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  • 1 min read

Audacious startups

I remember when this project was first announced and 'PR'd. It's just another good reminder about the unpredictability of these world-changing projects. Sad but interesting:

Electric car company Better Place shuts down after burning through $850M | VentureBeat:

Better Place is the electric car company that hoped to change the world with its ambitious battery-swapping stations. But today it said it's shutting down. The closure brings to an end arguably the most audacious "clean tech" company ever attempted.

  • 1 min read

Fantastic Billy Joel Interview

If you are, or ever were, a Billy Joel Fan you will really like this interview. Fascinating to read what seem to be the reasonably honest thoughts and feelings of a Rock Star!

Billy Joel on Not Working and Not Giving Up Drinking - NYTimes.com:

So he doesn't write anymore, not pop songs anyway. Instead he goes about his relatively ordinary life in plain sight in a cedar shake house in the middle of Sag Harbor village. He has a few of his vintage motorcycles in the garage, and his boat slip is within walking distance. He is seemingly never alone, spending his time in the company of his two pugs or his live-in girlfriend of three years, Alexis Roderick, a former Morgan Stanley risk officer (who he probably wishes had been alongside him in the 1970s to assess his first record deal). What he lacks in output, he more than makes up for in opinions -- about his legacy, his mistakes, a rock-star life lived hard and the heroes and villains he met along the way. If the new music of many of his contemporaries is any measure, prolificness is an overrated quality. Once a pop genius, always a pop genius. We ought to know by now.

  • 1 min read

Mad Men Going Nuts

Do you watch Mad Men? I know it's very good. I always watch it. But sometimes, it doesn't make sense, and I wonder, have I been sucked into a reality distortion field myself? Is it really good?

REVIEW: Mad Men - Episode 8: The Crash - Celebrity Gossip, News & Photos, Movie Reviews, Competitions - Entertainmentwise:

However, the experiment was hit and miss. With the majority of the creative team at SCDPCGC (as the agency seems to be called at the moment) under the influence of, um, well who knows really, there were moments when it was hard to tell what was real from what was imagined. Again, that isn't necessarily a bad thing but there was a bit too much of it in this episode to make it a really enjoyable show. Was Ken really tap dancing in front of Don or was it just a product of his drug induced haze? Either way it was strange. However, where the confusion definitely worked was in the appearance of Grandma Ida.

  • 1 min read

Useful document about design for iOS (iPad and IPhone)

Starters Guide to iOS Design:

As someone who does work on both the development and design side of iOS apps I find that many designers struggle with the transition to UI work, or with the different processes involved in iPhone and iPad app design. In this guide I'll describe the deliverables you'll be expected to produce, outline the constraints of the medium and introduce fundamental iOS and UI design concepts.

  • 2 min read

Interesting view on Tumblr/Yahoo deal

Yahoo, Tumblr, and the Loyalty Factor - Ben Gomes-Casseres - Harvard Business Review: a blog post analyzing f some of the strategic issues underlying the Tumblr/Yahoo deal:

"…Still, after the initial shock subsides, can Yahoo count on Tumblr users staying on? That is probably how the investment bankers framed it -- as a question of switching costs, lock-in, network externalities, and the like. Where are these users to go? There is no equivalent forum of this type, richness, and network size (at least not yet). It would seem that the 18-24 year-old demographic that Yahoo is pining for does not have an easy exit choice…." (**from:

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Ben Gomes-Casseres - Harvard Business Review)

He also mentions a book - Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (Hirshman) - that seems to have anticipated some of the lock-in, churn and loyalty challenges that subscription based online services of all kinds face, way back in the 1970's. Seems like an interesting book, well worth reading:

"Mr Hirschman's most famous book, "Exit, Voice and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organisations and States", remains as suggestive today as it was when it first appeared in 1970, for managers and policymakers as well as intellectuals. Mr Hirschman argued that people have two different ways of responding to disappointment. They can vote with their feet (exit) or stay put and complain (voice). Exit has always been the default position in the United States: Americans are known as being quick to up sticks and move. It is also the default position in the economics profession. Indeed, when his book appeared, Milton Friedman and his colleagues in the Chicago School were busy extending the empire of exit to new areas. If public schools or public housing were rotten, they argued, people should be encouraged to escape them." (from : The Economist)

  • 1 min read

How to be a “woman programmer”

How to Be a 'Woman Programmer' - NYTimes.com:

But none of it qualified me as extraordinary in the great programmer scheme of things. What seems to have distinguished me is the fact that I was a "woman programmer." The questions I am often asked about my career tend to concentrate not on how one learns to code but how a woman does.

  • 1 min read

An interesting stat: Is it true?

Kirk McDonald: Sorry, College Grads, I Probably Won't Hire You - WSJ.com:

According to one recent report, in the next decade American colleges will mint 40,000 graduates with a bachelor's degree in computer science, though the U.S. economy is slated to create 120,000 computing jobs that require such degrees.

Now, I don't know where this gentleman, Kirk McDonald got this statistic but if you are teaching computer science then it's a pretty sobering statistic. I am going to try digging deeper to see if I can find the source.

  • 2 min read

Number crunching smartphone app success

Here's my five-step plan for world domination:

1. I am creating a comprehensive taxonomy of characteristics of smartphone apps. Much more detailed than a feature list: "is it on android or iPhone" but really micro. I will have 20 different user interface 'styles' defined scientifically. I will analyze all 11 different variations on viral growth models and describe them scientifically. I will classify the color schemes, fonts used, left versur right swiping, number of customizable characters, and that's just the start!

2. Once I have that, I will have an independent panel of experts score the top one hundred smart phone apps on each of the facets of my taxonomy. With that I will have a 200-factor success "genome" for each of the top smart phone apps.

3. In parallel I will have a panel of business researchers determine statistics, over time, on each of the top smart phone apps. Number of users, amount of revenue, number of downloads, user ratings, and most important return on investment.

4. Armed with that data I work with a top Statistics PhD and find the predictive factors that lead to a successful outcome for a proposed app.

5. Once I prove that my equation works, I will market my services to VCs and app developers and help them decide which horses to back, and how to improve and refine the concepts they work on for maximum pay back.

What do you think? Will it work?

Solving Equation of a Hit Film Script, With Data - NYTimes.com:

A chain-smoking former statistics professor named Vinny Bruzzese -- "the reigning mad scientist of Hollywood," in the words of one studio customer -- has started to aggressively pitch a service he calls script evaluation. For as much as $20,000 per script, Mr. Bruzzese and a team of analysts compare the story structure and genre of a draft script with those of released movies, looking for clues to box-office success. His company, Worldwide Motion Picture Group, also digs into an extensive database of focus group results for similar films and surveys 1,500 potential moviegoers. What do you like? What should be changed?