Steve Ballmer said, "The internet was designed for the PC. The Internet was not designed for the iPhone." Let me tell you something, the internet wasn't "designed" for anything. It wasn't designed to handle voice, but it does, it wasn't designed to handle video but it does. The fact is, the Internet was designed to support the "unkown". Oh by the w...

Just read the news that Bloomberg is buying Business Week see here. According to the news, Bloomberg is paying $5M in cash plus the severances for 400 people. Lavishly assuming 3 months severance, at $10K/mo, that's another $12M of costs. That's $17M of total costs to Bloomberg. What do they get in return? The same article suggests that Business We...

On mother's day we got a Kindle for my wife and she hasn't been able to live without it since. Thank you Amazon. In many more ways than one, it is a wonderful device, so good that it makes me debate whether every family member should have one. But for now we are sharing it. I am reading the kids "The Treasure Island" every night, and for myself, I ...

Last Saturday I was a panelist at the TABCON 2009 conference talking about mobile apps. It was a good panel where the last question was "can you give us an example of a radical mobile application". It was one of those open ended question that challenge the user to have to be insightful and creative at the same time. While I was waiting my turn, I g...

I recently got this email sent by an office assistant to every employee in her company. I found it inspiring. People like the person behind this email make a difference between something remarkable and something ordinary. Enjoy the weekend & Happy Birthday Oya! -----Original Message----- From: XXXXXX To: XXXXXXX CC: XXXXXXXX Sent: Wed Apr 08 16:49:...

One of our up and coming portfolio companies, one I am personally involved in, recently got written up on ReadWriteWeb. Twine is growing fast, and I am happy it is getting noticed. The article is a great read on where the web could be going. I highly recommend. P.S. Now you guys know where my "technology prediction #5" came from :-)

I got an email from President Barack Obama this morning. It has all the ingredients of putting government and social media together. There are has links to where I can submit questions, where I can watch videos. Very progressive, very interesting. My prediction of mywhitehouse.gov is not there, yet. But we are close. Here is the email Baris -- The ...

Last year, when I wrote this same post for 2008, it was much easier to make predictions because everything was on the up and up, people took more chances. We no longer have that environment. When people are in survival mode, they care less of long-term trends, and care a lot more about very very short-terms trends that affect them quickly and direc...

I've been thinking more and more lately as to what problems in the world can be reduced to a math problem solved by analyzing massive sets of data. It's along the lines of Chris Anderson's fantastic Wired cover story, The End Of Science. Some hard problems become easier if there was a lot of data collected about them. It's been a major theme of thi...

If you are right handed, protect your right arm and move your work mouse to your left hand. If you are left handed, protect your left arm and move your work mouse to your right hand. I am serious. I did this two years ago, and now at work I use the mouse with my left hand and at home I use the mouse with my right hand. It is so seamless at this poi...

Now is the time to find something you are thankful for. Especially now, when the whole world seems to be falling apart. Stocks are down. Economy is bad. Terrorists are still on the loose. Bankers are still on the loose. Still often wrong. Still never in doubt. Limited partners want return of capital instead of return on capital. Nothing seems easy,...

Yesterday, I saw a GM banner somewhere on Yahoo finance that said how good and necessary the Auto Industry Bailout would be for America. I wish I thought to hit PrntScrn so I could show you the ad. But do you all see how ridiculous this is? GM has a problem selling cars, so it uses its marketing spend not to sell more cars but the convince people o...

The Web 2.0 Summit started today. If there was one word to describe the overall atmosphere and mood is that it was 'muted.' Despite the new president, the mood lacked the spark and feeling of being part of something big. It was definitely there two years ago. That was then, this is now. We'll see how the rest of it goes. I heard one good stat. Even...

One of our close friends have a pumpkin carving day tradition. This one was one of the best pumpkins carved that day. Thanks Pete & Ayse. Happy Halloween!

I've been traveling to Canada a lot for work lately. Air Canada has shown me many movies on demand, United has not given any choice, and both have shamelessly asked for $3 for headphones I haven't paid. None of the movies I saw moved me except for one. Ironically, it was the one I thought would be the worst and avoided consistently until the last l...

Congratulations Munjal and the rest of the like.com team on the fundraising! It is just one more testament to the fantastic product you are building. As an angel investor, it is a great pleasure to see the team grow, mature and become that great business that it deserves to be. What a wonderful ride to be a part of.

"Apparently the Nigerian government has warned its citizens that if they get any e-mails from Irish/UK/US banks, promising government-backed deposit security and seeking bank account details, its a scam..."

https://faculty.chicagogsb.edu/luigi.zingales/Why_Paulson_is_wrong.pdf Here is the first paragraph as a teaser Why Paulson is Wrong Luigi Zingales Robert C. Mc Cormack Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance University of Chicago -GSB When a profitable company is hit by a very large liability, as was the case in 1985 when Texaco lost a $12 billio...

Just downloaded it. Before downloading I was looking for one feature and one feature only. And I found it. It was just as I expected. You have to opt-out of opt-in to the browser sending your surfing history to Google. Here is the image right at the General tab if you opt-in. One wonders why opting in is the first thing Google asks you to do after ...

I am back from vacation, and happy to see that the world has not come to an end yet, though some great progress in that direction has taken place in the last 2 weeks. I've written before that we are in the Design Era of Technology. Getting it to work matters, designing it well matters just as much. On that thread, here are some wonderful user inter...