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Isaac Asimov speaking about education through interconnected...

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 16:39:40 -0400

Isaac Asimov speaking about education through interconnected computers in 1988. Awesome.

Intel’s original business plan. Got it from Thomas...

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 22:14:53 -0300

Intel’s original business plan.

Got it from Thomas Petersen, here

FaaP - Facebook as a Platform?

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 14:56:00 -0300

I get the feeling that almost everyone is hating Zuckerberg at this moment (specially stockholders). Earnings were disappointing, and the stock is getting beaten because of it.

However, I’m convinced that most people missed the huge vision that Zuckerberg has for facebook as a platform, as stated in their earnings call. That’s why I summarize below what I believe are the most important parts of the call.

It’s pretty clear that they’re financing their journey to become the social layer of the web and mobile through advertising.

It remains to be seen if they’re able to monetize mobile users effectively in the short term, realize the full value of social ads for user, advertisers and themselves; and what’s the real potential behind the FaaP (Facebook as a Platform) idea and if they’re able to materialize it.

In my opinion, the monetization possibilities at “the digital social layer” are huge, yet difficult to quantify at the time.

Note 1: Of course, a social toy might appear along the way and become a good contender to this juggernaut. Paul Graham wrote that a good way to fight Google would be to make the search engine that’s used by the top 10,000 hackers. Maybe someone figures out how to get the 10,000 hackers equivalent for social networking disruption.

Note 2: A very interesting project in the “Social Layer” space is Dalton Cadwell’s App.Net.

Note 3: Regarding the stock I think it’s important to point out that in the following months 1.7 billion shares will get to the market as the lock ups expire.

Mark Zuckerberg

“I’m going to focus the rest of my comments today on our top priorities across our product areas for 2012, specifically mobile, platform and social ads.”

“We can imagine a day when you buy a new car and by logging into the car’s computer with Facebook, you can similarly have it immediately light up music, addresses, restaurants, stores and other destinations targeted specifically for you based on your friends and your interests.”

“We believe one of the biggest opportunities we have is to create the identity and social layer that all new apps and websites can be built on top of.”

“I mentioned we believe that all these consumer products, and maybe even more than consumer products that people use will become social over time. But we can’t build all those things ourselves, so we focused on building this platform. “

“We’re focused on building a successful platform, which enables developers to build great social experiences into their own apps by integrating with and exchanging information with Facebook.”

“It’s worth calling out that our vision for platform is bigger than what most people perceive.”

“Well, the basic approach that we have for now is we’re building out this platform and other companies can build on top of that. And you can view our business as an advertising and payments business, or you could view it as there will be these companies that help to transform these industries, and we will get some portion of the value that comes from that, that we’re helping to provide.”

Sheryl Sandberg

“Local is the Holy Grail of the Internet. Everyone is about to get people into local. “

“When you think about the advertising experience on Facebook, it is complicated today. And that’s mainly because we’re a completely new kind of marketing. We’re not TV, we’re not search, we are a third medium.”

“Our goal is to take everything people do, or at least close to everything people do, and make it social. And what we do is provide technology for our platform partners to do that.”

“Mark said in his remarks that we really believe that we are going to provide the identity and the social layer for everything that happens across Web, across mobile.”

“We really consider ourselves a partnership company.”

“We want to take social companies and make them big, and big companies and make them social.”

Regarding this last quote, I wonder how the cake will be distributed among a world full of Big & Social companies or if they really have the ingredients to cook a bigger cake.

Read the Earnings Call Transcript for Q2 2012.

Listen to the Earnings Call for Q2 2012

Rails Girls: ¡Hola! Feelings from Buenos Aires

Sun, 17 Jun 2012 10:00:46 -0300

Rails Girls: ¡Hola! Feelings from Buenos Aires :

railsgirls:

The first day of Rails Girls Buenos Aires started off with high hopes and loads of smiling faces. Rails were installed, new friends were made and maybe we even learned a few new things.

Before we head towards the real deal coding on the second day, we leave you with a few tweets that truly…

Freedom

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 13:53:00 -0300

“Let us suppose that we had carried out production as human beings. Each of us would have in two ways affirmed himself and the other person. (1) In my production I would have objectified my individuality, its specific character, and therefore enjoyed not only an individual manifestation of my life during the activity, but also when looking at the object I would have the individual pleasure of knowing my personality to be objective, visible to the senses and hence a power beyond all doubt. (2) In your enjoyment or use of my product I would have the direct enjoyment both of being conscious of having satisfied a human need by my work, that is, of having objectified man’s essential nature, and of having thus created an object corresponding to the need of another man’s essential nature. (3) I would have been for you the mediator between you and the species, and therefore would become recognised and felt by yourself as a completion of your own essential nature and as a necessary part of yourself, and consequently would know myself to be confirmed both in your thought and your love. (4) In the individual expression of my life I would have directly created your expression of your life, and therefore in my individual activity I would have directly confirmed and realised my true nature, my human nature, my communal nature.

