News & Links List

"Learn to Let Go: How Success Killed Duke Nukem" WIRED
Simply an excellent article by Clive Thompson. Many lessons for any entrepreneur.

"The rise of Google Chrome" CNET

"A Year In Review: 2009 Social Marketing Trends" Forbes, Jeremiah Owyang

"10 Web trends to watch in 2010" CNN, Pete Cashmore

"Ten clean technology predictions for 2010" Cleantech Group

"Five Cleantech Predictions for 2010" Seeking Alpha

"5 Big Real-Time Web Trends of 2009" Mashable

"Ten 'BreakOut!' Business Ideas Of 2009: Meet the entrepreneurs behind tomorrow's most disruptive technologies." Forbes

"The Google Manifesto: Dr. Open and Mr. Closed" BNET

"iPhone Is The Best Selling Phone in Korea" Web 2.0 Asia

"How Alike Are Android and iPhone Users?" eMarketer

"Best 10 Books On China" Forbes, Daniel Harris

"I Am So Tired of Warren Buffett!" The Motley Fool

"Cities Where Homes Are Losing Most Value: A region-by-region look at the metros with the highest peak-to-present price drops." Forbes

"Revolutionary Educators: These 14 visionaries are shaking up how we educate our most disadvantaged kids." Forbes

"Change Nobody Believes In
A bill so reckless that it has to be rammed through on a partisan vote on Christmas eve." WSJ

"Atlantic Editor Lauds Lack of Obama Public Response to Terrorist" NewsBusters

"James Cameron’s New 3-D Epic Could Change Film Forever" WIRED

"Good Enough is the New Great" NYTimes

Tech Trends for 2010 — A Netscape Moment Coming Up

My third annual technology trends piece is up at VentureBeat...

Tech trends for 2010 — a Netscape moment coming up

When I made my tech trend predictions for 2009, we were in the middle of an economic meltdown. This year, I’m less focused on the recession and — thanks to my one-year old twin girls — am wading my way through a flood of information on baby products, toys and books. My mind has wandered between thoughts of Bugaboos and Ooyalas, Leapfrog and Playfish, or Seuss and Seesmic. Still, here are my tech trends for 2010.

Online Shopping Clubs Will Mature
Online shopping clubs aren’t anything new, but these post-bubble incarnations are. Leaders in this segment tend to hold “flash” sales (limited-time sales) and restrict sales to members only. Luxury goods lead this space with France’s Vente-Privee hitting $966 million in revenues this year and U.S’s Gilt Groupe earning almost $150 million in revenues in 2009. By 2010, within four years since launching in the U.S., the companies in this space will have achieved over $2 billion in worldwide sales. Talk about hockey stick growth!

This same model has transferred to other categories, with many luxury players launching travel offerings under their banners. There are also more narrowly focused sites launching, such as Totsy for moms and One Kings Lane for home décor. Woot in the U.S. and One A Day in Korea are flash sale sites that sell only one item everyday. One A Day hit $13 million this year and projects $28 million in sales for 2010 under this simplified model.

Much of this tremendous growth has been driven by the steep discounts all these sites have provided through access to excess inventory. There are concerns this category might see some trouble once the economy picks up and retailers begin rightsizing their inventory. But I believe it is here to stay because — similar to how Zynga and Playfish brought lazy interactivity to the online casual gaming space — these new e-tailers are pushing products and brand relationships to the lazy shopper. It won’t be just about discounted goods, since players like Gilt are already pushing exclusive, in-season goods. So I predict that 2010 will be a breakout year for this ecommerce category and it will move far beyond discounted luxury goods.

Gaming Will Advance Beyond PCs and Consoles
2009 was a great year for online gaming, with Zynga, Playfish, and others leading the charge and showing the power of Facebook and the social networking ecosystem’s distribution power. The next stage of online gaming will be led by more powerful gaming platforms and engines for mobile and the browser... (full article)

UPDATE: VentureBeat has a syndication partnership with the New York Times, so they select some articles everyday to republish in their Technology section and they picked my op-ed today.

TrendsSpotting's 2010 Consumer Trends Influencers: Predictions in 140 Characters

From TrendsSpotting's Taly Weiss...

TrendsSpotting's 2010 Consumer Trends Influencers: Predictions in 140 Characters

View more documents from Taly Weiss.

Facebook Crossing the Ethical Lines

Last week I received Jason Calacanis' mass email regarding Facebook's change in their privacy policy, "Is Facebook unethical, clueless or unlucky?".

It's spot-on, amusing and a must read for all of you social media addicts and startup entrepreneurs out there.

