Category Archives: Uncategorized

Steve Yegge’s post about Google’s platform strategy has been making the rounds lately, and buried in it is something very interesting: Jeff Bezos is an infamous micro-manager. He micro-manages every single pixel of Amazon’s retail site. He hired Larry Tesler, … Continue reading →

I first read about C in the early 80s in BYTE magazine, when they had a full issue on the language.  (According to the archives, it was August 1983).  After learning BASIC, pointers and function declarations really opened my eyes. … Continue reading →

I’ve always loved Netflix.  I was a very early subscriber, and we still carry the DVD plan even though we rarely use it (we’ve had some DVDs out for years).   And Reed Hastings has done something that few CEOs … Continue reading →

I just upgraded my iPad to iOS 5 — wow!  There’s lots of stuff in there. What’s most interesting are features that Apple’s pulled in from their app ecosystem. This is great for users (Apple gets to cherry-pick the best … Continue reading →

Following up on my work on digital fabrication and related areas, I tried Ponoko’s fabrication service.  I didn’t design anything myself (I’m lazy), but I bought a tabbed Arduino enclosure from their marketplace, cut from 3mm clear acrylic. Here’s the … Continue reading →

When Google announced they were buying Motorola, it was widely speculated that they did it “for the patents”. Now, Eric Schmidt is reported as saying: “We did it for more than just patents, .. The Motorola team has some amazing … Continue reading →

Continuing my ad-hoc series on avoiding the entrepreneurial lottery, another way of avoiding lottery odds is to require real capital for your project (and to get it funded). When we started Open Market in 1994, a basic Unix server and … Continue reading →

I don’t know any entrepreneurs that love raising money. It’s usually a necessary part of startups, but most entrepreneurs I know have their passion directed at their product, market, and customers, NOT at investment deal minutia.  Also, for funding rounds, entrepreneurs have to … Continue reading →

With Google+, we’re now reading the comparisons with Facebook, and the inevitable commentary on the commentary. I think Google+ is very interesting (and doesn’t suck), but it’s too early to tell how it will play out.  Google’s biggest hurdle is not Facebook’s … Continue reading →

On Yuri Milner making a blanket investment (loan) offer to every Y Combinator startup:  very interesting and good headline fodder, but in many ways, not surprising. The return distributions for Internet-flavored technology startups have gotten very, very skewed.  For example, … Continue reading →