NEVER JOIN A CLUB THAT WANTS YOU AS A MEMBER
There is so much happening today, that there seems to be very little to say. Everyone is waiting for "The Beat Goes On" and for Steve Fossett to return home (who the hell is this guy, when I am gone for two weeks nobody notices?).
Technology news is getting weirder by the day but we are beyond paying attention to it. California opposes companies to implant RFIDs in employees, Synthasite is giving shares away to subscribers, games manufacturers will use BCI (Brain Computer Interface) into their games so we can steer with our thoughts and a new hype is coming in the Valley (like powerset which has just parsed Miss Teen South Carolina (was that mean or what?). The new hype is called cool but written in the new Californian spelling as Cuill, according to Techcrunch a super stealth search engine that worries Google (frankly I do not think they lost a lot of sleep over this).
Miss Teen South Carolina
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When I talked yesterday about Google slowly taking over the complete web analytic market I forgot to mention that they opened the beta platform for Analytics AIR. I have enlisted as beta tester and will report on it when they start. You can also sign up here if you want.
There is also a new cool maps app called maps.amung.us. This is again Californian spelling, the West has always pioneered itself out of saturated situations by changing the rules of the game: when all the domain names are gone, just change the spelling.
One of our country managers asked me an intriguing question: we are under the radar for the moment and will be so for the next months, so who do we approach as potential partners, the top Internet companies or the below-the-liners like us?
Universal Darwinism (Richard Dawkins, the Selfish Gene) asserts that any system will accumulate complex traits that favor their reproduction if the system can negotiate variation (with better genomes), makes the right decisions (selection) and has the ability to replicate. There you have the answer. To put it in Groucho Marx immortal words: "I would not join any club that would have someone like me for a member." There is no progress in that, shoot higher and if they say no? So what? Call the whaaaambulance.
And you do not need money for asking. In our situation there is nothing we cannot do, just because we do not have any money. Take advantage of it, as long as it lasts, because I feel the oil coming ☺
September 5, 2007
September 4, 2007
WOW
WOW YOUR BLOG
The English have a nice word for it: flabbergasted. Amazed, I was when I saw who reads my blog. I thought less than a hundred people, but thanks to the English language and Google, I get readers from all over the world. I just integrated FEEDJIT which gives you (dixit Feedjit) real-time traffic data on your blog. No registration required and it's completely free. See where your visitors are located in the world, which websites they're arriving from and what they're clicking when they leave your site.
You can even do better and try out Google's Touchgraph TouchGraph's powerful visualization solutions reveal relationships between people, organizations, and ideas . If you type in 'www.pajamanation.com' you get a wow effect.
Further tools for our website and blog continue to appear: Builtwith to find out which software was used to build this site. Webgrader gives you SEO tips and checks out every mistake you have made. Google is ready with the Google GWT (Web Toolkit)
Entrepreneur.com gives 6 tips how to SEO your blog which are very useful and to monetize your blog look here : http://www.sizlopedia.com/2007/09/02/complete-blog-statistics-for-august-2007/
The only thing that frustrates me is Treppenwitze, l'esprit de l'escalier, staircase wit: I should have used Wordpress!
http://www.sizlopedia.com/2007/08/28/blogging-tookit-12-best-developer-tools-reviewed/
The English have a nice word for it: flabbergasted. Amazed, I was when I saw who reads my blog. I thought less than a hundred people, but thanks to the English language and Google, I get readers from all over the world. I just integrated FEEDJIT which gives you (dixit Feedjit) real-time traffic data on your blog. No registration required and it's completely free. See where your visitors are located in the world, which websites they're arriving from and what they're clicking when they leave your site.
You can even do better and try out Google's Touchgraph TouchGraph's powerful visualization solutions reveal relationships between people, organizations, and ideas . If you type in 'www.pajamanation.com' you get a wow effect.
Further tools for our website and blog continue to appear: Builtwith to find out which software was used to build this site. Webgrader gives you SEO tips and checks out every mistake you have made. Google is ready with the Google GWT (Web Toolkit)
Entrepreneur.com gives 6 tips how to SEO your blog which are very useful and to monetize your blog look here : http://www.sizlopedia.com/2007/09/02/complete-blog-statistics-for-august-2007/
The only thing that frustrates me is Treppenwitze, l'esprit de l'escalier, staircase wit: I should have used Wordpress!
http://www.sizlopedia.com/2007/08/28/blogging-tookit-12-best-developer-tools-reviewed/
September 3, 2007
On Ideas, Ideation and the Ideals in Men
Ideas: assets or liabilities?