Also a good follow up op-ed is by digital identity guru, Kaliya Halmin, over at ReadWriteWeb, "Facebook's Privacy Move Violates Contract With Users". An excerpt:

I think Facebook believes it can do anything with users because it believes they will never leave because "all their friends are there". Friendster was this arrogant too. Facebook blocks users from scraping their friends' data out of the service, which would allow them to easily find and reconnect with them elsewhere. It claims it prevents us from getting this information to protect our privacy. Really, it is all about locking users in.

I wonder how many more times they will get strip us down, leaving our familiar social clothes and underwear on the floor, and leaving us socially nude.

I think it is unethical and I agree with the concern that Jason Calacanis raises about how this will affect other Internet companies. "Facebook's reckless behavior is... simultaneously making users distrust the Internet and bringing the attention of regulators." This change will affect all of us working on building the new techno-social architecture of our society via the web.

News & Links List

"Twitter? Profitable? Really?" CNET's the social

"Android closes in on iPhone ad traffic in AdMob’s latest report" VentureBeat

"Charities Criticize Online Fund-Raising Contest by Chase" NYTimes

"Fund Boss Made $7 Billion in the Panic" WSJ

"To sway Nelson, a hard-won compromise on abortion issue" The Washington Post

"Gladwell-Simmons III
Malcolm Gladwell and Bill Simmons are back in The War to Settle the Score" ESPN

The Onion Ripping On Friendster

From the people at The Onion...

"Internet Archaeologists Find Ruins Of 'Friendster' Civilization"

Internet Archaeologists Find Ruins Of 'Friendster' Civilization

SNL on Google vs. iPhone

UPDATE: Since the YouTube clip was taken down, here is the original from Hulu but you have to suffer through commercials to get to 37 minutes / 23 seconds where the Google clip is.

News & Links List

"Top 10 biggest social media stories of 2009" VatorNews

"VCs May Lose Privileged Tax Position — Poor Babies!" Sramana Mitra

"Why The Economics Of Social Gaming Are So Attractive To Investors" paidContent.org

"Mag+, a concept video on the future of digital magazines" BERG Blog

"How to fail… gloriously" VentureBeat, Eric Ries


"Achieving a failure" by Eric Ries
Excellent post for any entrepreneur to read.

"Why Men Don't Promote Women More" Forbes

"Surviving A Workaholic Spouse" Forbes

"Climategate goes SERIAL: now the Russians confirm that UK climate scientists manipulated data to exaggerate global warming" Telegraph

"The World on Reset: I keep saying that this is not a recession, but a reset." InsideWork, John Hope Bryant

"Reality-Check: Leadership Is All About Power" InsideWork, Bradley J Moore

"Top Ten Unexplained Phenomena" Live Science

"What Makes Ken Burns’s Films Unique?"

From the Big Think...

From cutting huge amounts of footage to zooming and panning on still photos, the documentarian explains the techniques that distinguish his films—and why changing them now would be “ridiculous.”

News & Links List

"Google phone looks 'supersharp'" CNET

"Nexus One, The Google Phone, Captured In The Wild (Pictures)" TechCrunch

"Facebook's Great Betrayal" Valleywag

"Top Twitter Trends of 2009" Twitter Blog

"eBay Admits to Using Confidential Craigslist Info to Compete" BNET

"Ashton Kutcher's Live Webvids: Genius New Format or Celeb Desperation?" Fast Company

"Today's Vision of Tomorrow: Web 3.0 in 3-D" Fast Company

"Streamlining Innovation: HP Labs Director Prith Banerjee discusses the company's corporate innovation strategy." Forbes, Sramana Mitra

"TED's Next Challenge: World-changing ideas shared at TEDx Silicon Valley." Forbes

"In a Wikipedia age, should all ideas be free?
The US Supreme Court shouldn't weaken the patent protections that fuel technological progress." The Christian Science Monitor

"President Obama to Give Yet Another Stern Message to Bank Execs" ABC's Political Punch

"Inconvenient truth for Al Gore as his North Pole sums don't add up" Times Online

"Understanding Joe Lieberman" The New Republic

"The World on Reset
I keep saying that this is not a recession, but a reset." InsideWork

"Is Bottled Water Really That Bad? Yes"

Via Fast Company's post, "Infographic of the Day: Is Bottled Water Really That Bad? Yes"

Presented by Online Education

News & Links List

"When Google Runs Your Life" Forbes

"Susan Lyne on Gilt.com's Pleasures and Pressures
Susan Berfield talks to Susan Lyne, CEO of luxury e-tailer Gilt Groupe" BusinessWeek

"Craigslist founder testifies felt betrayed by eBay" Reuters

"Why Introverts Can Make The Best Leaders" Forbes

"The Scientific Tragedy of Climategate
Can climate change science recover from the damage done by leaked emails?" Reason.com

"Al Gore can’t tell time – thinks most recent Climategate email is more than 10 years old" Watts Up With That?

