I found this interview of Mohammad Yunus of Grameen Bank. His idea to provide “micro loans” to poor people to jumpstart their entrepreneurship truly is changing the world. In fact, Yunus won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his work. Here are some key quotes from the interview: “Women have a long-term vision, she wants [...]
My interview of Fake Steve Jobs, sponsored by LinkedIn, is tomorrow at 6:00 pm Pacific. If you want to attend in person, click here to register. UStream will also stream it live if can't attend in person. You can click here or return to this posting to watch this embedded player. Also, on November 8th [...]
Chris Brogan suggested that people be able to use Twitter to post news to Truemors. We listened to him, and my buddies at Electric Pulp made this possible even though they were really busy with Stephen Colbert. I call it “Twitter News Network” (TNN). Here’s how what you need to do: Follow the Twitter Truemors [...]
Here are the top-ten Leopard tips from my friends, Adam Engst et al, at Take Control Books. They’ve already released five ebooks to help people upgrade to Leopard. These books cost either $10 or $15, but you can save 30% if you buy all five. Take Control publishes minor updates for free, so the authors [...]
This interview features the chief marketing officer and product manager of Compete, Inc. They discuss how Compete competes with Alexa and Comscore, site metrics, and SEO practices. Question: What exactly does Compete do? Answer: Stephen DiMarco: We have a diverse sample of 2,000,000 U.S. Internet users that have given us permission to analyze the web [...]
“Snooze or Lose” is an article that every parent should read because kids need their sleep or their cognitive ability may get set back for years. Here’s the key sentence: “A few scientists theorize that sleep problems during formative years can cause permanent changes in a child’s brain structure: damage that one can’t sleep off [...]
It’s 10:30 pm, and I’m sitting on a baggage cart on the tarmac of the Monterey, California airport. My U. S. Airways flight was set to depart and then an engine warning light went on—this was two hours ago. The reason we’re all on the tarmac is that a fire alarm went off, so we [...]
On November 6th, LinkedIn is hosting a live Q&A session with Dan Lyons (a.k.a. “Fake Steve Jobs”). I will be the moderator of the event. It is open to all although seating is limited. Click here to learn more. Click here to RSVP. I’ve never interviewed a “fake” before, so this will be fun! Date [...]
These are photos from Core Memory: A Visual Survey of Vintage Computers by John Alderman with photographs by Mark Richards. There’s a sensual beauty to computers that I never appreciated until I saw these pictures, and I can’t think of a better Christmas gift for a hardware geek. ILLIAC IV. In 1966, Daniel Siotnik began [...]
A few weeks ago Chris Brogan published a list of the 100 blog topics that he wished people would cover. One of them was, “How Twitter Improved My Blog,” and I accepted the challenge to write something along these lines. (For those of you who are unfamiliar with Twitter, you can read “The Tao of [...]
PopTech is a three-day conference in Camden, Maine. It brings together 500 visionary thinkers in the sciences, technology, business, design, education, government, and culture. Here are this year’s speakers (you’ll see that this isn’t the usual collection of Web 2.0 gadflys) and schedule. You can watch the sessions via a live, free webcast by registering [...]
After posting "Financial Models for Underachievers: Two Years of the Real Numbers of a Startup" about the two years of actual costs of Redfin, many people asked for a generic version of the financial model that Redfin used to project costs. Here it is! Redfin used this model over the past two years, but beyond [...]
Fred Greguras is a partner at the Silicon Valley law firm of Fenwick and West. He is also a buddy of mine, and I asked him to answer the most common questions of newbie entrepreneurs. His clients have included BioMarker Pharmaceuticals, Excite, Kintana, and Speedera Networks. It’s very important to make the right decisions in [...]
Frank Warren started PostSecret as a community art project in November 2004. Since then people have sent in one hundred and seventy-five thousand anonymous postcards. They are featured in art galleries, a music video, and Frank’s bestselling books: PostSecret, My Secret, and The Secret Lives of Men and Women. His new book is A Lifetime [...]
Jajah is a VOIP phone service that doesn’t require a download or headset. It enables you to make VOIP calls from any phone to any phone. The company recently introduced “Jajah buttons.” This product enables people to call you at no charge (or very low cost) by clicking on a button in places such as [...]
I subscribe to over sixty feeds, and they generate 1,000 posts per day. If you subscribe to multiple RSS feeds, you’re probably overwhelmed by the amount of posts like I am. FeedHub reduces the number of posts to those that are most relevant to your interests. To start, you export your feeds to an OPML [...]
I’m speaking at the Business of Software Conference on October 29th at the San Jose Marriott. Other speakers on the agenda include Joel Spolsky, Rick Chapman, Dan Nunan, Jennifer Aaker, Tim Lister, Jeffrey Pfeffer, Eric Sink, Hugh MacLeod, Bill Buxton, Alberto Savoia, and Matt Mason. There’s a 22% discount going on right now. I hope [...]
I love this kind of stuff: Website Grader. You submit an URL, and the test grades how effective the site is in terms of search engine optimization. This blog got a score of 99%! Admittedly, I don’t know a thing about SEO; in fact my SEO strategy is: “Create as good content as you can [...]
My buddies at Avenue A | Razorfish provided me this copy of a study called “Fast Forward: Designing for Constant Change.” It consists of thirteen essays and research that explore how consumers’ digital media habits affect the ways that companies should design user experiences and digital brands. The company wrote the report for marketers who [...]
My buddy at Redfin, Glenn Kelman, decided he wanted to bare his financial soul so that other entrepreneurs could get greater insight into the witchcraft called financial modeling. In this two-part posting, he reveals his numbers and his lessons. They are eye-opening for most entrepreneurs. Part I: Numbers Startups face one primary challenge: To never [...]