Hubris Versus Humility: The $15 billion Difference
Describing your product as “new and “never been done before” instead of “we’re just like those others guys, but better” could cost your company billions. RIM and TiVo are two examples of getting i…
Why You Should Pay Attention to Node.Js
No, not “because I said so.” The best reason to pay attention to node.js is the audience that is paying attention to it. Joe Shaw’s pointer the other day was just the latest in a string of node.js mentions. By now you’ve probably heard that the folks from Heroku recently – as in two weeks
A Cautionary Tale from the Startup World
Marketing, entrepreneurship, and the ongoing study of how influence spreads (with the occasional interlude on travel, pasta, TV -- the important stuff) from founder Rand Fishkin.
Deceiving Users with the Facebook Like Button
Facebook just launched a super-easy widget called "The Facebook Like Button". Website owners can add a simple iframe snippet to their html, enabling a nice "Like" button with a count of other people's "Likes" and a list of faces of people if any of them are your friends. The advantage of this new tool is that you…
Facebook's DKIM RSA key should be crackable
If Facebook sends you a mail they will sign it using DKIM . Here are the headers from a mail I received the other day: DKIM-Signature: v=1...
Why writing software is not like engineering
While my talent lies in software, my graduate studies were in computer engineering (designing and building digital computers). One observation always struck me: computer engineering seemed more straightforward than computer science (building software). There are a set of engineering design rules to follow and…
Flattr, and Why It's Brilliant
Flattr is an exciting new social networking / micro-payment service that allows you to set a donation amount that gets divided among all the different content y
The Gervais Principle III: The Curse of Development
In the first two parts of this series, we talked about the archetypes that inhabit organizations (Sociopaths, Losers, Clueless), what they do (the Gervais…
Pull the plug. Your battery will thank you
One question that I have been asked frequently is “do laptop batteries fade faster if they are continuously plugged in?” A reader asked thi...
Why Facebook never happened in the UK. The case of FitFinder.
Update: FitFinder has been Relaunched as Floxx with Doug Richards as an Investor. Good luck Rich! Back in April this year, I heard of a little UCL based startup (FitFinder) that was gaining ‘Facebookearlydayslike’ traction in some UK Universities. It was a location based public/flirting service. The founder pitch