"50 nerdy pick-up lines" Bloggasm

News & Links List

"Google sues over alleged work-at-home scams" CNET

"Etherpad Goes to Google - Just Another Silicon Valley Soap Opera" ReadWriteWeb

"Apple’s Game Changer, Downloading Now" NYTimes

"eMarketer Weighs In on 2010 Trends: E-Commerce & Mobile" eMarketer

"New Digital Publishing Venture Boasts Access To 144 Million-Plus Audience; Squires Talks" paidContent.org

"The rise and fall of MySpace" Financial Times

"IBM Completes "World's Greenest" Data Center, Aims for World's Fastest Supercomputer" Fast Company

"Job creation? Look to entrepreneurs" CNN, Amy Wilkinson

"A dozen of the best start-up pitches on the Web" JonBischke.com

"Who Killed California?" National Affairs

"The Gambler Who Blew $127 Million" WSJ

"How Einstein Divided America's Jews" The Atlantic, Walter Isaacson

"Bill Gates on the Dead Aid Meme" AppAfrica

"Rick Warren, Silent Enabler Of Hatred" The Atlantic, The Daily Dish

"Tim Keller Wants to Save Your Yuppie Soul" New York Magazine

"Thinking Habits" InsideWork 52

Digital Tourettes

My friend, Dave, and I were talking about one of our friends who lives in the realm of too much information on his social networks. It's to the point where a person might say:

"Is his wife going to divorce him?"
"What?!?"
"Man, his wife is going to beat his ass."
"Did I really need to know that?"

Dave would classify our friend as having "digital tourettes." This is a syndrome where people uncontrollably cross social boundaries that the vast majority of a society won't cross. It's not simply posting too many details of your life's activities or daily habits, but those activities that people don't need to really know. This involves unnecessary information about bowel movements, flatulence, sexual activities, details about strip club visits, bachelor party escapades, stupid college adventures, etc.

I really hope this doesn't become a growing syndrome due to this new digital era of micro-blogging, 24/7 online presence, and wannabe stardom. Seriously, if you know anyone that might have these symptoms, please conduct an intervention and get him/her some psychiatric help.

Google Launches Real-Time Search... Toast is Burning

Not a big prediction since most people knew it was coming, but here's what I wrote in the comments of my tech op-ed at Mashable, "4 Emerging Trends of the Real-Time Web":

When Technorati, Feedster and others arrived on the scene. I loved their services, but believed that once Google paid attention to this space and developed their own blog search that Technorati and others would be toast. A few years later, Google quietly launched their blog search service and I made the switch within a year once their search results were better than Technorati’s.

So I'm doubtful of any big new companies in this space and expect only smaller exits of $10M-$30M for those trying to be a comprehensive search engine. That's why I think vertical categories have more potential. Of course, I could be wrong but will keep track of this space. Thanks!

In my initial draft, I was more negative and my third emerging trend, "Real-Time Search is Looking Up," was actually written as "Real-Time Search is Toast" since I was referring to the startups trying to be the next Google of real-time search. Unless you like butter and jam, I warned people to avoid this space that Google and other big dogs would eventually conquer. Since it was an op-ed, which was to be encouraging to entrepreneurs, I changed it to a more upbeat title.



Google's official announcement here.

Climate Change 2009 Perceptions

Trendsspotting's Review on Global Warming Public Perceptions: The decline and the rise in interest for the Global Warming Problem during 2009.

Climate Change 2009 Perceptions

View more presentations from Taly Weiss.

News & Links List

"Why entrepreneurs need to understand the route from A to B" London Business School, John Mullins

"Winners and Losers: Internet Search in China" Knowledge@Wharton

"How Google Can Help Newspapers
Video didn't kill the radio star, and the Internet won't destroy news organizations. It will foster a new, digital business model." WSJ, Eric Schmidt

"Huffington To Murdoch: Stop ‘Pointing Fingers’" paidContent.org

"Real-time flight reviews via Android and iPhone" Springwise

"Getting More Out of the Conversation: The Real Real-Time Challenge" ReadWriteWeb, Adrian Chan

"Invisible but indispensable: A host of medium-sized Japanese electronics firms have developed dominant positions in many areas of technology. Can they keep them?" The Economist

"Don't be evil, Craigslist" Startup diaries

"Common Traits of A-Players
An unscientific observation of what A-Players have in common" Summation

