cacheop

Very reassuring. at #levolabs – View on Path.

Thu, 23 Aug 2012 11:41:32 -0400

Very reassuring. at #levolabs – View on Path.

Proud to now be a part of #WeTopia wtp.io/GivJoy let’s play this game and do some good 4 kids...

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 07:11:37 -0500

Proud to now be a part of #WeTopia wtp.io/GivJoy let’s play this game and do some good 4 kids around the world #MAKEACHANGE
— Justin Bieber (@justinbieber) December 20, 2011

Very cool. This is my Memolane!

Thu, 19 May 2011 16:19:00 -0400

Silicon Alley Talent Fair

Tue, 17 May 2011 10:24:00 -0400

Silicon Alley Talent Fair & After Party is June 16th. The recent surge of entrepreneurial activity in New York has created a surge in hiring. Now is the time to join some of New York’s most creative and industrious minds to bring the next wave of computer products and services to the forefront of daily use. Join us on June 16th at the Armory for a Startup Talent Fair, where you’ll have plenty of time to meet with exciting new startups and network with other talented individuals like yourself. Good back story, too: SAJF was born out of 80 + startups doing the entrepreneurial thing and leveraging an email mishap to rally around the concept of doing their own job fair. It took on a life of its own and has found mass support across the NYC startup community. For the full story: http://mashable.com/2011/04/05/nyc-startups-job-fair/ This event is organized and produced by startups for startups. To register as a jobseeker: http://bit.ly/SATFtalent; to register as an employer: http://bit.ly/SATFemployer

From Startup One Stop

There are two kinds of people in the world

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 09:57:19 -0400

There are two kinds of people in the world:

You’ve either started a company or you haven’t. “Started” doesn’t mean joining as an early employee, or investing or advising or helping out. It means starting with no money, no help, no one who believes in you (except perhaps your closest friend

r03: Urban Sql injection. WIN!

Sat, 19 Feb 2011 09:23:40 -0500

r03:

Urban Sql injection. WIN!

Pivot.

Fri, 28 Jan 2011 15:58:02 -0500

Pivot.

Is pivoting natural selection or intelligent design?

Wed, 29 Dec 2010 11:44:57 -0500

Pivoting is not particular to tech startups. Many of the largest companies we know today have done it throughout the years to adapt to new times or even to survive. The list surprises lots of people:

Berkshire Hathaway: Textiles → Private equity
BMW: Aircraft engines → Vehicles
IBM: Office machinery → Computers → IT Consulting
Nintendo: Playing cards → Video games
Nokia: Rubber boots → Cell phones
Pixar: Animation tools → Animated movies
Sony: Rice cookers → Various electronics

Pivoting as pre-planned strategy is probably rare, most companies do it because they have to do it. It’s however very common to the new generation of tech startups to figure out things one step at a time and be able to understand what/when to pivot. Eric Ries nailed a definition for it:

…The idea that successful startups change directions but stay grounded in what they’ve learned. They keep one foot in the past and place one foot in a new possible future. Over time, this pivoting may lead them far afield from their original vision, but if you look carefully, you’ll be able to detect common threads that link each iteration.

Interestingly enough the two leading startups in the hottest space right now have come to where they are through different pivot paths. (It says something about the group buying business model with such low barrier-entry that practically any web business can pivot to it.)

Groupon started as The Point, a website that let people create a campaign asking people to give money or do something as a group and leveraged their technology to implement group buying after struggling to get traction.

LivingSocial started as a Facebook platform developer. They were all over the place until they acquired BuyYourFriendADrink and e-commerce site that allowed users to buy gift certificates for friends towards any of the bars in their network. One of their salespeople identified the opportunity that triggered the pivot.

Watch these companies founders explain how they ended up being where they are. Natural selection or intelligent design? Leave a comment…

Is 30% focus on innovation enough to keep you #1?

Tue, 16 Nov 2010 07:59:00 -0500

The only good thing about not being able to go to the Web 2.0 Summit this year is watching its live stream (or rather archived sessions for the ones who are busy during the day).

