Michael Lehman's Independent Innovation

OnStartups.com - Underpants Gnomes?

Michael_Lehman — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 13:23:00 GMT

If you are a startup I think you'd find www.onstartups.com very worth your time.

They have a post relating most startup plans to those of the South Park "Underpants Gnomes" who's business plan is:

Steal Underpants
?
Make Profit

Always a good idea to have a good #2 step in mind before you leap!

You can also follow them on twitter.

Happy St. Patrick's Day - Cloud-based testing tools

Michael_Lehman — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 13:16:00 GMT

Just ran into BrowserMob a cloud-based load testing tool based on Firefox and Amazon EC2.

It allows you to throw hundreds or thousands of "virtual users" at your web site simultaneously. Unlike most load testing tools however, it uses actual browsers (Firefox) to do the work which can give you a more realistic experience than simulation.

I'll be trying this on my next web app.

Operating Systems Don't Matter - I agree

Michael_Lehman — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 15:03:00 GMT

Joe Wilcox over at Microsoft Watch today wrote a piece entitled "Operating Systems Don't Matter".

As I wrote in the comments to that post, I was a partcipant in a concrete example of his thesis: Digital Research, Inc.

DRI wrote and distributed operating systems starting in 1977, beginning with CP/M and then MP/M, CP/M-86, MP/M-86, CP/M-68k and Concurrent CP/M-86. I was the director of Research and Development at DRI from 1981-1984.

Each of these were state-of-the-art for the time and contained more functionality than the competition (PC-DOS/MS-DOS). However, as Joe points out, end-users don't buy operating systems, they buy tools that help them have fun, do their job or save time (at best all three!).

Digital Research and Microsoft were of approximately equal size (~200 employees) in 1983 with Digital Research leading the way with a broad range of "ISVs" or independent software vendors. We even held our own trade show CP/M-83 in January 1983.

Gary Kildall who founded DRI had a strong philosophical stance that would, eventually, be the downfall of DRI: "We write operating systems and languages but we do not write applications. We don't want to take market share from our ISVs".

Microsoft, on the other hand, started writing applications shortly after PC-DOS was shipped and that made all the difference. The pull through for MS-DOS, and eventually Windows, was driven, of course, by applications and Microsoft wasn't afraid to participate in the application side of the market.

That, in my humble opinion, made all the difference. Digital Research never went public and by 1991 had been bought by Novell and eventually faded into computing history. Microsoft went public, kept buidling applications and, to my continuing bemusement, I now work there (not building applications mind you but creating tools for those that do).

Pascal/MT+, it was 30 years ago today

Michael_Lehman — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 22:46:00 GMT

It was 30 years ago today that I started, in earnest, to build Pascal/MT [wikipedia link], the first source-code-to-binary Pascal compiler. In those days one could either use UCSD Pascal (a P-code compiler/interpreter) or Pascal/Z which compiled to Z80 assembler code with then had to be run through the Zilog Z80 assembler.

Pascal/MT, which was written entirely in assembly language, also auto-linked the run-time so that the end result of a Pascal/MT compilation was a single running .COM (CP/M executable) file containing the application program compiled to native 8080 assembly language.

I sold the first copies in a ziploc bag with a "xeroxed" manual at Computerland of San Diego in July 1979.

Later that year we won a contract from Atari to build a Pascal compiler for the 6502 but retained the rights to re-target it to any other environment *except* the Apple-][. We built Pascal/MT+ using Pascal/MT and in September of 1980, we shipped this compiler as Pascal/MT+ for CP/M.

In January of 1981 we won a contract, competing against Microsoft, for a version of Pascal for Intel's RMX-86 operating system and in October 1981, we sold the whole company (MT MicroSYSTEMS) to Digital Research (the makers of CP/M).

Cloudcamp Seattle videos.

Michael_Lehman — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 04:07:00 GMT

The nice folks at Seattle 2.0 webcast the Cloudcamp sessions.

It was a great day with brilliant people and awesome energy.

Recorded versions should be available soon.

Attending Cloud Camp - Seattle

Michael_Lehman — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 16:37:00 GMT

Just signed up for Cloud Camp Seattle which is tomorrow Feb 28.

There are 34 free tickets left and it looks like it's going to be very interesting.

“CloudCamp is an unconference where early adopters of Cloud Computing technologies exchange ideas. With the rapid change occurring in the industry, we need a place we can meet to share our experiences, challenges and solutions. At CloudCamp, you are encouraged you to share your thoughts in several open discussions, as we strive for the advancement of Cloud Computing. End users, IT professionals and vendors are all encouraged to participate.”

Looking for digital content distributing independent innovators!

Michael_Lehman — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 03:33:00 GMT

Tomorrow, I am going to start podcasting and blogging regularly again.

