Wednesday, March 31, 2010

News & Links List

"Who Pays for ObamaCare?" Forbes' The Science Business

"Progressives' Strategic Choices on Health Care Likely Made Little Difference" FiveThirtyEight

"'Basically an Optimist'—Still
The Nobel economist says the health-care bill will cause serious damage, but that the American people can be trusted to vote for limited government in November."
WSJ

"The ObamaCare Writedowns
The corporate damage rolls in, and Democrats are shocked!"
WSJ

"God Gets His Healthcare Bill" Bully!Pulpit, Paul Kengor

"Why Google Sucks at Marketing" BNET

"Google Fiber Candidates: Top 5 Desperate Cities" PCWorld

"Google leaving China: Better late than never" CNET

"Doing business in China getting tougher for U.S. companies" Mercury News

"Apple Store Cube Is More Popular Landmark Than Statue of Liberty: Cornell Report" Fast Company

"Is Facebook to blame for U.K. rise in syphilis?"
CNET

"MyTown Hits 1.5 Million Location-Based Gamers; Ups The Social With Version 3.0" TechCrunch

"Virtually addicted: Weaning Koreans off their wired world"
CNN

"Five Funniest Media Stories - the Special Geo-Location Edition" BNET

"A Billionaire's Pact With God" Forbes

"Pope accused of ignoring pleas to stop priest who molested 200 deaf boys" Times Online

"Nazi scandal engulfs Human Rights Watch" Times Online

"Grieving mothers blame baby slings for infant deaths" CNN

"Autistic teen picks perfect bracket" ESPN

"If You're Good, I'll Buy You a Toy
The difference between bribing your child and rewarding your child."
Slate

"Every Urban Prep senior is college-bound
100 percent of first senior class at all male, all African-American Englewood academy is accepted to universities"
Chicago Tribune

"Fatty foods may cause cocaine-like addiction" CNN

Monday, March 29, 2010

"Lean Startup Marketing"

Came across this presentation on SlideShare:

"Sean Ellis has helped companies like Dropbox, EventBrite and Xobni grow explosively. His expertise was also essential in guiding Uproar and LogMeIn to IPO. Learn how he did it."

Friday, March 26, 2010

Blogger's New Templates... New Skin for Silicon Moon

Blogger launched some new templates in their test labs called "Blogger in Draft".

I tried it out a couple weeks ago, but didn't follow through until I got their email yesterday:

We’re excited to announce that the Blogger Template Designer is now available on Blogger in draft, Blogger’s experimental playground.

The Blogger Template Designer makes it easy to customize the look and feel of your blog without knowing any HTML or CSS. Here are a few of the new features available in the Blogger Template Designer:

* Beautiful new templates to start from
* Custom blog layouts with one, two and three columns
* Hundreds of background images
* Customizable colors, fonts, and more...

What are you waiting for? Express yourself in style with the Blogger Template Designer. Learn more at www.blogger.com/templates.

The Blogger Team


Anyway, it's been probably 3 years since I last changed the design skin of my blog, so the timing was right to do it again.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

TEDTalk: Gary Lauder's New Traffic Sign - Take Turns

Gary Lauder is the co-creator of the Socrates Society at the Aspen Institute along with his wife, and I am happy to say that I've been a part of and enjoy their events.

Gary spoke at this year's TED about changing from stop signs to roundabouts like they have in Europe. Great presentation and great idea! Summary from TED:

Fifty percent of traffic accidents happen at intersections. Gary Lauder shares a brilliant and cheap idea for helping drivers move along smoothly: a new traffic sign that combines the properties of "Stop" and "Yield" -- and asks drivers to be polite.


Friday, March 19, 2010

News & Links List

"Tim O'Reilly: 'Whole Web' is the OS of the future" CNET

"How Tech Can Save News Media from Financial Tsunami" BNET

"The Secret to Funny or Die's Success: Celebrities, Product Placement, and Above All Else, Funny" Fast Company

"Why "Tron Legacy" Will be Awesome: the Director's an Architect" Fast Company

"China’s Internet obsession
People in the country’s 60 largest cities spend 70 percent of their leisure time online. Seismic changes in the consumer market are likely as a result."
McKinsey Quarterly

"What’s next for global banks
Banking giants in emerging markets will probably do well in any likely economic scenario. Other banks face a more challenging future."
McKinsey Quarterly

"High-Growth Firms Account for Disproportionate Share of Job Creation, According to Kauffman Foundation Study" Kauffman Foundation

