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 [...]
Fanpop is a network of social portals where communities of fans can discover and share content and participate in discussions around their favorite topics of interest. Rather than visiting multiple websites and forums or hunting and pecking through search results, passionate users bring the best content together in one place. Fans can submit, organize, and [...]
Apparently I offended many people in my Jon Winokur interview by publishing this Vichyous attack on the French: Question: Is there any hope for the French? Answer: The French will always be the French. That’s both the bad news and the good news. What the British entertainer Ivor Novello said over 50 years ago is [...]
Yahoo! sponsored an event called “Hack Day” this weekend. Approximately 500 developers showed up and created fifty-four prototypes in a twenty-four hour period. Blip.tv has the demos here and here. The winner was called Blogging in Motion. Yahoo! even brought in Beck to entertain the crowd on Friday night. (To be honest, I had never [...]
Just returned from a few days in Mumbai. What a mind-expanding experience! I was there to speak for an IBM conference for middleware vendors and customers. The contrast in living conditions for the very rich and the very poor is eye-opening—and I didn’t see the absolute extremes of either. I’ve never seen such vivid colors [...]
In case you hadn’t noticed, I love hockey. A buddy named Dave Aiello just told me about a website that he created called RinkAtlas. He used the Google Maps API and verified and corrected the geocoding to over 1,800 rinks in the fifty states and Puerto Rico. If you ever need to find a rink, [...]
SVASE (Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs) is hosting an event called “Launch: Silicon Valley” on November 8 at the Microsoft Campus in Mountain View, California. SVASE is looking for new companies that are ready for launch or have launched recently. If you want to nominate a company, please email a two-page executive summary to: [...]
This is a video of a Churchill Club panel (9/20/06) that I moderated called Next Generation Insights. It featured six Silicon Valley young adults whose ages ranged from fifteen to twenty four. These are some factoids that I found interesting: They send as many as 4,000 text messages per month from their phones. They watch [...]
Jon Winokur is the author of twenty books on a subjects from advice to Zen. He finds the world’s funniest, wisest, and sarcastic quotes and publishes them in books. Trust me when I tell you that this is harder than it sounds. He’s a one-man Wikipedia of wisdom and sarcasm. I first learned about him [...]
iWoz is out. It’s a must read for anyone who’s interested in engineering and Apple. I reviewed it previously here.
Jajah announced a new service called Jajah Mobile. The original version of Jajah enabled people to make a VOIP call from any phone to any phone without a download, installation, new phone number, or allowing your computer to be used in P2P network. All you had to do is initiate the call with a computer [...]
One of the important insights that the Startups 2006 panel hammered home was the importance of distribution for consumer-facing startups. (By the way, an astounding 13,000 people watched this video during the first week.) Many people use the word “distribution” as if it were a tactic when in fact it is a goal. Any bozo [...]
I learn something new every day. Little did I know, being the trailing-edge blogger that I am, that Digg is so powerful. I’ve focused on links and Technorati, but there’s a parallel universe of traffic and Digg. Here’s a good example. This is my traffic log for the first few weeks of September. The spike [...]
My saga with my hosed hard disk is almost over. The people at the Apple store at Stanford Shopping Center took great care of me and swapped it out. Between luck, partial/old backups, and the hard work of my buddy Craig Hosoda, I have almost everything back in place. The total cost of my dumbness [...]