Bowman to Google

We're just back from New York so we might be a bit late with this bit of news that's pretty friggin' great for Google. They've managed to snag Douglas Bowman as their "Visual Design Lead".

Bowman is one of those great designers who knows how to combine great design with business needs, and in the end turn out standards compliant work that sets the pace for hundreds of aspiring designers (and some copy-cats too).

Bowman also designed the template that this blog has been using for quite some time. Unfortunately we've taken lots of liberties with the code. Sorry. More on the story from the man himself.

Listen. Don't listen.

The Business 2.0 story on the Bulletproof Startup has caused quite a stir. Right now it seems opinions are pretty much split 50/50 between those who like it and those who don't.

I've only had a quick look at the story but I might post about it if I get around to reading the whole thang' within the next few days.

Net neutrality

"The push for new laws mandating Net neutrality principles appears to be gaining steam on Capitol Hill."

Idiotic statements

I've read a few god posts by this guy before. How ever, when he writes about the new glossy MacBook screens, and draws the conclusion that those who like the shiny shiny screens are "idiots", I loose a lot of faith in his views. Granted, it is his opinion, and he is entitled to it.

But to simply label someone who prefers another type of laptop screen an "idiot" is not exactly an exercise in intellectual vigor either.

What do I think about shiny screens? I don't really like them. But I'm pretty sure that those who do, aren't idiots.

Headdress

"Headdress turns your Mac into a nice little server, capable of virtually hosting several websites in your local network. With Headdress you won't need to nest your sites or dig through configuration files, and turning PHP on is a breeze with one click activation."

Cool.

Pretty icon too, very Philip Treacy-ish!

Found via a post at TUAW.

Q&A with Peter Thiel

Matt Williams (Mercury News and SiliconBeat) asks Peter Thiel (formerly of PayPal, now Clarium Capital) Where will Web 2.0 take Silicon Valley?"

"There are four central places in the U.S.: New York for finance, Los Angeles for media, Silicon Valley for technology and Washington, D.C., for politics.

Silicon Valley is eroding L.A.'s dominance in media. The entertainment industry is going to stay in Los Angeles, but certain pieces of the entertainment industry are being picked off. For example, look at what Napster did to music with file sharing, and what YouTube is doing with video."

It's a short piece but worth reading. The importance of Stanford is once again refered to. See my previous post on it here.

The 53,651 Meme

I'm happy that the voices cautioning entrepreneurs about appealing to the "wrong" crowd, and/or reading to much in to their early numbers, is getting proper traction.

The "geek echo chamber" as SiliconBeat calls it is a great place to be for feedback and support. But for most it's not where the bulk of the revenue will eventually originate from.

After all, knowing ones main audience is (among other things) Business 101.
Got a great idea? Build it on a solid business foundation. The love will follow.

Good overview and links here.

Summer of Code

The sun is shining and the birds are twirping. It must be summer. Time to send yourself of to code camp, or at least make sure to stay on top of what's going on with the Google sponsored Summer of Code.

The OpenOffice.org people are involved too.

Yahoo! Tech - 2 thumbs down

Yahoo! really wants to "get" a lot of things: Web 2.0, social bookmarking you name it - Big Purple wants, and needs, to be in the mix.

The latest offering from Sunnyvale is Yahoo! Tech which aims to provide "reviews, help, and how-to advice for buying and using personal electronics".

I'm apparently not alone in thinking that CNET Reviews is in Yahoo!'s cross hairs.

To cut a long story short - right now Yahoo! Tech scores a 2 out of 10 on content, usability, design, and value. They'll probably get a little better with time.

But here's the catch with Yahoo! Tech, My Web 2.0, Yahoo! Mindset etc - it's not good enough. Sure, launching and tweaking as you go along is a good idea... if you improve on your offering in proper chunks. In my mind Y! isn't doing that. Stuff gets launched, stuff seems to get ignored, and stuff becomes irrelevant.

I miss the good old days when Y! would launch great, innovative features, sites and services. Today they are playing catch up, and not very well either. Are they listening to the people within the company who have great ideas (they exist, I'm sure)?

Come on Yahoo!, make us believe again.

Notebook no more

Russell Beattie is closing his Notebook. Does this mean that the new big thing among long time, high profile bloggers is to stop blogging? Who's next? ;-)

Russell, thank's for years and years of good, annoying, relevant, irrelevant, smart, whiny, inspiring, eye-opening... etc etc... posts!