You have no idea how much I want to work on a project like this someday.
Sony PS3 Video Store – Realtime Projection Mapping – Part2 from The Found Collective on Vimeo.
Hot Wheels
You have no idea how much I want to work on a project like this someday.
Sony PS3 Video Store – Realtime Projection Mapping – Part2 from The Found Collective on Vimeo.
Hot Wheels
Sometimes, you generate interest by simply not saying anything. All it takes is one person to be excited about the unknown, and that excitement can spread.
I don’t know anything about Wendr. In fact, here’s everything I know:
That’s my old friend from New Orleans, Marc Calamia, seeming to be excited about Wendr. I clicked through and landed here:
They’ve told me nothing. No reason for me to join. But also, no reason for me not to. So naturally, I signed up.
Sometimes we just want there to be more cool things, and we’re willing to give up an email address to hear about them. Moral: Don’t underestimate the fact that people want to like things.
Mark Cuban is one of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs, starting Audionet at the beginning of the streaming media generation, turning it into Broadcast.com and then flipping it to Yahoo for a fortune. In this article, he shares his 12 secrets for startup success.
I think Mark’s most debatable comment is a combination of his first 2 points:
Mark’s basically implying that if you go into a business idea with an exit in mind, you won’t have the passion to see the company through to that exit.
Whether you agree with Mark or not, it is important to understand what people like him believe are the keys to building a successful startup. In most cases, entrepreneurs will be approaching people like Mark for venture capital. Understanding what they are looking for saves everyone a lot of time and improves the probability of raising those funds.
If I had the chance, I’d ask Mark when he thinks it’s necessary to think about the exit. After all, at some point the Broadcast.com team had to consider how to turn their nice little business into the $6B exit it became. Who made the company make that pivot, and when did it happen?
I’d suggest anyone considering a startup should read all of Mark’s 12 points. It’s a great summary on entrepreneurial Do’s and Dont’s.
Interesting quote at the bottom of this article about Jorge Posada’s retirement:
“Swinging with pine tar on his hands, and without batting gloves, he was a five-time All-Star, caught David Wells’ perfect game in 1998, and played in 125 games in October. He is a borderline Hall of Fame candidate, but his legacy as a Yankee probably means more to him.”
Digital Buzz Blog is one of my favorite reads. And they recently posted some stats which I believe came from Media Bistro. Now, after you read the stats below, I’m going to give them to you in the exact opposite way. Tell me if any of the story seems any different.
Version 1:
It was a huge year for Social Media and here is a great infographic that rounds up the key Social Media Statistics to kickoff 2012. It’s pretty impressive to see that Facebook has grown to more than 800 million active users, adding more than 200 million in a single year. Twitter now has 100 million active users and LinkedIn has over 64 million users in North America alone.
A few interesting take outs for social media statistics in 2012:
Facebook Statistics 2012:
Twitter Statistics 2012:
General Social Media Statistics 2012:
Facebook Statistics 2012:
Twitter Statistics 2012:
General Social Media Statistics 2012:
I know, 777 yards, etc…. But there are 3 things that bugged me about the end of that game, and don’t seem to be in any articles I have read.
You won’t see this analysis written anywhere else – this content comes from part of an email chain where a bunch of people were discussing the differences between the original Occupy Wall Street and the local spin-off versions such as Occupy LA and Occupy Seattle. It all stemmed from an LA Times article that explained it would cost Los Angeles $2.3 Million to clean up the park which had been Occupied. I’ll keep the whole email from this anonymous person for context, but the paragraph with the poker analogy is the one I found most compelling.
Note: At this point the discussion had moved to talk about whether the movement, or the offshoots of the movement, would be successful on getting student-debts absolved. (And no offense to puppetry and history majors.)
People take risks and develop new and improved goods and services because they believe that they will profit from it. That is at the root of our free market economic system. That is exactly what Adam Smith wrote about all those years ago. Plus, where do you think all that money comes from to pay off people’s debts (whether student loans or mortgages or bank bail outs or whatever)? Government takes in revenue through taxes. The inhabitants of a country pay the taxes. So, if one group of people want money from the government (and that is exactly what asking to have your debts payed off is- getting money from the government), in essence those people are asking other people to pay for their choices. Why should I have to pay for the choices that another person made (that is the root of the whole social contract and the obligations of citizenship)?
For example, I am OK with helping to pay for education in general- most people are. That is why we have free public K-12 education. It is an investment in the future. I am also OK with student grants for college kids who can not afford college. That also helps society and is an investment in the future. But if some guy takes out a massive loan from a private business (i.e. a bank) to fund his two years in college to get a masters degree in literature or history or puppetry or what have you, and then the guy can’t get a job with his worthless degree, why should I have to pay to get his loan written off? That guy is in essence begging money from me. He better be able to explain why and persuade me to pay off his loan, or I will not want to pay it off for him. And if his first attempt to persuade me to pay off his loan is to “occupy” the park down the street from my house and threaten to stay there until I pay for his loan, then frankly he has failed at making his case from the get go.
To put it in poker terms, imagine if some guy at the table made big risky bets over and over, chasing long odds on flush draws hand after hand, borrowed money repeatedly from other players to buy in on more hands, and when he finally craps out and has no more money, he demands that everybody else pony up money to pay off his debts. How would you feel about that? How would you react to that? How would the other players react to that? Now imagine if that guy- rather than to try to logically explain why you should pay off his debt- decides to go sit in the bathroom and “occupy” it for several weeks. He messes the place up, refuses to clean it up, disturbs other people who are just trying to use the bathroom, refuses to leave even though he is on private property and the owners ask him nicely to leave, and becomes belligerent when the police to evict him. How would you react to that?
Michael Neu posted this article on our company blog. I think it’s a good summary and am re-posting it here.
>>
Techcrunch posted an article today called “Cheezburger’s Ben Huh: If GoDaddy Supports SOPA, We’re Taking Our 1000+ Domains Elsewhere”. The story is in reference to GoDaddy’s support of SOPA the (Stop-Online-Piracy-Act). Although the bill sounds like a good thing many people are worried that the bill goes WAY too far. If SOPA passes it would makes it really easy for copyright holders to censor content and shut sites down that they think are offensive. The censorship issues go far beyond that as well.
Ben Huh, The CEO of The Cheezburger Network, has decided to pull his names from GoDaddy because of their support of the bill. Many other big media companies support the passing of the bill as well.
This is very hot topic right now #SOPA and many sites have spoken out against the bill including Google, Yahoo and others.
I completely agree with Ben’s stance and think he is giving GoDaddy a chance to make it right before he moves his domains. However, as the article stated it GoDaddy is used to taking some heat, and it will probably take a lot more for them to change. There seems to be a push to transfer domains away from GoDaddy because of their support of this bill so we will how GoDaddy reacts if that trends gains any more momentum.
People need to familiarize themselves with what is happening with the SOPA bill, and how poorly it was written. It truly is a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” and needs to be stopped before it passes by a completely technologically uneducated group of political representatives.
I strongly urge you to familiarize yourself with what is going on and take action like Ben did.
What are you doing to stop this bill from passing?
We’ve all seen Mad Men. Well this is the kind of video you get when your Creative department is drinking scotch and hitting on secretaries all day. Take a drink every time you see something sexist and/or something that would get a Marketing Director fired today.
And just like that, the old starts to make way for the new.