Before breakfast today I watched Mark Pincus presentation. The bigger Zynga gets the further from innovation they seem to move. No announcements, boredom. Of 1,300 employees, 400 are working on “new IP”, so roughly 30% of the company is dedicated to innovation (if that’s what they mean by new IP). While there’s a lot of cloning still going on from latecomers it’s important to realize that there are probably 100’s, if not 1000’s of gaming startups that are dedicating 100% (not 30%) of their resources on innovation. And Zynga is probably waiting for that with a big check, so next year they have more boring numbers to show.

Watch live streaming video from web20tv at livestream.com

150 years of Gustav Mahler

Sat, 04 Sep 2010 21:00:06 -0400

If you’re a Mahler fan you can create and vote for the dream Mahler symphony cycle. The favourite users‘ recording of each symphony will be released together as a limited-edition CD box-set called Mahler – The People‘s Edition in November 2010.

Here.

DICE 2010: "Design Outside the Box" Presentation

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 15:15:54 -0500

DICE 2010: "Design Outside the Box" Presentation

TigerTag interview at Jason Calacanis’ This Week In...

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 09:36:00 -0500

TigerTag interview at Jason Calacanis’ This Week In Startups. Skip to 10m 20s to watch Eric Lagier talk about the Open Angel Forum experience and pitch TigerTag.

People ain't no bad

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 23:13:00 -0500

It may not be unanimous the opinion that people are mostly good - I know some of you are skeptical about it. However from time to time we learn stories that remind us that goodwill exists and people will help strangers without expecting a payoff.

I took a cab last night to Grand Central Terminal and as I enter the car I notice there’s a laptop on the back seat. I show it to the driver and he asks me to give it to him because he would drive back to 54th street - where he had dropped off the unlucky owner - and return it. I asked if he knew exactly where the person went and as he assured me I handed him the computer.

First reaction I had was to tweet it, and the tweet ended up on Facebook where some commenters were skeptical the owner would ever recover the laptop. To the skepticals here’s some good stuff.

NYC cabbie drives 200 miles to return $21,000 left in taxi by tourist.

The cabbie drove about 50 miles to a Long Island address he found in Mrs Lettieri’s handbag. No one answered the door at the house in Patchougue, so he left his phone number and drove back to the city. Hours later, he received a call from the family, turned around and drove back with the money.

The Guardian is running a reader poll - “If you found a large wedge of cash, would you return it or keep it?” Here are the results so far.

LIRR conductor lauded for returning lost wallet containing $2,800

Pinkham was humble about his heroic deed, and isn’t even allowed to collect reward money as an LIRR employee.

“We’re here for the customers,” he said.

(cross posted at blog.tigertag.com)

Sir Ken Robinson speaks about creativity and schools and how...

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 13:47:00 -0400

Sir Ken Robinson speaks about creativity and schools and how they aren’t usually together. Very funny and inspiring presentation at TED.

Volt 230 Mpg? Sticker shock

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 16:37:40 -0400

Volt 230 Mpg? Sticker shock

Rooting for Rio nevver

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 11:06:56 -0400

Rooting for Rio

nevver

OnlyOnce: Stuck in Legal

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 09:59:49 -0400

OnlyOnce: Stuck in Legal

Augmented Reality on the Rise

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 16:46:00 -0400

Augmented-reality is catching up and everyday we see a new ‘demo’ that promises to change the way you will see the world. AR, in the hype cycle that Gartner plots is right on ascension getting close the the apex - which in their analisys is when a technology is 2 to 5 years to reaching mainstream.

Right on the bleeding edge - more than 10 years to mainstream adoption - is human-augmentation, which is not related to some spam you normally get. I still prefer Tim O’Reilly’s term body hacking.

Hype Cycle 2009: Augmented Reality on the Rise

NoSQL: no future for RDBMS?

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 15:43:45 -0400

Tokyo Cabinet is cool name. I think of some 80’s punk band every time I hear it - specially because it’s always associated with the NoSQL movement. In fact there’s a number of key/value stores out there that are really interesting for a large number of particular applications. Don’t think that RDBMS will die or get replaced by this approach. It’s almost like there’s a new way of doing things that weren’t thought or possible in the relational world (like Map/Reduce has introduced us to a new paradigm).

To the question on whether non-relational stores scale, don’t scale or scale easier than relational ones I’ll leave up to the blogosphere to debate. Here’s a good starting point.

China will overtake the US as the world lead manufacturer by...

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 11:03:59 -0400

China will overtake the US as the world lead manufacturer by 2015.

The US as Manufacturing Leader