My day job (at Microsoft) has been consuming every spare cycle that I didn't need to eat and/or live but many things are converging which have inspired me to, once again, be attentive to (both personally and professionally) independent innovation and podcasting.

If you sell and/or give away your digital content and are interested in an interview, drop me a line using the email link.

Here's to a mighty fine 2009!

Giving Posterous a Whirl...

Michael_Lehman — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 17:04:00 GMT

I've just started a new separate blog over at http://independentinnovation.posterous.com/ which purports to be a zero-friction blogging platform.

The appeal, for me, is that I can post blog entries via email instead of having to be connected either to this site or to my Windows Live Writer.

As this will let me post easily from my morning bus commute, I'm going to give this a try for a while and see how it works.

At least, for now, I'll cross-post to both blogs.

7 Tips for Living a Happier Life - from Aesop

Michael_Lehman — Fri, 09 May 2008 00:22:00 GMT

Over on The Positivity Blog, Henrik Edberg, a 27 year old student from Sweden, gives us 7 Tips for Living a Happier Life, derived from Aesop of the "Fables" fame.

Here are the 2500-year-old gems of wisdom (see Henrik's blog for more details):

1. Your wishes may not be all that they are cracked up to be.
2. Learn not only from your own life.
3. Beware of complacency.
4. Work on your own goals.
5. Kindness is always good.
6. What they say might not really be about you.
7. Help yourself.

Wisdom comes when you need it most and often times from unexpected sources!

Putting Things Off - PTO - The laid-back productivity blog

Michael_Lehman — Thu, 08 May 2008 20:05:00 GMT

Ok, this is just too fun to pass up: http://putthingsoff.com/

In Nick Cernis' own words: "Put Things Off (PTO) helps freelancers, entrepreneurs and busy people just like you work smarter, play harder and live the lives they love. PTO talks about productivity, freelancing, running your own business, making money online, setting goals, software, web applications and more"

And he just released his first book, Todoodlist, in which he recommends paper and pencil... something to think about.

Steve Rubel - Three Ways to Mitigate the Attention Crash, Yet Still Feel Informed

Michael_Lehman — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 21:36:00 GMT

Steve Rubel, with whom (and a few others) I once tried to form a Mastermind group (our schedules never could mesh), has a great new post about Three Ways To Mitigate the Attention Crash.

Summary:

Inbox Zero - www.inboxzero.com - A technique to use "email dashes" instead of on-demand reactiveness
Invest in Search - Both Web and Desktop
Make Unusable Time Usable - Use Audible to listen to business books (I highly recommend that also) and Instapaper.com (something I've got to check out).

Highly reccomended.

Cognitive Surplus - Finally a way to figure out where to get the time to create new stuff!

Michael_Lehman — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 18:44:00 GMT

Clay Shirky's talk at Web 2.0 Expo this week, finally enabled me to figure out where to get the time to create podcasts, eBooks, etc.... STOP WATCHING TELEVISION (or at least sitcoms)...

Your thoughts/comments? What do you to to make time to create new things?

Web 2.0 Expo - San Francisco - Day 2

Michael_Lehman — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 23:27:00 GMT

At the Web 2.0 Expo this week. Interesting conversations with people who are at the forefront of moving the world to (and from) the web.

Hanging in the blogger's lounge the energy is amazingly high (and this is during the keynotes!)

Good connectivity, Flip is selling mini video cameras for $60 and the blog/twit-o-sphere is burning!

DM on Twitter (Michael_Lehman) if you want to meet in-person.

Write/Build e-Book in 3 Days?

Michael_Lehman — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 23:12:58 GMT

The folks over at GET WISDOM! have a blog post today entitled How To Create Your Own E-book in 3 Days.

Day 1: Brainstorm about something you'd personally like to improve and go gather information about that and write/compile your content.

Day 2: Plan your product, joint ventures, and how you're going to build "social proof":

"With out social proof that your
product works, you will have a difficult time selling it.
A majority of people are a little bit skeptical when it
comes to buying info products online so you also might want
to invest in a quality copywriter who is experienced in
writing sales letters for info products."

Day 3: Write a sales letter and plan your "element of scarcity" that will encourage browsers to buy right now rather than waiting.

I'm not sure I can do it in 3 days but I like the challenge!

Technorati Tags: eBook

MIX08 and 41 Blog Success Tips

Michael_Lehman — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 20:39:00 GMT

I'm in Las Vegas for the MIX08 conference. Part of what I'm doing here is finally, and I promise that I really mean it this time :), blogging regularly again!

So here's the first of many posts this week!

To help out, I'm reading Chris Garrett's 41 Blog Success Tips from 10 Years of Blogging You Can Learn Today.