May 2013
1 post
4 tags
Startups Are Like Friends
Sometimes you love them. You can’t get enough of them. You wake up Monday morning and can’t believe how lucky you are to have them.
Sometimes you hate them. They take and they take and they take until you feel like you have nothing more to give.
Sometimes they make you laugh. Sometimes there’re tears. Sometimes they give you facial ticks and sometimes they give you money.
...
April 2013
1 post
March 2013
1 post
February 2013
3 posts
4 tags
Where To Draw The Line: What Is A PC?
Over the last couple years we have seen lots of people weigh in on whether tablets should be counted as PCs. However, we’ve seen a slow shift towards research firms adding tablets together to demonstrate PC marketshare.
What was one 10” tablet, the iPad, became lots of tablets of many sizes from many manufacturers. Flash forward to the last few weeks and we’ve been hearing...
5 tags
A New Baby →
There are many satisfactions to being involved with product and software development. There are also many dissatisfactions. The universe is determined to ship as little code as possible. As many engineers and developers and designers will attest to, shipping comes far too rarely.
However, when you’ve experienced a few shutdown projects, a few shuttered startups, and a few failed features,...
2 tags
The Stacy Doctrine →
I’m naked now. In a very metaphorical sense, but it’s true. Through the crazy emotional journey of fundraising, I’d slowly started putting on someone else’s clothes. Someone from the establishment, someone with old ideas and blinders, someone who wears parachute shirts and shoes I can quite describe other than uncomfortable.
I was listening to the questions of all those...
January 2013
13 posts
2 tags
High Highs, Low Lows
On December 6th 2012 I left Brazil for San Francisco to answer a call. The universe had been reaching out to me and inviting me to do something more, or at the very least different, for weeks, and it was that day that things finally aligned for me to answer.
I was scared, but at the same time the blood in my veins had been replaced by electricity and my eyes by telescopes. On the plane from São...
3 tags
Look At That Idiot With That Thing On His Face →
HTC has introduced what many are laughing at, which is a companion device to a very large phone. A phone that solidly would be considered a “phablet”, a phone and tablet in one. Although I agree that having a little cordless phone device in addition to your “phone” sounds funny, there is something about this general concept that feels correct to me.
A few weeks ago I...
Help Local Entrepreneurs Hurt By Sandy →
My news app of choice, Undrip, is using their hip hop skills to help get a few local businesses affected by Superstorm Sandy get back on their feet. Their video embedded below is awesome! It’s a kind of hommage to those who give their life to the dream. I can’t stop listening to it.
After listening you can also donate to help the cause. I already donated this morning. You should too.
...
2 tags
Blackberry Says They're Future-proof →
I stumbled in to a “news” story aboutBlackberry this evening that proved that they have learned just about nothing since there very public downfall.
In an interview with a German newspaper just yesterday, said Thorsten Heins, Blackberry’s CEO:
“We have taken the time to build a platform that is future-proof for the next ten years.”
That assumes so much. They...
Lonely
A week ago I landed here in San Francisco. I’ve left my darling and supportive wife and two kids in the care of my parents and her parents in Utah, while I flex my creative muscles in pursuit of a call. The call to build something. The call to create something. The call that comes to each of us, which demands you ask yourself what more the earth could have, your life could have, if you were...
3 tags
You May Be The Product, But That's OK →
Smart write up on All Things D this morning about making the most of an advertising-centric online world. Although it hasn’t really changed my views, I’m a big fan of making the most of my situation, and that’s largely what I took away from the article.
“What you can do is actually get value from being tracked — while holding companies to a high standard of...
3 tags
iPad Mini Is The New Default iOS Device →
Every now and again a device gets released, that I buy, that everyone I sit next to on planes or at church or just around want to talk to me about. The iPad Mini has been such a device. As someone who has used an iPad from the first version, up until now I haven’t been a huge fan of them. I like the idea of them, but found that I’d rather just be using my iPhone to do basically...
2 tags
CES Update
So far CES has been a series of what I am allowed and not allowed to do. Don’t walk here. Don’t go in there. Out this one. Stand over here. Don’t sit there. I feel like I’m back in 2nd grade, only there’s no Mrs. Rochester promising snacks afterward.
The other thing has struck me is the sheer scale of this event. For instance, they have maps you can use to see...
My First CES: The Awfulness And Excitment
I will be attending this years CES, which will mark my first time at the event. I’ve read the coverage in the past and fully expect it to be filled with out of touch former big leaguers trying to dazzle the press with products that clearly won’t compete. Yet, I’m not going so I can be a part of that.
