What was the action taken and what was the result?
What might have been a more preferred result?
What was the specific lesson learned?
How could we identify a similar situation in the future?
What behavior is recommended for the future?
Who needs to be informed about this lesson to ensure a more preferred result?

The progression of questions take you from recalling the action, analyzing the action, determining new lessons, and deciding who needs to have this knowledge.

Try it for yourself and for your teams.

The individual devices have great UX. But as I move from one form factor to another most apps make the UX feel disconnected.

Example: I use an IM application on all devices. But if I start s conversation on my MacBook and then pick up my iPad to go into the living room, or my iPhone to run to the store my conversation is broken. The chat history does not follow me, and even worse, multiple devices will remain logged on so a new IM will register on multiple devices.

I think with all of the new and innovative form factors now finding adoption momentum, there is a good opportunity for frameworks to be built to support the movement of the UX in a seamless way across devices.

Pushing data into the cloud, or having a good sync system is a great start, and I’d love if my various apps had better sync capabilities. But can we sync the UX of applications. Can product developers break out of the paradigm of an application living in a single instance of a process. Can UX be elevated to it’s own entity with app instances being merely a view into the current session.

Should my word processor always start from zero when I open it? Or should it return to it’s previous state? If I’m editing a blog post on my laptop and I decide to move to my iPad, should I dare to expect to continue where I left off seamlessly?

It’s a hard problem to solve from a logic perspective, and its a lot of plumbing to write for app developers. Maybe someone will think through the business rules and create a framework we can all build on.

If you are that person, I’d love to talk with you and support you. What do you all think?

I’ve recently revived this blog and have attempted to be more active on my Facebook account. And, we’ll have to see about Twitter.

For me, my favorite online outlets are this blog and online forums. There are personal relationships and reputations on both, but the knowledge sharing is so much deeper than short posts and status updates. But alas, responding to people in depth and writing something interesting is time consuming. That’s probably why Facebook is so popular, it’s easy and mostly brainless.

I know it’s worth it though. There is a level of intrinsic satisfaction to it, though with such a large amount of noise out there it can be painful to curate.

Of the five trunks, three of them used to be alive with leaves sprouting. Now,  only one trunk is left sprouting leaves and it’s flourishing, all the others have died. This tree reminds me of a lesson about starting a business. A lesson about focusing resources and not being pulled in all directions. About how some ideas and ventures will eventually fail, and how by staying in there, eventually one idea will flourish and grow.

Growing a startup isn’t about taking on many goliath’s in parallel. It’s about nurturing the most promising ventures and then building from that success. Create leaves, not trunks.

The relentless search for “tell me what to do” 

If you’ve ever hired or managed or taught, you know the feeling.

People are just begging to be told what to do. There are a lot of reasons for this, but I think the biggest one is: “If you tell me what to do, the responsibility for the outcome is yours, not mine. I’m safe.”

When asked, resist.

To develop ourselves personally, in our careers, and even to enhance those skills we are good at we have to get out of the box and stay outside of it for a sustained period of time.

If we’re “good” we can see those skills that are important but lacking. If we’re “great” we will stay focused on developing those skills and not be tempted back to the norm, back to the path of least resistance. The danger to our development is that we trick ourselves into thinking we really are stretching our abilities and facing down things we are not comfortable with.

When do you market:

1. You market your self to your employers when you’re looking for a job.
2. You market your offering to your customers when you’re trying to sell a product or service.
3. You market your leadership to your employees when you’re trying to build teamwork and sell a vision.
4. You market your personal attributes to your co-workers when you’re trying to build consensus.
5. You market your productivity to your boss when you’re looking for a raise or increased responsibility.
6. You market your business to your investors or bank when you’re raising money.

When you market you need to know who you’re talking to, what they want and need, and how to communicate that you’ve got the goods. This analysis is the driver of all your business.

I’ve received the largest batch of resume’s from a craigslist as as I ever have in December 2009 99% of applicants haven’t changed their stripes. Here’s the advice:

1. If you’re out of town, specify whether you’re willing to re-locate or work remotely. Unless you’re exceptional I’m not going to contact you to find out.
2. Read the job posting and respond relevantly. I have a boutique shop that does cool things and a job posting that’s asking for some unique qualities. That means, don’t respond with a standard copy/paste letter or with no email body at all.
3. Along those lines, tell me why you’re a good candidate for the job. I spent time being detailed about the position, spend some time and tell me why you’ll fit. Don’t make me figure it out by deciphering your resume.
4. I get over 100 responses to each job posting. Ask yourself if you’re really going to stand out.
5. Give me your phone number and address, not just an email.
6. I don’t care about your GPA unless you list it as low. Maybe others do. Leave the GPA off, include the year of graduation. If there’s no GPA, I don’t care to know it. If you list a 2.2 GPA, I’m going to notice.
7. I expect everyone is embellishing to a degree, make yourself sound awesome because I’m probably going to assume you’re not as good as you say (unless you say it *really* well)

All that said, it’s a hard market out there and I wish everyone good luck with the job hunt. We’re not at 12% unemployment because it’s easy!

Check out the blog, it’s got some great stuff. I’ve published a first video in an infinite part series on How to make the Mac not suck for power users and I’ll continue to produce video and blog posts.

Also, if you are a Mac enthusiast and want to share tips and technology, contact Adam, he’s looking for more authors!

http://venturehacks.com/term-sheet-hacks

With an online economy driven by advertising demand and not necessarily demand for your product or service how do you plan and compete?

Check out the article: 

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1005997&src=article1_newsltr .

