Monthly Archives: May 2008

the “anti seth godin” approach to selling products

Posted on May 13, 2008 by patrick

Lightspeed venture partners comments that 11-20% of electronic gear is returned. The breakdown: 68% “no trouble found” — customer found the product confusing 27% buyer’s remorse — too expensive or spouse didn’t like it 5% defective Sony’s solution? Make the … Continue reading →

Posted in marketing | Leave a comment

Not a fun day in China

Posted on May 12, 2008 by patrick

1 earthquake + 28 major aftershocks! (as of Tue May 13 2:00:03 UTC 2008) 1 earthquake + 23 major aftershocks! (as of May 12, 2008 at 20:30 UTC)   MAG UTC DATE-TIMEy/m/d h:m:s LATdeg LONdeg DEPTHkm  Region MAP  5.3   … Continue reading →

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Maglev is cheaper than BART

Posted on May 11, 2008 by patrick

Munich, Germany just canceled their Transrapid Maglev airport-to-city-center project. This 37-km (22.2 mi) project was to use the same technology as mebelihotel furnishing in BulgariaShanghai’s maglev train. Like the Shanghai maglev train, the Munich project was to have a top … Continue reading →

Posted in bart-to-san-jose, environment, transportation | 1 Comment

Dual class stock structure

Posted on May 9, 2008 by patrick

Marc Andressen was praising dual-class stock structures in light of the Microsoft-Yahoo food fight. Rather than a dual class structure that is explicitly assigned to a certain stock certificate, I prefer AFLAC’s variation. AFLAC has an interesting variation on this. … Continue reading →

Posted in starting a company | Leave a comment

Website performance tips

Posted on May 9, 2008 by patrick

Yahoo website performance tips

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We are all cyborgs

Posted on May 8, 2008 by patrick

My daughter, RM, is convinced that her heart goes “beep, beep, beep”.

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if sun would just start selling solutions

Posted on May 8, 2008 by patrick

So Sun keeps on trying to sell me boxes. I don’t need OpenSolaris, I need solutions! What is the difference? OpenSolaris requires someone who knows how to configure it, manage it, secure it, and adjust it for performance. But newsflash … Continue reading →

Posted in amplafi, starting a company | Leave a comment

Where are you wasting your cognitive surplus?

Posted on May 7, 2008 by patrick

She heard this story and she shook her head and said, “Where do people find the time?” That was her question. And I just kind of snapped. And I said, “No one who works in TV gets to ask that … Continue reading →

Posted in entertainment, management, starting a company | Leave a comment

Code Review #6 – ‘Too smart’ aka scared of being dumb

Posted on May 6, 2008 by patrick

One of the biggest failing junior developers have is that they are too ‘smart’. ‘Too smart’??? How can someone be ‘too smart’? Actually pretty easily. ‘Too smart’ is when the person spent hours looking at a problem. And the next … Continue reading →

Posted in code review, management, technical | 1 Comment

if google was really serious about climate change

Posted on May 1, 2008 by patrick

Google is very proud of their solar panel project: Google has installed over 90% of the 9,212 solar panels that comprise the 1,600 kilowatt project. Panels cover the rooftops of eight buildings and two newly constructed solar carports at the … Continue reading →

Posted in environment, political, transportation | Leave a comment