"Dubai, Abu Dhabi And Debt" Forbes

"Dubai Credit Risk Falls Most in 9 Months on $26 Billion Workout" Bloomberg

"Some of Dubai World's Major Holdings Around Globe" CNBC

"The 25 Smartest People of the Decade" The Daily Beast

"Why California Is Like France" Forbes

"Searching in Vain for the Obama Magic" Spiegel Online

"Your Life is Perfect" InsideWork, Bradley J. Moore

"Heroic Healthcare" Bully! Pulpit, Dave Dias

"Dirty-Dealing Rationalized
Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain" InsideWork, Jim Hancock
Faith perspective on the Tiger Woods situation

Michael Crow: 10 Best College Presidents

My old graduate school professor, Michael Crow, was recently recognized by TIME as one of the 10 best college presidents in the U.S. Professor Crow is now President of Arizona State University and I believe always destined for greatness in academia. Before ASU, he was Executive Vice Provost of Columbia University and had an incredible record of impact and success. He founded the Columbia Innovation Enterprise (now called Science and Technology Ventures), helped establish the Earth Institute at Columbia University, and helped established In-Q-Tel (CIA's venture capital arm) and currently serves as their Chairman of the Board. Basically, Crow is a stud.

He was an advisor to my first startup, ViewPlus, and another venture I did right after my time at Columbia. During ViewPlus, my co-founders and I had an initial meeting with him at his university office. I remember my close friend and colleague, Jimmy, saying afterward, "He's definitely one of the smartest people I have ever met..."

TED's 2010 Senior Fellows Announced

TED has announced their inaugural class of TED Senior Fellows. Twenty select people from all of the TED fellows around the world were selected for this special program.

A special congratulations to my friend, Adrian Hong, who is the founder of Liberty in North Korea (LiNK).

Here are the twenty:

Taghi Amirani (Iran/UK) – Documentary filmmaker, Amirani Films

Rachel Armstrong (UK) – Teaching fellow, The Bartlett School of Architecture; physician; science-fiction author

Frederick Balagadde (Uganda/US) – Research scientist, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; co-inventor of the microchemostat, a medical diagnostic chip

April Karen Baptiste (Trinidad) – Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, Colgate University

Faisal Chohan (Pakistan) – CEO, Cogilent Solutions; founder, Brightspyre, Pakistan’s largest online job portal

Colleen Flanigan (US) – Fine artist; stop-motion armaturist, coral reef restoration expert

Gabriella Gómez-Mont (Mexico) – Founder, Tóxico Cultura, a Mexico City-based artistic think tank

Jonathan Gosier (US/Uganda) – Founder, Appfrica, a business incubator in Kampala

Peter Haas (US/Haiti/Guatemala) – Founder, Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group (AIDG)

Erik Hersman (Kenya/US) – Co-founder, Ushahidi.com; blogger, AfriGadget and White African

Adrian Hong (US/North Korea/South Korea) – Director, The Pegasus Project; former director, Liberty in North Korea

Juliette LaMontagne (US) – Education consultant; innovation facilitator

Alexander MacDonald (US) – Economist, NASA Ames Research Center

Juliana Machado-Ferreira (Brazil) – Biologist, SOS FAUNA; PhD candidate, Sao Paulo University

VK Madhavan (India) – Executive Director, Central Himalayan Rural Action Group (Chirag)

Naomi Natale (Italy/US) – Founder, One Million Bones, a large-scale social activism art installation

Bola Olabisi (Nigeria/UK) – Founder, Global Women Inventors and Innovators Network (GWIIN)

Alexander Petroff (US/Democratic Republic of the Congo) – Founder, Working Villages International

Juliana Rotich (Kenya/US) – Co-founder, Ushahidi.com; blogger, Afromusing and Global Voices

Mohammad Tauheed (Bangladesh) – Architect; founder, ArchSociety

TIME's 50 Best Inventions: No-Punt Offense (Was Belichick Right?)

I came across TIME's "50 Best Inventions of 2009" from a couple weeks ago and oddly enough it was during the week when many people were criticizing Bill Belichick for going for it on fourth down and two yards from their own 28. One of the 50 best inventions, which I don't believe should have made the list, was the "no-punt offense":

Kevin Kelley, coach of the Pulaski Academy football team in Little Rock, Ark., has called for only a single punt in the past two years. Like a seasoned gambler, Kelley has figured out that punting on fourth and long near your own end zone decreases the odds of the other team's scoring by only a relatively slim amount. So going for it will pay off in the long run: Pulaski won a state championship last year and is in the hunt this year too.

So it seems Belichick was right.

UPDATE: Following up with a search, it seems ESPN's Bill Simmons uncovered more statistics behind the seemingly no-brainer call Belichick didn't make.