Although I’ve wanted to experience the awfulness/excitement first hand...
5 tags
Life Is Not Surprises
What started with a simple, one room hotel in the sketchy part of town, is ending with dear friends, damp eyes, and a road that feels solid enough to walk back to the US on.
I don’t know why, but life never surprises me. When I was younger, I was quite the embellisher. I felt deep inside that my life should have been more than what it was. As I’ve grown older and experienced more, I...
2 tags
The New Business
Although I’m not ready to discuss everything, I do want to say that my new business is very much picking up where I left off at Baby.com.br and is actually inspired by all that I learned while building its expansive audience of over two million moms. Moms are a special group. A noble group. And a pain for them, in my eyes, is worthy cause of my time.
Stay tuned.
5 tags
The Beginning
There is something completing about a year’s end. Everyone writes something about it, either in the coffers of the mind, the pages of journal, or the walls of a social network. We find ways of resolving things, if at no other time, at the end of the year.
The last year, 2012, was very complete for me. What had barely just begun in 2011, Baby.com.br, entered 2012 with a few employees, big...
December 2012
1 post
November 2012
7 posts
Everything You Need To Know About iTunes 11
One, I’ll feel slightly more bad never using iTunes 11 than I did never using iTunes 10. Two, there will come a time when there will be no one left to review new iTunes releases. All iOS devices now work independent of iTunes and owning music was important to my generation and those before me, but it isn’t important to the rising generation. So a glossier, more visual version of an...
Finding What To Watch: A Suggestion For Fixing...
It’s late. I got home from work over an hour ago and my wife and I have already eaten dinner. We sit on the conch together, our legs tangled in the middle with a throw, reading books, news, blogs, and chatting about interesting things we find. After sometime, one of us invariably offers to turn something on to watch.
We’re dedicated “cord cutters,” meaning we refuse to pay...
Everyone Needs Stephan: A Lesson In Social Proof
I take a shuttle to work. It comes to the front of my apartment building every morning at 7:35. So, every morning I call for the elevator at 7:25, and usually arrive at a bench where I sit and wait for the shuttle at around 7:30. Again, every morning.
There is a young English guy, Stephan who reports for Bloomberg, that always gets to the bench before I do. I quite enjoy his company, and look...
5 tags
Would You Rather Have A Unit On Your Face Or In... →
Google Glass, Google’s heads up display for your face, and Microsoft’s current dabblings in the space with an augmented reality technology also for your face, are both interesting developments. In fact, beyond mere interest these potential devices have captured the imagination if those that are following this space and these companies.
However, one imagination I think has gone too...
Welcome Back Mike →
It seems a lifetime ago that TechCrunch was in its glory days with Michael Arrington at its helm. TechCrunch died after that. And then was very suddenly and quite mysteriously reborn, at least to me.
I fully thought PandoDaily was going to pick up where TechCrunch left off. They had the staff and the ambition. But it wasn’t meant to be. The site rarely draws me in anymore and I’ve...
September 2012
15 posts
Be The Right Kind Of Risky →
Andy Rachleff has some thoughts on TechCrunch this afternoon about what makes successful investors, and I liked the way he phrased this about risk:
Market risk causes companies to fail. In other words, you want companies that are highly likely to succeed if they can really deliver what they say they will. Unfortunately, consumer Internet companies don’t follow that pattern. They usually have low...
“It may be overly conservative, but I’d rather be paranoid than dead.”
– David Lee of SV Angel saying to entrepreneurs to always have 18 months of runway
1 tag
“We’re not just another open platform on the market, we are BlackBerry.”
– Times change, just not very clearly for Thorsten Heins
MySpace, Growth, Success, and Failure →
MySpace. Will there ever come a time when we will not love to discuss its epic rise and fall? Will there come a day when the stories will fade from that of legend to vague memory? Probably, but it’s hard to imagine. MySpace introduced “being social” to millions and any site that once demanded hours from you daily will always hold a certain position in your heart.
It is back in...
“One thing I should tell you is that our approach is our approach, and we don’t...”
– Jeff Bezos, on September 6th, on Amazon’s business model
2 tags
iPhone Naysayer Naysaying →
In what I find kind of an awkward post, Jim Dalrymple naysays iPhone naysayers. In an ironic twist it actually made me wonder how valid anyone’s opinions are on either side of the fence.
I’m an enthusiastic Apple fan and those around me can tell you that I wasn’t ready for a new iPhone design because I was still so enthralled with the design of my iPhone 4. But naysaying...
