that it's better to be feared than loved. Dacher Keltner, professor at U.C. Berkeley, has defined what I would [...]
Day -1095: Waiting for a Macintosh that comes close to a Vaio in size, weight, and, most importantly, battery life. Day -60: Rumors start circulating about a super-cool, super-thin MacBook. Day -30: Go into Apple store and tell them to put one of these rumored super-cool, super-thin MacBooks aside for me if the rumors are [...]
Since so many people liked the merry-go-round water pump idea, I thought I'd mention another one: Milk banking. Yes, it's what it sounds like: Women give milk to a milk bank ala a blood bank. Apparently natural milk helps premies and sick babies. I learned about this business when the New England Milk Bank won [...]
Entrepreneurship Week starts on Friday, February 22nd. The events are free and open to the "greater Stanford community" (which I would define as anyone who can get to the campus). Here is the agenda that features a bunch of great workshops and sessions. I can't imagine you could a better way to spend a few [...]
Here's a counter-intuitive thought: Shoppers with less information about a product are happier than those with more information. Researchers at the Tippie College of Business came to this conclusion after conducting a study in which people were asked their opinions of chocolate and hand lotion. One group was given extensive information and the other much [...]
http://www.youtube.com/v/uQu_Jppvzyk This is the cleverest idea I've seen in years (and Apple had nothing to do with it as far as I know): PlayPumps. Kids play on a merry-go-round and pump water for villages at the same time. Girls benefit in particular because they are usually the ones fetching water. How cool is that?!
Q: What’s the difference between Silicon Valley and yogurt? A: Yogurt has culture. Maybe this isn’t so true anymore. I did a video interview for a new blog that I predict you’ll find very interesting, It’s called Valley Zen: At the Intersection of Zen and Technology. Drue Kataoka and Bill Fenwick are the writters. Drue [...]
Bob Sutton continues to fight the good fight against certified orifices. He started by literally writing the book about it. This time, he's created a test for you to determine if you have the client from hell. Click here to take the ACHE (Ass**** Client from Hell Exam). Luckily, he provides a path out of [...]
The Industry Standard is back, and I wrote a post for it based on a panel I moderated last Friday. The topic of the panel angel investing, and a more qualified panel doesn't exist: Andy Bechtolsheim (the first investor in Google), Ron Conway, and Ian Sobieski. If you're interested in angel investors, you need to [...]
An email pitch from an entrepreneur named Sherry Couch of BizNiche brought a big smile to my face. First of all, how could I skip an email with a subject line like this one: “Everything you should know about me as an entrepreneur you could learn from my OB/GYN”? Sherry went on to write:I am [...]
My favorite scene in The Last Samurai was when the Tom Cruise character says something to the effect that “I’ve never seen a people who are more obsessed with perfecting simple skills” as he watches some villagers. This is just so Japanese—I’ve used it several times to explain to my wife why I try to [...]
You’ve got to read “Is the Tipping Point Toast?” by Clive Thompson in FastCompany. The gist of Thompson’s piece, based on the work of Duncan Watts of Yahoo Research, is that the theory that a select few “key influencers” matter more than “the rest of us” when it comes to viral and word-of-mouth marketing campaigns [...]
Dave Walker pointed out a very interesting blog post called "Ecommerce Registration Usability Tips." The author(s) analyzed the registration procedure of eighty seven online retailers. One of my pet peeves is sites that don't allow you to use your email address as a user name--he found that only 13% do. Surprisingly, only 1% of the [...]
Triggit is a WYSIWYG web application for integrating third-party elements into websites. It enables people to drag and drop advertisements, Flickr pictures, and YouTube videos directly into their site without any skills in web programming. Triggit is free to use, and works on any site that accepts JavaScript. It does not require any downloads, access [...]
My friend Anastasia Goodstein is running the Ypulse College Mashup conference for companies who are trying to reach the college-student market. The conference is running from January 31 to February 1 in Santa Monica, California. Speakers include: Jake Sasseville, host, The Edge With Jake Sasseville; Jessica Barron, director, Front Page Programming, Yahoo!; Chip Ross, director [...]
Saturday, January 12, 2008 I write this after a good night’s sleep—the first I’ve had since December 29. That was the day that incumbent Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki announced victory in the country’s elections and was sworn in as a nation listened, paralyzed with shock. Moments later, the radio system went dead. When broadcast resumed, [...]
All hail Garr Reynolds! He has written the definitive book about making great presentations: Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery (Voices That Matter). To give you a taste of his book (and increase my link count), here are ten questions (really thirteen) with Garr. Question: Who indexed your book? I know I’m [...]