by Andy Brudtkuhl on June 27, 2008
Now that Bill Gates has retired my new “wish i was him” is Jeff Bezos. He was interviewed on my favorite radio show, On Point, yesterday where he discussed the future of reading, e-commerce, the economy, and the internet.
Here is the broadcast…
JeffBezos
In the world of the Internet, Jeff Bezos is a giant. A pioneer. In the old days, they might have said a god.
He started Amazon.com when e-commerce was next to nothing and the web was still a whisper. Today, Bezos is a billionaire, Amazon is ubiquitous, and the web, well, it’s the way we live.
It hasn’t all been pretty. A lot of bookstores have been trampled. Amazon’s balance sheet was touch and go along the way.
But Bezos is still thinking big. From the way we read, to “cloud computing,” to humans in space.
by Andy Brudtkuhl on June 27, 2008
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Wirewize, tells you how to connect the gizmos in your home entertainment center. You tell it what you have, and it tells you which cables you need and then, very specifically, where to plug them.
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Yes, I think you do. I’ve been in a situation with a non-programmer President of a software development firm. He never “got it” which created schedule, budget, and morale problems.
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Watching nonprogrammers trying to run software companies is like watching someone who doesn’t know how to surf trying to surf. Even if he has great advisers standing on the shore telling him what to do, he still falls off the board again and again. The cu
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Microsoft announced this morning that it plans to acquire Portugese mobile application company Mobicomp, makers of some very cool mobile tools that we’re excited to get our hands on. Microsoft watchdogs Liveside saw the news first and have a good descript
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“Don’t quit your job to become the queen of cheese,” he cautions. “But if you’re doing something that blows and you hate it, go work at 7-Eleven to pay your bills and spend every other hour building your personal plan. If you work 9 AM to 6 PM a
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Monitor social media effectively with Radian6’s user-friendly web dashboard. It allows topics to be quickly set up for monitoring, queries and analysis. Use it to uncover seemingly hidden issues and trends that could affect strategic directions for cl
by Andy Brudtkuhl on June 26, 2008
Sometimes I bounce around my Google Reader looking at different sections trying to find snippets to read. Every once in awhile (turning into quite often) this random act brings related ideas from different bloggers together and sparks a thought in my head, which I then relay to you.
Today I was catching up on local Des Moines marketeer Mike Templeton‘s blog as he describes in his post, “Late Nights Still Win“, the problem he and many of us face as web workers and entrepreneurs. I run into the same problem with my company. During the day I work on software development for a client that requires full-time attention from me. This creates a predicament for me as I have web strategy and development consulting clients, product development, community maintenance, and blogging to deal with. I’m in the same position as Mike – I work all day and sometimes find time to spend with friends and family.
Interestingly enough right after reading Mike’s post I stumbled upon The Chicago Reader’s coverage of the SEED conference in Chicago, featuring what the Reader calls “Web Cowboys” (I like that – can I be a web cowboy?). In it they interview GaryV (who recently visited Des Moines) and he said something that hit home:
“Don’t quit your job to become the queen of cheese,” he cautions. “But if you’re doing something that blows and you hate it, go work at 7-Eleven to pay your bills and spend every other hour building your personal plan. If you work 9 AM to 6 PM and get home at 7, whatever you put in between 7 and 3 AM is what you’re gonna get in return. You want to watch Lost? Knock yourself out. I don’t watch shit. I don’t read shit. I’m all about my community and putting out content. I don’t consume. I put out.”
by Andy Brudtkuhl on June 26, 2008
Yes… I had the president of a software development company tell me (in anger), “It’s not rocket science” after asking me why a deliverable was late. “I only see one form here, how can it be that hard?”, he said. At that time I was Project Manager and Software Engineer at a product development firm here in Des Moines. The president was not a programmer.
That brings up a question posed today by Mary-Jo Foley as Bill Gates prepares to leave Microsoft: “Do you need to be a programmer to run a software company?“. This is reference to Bill’s attention to detail to the software being built by his engineers.
Joel Spolsky wrote about it today, asking “How Hard Could It Be?” in his Inc.com column. Joel was a program manager of the Excel team in the early 1990′s and tells a great story that, to me, sums up Bill’s passion and persistence as the leader of a software company. Joel summed up my frustration (and likely many other developers’) of working for a software development company whose leaders know little to nothing about software devlopment:
“Watching nonprogrammers trying to run software companies is like watching someone who doesn’t know how to surf trying to surf. Even if he has great advisers standing on the shore telling him what to do, he still falls off the board again and again. The cult of the M.B.A. likes to believe that you can run organizations that do things that you don’t understand. But often, you can’t.” – Joel Spolsky
by Andy Brudtkuhl on June 26, 2008
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Twitter just announced yet another sum of funding, this including money from Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezo’s fund Bezos Expeditions. The company says the money will be spent on building up its infrastructure and reliability to become the communications uti
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Many web workers have gone the non-traditional route with their business cards, and opted for the cute, colorful Moo cards instead. Well, very soon you can have your Web 2.0 goodness and your traditional business cards, as Moo has announced those as their
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The Kraft Group, which owns, among other things, the New England Patriots, has led a group of investors in providing $4.6m SeriesA financing to Blog Talk Radio.
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Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit last week kicked off the largest hiring spree in its history as the group prepares to accelerate development of a new wave of software products for Apple users.
