We’ve begun testing Truemors For Friends (TFF), and we could use some outside testers. Our Facebook version enables you to spread news, rumors, and gossip within the Facebook community. You can also share pictures, and links with your friends and see their pictures in each posting and comment. TFF is very different from Truemors.com. Our [...]
I work in the surreal world of Silicon Valley where venture capitalists fund companies based on PowerPoint pitches and executive summaries. My friend Tim Berry rightfully pointed that business plans still serve an important role in "the rest of the world." He's right, and he should know because he's the president of Palo Alto Software, [...]
I feel as if there’s a force field that’s sucking me deeper and deeper into Facebook. (Although there was a temporary setback when my account was disabled for excessive evangelism, if-you-know-what-I-mean.) The whole Facebook apps thing was the crowning touch. Facebook as a “platform” is the most interesting development platform since Macintosh. To wit, I [...]
Would you like to rule the web? Mark Frauenfelder’s new book will help you do exactly that. I thought I knew about most of the cool stuff on the web, but thirty pages into this book it was clear to me that I was deluding myself. Mark is the founding editor of BoingBoing.net and editor [...]
Thinking about taking the plunge and being your own boss? First, check out “Should You Start Your Own Work at Home Business?” It explains the pros and cons of working at home. Sometimes the grass isn’t greener, but it’s best to know what you’re really getting into in advance.
Just came across three cool projects/sites that I have found very useful: Snap Shots plugin for Firefox. If you use Firefox, this is an essential plugin. It enables you to place your cursor over a link and see a snapshot of the web page. This used to require that the site implement some Javascript on [...]
Jeffrey Pfeffer is the Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University. He is the author or co-author of twelve books.Dr. Pfeffer received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Carnegie-Mellon University and his Ph.D. from Stanford. He began his career at the business school at the University [...]
On Thursday I'll be appearing live (as opposed to dead?) on uStream. The details are: 2:00 pm Pacific time July 12th Click here to go to the site. Hope you can join me. It's going to be a freewheeling discussion about venture capital, entrepreneurship, Truemors, and anything else you want!
On July 16th and 17th my buddy Anastasia Goodstein is running a conference called Mashup 2007. The topic of the conference is marketing technology to teenagers. Here are the agenda and list of speakers (I volunteered, but she said I was too old...). July 16th and 17th Hotel Nikko San Franciso, California The teenage market [...]
Lois Kelly is the author of Beyond Buzz: The Next Generation of Word-of-Mouth Marketing. This is her explanation of the top nine types of stories that people like to talk about. If you’re pitching your company to investors, customers, partners, journalists, vendors, or employees and you don’t use at least one of these story lines, [...]
The Churchill Club panel called "No Plan, No Capital, No Model...No Problem" is now available for download.
Scott Berkun worked on the Internet explorer team at Microsoft from 1994-1999. He is the author of a recently released book called The Myths of Innovation. He also wrote the 2005 bestseller, The Art of Project Management. He teaches a graduate course in creative thinking at the University of Washington, runs the sacred places architecture [...]
It’s hard to write something about the iPhone that takes a new angle. For the next few days you’ll be seeing hands-on reviews of the iPhone by folks like Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal and David Pogue of the New York Times. Come Friday night, you’ll also see the first customer reactions. Thus, [...]
Markus Frind, the founder of PlentyOfFish.com is my new hero (James Hong of Hot or Not is a close second). Marcus spends about two hours a day in his underwear managing a free dating website that gets twelve billion page views a year. He is the only employee, and he only has one server. And [...]
Want to be inspired? Check out this collection of videos about social entrepreneurs from around the world. It’s called the FRONTLINE/World series. Here’s a description: “…we have searched for stories about people who innovate in ways that truly transform our interconnected world. This special site will feature the stories of people whose ideas and organizations [...]
Pixilu Imaging Inc. provides professional retouching services as an online service. You upload digital photos and Pixilu’s graphic artists review each photo and perform color correction, acne removal, facial lines reduction, teeth whitening, and enhanced red-eye correction. The cost varies from $1.49 to $9.99 per photo. I submitted my picture to the service, and this [...]
I am three weeks behind the times, so I’m just catching on to how cool the Facebook Platform is. Then I read “Analyzing the Facebook Platform, three weeks in” by Marc Andreessen. It’s a must read for any social-networking entrepreneur. Facebook Platform is almost as exciting as developing Safari apps for the iPhone. :-)
There was such a positive response to the speaking tips of Doug Lawrence (email) that I asked him for more stuff. Taking a cue from the fact that “Bite your tongue” was the most popular tip, here are more: Warm-up with a towel. Singers often have to get their chops “up” in their hotel rooms [...]
In the spirit of the $12,107.09 startup, check out how some folks started FROG, an organization to help Guyana (no relation to me), on the very cheap. It includes a great list of free/cheap apps to use. Lots to admire and learn here.
I know that you might be sick of my Art of Innovation speech, but Zentation has created a very good way to view a PowerPoint-based speech that shows both the speaker and the current slide. Here is a sample to show you how it works.