Amanda Congdon was one of the first, if not the first, videoblog sensations. As a host of Rocketboom, she had approximately 300,000 viewers in the spring of 2006. She extended her online fame to a television appearance on the CBS television show CSI. (This is the show—which I love—where all the cops are good looking; [...]
Three of my buddies who are patent attorneys disagreed with my diatribe against patents as a key component of a startup’s defensibility. Being the open-minded Guy that I am, I offered to publish their counterpoint so that you can obtain a broader perspective of intellectual property issues for startups. Patent law is currently a sea [...]
You have to check out this posting on The Amateur Gourmet. It’s one of the best blog postings I’ve ever seen. (Thank you Leslie Carol Roberts for telling me about it.) Here are other examples of photo storytelling that shows the power of the medium: First Annual Zombie Walk in Atlanta, GA Never Let Go...
RAZZ, Inc. recently introduced the RAZZ Mixer. It enables people to create personalized audio recordings to post on web pages. This is a Flash-based application consisting of a voice recorder, music uploader, and special effects sound board with hundreds of pre-recorded sounds. Users “mix” recordings for posting onto social-networking sites and blogs. These recordings serve [...]
The world is running amok with entrepreneurs pitching every sort of Web 2.0, social networking, user-generated-content startup. It’s the attack of the bull-shiitake startup projections, so I’m losing my hearing; there’s a ringing in my head, and I get dizzy every once in a while. Before the world implodes (again), here is a top-tenish list [...]
Just a reminder: Hope to see you guys at the Garage/SVASE "Art of the Start" event on Wednesday, November 8th. It’s at the Microsoft Conference Center in Mountain View, California. We’re covering the topics of entrepreneurship, venture capital, product introduction, sales, and marketing. The highlight is a fireside chat with Michael Arrington of TechCrunch. The [...]
Steve O’Hear traveled to America in 2004 with two friends in order to document life in Silicon Valley. The end result is a DVD that he’s selling called In Search of the Valley. It contains interviews of people like John Warnock (Adobe), Andy Hertzfeld (Macintosh programming whiz), Woz, Craig Newmark (Craig’s List) Tim O’Reilly (O’Reilly [...]
You have to like an author who has the testicles (or ovaries) to walk away from Harvard Business School Press because it wouldn’t let him use the word “asshole” in his title. (HBS Press also turned me down once, but I digress...) Robert Sutton is the author who did this; he’s a professor at Stanford [...]
Over at Escape From Cubicle Nation, Pam Slim has compiled the top ten entrepreneur’s song list, complete with samples. Speaking of music, I was listening to the Greg Kihn show on KFOX this morning, and Gregg Allman called in because his daughter’s band came in second in the station’s “Last Band Standing” contest. In response [...]
My buddies at FilmLoop are about to announce a Halloween photo story contest. To enter, click here. The prize is $500 of party supplies so that you can have a good time as you scare the shiitake out of people with your costume. FilmLoop released a new version so that you can add “bling” such [...]
Blog reader Curtis Thompson asked me a very good question a few days ago: What should an entrepreneur say when she’s asked what makes her company defensible? This question is more and more common as more and more entrepreneurs start “Web 2.0 companies,” and investors torture themselves by wondering why they didn’t fund YouTube. “Defensible [...]
The Woz XM radio show “Guest DJ On A Segway” starts airing this week on Channel 15, The Village: Tuesday - Noon ET to 4:30 PM ET Friday - Midnight ET to 4:30 AM ET Saturday - 6:00 PM ET to 10:30 PM ET Monday - 3:00 AM ET to 7:30 AM ET Woz will [...]
I found a great blog entry that explains technology marketing. Here are the first three elements of this top-ten list: Marketing is not a department. Marketing is a combination of elements that creates the environment in which it is possible to meet a customer need (starting right back at product development). Promotion and sales are [...]
I may be one of the last people on the planet to hear about this experiment, but just in case I’m not, read on. Dr. Sugata Mitra conducted an experiment in 1999 in which he placed a computer connected to the Internet in a slum wall in New Delhi. He allowed children to use this [...]
One of the consequences of a boomlet is that organizations like research labs, defense contractors, and aerospace companies are going to want a piece of the action. Their logic will go like this: “The technology we invented for satellite imaging can be used for amateur video, so we could have created YouTube and sold to [...]
Coghead provides a web-based application that allows tech-savvy businesspeople (that is, non-programmers) to create and deliver their own web-based applications. Essentially, it’s bringing the “do-it-yourself” trend to software—hopefully disrupting tradition and changing the way software is created and used. It can help fill the large, unmet need for small, specialized applications because packaged software is [...]
Now-Up-to-Date Script for Motorola Q A few months ago I mentioned that I had bought a Motorola Q and posed the question of getting my appointments from Now-Up-to-Date to the phone. The best solution was this convoluted path: Export from Now-Up-to-Date, import into Palm Desktop, export as vCal, import into iCal, and then synchronize with [...]
Polly LaBarre is the co-author (with Bill Taylor) of the newly released book called Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win. The strategies, tactics, and advice in Mavericks at Work grew out of in-depth access to a collection of forward-looking companies. These maverick companies are attracting millions of customers, creating thousands [...]
I’m in Waterloo (Ontario, no French jokes, please) to give an Art of the Start speech for Communitech. I just found out that the event is open to the public and free. The speech is on Friday, October 6th at 11:00 am in Fed Hall on the University of Waterloo campus. Click here to register. [...]
America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization. Georges Clemenceau America...just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries [...]