Biz according to U2

Great story from NYT on U2 and the, in my view respectful, smart yet financially brilliant, business decisions made by Bono & Co.

9 tips from U2 on how to connect with customers

Where's Blinksale?

I just realised that there hasn't been a post to the Blinksale
blog since September 14. I find this a bit odd as from what I understand Firewheel Design (the creators of Blinksale) fully understand the value of a relevant and frequently updated blog.

It worries me when fairly high profile web 2.0 companies seem to loose steam after only a short period of time. I want to point out that I have no idea how Blinksale is doing in terms of revenue etc, I'm only commenting on the communication side of it, i.e. their blog. Does anyone know what's up at Blinksale? It would be interesting to find out.

Kiko

Finally getting around to trying out the Kiko cal. But, big oups, it doesn't seem to support Macs.

No help on the site. No help in the Google group. Sent an email to the Kiko crew. We'll see what they say (and how long it takes for them to get back to me - always interesting with small start-ups - do they take early user/adopter support seriously or are they simply building to have their technology bought by a established player).

Kiko sounds good on paper. I'm hoping it actually works IRL. Stay tuned.

Jobs , Gates and presentation Zen

"I thought it would be useful to examine briefly the two contrasting visual approaches employed by Gates and Jobs in their presentations while keeping key aesthetic concepts found in Zen in mind."

A good, and amuzing, read.
Presentation Zen: Gates, Jobs, & the Zen aesthetic

(As pointed to by Guy Kawasaki's Guy's List.)

Xooglers

I rarelt come across a blog from former employees talking about their former employers that's actually worth reading. The brand new Xooglers is an exception. And exceptional, in the quality of writing and story telling.

Written mostly by Doug Edwards, Google's Director of Consumer Marketing and Brand Management from 1999 to earlier this year, it's a story about what life really was like for those joining Google in the god ol' days. It actually reminds me of Douglas Coupland's Microserfs in some ways. Those of you who knew me during the mid 1990's know that I l-o-v-e-d that book.

Get reading!

A date with Drew

We rented a very funny movie tonight, I highly recommend it!

My Date With Drew - 30 days - $1,100 - 1 date

More ProCare

Apparently Apple are adding new features to the ProCare program. Supposedly the release date was earlier this week, but for some reason it was pushed back.

It's funny, I even saw the brochures at my local Apple Store, but as soon as I asked about it one of the employees grabbed the print material and showed it in a drawer. I so wish I'd picked one up before I asked!

Oh well, stay tuned...

But can it handle Lynx?

A bunch of people have pointed me to blog posts about how much 37signals suck, how them switching of comments on their blog is "web 1.0" etc. I'm guessing these people are concerned about my praise for Jason F and co.

Well, tough luck.

In my book 37signals represents a truly inspiring team with brilliant (but not flawless) ideas and philosophies.

To save some time, and to cut to the chase on this topic - please remember that the proof is in the pudding. Here's some proof that regardless of what you think of 37sig's, you can't deny that they know how to put things together.

From Chad Dickerson's blog:
"Last night, I decided to not-so-carefully run a couple of Web 2.0 apps through the old-school Web 0.1 Lynx browser to see which would work best, or work at all."

Read on!

Yahoo! does Web 2.0

A pretty good overview from eWeek on my former employers (mostly) smart Web 2.0 efforts... "Yahoo: From Dot-Com Survivor to Web 2.0 Powerhouse"

"Through a series of clever acquisitions and in-house creations, Yahoo Inc. has transformed itself from a dot-com survivor into a Web 2.0 powerhouse driven by blogs, podcasts and other forms of user-generated social media."

Trumba's $8 000 000

Congrats to Trumba and the injection of $8 million (seen on SiliconBeat). I've written about Trumba in the past, including here, and I liked their service. But I must admit that the new and much imrpoved AirSet is impressing me more than Trumba ever did. Plus, I have to echo what SB's Matt was saying - why does Trumba think that they can charge $40/year for their service?

As far as I can see, Trumba was a better service a few months ago. But today they are falling behind, AirSet and others are catching up. And I don't see Trumba launching new services to stay ahead of their competitors, plus I don't see the value added features that makes me want to give up $40 as opposed to pay zero bucks to one of their competitors for a similar service.

If you're looking for a good cal, try the improved (but not yet perfect) AirSet. I panned them in May, but they have gotten their stuff together and are now, in my mind, the #1 shared cal service.

Zuckerberg inspires

I read about Facebook's Zuckerberg over on Signal vs. Noise, and I can only say that I admire him.

Would I turn down, say, $50 million or so myself? I really can't say that I would. Actually, I would see an opportunity to use that money to create other interesting ventures.

But people like Zuckerberg inspire me to be a better entrepreneur, to build better businesses, to challenge my assumptions.