Our products would be so many mirrors in which we saw reflected our essential nature”

Ayn Rand? No, Karl Marx.

It’s fascinating how people can conceive such divergent roads to get to the same destination.

My second playlist on @8tracks: Fill your day with sunshine! 01....

Thu, 24 May 2012 16:41:00 -0300

My second playlist on @8tracks: Fill your day with sunshine!

01. Mike Pinto - Tricky Nicky

02. Ben Harper - With My Own Two Hands

03. Matt Costa - Mr. Pitiful

04. Bernhoft - Cmon Talk

05. Donavon Frankenreiter - Free

06. Jack Johnson & Zach Gill - Girl I Wanna Lay You Down

07. Ray LaMontagne - Three More Days

08. Matt Costa - Yellow Taxi

09. Israel Kamakawiwo’ole - Somewhere Over the Rainbow

10. Jack Johnson - Banana Pancakes

11. G. Love, Jack Johnson & Donavon Frankenreiter - Rodeo Clowns

12. Mike Pinto - One More Time

13. Jack Johnson - Bubble Toes

14. Animal Liberation Orchestra - Barbeque

15. Donavon Frankenreiter - It Don’t Matter

16. Dave Matthews Band - Two Step (Live In New York City July 17, 2010)

Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever lived

Tue, 15 May 2012 02:54:00 -0300

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla

Tesla’s Autobiography

“When we’re gone, all that’s left of us is what...

Thu, 10 May 2012 12:21:37 -0300

“When we’re gone, all that’s left of us is what we’ve made”

Inspiring talk by Wilson Miner

Perpetual To-Do List

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 16:17:00 -0300

Don’t ignore your dreams

Don’t work too much

Say what you think

Cultivate friendships

Be happy

By Paul Graham

http://paulgraham.com/todo.html

The Listserve

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 16:30:29 -0300

A few days ago I discovered thelistserve.com thanks to a tweet by Andrew Weissman. The idea is simple, yet powerful. In their words: “One person a day wins a chance to write to the growing list of subscribers. It could be you.”

So, you get a daily email from a random person that’s already subscribed. And one day, that person might be you.

On Wednesday evening I got my first email from thelisterve, written by Emil Stenström, and it was awesome!

Hope you’ll read it through and enjoy it as much as I did:

“I’m sorry to break this to you, in an e-mail from a random stranger like this, but it needs to be said: Most of your life won’t be fantastic. I’m not joking. The adventures you’ll tell your children about will be a minuscule part of it. So if you want to avoid the feeling of utter disappointment as you grow older, you need to accept that fact. Sorry.

This leads us to the insight: You should focus more on the non-fantastic parts. The parts where you eat breakfast, walk to the bus, have a boring day at work, eat your ordinary lunch, shop groceries, and brush your teeth. After all, this is the major part of your life, and neglecting it is a wasted opportunity.

Here’s the thing: Most of the boring stuff in your life is so dull, that even the tiniest thing can make it seem fun. The tiniest thing. This means the you could make it better with extremely simple means.

What exactly am I talking about here? Little things. Like these:

* Challenges: When brushing your teeth tonight, use your left hand.
* Mind games: When you enter work (or school!), imagine the sound “Kabaaaam!” as you enter, as if your presence changed the whole room.
* Action: Jump down from the side-walk, instead of just stepping down.
* Changes: Buy some fancy tomato sauce tonight, instead of your usual brand.
* More action: Count the number of pink things on your way to work, as if your life depended on it.

See? Easy stuff. I really try to live by this “Everyday Action” idea, and I think it works for making the boring parts of life more fun. Because that’s the thing: just because the fantastic moments are few, there’s no reason to just sit there, waiting for the next big thing to swipe you off your feet. Have some fun meanwhile, it’s easy…”

http://friendlybit.com/css/the-listserve-im-sorry-to-break-this-to-you/

Blake Masters: Peter Thiel’s CS183: Startup - Class 2 Notes Essay

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 23:28:55 -0300

Blake Masters: Peter Thiel’s CS183: Startup - Class 2 Notes Essay:

blakemasters:

Here are my class notes, typed in essay form, from Class 2 of CS183: Startup. Errors, omissions, and/or poor phrasing are my own. Credit for good substance and wording is Peter’s entirely.

CS183: Startup—Notes Essay—April 4—Party Like It’s 1999?

I. Late to the Party

History is driven…

Float - Sube

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 17:46:53 -0300

“Insurers receive premiums upfront and pay claims later. In extreme cases, such as those arising from certain workers’ compensation accidents, payments can stretch over decades. This collect-now, pay-later model leaves us holding large sums – money we call “float” – that will eventually go to others. Meanwhile, we get to invest this float for Berkshire’s benefit. Though individual policies and claims come and go, the amount of float we hold remains remarkably stable in relation to premium volume. Consequently, as our business grows, so does our float.”