"Obama Should Focus On Jobs Not Health Care" The Huffington Post

"Slaughter House Rules
How Democrats may 'deem' ObamaCare into law, without voting."
WSJ

"Why Health Care Costs Keep Rising: What You Need to Know" ABCNews

"First Thoughts on the CBO Score" The Atlantic

"CBO: Obamacare Would Cost Over $2 Trillion" Weekly Standard

"Donor bill would help prevent exploitation: POINT OF VIEW Egg donation measure" NewsOK

"$30,000 Millionaires: Douchebags in the Mist
Venturing into the Dallas jungle in search of the elusive $30,000 millionaire: Is he myth or fact?"
Dallas Observer

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Salary Caps for Who? Celebrities, Athletes or Bankers?

With the recent scrutiny and criticism of the salaries of investment bankers, I wonder if people look beyond the optics of the profession and understand the operations of such professional services firms. Investment banks along with strategic consulting firms (i.e. McKinsey, BCG, Bain) really don't have R&D or product development to reinvestment their profits into. Their products and assets are their people, so of course they are going to paid them well. I guess an alternative could be to establish huge corporate foundations beyond what we have ever seen, but would that be a good business practice? Maybe.

Another viewpoint to consider is who we, as a society, want place atop of the pedestals of professionalism? Take away the investment bankers and hedge fund managers, then we are left with celebrities and athletes as the profession class that take in large regular paychecks. There are entrepreneurs, but most people are not measured risk-takers. Are these professions the ones we want our children to model themselves after? To envy? To desire? To hard work to be like?

With investment bankers, at least the more studious college students had a goal and outlet. Math geeks have hedge funds driven by quant jocks as an alternative to the ivory towers of academia.

And after reading this article, "Seven costly pro athlete screw-ups" I cringed:

"Almost 80 percent of National Football League players are flirting with bankruptcy two years after they retire, according to Sports Illustrated. NBA players aren’t faring much better. 60 percent of former National Basketball Association players end up broke within five years of retirement. Athletes squander millions of dollars due to bad decisions, lavish spending and poor financial planning..."

Are these really the role models of our society and the dreams to instill in our children? Hell no.


UPDATE: True/Slant's Japhy Grant on celebrities, "Why Shouldn’t We Treat Celebrities as Gods?"

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

TEDxSoMa: David Sibbet

My fellow Coro alum and current board colleague at Coro Northern California speaking at TEDxSoMA. David Sibbet was the creator of graphic facilitation.

Google TechTalk: Pyongyang University of Science & Technology

The TechTalk at Google that Christine hosted is up on YouTube.

Pyongyang University of Science & Technology: First International University in the Heart of North Korea

ABSTRACT (Q&A starts at 35:55)

Presented by Dr. David Kim, Vice President of Pyongyang University of Science & Technology in Pyongyang, DPRK, and the Vice President of Yanbian University of Science & Technology (YUST) in Yanji, Jilin Province, China.

The opening of Pyongyang University of Science & Technology (PUST) was once thought to be an impossible dream. However, the first phase of the campus is now finished and ready to accept students in April 2010. Dr. David Kim, who serves as the Vice President of PUST, will be joining us to raise awareness about this first international university in North Korea (where the teaching language will be English), discuss recruitment of international faculty and explore fund-raising opportunities.

Monday, March 15, 2010

News & Links List

"Tim Bray Throws His Hat Into The Android Ring Because He Hates The iPhone" TechCrunch

"A very personal Google Android vs. Apple iPhone war just got some more personality" ZDNet

"Why Google Android is winning" CNET

"Tech finds its place at SXSWi (roundup)" CNET

"Privacy is not dead, says SXSWi keynoter Boyd" CNET

"Google ‘99% certain’ to shut China engine" Financial Times

"Is Voice-Based Bubbly the New Twitter?" Advertising Age

"Tech Start-ups Cope With Data Flood" WSJ

"The Facebook Imperative Cannot Be Stopped" TechCrunch, Marc Benioff

"Polyvore Hires Former Google Executive as Chief" NYTimes

"Where Google Is Going: Taking Over TV Advertising, Perhaps" BNET

"Digital Lift-Off: Web ads to get a 10% boost in 2010. For the first time advertisers will spend more on digital than print." Forbes

