Very entertaining article by Joel Spolsky about not forgetting where you came from and acknowledging that its your own fault if you chose not to take a compass or if they weren’t invented yet, either way the new recruits won’t leave without a TomTom.
Archive for the 'Business' Category
Good ‘ol Merlin Mann, gotta love this quote:
Yeah, I know smart execs have delegated for centuries. But I can envision a world where sweating over your beepy electronic device starts looking about as “executive†and “pro-active†as sucking on a crack pipe in the break room.
Lately I’ve taken to treating the phone like any other information source, it can wait its turn. There’s a stack of magazines sitting under my desk that have been waiting longer for attention than some of my text messages. That hardly seems fair now, does it? 
Great point on Duct Tape Marketing about not spending time doing things that others could do when you (I) should be marketing:
if you can get the neighbor kid to mow your grass for anything less than $100/hr, therefore giving you 3 hours to write a killer sales letter - it’s probably a steal
It never fails to amuse me slightly how economists in general do not appear to consider ethics or the environment unless using them to explain a strange statistic. Its almost like to have an economist on a board or in a group means you need an old fashioned hippie to provide balance. Nonetheless, I really like how potentially controversial data can be presented by an economist absent any emotion, just the facts please. Check out the price of cocaine around the world. It seems that if you’re in NZ and get the urge, you’d save a bunch by flying elsewhere for your binge.
Of course it doesn’t quite happen like this, but still, I’d like to see the Economist interviewing all those drug lords to collect their stats!
Jump on over to the Spikefin blog (or email us) if you know any good Practice Managers or Testers who might like to come and work with us.
So Netscape is still making browsers. But why??
Our neighbours up here in Pipitea House, Mindscape, are in this weeks’ Infotech. Apparently they’ve just released BackgroundMotion, not so surprisingly (since all the content is for Vista Ultimate’s DreamScene), Microsoft is pleased about it. I wonder if I’d like having a subtle video as a desktop background? Might be soothing. Unfortunately as I don’t have Vista Ultimate installed on my lappie I can’t try it out. In any case, nice clean looking website - and you can download the website sourcecode by clicking View Code at the bottom. Cool.
It’s great how I hear about what they’re doing by reading the newspaper 15 metres from their office
It seems to me that Netscape founder Marc Andreessen just wanted something to say, while everyone else was already talking. Basically, Marc points out that “Web 2.0″ is just a term for the way the web was always supposed to be, so we should just call it The Web. His point is entirely valid, but it really has taken a major evolutionary process to get here, so there is nothing wrong with giving it a name and being somewhat excited that we’re finally getting somewhere. Nutscrape had various version numbers while it still did essentially the same thing but incrementally (and debatably) better each time, didn’t it?
According to the front page of the Dominion Post Weekend, “We spent about $1127 million on takeaway foods last year”. That’s quite a bit. In fact, it’s an annual subscription by the average kiwi of $269.51. That’s about a little under a meal a week I guess. I must be above average (depending on the definition of takeaway food, does Wholly Bagels count? does Malaysian noodles count?). Note of course that nearly a quarter of these average kiwis was born in one of more than 200 other countries.
Sales assistants are the single biggest occupational group. I’m not sure exactly what defines a sales assistant, or takeaway foods, but whatever they are, it seems apparent that there is a lot of people who could benefit from great food ordering and management systems on both sides of the counter and by extrapolation, in the office out the back too. In my position, that’s good news.
I’ve been harping on about this for a while to my friends in the local band, Supermodel (mentioned recently), about the fact that the name of their band is great, but it is not original.
I’d like to see a reality tv show where they challenge all these other Supermodel bands for their name. The winner of the series gets to keep the name and the others have to change theirs. All the different genres up against each other with their various levels of experience thrown in. All bands having to compete in various stardom challenges, not just talent in playing music. Dance. Stand-up comedy. Industry knowledge. Working a crowd. Messing up a hotel room. Being on a talk show. Doing a radio interview. Making cool t-shirts. Recovering from a calamity during a live performance. Spending time together on the road. Making a music video. Writing a song. Wearing sunglasses. Saving some children. Attending a black tie event. Throwing a party.
Do you know who I could speak to about this concept? Who “does” reality tv in NZ? Or anywhere else for that matter, the other bands are all over the world. Steal the idea if you like, just send me the dvd.