http://www.venturegeek.com/wordpress More questions than answers from way out on the long tail Mon, 19 May 2008 16:51:08 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en "A cynic is a passionate person who doesn’t want to be disappointed again." - Benjamin Zander http://www.venturegeek.com/wordpress/2008/05/19/quote-of-the-day-11/ A friend of mine was relating the job description of a friend of his. I won't name names to protect the job of the friend-of-a-friend, but it involved a certain large technology company hiring contractors to post offensive messages on the forums of a certain other large technology company. ... http://www.venturegeek.com/wordpress/2008/03/21/content-sabotage-or-exercises-in-poor-business-ethics/ Nearly two years ago I wrote about the age of the "big-boned" client (which today is apparently called a "fit client"). The basic premise of what I wrote then was to combine the ease of deploying web-based apps with the convenience of a stand-alone app on the desktop -- ... http://www.venturegeek.com/wordpress/2008/03/07/ssb-i-love-thee/ And this is supposed to make me WANT to use your application? This email was sent by Social Profile. You can disable emails here. --- In total, you were reviewed for dating 7 times and no people expressed interest in you. You are more desirable than less than 20% of 23,333,163 people. Last week you ... http://www.venturegeek.com/wordpress/2008/03/06/viral-marketing-to-losers-or-how-to-cause-me-to-uninstall-your-app-and-curse-your-spamming-ways-in-fewer-than-50-words/ A quick shout out to Chris B and Adam G, friends of Venture Geek and founders of the Afghan Music Project, for their recent coverage about where some of the money they raised is going. If you like things like human rights, Democracy, and/or interesting music, consider buying the ... http://www.venturegeek.com/wordpress/2008/01/16/go-amp-go/ As an MBA interested in entrepreneurship who used to build web applications for a living I am often asked by non-technical folks how they can find good engineers to start a company with. It's a tough problem, especially these days. Sean Corfield links to a nice summary of how to ... http://www.venturegeek.com/wordpress/2008/01/12/hiring-engineers-when-you-arent-one/ A man is a fool not to put everything he has, at any given moment, into what he is creating. You're there now doing the thing on paper. You're not killing the goose, you're just producing an egg. So I don't worry about inspiration, or anything like that. It's a ... http://www.venturegeek.com/wordpress/2007/12/27/quote-of-the-day-10/ I have spent the last 5 months back in Product Management Land, and as I prepare to leave to go back to a more marketing-centric role (more on that later) I am reflecting on the nature of my job here. Broadly speaking, there are two primary metaphors I have ... http://www.venturegeek.com/wordpress/2007/12/12/gather-synthesize-prioritize-define-and-shepherd/ A new colleague of mine recently told me a story that I had to capture here because it so perfectly illustrates the nature of business decisions relative to technology. Several years back he was pitching a big consulting project to a major telco. The telco had put out an RFP ... http://www.venturegeek.com/wordpress/2007/11/01/chairs-with-wheels/ "Creativity is what happens when you take a zero off the budget." -- James Hong quoting someone he can't remember. http://www.venturegeek.com/wordpress/2007/06/21/quote-of-the-day-9/ A few months ago I wrote a post pondering whether Adobe Apollo's use of WebKit would cause greater support for Safari in various web properties. Today Apple tried to create some noise by announcing Safari for Windows, and most people seemed to receive this news with a big yawn. ... http://www.venturegeek.com/wordpress/2007/06/12/safari-on-windows-a-turning-point-for-apple/ Tonight I had a spooky experience -- a 419 scam was attempted via AOL Instant Messenger. Someone using the screen name "taylornelly2" claiming to have found me through MyBlogLog started out with small talk but quickly moved into the whole story about being from Africa and having lots of ... http://www.venturegeek.com/wordpress/2007/04/24/instant-messenger-419-scam/ I am told I have the distinction of being the first person to blog about the fantastic (and free) service OpenDNS (created by the inimitable David Ulevitch). If you aren't using OpenDNS, you should be -- it will make your Internet browsing faster and more secure.Tonight I heard about ... http://www.venturegeek.com/wordpress/2007/04/22/opendns-getting-better-and-better/ I was trying to explain this comic from xkcd to my wife, but I couldn't explain what it means or why I thought it was amusing.I think if you both understand this comic and find it at least mildly amusing you are clearly a geek (whether the inverse is true ... http://www.venturegeek.com/wordpress/2007/04/22/geek-test-1/ I wrote last August about the launch of Yardbarker, a social-media sports site created by my friends Pete Vlastelica and Jack Kloster (along with Jack's brother Jeff and Mark Johns). This week Yardbarker announced additional financing from such notables as Russell Siegelman, Ron Conway, Steve Blank, and several others.I ... http://www.venturegeek.com/wordpress/2007/04/17/yardbarker-is-kicking-some-ass/