I got a lot of response to my blog about hypernumerals yesterday, but mostly in my email. Please be adviced that the comments are on so you can answer in the blog itself.
I do not agree with some of you that there not enough ideas around. In Slashdot today: "Ideas are really the sexy part of innovation and there's rarely a shortage of them. If you look at the biggest problems around innovation, rarely does a lack of ideas come up as one of the top obstacles; instead, it's things like a risk-averse culture, overly lengthy development times and lack of coordination within the company."
The question is whether an idea is an asset or a liability.
When I said I am giving ideas away, it is because otherwise they become a liability since I do not have the financial backing to exercise them all. If I do not give them away, they accumulate as to-do lists in my head or like save-bookmarks. So, better that somebody else does it then, so that I am rid of them. Invention without a financial return is just an expense. Ideas without the power to exercise them become frustrations.
Whether there is job in gatekeeping or idea-production for companies? I doubt it very much. Although I love ideas, thinking, philosophy and abstract objects, basically ideas are worthless. It is 10 times tougher to come up with a prototype; 100 times tougher to come up with a company around it that is working and has real customers; 1000 times tougher with a company that is profitable and keeps evolving and 10,000 times tougher to do an IPO around that company and finally 100,000 times tougher to exit as a multi-millionaire.
Walter
I got a lot of response to my blog about hypernumerals yesterday, but mostly in my email. Please be adviced that the comments are on so you can answer in the blog itself.
I do not agree with some of you that there not enough ideas around. In Slashdot today: "Ideas are really the sexy part of innovation and there's rarely a shortage of them. If you look at the biggest problems around innovation, rarely does a lack of ideas come up as one of the top obstacles; instead, it's things like a risk-averse culture, overly lengthy development times and lack of coordination within the company."
The question is whether an idea is an asset or a liability.
When I said I am giving ideas away, it is because otherwise they become a liability since I do not have the financial backing to exercise them all. If I do not give them away, they accumulate as to-do lists in my head or like save-bookmarks. So, better that somebody else does it then, so that I am rid of them. Invention without a financial return is just an expense. Ideas without the power to exercise them become frustrations.
Whether there is job in gatekeeping or idea-production for companies? I doubt it very much. Although I love ideas, thinking, philosophy and abstract objects, basically ideas are worthless. It is 10 times tougher to come up with a prototype; 100 times tougher to come up with a company around it that is working and has real customers; 1000 times tougher with a company that is profitable and keeps evolving and 10,000 times tougher to do an IPO around that company and finally 100,000 times tougher to exit as a multi-millionaire.
Walter
August 30, 2007
The Hypernumber Idea
Hypernumerals
"It has never been easier to start an Internet company. Create a Web site, begin a "viral" marketing campaign to grow word-of-mouth and acquire an audience, garner some ad revenues, generate venture capital funding and sell out to a Web giant such as Yahoo! or Google."
This is how an article in Forbes starts, with the title: Good technology is nice, but a Good idea is better. http://www.forbes.com/entrepreneurs/2007/08/09/google-yahoo-youtube-ent-fin-cx_kw_0809whartonvc.html?boxes=relstories I cannot agree more, but since my RSS reader is daily filled +100, I tend to have too many ideas, so I started to give them away for free, thereby contributing to the emerging Gift Economy ☺
For instance, Techcrunch announced today that one of the finalists of Seedcamp, a European Y Combinator-like seed fund and mentoring program is a Scottish Project Fairplay which states that they want to do something with hypernumbers such as hypertext does with words. I tried to find out more, but strangely the new company has no website hyperlinked to their name ☺
Hypernumerals is an old idea, but nobody has ever touched it the right way. Everyone says it is too much of a niche market, but I disagree.
When I think of hypernumbers I do not think in algebraic systems where they are called hypercomplex or numbers with dimensionality (axes). My view on hypernumbers should do to numbers (or numerals) what hypertext does to text. This opens up a whole array of opportunity. One could set up a new advertising concept around "number advertising" instead of text advertising. The advertisement syndication or ad serving platform could be called "Addsense", for instance (instead of Adsense). One could generate frequency tables of numbers in texts ("Adnumbers" versus Google's Adwords) so that it would be possible to make a top 20 of the most popular numbers in the world. Let's not forget that any text which consists of tips and is numbered is immediately taken up by Digg or other content synidcators, people just love numbered lists.
