"Soon time for winter sleep"
Archive for September, 2008
Soon time for winter sleep
08
Sep
Peter Thiel: Best Predictor of Startup Success Is Low CEO Pay
08
Sep
Erick Schonfeld via TechCrunch
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In a long-ranging discussion today at TechCrunch50, investor Peter Thiel (PayPal, Facebook, Slide) gave his thoughts on what is the best predictor of startup success. At the Founder’s Fund, one of the most important factors he likes to look at before deciding to invest in a startup is how much the CEO is paying himself. (This is also a factor that one of his investments, YouNoodle, looks at to value private startups). Says Thiel:
The lower the CEO salary, the more likely it is to succeed.
The CEO’s salary sets a cap for everyone else. If it is set at a high level, you end up burning a whole lot more money. It aligns his interest with the equity holders. But [beyond that], it goes to whether the mission of the company is to build something new or just collect paychecks.
In practice we have found that if you only ask one question, ask that.
Person Peter Thiel
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In Startupland, everybody should be working towards the same goal: that big juicy exit. That’s the only payday any CEO should be worried about (even though more than half of them will never get it).
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iKnow! and the Social Brain Network
08
Sep
Doriano "Paisano" Carta via Mashable!
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Cerego introduced iKnow at DEMOfall 08 today as “The first intelligent social learning platform.†Basically, iKnow! enables people to learn faster and improve memory retention through patented learning algorithms that generate personalized learning schedules. Each person’s training schedule is unique because it is customized according to their optimum periods of time for studying and learning. This process is based on research conducted on optimum learning patterns in the fields of cognitive science and neuroscience.
Big in Japan
The url for the iKnow website currently uses the Japanese domain extension because it has been in beta in Japan for the past ten months. There are currently over 250,000 registered Japanese users studying English. Cerego plans to provide support for many other languages and even an open API for developers, which will mean many new applications based on their system.
World-wide brainshare
iKnow wants to become not only a tool to help users learn but also an intelligent social network where they can share and collaborate with other users. The goal is to get members to help each other grow and learn within their online system. Ultimately, users from all over the globe will be able to remix content and share them with others within the learning community.
Crash Course of Classes
The real proof in the pudding is actually taking a few courses to see how well iKnow worked. So I went to their English courses page which only has a few listings at this point in time but many more are sure to come. Right now there are some courses for vocabulary and SAT preparations.
The first thing you notice in any of the courses is the abundance of audio assistance on every page. This is especially useful in courses where you learn languages or need to hear how words sound such as in the vocabulary courses that I took. You can click the play button as often as you need to hear the word or sentence.
The other interesting thing you notice is how many ways different ways they ask the same questions which is an effective method of training. For example, instead of just asking a multiple choice question, you will need to actually spell out words as well as fill in the blanks of sentences. It forces you to learn the concepts even when you guess something correctly it will test you again in another manner almost as if to verify whether or not you were lucky or really knew the answer.
Making Learning More More
I was impressed with the amount of things I learned in a relatively short period of time. It was also kind of enjoyable and not painful at all. In addition to the regular courses, iKnow also has a game-like study course called BrainSpeed that’s fun and fast-paced. It’s timer based and conducts itself much like a gameshow.
It even maintains a top players ranking list and allows you to invite others to join the fun and learning.
Final Thoughts
It makes sense to combine the power of computer technology and the many benefits of social networking with this new learning platform from iKnow. Making the process a global experience where users can actually interact and assist one another is an excellent idea. If things go as well for iKnow then we could very well be looking at the future model of online training and educational systems that are effective and fun.
TC50: Demo Pit angry over lack of WiFi
08
Sep
(author unknown) via The Inquisitr
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Shared by Sean
I also saw tweets about the audio/visual failing.
TechCrunch50 has been plagued by a lack of internet connectivity, according to emails we’ve received and other reports online.
As well as affecting people on the floor, the biggest losers from the WiFi problems are the 100 companies in the demo pit, who from one account I have are furious, particularly given that unlike the presenting companies, they had to pay to be at the conference.
Mixed reports on EVDO and 3G access. Some demo pit companies do have cards, but coverage isn’t great. The issue being that when you’re demonstrating a web startup, having access to the internet to demonstrate your product is a necessity.
Here’s some of the feedback via Twitter
“Demoing Powerset at TC50, in between Zivity (good location) and Wixi. But still no WiFi? Wishin’ I were at DEMO.†Mark Johnson on a stall in the demo pit.
“tc50 demopit is just a pit right now. No wifi, no demo.†matteofabiano
A wry observation: “Funny. There are more tweets about the broken WiFi at TC50 than about the actual event… †schillmoeller
There does appear to be some good news for companies in the demo pit though:
“There’s good news & bad news. Since the wifi at #TC50 was down most of today, today’s Demo Pitters are invited back tomorrow. Yay!/Ugh! “ J-Strizzle
Even Scoble couldn’t stay on message
“I hear that at Demo the wifi works. Not here at TC50.â€
As one email to me put it: “I know the attention this amateur hour gets is frustrating the hell out of them.â€
If you have any thoughts on the debacle or inside information, leave a comment, or send us an email. We’ll also consider running any anonymous rants.