"The Future as Platform: Mark Hendrickson's Vision for Plancast" ReadWriteWeb

"Why User Competency Matters in Social Design" Mashable, Adrian Chan

"Africa’s Gift to Silicon Valley: How to Track a Crisis" NYTimes

"How GM Destroyed Its Saturn Success" Forbes

"TED: Now with More Elitism?" TechCrunch, Sarah Lacy

"The elephants in the room at TED" Scobleizer

"Venture-Capital Firms Caught in a Shakeout" WSJ

"South Korea Unveils "ReCharging Road" for Eco-Friendly Buses" Fast Company

"Prizes for Academics Who Solve Real-World Problems" Springwise

"Christians flee after Nigeria's massacre" AFP

"'They Need to Be Liberated From Their God'
The 'Son of Hamas' author on his conversion to Christianity, spying for Israel, and shaming his family."
WSJ

"Your Moral Outrage at Whale Sushi is Unjustified" True/Slant, Japhy Grant

"The Marketing Power of Women" InsideWork, Dan Wooldridge

Friday, March 12, 2010

What Motivates Your Heart?

My article at InsideWork is up and also reposted below. Heads up since it has religious references.

What Motivates Your Heart?
Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation

Recently I watched Dan Pink’s TEDTalk where he sought to answer the question of what motivates people.



Pink talked about Karl Duncker’s candle problem and variations of his experiment that explored the science of motivation. One experiment asked a group to solve this problem and explained that it would be timed to established norms. A second group was offered financial incentives. If you were in the top 20% of the fastest times, you would receive five dollars. If you were the fastest of everyone, you would receive twenty dollars.

The results were obvious, right? The second group, motivated by financial incentives, took on average 3.5 minutes longer. Yes, longer. Would this work in third world countries and developing economies? Yes. This study has been replicated over 40 years across numerous cultures.

What is basic knowledge in the social sciences should have been an epiphany in the corporate world, but this hasn’t occurred yet. Dan Pink went on to explain how extrinsic motivators, such as carrots and money, work for simple tasks, but not for complicated tasks.

He stated, “If you want engagement, self-direction works better.”

As long as the task involved only mechanical skill, bonuses worked as they would be expected: the higher the pay, the better the performance. But once the task called for “even rudimentary cognitive skill,” a larger reward “led to poorer performance.
— D. Adriely, U. Gneezy, G. Lowenstein, & N. Mazar, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston


Pink’s talk sent me back to my high school years where I recalled listening to the common sermon on storing up treasures in heaven (Matthew 6: 19-14) and being turned off. I remember thinking as a young believer, “Why would the idea of storing up riches in heaven motivate me at all? If accumulating wealth didn’t interest me as a non-believer, why would it interest me as a believer?”

Reflecting back on all those sermons, I don’t remember a pastor ever analyzing this and bringing out God’s wisdom that was as insightful as Dan Pink’s talk. Maybe these pastors should have read what Pink discovered. Of course, part of my lack of recall could have been due to my own ignorance since I incorrectly assumed these pastors were discussing a similar monetary system would be established in heaven as on earth. Heavenly dollars? Who cares about storing up treasures in heaven?

Now since I’m a bit older and a little more informed, I realized after listening to Pink’s talk that God already knew this about us.

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Matthew 6:21

The treasure that motivates us in what’s in our hearts. Hopefully as believers it’s Christ and God’s words for us. It’s not a promise of material wealth that will motivate people to change and live a life to glorify God, but the relationship that God offers—the daily sanctuary, peace, joy, wisdom and love that he freely gives.

John MacArthur has a great story on this:

During the time of the Decian persecution in Rome, the Roman authorities broke into a certain church thinking they could loot their treasures. The Roman prefect who was in charge stepped up to one saint named Laurentius and said, “Show me your treasures at once.” Laurentius pointed to a group of widows and orphans who happened to be eating a meal and said, “There are the treasures of the church. We have invested all we have in them.” That is treasure in heaven. Beloved, remember that what we keep we lose, and what we invest with God we gain eternally.

So if pastors and Christian leaders would pierce into God’s wisdom on the question of what motivates people, how would this reflect on their sermons? Their actions?

As business executives and managers, how does this affect your approach in working with your colleagues? I assume, to understand people better, you would first have to learn more about them and try to see where their hearts lie. This sounds like a commitment of time to me. Some people are open books, but most take time to reveal their hearts. If you can’t find any widows and orphans, investing in the people around you is a good start to building up your treasures in heaven.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Record Labels, Old Media Don't Get New Media, Online Videos and Embedding

I came across this op-ed by Damian Kulash ("WhoseTube?", NYTimes), lead singer and guitarist of the band OK Go. And then this morning I received this article from Fast Company:

"OK Go Ditches Label Over YouTube Embedding Rights" by Dan Nosowitz

The article basically covers Damian's prior piece and tells about the conclusion of their conflict with EMI, who wouldn't allow them to have the embed code active for their YouTube videos. Once EMI blocked embedding their video views went from 10,000 per day to 1,000 per day. After OK Go left EMI and turned back on embeddable videos "digital album sales tripled and digital tracks sales have jumped more than sevenfold."



This brings me back to my days at GoingOn Networks when we were working with Forbes.com on various projects. In early 2007, our first project was to help them with an online video contest. It was going to be an "office pranks" contest where people could upload their videos and get rated by the Forbes' readership and a panel of judges.

Since I was leading this project and the product development, one of the first issues I had with Forbes.com was that they didn't want to allow video embedding. I remember strongly warning them that they would limit the viral effect if they didn't offer this. As typical old media people, they stated that they didn't want eyeballs off their main page and lose ad dollars. Our team explained that ads could be inserted into the videos and it would be a greater loss in terms of the video views. We didn't have hard numbers, such as OK Go's 90% drop-off rate, but it was clear anecdotally it would be a major hindrance to their viewership and audience growth.

Working hard to please our client and make this is a successful contest, I introduced Forbes.com to our contact at CAA, who was extremely helpful. One of their talent agents introduced them to a couple film producers and they seeded the Forbes.com Office Pranks site with some great content. We launched and their numbers weren't great. In my eyes, it was a flop and as a startup we were hoping for a home run. There were a couple other issues we warned them about, but the driver was that they weren't willing to allow the blogosphere to run with their content. They thought people would run away with their content and their ad dollars. This was 2007, but today is 2010 and it's amazing to me that many old media companies still don't get it.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

TEDTalk: Dan Barber "How I Fell In Love With A Fish"

One of my favorite presentations at TED this year. Dan Barber talks about a revolutionary farming method in Spain. Insightful and informative. Check it out!

"Chef Dan Barber squares off with a dilemma facing many chefs today: how to keep fish on the menu. With impeccable research and deadpan humor, he chronicles his pursuit of a sustainable fish he could love, and the foodie's honeymoon he's enjoyed since discovering an outrageously delicious fish raised using a revolutionary farming method in Spain."

SK Telecom's Google Android Promos




SK Telecom's promo for Google's Android platform in Korea. Little Androids in the subway.


Promo at Phoenix Park ski resort in Korea. Very cute.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

The New Entrepreneur: Research Review

"Grasshopper.com presents a comprehensive research review (research by TrendsSpotting) on entrepreneurs:"

Story on Pandora's Perseverence

Great story on entrepreneurship and perseverance by Tim Westergren, so this link deserves its own space. He closed his second round after 347th pitches and 11 credit cards.

"How Pandora Slipped Past the Junkyard"

The New York Times
by CLAIRE CAIN MILLER


OAKLAND, Calif. — Tim Westergren recently sat in a Las Vegas penthouse suite, a glass of red wine in one hand and a truffle-infused Kobe beef burger in the other, courtesy of the investment bankers who were throwing a party to court him.

It was a surreal moment for Mr. Westergren, who founded Pandora, the Internet radio station. For most of its 10 years, it has been on the verge of death, struggling to find investors and battling record labels over royalties.

Had Pandora died, it would have joined myriad music start-ups in the tech company graveyard, like SpiralFrog and the original Napster. Instead, with a successful iPhone app fueling interest, Pandora is attracting attention from investment bankers who think it could go public, the pinnacle of success for a start-up.

Pandora’s 48 million users tune in an average 11.6 hours a month. That could increase as Pandora strikes deals with the makers of cars, televisions and stereos that could one day, Pandora hopes, make it as ubiquitous as AM/FM radio.