Just like Adsense people could bid (why not a simple Vickrey auction?) to sponsor a certain number or cipher in texts all over the world in for instance a CPA model (cost per action instead of cost per click as Google now does which would lead to price discovery in this niche market). This would require a new search engine (let's call it "Numeratica"), for numbers only, which could be an add-on to Firefox and an alternative to wikipedia. The field of numerals should include both the idea of numbers and symbol for numbers (so that I could for instance sponsor a variable number such as the US debt). My definition of numberals would also include zero, negative numbers, rational numbers, irrational numbers, and complex numbers.
The idea is infinite. Just like numbers and our imagination.
"It has never been easier to start an Internet company. Create a Web site, begin a "viral" marketing campaign to grow word-of-mouth and acquire an audience, garner some ad revenues, generate venture capital funding and sell out to a Web giant such as Yahoo! or Google."
This is how an article in Forbes starts, with the title: Good technology is nice, but a Good idea is better. http://www.forbes.com/entrepreneurs/2007/08/09/google-yahoo-youtube-ent-fin-cx_kw_0809whartonvc.html?boxes=relstories I cannot agree more, but since my RSS reader is daily filled +100, I tend to have too many ideas, so I started to give them away for free, thereby contributing to the emerging Gift Economy ☺
For instance, Techcrunch announced today that one of the finalists of Seedcamp, a European Y Combinator-like seed fund and mentoring program is a Scottish Project Fairplay which states that they want to do something with hypernumbers such as hypertext does with words. I tried to find out more, but strangely the new company has no website hyperlinked to their name ☺
Hypernumerals is an old idea, but nobody has ever touched it the right way. Everyone says it is too much of a niche market, but I disagree.
When I think of hypernumbers I do not think in algebraic systems where they are called hypercomplex or numbers with dimensionality (axes). My view on hypernumbers should do to numbers (or numerals) what hypertext does to text. This opens up a whole array of opportunity. One could set up a new advertising concept around "number advertising" instead of text advertising. The advertisement syndication or ad serving platform could be called "Addsense", for instance (instead of Adsense). One could generate frequency tables of numbers in texts ("Adnumbers" versus Google's Adwords) so that it would be possible to make a top 20 of the most popular numbers in the world. Let's not forget that any text which consists of tips and is numbered is immediately taken up by Digg or other content synidcators, people just love numbered lists.
Just like Adsense people could bid (why not a simple Vickrey auction?) to sponsor a certain number or cipher in texts all over the world in for instance a CPA model (cost per action instead of cost per click as Google now does which would lead to price discovery in this niche market). This would require a new search engine (let's call it "Numeratica"), for numbers only, which could be an add-on to Firefox and an alternative to wikipedia. The field of numerals should include both the idea of numbers and symbol for numbers (so that I could for instance sponsor a variable number such as the US debt). My definition of numberals would also include zero, negative numbers, rational numbers, irrational numbers, and complex numbers.
The idea is infinite. Just like numbers and our imagination.
Never Jam Today
NEVER JAM TODAY
I have talked about Pajamanation extensively in more than 12 blogs in a qualitative way and if you want the quantitative appraisal of Web Grader you can find it here (I have made it particularly tough for us by comparing us to two giants www.guru.com and www.elance.com). Here is the report http://www.websitegrader.com/wsgid/192307/default.aspx
Now that the end of the holidays is approaching, we need to prepare some action. We have nine milestones to go before we are ready to leave Terra Incognita (nomad's land)
1. V2 should be ready
2. The new contracts should be ready and send out to the managers
3. We need a Web Farm
4. V2 must be tested by all of us (and perhaps even by www.inviteshare.com) and all the suggestions and glitches have to be incorporated
5. A designer must make the site extra yummy
6. A copywriter must look at the texts
7. The SEO must be done
8. The country sites must be ready
9. A global press release must be done by a PR bureau
These milestones must be done in the next six months and then we will be ready, but we will emerge in a complete new landscape. Let me just tell you about what I think are three of the new parameters:
Apple
The iPhone will change everything: it will boost web mobility and search will move from the laptop to the handheld, it will boost mergers between manufacturers and providers (10% margin deals by Apple), Apple will be the number two computer sold in the US (it is now just in number three place having increased its sales enormously) and there will be an ever greater amount of switchers (from pc to Mac) by the pressure of consumer technology such as iTunes, iPod, iPhone, iPhoto etc..