(source image credit: Magerleauges)
Google: The all-time biggest company based on free
08
Sep
Chris Anderson via The Long Tail
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I've always assumed that Google was the best--and biggest--example in history of a business model based on free, but until today I hadn't actually run the numbers. Before I get to those, let's definite what "built on free" means.
Until the advent of the Web, the biggest companies built on free were broadcasters in radio or TV ("free-to-air" services, where a third party--the advertisers--pay for content to be free to consumers). In the rabbit-ears broadcast era, these were pure free plays: virtually all their revenue came from direct advertising payments or syndication revenues from their local affiliates, who were just passing along their own advertising revenues.
This is what's commonly referred to as "the media business model". Sometimes it means that advertisers subsidize 100% of the content costs, other times they subsidize just 70-80% of those costs, as in the case of magazines and newspapers.
Since the advent of cable TV and satellite radio, the media business model has evolved. TV broadcasters are bigger but they're also more diversified, with a mix of revenues from traditional ad-supported free media and paid content, from DVDs to pay-per-view. Only terrestrial radio remains purely free.Â
Meanwhile, the pure free-to-consumers media business model has moved to the Web, but mostly in the shape of companies that don't fall neatly into traditional definitions of "media", such as Google or Yahoo.
So to properly see how the Web free companies compare to the broadcast free companies, we'd have to carefully tease out just the free parts of the broadcasters's revenues. Fortunately, we don't have to bother because it's really no contest.
Google, at $17 billion in annual revenues last year, is larger than any broadcaster in history, free and non-free elements combined. The biggest broadcasters, ABC, CBS and NBC, are all in the $14-$15 billion range. The biggest radio network, Clear Channel, had revenues of $7 billion. Meanwhile, on the Web, Google's closest free competitor is Yahoo, at $7 billion.
So congrat, Google. You are indeed the all-time biggest company built on free. And a good thing, too, given how much time I've been spending at the Googleplex of late.
Wife of Washington Lobbyist Uses Money as Wrapping Paper
08
Sep
Filed under: Wealth
When it comes to gifts usually it's what's on the inside that counts, but that's not necessarily the case for the gifts Edwina Rogers gives -- she wraps her presents in money. Uncut sheets of real, government-issued, dollar bills.
The wife of Washington lobbyist Ed Rogers gets the money sheets from the United States Bureau of Engraving (you can order them for yourself here) and then slices and dices as you would any wrapping paper to best fit the gift and get the best pattern on the front of the package (in this case it's lining up Washington's face just right). No matter that she regularly cuts several bills in half in the process, to be frugal she sticks to the dollar paper and only uses it to wrap "small" gifts.
A sheet of money paper consisting of 32 $1 bills sells for $55.
Via Trendhunter
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Load Content When Users Hit Page Bottom For Endless Scrolling
08
Sep
There’s a snazzy new feature we’ve seen a couple places that we just had to look into. When users reach the bottom of a page, more content is loaded. So, rather than users closing the window (or having to click a “next page†link), you can given them more to read. For sites with a significant amount of content, this makes for endless scrolling.
There’s a short delay, while an Ajax call, retrieves more content and pastes it below. Otherwise, it’s a smooth transition to the next bundle of blog posts, photos, or links. You can see endless scrolling in the wild at lifestreaming service Soup.io, link-sharing site DZone, Google Reader (if you have an account), or this demo of the technology. Just scroll to the bottom of any of those pages.
If this is something you want to implement there’s a JQuery implementation for endless scrolling. As with many snazzy JavaScript tricks, you’ll need a server-side component to send the next set of data.
See also:
- Is JavaScript Part of the ‘Real’ Web or Not?
- A Thousand Points of Lightbox
- Make a Cropping Tool For Your User Avatars
Book on the current Secession movement (and Sarah Palin)
08
Sep
Adam Parfrey publisher of Feral House Press says: Know how Sarah Palin is accused of being a Secessionist, as part of the Alaskan Independence Party?
Secession: How Vermont and All the Other States Can Save Themselves from the EmpireFeral House recently published the primary (and only) book of the current Secession movement, Thomas A. Naylor and Kirkpatrick Sale's Secession: How Vermont and All the Other States Can Save Themselves from the Empire.
Naylor is the founder of the Second Vermont Republic.
Kirk Sale is founder of the Middlebury Institute. Also see this YouTube vid.
Lynette Clark, Chairman of AIP, and her husband, Dexter Clark, say that Sarah Palin was a Secessionist in the mid-90s, and attendee to meetings and such, and that her husband was an ongoing member until 2002. The McCain people protest that Sarah Palin was never really a full-flredged member of AIP, but just the past few months made a vid supporting AIP ...
Thomas Naylor's part of the Secession movement is a leftist concept, and other states hold libertarian, and sometimes rightist ideas, such as the Alaskans. The idea of the movement is an anti-Globalist, anti-Empire "Divided We Stand"...