I tend to believe that technology amplifies humanity, human interaction, and human behavior. I don’t think it trends one way or another. Rather I believe it gives us greater potential for both good and bad.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/is_web_technology_making_your_life_better.php .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qU1fixMAObI .

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free?currentPage=all

A great event and a lot of fun.

This is another mobile blogging test.

I’m the guy in the center accepting the award. This is Las Vegas in 2005 when I was CTO of WebRaiser Technologies.

With advertising becoming the primary business model of the online economy it is critical that we as investors and entrepreneurs understand the advertising business model.

Its a very hard road. It takes a large network of eyes to make money advertising. Or, it takes a highly valuable targeted demographic of eyes. And even then, you must be savvy enough to draw in the advertisers and maximize the opportunity.

On a side note, this is the first post from my iPhone!

http://watchmojo.com/web/blog/index.php/2008/02/20/why-most-vc-backed-ad-supported-companies-are-doomed-to-fail/

It’s not from worry. It’s from excitement and analysis. Business scenarios, investment pitches, financing instruments, customer relationships, marketing, branding, legal work and banking.

It’s constant iterations of scenarios, ideas, and plans. Where are the holes? What are the risks? What can be mitigated? What are the priorities?

This isn’t the first night of entrepreneurial insomnia I’ve suffered. Sometimes I can cure it through reading a good mystery book. Some nights, like tonight, I blog. Sometimes I work.

I know it’s something that other entrepreneurs go through. What kind of strategies do you use to silence your mind at night? 

What is Google?

Let’s look at Google. At it’s core, Google is a content company that derives revenue from advertisement. If you look at Google’s 10Q, 99% of their revenue comes from advertising services.

Google looks at online, desktop, and mobile software as content that can be offered free to users in exchange for advertising.Rather than having a blog, or a wiki, or a magazine, or pornography, or some other form of content, Google’s driving content is software. Software to search the web, software for email, software for editing documents, software for managing photos, software for getting directions, software for reading news and blogs. Google provides free web, desktop, and mobile software in exchange for advertising attention.

I’d like to note an exception to the above with Google’s business services, but that business unit is an insignificant revenue stream and has insignificant market share.

Google is best defined as a content producer, monetized by advertising. They are unique from what we would traditionally think of as content producers in that their free content is software and web services.

What is Microsoft?

Microsoft is a pure software company at it’s core. Microsoft designs, develops, tests, and packages software for desktop, server, mobile, handheld, tablet, vehicle, surface, and other devices. From operating systems to games to productivity tools, Microsoft is a company that produces licensable software across a breadth of industries.

Microsoft licenses software and sells support and maintenance contracts; targeting both business and consumer customers. Microsoft has the sales, marketing, and support infrastructure to back up a large software business.Gaming, media, advertising, consumer electronics, hardware, and other businesses Microsoft has extended into. Leveraging their software business they develop or advance new markets to sell software into.

At the end of the day, Microsoft sells software and has an ecosystem built around it for support, certification, maintenance, and development.

Winning the Consumer Market

Google is moving more and more into the consumer space. A space where advertising is a legitimate form of revenue generation. Google can continue to offer free software content to consumers and monetize through advertising. By offering software and services for free, Google is granted more leeway from consumers regarding the quality of the software… whether it be bugs or lack of functionality. Consumers are also okay with software being in a perpetual beta when the software is free.

For traditional software sales, Microsoft is maintaining it’s dominance. Despite all the bad talk in the press and blogosphere, Microsoft’s software business is still growing, as is the company as a whole.

Microsoft is cognizant of the intrusions into the consumer space by free software and web services from Google and other companies and is putting together strategies and making acquisitions for when the time comes that their software unit becomes flat. Today, there is still a lot of money to be made with traditional software sales, and Microsoft isn’t about to jump into the advertising for software content business until they’ve finished milking the software licensing cow.

Winning the Business Market

Today, Google doesn’t have the pieces in place to serve the business community. They have not invested in the sales and support infrastructure, nor have they invested enough in their business software offerings. Their business offerings are not as feature-rich, end to end, or functional as Microsoft offerings. Google does not have the world wide sales teams and support infrastructure that Microsoft has. Google has no certification program and a weaker partner network.

Google is a consumer facing company today, and from their investments it looks to stay that way for a long time. Microsoft is business facing and has leveraged that market to get to the consumer.

Recently, Microsoft has made investments and acquisitions in cloud computing and web advertising (including their recent $42 billion bid for Yahoo). Microsoft is in a dominant position overall and is getting prepared to compete when software goes more and more online. Remember, Microsoft still has a large web presence, a large IM presence, a large email presence, and a large social networking presence (especially in other countries). Microsoft is already ramping things up to take over when packaged software slows.

Google has a long way to go to enter domains Microsoft is dominant in. Microsoft has much less work to upset Google’s consumer web dominance.

• Capitalization- the number one reason companies fail is that they run out of money. Make sure you have enough personal assets, debt financing, or outside investment to keep running. Calculate your startup costs and add 50% for a buffer.
• Networking- get involved in local entrepreneurial groups. Having relationships with a wide range of people in different industries and skillsets, and generally being plugged in is critical to success. Having a network of informal advisors opens up new doors, sheds lights on problems, provides insight, and is generally good moral support. This is all in addition to meeting potential customers, partners, and acquirers.
• Leverage- When buliding a startup think of leverage. You’re recruiting people, you’re signing deals, you’re partnering, you’re working with investors. Do what you can to build up your company portfolio of assets. Do what you can to build up your companies options. Assets increase value and options provide room to negotiate. You want some leverage when you talk to people so you aren’t speaking from desperation.