Google
Google will probably take over Firefox in the browser market, Gears will fill the disadvantages of desktops versus webtops (offline), Google will push its webtop strategy as an alternative to MS, the Gphone will gradually displace GPS systems because Google will have its own phone OS (through the acquisition of Android). Google together with Apple will be responsible for a renaissance of micro-entrepreneurship and a return of work to the homes.
Venture Capital
VC money will become tougher to get hold of because of the amount of high quality deals, the uncertainty of stock markets and the nervousness of their shareholders. The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday, but never jam today
(Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass)
☺
I have talked about Pajamanation extensively in more than 12 blogs in a qualitative way and if you want the quantitative appraisal of Web Grader you can find it here (I have made it particularly tough for us by comparing us to two giants www.guru.com and www.elance.com). Here is the report http://www.websitegrader.com/wsgid/192307/default.aspx
Now that the end of the holidays is approaching, we need to prepare some action. We have nine milestones to go before we are ready to leave Terra Incognita (nomad's land)
1. V2 should be ready
2. The new contracts should be ready and send out to the managers
3. We need a Web Farm
4. V2 must be tested by all of us (and perhaps even by www.inviteshare.com) and all the suggestions and glitches have to be incorporated
5. A designer must make the site extra yummy
6. A copywriter must look at the texts
7. The SEO must be done
8. The country sites must be ready
9. A global press release must be done by a PR bureau
These milestones must be done in the next six months and then we will be ready, but we will emerge in a complete new landscape. Let me just tell you about what I think are three of the new parameters:
Apple
The iPhone will change everything: it will boost web mobility and search will move from the laptop to the handheld, it will boost mergers between manufacturers and providers (10% margin deals by Apple), Apple will be the number two computer sold in the US (it is now just in number three place having increased its sales enormously) and there will be an ever greater amount of switchers (from pc to Mac) by the pressure of consumer technology such as iTunes, iPod, iPhone, iPhoto etc..
Google will probably take over Firefox in the browser market, Gears will fill the disadvantages of desktops versus webtops (offline), Google will push its webtop strategy as an alternative to MS, the Gphone will gradually displace GPS systems because Google will have its own phone OS (through the acquisition of Android). Google together with Apple will be responsible for a renaissance of micro-entrepreneurship and a return of work to the homes.
Venture Capital
VC money will become tougher to get hold of because of the amount of high quality deals, the uncertainty of stock markets and the nervousness of their shareholders. The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday, but never jam today
(Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass)
☺
August 27, 2007
META time
META
Sunday, September 2, 2007. That is the date, when I will tell you the date for our launch. I do not want to break another promise, I will make this deadline, but therefore I need to be sure.
I have also discussed with Yosi, the openness of our dialogue. We let the world see the teenage mentality of a young global company, I quite like it. It proves that CEOs are mere mortals, companies make mistakes, and entrepreneurship is closer to art than science. Above all, it sets one thing right: leadership comes from the bottom up, the CEO only moderates it. But shall we close the blog or leave it open. As a Belgian, I am a man looking always for a win-win. Therefore I have decided to daily write two blogs starting from Monday: one for the CMs which will be closed, and one for the public and the users, which will be open.
In the beginning when I talked about Pajamanation, I told people the philosophy that was behind it, but now, I don't anymore. Because Pajamanation is a Black Swan (Nassim Taleb just wrote a book about the Impact of the Highly Improbable). "We produce 30 year projections of social security deficits and oil prices without realizing that we cannot even predict these for the next summer."
He is right, we are a young, reckless, superficial and very unfair race, but we have our moments of grandeur and vision. You need a story to displace a story. We are building this story together. Ideas come and go on web 2.0 but I believe our story will stay. The desertion of corporate cubicles for the home office, the renaissance of entrepreneurship at the individual level, the leapfrogging of the third world, the opening up of the source code of entrepreneurship, the final Maslov level of self-realization, the unsustainability of the present unfair model of social structure, the displacing of a decennium of jobtakers by a new decennium of jobmakers and the feast of creativity. This fills me with joy and anticipation. It is a great story and one I love to tell.
Sunday, September 2, 2007. That is the date, when I will tell you the date for our launch. I do not want to break another promise, I will make this deadline, but therefore I need to be sure.
I have also discussed with Yosi, the openness of our dialogue. We let the world see the teenage mentality of a young global company, I quite like it. It proves that CEOs are mere mortals, companies make mistakes, and entrepreneurship is closer to art than science. Above all, it sets one thing right: leadership comes from the bottom up, the CEO only moderates it. But shall we close the blog or leave it open. As a Belgian, I am a man looking always for a win-win. Therefore I have decided to daily write two blogs starting from Monday: one for the CMs which will be closed, and one for the public and the users, which will be open.