Extracted from Warren Buffett’s Annual Letter to Shareholders of 2009

I wonder if there’s any way to invest in SUBE (Argentina’s card for public transportation)? Or better, companies with public transportation cards that invest their float wisely…

Learn to Program - Chris Pine

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 21:55:00 -0400

I’m learning to program with Chris Pine’s book, which I highly recommend, and just wanted to share what I think is the best paragraph in the book so far:

Figuring this all out would take us a ridiculous amount of time. I mean, it’s pretty cool that you can do it at all, but you didn’t pay good money for “pretty cool.” No sir, this is a De-Luxe-Supremium book you have here. And for that, my friend, we need some serious saving. We need some full-frontal loading. Yes, when you’re looking for De-Luxe-Supremium, you want YAML.

You can buy the book here.

And you can also read it online here.

Chrome - Google has insecure content.

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 13:11:00 -0400

Chrome - Google has insecure content.

The Apple Marketing Philosophy by Mike Markkula. 1977.

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 20:05:37 -0400

The Apple Marketing Philosophy by Mike Markkula. 1977.

Video

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 16:28:40 -0400

Two sides of the same coin.

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 22:34:00 -0300

Two sides of the same coin.

http://www.apple.com/stevejobs/

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 20:47:07 -0300

http://www.apple.com/stevejobs/

Don't start at version infinity, a toy might be just ok!

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 20:57:00 -0300

Yesterday after watching Derek Sivers Uncommon Sense videos I kept thinking about building Version 0.1of something instead of building the vision for Version ∞ at moment 0.

I associated this with Chris Dixon’s post “The next big thing will start out looking like a toy”. He uses the term “toy” to describe a product/service that at an early stage is dismissed by “serious” people, but in the end turns out to be a serious success.

I believe that many times, at the very beginning, even the people working on the toy thought of it as a toy and not as something huge.

Only after discovering they were creating a lot of value with the toy (or wealth in Paul Grahams terms), they start working on the vision for Version ∞ that will enable them to “conquer the world”.

While thinking about the stuff I’ve done in the last couple of years, I came to realize that it often works this way. Most experiments had better outcomes than plans. I’m not pretending to draw any big conclusion, or planning to stop planning, but I’ll definitely try to experiment a little bit more.

There are some good examples of the importance of experimenting instead of trying to come up with huge visions and ideas out of the blue.

Airbnb started as airbedandbreakfast
“We both quit our jobs to become entrepreneurs…. suddenly we found ourselves unable to afford our own apartment” “We started to think creatively about how we could solve our problem of not being able to pay the rent” Joe Gebbia
Joe Gebbia’s talk

CDbaby started as a hobby
Derek Siver’s video

Twitter started as twttr
Jack Dorsey had an idea to make a more “live” LiveJournal, it took him 6 years before experimenting with it. twttr sketch

Facebook started as thefacebook
“Everyone’s been talking a lot about a universal face book within Harvard,” Zuckerberg said. “I think it’s kind of silly that it would take the University a couple of years to get around to it. I can do it better than they can, and I can do it in a week.”
According to this article

Paul Graham & Harjeet Taggar questions during office hours @ Disrupt Conference

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 01:04:00 -0300

I took some notes of Paul Graham & Harjeet Taggar questions during office hours @ Disrupt.

Going through all of them is definitely a worthwhile exercise!

Rules: No google, all by heart, in less than 1 minute each.

What’s your market?

How do you sell to your market?

Where does your current market top out?

You are growing at n%, where does it stop?

What’s the number one reason your customers turn you down for? (Harjeet Taggar)

Make people complain directly to you.

Do you have any evidence of how hard it is to convince people to use your product?

If one of your competitors teams up with a big company, is there room for you still?

How did you find your users? (Harjeet Taggar)

What is the thing you do that users are most excited about?

Why do you make *signing up* so hard for people? You WANT to know the rate at which your product spreads without constraints, and you want to optimize that.

So your product is sort of a supra set of “other product”? (slides.io)

What are the specific features of your product?

How big is your market?

Have you try selling/pitching your product?

Why would people use your product instead of another one? What’s the specific feature that will convince them?

What’s distinctive about you? What specific feature?

Can you think of an example of what you can do better than your competition?

What will they jump to you for?

Why did you decide to work on this particular problem? (Harj Taggar)

Do you have a plan for getting users? (Harjeet Taggar)

Be MUCH better than *incumbent* at a small subset of things. vs being 1% better at everything.

Who is the user of your product?

Are you using it yourself? How do you use it (give example)?

Where does your traffic come from?

What’s your plan for making money?

I wonder if being international from day one is good…

You need evidence that shows that what you are working on is leading down the right path

If you’re making something frivolous, there’s danger that it could be fashionable for a while.

How did people find your product?

Here’s the video: