Cool posters found via Khoi Vinh
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My latest project is a recreation of the original Command and Conquer entirely in HTML5 and Javascript.
This is crazy cool. I’m increasingly impressed with what seems possible with HTML5.
One aspect of HTML5 development which is annoying is how much more visual it is than “classic” web development and design. I am no artist – and a lot of what I see in HTML5 relies heavily on one’s ability to draw (or, I suppose, use and manipulate stock images).
The much-talked about app that lets you build and publish your own e-book on the iPad. I’m downloading it for a look now.
The US Department of Justice today coordinated the shutdown of Megaupload and the arrest of several of its founders. In response, the web hacking group called Anonymous has taken to the digital streets and started taking down various related websites including the US Department of Justice and the MPAA.
Megaupload, for me and for my friends, has always been the go-to destination for watching HBO or other TV programs that can’t be easily found on Hulu, Netflix, or iTunes. It’s common knowledge: Megaupload is for watching copyrighted TV and Movies for free.
So why is everyone surprised? And why does everyone appear pissed off?
The fact of the matter is the the US DOJ and FBI are right about Megaupload, and regardless of whether or not it can be proved conclusively that media companies are suffering a financial loss because of Megaupload’s existence (I doubt it can be proved conclusively), the act of running a business offering someone else’s product without an agreement to do so is certainly wrong, and because I think the DOJ has done their research, I think it’s probably illegal too.
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A great post from Ben Horowitz on a new concept he calls management debt:
Like technical debt, management debt is incurred when you make an expedient, short-term management decision with an expensive, long-term consequence. Also like technical debt, the trade-off sometimes makes sense, but often does not. More importantly, if you incur the management debt without accounting for it, then you will eventually go management bankrupt.
If you’re running a small company, this post is well worth a read.
This is probably the best tool I’ve seen for picking a new domain name.
If our brains have two systems: one (1) for “intuitive” and relatively thoughtless thinking, and another (2) for complex math problems and weird experiences, and we spend most of our time in system (1) while looking at and ignoring ads, then what happens if system (2) sees ads?
Try scanning someone’s Timeline. It’s a very unpleasant experience. When information is organized in a list, it’s trivially easy to scan it, but with Timeline your eye has to dart around and try to combine the layout into an understanding of what the person’s been up to. It induces cognitive strain and brings System 2 online.
Jeff DeChambeau theorizes that Facebook’s eye-strain layout might be done to intentionally force us to view ads while in a different “brain state” than we normally view ads in, perhaps with the hope that those ads will be more effective that way.
The USA Today has a big front page piece today on the difficulties facing the protracted effort to clean up the tanks and tanks of nuclear waste sitting in deteriorating tanks at the Hanford Nuclear Facility in Washington:
More than 60 of the tanks are thought to have leaked, losing a million gallons of waste into soil and groundwater. So far, the contamination remains within the boundaries of the barren, 586-square-mile site, but it poses an ongoing threat to the nearby Columbia River, a water source for communities stretching southwest to Portland, Ore.
So, no pressure to get this process going, then, right? No worries, because it’s been in process for a decade already and we know what we’re doing.
The challenge lies in the plant’s huge pre-treatment building, where the waste traverses an intricate set of pipes and vessels as its radioactive streams are separated and sent to separate facilities for conversion into glass. To keep the waste agitated, many of the pre-treatment vessels contain “pulse jet mixers” that act like giant turkey basters, sucking the waste into tubes and expelling it through jet nozzles.
“No one can stand up and say with any certainty that (the mixers) will work,” said Walter Tamosaitis, who spent seven years as a supervising engineer on the project for URS Corp. before being reassigned in 2010.
Oh, I see. And it turns out that if the system doesn’t work — the waste is so toxic that once the treatment plant is sealed off and the cleanup process started, it can never be re-opened.
This, to me, is a prime example of why nuclear power just isn’t worth it. We have options that don’t produce these kinds of problems.
Go give the article a read.
Now there’s a fascinating comment on whether or not we need “real identities” to be enforced online.
Then, in 2007, while doing the extended-side-angle pose, a posture hailed as a cure for many diseases, my back gave way. With it went my belief, naïve in retrospect, that yoga was a source only of healing and never harm.
Fascinating collision of modern medical science and Yoga.
The network slowdown likely heralds the arrival of an initiative Iran has been readying—a “halal” domestic intranet that it has said will insulate its citizens from Western ideology and un-Islamic culture, and eventually replace the Internet.
As far as I understand it, this is totally possible. It’s one of those reminders that the internet is not this all-powerful thing that lives separately from oppressive regimes and the harsh rules of international relations.
Let me be as clear as I can be: the iOS multitasking bar does not contain “a list of all running apps”. It contains “a list of recently used apps”. The user never has to manage background tasks on iOS.
I guess I can see how this would be confusing. If it doesn’t matter – why bother letting users remove apps from the list?
Because sometimes code breaks, and it’s nice to have a backup option to shut things down. Under normal circumstances, though, you don’t have to manage which apps are “open” or “closed” to conserve battery on your iPhone.
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In research by Dan Ariely and others it appears that higher incentives, actually reduce performance. That’s a perverse and counter-intuitive result, but in several different kinds of experiments, groups that were promised the largest amount of money as a reward for doing a task performed that task more slowly, and completed the tasks less often.
This post actually lays out a pretty convincing argument for eliminating sales commissions.
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This is actually kind of a neat look at how the Ruby interpreter treats strings of different lengths.
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Following up seems to be one of the most important aspects of business, but it’s also something that suffers a lot without a significant amount of systemization. I think there are a lot of opportunities that pass by for companies, especially smaller businesses, because they open doorways and then for various (good) reasons they don’t end up walking all the way through.
Of course there are different types of businesses and there are different types of follow up. So let’s see if we can categorize some of the kinds of people you would follow up with:
- A potential consumer customer
- A potential b2b customer (a lead)
- A consumer who has bought your product
- A b2b customer who has bought your product
- A potential partner who can help your business
Out of this list, I think we already pay a lot of attention to potential customers, be they consumers or other businesses. There are whole lot of SaaS systems dedicated to tracking leads, bringing leads in to a “funnel,” and assigning various follow up to the right staff.
In this sense, the system of lead generation and follow up is a very “solved” problem, and the issue facing many small businesses in this space is a lack of adherence to any given system.
These systems are also readily used for the business development deals where the end goal may not be a sale, but certainly an agreement of some kind.
That leaves follow up with a consumer or business customer who has already bought your product.
This people are really the most likely people to be customers for you again. In the b2b world, a “lead” doesn’t get thrown away once they’ve bought something once, they get pushed up the priority list and hopefully become a long term regular customer.
In some consumer industries, especially where (like in the b2b market) the sales process is competitive and the final product is extremely expensive — like automobiles and houses — there is already a standard practice for customer follow up and retention.
Car dealerships maintain a relationship with you not only through maintenance but in some cases through drivers club memberships, magazines, and other regular mailings. I’ve only bought one house, but the follow up has been very good so far, and it’s definitely going to keep the agent top-of-mind when it comes time to sell the house I’m currently in and find a new one.
Even though the costs of having this kind of follow up in place could be large (staff dedicated to the process, printing and mailing materials, database management, and so on), it’s well worth it if a returning customer brings in, per purchase, several thousand dollars or more.
What if this process could be made more efficient for smaller, consumer facing companies, or for companies with less expensive products, but for whom the returning customer is an essential part of the package? Essentially, what if there was a resource-poor way to increase the lifetime value of each of your customers?
For all I know these services already exist (in fact, it looks like followup.com offers something in this vein, but only for auto dealerships, and a bit ham-handed), but I imagine that being able to sign up for a company that will manage this process for you would be a great advantage. Hand off the contact info, exclusively to be used for these very limited purposes, and allow the company to send various follow-up materials on your behalf that will encourage customers to become repeat customers and even real devoted fans.
How noticeable would it be if you signed up for an online service and received an actual physical thank-you in the mail? What if you got a free ticket to a movie? What if you got something on your birthday?
I can think of a lot of businesses that could benefit from a service like that.
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Mark Suster’s take on riding subways vs taking taxis:
I lived in London for nearly a decade. For the first few years I took the Underground everywhere. Over time as I became more senior at Andersen Consulting I had more resources to take taxis everywhere. For a few years I found myself constantly in taxis.
It was certainly more private. I probably caught less colds. But it was colder. After I started my first company I find myself back on the Underground. I love that feeling of being amongst random people. I love the people watching. I love imagining what all of their lives are like. What they do. Where they live. Who they are.
When I’m in New York City I almost always find myself taking the subway where possible. I feel more connected. I feel more at one with the city. I feel more Haimish.
I too love riding the subway when I’m in New York (or frankly, most places on the east coast), and what I love about the transit systems there is that everybody uses them. I even liked the buses while I lived in Brighton, because everybody uses them.
Public transit can be an awesome way to feel connected to the people around you, but I think a city kind of has to be built for it, but culturally and physically.
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New startup ideas are all around you, in the improvised behaviors of people you know. It takes a keen product eye, however, to notice these improvisational behaviors and recognize which ones are worthy of being developed into standalone products.
I’ve referred to this kind of behavior in the past as linespotting, and it’s something I think a lot of very successful entrepreneurs seem to have in common.
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