In the beginning when I talked about Pajamanation, I told people the philosophy that was behind it, but now, I don't anymore. Because Pajamanation is a Black Swan (Nassim Taleb just wrote a book about the Impact of the Highly Improbable). "We produce 30 year projections of social security deficits and oil prices without realizing that we cannot even predict these for the next summer."
He is right, we are a young, reckless, superficial and very unfair race, but we have our moments of grandeur and vision. You need a story to displace a story. We are building this story together. Ideas come and go on web 2.0 but I believe our story will stay. The desertion of corporate cubicles for the home office, the renaissance of entrepreneurship at the individual level, the leapfrogging of the third world, the opening up of the source code of entrepreneurship, the final Maslov level of self-realization, the unsustainability of the present unfair model of social structure, the displacing of a decennium of jobtakers by a new decennium of jobmakers and the feast of creativity. This fills me with joy and anticipation. It is a great story and one I love to tell.
August 26, 2007
Red Queen
Red Queen in Wonderland
Yesterday I have been thinking about the Dagan rule: 33% are doing all the work, 33% do something and 33% do next to nothing. Last time I said that this was a reflection of the world. But there may be another explanation.
If you look at the people subscribed to my blog and our Pajamanation group at Facebook, the Dagan rule holds: 33%, those that doing all the work. But I cannot believe that 66% are unconcerned about our efforts.
Suppose (like Chomsky's formal grammars) there are four types of people nowadays: Type-0, Type-1, Type-2, Type-3 and these types reveal the way that technology is digested buy them. I mean, our world is not any longer a reflection of the world five years ago, it is a world filled to the brim with technology.
For type-2 and type-3 I would suggest that they buy a Macbook and get an DSL connection and then configure their i-google page. They outsource their mail address to Google, join Facebook, put their itunes music on igoogle, their youtubes videos, the alert page when their name is mentioned, the weather forecast, babelfish and of course, the most important Google reader, so that they can daily read all the articles they want from all the magazines they want (and my blog!). If they are temporarily out of signal, they can use Google Gears to read them offline.
In short: it is to us Type-1's, to educate Type-2's and to Type-2's to educate Type-3's. But first we have to know, if this premise is true.
Tomorrow is a special day: I will tell you about the date when we become Overlords, a frequently delayed operatation to gain a foothold on in cyberspace. When D-Day?
Walter
Yesterday I have been thinking about the Dagan rule: 33% are doing all the work, 33% do something and 33% do next to nothing. Last time I said that this was a reflection of the world. But there may be another explanation.
If you look at the people subscribed to my blog and our Pajamanation group at Facebook, the Dagan rule holds: 33%, those that doing all the work. But I cannot believe that 66% are unconcerned about our efforts.
Suppose (like Chomsky's formal grammars) there are four types of people nowadays: Type-0, Type-1, Type-2, Type-3 and these types reveal the way that technology is digested buy them. I mean, our world is not any longer a reflection of the world five years ago, it is a world filled to the brim with technology.
- Type-0 people are like Chris, our CTO, they span the complete horizon, there is very little gaps in their knowledge, they have been TO almost from birth.
- Type-1 people are like the 33% who are reading my blog. They are extremely updated on all the new technologies and apps that come out every day. They probably spend 60% of their day learning just to keep up.
- Type-2 people are like the 33% who do something but not enough. Perhaps they are like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland, they are running very fast to stay in the same place. Perhaps they want to read my blog but do not know where it is, they want to read it daily but do not know what an RSS reader is or how to configure one, they want to join the party on Facebook but they do not find 'groups' and if they do, they do not find 'join'.
- Type-3 people, probably have intermittent access to the internet and are just e-mailers and all the rest escapes them.
For type-2 and type-3 I would suggest that they buy a Macbook and get an DSL connection and then configure their i-google page. They outsource their mail address to Google, join Facebook, put their itunes music on igoogle, their youtubes videos, the alert page when their name is mentioned, the weather forecast, babelfish and of course, the most important Google reader, so that they can daily read all the articles they want from all the magazines they want (and my blog!). If they are temporarily out of signal, they can use Google Gears to read them offline.
In short: it is to us Type-1's, to educate Type-2's and to Type-2's to educate Type-3's. But first we have to know, if this premise is true.
Tomorrow is a special day: I will tell you about the date when we become Overlords, a frequently delayed operatation to gain a foothold on in cyberspace. When D-Day?
Walter
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