Coming To Terms With Originality
Humans are fascinated by originality. We’re consumed and distracted by it. Our laws and customs have been crafted around glorifying and vilifying it. When something truly unique breaks in to the mainstream it is heralded. When something is original, yet obscure, it is cast out and criticized as fringe or out of touch.
Individual thinkers can be bullied in schools when they’re young,...
“Betting completely on HTML5 is one of the, if not THE biggest strategic mistake...”
– Mark Zuckerberg, speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt
Google's Latest Partnership: Warby Parker? →
Like any new piece of hardware looking for its first customer base, Google Glass, Google’s heads-up display device, needs a distribution platform.
A platform for Google’s eyeglasses attachment could offer a sales channel, as well as type of social proof that it is acceptable to use the new wearable computer. I think there would be no better partner than Warby Parker. They’re...
Confessions Of A Dangerous Flying Man →
Although I wish I could always make this happen, I’ve only been able to make it work once. The year: 2007, the location: somewhere over Utah, Nevada, and California, the device: Blackberry 8830 World Edition.
I give far too much power to the antiestablishment voice in the back of my head, but most respects I can’t help it. I like ignoring authority. I like challenging it. And nowhere...
1 tag
Scratching A Short-term Itch →
“I think a lot of great software has been written by people who are scratching a short-term itch, something which has been niggling them for ages, but in the back of their mind they’ve got a wonderful long-term plan.”
That is Tim Berners-Lee talking about how innovation occurs on the web, which he invented in the early 90s. He was referencing himself, as well as many others, in that he wanted to...
Current State Of Home Automation →
I’ve been following home automation for the last few years with great anticipation for both cost and usability to make their way in to the broad consumer market. Although we’re not there yet, a company called Savant is making some inroads.
In this Forbes article and video we’re able to see iPads, iPhones, and iPods control the lights, TVs, doors, and other standard elements of...
1 tag
The New iPhone In Action →
A new iPhone has meant many things through the years, but one thing it has never meant was a new screen size.
MacRumors has made a thorough video of what this new screen size looks like and what it means for both new and existing apps and content.
August 2012
9 posts
4 tags
Designed By The Author
Two things have stayed with me through the years, all the way back to when I was a young boy. More than Legos, hemp bracelets, and rollerblading there was always art and storytelling.
My mom had art supplies around all the time while growing up and I was an excellent liar. I’ve since read Maura Kelly, in The Atlantic, detailing how kids who lie are using the same synapses as adults who are...
“There will be no banner ads on the Google homepage or web search results pages....”
– Yahoo! CEO, former Google VP, Marissa Mayer in 2005
More at TechCrunch →
These were the last three words of Michael Arrington’s last blog post. It isn’t even worth mentioning what his post was about because all the really matters is:
ONE | Sarah Lacy screwed PandoDaily up. This became perfectly clear when she made professional enemies with Arrington. PandoDaily is over. I hated watching TechCrunch fall and thought it was over. But it didn’t die like...
Microsoft's New Logo - "Helvetica Is Over" →
We’ve all seen the countless slideshows that present logo after logo that uses a variant of Helvetica. For many decades the font has meant young, fresh, relatable, even transparent, and nothing if not confident. Yet, after 55 years of making companies and individuals appear a certain way, an era is coming to an end.
Microsoft, arguably one of the most identifiable companies in the world,...
Launch Fatigue
My life for the last two and a half years has been nothing but launching products. At my last startup, PoolTables.com, and now Baby.com.br, my life has been governed by building something entirely new.
Although new products are fun and flexible, they are also exhausting. New products are typically fairly feature light and require reinventing the wheel in some ways. There are interesting aspects...
1 tag
Macs Are For Artists...Oh, And Everybody Else Too →
This Russian news article references Apple as the “darling of the hipster set…” Now, I’m not sure what a “set” is, but I don’t question why they identified it as such.
Dalrymple, in the linked article, points out that Apple didn’t become the most valuable public company in the world on the backs of hipsters. However, go back just a few years to even...
The Apple Genius Ads Might Actually Be Genius
I know this is SOOOO last week, but I joined in the chorus with all the other already-Apple users and decided the new ads, which depicted an Apple Store Genius solving normal “stupid” people’s problems. I’ll spare you the gritty details, because you probably already got your fill, but my largest complaint, on top of not being very entertaining or inspiring or creative, is...
A Line To Nowhere
A little over ten years ago the Olympics came to my hometown, Salt Lake City. I was in high school and to me and a couple friends the entire world was ours for taking.
After school we would catch the train downtown and try to find people who spoke English and maybe watch an awards ceremony or two and see if we could get some face time with the bronze medalists, whom the media would usually let...