“We were in a pretty deep dark hole for a long time,” said Mr. Westergren, who is now the company's chief strategy officer.. “But now it’s a pretty out-of-body experience.”... (full article)

Monday, March 8, 2010

News & Links List

"The Origins Of Facebook And Its Founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg" Silicon Alley Insider

"At Last -- The Full Story Of How Facebook Was Founded" Silicon Valley Insider

"The Duplicitous Deeds of Mark Zuckerberg" theAtlanticWire

"Apple approaches $200 billion" Fortune Brainstorm Tech

"Microsoft demos cross-platform game on Xbox, Windows, and Windows Phone 7" VentureBeat

"Motorola Backflip doesn't allow non-Market apps, proves AT&T doesn't get Android" Engadget

"Open Thread: When Is The Valley Worth Moving To?" ReadWriteWeb, Jolie O'Dell

"How Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities Work, In One Not-So-Easy Diagram" BNET

"Billionaire Banker's Blowout Year: Texas banker Andy Beal had a great 2009, but says we're in a credit bubble again." Forbes

"Reaching Affluents on Social Nets: Can luxury brands make friends?" eMarketer

"It Begins… Media Calls Bush-Hating, Pot Smoking, Truther & Pentagon Shooter a “Right-Wing Extremist” …Update: Shooter Linked to Al Franken …Update: He’s a Dem" Gateway Pundit

"How Obama Is Making the Same Mistakes as Bush" TIME

"Mirror, Mirror
Textbook economics is "a bizarre point of view"--according to the textbook's author!"
WSJ's Best of The Web Today
Taranto is again friggin witty and hilarious as he rips on Paul Krugman

"Why I Changed My Mind About School Reform
Federal testing has narrowed education and charter schools have failed to live up to their promise."
WSJ, Diane Ravitch

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

News & Links List

"Apple Goes After HTC In Lawsuit Over 20 iPhone Patents" TechCrunch

"Apple vs HTC: a patent breakdown"
Engadget

"What to Expect From Hulu's First Original Series, 'If I Can Dream'" Fast Company

"To Grow a Company, You Need to be Good at Killing Things" Summation

"Censorship in China: How ReadWriteWeb China Was Closed Down For a Month" ReadWriteWeb

"Converting the foreign policy elite" The Washington Post, Chris Seiple

"'God gap' impedes U.S. foreign policy, task force says" The Washington Post

"Change in Pakistan requires respect, reconciliation, and religious freedom" Christian Science Monitor, Chris Seiple

"Learning From the Sin of Sodom" New York Times, Nicholas Kristof

What the World Needs Now: The TEDActive Music Video

"When the John Lennon bus drove up to TEDActive, attendees got the chance to collaborate on a music video to share their ideas for what the world needs now.

Jill Sobule, John Doe, Sara Watkins, Stuart Johnson, Don Was, Dave Way, Krish Sharma and the amazing team on the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus came together to write, perform and produce an original song, on-site during the conference. Aaron Koblin directed the video, and the TEDActive community turned their ideas into illustrations, with a little help from artist Jansen Yee."

Entrepreneurs Made, Born and Taught

A flurry of blog posts and articles on entrepreneurship and whether entrepreneurs are made or born. Great stuff.

"Can Entrepreneurs Be Made?" TechCrunch, Vivek Wadhwa

"Wake-Up Call For Newly Hatched Entrepreneurs" Forbes, Steven Berglas

"Why B-Schools Set Up Entrepreneurs To Fail" Forbes, Sramana Mitra

"And Google Begat...
The search giant's former employees are seeding tech startups—and shaping another wave of innovation"
BusinessWeek

"What constitutes a startup mistake?" Simeon Simeonov

News & Links List

"Action Streams: A New Idea for Social Networks" ReadWriteWeb

"Action streams: a blue sky proposal" Adrian Chan

"If Google Wave Is The Future, Google Buzz Is The Present" TechCrunch

"Watching the birth of Flickr co-founder's gaming start-up" CNET

"Time to Start Looking for a Buyer, Palm?" WSJ's Digital Daily

"To Calm Anxious Employees, Palm CEO Blames Verizon" BNET

"Nine Young Chinese Entrepreneurs To Watch" Forbes

"The 10 Weirdest Ad Stories of the Month" BNET

"LVMH launches luxury online magazine Nowness" Guardian's PDA

"Warren Buffett would scrap health care bill" Politico

"Man who broke the Bank of England, George Soros, 'at centre of hedge funds plot to cash in on fall of the euro'" Mail Online

"How Asia And Africa Can Help Each Other" Forbes, Kofi Annan

"The Wild Wedge" Great West Institute, Brooke Williams
Brooke was nice enough to quote me from my "Coming Soon: Nontrepreneur Nation" article

"CNN Overnight Thread: Liberals, Atheists Are Smarter Than Conservatives; They Sing Better, Too" Big Journalism

"Closing Arguments: Finally, an end to Justice Dept. investigation" by John Yoo

"Revising the Revised History of Capitalism" InsideWork, Glenn McMahan

"Top 50 players of the World Cup" ESPN